The Vinyl Detective--Flip Back, page 17
Nevertheless we all dived in, trying to imitate Clean Head in this as well, with varying degrees of noise and clumsiness. After waiting on the hot roof of the car, the shock of the cold water suddenly made the situation very real.
I braced myself and swam, rolling my head with each stroke, through the water and up into the air, taking a breath and moving steadily forward, keeping watch on the island in the distance. I had salt in my nose and in my eyes, and the cold was becoming intense. I swam as hard as I could and as fast as I could, to get my body heat up.
I was in the middle of our little group, with Tinkler on my left and Nevada on my right. Tinkler was attempting a laborious breaststroke, but within a minute or two he began to imitate the front crawl that Nevada and I were using. The three of us moved forward, roughly in line. Nevada remained fixed in the same position on my right, but Tinkler kept lagging back. He was doing a surprisingly good job though, all things considered, and I began to realise we might all get out of this alive.
Ahead of us Clean Head was just a dot in the water and a chevron of foam as she swam strongly and unwaveringly towards the island. Suddenly she rolled over, sleek as a seal, and began to do backstroke. I realised she was doing this so she could keep an eye on us.
She must have deliberately slowed down as well, because the gap between us and her began to close. Soon we were near enough for me to make out the features on her face. She gave me a white flash of smile and then rolled over again and began to resume front crawl—pulling effortlessly away from us again.
“Show-off,” said Nevada at my side.
And I began to laugh, having to time it with the rolling movements of my head so I wouldn’t get water in my mouth. I realised, with a surge of exhilaration, that this really wasn’t so bad, swimming strongly through the vast cold water with a huge bright sun beating down on us, the people I loved all around me. It wasn’t so bad. It was an ordeal and a trial and a battle. But it was one we were going to win. This island was growing perceptibly closer now. We were going to be there before you knew it. Dry land, blankets, brandy.
Ahead of us, Clean Head did another one of her swift, seal-like manoeuvres, this time streaking to her left with amazing speed and suddenness. She really was a show-off. I wondered what she was up to. Was she correcting her course? She was cutting through the water with astonishing velocity.
Then I realised her arms weren’t moving. Her face was turned towards me, her eyes wide with terror. She streaked away through the water, carried off, dwindling, her figure shrinking, her face a tiny shape, a pinpoint, nothing.
Tinkler gave a tormented cry and began to clumsily lunge off in the direction Clean Head had gone. “No!” yelled Nevada. “Tinkler! Stay!” It was horribly like shouting at a dog. But it worked. He subsided, thrashing for a moment and sobbing, and then he came back in close to us, his arms cutting the water in time with his sobs.
There was no sign of Clean Head, or of the tide that had taken her. It was as if a huge hand had grabbed her underwater and just pulled her away from us. Taken her somewhere else. I heard an ugly rasping sound. It had a disturbing edge of hysteria to it, and it frightened me. When I realised it was my own breathing, I grew more frightened still.
The island was getting visibly nearer. The phony-fairy-tale shimmer had dissipated and instead its outlines were clear and sharp. The muscles in my shoulders were aching and my legs were heavy as I tried to keep kicking in a steady rhythm. The cold was now becoming intense, and worryingly numbing.
But I knew I could reach the island.
I felt it in my body, the possibility of it, the physical certainty of achieving it.
But what did it mean? To reach dry land, and walk on it, with our friend gone?
Tinkler made a loud noise. It wasn’t like the sobbing from before. This wasn’t despair. It was savage anger. It was an astonishingly ugly sound. I turned to look at him. His eyes were fixed on mine, and the pure fury in them was shocking, a revelation. But in a moment I couldn’t see them anymore because his face was too small, too far away, as he was dragged away with preternatural speed, the riptide carrying him off.
For a moment I could still hear him yelling.
Then he too was gone.
“No,” I said.
There was a sound to my right and water splashed into my face as Nevada came swimming in towards me, closing the gap between us. Her eyes were fixed on mine, lambent and ferocious.
“Don’t go after him,” she said.
I shook my head, hardly different from the endless rhythm of it rolling through the water.
Roll, stroke, breathe. Roll, stroke, breathe.
Nevada and me, swimming side by side.
Just the two of us now.
Tears were flooding down my face, indistinguishable from the seawater but hot where it was cold. Don’t go after him, she’d said. But by the time I’d even thought of it, he was gone.
“You couldn’t do anything,” called Nevada. She had eased further away from me again.
“It’s not your fault,” she called. Her voice was further off still. She had increased the distance between us. Why was she doing that?
Then we looked at each other. We both realised it at the same time.
She wasn’t moving away from me. I was moving away from her.
I was being carried away.
I wasn’t moving; I was motionless and all the world was shifting around me. Like when you look out the window of a train and the station outside seems to lift itself up and it begins to lumber off behind you as you gather speed.
I was gathering speed.
Within a few seconds Nevada had dwindled to a tiny figure in the distance. Then she ceased to shrink. For a moment she remained the same size. Then she began getting bigger again. Her arms were chopping at the water with merciless speed. At first I wasn’t sure, then I was.
She was getting nearer.
I realised with a shock, far more profound than the shock of being taken by the tide, that she was coming after me.
“Don’t do it,” I shouted. “Stay away.”
Her small face was gouging through the water, stubborn and determined, her pale arms coming down into the water in a relentless, ceaseless rhythm. “Stay back!” I screamed.
I felt a huge, irrational fury, my pipsqueak emotions utterly dwarfed by the immense mechanism of the ocean that was carrying me away into its anonymous vastness.
But, even so—how could she ignore her own advice like this?
And she kept getting closer.
Nevada was moving with bewildering speed. How could she be swimming so fast? Then she stopped stroking, and just let herself float, and she kept on rocketing towards me and I realised she wasn’t swimming at all. She was caught in the same riptide as me. She loomed closer and closer. The cold green water swept us together.
I reached out and caught her hand in my mine. I dragged her to me. We were riding the water as if we were sliding down an endless slope together.
The cold, stony green waves rose on either side of us, and we were cradled in a trough between them.
I held her in my arms as if we were lying in bed together, in the endless bed of the ocean. Maybe that was what it was. Maybe that’s how it would be. Us sleeping together, endlessly, in those limitless cold depths.
A wave slapped me in the face, as heavy as a sandbag. We were no longer in a safe, smooth trough. Waves were crashing down on us. I had water in my mouth and nose and I started to choke.
I spat, coughed, cleared my throat and nose. Beside me Nevada was doing the same.
We both began stroking furiously to stay afloat, each using just one hand because our other hands were still locked together. I knew that, whatever was coming, we weren’t going to let go. I stared into her eyes, in which I saw that old familiar look of concentration, the look that said she had a goal in mind and nothing was going to make her quit. A look of primeval, immovable stubbornness.
I loved her, with every cell in my body, and I was equally furious with her.
“Why did you do it?” I shouted.
She said something, but I never heard what it was, because just then something slammed into my back with immense force, knocking the wind out of me. Then the water lifted me again, then slammed me down again. The third time I was slammed down I let go of Nevada’s hand, helpless and beaten.
But it didn’t matter.
I was bouncing against sand.
We’d reached the island.
I rolled over, put my hands down into wet sand, dug my fingers in, lifted my shoulders, lifted my head out of the water, and breathed. Beside me, Nevada was doing the same. A wave crashed down on top of us, slamming us to the wet sand again. Water surged into my mouth and nostrils, and I realised how silly—and how easy—it would be to get this far and still drown.
I felt Nevada’s hand grip mine again and together we crawled forward out of the water, using our four legs and our two free arms, like some strange, clumsy linked creature that had just evolved enough to leave the ocean. When we were beyond the reach of the tide, on a low slope of dirty sand, we let go of one another’s hands and collapsed on our backs.
I heard her harsh, sharp breathing and my own. Gradually they both slowed. Above us tattered white strips of cloud were curled in a strange formation against the hot blue sky.
I turned my head, and stared past ragged strands of my own hair, now clotted with sand, towards Nevada, who was staring back at me, her own hair pasted tight to her skull on one side and spread out on the sand like strange black seaweed on the other. We just lay there and stared at each other.
I felt a savage exultation. We’d survived. And then that mood crashed and I thought of—
“Tinkler. Agatha.” Nevada whispered their names.
We rose to our feet and started walking. We didn’t have the strength, but we walked anyway. I peeled off my socks and walked barefoot. Nevada’s feet were already bare. We’d both lost our shoes. I looked back at the ocean, out towards where the car must be, but all I saw was a flat green expanse of water with the sun glaring off it. A gull was bobbing lazily in mid-air. It looked utterly peaceful and benign.
I shuddered, knelt down and puked my guts out. I told myself I must have swallowed seawater, but I really don’t think that was it. Nevada kneeled behind me, her hands on my shoulders, until I finished heaving.
Then we resumed walking. I didn’t look back towards the water again. As we walked along beside it, I kept my head turned away so I wouldn’t see that vast expanse of moving green. The gull gave a mocking cry, as if noting my cowardice.
Nevada took out her phone. “It’s dead of course,” she said. I checked mine.
“Dead too.”
“We’re supposed to stick it in a bowl of… what? Dried lentils?”
“Rice, I think.”
We walked past ugly black outcrops of rock, tidal pools shimmering with a rainbow slick of petrochemicals, heaps of rubbish brought in by the tide—bottles, drink cans, anonymous crushed plastic shapes. Our bare feet left neat prints in the wet sand, like a pair of carefree holiday beachcombers out for a stroll. We passed upended fishing boats, rotting charcoal-coloured hulks, and then ahead of us we saw a strange, shapeless lump lying at the margin of the water.
We hurried forward and the lump resolved itself into two soaked, intertwined figures. We began to run.
When we reached them, Clean Head looked at us and croaked, “I think your boy copped a feel. I’m going to kick his ass, as soon as I get my strength back.”
She staggered to her feet and there was an anguished cry from the remaining sodden figure lying there.
“I did not cop a feel,” said Tinkler.
I believed him.
Then there was a brief pause. “I wish I’d thought of it.” Then another pause. “You can still kick my ass, though.”
But Clean Head was some distance away, sitting on the sand. She reached into the pockets of her jacket and took out her shoes and put them on. She was the only one of us who managed to retain them.
“There’s posh for you,” said Nevada.
* * *
I kissed Nevada on the ankle as I eased her legs off my shoulders. I slipped out of her and she rolled over, reaching behind herself to draw me close, and we lay in the bed spooning. Warm late evening sun slanted into our room, lighting up the cream ceiling and the lemon-yellow curtains, stirring in the breeze of the half-open window. Nevada kissed my hand, then hugged it between her breasts.
“One good thing about this case,” she said. “It’s certainly perked up our sex life.”
“So we’re calling it a case now, are we?”
She murmured a reply but, like whatever she’d said to me in the riptide, it was lost forever because I was sliding headfirst down a dark chute towards sleep and oblivion.
* * *
The following morning we showered and dressed and went down to the breakfast room. Not surprisingly, we were ravenously hungry.
Tinkler and Clean Head were already there. As we walked in, Tinkler said, “What did I tell you? Look at them. They’re positively glowing.” He nodded at me. “You did, didn’t you? You had near-death sex.”
“Yes, we did,” said Nevada complacently, sitting down at the table with them. “And it was great.”
“You see,” said Tinkler, turning to Clean Head. “I told you. Why couldn’t we have near-death sex?”
“No way,” said Clean Head, shaking her head. She reached into the basket of freshly baked croissants and chose one.
“Why not? It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! Why won’t you take advantage of it?”
“Because,” said Nevada, evidently speaking on behalf of Clean Head, “none of us would have had a near-death experience in the first place, indeed we wouldn’t be here at all, if it wasn’t for your stupid obsession with your stupid ex-girlfriend.”
Clean Head broke open her croissant and sniffed its steaming golden interior with approval. “Roger that,” she said. She looked at me. “I don’t understand how they did it. Set the trap with Alan.” She took a bite of the croissant. “I mean, you were texting him, right?”
The croissant looked good; I grabbed one and so did Nevada.
When we’d got back to the B&B yesterday we’d borrowed Miss Bebbington’s phone to make some calls, before using all her hot water in a series of showers and collapsing into bed. I’d rung Alan, just to confirm what we already knew—that there had never been a copy of Wisht—and also to make sure he was all right.
“I haven’t bought any record collections for weeks,” he told me. “And I’ve been stuck here in Vulcan House all day sorting out books and magazines. I’ve got a nice set of Down Beat if you’re interested? From Gene Lees’s run as editor.” I told him that yes, I was interested as a matter of fact, but could I get back to him later. I didn’t mention the near drowning or anything else. There didn’t seem much point.
“They spoofed Alan’s number,” said Tinkler, helping himself to the last two croissants before they all vanished. “That’s easy. So it looked like you were getting a text from him, when in fact you were getting a text from them.”
“Whoever they are,” said Nevada.
“But what about when I texted him back?” I said. “Can they spoof that, too?”
“That’s not so easy,” said Tinkler. “But it’s doable.” He shrugged. “It must be, since they did it.”
“But how did they even know that you knew Alan?” said Clean Head. Then, to Tinkler, “Give me one of those croissants.”
“Can we have near-death—”
“No.”
“Okay.” He handed over the croissant.
I said, “There are links to Alan and his shop all over my website. That would have been the easy part.”
“What was the hard part?”
“Intercepting his text back to Alan,” said Tinkler. “And I suppose hacking the web page for the tide times.”
“And the bullet-riddled sign,” said Nevada. “They must have changed that, too.”
After I had called Alan on Miss Bebbington’s phone, Nevada had called the emergency services to tell them that we had survived. Oddly enough this elicited not congratulations on our tenacity, grit and luck, but rather a lengthy lecture about how stupid we’d been to ignore the tide tables. As soon as Nevada had finished the call, our landlady felt obliged to deliver much the same lecture.
Never one to take criticism easily, Nevada had insisted on dragging Miss Bebbington down to the causeway to look at the sign there. The shiny new sign. I had gone along, too. I was utterly exhausted and drained, but no more so than my beloved. Now shoeless, I had slopped along in the old retired pair of rope-soled espadrilles I’d brought with us to serve as slippers.
Of course, the shiny new sign was gone and the old bullet-riddled one was back up in its place.
“You see?” said Miss Bebbington mildly, somehow managing to convey that she was accustomed to people taking way too many drugs and getting out of their heads and seeing things that weren’t there. But, nevertheless, it was wrong to do that and also mess with the tide tables.
Nevada had turned to me, her face framed by the rusted and pockmarked sign, and said, “These fuckers are nothing if not thorough.”
* * *
No amount of rice was going to restore our phones. They were write-offs. “Rice-offs,” said Tinkler.
More sadly, so was Tinkler’s little car. Our local island motor mechanic, Gareth the Mormon Hipster, hauled the battered and dripping little vehicle back from the site of its doom once the tides withdrew again and delivered it to us with the manner of a man who’d done this sort of thing before. He gave us a look that was strangely compounded of affection, contempt and acceptance.
So did everyone else. Suddenly we felt like part of the island community. People who would have ignored us before now greeted us in the street. We’d apparently hit on the perfect way of breaking the ice. “We’re the stupid mainlanders who ignored the tide tables,” said Nevada. “Now everyone can look down their noses at us.” It was true. Any conversation about any subject was guaranteed to work its way around to a discussion, however tangential, of how ill-advised it was to ignore the times of the tides, the tides themselves, and indeed the implacable nature of—well, nature.
