Longshot. Part 44

Close to, the boathouse was if anything less attractive than from a distance, though there were carved broken eaves that had once been decorative in an Edwardian way and could have been again, given the will. The construction was mostly of weathered old brick, the long side walls going down to the water's edge, the whole built on and into the river's sloping bank.

True to Sam's philosophy the ramshackle wooden door had no latch, let alone a padlock, and pushed inwards, opening at a touch.

Windows in the walls gave plenty of light, but inside all one could see was a bare wooden floor stretching to double gla.s.s doors leading to a railed balcony overhanging the swollen river.

'Don't boathouses have water in them?' I enquired mildly.

'The water's underneath,' Harry said. 'This room was for entertaining. There's another door down by the edge of the river for going into the boat dock. That's where the grotto was. Sam had put coloured lights all round and some actually in the water- it looked terrific. There was a bar up here in this room. Fiona and I went out onto the balcony with our drinks and looked at the sky full of stars. It was a warm night. Everything perfect.' He sighed. 'Perkin and Mackie were with us, smooching away in newly-wedded bliss. It all seems so long ago, when everyone was happy, everything simple. Nothing could go wrong- Then Tremayne had a spectacular year and to crown it Top Spin Lob won the National- and since then not much has gone right.'

'Did Sam invite Nolan to his party?'

Harry smiled briefly. 'Sam felt good. He asked Dee-Dee, Bob Watson, the lads, everyone. Must have been a hundred and fifty people. Even Angela-' He stopped and looked at his watch. 'It's just about time.'

He turned and took a step towards the far-end balcony, the ancient floorboards creaking underfoot.

There was a white envelope lying on the floor about halfway to the balcony and, saying perhaps it was a message, he went towards it and bent to pick it up, and with a fearsome crack a whole section of the floor gave way under his weight and shot him, shouting, into the dock beneath.

CHAPTER 12.

It happened so fast and so drastically that I nearly slid after him, managing only instinctively to pivot on one foot and throw myself headlong back onto the boards still remaining solid behind the hole.

Harry, I thought ridiculously, was dead unlucky with cold dirty water. I wriggled until I could peer over the edge into the wet depths below and I couldn't see him at all.

s.h.i.+t, I thought, peeling off my jacket. Come up for G.o.d's sake, Harry, so I can pull you out.

No sign of him. Nothing. I yelled to him. No reply.

I kicked off my boots and swung down below, holding on to a bared crossbeam that creaked with threat, swinging from one hand while I tried to see Harry and not land on top of him.

All that was visible was brownish opaque muddy water. No time for anything except getting him out I let go of the beam and dropped with bent legs so as to splash down softly and felt the breath rush out of my lungs from the iciness of the river. Letting the water buoy up my weight I stretched my feet down to touch bottom and found the water came up to my ears; took a deep breath, put the rest of my head under and reached around for Harry, unable to see him, unable with open eyes to see anything at all.

He had to be there. Time was short. I stood up for a gasp of air, ducked down again, searching with fingers, with feet, with urgency turning to appalling alarm. I could feel things, pieces of metal, sharp spiky things, nothing living.

Another gasp of air. I looked for bubbles rising, hoping to find him that way, and saw not bubbles but a red stain in the water a short way off, a swirl of colour against drab.

At least I'd found him. I dived towards the scarlet streaks and touched him at once, but there was no movement in him, and when I tried to pull him to the surface, I couldn't.

s.h.i.+t- s.h.i.+t- Stupid word kept repeating in my brain. I felt and slid my arms under Harry's and with my feet slipping on the muddy bottom yanked him upwards as fiercely as I could and found him still stuck and yanked again twice more with increasing desperation until finally whatever had been holding him released its grasp and he came shooting to the surface, only to begin falling sluggishly back again as a dead weight.

With my own nose barely above water I held him with his head just higher than mine, but he still wasn't breathing. I laced my arms round his back, under his own arms, letting his face fall on mine, and in that awkward position I blew my own breath into him, not in the accepted way with him lying flat with most things in control, but into his open nostrils, into his flaccid mouth, into either or both at once, as fast as I could, trying to pump his chest in unison, to do what his own intercostal muscles had stopped doing, pulling his ribcage open for air to flow in.

They tell you to go on with artificial respiration for ever, for long after you've given up hope. Go on and on, I'd been told. Don't give up. Don't ever give up.

He was heavy in spite of the buoyancy from the water. My feet went numb down on the mud. I blew my breath into him rhythmically, faster man normal breathing, squeezing him, telling him, ordering him in my mind to take charge of himself, come back, come back- Harry, come back-

I grieved for him, for Fiona, for all of them, but most for Harry. That humour, that humanity; they couldn't be lost. I gave him my breath until I was dizzy myself and I still wouldn't accept it was all useless, that I might as well stop.

I felt the jolt in his chest as I hugged it in rhythm against mine and for a second couldn't believe it, but then he heaved again in my arms and coughed in my face and a mouthful of dirty water shot out in a spout and he began coughing in earnest and choking and gasping for air- gasping, gulping air down, wheezing in his throat, whooping like whooping cough, struggling to fill his functioning lungs.

He couldn't have been unconscious for long, looking back, but it seemed an eternity at the time. With coughing, he opened his eyes and began groaning which was at least some sign of progress, and I started looking about to see how we were going to get out of what appeared to be uncomfortably like a prison.

Another door, Harry had said, down by the river's edge: and in fact, when I looked I could see it, a once-painted slab of wood set in brickwork, its bottom edge barely six inches above the water.

Across the whole end of the building, stretching from the ceiling down into the river, was a curtain of linked metal like thick over-sized chicken wire, presumably originally installed to keep thieves away from any boat in the dock. Beyond it flowed the heavy mainstream, with small eddies curling along and through the wire on the surface.

The dock itself, I well understood, was deeper than usual because of the height of the river. The door was still six inches above it, though- it didn't make sense to build a door high if the water was usually lower- not unless there was a step somewhere- a step or walkway even, for the loading and unloading of boats-

Taking Harry gingerly with me I moved to the left, towards the wall, and with great relief found that there was indeed a walkway there at about the height of my waist. I lifted Harry until he was sitting on the walkway and then, still gripping him tightly, wriggled up beside him so that we were both sitting there with our heads wholly above water, which may not sound a great advance but which was probably the difference between life and death.

Harry was semi-conscious, confused and bleeding. The only good thing about the extreme cold of the water, I thought, was that whatever the damage, the blood loss was being minimised. Apart from that, the sooner we were out of there, the better.

The hole through which Harry had fallen was in the centre of the ceiling. If I stood up on the walkway, I thought, I could probably stretch up and touch the ceiling, but wouldn't be able to reach the hole. Might try jumping- might pull more of the floor down. It didn't look promising. There seemed to be part of a beam missing in the area. Rotted through, no doubt.

Meanwhile I had to get Harry well propped so that he wouldn't fall forward and drown after all, and to do that I reckoned we needed to be in the corner. I tugged him gently along the walkway, which was made of planks, I discovered, with short mooring posts sticking up at intervals, needing me to lift his legs over one at a time. Still, we reached the end in a while, and I stood up and tugged him back until he was sitting wedged in the corner, supported by the rear and side walls.

He had stopped coughing, but still looked dazed. The blood streaking scarlet was from one of his legs, now stretched out straight before him but still not in view on account of the clouded water. I was debating whether to try to stop the bleeding first or to leave him in his uncertain state while I found a way out, trusting he wouldn't totally pa.s.s out, when I heard the main door creak open directly above our heads; the way Harry and I had come in.

My first natural impulse was to shout, to get help from whoever had come: and between intention and voice a whole stream of thoughts suddenly intruded and left me silent, open-mouthed to call out but unsure of the wisdom.

Thoughts. Harry had come to this place to meet someone. He didn't know who. He'd been given a meeting place he knew of. He'd gone there trustingly. He'd walked into the boathouse and tried to pick up an envelope and the floor had given way beneath him and a piece of beam was missing; and if I hadn't been there with him he would certainly have drowned in the dock, impaled on something lurking beneath the surface.

Part of my later training had been at the hands of an ex-SAS instructor whose absolute priority for survival was evading the enemy; and with doubt but also awareness of danger I guessed at an enemy above our heads, not a saviour. I waited for exclamations of horror from above, for someone to call Harry's name in alarm, for some natural, innocent reaction to the floor's collapse.

Instead there was silence. Then the creak of a step or two, then the sound of the door being quietly closed.

Eerie.

All sounds from outside were m.u.f.fled because of the dock being partly below ground level, set into the slope of the bank, but in a short while I heard the sound of a car door slamming and after that the noise of an engine starting up and being driven away.

Harry suddenly said, 'b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l.' A couple of sweet words. Then he said, 'What the h.e.l.l's happening?' and then, 'G.o.d, my leg hurts.'

'We came through the boathouse floor.' I pointed to the hole. 'The floorboards gave way. You landed on something that pierced your leg.'

'I'm f- freezing.'

'Yes, I know. Are you awake enough to sit here on your own for a bit?'

'John, for G.o.d's sake-'

'Not long,' I said hastily. 'I'll not leave you long.'

As I stood on the walkway, the water level reached above my knees, and I waded along beside the wall in the direction of the lower door and the river. There were indeed steps by the door, three steps up and a flat landing along below the door itself. I went up the steps until the water barely covered my ankles and tried the doorlatch.

This time, no easy exit. The door was solid as rock. On the wall beside the door there was a row of three electric switches. I pressed them all without any results from the electric light bulbs along the ceiling. There was also a control box with cables leading to the top of the metal curtain: I opened the box and pressed the red b.u.t.ton and the green b.u.t.ton to be found inside there but, again, nothing changed in the boathouse.

The arrangement for raising the curtain was a matter of gear wheels designed to turn a rod to wind the metal mesh up onto it like a blind. The sides of the curtain were held in tracks to help it run smoothly. Without electricity, however, it wasn't going to oblige. On the other hand, because of its construction, the whole barrier had to be reasonably light in weight. 'Harry?' I called.