“No-oo.” The slow brother searched again for the words he was supposed to say. “Father left us … a long time ago now …” His words drifted away.
There was another silence, longer this time.
The slow brother thinking, searching for what to say next.
The man with the bobble hat waiting for him to speak, to say what they would be doing.
“You hate twelve-year-olds. You said that.”
“Me? My work, do you mean? Oh yes, I hate twelve-year-olds all right … but, you know, what can you do in this day and age? They’re everywhere. Fuck them, that’s what I say.”
The man with the bobble hat smiled at the slow brother.
Bemused again at the response, a sullen and angry expression across his face. Half-face, he thought to himself. The man with the bobble hat turned away to look back down at the row of trees.
And then the slow brother raised his axe and moved towards the man.
16. THURSDAY 15 NOVEMBER, AFTERNOON
“No!”
The smart brother, appearing by the row of trees and seeing the slow brother raising his axe, shouted at the top of his voice.
The slow brother dropped the axe, startled.
The man with the hat stumbled forward in shock, falling to his knees. “Shit, you could have had my head off.”
The smart brother was upon them straightaway. Handing out tools the slow brother had forgotten to take with him. Smoothing over the incident, saying the slow brother was always keen to fell the first tree of a new row … was clumsy … couldn’t really be trusted. You know how it is. But, hey ho, no harm done.
“You must never turn your back on him!” A jovial comment.
“No, I’ll be more careful in future.” The mistaken belief that this was sheer clumsiness, nothing more – no sense of the intent to kill.
“He’ll give you a centre-parting if you’re not careful!”
Laughter, a sudden sense of relief. And then the smart brother was sending the man with the bobble hat back down to help the other men while he stayed behind. The brothers watched as the man with the hat walked away.
One angry, the other suddenly shame-faced.
The man with the hat turned and smiled as he disappeared out of view. A cheery wave. No harm done. And now the two brothers were alone.
“What were you doing? I saw you go. Could tell something was wrong. What is it? It looked like you were going to kill him.”
The slow brother dropped his head, would not speak.
“By God, you were, you were going to kill him … for Christ’s sake, why?”
The slow brother raised his head, looked to be on the brink of tears.
The smart brother moved forward, touching arms, leaning his head forward. The slow brother responded, and they stood there, heads bowed close together, their arms on each other.
“He is a bad man. He hates children. He said he does things to them. He said the f word.”
“I can’t believe … I don’t … what did he say to you? Tell me. His exact words. Word for word. Can you remember?”
“He said, I go out and … fuck children … that was this morning. He just said, kids are everywhere … Fuck them, that is what I say. He talked like Father.”
The smart brother stood back and looked at his brother. “You must have mis … why would he say that, why would he say such things to you like that? Out of the blue. You only just met. It’s just words. He’s trying to be funny. Be friends. That’s all.”
“He is a bad man.”
A shake of the head, disbelief, frustration, maybe relief too.
“Yes, but I mean, he’d not say these things to you. A stranger.”
“You said we are heroes. We are super-heroes and we destroy bad men who hurt children. Like Father. You said … you said we are super-heroes.”
“We are.” He shook his head in exasperation. “We do. But we can’t do it here. If you had killed him here, now, what would we have done when his family came knocking on the door … and then the police. What would Mother say … we are her best boys, remember?”
“Best boys, yes, we are,” he replied, almost absent-mindedly. “We are her best boys.”
Another shake of the head, a realisation of how close that was.
The slow brother sat down on the ground and reached for the box of matches and the tin of roll-up cigarettes in his pocket. Hands shaking, he eventually lit a cigarette before passing the box and tin over.
The smart brother lit a cigarette too, leaning his head back and blowing smoke out loudly, something close to a sigh. “You’ll be the death of me, really you will,” he laughed.
The slow brother looked across. “He said he has two children who look like twins. And he must hurt them. We have to stop him before he hurts them again.”
“If he is a bad man … if … I’ll find out … we will, but not here, not now. I’ll get his name and find out more about him. Where he lives. What he does. And then, if he is bad, one night, next week, next month, when no one will think of him ever being here, I’ll go and find him. And then I’ll do it.”
“Can I come too? I could help,” the slow brother said.
The smart brother shook his head. “No, I’ve told you before. How many times? You can’t. You might be recognised. Your face. We nearly got caught … once or twice before, all those years ago. That pub. Do you remember? … we can’t risk it again. You’re too memorable, even if you wear a hood.”
The slow brother touched his face as the smart brother went on.
“But I will tell you when I will be going, and you can wait in the trees until you see me get back, and you can come and put him in the cesspit on your own.”
“I will do that.” The slow brother looked excited. He then thought for a minute and carried on talking.
“You will find him and kill him and save the little children?”
The smart brother nodded.
“You will then bring him back here to me and I will make sure he is dead, and I will put him in the cesspit with the other bad men?”
The smart brother smiled in agreement.
“And the children, all of the little handsome boys and all of the pretty little girls, will all live happily ever after?”
The smart brother embraced the slow brother.
“Because we’re …”
They spoke together, “Super-heroes.”
* * *
As the daylight faded, the smart brother raised his arm and whistled. “That’s it everyone, finish up, two, three minutes please. Job’s done for today.”
The workmen, with aching backs and words of relief, finished what they were doing, chopping trees, dragging them towards the piles, getting them ready for the garden centres.
Then made their way to the trestle table, reaching for their holdalls, swigging cans of drink, lighting cigarettes, chewing on chocolate bars.
“Everyone, form a queue, please. You, Roy, at the front … you, Where’s Wally, at the back.”
The smart brother moved to the trestle table, pulled up a chair and lifted a holdall onto the chair next to him. He nodded the slow brother over to sit on the other side of that. To do what he used to do with Father. The slow brother unzipped the bag and took out a handful of ten-pound notes, ready and waiting.
“Okay, other bags off the table, please … make some room … First one … Roy? Here’s your money … sign this …” A moment or two to sign, to nod and smile at each other, to shake hands. “No work tomorrow. We’re busy. See you on Monday? We’ve more to do then. Good … and the next?”
One by one, the workmen lined up to take their cash and sign and print their names, real or fictitious, it did not matter.
Then, finally, with farewells and checks of their mobile phones and shouts to be at the pub at eight, all but one made their way off, back towards the farmhouse and their cars and vans.
“Sign here,” the smart brother said to the man in the bobble hat as the slow brother took out the fina
l few notes and counted them carefully onto the trestle table. “Ten pounds … and twenty pounds … and thirty pounds … and forty pounds … and …”
The man with the bobble hat held out his hand and the slow brother, having counted the notes onto the trestle table, counted the notes out again into the outstretched hand. “Ten pounds … and twenty pounds … and …”
“What does this say? Alan? White?” the smart brother asked, looking at the scrawled signature and scribbled, printed name. “I can’t keep calling you Where’s Wally … because of your hat.”
The man smiled and nodded, acknowledging the cash and the question. “It’s Whyte. Y. T. E. Adam Whyte. Adam will do … will you want me back on Monday, too? I just wondered … you asked me to get to the back … am I … too slow? I’m not used to rough work like this.” He smiled, slightly flushed and embarrassed.
“Your work’s fine … I just wondered if you might want some more … keep it to yourself for now, but we might have some work coming up that you might do … if your family … your wife … would be okay with that?” He gestured to the man in the hat to sit down. “If you could write down your address and phone number … Adam … I can give you a call some time?”
The man reached out for a chair, sat down opposite the brothers. Then wrote down his details next to his name and signature on the sheet of paper on the table.
He smiled shyly at the slow brother. Felt perturbed at the brother’s unsettling look.
Hesitated, but needed the work, something to do, some sort of prospects. A future.
“I’m widowed … I lost my wife … breast cancer … end of last year. And then I’ve been made redundant this year, so I’ve got some redundancy money but that won’t last long … and I’ve two children … as I say …” he tailed off as the slow brother suddenly looked angry, as if he did not want to hear of such matters.
The smart brother spoke. “So, it’s just you and your children at home? You don’t have your mother or father there with you or a sister … anyone?”
The man shook his head. “Just us. We live just over the fields, actually, ten minutes through the woods. My parents live the other side of Norwich, well, up near Cromer, really. We see them now and then. My wife’s parents live in Stirling in Scotland. We don’t really …”
“So, what do you do … I mean work … and going out … with children? Do you have neighbours who help out … watch over you?”
The man shrugged. “No, not really. It’s just the three of us. There’s a young girl with a baby in the village – she’s got one of the council houses down by the old watermill – the children go there after school and if I need to go out at all … which isn’t very often, lately. She was a friend of my wife’s.”
The smart brother nodded. He looked thoughtful, caring even, assumed the man with the hat.
“We’ve six cottages on the edge of this land. We don’t just do Christmas trees. Not much of a living in that. The cottages have always been tenanted, but we’ve two come up lately, the old boys in each both died … and they need doing up. We’re going up tomorrow, the two of us, to see what we have to do. We’ll need some help in a week or two. Clearing out. Painting, decorating, handyman stuff maybe … cutting wood, drilling … if you’re interested?
The man with the hat nodded, yes, yes, he could do that, he would be interested, certainly.
Daytime would be best, yes, yes, I won’t tell any of the other workers.
Well, see you on Monday and then, once the trees have all been done, I’ll wait for your call. I can come any weekday. No, I won’t tell anyone, yes, the other workers would be jealous.
“Our little secret!” concluded the man with the hat. He smiled, almost a sudden sigh of relief, as if all his troubles were over.
The smart brother stood up and shook hands. “I’ll call you … soon.”
The man with the hat went to the slow brother to shake his hand. But he had already turned away, picked up his axe and was heading for the farmhouse.
* * *
The elderly woman sat on an old kitchen chair, a blanket wrapped round her, at the bottom of the staircase.
“It’s so cold tonight. I cannot feel my fingers. I shall be pleased to get to bed. To wrap up warm at last.”
The smart brother stood, three or four steps up, holding the back of the chair.
The slow brother, crouched by the elderly woman’s feet, gripped the front two chair legs.
“Be careful, Sonky,” the old woman snapped, “you’ll have me over.”
The slow brother, struggling to raise the chair from below, did not answer as, ever so slowly, he lifted the chair. He smiled at his mother as he held the chair steady.
“Your breath smells. Have you cleaned your teeth?”
He shook his head. Went to say something, to explain, to apologise.
“Don’t just stand there, take me upstairs.”
The smart brother took one step back, the slow brother one step forward. The elderly woman held tight to the sides of the chair, issuing instructions one after the other.
“Careful.”
“Move away from the wall, Sonky.”
“Don’t drop me.”
Halfway up, the two brothers stopped, as they did every night, to get their breath. The smart brother had once suggested that they should move her bedroom downstairs. She’d not hear of it. What do you think I am, she’d said, a cripple? A stair lift, then? But no. That was an unnecessary expense they could ill afford. And they did not really want anyone inside their home.
And so, night after night and day after day, they’d take her up the stairs each evening and bring her down again the next morning. This old, cantankerous woman, who showed little love for her two sons.
The smart son, not so long ago, aware of her increasing frailties and growing belligerence, had looked at care homes in the area. A blessed relief for all of them. But the costs, he had not realised, were way beyond them. And his last visit had been, he searched for the right word, traumatic. Dangerous. He had come close to being uncovered.
“What are you waiting for? Move!”
“Hold me steady.”
“Stop. Stop here. I need the bathroom.”
The smart brother rested the chair at the top of the stairs. “I can do it myself. I can do it,” the old woman said, lifting herself slowly up. “Help me. Help me up. Take my arm, Chopsy.”
Between the two of them, the two brothers, they helped the old woman struggle across the landing and into the bathroom, untouched for decades, the 1960s, maybe earlier. She walked slowly, painfully, over to the toilet with the overhead cistern.
“Well?” she asked, looking back at the two brothers in the doorway. “Not you, Sonky. You’ll have me over.”
The smart brother walked across, lifted the toilet lid and rested the seat down. He reached for the toilet roll hanging from a nail in the wall and, tearing off two or three sheets and folding them over, he wiped marks from the toilet seat.
“Yes, yes,” she said impatiently as she stood there, her back to the toilet.
The smart brother leaned forward to unbutton her skirt. It dropped to her feet and he took her arm as she stepped over it and back. He picked it up and put it carefully on the windowsill.
He then bent over and reached for her slip and underwear.
She spoke, looking across at the slow brother, “What are you doing?”
The slow brother pulled the bathroom door to, waiting for her to finish. To do what she needed to do. Dabbing at herself and passing sheets of toilet paper to the smart brother to clean her up if need be.
And then came the long and painful shuffle as they helped her along the landing to her room. The sagging double bed. The faded pink candlewick blankets. The piles of old magazines. The knick-knacks from long-gone funfairs of years ago.
And the bibles and religious pamphlets, from so many different religions and sects, that she had collected over the years and had read from every night until recently.
/>
Now, the smart brother sat on the edge of her bed and read to her, from a thick, old pamphlet, a page or so at a time, as she fussed and fiddled with her sheets and blankets and the bits and pieces on her bedside cabinet. Tissues. Aspirin. Ear plugs. A glass of water.
“Listen to your father who gave you life, and do not despise your mother when she is old …”
The slow brother sat, in the high-backed chair over by the window, listening to the smart brother’s quiet and measured tones, the words little more than a blur. He had heard the same passages read time and time again. Mother’s favourites. She had underlined the sentences and paragraphs she liked most. She nodded and occasionally echoed the words.
“Buy truth, and do not sell it; buy wisdom, instruction and understanding.”
He looked at the window, smeared thick with dust and dirt, apart from a small, fist-sized circle that had been wiped clear in one of the small panes. He leaned in and looked through the circle, down to the front of the farmhouse and up the driveway and away.
Where the workers parked their cars and vans before walking up to the rows of trees.
Where, in that outbuilding just over the way, there was the cesspit where so many bodies were buried.
Where he had dragged them up the path, stopping for breath beneath the window of his mother’s bedroom. All below that little, smear-free circle.
“The father of the righteous will greatly rejoice; he who fathers a wise son will be glad in him. Let your father and mother be glad; let her who bore you rejoice.”
And he wondered, in that slow old brain, whether Mother had sat in that chair, looking out of the window at night.
When he thought, they thought, she was fast asleep.
And what, as she rubbed her bony hand back and forth on the glass, she had seen.
17. FRIDAY 16 NOVEMBER, MORNING
DI Gayther sat alone in his portacabin office, looking out of the window. It was overcast and wet; a persistent drizzle had been falling for what seemed like hours. He checked his watch, 10.25am – an hour and thirty-five minutes since he’d sat down at this chair. It seemed much longer.
The Scribbler Page 19