The Progress of a Crime

by Julian Symons

  Porky wasted no time in saying, “I told you so.” He was brisk. “This calls for action, old man. Agreed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Right, then. This is what we do…”

  A thin rain was falling as they pulled up outside The Club. They grouped on the pavement, and Brad pointed down the steps. Porky led the way, the others followed. The door was closed, but it opened when Porky turned the handle. There was no sound of music inside and the room seemed to be empty.

  “Nobody here,” Geoff Cooper said disgustedly. Then two figures came out from the other end of the room, behind the band platform.

  Brad cried out, “There he is.”

  The four of them advanced on the boy. Porky brought him crashing to the floor with a rugger tackle. There was a short scuffle and then, in a moment it seemed, the boy’s hands were tied behind his back.

  The boy’s companion launched herself at Porky. It was the fair-haired girl who had been with Baxter the previous night. Geoff and Peter held her. She was wearing jeans and a boy’s shirt.

  “Hard to know if it’s a boy or girl,” Peter said. He put his hand on her and laughed on a high note. “You can just about tell.”

  The girl cried out, and Porky turned on Peter. “Cut it out. None of that—you know what we’re here for. We’ve got no quarrel with you, you aren’t going to get hurt,” he said to the girl. He spoke to Baxter. “You know why we’re here.”

  The boy spoke for the first time. “You’re off your beat, fatso. Shove off.”

  They had gone to The Oasis before coming down here, and changed into the old clothes they wore on week-ends for gardening or cleaning the car—clothes so different from their neat daily wear as to be in themselves a kind of uniform. Porky’s thick jersey made him look fatter than usual. He was wearing gym shoes, and he balanced himself carefully on his toes.

  “Just a few questions, Baxter. Answer them and we won’t have any trouble. Where’s the gang? Why is the place empty?”

  “It’s not club night.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Cleaning up for to-morrow. What’s it to you?”

  Porky stuck his red face close to the boy’s dark one, jerked a thumb at Brad. “Know him?”

  “That drip. He was in here last night.”

  “You know his son. Where is he?”

  Baxter looked at him with a half sneer, half smile. “Tucked up in bed—would that be the right answer?”

  Brad saw Porky’s hand, large as a knuckle of ham, swing back and slap Baxter’s face. The bird leaped inside him, throbbed so violently that his chest was tight. There was a ring on Porky’s finger, and it had cut the boy’s cheek.

  “Not the right answer,” Porky said. “The boy’s been kidnapped. By your friends, while you’ve fixed yourself a pretty little alibi to keep out of trouble. We want to know where he is.”

  “I’ll tell you what to do.”

  “What?”

  Baxter sneered. “Ask a policeman.”

  The bird fluttered up into Brad’s throat. He moved toward Baxter with his fist raised. He wanted to speak, but he was breathing so hard he could say nothing intelligible.

  After that it was all dreamlike. He participated in what was done—binding up the girl’s mouth so that she could not cry out, locking the basement door, bundling the boy out into the car; but it did not seem to him that Bradley Fawcett was doing these things. Another person did them—somebody who had been released from Bradley Fawcett’s habitual restraints. In this release there was freedom, some kind of freedom.

  They had come in his car, and as he drove back he took a hand from the driving wheel and passed it over his face. He was not surprised to find the skin damp, cold, unfamiliar. He absented himself from the presence of the others in the car, and thought about Miriam—how she had clung to him when he returned, and had begged him to go back to the police.

  No, we’re going to deal with it ourselves, he had told her quietly and patiently, as he took off his city clothes and put on his week-end ones. Who were “we”? Porky and the others who had come to the house last night.

  “What are you doing to do?”

  “See them. Find out what they’ve done with Paul. Get him back.”

  “You really think that’s best?” Without waiting for him to say yes, she went on, “You won’t do anything to make them hurt Paul, will you?”

  The very thought of Paul being hurt had made him feel sick and angry. “What do you think I am?” he asked, and as he repeated the words he was aware that they were a question—and one to which he could provide no simple answer, as he could have done a few days or even a few hours earlier.

  As he was leaving she had come up and held him close to her. “It’s all our fault, isn’t it?”

  “Our fault?”

  “Something to do with us. People like us.”

  He had stared at her, then disengaged her arms, and left the house…

  They took the boy into the garage. His arms were still tied behind his back. The small cut on his cheek had dried. He made no attempt to call for help, or even to speak, but simply looked at them.

  “All right,” Porky said. “That saw bench over there is just the job, Geoff. Agreed?” He had brought in with him from the car a small leather attache case, and now he took out of it a length of rope. Geoff and Peter bent Baxter over the saw bench.

  “Stop,” Bradley Fawcett said. “What are you doing?”

  “He needs a lesson. All agreed on that, aren’t we? Let’s give him one. Here’s teacher.” And now Porky took something else from the attache case and held it up, laughing. It was a thick leather strap.

  As the bird inside him fluttered and leaped and hammered on his chest trying to get out, Bradley Fawcett said in a strange voice, “We must ask him first. Don’t do anything without asking him again first.”

  Porky’s glance at him was amused, contemptuous, tolerant. “We’ve asked already, but let’s do it according to Hoyle.” Casually he said to Baxter, “Where’s Paul? What have you done with him?”

  Baxter spat out an obscenity. “If I knew, d’you think I’d tell you?” And he spat out another obscenity.

  “Very nice.” Porky savoured the response almost with pleasure. “You see what we’re up against, Brad. He’s a tiger. We must show him we’re tigers too.”

  Brad took no part in stretching the boy over the bench and securing his feet. Instead, he considered wonderingly the garage in which everything was stacked tidily—the mower in one corner with its small bag of spanners beside it; the hoe, rake, garden shears, standing in racks; the packets of grass seed and weed-killer on a shelf; Paul’s canoe suspended by pulleys. Surely this was the apparatus of a harmless and a decent life?

  Yet he knew that he would never again be able to look at these things without thinking of the intrusion among them of this boy with his insolent manner and his strange clothing—the boy who was now bent over the saw bench with his trousers down around his ankles and some of his flesh visible, while Porky stood to the right of him holding the strap and Geoff tucked the boy’s head firmly under his arm.

  Brad took no part, but he found himself unable to move or to speak while the bird leaped within him, was quiet, then leaped again in its anxiety to escape as the belt descended and a red mark showed on the white flesh. The bird leaped violently at the sight of that red mark and Brad jerked a hand up in the air—but what did he mean to say with that outstretched hand? Was it a gesture of encouragement or of rejection?

  He wondered about this afterwards and was never able to know if the answer he gave was honest; but at the time he could not wonder what the gesture meant for the garage door opened, Paul stood framed in it, and Brad was the first to see him. Brad said nothing, but he made a noise in his throat and pointed, and Porky half turned and lowered the strap.

  “Dad,” Paul
said. “Mr. Leighton. I saw a light. What are you doing?”

  In his voice there was nothing but bewilderment. He had his school cap on, he looked handsome and detached, as an adult might look who had discovered children playing some ridiculous secret game.

  Bradley Fawcett ran forward, grabbed his son’s arm and shook it, trying to shake him out of that awful detachment, and said in a voice which he was horrified to hear come out as high and hysterical as his wife’s, “Where have you been? What’s happened to you?”

  “Happened? I went to Ainslie’s party. Ainslie Evans, you know him.”

  “Why didn’t you tell anybody? You’ve got no right—” He could not think what it was that Paul had no right to do.

  “But I did tell—I told Mummy yesterday morning. She must have forgotten.”

  Paul took his arm away from his father’s hand. He was looking beyond Brad to where Geoff and Peter were untying John Baxter, who drew up his trousers. “Why were you beating John? Have you kidnapped him or something? Is this your idea of a joke?”

  Porky gave a short snarl of laughter.

  Paul went on. “It’s something to do with that broken window, isn’t it?” Now he faced his father and said deliberately, “I’ll tell you something. I’m glad they broke that window.”

  “Paul,” Brad cried out. He held out his hand to his son, but the boy ignored it. Paul stood in the doorway and seemed about to say something decisive, irrevocable. Then the door closed behind him.

  John Baxter had his trousers zipped. He looked from one to the other of them. “It was assault. I could make a case out of it. If I wanted.”

  “It was a mistake.” Geoff cleared his throat. “I don’t know about the others, but I don’t suppose you’d say no to a fiver.” He took out his wallet.

  Peter already had his wallet out.

  Porky said, “Don’t be silly.” They stared at him.

  “Have you forgotten who he is? He’s the little punk who daubs garages and breaks windows. What are you giving him fivers for—to come back and do it again?” When he spoke to John Baxter, the cords of his thick neck showed clearly. “You were lucky. You just got a little taste of what’s good for you. Next time it might be more than a taste, eh, Brad?”

  “It’s done now,” Brad said mechanically. He was not thinking of the boy, but of the look on Paul’s face.

  “Don’t worry,” Baxter said. “You can stuff your money. But next time you come our way, look out.”

  “We won’t—” Geoff began to say.

  “Because next time we’ll be ready for you, and we’ll cut you. So look out.”

  Then the garage door closed behind him too, and Porky was saying with a slight laugh, as he snapped his attache case, “All’s well that ends well, no harm done, but you certainly want to be careful of what your wife says, Brad old man.”

  The bird fluttered again within him, and he found relief in shouting, “Shut up!”

  Peter Stone fluted at him. “I think you’re being unreasonable. We were doing it for you.”

  “Get out!” Brad held open the door. Outside was darkness.

  “You’re overwrought.” Porky was smiling. “A good night’s sleep’s what you need, Brad old man.”

  They walked away down the path, Porky with a slight swagger, Peter Stone with an air of being the injured party. Geoff Cooper was last. He gave Brad’s arm a slight squeeze and said, “You’re upset. I don’t blame you. See you on the 9:12.”

  I never want to see you again; you have made me do things I never intended—things I know to be unworthy: those were the words he cried out in his mind, but they remained unspoken.

  He stood there for some minutes after the sound of their footsteps faded, and looked at the light in the house which showed that Miriam was waiting to receive him in a gush of apologetic tears; and as he stood there he came slowly to the realisation that Porky was right in saying no harm had been done.

  A young tough had got a stripe on his backside, and very likely it would do him good. And as for Paul, it was absurd to think that what he had seen would affect him, or their relationship, permanently.

  Bradley Fawcett’s thoughts drifted away, and suddenly he found that instead of being concerned with Paul he was reliving that moment in which leather struck flesh and the bird had leaped violently, passionately, ecstatically, within him.

  As he dismissed these thoughts and walked over to the house and the lighted window, he reflected that of course he would catch the 9:12 in the morning. There was for him, after all, no other train to take.

  the colour of murder

  If you’ve enjoyed The Progress of a Crime, you won’t want to miss The Colour of Murder

  another British Library Crime Classic by Julian Symons, published by Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks.

  Available now.

  poisonedpenpress.com