It’s gone 3 a.m. and I’m flying.
We’re in an Ideal Home exhibition. Linda’s house has about 19 rooms. Thick carpets, plush sofas, huge wooden tables, Bose sound system, enormous abstract canvases and arty black-and-white photos positioned just-so on the walls, vast windows opening onto a lush green spot-lit garden with pools and fountains and streams. There’s music and video everywhere. It’s like a club with different theme rooms: the groove room, the chill space, the cocktail lounge, the smoking-room, the dance-floor, the necking zone, the burger bar, the dub den, a computer-game area and even a home-cinema… we’re playing snooker and pinball and table tennis… we’re drinking champagne and gin and tonics and tequila slammers and some sangria that someone’s made with a tin of cocktail fruit and a fine white powder that wasn’t sugar... There are hot-dogs and pizzas and endless pasta and rice salads wherever you look. The air is thick with hash smoke. Linda brings me a shot-glass brimming with Cuervo Gold and slides a slice of lemon in my mouth.
“You won’t need salt”, she says, and she licks her finger, wipes it across my cheek and invites me to suck it.
There are school kids and older students flowing back and forth between the rooms, everyone pretty spaced out, but there’s a good vibe. There’s no riff-raff here; there are even a couple of bouncer types at the main gate keeping the gatecrashers out. Everywhere people are talking… About Terry Booth, about me, about Linda… about football, music, holidays, books, art, cars, clothes, money, food, plans for the future… I want to join in and I start to speak and then I hear another conversation and I want to chip in there too. The words won’t come fast enough and I can’t concentrate on anything for more than two seconds. Linda’s staring at me and she opens her mouth but I can’t hear her. She wiggles a finger at me and beckons for me to follow her. But I can’t move. My feet are glued to the carpet and I weigh three tons.
And then I’m outside in the garden and I’m breathing in, drinking in thick whorls and swirls of perfume it seems like; roses and thyme and fresh-cut grass and then I’m back inside sitting in what I take to be a library. There are books everywhere… rows and rows and rows of books and I spin round and I’m surrounded by shelves of volumes and tomes, novels and art-books and dictionaries and they all seem to be made of neon, pulsing coloured light, shrinking and expanding and glowing as I turn. And then I’m sitting down and Dave Middleton’s lying on the floor at my feet.
“The curtain’s like a wave”, he says. “You could almost surf it”.
And so I look at the curtain and it is like a wave; it’s billowing and furling, top to bottom, bottom to top, a wave of velvet… a two-tone velvet wave, rising and cresting and falling with the breeze rolling in behind it through the open window, and I can smell salt and hear seagulls and Dave’s laughing.
“I know what you mean”, I say.
“And I know what you mean”, he replies.
We both laugh and he passes me a joint.
And then Linda’s sitting next to me and she’s got her tongue in my ear.
She grabs my hand and pulls me to my feet and says “Come on.”
Still holding my hand, she guides me through a maze of warm bodies and smoke and throbbing bass beats and the smells of garlic and beer and we go along a passage and down some steps and she opens a door and then she’s taking my belt off.
“So you know Sarah”, I say.
“What?”
“Sarah Hartley.”
“Yeah, sure, Sarah, yeah”.
“Where is she?”
“She’s in Switzerland. Come on, give me a hand…”
“Where in Switzerland?”
She puts her arms round my neck and licks her lips. She has a mole on her cheek. She looks like Cindy Crawford.
“What does it matter?” she says and places my right hand on her left breast. It’s full and warm and I can feel her heart beating, 110 bpm I’m guessing.
“It matters”, I say.
“Not now it doesn’t.”
She kisses me and I let her and then I push her away.
“It does matter now. It matters all the time. I have to see her”.
She looks at me like I’m a turd and takes a step back.
“Jesus, what is it with you two?”
She shakes her head and brushes the hair from her face and then glances up at me, a faint smile curling on her lips and a bleary dull glow in her eye. Then she comes back at me and kisses me softly on the cheek, running a finger down my chest, slipping it inside my shirt and circling my navel.
“You should forget her, Paul. She’s got a boyfriend over there. She’s really into him”.
“A boyfriend? What’s his name? Who is he?”
“What? I can’t remember his name… Pierre, I think… he’s like mega-rich and they’re totally in love. It’s amazing… I’m like really sorry, you know, but you need to find someone else too…”
She kisses me again, biting my lip, tugging at my hair with one hand and sliding the other into my back pocket.
I bite her tongue, too hard, and I can taste blood. She screams and steps back, hands to mouth.
“You fucking moron!” she yells. “You don’t know how lucky you almost got! Get out! Now! Bugger off!”
But I’m already at the door and I’m feeling very weird.
I’ve no idea what time it is and I’m not sure where I am but I’ve got a bottle of whisky in my hand and I’ve only been sick once. A car whizzes past and I suddenly realise I’m on the Halifax Road and I must have walked about two miles since I left the party.
I go into the public toilets near the lock and splash water on my face and drink a bit even though I’m sure the water’s straight from the canal and not drinkable and probably full of toxic waste and flesh-eating bacteria. I try to look at myself in the mirror above the basin but there’s no light and all I can see is a shadow. I’m just a shadow, I say to myself, and I believe it.
I walk along the canal for a while and sit down on a bench and drink some whisky and smoke a cigarette. My head feels like an echo chamber, a tape-loop, replaying bits and pieces from the evening, sometimes loud, sometimes quiet, sometimes in reverse, sometimes in slow motion. I remember seeing Linda earlier on, across the room, and trying to read her lips as she was talking to some girl or other. I couldn’t tell what she was saying. But she has nice lips and I can hear her now as if she was standing next to me.
“Sarah Hartley… Paul Boyd… Sarah Hartley… Paul Boyd…”.
The tape plays back and forth in my head umpteen times and I try to work out what she said next but the loop’s stuck and keeps winding back and then I can see another scene where Linda’s slipping some powder into a glass of tequila and handing it to me and laughing and the laughing segués into Linda saying: “What is it with you two?” echoing again and again until another voice breaks in: “Hiya handsome, what are you doin’ here?” and I’m confused because I can’t see a face in my mind.
“Hey, Paul!”, the voice says and I look up and Tracy Booth is standing there with a bloke wearing a black crash helmet and a red leather jacket. I look around and I see the moon shattered like sparkling shards of white glass on the oily surface of the canal and the sky turning grey-pink-yellow over the hills and I wonder what day it is.
I try to say something but nothing comes out. The next thing I know is the bloke’s disappeared and Tracy’s sitting on the bench next to me lighting a cigarette and she smells of cheap talc and tobacco and breath mints.
“I hear you met our Terry tonight, or yesterday… dumb bastard… I didn’t think you had it in you… let’s see what else you’ve got in you”.
Then she drags me off the bench and pushes me to the ground and sits astride me and undoes my flies and pulls my cock out and I’m hard.
There’s a stone under my back and it hurts and I try to wriggle to one side but Tracy’s surprisingly strong and I’m pathetically weak and I can’t move. She fits herself onto me and rides me hard, her eyes glazi
ng over as she gets herself off and a drop of her sweat drips into my eye and stings. I buck and twist and she slaps my face and I get a hand free and slap her face and push her off and manage to stand up. She falls back against the bench, panting and groaning and I somehow get it together to put one foot in front of the other and run. And I run until I get a stitch and I can’t see the canal any more and I’m sick again and cold and shivering but the night’s not over yet because there’s something I have to do.
I’m standing on the front terrace at the Castle, screaming. I’m throwing stones at the stained-glass windows and I’m screaming some more. A light comes on upstairs and I take aim with the air-rifle I’ve taken from the garden shed and fire off a shot and reload and fire again. I hear breaking glass and maybe a scream. Another light comes on above the door and King Greville bursts through it and I scream again: “Where’s Sarah? Where’s Sarah?” and then he slugs me with a baseball bat and I fall over and I don’t remember anything else.
The end.
The ambulance and the police arrived more or less at the same time, so he had been told, but he wasn’t arrested until the next evening when he finally came round after having his stomach pumped and being subjected to a barrage of toxicology tests.
He was charged with raping a minor and grievously wounding a woman with a firearm.
Tracy Booth (aged 15 years and 11 months) had turned up at the police station at breakfast time with her father and two brothers, Terry and Colin, both of whom swore they’d witnessed him raping their baby sister and smashing her head against a bench. She had the cuts and scratches on her face and the bruises on her arms and legs to prove it.
Mrs Hartley had been standing behind the stained-glass window when he fired the air rifle and a splinter of glass had flown into her eye. It was feared she might go blind, they said.
He didn’t stand a chance.
Chapter 11
Halifax, Tuesday April 23rd 2013
He ordered a pint in the Red Lion and paid for it but when it came he only took a single mouthful before he decided he should be somewhere else.
As he came out of the pub, he saw a crowd spilling out of the Police HQ, almost everyone with a mobile phone in their hand. Photographers were lying in wait, hoping for a candid shot of the man of the hour, but he imagined Neil Morgan would be leaving through a back door or an underground car-park. He was wrong… Morgan appeared in the doorway and was bombarded by flashes. He raised his hands, the same gesture as before, and he waited for microphones and dictaphones and mobiles to be thrust forward before he said a few words. Then he turned back inside and disappeared from view.
Paul retrieved his car from Richmond Road and drove out of the town centre towards Calderwood Hall. It was the end of the day and the roads were busy with commuters and shoppers. It took him three quarters of an hour to get to the turn-off over the canal and by the time he pulled in next to the Cottage the sun had already started to slide down behind the hills and the beeches and oaks along the lane were black silhouettes against an orange sky.
He stepped out of the car and checked out the Cottage. It was an odd construction, with an air of the Rialto about it, with one room either side of the wrought-iron gate, and three rooms above, forming an arched bridge. To one side had been the kitchen and living space, with his parents bedroom, the bathroom and a small office upstairs and his own bedroom below on the other side. When he got up in the morning he had to climb up a twisting spiral staircase, walk along a stepped corridor, and then down the stairs to the kitchen. The gate itself had only rarely been opened as long as he had lived there; for the odd farm or gardening machine to pass through, and once as an entrance for guests at a garden fête the Hartleys had organised for the millennium. He hadn’t been here for that, but he’d seen pictures in the paper. The locks on the gate were rusted and crumbling now and he wondered if anyone had lived here since Mum and Dad had died 12 years ago. It didn’t look like it.
The front garden outside the Castle walls was a wasteland, overgrown and desolate. Ivy was creeping up the stone and encroaching over a window-frame covered in cobwebs and flaking paint. He ripped off a few strands and branches and threw them on a pile of dead leaves.
He slipped through the hole in the wall, hidden by the rhododendron bushes on both sides, and looked over at the back garden, just a few hundred square yards, separated from the Castle grounds by a fence and a hedge and a wicket-gate. It too was invaded by nettles and weeds and no-one had taken a spade or a hoe to it in a very long time. There were faint outlines where old railway sleepers had once formed rectangular vegetable patches, now smothered in tangles of burdock and bindweed. The garden shed in one corner looked like an old slave cabin after a hurricane, pale warped wood held together by crumbling joists and joints, a dismal reminder of the work and play that had brought it to life in better days.
He walked towards the Castle across the meadow. The grass was long and studded with dandelions and clover and badly in need of a good mowing. Or a flock of sheep. Up ahead he could see a dirty white van parked as close to the Castle’s front door as it could get and as he got nearer he could see a fat man asleep at the wheel, his mouth gaping open with an unlit cigarette hanging from his lips. A sign on the side panel read “Pennine Removals Ltd”. He wondered whether Neil Morgan was coming or going. The back door to the van was open and inside it a number of paintings were stacked up to one side, separated by sheets of bubble-wrap. For a moment he imagined he was interrupting a robbery... but he didn’t think burglars bothered much with protective packaging... He moved towards the main Castle door and as he stepped under the porch and approached the threshold a young man emerged from the doorway, maybe 17 or 18 years old, with a buzz-cut and grubby overalls, and he was carrying another painting, a dark landscape that looked very old and immediately suggested value.
“Hiya”, the young man said.
“Hello”.
“You looking for Mr Morgan?”
“I am, yes.”
“He’s not back yet, shouldn’t be long.”
The lad put the painting in the van, quite fastidiously he thought, and turned back to him, a cocky look in his eye, clicking and clacking chewing gum between his teeth.
“So who are you then? I mean, we’re in charge while he’s not here... You’re not a journalist are you?”
“No, I’m not.”
“So who are you?”
Another young man, an older version of the first one, a brother or a cousin perhaps, emerged from the building carrying a small canvas in each hand. He barely looked at them.
“I’m a friend of the family.”
“Oh aye? You got a name have you, in case he asks, like...?”
“Paul Boyd. I used to live in that house...” and he pointed towards the Cottage.
“Paul Boyd, eh? I’ve heard of you...”
“Oh yes?”
“My name’s Wayne Booth. I think you know me Mum, Tracy.”
Jesus Christ... He did a quick calculation... the kid could only be 16 years old ... for a moment he had a horrible thought, but then he remembered something.
“Yeah, yeah... I remember your Mum... how is she?”
“Oh, she’s all right, a bit tired like... I mean I’ve got six brothers and sisters and she’s preggers again. Never stops.”
The kid must have read a strange look on his face.
“We’re not nickin’ anythin’... honest... it’s all going off for auction in London. Mr Morgan’ll be back soon. Ask him...”
“I’ll wait for a bit then...”
“Knock yourself out.”
And Wayne Booth went back into the house.
He wandered round to the back of the Castle as he waited for Neil Morgan, wondering if Tracy Booth was still called Tracy Booth because she’d kept her maiden name, or if she’d actually married another member of the clan. Perpetuating the myth... And he knew the kid wasn’t his, because she was already pregnant when she fucked him... or fucked him over...
He heard the faint hum of an engine and tyres spitting gravel and turned round a corner to see a grey Lexus pulling up next to the white van. Neil Morgan got out and the door made an expensive-sounding clunk and he said a few words to Wayne Booth. They both looked over as Paul climbed up the steps to the terrace to join them. Wayne spun round and walked back towards the house. Morgan took a step forward, taking his suit jacket off and draping it over his shoulder. Paul saw the crease in Morgan’s trousers and his cuff-links and the handkerchief in his breast pocket and wondered if there was a dress-code for missing-person press calls.
“What do you want? What are you doing on my property?”
Paul pointed to Wayne’s back.
“Didn’t he tell you?”
“Tell me what? You’re not more fucking press, are you?”
Actually, he was, in a way, but there was nothing to be gained by admitting it.
“Isn’t this still Sarah’s property, or perhaps even Rebecca’s?” he said.
Morgan’s brow creased and he glared at him. His blue eyes were cold and hard.
“That would be Mrs Hartley to you, and Mrs Morgan in the first case!”
“It’ll always be Sarah to me...”
He could see Morgan wondering how angry he should get. He was
seething. He decided to taunt him some more.
“I’ve been a family friend for years. I used to live in the gate-house, three generations of us, in fact. The name’s Boyd... Paul Boyd, delighted to meet you.”
He stepped forward, a broad smile on his lips, and held out his hand.
Morgan’s eyes flicked over to the Cottage and then back and he parted his lips to show some clean white teeth and he took his hand and shook it vigorously.
“Well... I see... Neil Morgan... a pleasure... I apologise for the rather hostile welcome...”
“Not at all, I can understand why you might be on your guard.”
Morgan released his hand and stepped back, unsure of what he meant. Or so it seemed...
The King's Shilling Page 8