One of a Kind, page 21
My mother had read me Little Grey Rabbit. She’d done her best.
When I opened my eyes again, convinced that I hadn’t slept another wink, daylight was coruscating outside the window in sunlight reflected off sea, and the trees were back to their whispering shivers.
I still had my head on Ivo’s chest, and, from the feel of it, he had his head resting on top of mine as he’d toppled slightly sideways. Seagulls were squawking and stamping about on the roof above, and my entire body ached. I shifted slightly and the weight of Ivo’s head moved away.
‘Hey. Morning. Gosh, I slept well, I sleep better with you, that’s a point worth noting.’ He hauled himself upright and my head bounced. ‘How are you feeling today?’
‘About a hundred,’ I croaked.
‘Out of how many?’
‘Years old, Ivo. Please tell me we can get off the island today.’
He laughed. ‘I could tell you that, but I’m not sure it would be truthful. The police need to interview us both, there’s an awful lot of admin goes along with drug smuggling, apparently. And don’t you want to say your final goodbyes to Fred? Plus, we owe the mud boys a crate of beer and I think Drone… Tony wants to see you too.’
I wriggled. ‘What’s going to happen, Ivo?’
‘Entropy, decay, sun goes supernova, eventual heat death of the universe. Oh, you meant to us. No idea, I’m afraid. I can ask Ru about the likely outcomes for Sally if you like. But I doubt we’re in any trouble.’
I swung myself out of bed. I hadn’t really meant what would happen to us. I didn’t exactly know what I had meant. There was a whole lot of future out there, stretching away to the horizon in all its multiplicities, but one thing I did know, it would include Ivo. My future would always include Ivo.
‘I can’t guarantee that I won’t get really annoyed with you,’ I said, continuing my train of thought.
Ivo was straightening the bed. ‘What? I mean, annoyed with me, when? Oh! This must be what it’s like having a conversation with me – when half of it has already happened in your head and the rest is just infill. Wow. Being on the other side is horrible.’ Then he grinned. ‘Of course you’ll get annoyed. I am a very annoying person.’
‘You are.’
Now he grabbed my hand. It was the one with the sore knuckle, but I tried not to wince because he had an intense expression on his face. ‘But I am also loyal unto death and I am crazy about you, Cress. I truly will do whatever I can to not annoy you beyond that which you can cope with. I’ll even start taking the tablets to calm me down, if you’d like that.’
We stood for a moment, both of us ruffled and slightly stiff from an uncomfortable night. I also suspected that I had garlic breath from the food last night, so I hoped he wasn’t going to kiss me.
‘No,’ I said eventually, watching his expression clear. ‘I don’t want that. I want you as you are, Ivo, because that’s the man I – well, I suspect that I have fallen in love with.’
A pause that lasted a heartbeat. Then Ivo closed up against me, swept his arms around me and we were off, dancing around the small room in a half tango, half waltz. Held against him I could feel the energy crackling from his slender frame, feel the strength of the muscles that held me.
‘Ditto, Cressida,’ he said quietly against my cheek. ‘Ditto.’ Then he stopped, looked into my eyes. ‘I mean the bit about falling in love, not all the stuff about the tablets. I’ll take those if I need to. If… if everything I am gets a bit much for you. They don’t make me normal, if normal is really a concept we can embrace when talking about neurofunctioning…’
‘Shut up,’ I said, equably. ‘And your phone’s ringing.’
It was the local police. We needed to get to Newport and be interviewed. There seemed to be a seriousness to the phone call that I hadn’t expected, when really all we’d done was get caught up in events that were nothing to do with us. Surely we only needed to give a statement?
‘Yes, it is rather worrying, isn’t it?’ Ivo frowned at his phone after he’d finished the call. ‘Unless they think that… you don’t think they suspect that we were bringing stuff back, with Fred?’
We stared at each other, wide-eyed.
‘No. Given what happened, they must know that our involvement was all coincidental, surely. And your brother’s in the police,’ I said.
‘That’s no guarantee of anything,’ Ivo muttered. ‘But they can’t. I mean, Sally…’
We looked at each other again. ‘They would have arrested us.’ I blinked at him. ‘If they thought we really were a part of all this.’
‘Why? They knew where we were. We weren’t going to get off the island, unless we fancied rowing, and in that storm we’d have capsized twenty metres offshore.’
This made me think. ‘If we couldn’t get off the island, then do you think Mr Polite and Mr Thug might still be here?’ I asked.
‘Who the hell are Mr Polite and Mr Thug? Weird names.’
‘Says the man who tried to call Sally’s assistant “Droney”. No. They’re the two men who tried, rather ineptly, to get geology to kill Sally and me. We should be a lesson: never leave a geographical fault line to do a man’s work.’ I thought for a second. ‘Get a piece of paper, Ivo. I think we may be able to do something useful before we go to Newport.’
15
Ivo and I were separated at the police station. I gave a statement to a bored young constable, who didn’t seem to believe a word of it, and then I asked, ‘Have you got Sally here?’
‘Sally who?’
‘Sally. Who set this whole thing up. You arrested her yesterday, in the hospital, I think.’
‘Oh, her. Yes. She’s not saying anything.’
I produced the piece of paper from my back pocket. ‘These are the men you want. They’re driving a white SUV with a dented passenger wing, and Ivo’s written the number plate on the back.’
The constable held up the drawings. Ivo had done his best from my detailed descriptions, and, with much rubbing out, we’d produced likenesses of Mr Polite and Mr Thug that were as good as I could do from memory. Ivo really was terribly good at drawing, I thought, looking fondly at the pencil sketches. It had probably been thanks to his art therapy.
‘I’m just going to take this to the sergeant,’ he said. ‘Wait here.’
‘As opposed to what?’
I got a cold stare. ‘Well, I haven’t handcuffed you to the chair.’
‘Not yet,’ I muttered. ‘And could you ask him if I could talk to Sally?’
Another cold stare and I was left in the little interview room, which smelled of people who smoked too much and cold coffee. There was a large damp stain down one wall, and ceiling tiles made of that dotted plastic that always looks as though it’s going mouldy. I wondered where Ivo was. I wondered what the hell was going on, and why we hadn’t been given a pat on the head and sent on our way.
Eventually the door opened. Bored Constable was there with Irritated Sergeant, who looked as though he’d only just missed having a TV series written about him. He was jaded and tired looking, unshaven, and I would have taken bets on him having a failed marriage, an alcohol addiction and a child who refused to communicate with him.
‘This yours?’ he grunted, holding up the sketch.
‘Yes. Well, not exactly, Ivo drew it. Those are the two that put us in the shed.’
Another grunt. It was like being interviewed by a gorilla in a man suit. Then, ‘And the car? You’re sure about the car?’
‘Absolutely.’
Grunt. ‘We got them trying to board the ferry.’
A silence. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to react to that. Delight? Horror? I certainly didn’t want to run into them any time soon. If they realised Sally and I were still alive, they’d know everything was over for them, and I didn’t think they’d be rushing to send us cards of congratulation on our intrepid escape and boxes of chocolates. Ivo, of course, they’d missed out on giving a creative death too. Presumably his escape would be another reason they were so intent on getting off the island.
‘But we need everything you can tell us about them, about the operation here.’
‘Operation Dovetail, sir,’ put in the constable, helpfully. ‘That’s what we were calling this investigation.’
‘Really? Not Operation Red Squirrel? I’d have thought that was more appropriate,’ I said. ‘And I’ve told you everything I know. You need to ask Sally for details, she was the one sending the stuff out in the transport cases.’
A double grunt this time. ‘She’s not talking.’
‘I expect she’s terrified.’ I leaned forward across the table that separated us, putting my elbow on the drawing of Mr Polite’s face. ‘Let me talk to her. I want to know what the hell was going on, probably more than you do, and she’ll talk to me.’
The constable and the sergeant looked at one another. ‘Are we allowed to do that?’
‘Course we are. We’re the bloody police, we’re in charge. Don’t let this young madam make you think otherwise.’
Young madam? I bristled, but it didn’t seem politic to wade in while they were making a sensitive decision. ‘If you record our conversation,’ I said, delicately, ‘then you might just get your evidence.’
The sergeant harrumphed and I upgraded him to being happily married but having an uncomfortable relationship with his ageing parents. ‘True. All right. Think they’re a bit sick of her down in custody anyway, she won’t stop crying.’ He pushed his chair back and I furtively checked to make sure he had both legs. ‘We’ll see what we can do. Stay there.’
While Constable and Sergeant went out, not giving me time to ask what the alternative was again, I leaned back in my chair and looked at the drawings they’d left behind. I supposed there must be CCTV at the ferry port and they’d managed to nab these two trying to get off the island. I frowned down at the sketch, which had Ivo and I arguing over whether a monobrow was really an identifying feature, and shook my head. Ivo’s particularly focussed memory had saved us. He’d recognised the van, and the SUV, because they’d caught his attention and been worthy of memorising. He’d been right; sometimes, just sometimes, it looked as though his brand of butterfly mind could come in very useful.
The door opened and Sally was bundled in. She was wearing what looked like a police-provided tracksuit, her hair was still dreadlocked with mud and salt water and she looked as though she’d spent the last twenty-four hours crying solidly. As soon as she saw me, Sally crumpled and had to be held up by the officers, one to each arm.
‘I don’t know what to do!’ she wailed. ‘Everything’s gone! I’ve been so stupid!’
‘You’re not hearing any disagreement from me,’ I said, somewhat curtly, but then I had had a disturbed night. Oh, and nearly died. ‘Look, sit down and you can tell us all about it.’
We were shuffled towards the little plastic-topped table, screwed to the floor, I noticed. I sat directly under the brown stain and Sally, after some hesitation, sat the other side of the table. Everyone except Irritated Sergeant left, and he went and stood in a corner, being as inconspicuous as he could, but it didn’t really seem to matter. Sally wanted to talk. I could only assume that she’d been paralysed with fear at the whole situation and seeing me had made things feel more normal.
‘They came to me,’ she started, making it sound as though she’d been recruited by a supernatural brigade.
The sergeant cleared his throat and gave me a meaningful nod. ‘These two?’ I took my cue and flourished the drawing. Sally picked it up.
‘Yes. Well, just this one.’ She tapped the sketch of Mr Polite. ‘He told me to call him Simon, but I know his name is really Nate because that’s what the other guy used to call him. He came to me one day when I was trying to get extra funding – I was desperate!’ She turned pleading eyes on me. ‘I was rattling a bucket in town!’
I nodded. Those bucket-rattling sessions were the worst. Being ignored by shoppers while getting soaked and frozen and trying to look upbeat and friendly. Horrible.
‘He asked me if I wanted to make some money.’ She snorted. ‘I was standing in the middle of Cowes, with a plastic bucket of 2ps, so it was a bloody stupid question when you think about it.’
She sounded a little calmer now, a little more like the down-to-earth Sally I’d first met.
The sergeant coughed again.
‘And it went from there?’ I was beginning to enjoy this. Maybe I should join the police force? I’d got visions of myself as the maverick cop who does things unconventionally and Gets Results. Then I remembered the punch to the head, the fear of dying and looked again at the big brown stain down the wall and decided to stick to rescuing animals.
‘They came up with the idea of pretending to take the squirrels around the country and gave me the special boxes. Adam – that’s Adam Williams, he was a friend of mine at school, bit down on his luck at the moment – he came in to do the actual travelling and meeting up with people. He’d take the squirrel – it was usually Swoop, because he’s pretty tame – in a special box with a couple of kilos of… of the stuff, and he’d meet up with someone to dispose of it. They’d transfer the money, swap it for the drugs, give Adam a lift to the nearest station and come back with the squirrel and the cash. But this time it looks as though whoever he was meeting decided to have the drugs and the money.’ She sniffed. ‘He used public transport. Said it would be less easy to track him that way.’
She stopped speaking and dropped her head. Her hair, weighted with mud, fell forwards over her face.
‘How long?’ I half whispered it. She looked so defeated, so downtrodden. ‘How long has it been going on for?’
‘About six months.’ Then she jerked her head up and her eyes were angry. ‘And you know what really pisses me off? Him’ – she jabbed her finger at the sketch of Mr Polite, getting him right in the eye – ‘saying that it was hundreds of thousands of pounds a time! They were giving me ten grand! Ten grand for use of the squirrel and the cover story. Ten’ – and she stabbed her finger down again, emphatically with each word – ‘measly… grand!’
I could only hope that, somewhere in another custody suite, Mr Polite was now wondering why his vision had gone blurry.
‘Would you be prepared to stand up in court?’ The sergeant sounded surprisingly gentle. ‘Testify? Give us everything you know about these two and the operation? Any names, dates, further details?’
Sally snorted. The anger seemed to have re-energised her. ‘Course I will. I’ll personally set them on fire if you want.’
Another cough. ‘Yes, well, I don’t think that will be necessary.’ A pause. ‘Tempting, but not necessary.’
We all looked at one another for a moment. ‘What will happen to me?’ Sally’s voice was small again. ‘Only the unit will close. There’s no funding unless I keep at it, and everyone will lose their jobs, and the squirrels…’ She swallowed a small sob.
‘Oh prison, that’s a given, I’m afraid.’ The sergeant poked thoughtfully at an ear. ‘But for full and complete co-operation, transparency, maybe some useful info – you’ll get a reduced sentence.’
‘I know a high-court judge,’ I offered, helpfully. ‘Well, Ivo does. If that’s any use.’
‘Maybe, maybe not. But we’ll do what we can, given the severity of the offence.’ The sergeant eyeballed Sally sternly. ‘What the hell were you thinking, girl?’
‘I don’t know!’ She was back to wailing. ‘I just wanted to keep IWRSPS going!’
She pronounced it Eye Warsps. I made a note to tell Ivo.
‘Bloody stupid way to go about it.’
‘I know. I know.’ She hung her head again. ‘I’m not going to get involved with anything stronger than paracetamol from now on.’ A deep breath. ‘And I’m going to be giving that a swerve if I can.’
‘And Tony?’ I had wondered about the absolutely-no-anger-issues-at-all man. ‘What was all that about him knowing Mr Williams?’
I got an approving nod from the sergeant for that.
Sally snorted. ‘I got scared. I was trying to throw you off. I knew Tony had seen Adam around the place sometimes. I tried to only hand over the squirrel and the boxes at night or when nobody was about, but people keep coming and going and it’s really hard to keep a secret on an island. So I thought, if I told you Tony was a bit… well, that he had problems, it’d put you off asking him anything. He’s going to wait for me, you know.’
The sergeant and I frowned at one another. ‘What, now? Is he outside?’ I asked, confused.
‘No, no, I mean, for me to come out of prison. He says he doesn’t care what I did, he knows it will have been for good reasons. He’s actually quite sweet.’ Sally looked as though this had come as a revelation to her. ‘And he’s very good with the squirrels.’
‘Which is what really matters,’ I said, somewhat weakly.
‘Well, yes.’ Sally looked as though this should go without saying. Then she squared her shoulders. ‘I was bloody stupid,’ she said, and now her voice held strength rather than self-pity. ‘I thought I could raise a bit of money for IWRSPS and I sort of kidded myself that they were just renting a squirrel for a while. I managed not to think about it being, well, basically, drug running.’
‘Did you know?’ I grasped at the feeble straw.
She dropped her eyes. ‘They didn’t tell me, not directly. But I knew they weren’t moving duty-free cigarettes or anything, it was a bit obvious.’ She sighed. ‘I am a good person, Cressida, really.’
‘Tell that to the judge,’ said Irritable Sergeant, who then slapped himself across the forehead. ‘Sorry. Too much Law and Order in my formative years.’
Sally stood up. ‘You can take me away now,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to explain to Cressida why she nearly died, and to tell you that I’m really sorry.’
The sergeant stood up too and went to take her arm to hustle her back to the cells, but she stopped again in the doorway and looked back over her shoulder at me, in a scene worthy of the best TV detective drama. ‘Look after the squirrels, please,’ she said, with her eyes full of tears. ‘I couldn’t bear…’
