Quarter Square

by David Bridger

  He smoothed his thick white hair. “That was the first I knew of angels and the first I ever heard of the Wild. Forty-odd years on, I’m still learning. Anyhow, that experience opened my inner eye, and I found the threading magic.” He raised a sardonic eyebrow. “So don’t tell me it ain’t working for you after ten minutes, okay? I’ll be in Cap’n Jaspers.”

  He glanced over at the scaffolding as he climbed down from the stage, and the pile of iron that had lain undisturbed for two centuries suddenly spilled across the stage floor. He chuckled as he walked out of the theatre.

  I didn’t have Andrew’s magic. It wasn’t that I didn’t have the patience. I simply couldn’t feel anything, and somehow I knew this magic wasn’t in me. Maybe I had some magic, and maybe I didn’t. But if I did, I was pretty sure it didn’t involve golden lines.

  I got to work and selected blocks of timber from the pile I’d set aside to start building a backdrop frame. I was busily sawing wood when Andrew returned with Tara at his side.

  “Thought so,” he called from the back of the arena. “No patience, you youngsters.” He climbed onto the stage. “Tara thinks she might be able to help.”

  “We need somewhere clean and quiet to sit.” Tara looked at the sawdust and shavings carpeting the floor.

  “Hang on.” I found a soft broom in the wings and brushed a small area clean.

  “It’ll do.” She sat cross-legged and gestured for us to join her, then produced a black felt bag from her shoulder pouch and a handkerchief-sized felt cloth from the bag, which she spread flat on the stage between us.

  “We keep this simple,” she explained, rattling something that sounded like marbles inside the bag. “We ask a single question, and we get a simple answer. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Tara closed her eyes and breathed in and out slowly several times. The silence grew deeper, as if everything was waiting.

  She opened her eyes and looked directly at me as she asked, “Does Joe have magic?” She plunged her hand into the bag and pulled out a smooth black pebble painted with a white symbol that resembled an open eye.

  “That’s the Sun,” Tara said. “The answer is yes.”

  “I knew it,” Andrew murmured.

  Tara replaced the Sun and stirred the stones again. “What is Joe’s magic?” She closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, turned the bag upside down and emptied the stones onto the felt cloth.

  We studied them, each painted with a different symbol in white or red or blue. Andrew and I glanced at each other, and he shook his head slightly, which I took to mean keep quiet.

  Tara said, “You are very old.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You are a lion.”

  There was something in this.

  “You work in wood.”

  Well, duh. I glanced around at my timber and couldn’t help giving a quick eye roll.

  Tara tapped the back of my hand to get my full attention. “You work in wood. Your magic is in wood.”

  Andrew picked up a cut-off cube from the timber and passed it to me.

  Tara touched my hand and the wood I held. “Oak.”

  I glanced down. Yes, it was oak.

  “You are a protector—a provider and a healer. Not my kind of healing. You heal through action. You bring truth and balance, and sometimes it hurts. Sometimes pain accompanies you. It isn’t clear if you bring the pain or if the pain brings you. Maybe you just arrive at the same time. I don’t know.” Her eyes glazed over. “But out of the pain you bring truth and balance.”

  Andrew and I shared a glance.

  Tara blinked and snapped out of her brief trance. “You are oak,” she repeated with an air of finality.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  Andrew grinned as they got to their feet. “There you go. You’re oak. We’ll leave you to play.” He took Tara’s arm, and they left me in silence.

  There was no doubting Tara’s honesty and talent, but I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. I put the block of oak in my pocket and hummed a happy tune as I locked the front door behind me on the way to get my brunch from Cap’n Jaspers. Whatever all this wood magic and everything meant, it felt good.

  “Jo-oe,” Cindy and Debs called in sweet, two-part harmony as I hit Southside Street. They were across the road, spinning poi for tourists on the wide cobbled area in front of the old glassworks.

  People in their audience noticed me. I grinned back and waved.

  I’m an insider!

  The grin stayed put while I strolled round behind the Navy Inn, but it dropped at the sight of a long line of motorbikes at the kerb and dozens of leather-clad riders standing around drinking mugs of tea outside Cap’n Jaspers.

  My stomach flipped and my pace slowed. Was I really so hungry? Probably not.

  But it didn’t look like the gang from the other night. These guys were more the kind of law-abiding enthusiasts I used to meet all the time during my biker days at university, when my friends and I rode out into the countryside most weekends.

  I got close enough to see for sure. Yep. They were talking bikes, of course, and there wasn’t a single outlaw type among them. I nodded hello as I passed and felt perfectly safe admiring the nearest highly polished machines while I ate my quarter-pound chicken burger.

  I took the other route home and saw Jimmy juggling for a small crowd up ahead on Quay Road, sending a set of heavy silver balls high into the air in a never-ending arc and singing a nonsense song with the cheekiest grin I’d ever seen outside an Artful Dodger film. Fliss moved with a pretty smile among the gathered tourists, collecting coins in a cloth cap and sharing a friendly word here and there. She noticed me passing by on the harbour wall and shouted, “Hi, Joe!”

  “Day off, boss?” Jimmy didn’t falter or miss a catch. I’d bet he could juggle those balls with his eyes closed.

  “Lunch break. I’m making a start on the backdrop frame today.”

  “It’s gonna get bloody hot out here this afternoon. I might come and give you a hand later.”

  People were glancing back to see who Jimmy was shouting to as I waved and walked on, and again I got that warm thrill of belonging. Friendship. Family.

  And, again, the stupid grin fell off my face when I turned the corner alongside the theatre and bumped into Will. Great.

  “Ah, Joseph.” He gripped my arm just above the elbow. “A word.”

  I glared at his hand until he removed it, then met his stare and waited for him to speak.

  He flicked sawdust from my shoulder with his fingertips. “About Min.”

  “What about her?”

  “Back off.”

  “Fuck off.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “You don’t want to fuck with me. Be warned.”

  “What are you gonna do, dickhead? Pull faces at me again?”

  “She’s mine, right? Accept it. Back off, or you’ll be sorry.” He looked me up and down with a sneer of contempt.

  The horribly familiar buzz started like a whisper in my brain and grew rapidly. No! I shook it from my head and slammed him against the wall.

  He exhaled with a whoosh. There was whisky on his breath.

  With my left forearm across his throat, I pinned him there and drew back my right fist. “I told you, that mind-control shit doesn’t work on me.”

  He started laughing. I’d just smeared him all over a rough stone wall, and yet he was laughing like a schoolboy.

  “Are you growling at me?” He could barely get the words past my choke hold but still giggled. “Seriously growling? What the hell do you think you are now?”

  I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. He was a weird one. I shoved him aside and pointed a finger at his face. “Min can make her own decisions. You stay out of my way.”

  He burst out laughing again as I stalked towards the theatre door.

  I shut out his stupid laughter and relished the cool peace and quiet inside the building, but before I reached the arena, someone hammered on the door
I’d just closed. If the idiot had come back for more, I was ready to deck him. I stamped back down the corridor, flung the door open and glared out.

  Two men in suits regarded me curiously.

  “Joseph Walker?” asked the taller one.

  “Yes?”

  “Are you Joseph Walker?” he insisted.

  “Yes. What do you want?”

  “I’m Detective Constable Turner,” said the shorter one. “This is Detective Constable Peterson. Can we come inside for a minute?”

  I let them in and followed them to the main arena, glad that no insiders were working there. Peterson looked around with interest, while Turner never took his eyes off me. Was this about the gang fight the other night?

  “What’s going on?”

  “Is anyone else here?” Turner’s tone was brusque.

  “No. What do you want?”

  Peterson finished his examination of the arena and turned his attention to me. “Are you married to Carole Walker of 39 Hunters Close, Islington, London?”

  I was getting a very bad feeling about this. “Yes.”

  He nodded. “Joseph Walker, I am arresting you for the murders of Carole Walker and Tony Evans. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you say may be given in evidence. Do you understand?”

  Turner produced a pair of handcuffs and snapped them on me. “Where do you keep your clothes?”

  “Carole’s dead?” The world was crashing down around me. “And Tony? How did they die? Why would anyone think I killed them?”

  I was in a cold sweat. I glanced back and forth between them and realised I must be wild-eyed. Right there and then the thought at the front of my mind was that I didn’t want to appear guilty. But instantly I remembered Carole and Tony were dead, and my instinctive selfishness did make me feel guilty.

  I took a steadying breath and swallowed hard to relieve the pressure building in my ears. “What the hell is going on? Are you bastards going to tell me what happened to them or what?”

  “Let me give you a hint,” Peterson said quietly. “When I said you don’t have to say anything, what I meant was don’t say anything.”

  “Where are your clothes?” Turner asked again. “And the keys to this place? I’ll lock your front door when we leave.”

  “The keys are in my pocket. Clothes are in the back.”

  He fished the key out of my pocket and walked towards the dressing rooms, and that was that. We were on our way. Peterson placed a firm hand on my shoulder and guided me to an unmarked police car parked outside. Turner appeared with a sealed brown paper bag, which I guessed contained my clothing. He locked the theatre door and put the key into his pocket.

  “Where are we going?”

  Peterson didn’t even look at me. “Shut up.”

  The policemen chatted to each other all the way up to London, but neither of them was keen to talk with me. I supposed the paperwork was easier with no conversation to record.

  We stopped for a toilet break in the very same place Carole and Tony and I had stopped a week earlier on our way down to the West Country. That day was a lifetime ago.

  I couldn’t stop imagining various ways in which they might have been killed, and however I tried, I couldn’t erase the picture of them having sex in the hotel room. That wasn’t how I wanted to remember them.

  Had they been murdered by someone with a grudge against Tony? It had to be that, because for the life of me I couldn’t think of anyone who might have a grudge against Carole.

  Except me.

  Or maybe it was some random violence. That kind of thing happened all the time, right? Madness.

  I hoped they hadn’t suffered. I hoped Carole hadn’t been scared. Maybe they’d been lucky and hadn’t seen it coming. Just stepped from happiness into oblivion. That would be the best way to go.

  We reached London in the late afternoon and drove directly to Islington Police Station, not far from our house.

  Turner handed my possessions to a custody sergeant, who logged everything meticulously, then took me to a medical room and directed me to stand on a sheet of paper and strip naked. He placed the clothes I’d been wearing into a paper bag, along with the sheet, and handed me a white paper suit to wear. Then I was introduced to a forensic medical examiner, who checked me for injuries and took a sample of my DNA. During the examination, he asked me when I’d last slept and eaten, and I assumed he was checking my fitness for interrogation. I passed my medical, and the sergeant locked me in a cell.

  I sat on the bed and went back to wondering how and why Carole and Tony were murdered and who could have done it. I thought briefly about a suicide pact but rejected the idea immediately. It was ridiculous. The truth was, with me out of their lives, their futures were rosier than ever before.

  I wished I’d answered Carole’s call that day instead of chucking my phone into the sea. I wished I could talk to her one more time, to tell her I wasn’t angry with her anymore, maybe to remember some of the good times together and to part as friends. I hoped against hope that however they’d been killed, it had happened instantly.

  A uniformed policeman brought me a paper plate of egg and chips, with plastic cutlery and a plastic cup of milky tea. While I was eating, it struck me that I hadn’t had a chance to tell Min or any of the insiders what had happened to me.

  Maybe someone had seen me being arrested. I hoped so. It kind of grounded my emotions, to think of my new family knowing I wouldn’t just disappear. And that they would be concerned about me. The thought brought a lump to my throat.

  The uniformed policeman came back and took me to an interview room, where he told me to sit. Another policeman stood silently inside the door, and we waited.

  I studied the room, including the double-cassette tape recorder fixed to the wall at one end of the desk, and the pane of darkened glass set into the wall opposite me, which I assumed was a one-way window.

  The clock on the wall above the door said 5:00 p.m. when two detectives walked in and sat down, the man opposite me and the woman to his right, between him and the wall. Before a word was uttered, the woman unsealed two cassette tapes and placed them in the recorder. She turned on the machine and said in a clear North London accent, “Interview with Joseph Walker. Present are Detective Chief Inspector Ian Dawson and Detective Sergeant Jennifer Smith.”

  Dawson spoke directly to me. “I’ll remind you that you are under arrest and being interviewed as a suspect in the murders of Carole Walker and Tony Evans. Do you wish to have a legal representative or an impartial witness present in this interview?”

  Although his soft Scottish accent made him sound unthreatening, I was under no illusion about the danger he posed to me. As far as he was concerned, I was a murderer.

  “No.”

  “You may change your mind and ask for one at any time.”

  “Thank you.”

  “What I’d like you to do,” he said, “is account for your movements over this past week.”

  “I will. But first tell me what happened to Carole and Tony.”

  “I will. But first you need to account for your movements over this past week.”

  “When do you want me to start from?”

  “Anytime you like.”

  “Okay. I take it you know I stayed in Plymouth on Wednesday, when Carole and Tony came back to London.” I paused for him to confirm he did know this, but he just regarded me silently, so I carried on talking.

  “I spent the rest of Wednesday buying bedding, clothes, food and stuff. The next morning I started work on the theatre. And I’ve been working there ever since, until the policemen picked me up today.”

  I shrugged and looked innocently at him. I’d had plenty of time to think about this and had decided not to mention the insiders. They had nothing to do with any of this, and they certainly didn’t deserve to have the police invade their world just because my life had suddenly turned
into a nightmare.

  “So what happened to Carole and Tony?”

  Dawson shook his head. “You need to give us more first. Tell us about your trip to Plymouth.”

  “We went down to the West Country to look at several properties Tony bought in a job lot at auction. The theatre in Plymouth was last on our list.”

  “Why were you there?”

  “Tony asked me to survey the buildings. It’s what I do.”

  “Yes. You’re a builder, aren’t you?”

  “Carpenter.”

  “And Carole? Why was she there?”

  “She decided to make a holiday out of the trip. That was the official version. Of course, now we all know she was there because she was shagging Tony.”

  “So I hear,” said Dawson. “This was the first you knew of that situation?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you found out about them on Wednesday, and that’s when they decided to come back without you? And you decided to stay put in Plymouth?”

  “I found out on Tuesday. I slept rough in the theatre that night and went back to talk to them on Wednesday morning. That’s the last time I saw them.”

  Dawson removed a few sheets of printed paper from his file and shuffled through them, glancing at me over the top of them from time to time. He kept me waiting before saying quietly, “You have quite a temper, don’t you?”

  “No.”

  He studied the papers. “Tony Evans’s postmortem revealed recent dental work, so we talked to his dentist. He says Tony went to his surgery for treatment to a damaged crown on Thursday morning. We also spoke to Tony’s solicitor, who told us his client had a cut lip when he visited on Thursday afternoon to instruct him that he wished to transfer ownership of the theatre to you. The solicitor says Tony told him you’d punched him and why.”

  Dawson raised his gaze. “Do you still say you don’t have a temper?”

  I shrugged.

  “For the tape,” Smith announced, “the suspect shrugged his shoulders.”

  “I walked in on them shagging. Not exactly a normal situation. I don’t normally have a bad temper. What happened to them?”