Unfinished Business...
THE SECOND day was just as boring and miserable. So was the third. And the fourth. If there was any detectable difference, it was Sergeant Armstrong growing more irascible as time dragged on. I got the impression that he thought I didn’t have enough to do, which was true but hardly my fault. So I wasn’t surprised at his relish when, at the end of my fourth day, he told me that first thing in the morning I was to report to the jetty for ferry loading duty. The last roundup, as some wag had christened it
There was another difference. Sandra was increasingly withdrawn, rarely speaking and often failing to acknowledge my presence when our paths crossed, which was every night and morning. I didn’t blame her – grief can be a solitary thing – and I took the view that sooner or later she would accept her lot and re-include me. What was harder for me to bear was the way she cried herself to sleep each night, emphasising that I was useless.
On the fifth day, I wandered down to the jetty as ordered. The ferry was just coming alongside, so I helped the other copper present to moor it.
My colleague was a former senior connie who’d wiped himself off driving home after a station booze-up. He’d also wiped off the young female driver he’d ploughed into. Not my sort of person, but that was OK – he didn’t like cops who were quick with a shotgun either.
Anyway, he called out ten names from a list and ten persons presented themselves. No need to go hunting. We shunted them aboard, got them behind the oars and gave old Charon the nod. The old fella ignored us, just waiting for us to give him a starting shove. All he’d done was transfer the tiller from one end of the boat to the other, then wait impassively while we dock workers did our thing. Speaking to the hired help was apparently not in his job description.
I watched the departure for a few minutes, wondering what the Devil the poor bastards were in for. A cold shiver down my spine told me I didn’t want to know, so I returned to my beat.
North Third Street has six police phones equi-distant along its length. I know because counting such things helps relieve the tedium. I was passing the second one when it rang. I picked up the old-fashioned receiver and jammed it against my ear. Before I could speak, Armstrong was in action.
“Get your arse over to the Courthouse,” he rasped. “There’s someone creating a disturbance. Sort it out.”
Action at last! “OK, sarge, I’m on my bike.”
“And Mason, no arrest and no Courthouse. Got it?”
“Why? I thought the idea was…”
"Don’t think. Just do what you’re told.”
He was the boss. I hotfooted it for the Courthouse, about five blocks diagonally distant. I made it in less then fifteen minutes, to find a knot of agitated people and a stationary tram.
The tram was adjacent to the Courthouse exit. It had no driver, and several passengers were hanging through its doors and shouting towards the disturbance. They wanted someone to get back to the tram. Sandra.
She had tried to squeeze her way into the Courthouse against the turnstile, but no way could she get past that contraption. She’d conceded there was no route past the turnstile, so she was trying to deny access to the newcomers, probably hoping the resulting ruckus would produce someone in authority from inside. There seemed to more immigrants than usual and, after the shock of their meeting with St Peter, most of them were in no mood for an encounter with an angry, tearful female. It was producing was a bit of push and shove, plus some colourful language.
I did some pushing and shoving of my own on my way to the epicentre. “All right, you lot...cool it!” I strode to the turnstile, took Sandra by the arm, then turned back to the crowd. “Show’s over,” I told them. “Be on about your business.” To the laggards, I barked “Now!”
Sandra’s eyes raked me. Her face was pale and tear streaked and her hair, usually so neat, was a mess. She pulled away from my grasp. “What are you doing here?” she hissed.
“That’s obvious. What in the hell are you doing here?”
My answer was a welling of tears. “I have to know,” she cried. She took my hands, and I felt her intensity. “I have to know.”
Abruptly, she turned away from the turnstile to the adjacent wooden door. As it was when we first arrived, it was locked. Sandra banged on it, then kicked it. From the marks already on it, she’d kicked it before.
“Open the door!” she yelled. “For God’s sake, open this door!”
I felt desperately sorry for her. I moved between her and the door and once again took her arm. “Sandra, no more.” Defeat cross her features. Her shoulders slumped and she stood quietly, her eyes unseeing and her thoughts God knows where. Then I became aware of the passengers on the tram.
“Hey, what about us?” one moron yelled.
I walked to the tram and scanned the passengers. “Can anyone drive this thing?”
The moron pointed to Sandra. “Whassamatter with her?” He was a brash little twerp with a face like a hyena.
“She’s sick,” I told him. “Can you...”
“Nobody gets sick here.”
He was right, but semantics was not my strong suit. I unclipped my baton and hefted it. “I’ll tell you what some people do get here, sport. They get a sore head. Over and over.”
The moron backed off. He was replaced by a bloke who avowed he could drive the tram and he was going to the terminus anyway and so why didn’t he get going? He would have, but Sandra suddenly appeared.
“It’s all right,” she told me.
I was against it – she still looked pale and shaky – but she insisted. In the end, I let her go. I just hoped she’d learned something.
Before I signed off my shift, I asked Armstrong why he’d directed me not to arrest Sandra. “Orders,” he said, and wanted to know all about the goings-on. I told him, tactfully omitting the part about me threatening the moron. He looked thoughtful.
“Pretty obvious,” he decided. “The woman wanted an audience with St Peter. What’s the appropriate punishment? No audience.”
I was puzzled. I’d been certain her behaviour would draw a stiffer response, perhaps even a drastic one. Armstrong concurred.
“She got off bloody light. You can tell her that from me.” He gave a macabre grin, presaging what for him was a gem of constabulary wit. “Next time she won’t miss the boat, if you catch my drift.”
That evening, the mood in the dining room was even more sombre than usual. It seemed the whole room knew of Sandra’s abortive mission and was sympathetic with her. Certainly the women, especially the older ones, were giving her knowing nods and the occasional smile. One ever patted her shoulder as she walked past. Mothers, I suppose, are the same everywhere.
Initially, Sandra was uncommunicative. She sat with her head bowed, picking at her meal and resisting all my attempts at conversation. Even when I relayed Sergeant Armstrong’s dire warning, she just shrugged. It occurred to me then; if the pain of Hell frightened her so little, what pain must she be feeling now? I was pondering that when she looked up at me.
“I’m sorry, Mark. I wasn’t very fair to you, was I?”
My turn to shrug. “Forget it. I don’t blame you in the least,” I replied, glad to have her talking again. I went on to detail my day, laying it on thickly about how lost the souls in Charon’s ferry looked. She listened politely, until I got to the part where Armstrong was issuing his orders to me over the street phone. Her eyes narrowed, and muggins me realised he’d put his foot in it.
“He told you not to take me into the Courthouse?” she asked.
“Yep, he did,” I confirmed, hoping like crazy that it was her last question and knowing damned well it wasn’t.
“You could’ve taken me in?”
I nodded, liking the direction of this inquisition less and less. Her eyes never left mine.
“How?”
Trapped like a rat. And shortly, I was certain, to feel like one. I reached into my pocket .
“With this.”
Sandra stared at my key like a precious belonging she’d suddenly discovered in someone else’s possession. Her face darkened. “All the time I was trying to get in...you had that on you?”
I thought “all the time” was laying it on a bit thick, but I couldn’t deny the essence of her accusation. And, as I’d predicted, I felt like a rat. She stared at me for a full five seconds, her eyes black with anger. Then she slapped my face.
The slap went off like the proverbial shot, arresting the attention of everyone in the room. All eyes turned to see Sandra stand and hurry out. Then they turned back, accusingly, as if I were a criminal. In that sudden silence, I felt like one.
I don’t know how long it took me to get to sleep that night. All I know is, it was a damned long time. I agonised over what I’d done and hadn’t done, measuring my obligation to Sandra and her hopeless quest against my instinct for self-preservation. It was an equation that seemed to have no solution. But if I was worried when I eventually nodded off, I was more so when I awoke.
I did early and with the certainty that something was amiss. Lying there in the dark, I strained my senses for a clue, at the same time preparing to leap into action if necessary. I half-expected Sandra’s crying to be the cause, but the whole place was quiet and still. Neither could I smell smoke or detect any other sign of danger. I swung out of bed and fired up the gaslight, and immediately knew I’d had a visitor.
My uniform was on the floor. I am not the tidiest with clothes, but uniforms are another matter, especially when you have senior sergeants as finicky as Armstrong. My guts went cold. I leapt to where it lay, hoping against hope that my deduction was wrong. It wasn’t. The key was gone.
I flung the uniform on and hurried downstairs. As I left the building, a creepy feeling ran up my spine, as if someone was watching. It was probably Mrs Harvey, eager to report another infraction of the rules, but her malice, real or imagined, gave me no pause. I ran for the Courthouse, my footsteps echoing harshly along those dark, stark streets.
There was another cop already there, my colleague of yesterday’s ferry detail. He opened the entrance as I approached and gave me a nasty grin.
“You’re expected,” he told me.
I ignored him. I dashed inside, took the stairs two at a time and came to the corridor where I’d first made my appearance. I didn’t have to guess which door Sandra was behind. As before, I could hear her. I went straight in.
What greeted me was a carbon copy of the first time Sandra and Pete had locked horns, except that this time Sandra’s anger had spilled over into the rage of unrelieved desperation. Her quest had been unsuccessful. She was screaming at him, giving opinions that probably no one in two thousand years had been game to offer. Highly seasoned phrases – “desiccated old bastard” was one I caught – were turning the air blue. They were also not helping. Pete was refusing to reply, waiting for her to talk herself out by the look of it, but you could tell he was furious. I was alarmed that Sandra had lost the sense to see her peril, or perhaps she just didn’t care any longer.
Pete saw me and scowled. “Ah, Mason. Took your sweet time.”
Sandra saw me, too. Her tirade stopped and her shoulders sagged. For the second time, I saw defeat in her eyes. And for the second time, I felt desperately sorry for her.
Pete held up a key, my key. “Weren’t you told not to let anyone else have this?”
I nearly told him I didn’t let anyone have it, but that would’ve been tantamount to saying Sandra swiped it. If he didn’t know already, I wasn’t about to tell him. I gave him my best I’m sorry shrug.
“How very noble of you,” he replied. “Do you recall, the last time you were here, my warning to Ms Pastor?”
My throat was suddenly dry. “Yes.”
He flicked the key to me. “Then do your duty.”
“You have to be joking.” I grinned, trying to lighten him up. “Come on. She was only doing what any mother would do.”
The old bastard was implacable. Worse, he turned it back on me. “You know where you are,” he thundered, “and you know the rules. And you know the rules are immutable.” He pointed an ancient forefinger at me. “If you’d been any sort of a friend, you’d have given her more consolation for her loss. You’d also have counselled her against ignoring my warning. It’s for those failings that you’re escorting her to the ferry in the morning.”
So, he was consigning her to Hell. It was monstrous. A travesty. I decided to protest by refusing.
“Don’t even think about,” the all-knowing bastard said, “unless you want to escort her all the way.”
I was paralysed. How could I live without Sandra? In this place of perpetual gloom, she was my only light, a light that still lit up my heart. And beyond my selfish question, how dare he condemn her to that awful place..? I believe I was considering taking a swing at him when I felt Sandra’s hand on my arm.
“Mark, it’s alright,” she said, her voice soft and resigned. She pulled me towards the door. “I understand. Do what you have to do.” She looked at the implacable Peter and said just one word. “Sorry.” Then we were out of that room of judgement and on the stairs, only to meet my smug colleague on his way up.
“Been told to help you,” he announced, unclipping his cuffs.
“You won’t need those,” I fumed. “Just lead the way.”
He looked ready to argue, but when I put the key down my sock and reached for my baton, he had a change of heart. He did as instructed.
Out on the silent street, we walked with an arm around each other and to hell with any regulation to the contrary. We were quiet, too, because there didn’t seem to be anything to say. Except...
“I love you, Sandra,” I told her.
“And I love you,” she replied, returning my squeeze.
At that very moment, I determined that I was not going to leave her. It was time in my miserable, selfish, self-centered life that I did something for someone else. Time to put someone else first for a change. I wasn’t going to let them take her, not without a bloody good fight.
It was at that very moment that we heard the voice.
“Good evening,” he said.
He was a slim-ish bloke leaning nonchalantly against a light pole and smoking a cigarette in a holder. In the uncertain glow of the gaslight, he had a certain elegance about him, not the least due to his glittering cane and the black silk cape thrown with studied nonchalance over his shoulders. In his tight trousers and waistcoat, also black, he looked like a nineteenth century dandy. A black fedora heightened the illusion.
How we’d failed to spot him, I’m damned if I know. Or how my erstwhile colleague, striding away in blissful ignorance, also missed him.
“Don’t worry about him,” our sudden stranger said, his voice incongruously deep. He stepped forward, removed his hat and gave Sandra a bow. He had black hair with an extended widow’s peak which ended only just above the line of his eyebrows, bushy over deep-set eyes which, unless it was an artifice of the gaslight, glittered red. The moment he smiled, the word devilish sprang into my mind. I backed off a little, and so did an equally uncomfortable Sandra.
“Who are you?” I croaked.
He shrugged. “Depends. Lucifer, Devil, Mephisto...whatever. Most of you Christians go for Satan, but I’m not all that fussed. Except for Beelzebub and Old Nick. Don’t fancy them at all.” He grinned amiably. “Call me Satan. Better the devil you know, eh?” He laughed, then said, “By the way, your Walkman works now.”
What the hell was he talking about? My Walkman was uselessly taking up space back in my room. But Satan, or whoever he was, nodded at my belt. I followed his gaze, and my brain slipped a cog. The Walkman hung there.
“Try it,” he invited.
I did, and Benny Goodman’s “One O’Clock Jump” rewarded me.
My benefactor turned up his nose. “I’m a Basie man myself.” He pointed, and the Walkman clicked off. “Now, close your eyes.”
Sandra and I swapped glances. Who’d want to close your eyes with this bloke around?
“Now!” Peremptory.
I did, and immediately smelt the foul odour of Hades. My guts churned. By my side, Sandra fought against throwing up. Satan thought it was funny.
“Just to confirm that I am who I say I am.”
I hadn’t needed a demonstration, but I wasn’t about to ruffle his feathers by saying so.
“And quite right too,” he said. He flicked the butt from his holder and set about searching his pockets for a replacement. “And what am I doing here, you are about to ask? I slip over quite often, actually. Just to check the quality of merchandise on offer. And, on occasion, strike a deal.” He turned his red stare on Sandra. “I believe you want a little extra time back on Earth?”
Renewed hope lit up her face. “You can do that?”
“Indeed.”
Sandra, still the good journo, came over cynical. “What sort of deal?”
“Simple. I let you both go back, give you enough time to get the little one all squared away and sort out your affairs. Then back here you come...” He struck a match with unnecessary flourish “...and both your souls become mine. Standard contract.” He lit the fag before returning to Sandra. “Better, actually. To all intents and purposes, you are already mine.” He glittered at me. “You’re the one I’m really getting, aren’t you?” He turned back to Sandra. “Your choice.”
What a bastard of a choice – asking her which of us, Angela or me, she would sacrifice for the other. To my shame, my instinct screamed at her to save me. But I redeemed myself, I hope.
“It’s a deal,” I told him.
He looked at Sandra, who nodded. Then he blinked.