Silver Fin Page 18
For the first time James saw Meatpacker’s face.
Only it wasn’t a face any more. There were just a few flaps of skin and muscle left; the rest had been messily stripped away. And it was clear what creature had done this, because, as James watched, a long, fat eel, as thick as his arm, slowly squirmed out of Meatpacker’s mouth and on to the ground, where it slithered away into the water.
There were more of them, tangled in his hair like living locks, twisting and writhing. James wanted to look away but couldn’t. He was mesmerised by the sight.
The man with the pole now poked Meatpacker’s body, and the buttons on the front of his suit gave way and the clothing opened, releasing a great, tangled mass of grey and black eels. That was what James had seen moving. It was ridiculous that he had imagined that Meatpacker could still be alive.
James thought of the gun. What use would that have been against these fish?
The men by the castle had all backed away now. Nobody could bear the hideous sight. Sergeant White was consoling the younger policeman, who appeared to be sobbing. Several of the other men were being sick and James felt the gorge rise in his own throat. But he fought it and kept his eyes jammed to the glasses, because he wanted to see the reaction of one particular man – Lord Hellebore.
He stood there, tall and stiff-backed, staring at the corpse, and the expression on his face was not one of horror, it was one of fascination.
James turned to say something to Kelly, but then saw that he too was being quietly sick.
James rolled on to his back and lay there, looking up into the darkening sky. He took long, slow, deep breaths of clean, fresh air and tried to put the image of Meatpacker’s ruined body out of his mind. But it was no good – he knew that it would haunt him for the rest of his life.
18
Monsters Can’t See You in the Dark
‘There you go, Mister Bond,’ said Kelly with the voice of a snooty shoe-shop assistant, and he gave James back his boot. ‘Nobody’ll ever know it’s in there.’
James studied Kelly’s handiwork. ‘That’s amazing,’ he said, and smiled.
Kelly had spent the last half-hour fashioning a secret compartment in the heel for James. He explained that he often needed to hide things, back home in London, and James didn’t ask too closely why. Using his penknife, the older boy had carved out the heel and made a space large enough to fit James’s small, folding knife, and then fashioned an ingenious cover for it from the top layer of the heel.
They had stayed near the castle long enough to watch the arrival of an ambulance. By this time most of the eels had left Meatpacker’s body and slithered back into the water. But the last few were helped on their way by some of the less squeamish men, who kicked and prodded them across the ground. The two horrified ambulance men wrapped up the body, which was little more than a skeleton clothed in filthy rags, put it on a stretcher and loaded it in the back of their vehicle, before driving slowly off. There was no hurry. After all, Meatpacker was beyond needing a doctor.
Sergeant White and the young constable had gone into the castle with Lord Hellebore and, after that, nothing else happened until the policemen left, nearly an hour later.
When evening came, the two boys had left their hiding place and searched for a good spot to make camp, as far away from the castle and any human activity as they could find. They had worked their way back round the loch, passing Meatpacker’s thicket and carrying on until they found a suitably sheltered spot, beneath a tall, overhanging rock among some birch trees whose roots helped keep the ground relatively dry.
James slipped his boot back on and laced it tightly.
‘Do you think it’s dark enough yet?’ he asked.
‘We’ll give it a bit longer.’
‘While we’re waiting, would you teach me how to fight dirty?’ said James. ‘It might come in useful.’
‘No such thing as fighting dirty, really, Jimmy,’ said Kelly. ‘There’s just fighting to win. Use whatever you like, you can forget about rules; you’ve got to kick, scratch, bite, punch, claw with your nails… What you’ve got to do, see, is hurt your enemy as bad as you can as quick as you can, before he hurts you. Go for the soft bits, the eyes, nostrils, armpits, belly and, of course… well, you know where a bloke hurts worst.’
James looked down and winced.
‘Exactly,’ laughed Kelly. ‘You get a bloke down there and he’s out of action for the rest of the day. You want to know how to win a fight? You’ve got to get over your fear.’
‘Your fear of getting hurt?’
‘No, Jimmy, your fear of hurting someone else. It takes a lot of guts to smash someone up. To bust their noodle or knee them in the family jewels. That’s why most blokes only fight when they’re drunk. Of course,’ he said seriously, ‘the best skill you can learn is how not to get into a fight in the first place. But sometimes you won’t be able to avoid it, in which case you need to get it over with as quickly as possible.’
Kelly demonstrated some tricks to James – how to throw someone, how to get out of a stranglehold, how to punch without hurting your hand – and they spent a happy hour fighting each other.
At last they stopped, and Kelly looked up at the sky. There was a bright half-moon and the stars were starting to come out.
‘Time to go, I reckon,’ he said.
‘Have you figured out what to do about the fence?’ said James.
‘Yeah. There’s no point trying to find where Meatpacker got in, ’cause they’ll have fixed that.’
‘So what, then?’ asked James, checking the torch that Uncle Maxhad given him last night.
‘There’s them lorries,’ said Kelly.
‘How do you mean?’
‘They’re in and out of there a fair bit. If we could just get in the back of one of them.’
‘That sounds pretty risky.’
‘Everything’s bloody risky!’ Kelly snapped. ‘But we’ve got no wire-cutters to cut through the fence and no spades to dig under it, so the best bet is to just breeze through the gates in a chauffeur-driven charabanc. It’s worth a look, anyway. I reckon it’s plenty dark enough now.’
A shudder of excitement passed through James. His heart was beating fast. He felt more awake than he had ever done.
‘Come on,’ he said, jumping up. ‘Let’s go, then.’
It took them a good forty minutes to make their careful way round behind the hills to the rear gate by the compound; it was lit up, as bright as daylight, by high floodlights mounted on posts.
While Kelly scouted the area, James hauled himself up into the tree to get a look through his binoculars over the high wooden fence.
Kelly soon came back and asked him what he could see.
‘It’s still fairly busy with men coming and going, but the lorries all seem to be parked for the night,’ he whispered as he got down out of the tree. ‘How about you?’
Kelly led James to the edge of the wire fence.
‘See that ditch there?’ he said. ‘It runs all the way along to the road by the gate, then goes underneath it, through a pipe. Nobody’d ever see us if we crawled along it. You’d be able to get right up to a lorry.’
‘If there were a lorry,’ said James. ‘Maybe we’re too late, maybe we should have tried earlier.’
‘Yeah, maybe,’ said Kelly, climbing into the ditch. ‘But let’s sit it out and see what occurs.’
For an hour nothing occurred, and the two of them were just thinking of trying something different when they heard the distant sound of an approaching vehicle.
‘Ready?’ said Kelly.
‘I’m still not sure about this.’
‘You’ve had long enough to think about it.’
‘I’ve had too long,’ said James, but Kelly was off, wriggling along the ditch on his hands and knees towards the gates at some speed. James was ri
ght behind him.
The ditch was fairly deep and had two or three inches of water at the bottom, so they were soon drenched up to their elbows and hips, but James scarcely noticed.
Ahead of them, a big, dirty lorry trundled up to the gates and stopped. The driver got out, slammed the door, walked over to the guardhouse and spoke to the man inside.
The lorry’s engine was ticking over noisily and clouds of choking fumes were pumping out of the exhaust into the damp night air.
Kelly signalled to James to stop, then he turned and whispered to him. ‘Wait here.’
He scrambled up out of the ditch and disappeared round the back of the lorry.
A few moments later, he beckoned to James, who scurried up after him.
There was a canvas flap above the tailgate, and Kelly had quickly undone it just enough for them to squeeze through. It struck James that Red must have done this sort of thing before.
Kelly went in first, and James just had time to get in after him before the lorry started up again and rumbled through the gates into the compound.
Inside the lorry it was dark and stuffy and crammed with sacks of something knobbly.
They climbed over the sacks until they were sure that they’d be hidden if anyone opened the back of the lorry and looked in.
This was madness. It had all happened so fast that James hadn’t had time to think, and now here he was, entering Lord Hellebore’s castle. He looked at Kelly, who grinned at him and gave him the thumbs-up.
James opened one of the sacks and looked inside – turnips.
He smiled and shook his head.
The lorry waited for a moment at the inner gate, then carried on through, and half a minute later they stopped again and the engine was switched off.
They heard the driver get out, and then voices and laughter. The flap was tugged open and the back of the lorry was flooded with light.
‘I don’t fancy shifting this lot tonight,’ said a harsh voice in a thick Scottish accent.
‘It can wait till morning,’ said a second voice, which sounded American. ‘I’ll fix you up some with some grub, and then what do you say to a drink?’
‘Sounds grand,’ said the first voice, and there was more laughter as the two men went away, chatting.
‘Phew.’ Kelly sighed theatrically. ‘So far, so good. But we’d better get out of here sharpish and find somewhere a bit safer.’
He cautiously peered out of the back, made sure it was all clear and climbed down.
They were in a large shed where three other lorries were parked next to a couple of cars, a tractor and a motorbike. Stacked against the back wall was a pile of boxes and crates.
The two boys crept towards the open doors, keeping close to the wall, and looked out into the compound. It had quietened down since they had first arrived, but the occasional figure still crossed from one building to another.
Kelly timed his moment, then darted across to the shadows of a long, low building that was less well lit. James stayed close behind him.
From their new vantage point they could see that only the centre of the compound was this bright; towards the castle it was much darker.
Kelly pointed and James nodded, then they quickly moved away to the edge of the compound. They had one nasty shock when a door opened right in front of them. They instinctively dropped to the ground and pressed themselves against the base of the wall, but the man who emerged didn’t see them; he simply threw out a bucket of dirty water without looking around, and went back inside.
James was relieved when they reached a deserted area behind the main buildings that was completely unlit. The two of them pressed their backs against a wall, slid down and sat on the floor.
James’s throat was so dry, it felt as if he’d swallowed a cupful of sand, and his heart was beating so hard and fast it hurt. He was terrified and thrilled at the same time and was already exhausted, even though they hadn’t come very far.
‘We need to find somewhere to hole up,’ whispered Kelly. ‘And wait till everyone’s gone to sleep.’
‘You won’t catch me arguing,’ said James, and he looked across to where the great dark bulk of the castle loomed up over the nearby buildings. A few of the high, narrow windows showed lights and, as James watched, one of them went out. He thought of George Hellebore and his father in there… and what else? Who else? What secrets did it contain?
They rested for a while until they felt confident enough to set off again, creeping through the darkness, hunched over and alert, scuttling across the occasional pool of light. Soon they came to a low wall, and James remembered seeing what had looked like animal pens when he had first spied on the compound from the trees. There was certainly a strong animal scent on the air.
On the far side of the pens was a large, unlit area, and James pointed it out to Kelly.
‘It’s worth a look,’ he said, and climbed over the wall. Almost immediately he swore.
‘What is it?’ asked James, climbing down behind him.
‘I’ve trod in something. Careful where you walk.’
James stared at the ground and saw several piles of stinking excrement. So these were definitely animal pens, but what sort of animals? Cautiously he made his way to a low, concrete shed at one end and peeped in. A fat sow lay there with a litter of piglets snoozing restlessly by her side, snuggled against the warmth of her belly. In the way that some pigs have, it looked as if there were a big happy grin on the mother’s face.
‘Dirty animals,’ grunted Kelly, wiping his boot, and James suppressed a laugh. What with the tension and his tiredness, he was on the verge of hysteria.
Suddenly they heard a cough and a spit and, almost as if they’d rehearsed it, they both vaulted over the wall into the next pen and pressed themselves to the ground, not caring what they might be lying in.
James saw a crack in the wall and shuffled forward so that he could see through it. A man was coming into the first pen. James recognised him immediately; it was the short man with the long arms and the bowler hat who James had seen with Randolph and George the other day.
He was muttering under his breath and appeared to be drunk. He rocked from side to side as he walked on his little bowed legs and, close up, he looked even more like some kind of grotesque monkey than before.
‘Come on, you wee porkers,’ he sang, and stooped down to get into the shed where the pigs were sleeping.
Immediately there came a frightful whining and squealing, and the man emerged, carrying a wriggling piglet by the back of its neck.
The big sow and two or three more of her litter, all making a terrible din, followed him out.
‘Get back in there!’ the man shouted, and let fly a kick that took the sow on the side of her head. She shrieked and backed away, but the short man was laughing now and he took aim at one of the piglets. He got it with the toe of his boot and it flew across the pen and smashed into the wall of the shed, where it lay still. The man waddled over and picked it up. Its back was broken. He studied it and licked his lips.
‘You’ll make good eating, laddie.’
He chuckled and left the pen carrying the two piglets, one dead, the other very much alive and kicking. The last thing James heard was a string of insults aimed at the living piglet.
The boys waited there until they were sure that the man wasn’t coming back then they jumped up and managed to climb over the rest of the pens without further mishap. They soon found themselves by the lake’s edge, looking over at the island with the castle on it.
‘I don’t fancy swimming across that,’ said Kelly, staring uneasily into the black water.
‘Me neither,’ said James. ‘He doesn’t need watchdogs with those eels to look after him.’
‘Don’t mention the bloody eels,’ said Kelly. ‘I never want to see another eel as long as I live. I used to like a nice jellied eel. Never again.’
‘Look,’ said James, and he nodded along the water’s edge towards a derelict area which was fenced off by r
usting chicken wire that had mostly fallen down. It looked like a makeshift rubbish dump and was full of old boxes and tin cans and piles of rotting paper. In the middle of the dump stood the big old Scots pine that they’d seen from the far end of the loch. It looked diseased and uncared for and was probably dying.
Past the tree was the tumbledown ruin of an abandoned building.
‘What do you think?’
‘Worth a look,’ said Kelly.
They trotted over, pushed down a section of chicken wire and picked their way through the rubbish towards the building. It was made of dirty red brick and was covered with ivy and moss. All the windows were smashed and only one storey of it was still standing. The door was padlocked shut, but the wood was so rotten that they easily levered it away from the screws with a penknife. They tried to open it without making too much noise, but a sharp creak suddenly echoed out into the night as its rusted hinges complained. They froze. To them the noise had sounded as loud as an explosion, but they saw nobody, and nobody came. All that happened was another light went off in the castle.
They swiftly went inside. The roof was largely missing, though it did offer some shelter in one corner where there was a pile of reasonably dry boxes and empty sacks. There were some abandoned bits of decayed iron machinery in here, whose use James could not even guess at, and more dumped rubbish.
With the intention of building a secure hiding place they began to rearrange some of the boxes and sacks and, as James shifted an old crate full of broken bottles, he discovered a wooden trapdoor in the floor.
Kelly helped him clear enough stuff away to one side so that they could haul the door open, then the two of them went down a flight of stone steps into the darkness.
They swung the door shut above their heads and James got out the torch and switched it on. They were in a forgotten cellar. It was clean and dry and, apart from a shelf of empty glass flasks and a row of ancient barrels, it was empty.
‘Bingo,’ said Kelly. ‘This is perfect. We can make a halfway decent camp down here. Let’s get some of those sacks for beds and lie low until everyone’s asleep. Come on.’