by Kevin Brooks
It was my tenth birthday, I think. Or maybe eleventh. Some time around then. I don’t remember who gave it to me. It couldn’t have been Mum, she was long since gone. And I know it wasn’t Dad, because he always forgot my birthday. The only thing he ever gave me was dirty washing and a sore head. Anyway, it doesn’t make any difference who gave it to me as long as someone did. Which they did. The Complete Illustrated Sherlock Holmes. It was a whopping great thick book containing all the Sherlock Holmes stories and illustrated with the original drawings showing Sherlock as this gaunt and scary figure with mad, sunken eyes and a cruel mouth. I’d never read any mystery stories before and I probably wouldn’t have bothered then if I hadn’t been stuck in bed with a virus. I mean, it was a really thick book, nearly a thousand pages. That’s a lot of pages. It weighed a ton. But I got so bored just lying around in bed doing nothing, staring at the walls, listening to the sound of Dad clomping around in a drunken daze, cursing because he had to make his own dinner, I got so bored that I picked up this huge book one day and just started to read. And it was brilliant. I couldn’t put it down. I loved it, every single story. A thousand pages? Nowhere near enough. I was hooked. Mystery after mystery after mystery. I read the whole lot in two days. Then I read them all again.
And that’s how I came to love mystery stories. Murder mysteries, crime novels, whodunits, thrillers, detective stories, call them what you like, I love them.
After I’d put all the shopping away then tidied up a bit and done the washing-up and made Dad some cheese on toast, I went up to my room and lay on the bed and tried to read for a while. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. In case you don’t know, Raymond Chandler is the best detective writer ever. Philip Marlowe, that’s who he writes about. Marlowe, Private Investigator. Cool, tough, bitter and funny. A man of honour. Mean streets. Mean villains. Mean city. Bad girls, good girls, crazy girls. Good cops, bad cops. Snappy dialogue. Blackmail, murder, mystery and suspense. And a plot with more twists than a snake with bellyache. I’d read all the other Marlowe stories and I’d been looking forward to reading The Big Sleep for ages. It’s supposed to be his best. But when I opened it up and started to read, I just couldn’t get going. The words wouldn’t stick. I’d get to the bottom of the page then realise I couldn’t remember anything I’d just read. So I’d start again, concentrating, making sure I read every line, every word, one at a time, nice and slow, and then halfway through I’d lose it again. I don’t know. It was like I had no control over my thoughts, they’d just drift off somewhere without my knowing. So, I gave up on the book and just lay there on the bed, staring blindly at the ceiling.
I thought about Alex. I was looking forward to seeing her later that evening. She came round most evenings. Sometimes I’d go over to her place, but mostly she came to mine. We didn’t do anything, just sat around talking. I remember the very first time she came round, about a week after we’d first met, I didn’t know what to think. I was in a right state. Why was she coming? What did she want? Did she fancy me? What should I do? I was a quivering wreck. But when she showed up it was as if we’d known each other for years. No problem. No uneasiness. No awkward undertones. She didn’t even seem too bothered about Dad.
‘Is he always drunk?’ she’d asked, after he’d stumbled through the bedroom door, eyed her up, winked at me like a lecher then stumbled out again.
‘Just about.’
‘Mine was like that,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘That’s why Mum got rid of him.’
Her mum was an actress. She’d had a part in a daytime soap about fifteen years ago. I don’t remember the name of it. It was something about a clothes shop, or a factory or something. Anyway, she was in it for about a year.
‘She was quite well known for a while,’ Alex told me. ‘Not famous, exactly, sort of semi-famous.’
‘Like what’s-her-name from thingy?’
‘Who?’
I smiled.
‘Oh, right,’ she said. ‘Yeah, like that. People used to come up to her and say: You’re that one off the telly, aren’t you? You’re … no, don’t tell me, it’s on the tip of my tongue … don’t tell me …’
‘And what was it?’
‘What?
‘Her name.’
‘Shirley Tucker!’ she laughed. ‘A sexy young blonde with a heart of gold. Mum had to wear this great big wig, you know, with loads of make-up, short skirts and everything. She looked great. Anyway, a couple of years after I was born Shirley and her boyfriend were tragically killed in a motorcycle accident … and since then Mum’s found it really hard to find any steady work. She still gets the odd acting job now and then – local theatre, adverts, the occasional bit part on TV, that sort of thing – but it’s not enough to pay the rent, so she’s had to go back to part-time nursing. She hates it.’
‘Why did they kill off her character?’
‘I don’t know … there was something … a disagreement with the producers or something. Mum doesn’t like talking about it.’
Over the next few weeks we talked about everything. Alex told me all about herself, where she was from, what she thought about stuff, what she wanted to do.
‘I’m going to be an actress, too,’ she told me. ‘Mum was dead against it at first, she kept on telling me I ought to be a lawyer or something. “That’s where the money is, Alex, there’s no such thing as a poor lawyer, you know.” But once she realised I was serious about acting she changed her mind, and now she really helps me. She’s brilliant, Martyn, you ought to see her. She’s only got to raise an eyebrow and she becomes a different person. She can do anything: voices, the way people walk, their posture, anything. She’s brilliant.’
I thought of asking: if she’s so good, how come she can’t get a job? But I didn’t. I didn’t want to spoil the atmosphere. And in any case, I was genuinely impressed. Even if she wasn’t semi-famous any more, at least Alex’s mum had done something. All right, so she was a has-been. But a has-been is better than a never-has-been-and-never-will-be, like Dad. And Alex was so proud of her. It was such an alien concept – being proud of someone – I couldn’t help but be impressed. But what impressed me most about Alex was her ambition. She had an ambition. She knew what she wanted to do, she wanted to be something. And she was good, too. A good actress, I mean. ‘Tell me what you want me to be and I’ll be it,’ she said once.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Anything,’ she said. ‘A situation, an emotion, a person … anything.’ She flapped her arms in an elaborately dramatic gesture and put on an actory voice, ‘I will act for you.’
‘Anger,’ I suggested.
‘Can’t you think of anything better than that?’
‘Well, I …’
Her rage disappeared and she grinned. ‘Acting, Martyn. I was acting. Anger.’
‘Yeah,’ I mumbled. ‘I knew that.’
‘No you didn’t. Give me another. A person.’
I thought for a moment, then smiled. ‘My dad.’
‘OK. Just a minute.’ She was sitting cross-legged on the bed. She closed her eyes, muttered under her breath for a while, then got up and loped across the room and went out the door. I thought she’d gone to the bathroom. Just then there was a heavy knock on the door followed by a deep slurred voice. ‘Mar’n! Mar’n! Get down ’ere and get the bloody tea on!’
I answered without thinking. ‘Yeah, OK, Dad.’
The door opened and Alex came in grinning triumphantly.
‘And don’t take all bloody day about it, neither.’
It was uncanny. She sounded just like him.
‘Brilliant,’ I said. ‘Incredible.’
She licked her little finger and groomed an eyebrow. ‘It was nothing, a mere trifle.’
Ambition and talent … it was beyond me.
‘What about you, Martyn?’ she asked me. ‘What do you want to do? What do you want to be?’
What did I want to be? I’d never even thought about it. What did I want to do? All I wanted to do was s
omething else. Something that wasn’t what I was doing. Whatever that was. Nothing much. What did I want to be? What kind of question is that? What did I want to be? God knows.
I said the first thing that came into my head. ‘I want to be a writer. I’m going to write a murder mystery.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. They’ll make it into a television series and I’ll make loads of money.’
‘I hope there’s a part in it for me. And my mum.’
‘The ghost of Shirley Tucker?’
‘Yeah!’
‘OK. And who do you want to be?’
She thought about that for a while, then said, ‘The murderer’s beautiful mistress.’
‘Why?’
She shrugged and smiled. ‘Why not?’
One thing we didn’t talk about much was Dean. A few weeks after she’d started seeing him, after I’d met him for the first time, I asked her why she was going out with him.
‘What do you mean?’ she said.
‘Well …’
‘Well what?’
‘Well … he’s a bit of a dope, isn’t he?’
She went mad. ‘How the hell would you know what he’s like! You’ve only met him once. Christ!’
‘I didn’t mean—’
‘You didn’t mean what? What’s it got to do with you, anyway? Who the hell d’you think you are?’
I apologised as best I could but she didn’t want to know. She sulked for a couple of days, kept out of my way, didn’t come round for a while. I thought I’d blown it. Then, all of a sudden, she just seemed to forget all about it. She came round one night and everything was back to normal, as if nothing had ever been said.
Still, we didn’t talk about Dean much after that.
Dad was drunk when I went downstairs, which was no surprise. He was drunk every night. Sometimes he went out and sometimes he stayed in, but it didn’t make any difference, he was drunk wherever he was. He drank during the day, too, kept himself topped up with beer, but he never really got going on the hard stuff until the evening. Beer in the morning, beer for lunch and beer in the afternoon. Then beer and whisky for tea, and finally, whisky for supper. A balanced diet. He drank so much that even when he wasn’t drinking he was drunk.
In the evening, after he’d started on the whisky, there were four distinct stages to his drunkenness. Stage One, the first hour or so after he’d started, he’d make out like he was my best pal – cracking jokes, ruffling my hair, asking how I was, giving me money.
‘An’thing you need, Marty? ’Ere, ’ere’s a coupla quid, go on, get y’self a book or something.’
I hate being called Marty. And I hated him giving me money. He’d always ask for it back the next day, anyway. When he was like this, trying to be funny, trying to be Mr Nice Guy, I think that’s when I hated him the most. I preferred him when he got to Stage Two. At least it was honest. Stage Two was mostly self-pitying misery. There’d be a silent interval between Stage One and Stage Two, then the occasional grunt at something on the television or something in the newspaper, then he’d gradually build up steam, cursing his ugly luck, cursing the injustices of this world, cursing this and cursing that, cursing Mum for deserting him, cursing Aunty Jean for being such a witch, cursing me for tying him down with responsibilities, cursing just about everything that wasn’t him, basically. Then, all at once, he’d just stop, and for the next hour or so he’d just sit there slumped in his chair, smoking his cigarettes and pouring whisky down his neck until he got to Stage Three. Stage Three was incoherence with an unpredictable hint of violence. It didn’t bother me too much, the violence, not once I’d learned how to cope with it. It wasn’t difficult, really. It usually started with a question. The trick was to give the right answer, but that wasn’t always easy because it was almost impossible to understand what he was saying.
‘I tellya, I tellya, lissen, amadoin’ the bessacan or amanot? Y’thingiseasy? Y’thingiseasy? Y’thing I donwunna gi’y’thebess? Eh? Lissen. Y’thing I donwunna?’
If I gave the right answer he’d just leer at me for a second then start on about something else. But if I gave the wrong answer – like, ‘What?’ – then he’d more than likely swing for me. But, like I said, it didn’t really matter. Most times he was so incapable that all I had to do was step to one side and he’d miss … most times. I remember once, though, we were sitting at the table eating dinner and Dad had a cigarette smoking in the ashtray. The smoke was getting all over the place, stinking up the food, getting in my eyes, making me cough. I kept on asking him to move it, but he just sat there reading his paper, ignoring me, so finally I reached across to move it myself – and his fist came down like a hammer. Whack. Broke my wrist. I couldn’t believe it. I’d never seen him move so fast in my life. When he realised what he’d done and that I’d have to go to the hospital, he started getting really worried.
‘Was a acc’dent, Mar’n. Was a acc’dent. Y’gotta tell’em. Was a acc’dent.’
What it was, he was worried they’d send the social worker round again. You see, earlier in the year, one of the teachers at school had noticed a particularly nasty bruise on my arm. She started asking all these awkward questions – How did it happen? Is everything all right at home? Why are you so tired all the time? – that kind of thing. I tried to put her off but she wouldn’t leave it alone, and in the end this social worker came round poking his nose into everything. Dad was shaking like a leaf. He thought they were going to stop his benefit. But when the social worker talked to me I made out like everything was OK – which it was, in a way – and he seemed happy enough when he left. Of course, Dad put on his ideal father act for the next couple of days – smiling at me, talking to me, trying to be nice – but once he realised he was in the clear he was soon back to normal. Thank God. The way I looked at it, things weren’t perfect, but at least I knew where I was with Dad. Better the Devil you know than the Devil you don’t, as they say.
Maybe everything would have turned out different if I’d told the truth. But I didn’t. When I went to the hospital with my broken wrist I told the doctor it was an accident, I fell off my bike.
So, anyway, that was Dad in Stage Three – incoherent with an unpredictable hint of violence. Stage Four – the final stage – was when he collapsed into a drunken coma. Anywhere would do. In his chair, on the floor, in the bathroom, on the toilet, lying wherever he fell, snorting out great snotty snores, all kinds of dribbly muck oozing out of his mouth. The scariest thing was when he stopped snoring, just lay there as quiet as a dead man. Unwakeable. I poured a pan of cold water over his head once. He still didn’t wake up. That’s why I took a first aid course at school. So I could tell whether he was dead or just dead drunk.
That evening, either I’d misread how much he’d had to drink or else he’d jumped straight from Stage One to Stage Three. Or maybe something else happened. I don’t know. I don’t think about it much, to be honest.
All I was trying to do was watch Inspector Morse on the television. Is that too much to ask? I hardly ever watch the television. Morse, A Touch of Frost, Wycliffe, that kind of thing. The Bill, sometimes. That’s all I watch, that’s what I like. Detective stuff. Mysteries, murder mysteries. I love them. Especially Morse. I’m not too keen on the books, but the television series is brilliant. Two hours each. Brilliant. What more could a budding murder mystery writer ask for? Two hours of twisting plots, red herrings, strange vicars, spooky murderers and good old Morse always getting it right in the end.
Now, with Morse, you have to really watch it. From start to finish. It’s no good just having the television on in the background, watching a bit here and a bit there, you have to concentrate all the way through. Otherwise you won’t have a clue what’s going on. And if you don’t know what’s going on, there’s no point in watching it.
So, Wednesday night. Eight-thirty. In the front room. The curtains were closed. A cold orange light was flickering behind the false coal of the electric fire. I was sitting on the floor
with my back against the settee and Dad was in his armchair, drinking. I didn’t know how many he’d had, but I didn’t think it was that many because he kept on making stupid jokes about Morse, trying to be funny. Stage One. It was annoying, but I just sat there trying to ignore him in the hope that he’d get bored and shut up, or go down the pub and leave me in peace. But he didn’t. He kept on. Piping up every other minute with his pathetic comments.
‘Look at the state of him! He’s getting a bit fat, isn’t he?’
‘Coppers don’t drive Jags!’
‘No wonder he’s so miserable, listening to that bloody awful music all the time.’
He just wouldn’t stop. On and on and on. I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t hear what was going on. I was losing the plot.
Then he started with his Lewis thing.
I expect you know who Lewis is, but, just in case you don’t, he’s Morse’s sidekick. Sergeant Lewis. A bit of a plodder, in contrast to Morse’s unconventional genius. Once or twice in every episode Morse calls out Lewis’s name: ‘Lew-is!’ Kind of a catch phrase. For some inexplicable reason, Dad always found this hilarious, and whenever it happened he started calling out too, calling out in a stupid imitation-Morse voice: ‘Lew-is! Lew-is! Lew-is!’ And then he’d laugh like mad at his own incredible wit. The first time he did it, it was almost amusing. Almost, but not quite. But after hearing it about a hundred times since, it just made me sick. Why? Why did he do it? Over and over again. Why?
So there I was, sitting on the floor, leaning towards the television, trying to keep track of what was going on. Morse was in his office, sitting at his desk, pondering, frowning, trying to work out whodunit. Dreamy music was playing in the background. Suddenly he sat up straight and blinked. Something had occurred to him. Something crucial. He got up and opened his door and called down the corridor for Lewis: ‘Lew-is!’ And then Dad started. ‘Lew-is! Lew-is! Lewis! Lew-is!’ He wouldn’t stop. ‘Lew-is! Lew-is! Lew-is! Lew-is!’ And all the time he was snorting with laughter as if it was the funniest thing in the world. On the television Morse was talking to Lewis, explaining his crucial idea, but I couldn’t hear a thing. All I could hear was Dad’s crazy braying in my ear: ‘Lew-is! Lew-is! Lew-is! Lew-is! Lew-is! Lew-is! Lew—’