The Keys to the Street (44 page)

For the fiftieth time, or maybe not quite so many as that, he scrambled down through the churchyard and the brambles and stinging nettles onto the canal bank. The clothes he wore, black, ancient, stained rags, were dead men’s clothes from the rotting boots to
the greasy cloth cap. Sometimes he wondered what he would do if he found someone else on his pitch, settling down for the night. But he never had and he didn’t now. Once he’d sat down he always listened to the traffic passing overhead, fancying but doubtless mistaken that he’d know the sound of the van, the diesel noise that was somehow bigger and more of a gargle than that made by a taxi.

The bridge throbbed when cars went over it, boom-boomed when it was something bigger like a truck. It had been dark for hours, since five in the afternoon, but it wasn’t cold. Under the bridge it was always damp, the brickwork oozing moisture, the ground sticky, the canal waters dark, more shiny than he ever expected and with rainbow streaks of oil. There was something uncanny about a river that didn’t flow but where the water was stagnant, just water put into a ditch really, and the ditch had been dug by men. He’d never thought of any of that until he came to sit nightly by the canal.

He always tried not to fall asleep, but often he couldn’t help himself. If what he was waiting for happened that would wake him up all right. When he woke, usually a bit before dawn, his legs ached and his back ached from lying on damp concrete and he felt filthy, as if some sticky substance had been pasted on him in the night, to make a coat between his skin and his clothes.

Tonight he thought it unlikely he’d sleep. It had been his day off and he’d slept away the afternoon. Since that first evening when he’d forgotten, he’d never come down here without food, plenty of it. A pizza—ironical that, really—a couple of mini pork pies or a samosa, cold sausages, a bag of crisps, bananas. His wife called bananas the junk food of fruit and he saw what she meant, not that they weren’t good for you but that they were so easy to eat. He ate one. He drank some coffee out of the flask he’d brought.

The barrow he had with him he’d found dumped in the Grotto. God knows who had put it there or had used it. It was his now and he filled it up with groundsheet, sleeping bag, cushions, a torch, the cigarettes he shouldn’t smoke but probably would before the night
was out, food, the coffee flask, a bottle of water,
Today
, the latest Stephen King—when was Stephen King going to write about canals, the horrible way they just lay there, not moving, just waiting, still or lightly rocking? Maybe he already had.

Up in Camden Town a dog started barking. It barked for a bit, then began howling like a wolf. The wolves in the zoo never seemed to howl. He tore the pizza in half and each half in half and started eating. You couldn’t tell from the state of the darkness but it was after eleven, it was nearly midnight. Overhead the traffic was a lot lighter. For a long while mere wasn’t any traffic and then the bridge would thump and rattle.

It was too dark to read his book or his paper and he wasn’t keen enough on either to bother with his torch. He contemplated the slightly rocking black water with the skins of light lying on patches of it. He started counting the seconds between one rattle of the bridge and the next, calculating that enumeration at a medium-fast rate was counting seconds. A hundred and ten, next time a hundred and eighty. It was when he was counting for the third time, reaching two hundred and seventeen, that he had this crawling sensation that someone was looking at him from the parapet of the bridge.

He couldn’t see the parapet from where he sat, only the underside of the arch, greenish with lichen, a single drop of water falling from between two redder bricks. Grubbing with his fingers in the grassy earth, he picked out a flat pebble and, first holding it parallel to the ground, sent it skimming across the surface of the water. It made a trail of spray as a toy speedboat might. He thought he heard footfalls on the bridge above his head.

He belonged to a profession whose members are not supposed to feel afraid. It was the same with the armed forces. But these days it is no longer necessary to pretend you don’t feel fear, only not to show it. He was afraid and he knew all the ways of not showing it. At least, the hand didn’t shake that reached for the cigarette packet, took out a cigarette, and brought it to his mouth. He struck a match
and watched the blaze of light under the bridge, the glitter on the tubular rail, the black shadows fleeing into the water.

Which way would the man come?

He listened, heard something crushed underfoot, a piece of litter, plastic and hard. It cracked under the pressure of a shoe descending. He looked toward the sound, preparing to act his part, raising a fist to ward off an intruder, the way he had when the Oxbridge dosser came down.

It was over now. For good or ill, for himself or the Impaler, this must be the end. No more waiting and watching. Before he saw anything else he saw the glint of the knife.

He started to get up. Act naturally. The dosser on the canal bank would get to his feet, would start back, drop his cigarette into the dark water. He had his back to the underside of the bridge. It struck cold through the padding of his clothes. The man came down, revealed himself in the dark that is never quite darkness, tall, youngish, a dark combat jacket over that red and white vest, camouflage pants over the red jeans. His lips curled back like a dog’s.

The way he hurled himself onto the dosser with his back against the wall was sudden, a violent reflex, but not unexpected. The knife sank into something soft and thick, but not into flesh. There was no blood. It was pulled out to strike again but never reached its target. The poised arm was seized, brought up at an unnatural angle; a leg came out from the bundle of black rags and kicked with practiced aim, and the man in the combat jacket gave a soft groan. His upraised hand trembled, opened, and the knife fell clattering onto the concrete.

It was then that the kick came again, harder, more assured. Arms went up and for a moment the figure was poised on the coping, just a foot away from the guard rail, mouth open to scream. The booted foot slammed in just below the ribcage, a flat ram, and he went in backward, the scream released, making a huge splash as he struck the water. The spray flew up to the height of the bridge and
drenched the man on the bank, who cursed and shook himself.

He lay down flat in the wet. He was checking if his quarry could swim. Not well, but enough, enough to flounder down there in a doggy paddle, treading cold water, spluttering and coughing.

One of the other objects in the barrow was a mobile phone. He fished it out and made his call. As he was speaking, telling them where he was, where to find him, he thought how everyone had speculated as to why the Impaler avoided the park. What was sacred about the park, or dangerous about it? What placed an embargo on the park? But it was simple. The answer was simple. There was no traffic in the park, it was closed to all but park police and park administration vehicles—closed to a red and white take-away van.

The man in the water could hold out for five minutes and that was all it would take. They would be here to help him in five minutes, less than that now. He watched the struggles, the inefficient battling toward the canal rim and feeble grasping of the stone.

His eye on his watch, he waited another two minutes. Then he scrambled up the bank, searching till he found a six-foot-long stick, a branch with dead leaves still clinging to it. Down onto the puddled path again, the branch extended for its life-saving purpose. White, water-bleached hands grasped the wood. He pulled, bracing his feet against the place where the brickwork met the concrete path. He spoke the form of the caution and the man’s name and said, “I’m arresting you for the murders of Dominic John Cahill, James Victor Clancy, and David George Kneller, and the attempted murder of Detective Inspector William Marnock …”