Bad Penny Blues

by Barrie Roberts

  ‘And this is all on expenses?’ Jayne said. ‘Al, switch the mobile off and we’ll stay out all night!’

  ‘No chance!’ I said. ‘He’ll be here as soon as it’s well dark.’

  ‘Just make sure Sheila’s all right,’ commanded Jayne, ‘and you, of course.’

  We switched off all lights in the house and Jayne and Alasdair made their exit into Sheila’s car and away.

  ‘Right!’ I said to the assembled company in the sitting-room. ‘From now on, nobody switches a light on, nobody goes near a window, nobody makes a loud noise, and anyone who wants a smoke goes into the passage before lighting up. Any other orders, John?’

  He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘that’s about it, except for warning the civilians present that, if our man shows up, he’ll certainly be armed in some way, so stay out of the way while we sort him.’

  Sheila brought in trays of sandwiches and jugs of soft drinks We settled down to wait, each taking a thirty-minute turn at watching the monitor for signs of activity.

  The early evening movement of cars and people in the street died away and everything became very still. An occasional car went through the street but otherwise all we heard were the distant sounds of the town down the hill. On the monitor screen nothing moved. John’s two point men reported by radio that they were in place, one watching the side gully and one watching the back lane.

  As it grew dark the quiet conversation in the sitting-room lapsed into silence. Now we were all watching the little monitor with its unnaturally bright image of the lawn and the shrubs.

  A dog began to bark somewhere outside. ‘He’s on his way,’ I said.

  John’s radio crackled and a voice said softly, ‘Fido One here. Target entering alley.’

  ‘Roger. Stay put,’ John responded.

  It seemed like ages before the radio came to life again. ‘Fido Two,’ said a voice, ‘target at rear gate.’

  ‘Roger. Stay put,’ John commanded, and we all leaned closer to the monitor screen.

  In the far right-hand corner of the picture the gate moved slowly, swinging cautiously open, and a blurred figure slipped in and slid behind the shrubs alongside the gate.

  ‘We’ve got him!’ I breathed, finally satisfied that I had been right.

  Time passed and nothing more moved.

  ‘What’s he up to?’ whispered John’s sergeant.

  ‘He’s making sure that the house is really empty,’ I said. ‘Have you got your mobile phone, John? Ring my number and let it ring for ages. That ought to convince him.’

  John took out his phone and keyed my number. The phones in the sitting-room and the study sprang to life, yelping in harmony.

  ‘He ought to be able to hear them from where he is,’ I said.

  John cut the phones off. We waited again. After a few seconds the shrubs stirred. A face looked out, then a figure stepped on to the lawn.

  ‘That’s the lodger from up the street!’ exclaimed John’s detective constable. ‘I interviewed him the other night.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Watch!’

  He was walking steadily but cautiously across the lawn, both hands held in front of him. As he drew closer to the camera I saw that he was carrying something in both hands. Suddenly I saw the gap in my clever plan. He wasn’t going to burgle us.

  I slipped out into the kitchen, where the door was still unlocked, and took a cautious look through the window. Our man was still steadily advancing on the house.

  ‘Leave him to me!’ John’s voice hissed in my ear.

  ‘He’s carrying another bomb!’ I said. ‘I’ve got to tackle him before he gets close enough to throw it.’

  ‘Leave it to a rugby player!’ he commanded.

  ‘I am one,’ I said.

  ‘Public school stuff,’ he sneered.

  I didn’t wait to argue. I slid out of the door and pounded across the lawn. As he heard me coming the intruder swivelled, saw me, and raised his hand to throw. I silently thanked God for a headmaster who believed that soccer was a low game played by hooligans and took my target below the knees.

  He crumpled, but the bomb flew from his hand. I forced him into the ground and cowered over him, waiting for the explosion. Behind me, John Parry leapt like a dancer to catch the device and in one continuous movement flung it into the pond.

  My captive was heaving and cursing beneath me. With John’s help I stood up and we pulled him to his feet. I knocked off his hat, pulled off his glasses and pulled away the thick false moustache.

  ‘Ian Bradley,’ said John, ‘I am arresting you on suspicion of attempted murder, criminal damage, sending dangerous devices through the Royal Mail, sending anonymous threats, theft of a briefcase, theft of a motor car, cruelty to a cat, and probably several other things that I haven’t thought of yet. You do not have to say anything, but if you do not mention anything which you later rely on in your defence it may be to your disadvantage.’

  The other officers had joined us and we took Bradley back into the sitting-room. As the sergeant switched on the light, Bradley slumped into a chair, wheezing and twitching. I thought about Mrs Dunk’s neighbour’s lodger, who’d been apparently drunk and twitching immediately after the arrow was fired — when his disease hit him and he hadn’t got his medication because he’d dropped his pills in my garden. Bradley groped inside his coat and the sergeant grabbed his hand, forcing it open to reveal another tin, like the one he had dropped before.

  John screwed it open and examined the pills inside., ‘Looks the same,’ he said. ‘How many of which, Mr Bradley?’

  ‘One of each,’ Bradley gasped. Sheila was beside him in a flash with a glass of water helping him take the capsules and sip the water.

  He heaved and shuddered for a few minutes, then became stiller.

  ‘I suppose I should apologise, Dr McKenna,’ he said.

  ‘You might at that,’ she said.

  ‘I had to do it. I had to try and stop you finding out.’

  ‘I wasn’t looking for that,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t have found it and anyway I’d never have used it.’

  He shook his head from side to side. ‘I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t risk it,’ he said. ‘I thought you were bound to find out. When you wrote to me I thought you must have found out from the pills I dropped.’

  ‘I only found out,’ I said, ‘because, as a child, I met a man called Woody Guthrie.’

  His head jerked up. ‘Guthrie?’ he said. ‘You knew Guthrie? Then you know what happened to him?’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘I know that he became sick of a strange disease that doctors thought was drunkenness, that it took years for it to be correctly diagnosed and that then it turned out to be Huntington’s chorea — a hereditary disease that attacks the brain and invariably kills. It took me a long time — rather too long — but I finally put the pieces together. I remembered Guthrie and I remembered a man who pretended to have arthritic hands; I remembered a music teacher who pretended he hadn’t got a wife and son and who told us that he’d found one child who was a prodigy; I recalled a man whose wife thought he drank when he didn’t, who had bursts of temper for no reason so that she left him; and a man whose postman saw him dancing in the garden — not dancing, really, was it? It was the spasms from the disease, wasn’t it? I remembered that your grandmother came from Venezuela, where fifteen thousand or so people from one family carry the gene that causes Huntington’s; I remembered that your father died of pneumonia, which kills the lucky Huntington’s victims, I recalled a car with two cans of soft drinks to quench the unnatural thirst that victims have, and I knew what had happened.’

  I lit a cigarette. ‘You went to the Family Centre to track your ancestry and see where the disease came from. You discovered your transported ancestor, but that didn’t matter, you’d also caught on that it was your South American grandmother who brought the faulty gene into the family. It didn’t matter until you accidentally discovered that someone who was writing a book
was researching your family. Then you panicked.’

  ‘I couldn’t help it,’ he whispered. ‘I had to stop it. You could have ruined my son.’

  ‘Has he got the gene?’ I asked. ‘Has he been tested?’

  ‘No, no, of course not. He must never, ever know. It would destroy him.’

  ‘Then he might not have it. But you weren’t willing to take the chance. You tracked Sheila, tapped her computer from one of the websites, stole her briefcase and her car, broke into my garden, slaughtered our poor bloody cat. I should have caught on. A man who watched us all the time — who knew when we were in or out — an old man who walked his dog along here all the time — a respectable lodger doing research — a man who had read Stevenson as a boy and used the name “Mr Hyde” for his other personality. You could see this house from your bedroom window up the road, couldn’t you? I should have realised that a man who read The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren might be amused by children’s rhymes and that a science teacher might know how to make a reasonable bomb or two. I should have remembered a dog-kennel with no dog and a dog that barked just before you fired your crossbow. I should have known it all far sooner.’

  I was running off at the mouth because I was angry — angry at this sad little man who huddled in an armchair and angry at myself for not putting the pieces together sooner, for leaving Sheila at risk.

  ‘Well, you know it all now,’ he said. ‘And soon everybody will know and my boy will be destroyed.’

  ‘There’s no need for anyone to know,’ I said, ‘and you’ve forgotten something about Woodrow Wilson Guthrie.’

  ‘What’s that?’ he said.

  ‘The disease killed him when he was little older than you, but before then he’d written hundreds of songs, become world-famous and inspired people like Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs and Tom Paxton and Billy Bragg. Even if your boy has it, he can still make the grade.’

  ‘But if people know, nobody will train him, nobody will take him seriously!’

  ‘Will there be a trial?’ Sheila asked John.

  ‘I doubt it. He’s evidently a very sick man.’

  ‘I have been keeping alive on chemicals and my hopes for my boy,’ Bradley said.

  John picked up his radio. ‘Fido One, Fido Two,’ he said. ‘Collect the dog from the gully and bring the cars to the front. We’re going back to the nick.’

  Bradley hauled himself to his feet. ‘I am sorry, Dr McKenna. I didn’t want to harm you — really.’

  ‘Yair,’ she said. ‘Maybe not. Your son may be in my book, Mr Bradley, but your family secret won’t — fair dos?’

  He nodded. As the officers gathered around him to take him out, I stopped them for a moment.

  ‘There’s one thing I don’t know,’ I said. ‘What about the spider? Was that just a lucky guess?’

  He looked ashamed. ‘That was wrong,’ he said. ‘When I took the briefcase there was a magazine in there. It had one of those silly personal questionnaires in it with a question about “What is your darkest secret?” Dr McKenna had written that she hated spiders.’

  ‘You keep my secrets and I’ll keep yours,’ she said as they led him out.

  We stood at the door with our arms around each other’s waists as they loaded Bradley into a police car.

  ‘What about all this defongerating you were going to do?’ I asked.

  ‘Poor bastard,’ she said. ‘He’s been well and truly defongerated by life. Do you reckon his kid has got it?

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It’s fifty-fifty. Toss of a penny stuff.’

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