The meanest Flood

was a cold day and a thin sun cast pale shadows over the pavements. From the harbour a salty breeze forced the sightseers to hunch their shoulders. There were a few children but most of them were supervised by their parents or elder siblings. The ones who were alone were older than the boy in the boot, in their early-teens, and they seemed to be locals.
    Marilyn didn’t know what to do next. If she had found the boy she would have asked him what he was doing in the boot of Danny’s car. How he had got there, and why he was tied and gagged. Surely Danny didn’t know anything about it? A child bound and stuffed into the boot of his car. No, that was unthinkable. Marilyn had a child of her own. A dead child, but still, no one should be cruel to them.
    Unless it was a magic trick. Could it be that Danny had bound the child as part of an illusion? Was there an audience somewhere waiting for the child to reappear in the theatre? Why couldn’t she find the child in Whitby? Was it because he wasn’t there? Was it because he had never been there, and that she had not seen him in the boot of the car at all, ever?
    When you deal with a master magician you can never be sure even of your own senses, your own instincts.
    There may have been no child, no banging or whimpering coming from the boot. Even now there was probably no rope or face-cloth in the boot of Danny’s car. Perhaps the whole thing was an illusion?
    And if that was the case there was only one person in the world who would have the answers to her questions.
    The magician. Her phantom lover. The man she was prepared, if necessary, to die for. She hurried back to the parking space and got behind the wheel of the car. She headed out of Whitby, back along the coast road, later turning inland and nosing her way to York and Diamond Danny Mann.
    Marilyn wondered once or twice during the journey if she was losing her mind. She played with the idea of going back home and taking her medication. But she had a technique for dealing with crisis situations like this. What she would do was simply not think about anything that happened. She would watch and record like in that film where the man thinks he’s a camera.
    Don’t judge anything. Observe it and store it away.
    Don’t make associations. Standing water on the fields and in the streets as she drove into the city. Don’t make the association with rain or flood. Leave it as it is. Standing water in the streets. That’s all.
    Not easy to do, but the doing kept you calm, left your head cool.
     
    When she got to Danny’s street he had left the house and was walking away. Marilyn didn’t call after him. She put the car in first gear and followed.
    He walked swiftly, a bag gripped in his right hand. He travelled across the edge of town and along Gillygate. Marilyn was stopped at the traffic lights outside the art gallery and thought she might lose him, but as soon as she turned the corner there he was, his purposeful stride marking him out from the other people on the street.
    He crossed over to Clarence Street and took a right into a street lined with terrace houses. He fumbled with the lock on one of the front doors for a moment and then he disappeared inside the house.
    Don’t think about it, Marilyn told herself. Just watch. She reversed into a parking space between two other cars and peered out at the street. It was reasonably quiet. At the top end there was a group of youths outside a corner shop, probably planning burglaries and arson and muggings. A woman with a baby in a pram walked past, and a little later an old-age pensioner with arthritis and a walking stick.
    Marilyn kept her eye on the house where Danny was but there were no movements at the windows. Briefly she thought an upper curtain shifted but when she looked at it long and hard there was no sign of life. Marilyn wanted to ask herself what Danny was doing in there. She wanted to know whose house it was and why he was visiting. But she pushed the questions to the back of her mind. Just watch, she told herself. When he comes out you can ask him yourself.
    She watched the big man come down the street. He was wearing black-leather trousers and shoes with sky-blue socks and a black silk shirt. Over the shirt he wore a brown suede jacket with a belt. He had a shark’s tooth on a chain around his neck.
    He stopped outside the same house that Danny was visiting and knocked on the door. Marilyn craned forward, hoping to catch a glimpse of Danny when he