Nerve Read online

  From the centre of the ceiling, pale in the moonlight, hung twenty inches of sturdy galvanised chain.

  I looked down at my hands. The harness hook glinted with reflected light. No wonder it had been so difficult to break, I thought. The chain and the hook were almost new. Not the dark, old, rusty things I had been imagining all along. I swallowed, really shattered. It was just as well I hadn’t known.

  My hands themselves, including the thumb I had tried to warm, were white. Almost as white as my shirt-sleeves. Almost as white as the nylon rope which wound round the hooks. Only my wrists were dark.

  I stretched my feet out. More white nylon rope ran from one ankle to the other, about fifteen inches of it.

  My fingers wouldn’t undo the knots. My pockets had been emptied; no knife, no matches. There was nothing in the tack-room to cut with. I stood up stiffly, leaning against the wall, and slowly, carefully, shuffled over to the door. My foot kicked against something, and I looked down. On the edge of a patch of moonlight lay the broken link. It was a grotesquely buckled piece of silvery metal. It had given me a lot of trouble.

  I went on to the door and negotiated the step. The bucket stood there, dully grey. I looked round the moonlit L-shaped yard. Four boxes stretched away to my right, and at right-angles to them there were two more, on the short arm of the L. Over there too, was the tap; and beside the tap, on the ground, an object I was very glad to see. A boot-scraper made of a thin metal plate bedded in concrete.

  With small careful steps I made my way to it across the hard-packed gravel, the cutting wind ripping the last remnants of warmth from my body.

  Leaning against the wall, and with one foot on the ground, I stretched the rope tautly over the boot-scraper and began to rub it to and fro, using the other foot as a pendulum. The blade of the scraper was far from sharp and the rope was new, and it took a long time to fray it through, but it parted in the end. I knelt down and tried to do the same with the strands round my wrists, but the harness hook kept getting in the way again and I couldn’t get anything like the same purchase. I stood up wearily. It looked as though I’d have to lug that tiresome piece of ironmongery around with me a while longer.

  Being able to move my legs, however, gave me a marvellous sense of freedom. Stiffly, shaking with cold, I walked out of the yard round to the house looming darkly behind it. There were no lights, and on looking closer I found the downstairs windows were all shuttered. It was as empty as the stable; an unwelcome but not unexpected discovery.

  I walked a bit unsteadily on past the house and down the drive. It was a long drive with no lodge at the gate, only an estate agent’s board announcing that this desirable country gentleman’s residence was for sale, together with some excellent modern stabling, forty acres of arable land and an apple orchard.

  A country lane ran past the end of the drive giving no indication as to which way lay civilisation. I tried to remember from which direction the Mini-Cooper had come, but I couldn’t. It seemed a very long time ago. I glanced automatically at my left wrist but there was only rope there, no watch. Since it had to be one thing or the other, I turned right. It was a deserted road with open fields on the far sides of its low hedges. No cars passed, and nowhere could I see a light. Cursing the wind and aching all over, I stumbled on, hanging on to the fact that if I went far enough I was bound to come to a house in the end.

  What I came to first was not a house but something much better. A telephone box. It stood alone, brightly lit inside, square and beckoning, on the corner where the lane turned into a more main road, and it solved the embarrassing problem of presenting myself at some stranger’s door looking like a scarecrow and having to explain how I had got into such a state.

  There were a lot of people I could have called. Police, Ambulance or the Fire Brigade for a start; but by the time I had forced my still nearly useless hands to pull the door open far enough for me to get my foot in, I had had time to think. Once I called in authority in any form there would be unending questions to answer and statements to make, and like as not I’d end up for the night in the local cottage hospital. I hated being in hospitals.

  Also, although I felt so bone cold, it was not, I thought, actually freezing. The puddles at the side of the road had no ice on them. They would be racing at Ascot the next day. Template would turn up for the Midwinter, and James didn’t know his jockey was wandering around unfit to ride.

  Unfit … Between seeing the telephone box and clumsily picking up the receiver I came to the conclusion that the only satisfactory way to cheat Kemp-Lore of his victory was to go and ride the race, and win it if I could, and pretend that tonight’s misfortunes had not happened. He had had things his own way for far too long. He was not, he was positively not, I vowed, going to get the better of me any more.

  I dialled O with an effort, gave the operator my credit card number, and asked to be connected to the one person in the world who would give me the help I needed, and keep quiet about it afterwards, and not try to argue me out of what I intended to do.

  Her voice sounded sleepy. She said, ‘Hello?’

  ‘Joanna … are you busy?’ I asked.

  ‘Busy? At this hour?’ she said. ‘Is that you, Rob?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Well, go back to bed and ring me in the morning,’ she said. ‘I was asleep. Don’t you know what time it is?’ I heard her yawn.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Well, it’s … er … twenty to one. Good night.’

  ‘Joanna, don’t go,’ I said urgently. ‘I need your help. I really do. Please don’t ring off.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ She yawned again.

  ‘I … I … Joanna, come and help me. Please.’

  There was a little silence and she said in a more awake voice, ‘You’ve never said ‘please’ like that to me before. Not for anything.’

  ‘Will you come?’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘I don’t really know,’ I said despairingly. ‘I’m in a telephone box on a country road miles from anywhere. The telephone exchange is Hampden Row.’ I spelled it out for her. ‘I don’t think it’s very far from London, and somewhere on the West, probably.’

  ‘You can’t come back on your own?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve no money and my clothes are wet.’

  ‘Oh.’ A pause. ‘All right, then. I’ll find out where you are and come in a taxi. Anything else?’

  ‘Bring a sweater,’ I said. ‘I’m cold. And some dry socks, if you have any. And some gloves. Don’t forget the gloves. And a pair of scissors.’

  ‘Sweater, socks, gloves, scissors. O.K. You’ll have to wait while I get dressed again, but I’ll come as soon as I can. Stay by the telephone box.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll hurry, don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Good-bye.’

  ‘Good-bye …’ I fumbled the receiver back on to its rest. However quick she was, she wouldn’t arrive for an hour. Well, what was one more hour after so many? I had had no idea it was so late: the evening had certainly seemed to me to be going on for an eternity, but I had lost all sense of actual time. And Kemp-Lore hadn’t come back. His show had been over for hours, and he hadn’t come back. The bloody, murdering bastard, I thought.

  I sat down on the floor of the box and leaned gingerly against the wall beside the telephone, with my head resting on the coin box. Exercise and the bitter wind outside, inactivity and shelter inside; one looked as cold a prospect as the other. But I was too tired to walk any more if I didn’t have to, so the choice was easy.

  I put my hands up to my face and one by one bit my fingers. They were icy cold and yellowish white, and none of them had any feeling. They would curl and uncurl, but slowly and weakly, and that was all. I got to work on them seriously then, rubbing them up and down against my legs, bumping them on my knees, forcing them open and shut, but it seemed to make little difference. I persevered from fear that they should get worse if I didn’t, and paid for
it in various creaks from my sore and sorely misused shoulders.

  There was a good deal to think about to take my mind off my woes. That sticking-plaster for instance. Why had he used it? The strip over my mouth, I had assumed, had been to stop me shouting for help; but when I got it off at last and shouted, there was no one to hear. No one could have heard however loud I yelled, because the stable was so far from the lane.

  The strip over my eyes should have been to prevent my seeing where I was going, but why did it matter if I saw an empty yard and a deserted tack-room? What would have happened differently, I wondered, if I had been able to see and talk.

  To see … I would have seen Kemp-Lore’s expression while he went about putting me out of action. I would have seen Kemp-Lore … that was it! It was himself he had not wanted me to see, not the place.

  If that were so it was conceivable that he had prevented me from talking simply so that he should not be trapped into answering. He had spoken only once, and that in a low, unrecognisable tone. I became convinced that he had not wanted me to hear and recognise his voice.

  In that case he must have believed I did not know who had abducted me, that I didn’t know who he was. He must still believe it. Which meant that he thought James had knocked Turniptop’s doped sugar out of his hand by accident, that he hadn’t heard about Tick-Tock and me going round all the stables, and that he didn’t know that I had been asking about the Jaguar. It gave me, I thought, a fractional advantage for the future. If he had left any tracks anywhere, he would not see any vital, immediate need to obliterate them. If he didn’t know he was due for destruction himself, he would not be excessively on his guard.

  Looking at my bloodless hands and knowing that on top of everything else I still had to face the pain of their return to life, I was aware that all the civilised brakes were off in my conscience. Helping to build up what he had broken was not enough. He himself had hammered into me the inner implacability I had lacked to avenge myself and all the others thoroughly, and do it physically and finally and without compunction.

  She came, in the end.

  I heard a car draw up and a door slam, and her quick tread on the road. The door of the telephone box opened, letting in an icy blast, and there she was, dressed in trousers and woolly boots and a warm blue padded jacket, with the light falling on her dark hair and making hollows of her eyes.

  I was infinitely glad to see her. I looked up at her and did my best at a big smile of welcome, but it didn’t come off very well. I was shivering too much.

  She knelt down and took a closer look at me. Her face went stiff with shock.

  ‘Your hands,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. Did you bring the scissors?’

  Without a word she opened her handbag, took out a sensible-sized pair, and cut me free. She did it gently. She took the harness hook from between my knees and laid it on the floor, and carefully peeled from my wrists the cut pieces of rope. They were all more brown than white, stained with blood, and where they had been there were big corrugated raw patches, dark and deep. She stared at them.

  ‘More bits of rope down there,’ I said, nodding towards my feet.

  She cut the pieces round my ankles, and I saw her rubbing my trouser leg between her fingers. The air had been too cold to dry them and my body had not generated enough heat, so they were still very damp.

  ‘Been swimming?’ she said flippantly. Her voice cracked.

  There was a step on the road outside and a man’s shape loomed up behind Joanna.

  ‘Are you all right, miss?’ he said in a reliable sounding Cockney voice.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ she said. ‘Do you think you could help me get my cousin into the taxi?’

  He stepped into the doorway and looked down at me, his eyes on my wrists and my hands.

  ‘Christ,’ he said.

  ‘Very aptly put,’ I said.

  He looked at my face. He was a big sturdy man of about fifty, weather-beaten like a sailor, with eyes that looked as if they had seen everything and found most of it disappointing.

  ‘You’ve been done proper, haven’t you?’ he said.

  ‘Proper,’ I agreed.

  He smiled faintly. ‘Come on then. No sense in hanging about here.’

  I stood up clumsily and lurched against Joanna, and put my arms round her neck to save myself from falling; and as I was there it seemed a shame to miss the opportunity, so I kissed her. On the eyebrow, as it happened.

  ‘Did you say “cousin”?’ said the taxi driver.

  ‘Cousin,’ said Joanna firmly. Much too firmly.

  The driver held the door open. ‘We’d better take him to a doctor,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No doctor.’

  Joanna said, ‘You need one.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s frostbite,’ said the driver pointing to my hands.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It isn’t freezing. No ice on the puddles. Just cold. Not frostbite.’ My teeth were chattering and I could only speak in short sentences.

  ‘What happened to your back?’ asked the driver, looking at the tattered bits of shirt sticking to me.

  ‘I … fell over,’ I said. ‘On some gravel.’

  He looked sceptical.

  ‘It’s a terrible mess, and there’s a lot of dirt in it,’ said Joanna, peering round me and sounding worried.

  ‘You wash it,’ I said. ‘At home.’

  ‘You need a doctor,’ said the driver again.

  I shook my head. ‘I need Dettol, aspirins and sleep.’

  ‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ said Joanna. ‘What else?’

  ‘Sweater,’ I said.

  ‘It’s in the taxi,’ she said. ‘And some other clothes. You can change as we go along. The sooner you get into a hot bath the better.’

  ‘I’d be careful about that, miss,’ said the driver. ‘Don’t go warming those hands up too fast or the fingers will drop off.’ A comforting chap. Inaccurate too, I trusted. Joanna looked more worried than ever.

  We walked from the telephone box to the taxi. It was an ordinary black London taxi. I wondered what charm Joanna had used to get it so far out into the country in the middle of the night; and also, more practically, whether the meter was still ticking away. It was.

  ‘Get in, out of the wind,’ she said, opening the taxi door.

  I did as I was told. She had brought a suitcase, from which she now produced a thin, pale blue cardigan of her own, and a padded man-sized olive-coloured anorak which zipped up the front. She looked at me judiciously, and out came the scissors. Some quick snips and the ruins of my shirt lay on the seat beside me. She cut two long strips of it and wound them carefully round my wrists. The taxi driver watched.

  ‘This is a police job,’ he suggested.

  I shook my head. ‘Private fight,’ I said.

  He held up the harness hook, which he had brought across from the telephone box.

  ‘What sort of thing is this?’ he asked.

  ‘Throw it in the ditch,’ I said, averting my eyes.

  ‘You’ll be needing it for the police,’ he insisted.

  ‘I told you,’ I said wearily, ‘no police.’

  His disillusioned face showed that he knew all about people who got themselves beaten up but wouldn’t report it. He shrugged and went off into the darkness, and came back without the hook.

  ‘It’s in the ditch just behind the telephone box, if you change your mind,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  Joanna finished the bandages and helped my arms into both the garments she had brought, and fastened the fronts. The next thing the suitcase produced was a pair of fur lined mittens which went on without too much trouble, and after that a thermos flask full of hot soup, and some cups.

  I looked into Joanna’s black eyes as she held the cup to my mouth. I loved her. Who wouldn’t love a girl who thought of hot soup at a time like that?

  The driver accepted some soup too, and stamped his feet on the grou
nd and remarked that it was getting chilly. Joanna gave him a pained look, and I laughed.

  He glanced at me appraisingly and said, ‘Maybe you can do without a doctor, at that.’ He thanked Joanna for the soup, gave her back the cup, settled himself in the driving seat and, switching off the light inside the taxi, started to drive us back to London.

  ‘Who did it?’ said Joanna.

  ‘Tell you later.’

  ‘All right.’ She didn’t press. She bent down to the case and brought out some fleecy slippers, thick socks and a pair of her own stretchy trews. ‘Take your trousers off.’

  I said ironically ‘I can’t undo the zip.’

  ‘I forgot …’

  ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘I’ll settle for the socks; can’t manage the trousers.’ Even I could hear the exhaustion in my voice, and Joanna without arguing got down on her knees in the swaying cab and changed my wet socks and shoes for dry ones.

  ‘Your feet are freezing,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t feel them,’ I said. The moon shone clearly through the window and I looked at the slippers. They were too large for me, much too large for Joanna.

  ‘Have I stepped into Brian’s shoes?’ I asked.

  After a pause she said neutrally, ‘They are Brian’s, yes.

  ‘And the jacket?’

  ‘I bought it for him for Christmas.’

  So that was that. It wasn’t the best moment to find out.

  ‘I didn’t give it to him,’ she said after a moment, as if she had made up her mind about something.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It didn’t seem to suit a respectable life in the outer suburbs. I gave him a gold tie-pin instead.’

  ‘Very suitable,’ I said dryly.

  ‘A farewell present,’ she said quietly.

  I said sincerely, ‘I’m sorry.’ I knew it hadn’t been easy for her.

  She drew in a breath sharply. ‘Are you made of iron, Rob?’

  ‘Iron filings,’ I said.

  The taxi sped on.

  ‘We had a job finding you,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry we were so long. It was such a big area, you see.’

  ‘You came, though.’