Bad Things

Chapter 7 (#u19b0b265-81c9-5c54-a1ba-67e1bf1bf5f2)

The message was short.

If I don't answer please leave a message. We need

to talk.

Ellen Robertson.

And there was a phone number.

I was thrown by this, and stared at the digits as if they were a door marked ‘Danger’. An email address says that if you type something to this person, they will (barring server crash, over-zealous spam filters or random strangeness) get it pretty soon. At some undetermined point in the future they will read it, and at a time subsequent to that, they may reply. It is time-and chance-buffered communication. A phone number is different. It's old school. If you call a phone number there's a real chance you're suddenly going to be talking to a real person, in real time.

The email had been sent at 7.12. The clock on the laptop said it was now 10.24. Was that too late to call? Did I care? If this person was determined to throw a hand grenade into my life, did she have the right to choose the terms of my reaction? The digits changed to 25, and then 26. The longer I thought about it, the later it was going to get. I picked up my phone and dialled.

It rang five or six times, and then picked up.

‘Hello?’ A woman's voice.

‘This is John Henderson,’ I said.

There was silence for three, maybe four seconds. ‘I'll call you back,’ the woman muttered, the words running into one. Then the line went dead.

I grabbed my cigarettes and went out onto the deck. I couldn't sit, so I stood, watching the rain.

And waited.

I don't smoke inside any more, or drink alcohol under a roof. It's one of the ways I've learned to stop myself from doing things all the time. I'd had two cigarettes out on deck before the phone buzzed in my hand.

‘Yes,’ I said, heading quickly back indoors, away from the noise of the storm.

‘I've only got a couple of minutes,’ the woman's voice said. It sounded as though she was walking.

‘Who are you?’

‘My name's Ellen Robertson.’

‘I got that. But—’

‘I need your help.’

‘What do you mean, “help”?’

She paused. ‘I'm afraid.’

‘Of what?’

‘I think the same thing's going to happen to me.’

‘Look, I've got no idea what you think you know about—’

‘I live near Black Ridge,’ she continued, calmly, as if I hadn't spoken at all. ‘Twenty miles from where you used to live.’

For a moment this derailed me, but then I thought – so what? What happened was in the local papers. Available from district libraries, and doubtless on the Internet.

‘So?’

‘Wait a moment,’ she said.

Again I heard a noise like the swishing of a coat worn by someone who was walking quickly. It lasted maybe twenty seconds, and then I heard her breathing harder, her mouth back at the phone.

‘I have to go,’ she said, and the quality of her voice had changed. She sounded apprehensive, nervous. Maybe more than that. ‘I'm sorry, but—’

‘Look,’ I said, finding a tone of voice I hadn't used in a long time, except perhaps to Kyle the night before. ‘Help me out here. I don't know who the hell you are. You're telling me things that don't make sense.’

‘I'm the one who needs help,’ she said, her voice abruptly strong again – too firm, as if held right up against the brink of hysteria. ‘There's no one who's going to believe except maybe you, and now I realize you won't either. I thought perhaps you knew but evidently you don't and I can't risk emailing again because he's scanning the Wi-Fi now. If I tell you on the phone you're going to think I'm crazy and …’

She stopped suddenly. There were two seconds of nothing. Then she said ‘Goodbye’ very quickly, and I was listening to the roaring silence of a dead line.

The obvious thing was to call right back, but the ‘goodbye’ had been smeared, as if the phone had been jerked from her mouth on its way to being stuffed in a pocket. I could pretend she was a lunatic trying to take advantage of me in a way I hadn't yet determined, but I know how people sound when they're scared and freaked out. By the end of the call, the woman I'd been talking to was at least one of these, possibly both. I couldn't just throw a ringing phone into her world.

It sounded like an email wouldn't be a good idea either. The idea that ‘he’ – whoever ‘he’ was supposed to be, a husband presumably – was pulling her messages out of the ether sounded paranoid (it's not as easy as people think), but an email is an irrevocable act. Call someone, and if the wrong voice appears at the end of the line you can claim a wrong number or put the phone straight down and take your chances with Caller ID. Once an email's sent, it's gone. It paints what you've said on the wall and no amount of scrubbing will get it off again.

‘Fuck,’ I shouted. It was the loudest sound the house had heard since I'd been living there. I had no idea I was going to shout before the sound had already echoed flatly off the walls. I did not like to hear a noise that loud coming from inside me.

I stuffed the phone in my jeans pocket and stormed out onto the deck, down the external stairs and along the walkway over the dune. It was still raining, but I didn't know where else to go, or what else to do.

At eight the next morning I called the restaurant. It rang and rang. I gave up, tried again half an hour later. Finally I heard it being picked up.

‘Pelican?’ An unfamiliar voice.

‘Who's that?’

‘Eduardo.’ The cook sounded cautious. Addressing the public didn't come under his brief. ‘Who is it, please?’

‘It's John,’ I said. ‘I need you to find something on the computer.’

‘I don't know,’ he said, doubtful again. ‘I don't think Ted is happy if I was fooling around on there.’

‘There's no reason for him to hear about it.’

‘I don't know computers.’

I forced myself to keep a level tone. ‘Eduardo, it's no big deal. I'll tell you exactly what to do. I just need to get a number off the database.’

‘Whose number?’

‘Becki's.’