Death Drop Page 6

  Shulter said quietly, "I've made the usual noises at you. I haven't the gift of tongues, I'm afraid. There aren't any words for this. I have a young kid of my own. If it had happened to him, I'd feel as you feel. I think I can just about reach out and touch the edge of what you're feeling."

  They sat in silence.

  Fleming was the first to break it. "The autopsy is going on now."

  "Try not to think of it."

  "How can I help but think of it?"

  "I know. But nothing is ever quite as bad as we imagine it is. I'm sorry I wasn't at the mortuary with you. Brannigan or Preston should have told me." He raised his glass of beer and watched the sunlight send little diamond flashes of foam into oblivion. That Fleming was seeing the autopsy in every small detail he had no doubt and he didn't know how to stop him seeing it. Now was the time to talk about the body and the spirit and he knew he didn't dare. This was raw and real. One word now delivered with unction rather than with belly-aching truth and the small thread of communication that they were beginning to establish would snap. Fleming would get up and go and he would chalk up another failure. It was his job to be here – God help him. Literally God help him. He didn't know how to help Fleming.

  "Would you have agreed to the confirmation?" He asked the question for the sake of saying something. The answer no longer mattered.

  "I don't know. I suppose so." It was a life-line of words and Fleming held on to it. Go on, he thought, talk to me. Tell me about the living David.

  "Marristone Grange is C, of E. as you know. Confirmation is usual if the parents agree. I'd asked David about his own feelings on it and he said it was okay by him if it was okay by you. I sensed there was a close bond of affection between you."

  "Yes."

  "He didn't accept things easily. He questioned the Creed. Why would Christ descend into hell? He wanted chapter and verse quoted for everything. And then the Trinity – who or what was the Holy Ghost? He more or less accused me of inventing the Holy Ghost." Shulter smiled slightly. "He had a very literal mind, your son. Did you. know that?"

  "Tell me more."

  "I take Scripture classes several times a term – not with any of the set examinations in mind, but just to get to know the boys. It's part of the Marristone Grange tradition. My predecessor had let it lapse and it seemed a pity. I remember asking David's class about their favourite Biblical character and David surprised me by saying Zaccheus. It had taken guts, David said, to climb that tree with the mob trying to elbow him out."

  Fleming drew his beer towards him. He asked the question with some disquiet. "Did you sense that David himself was being elbowed out – by the other lads?"

  Shulter's obvious surprise reassured him. "Far from it. He was likeable."

  "He had no obvious enemies? No boy in his class that he was afraid of?"

  Shulter, aware that the flat lands of pain had assumed the unpredictability of quicksand, began treading with caution. Enemies? What young boy didn't have enemies? An enemy of a day or a week metamorphosed into a friend of a day or a week. Marristone Grange wasn't terrorist country. Fleming was speaking of children.

  "I can't imagine your lad being afraid of anyone. Certainly of no-one in my Scripture class. If something specific is worrying you, I think you should tell me more."

  He listened, perturbed, as Fleming told him about the sketch. Consolation was called for and he tried to give it. "I think you're probably reading more into it than you should. He had been ill. Medication can have odd side-effects. He might have had a drug-induced nightmare and then drawn the picture."

  "He might. It wasn't an explanation that Doctor Preston put forward. Perhaps he was trying to protect his pills as you are trying to protect the school." It was bitter.

  It was also, Shulter thought, unjust. If he were trying to protect anyone he was trying to protect Fleming himself. Whatever had happened it was over and finished. Fleming's acceptance of the boy's death was the first necessary step towards healing. The balm of Christian faith could only be applied when the wound was ready for it. The next question he had to ask would rub in salt, but it had to be asked.

  "I'm not trying to protect the school. It just seemed to me that it could be physiological rather than psychological." He balked at the question and then eventually rushed it out. "I wanted to see you this morning to ask what you intend doing about the funeral?"

  Fleming felt shock waves travel through his pores. His mind hadn't taken him that far. Shulter, aware how close he was to a breakdown, wished they were anywhere other than in a public bar. He moved his chair so that Fleming was partly screened from any curious onlooker.

  Fleming, controlled again, felt the unexpressed sympathy. He imagined Shulter on the other side of a partition in a confessional. A quiet presence. Only the Church of England didn't have confessionals, did it? David hadn't been brought up C. of E. or R.C. His christening had been in the U.R.C. Which Godly trade union was to take charge of the burial ceremony?

  Shulter pressed on gently with the practicalities. "I'll go with you to the undertaker. I wish I could take over all that side of it for you, but I'm afraid it's something you have to do yourself."

  "I realise that."

  "The funeral will probably be early next week – a few days after the inquest. Unless you decide to make other arrangements, I'll take the service – if you'll allow me to."

  "I'm not a member of.your church."

  "That doesn't matter."

  "Or even a believer."

  "That doesn't matter either."

  Shulter suddenly remembered some words of David's… not spoken to him but to another boy in his hearing after David thought he was out of earshot. "It seems to me you've got to flipping well take a heck of a lot on trust -• do you think that's what he means by faith?" He debated whether or not to repeat the words to Fleming. They were so apt in this particular situation Fleming might believe he had made them up. He risked it.

  Fleming heard David in the words. Trust. Faith. The words in the present context were hollow. David had trusted him and he in turn had trusted the school to take care of him. The kind of faith that consoled after the debacle was something outside his ken. He wished it were not. He wished he could go now with Shulter to his church and heave off this burden at the altar steps. He wished he could have a simple peasant faith – or the kind of faith that David was looking for.

  He was aware that Shulter had something else to ask, and was wary of asking it. He waited and the question came with some hesitancy.

  "The school has its own small chapel. At one time it was used for services. It's consecrated. Until the funeral would you like David's body to lie there – or do you want him to be taken to the undertaker's Chapel of Rest?"

  Fleming's answer came with no hesitation whatsoever. "Anywhere but the school. The bloody place killed him."

  Shulter, about to protest, thought better of it. Fleming's hatred was beyond reason. He hoped it was without just cause.

  By three o'clock the day had begun to be beautiful. The morning clouds had shredded in the wind and though the rain was still sporadic it gleamed with sunshine. The inlet of water, channelled from the harbour, rolled in with a soft breathing movement that touched the old craft of the Maritime Museum so that they, too, rolled and breathed and muttered like old men dreaming.

  A Portuguese frigate painted in strong blues and crimsons splashed the water around it with paler blues and crimsons. Next to it the wind played in the lug sails of a Chinese lorcha. An elderly Thames barge and a Danish jagt moved in unison, their timbers creaking.

  The paddle-steamers resisted the wind but responded to the water with slow rhythms evocative of ancient sea-shanties. The extraordinary peace of the place was suddenly shattered by the scream of a gull as it alighted on a tall thin funnel. From nearby a dozen gulls swooped in, calling and thrashing the water with their wings.

  The small group at the entrance gate waited wordlessly and watched the gulls come and go. Hammond, standi
ng a little away from the others, wished that he could have prevailed upon Brannigan to let him come alone. Brannigan at the last minute had decided to dilute the interview by bringing four of the senior boys, too. He had argued that Fleming would want to interview them anyway, and that the interview might as well take place on the ship where the accident had happened. Durrant, at fifteen, was the youngest and not sensitive. Masters, Welling and Stonley at sixteen plus were old enough to face the facts of the situation. In another year or two they would be out in the world. Fleming, no matter what his feelings were, wouldn't ride them hard. It was unspoken, but implied, that in their presence Fleming wouldn't ride Hammond too hard either.

  Hammond guessed that Fleming would see it as a bodyguard and add contempt to all his other emotions. He felt tired – even a little uncaring – as if the anxiety of the last few days had slowly exuded like pus from a boil. His mind refused to conjure up what had happened in detail, instead scraps of information he had dictated to the boys swam up to the surface like so much flotsam in the harbour. The Sirius on her trip across the Atlantic had averaged 6.7 knots. The Comet averaged 6.7 in British coastal waters. Both better than the Clermont's 4.7 knots. Snorter's propeller and Smith's screw of the early nineteenth century were the forerunners of Ericsson's double propeller of the mid-nineteenth century.

  Brannigan said, "He's just crossing the road by the traffic island."

  Fleming saw the four boys before he noticed Brannigan and Hammond. Their stillness as they watched him approaching was almost hypnotic. He felt like an aircraft being beamed in on radar and then, breaking the pull of their eyes, he looked beyond them and saw Brannigan and another younger man who must be Hammond.

  So this was the one. Tall – slightly stoop-shouldered -• thick, fair hair badly cut – bony features – a long wide mouth – unrevealing eyes.

  Brannigan made the introduction quickly and nervously, almost immediately turning from Hammond and drawing the boys forward. "These are the older lads who were on the ship at the time. I didn't think it was wise or necessary to have the younger ones along… This is Welling."

  "How do you do, sir?" Welling dared to do what Hammond hadn't. He extended his hand.

  Fleming took it. The boy lacked the usual awkwardness of adolescence. He had a glossy gracefulness. Masters was different in both physique and character. He was short and swarthy and mumbled inaudibly. His intense embarrassment struck a sympathetic chord in Fleming. This time he proffered his hand and the boy took it. Stonley, nondescript and silent, inclined his head stiffly and then moved quickly so that Durrant could come forward. Fleming remembered the name.

  "Durrant."

  "Yes, sir. How do you do, sir?"

  There was a certain bravado in the tone, something in the expression in the eyes, that seemed to belong to another situation. He looked at a tall, rather ugly, gangling boy who had bashed David for voicing a preference for baseball. But not just that, he sensed something more. Durrant looked back at him and saw quite simply an enemy. The method of his extermination would become clear in time. His imagination was already feeding on it.

  "You're the boy who objects to baseball, Durrant?"

  The quick tongue touched the thick lower lip. "Only in this country, sir. He went on about it a bit."

  "And you hit him – a bit?"

  "Not hard, sir."

  Fleming turned from him and looked at Hammond again. He indicated the boys. "Your idea?"

  Brannigan spoke before Hammond could answer. "No -• entirely mine."

  "I fail to see the reason for it."

  "You wanted an enquiry. The boys were there. They will be able to tell you what they saw or didn't see."

  He had to agree to it. He wondered what kind of loyalty Hammond could drum up. The feeling of being behind enemy lines was strongly with him again. Hammond was being safely hedged around. The degree of his vulnerability depended on the boys and Brannigan himself.

  Hammond said gruffly, "We can meet alone, if that's what you want, later on… I haven't tried to sympathise with you. Anything I say you'll probably misconstrue. If I say I'm sorry that David died – and I am, desperately and deeply sorry – you'll see it as an admission of guilt. I admit nothing. There was no negligence."

  Fleming was silent.

  Brannigan, deploring Hammond's attitude but not surprised by it, suggested that they should go into the Museum. He had already bought the tickets, including one for Fleming. A party of Swedish students of both sexes went through the gate at the same time. They spoke loudly, cheerfully and incomprehensibly and looked with some curiosity at the group of boys and men who spoke not at all.

  Their leader, who had some English, approached Brannigan. "Where is the position of the little ships, would you tell me please?"

  Brannigan, cravenly glad of their presence but sufficiently strong-minded to make an effort to get rid of them answered curtly. "The models? In the shed – up those steps over there."

  "The little boats of the primitive times, but not the models. The catamaran and the trees with the dug-out centre and the bamboo raft."

  "They're in the adjoining shed – the shed next to that one. They are numbered in your catalogue."

  "You are coming that way, too, please?"

  "No. We are interested in the vessels on the water."

  "And we also. Someone who would help with the interpretation we should be most happy to have." '

  Brannigan said firmly. "I'm sorry. It's not convenient for you to join us. You will find officials in each section. Ask one of them."

  The Swede rejoined his group. He spoke to them quickly and bitterly.

  Welling said in an aside to Masters, "How to make friends and influence people."

  Brannigan overheard him. "In any other circumstances, Welling, your criticism would be justified."

  "I'm sorry, sir. I understand the situation. I wasn't being critical."

  "No? Amusing, perhaps?"

  "No, sir. It was a stupid remark, sir. I'm sorry, sir."

  There were times, Brannigan thought, when the honest-eyed, easy-tongued, commendably hard-working sixth former got under his skin even more than Durrant did – which was saying a lot. Durrant had sparked up when Fleming had mentioned the baseball incident – rather like a bull being surprised by a matador's barb – but his expression had cooled down again to moroseness. Fleming's acquisition of that particular barb had surprised Brannigan, too, and disconcerted him more than a little.

  The wind blew an empty sweet bag against Durrant's ankle. He picked it up, made a ball of it, and dropped it into the water. The waves took it and flipped it against the black painted hull of a yellow-sailed ketch.

  Hammond spoke irritably, "There's a rubbish bin over there."

  Durrant, not aware he was being addressed, didn't answer. His ability to switch off from reality into a more congenial and interesting environment had been acquired over the years. His growing physical strength and bizarre imagination combined forcefully into what he saw as a power-house in an alien city. He could people that city as and how he wished and dominate them – some in fact, others in fantasy. His mind was now on Fleming senior. Brannigan, as a heavy-booted Colditz commandant, was by comparison small fry. Around Fleming was an aura of blood. Pleasurably he felt a small crawl of fear. This enemy was in the world inside his head – and he was in the world outside it. He began smelling the water of the harbour again and saw that the sweet bag had rounded the bow and disappeared.

  Brannigan went over to Fleming. "It would have been better to have come here' after closing time with no-one around. I can still arrange to do that if you would like me to?"

  Fleming saw it as procrastination. "Let's get on with it – now."

  Hammond, surprisingly, brushed past Brannigan and took the lead. He walked a few paces ahead of everyone, his head hunched between his shoulders, his arms swinging. The wind blew his hair into a parting across the back of his head so that his scalp showed white against the brown of his neck
. When he stopped and turned, the wind took his hair the other way and he put his hand up in an irritable gesture and smoothed it.

  "That's it. The Mariana." He indicated a cargo vessel with a green and yellow funnel. It was pulling lazily at its anchor as if in a half-hearted attempt at freedom.

  Fleming saw the name enclosed in a thin red-painted rectangle on the bow. Mariana. It was incongruously gentle. Like an execution chamber hung around with silk.

  Now that he was here he wished he were anywhere but here. The thrusting reality of David's death had degrees of penetration. To bear the pain and yet retain his calm demanded of his strength more than he was capable of. His instinct now was to turn and go. He had seen and heard all he could take. He wanted no more of it.

  Aware that his hands were shaking he put them behind his back and gripped his wrists hard.

  Brannigan was beside him. There was sympathy in his voice. "There's no need to board her. Hammond can explain the positioning of the boys from here."

  "We'll board her."

  Hammond led the way down the gangplank. His voice assumed the slightly higher pitch he used in class. "Every time I take a group of boys on a ship we move around the ship as a group to discover the general lay-out of it. After that each boy, apart from the younger ones who stay with me, goes to work on the particular part of the project assigned to him. I suggest we move around the ship now as a group – afterwards the boys can take up their individual positions and you can question them individually, if that's what you want to do."

  "That's what I want to do. But your guided tour can wait. I want to see the hold where it happened. Now."

  What the hell was Hammond thinking, of, Fleming wondered. A slow build-up to a grand finale? Bridge deck. Boat deck. Lower deck. And now wait for it, Fleming, while the drums roll.

  That he could quite easily kill Hammond occurred to him. He was emotionally capable of it.

  Their eyes met.

  Hammond shrugged. "All right. I wasn't trying to defer it. It was a duplication of the usual routine. I'm trying to present everything exactly as it happened." He turned to the boys. "Stay here. There's no point in your coming too."