The Swap

by Antony Moore

  'Fuck me, Harvey,' she said in a voice he had not heard before. 'I need you, right now.' And Harvey, wide-eyed with fear at what sex on the edge of a cliff might entail, but also suddenly consumed by the desire to be desired in this all-consuming sort of way, turned her and pushed her back against the whale's side. Then with a passion that he would later characterise as 'a bit D.H. Lawrence', he scrabbled the buttons of her jeans undone, tore them down and, kneeling on the wet rock buried his face in her crotch before standing and having what he would also later refer to as 'an old-fashioned knee-trembler'. The wind beat their bodies but they felt no chill, indeed Harvey was sweating like a racehorse by the time they finished. As they ended she gave a great howl into the wind and listened to it as it was whipped away from her, over the whale's soaring flanks and off inland. Harvey too cried out, though with a more grunting intonation that wasn't carried at all but seemed to stay for ages as a sort of echoed, animal noise under the rocks. She clung to him for a bit and then with a little laugh found her knickers round her left ankle and restored them and her jeans. Harvey turned from her and putting his back against the whale, dragged in great gouts of air. He really wouldn't have eaten that breakfast if he'd had any idea . . . He groped in the pocket of his unbuttoned denim jacket, found his cigarettes, somewhat crushed, and then spent several cursing moments attempting to light one in the swirling eddies of the wind.

  'That was amazing, Harvey.' They had returned to the hotel and were now, red-faced from the sting of salt in the air and from their exertions, sitting in the bar drinking hot chocolates. Still breathing rather heavily, Harvey nodded his agreement. He was already busy writing up the memory in his mind for future repetition to several of his friends. Much of his teenage years had been spent attempting to orchestrate knee-tremblers on headlands, and mostly it had been a history of terrible failure and shame. But now when his mates played that 'strangest place' game and someone came up with 'in a hammock on a catamaran' or whatever, at least Harvey could provide a half-decent riposte. He grinned at the warm place that he had prepared to keep the memory; it was already part of the new bit of himself that he was calling the Maisie'd bit. It was a part of himself that he wanted to see a lot of.

  'You seem to bring something out in me,' she went on, making it better and better. 'I'm not usually like this, I assure you. I was never like this with Jeff. In fact, he always did all the work, if you know what I mean. But with you . . . I can't keep my hands off you!' She laughed out loud, perhaps slightly longer and louder than Harvey would have chosen, but at least she was smiling, not always a certainty after sex, in his experience. He sipped meditatively of his chocolate and considered whether he should have a doughnut to go with it but realised that a woman who has only recently watched a man eat a breakfast of frankly heroic proportions might baulk at elevenses. So with a little sigh, no more than a breath really, he did his best to take sustenance from the warm thick drink while he watched for Simes. They had never met, and when the old teacher came nodding, birdlike and punctual, into his sight, Harvey considered him with a cool eye. He must be seventy, he thought, and was showing signs of the development of a naturally fit man who has spent too many years sitting down. He stooped and bobbed round the tables, his eyes seeking an ex-pupil that he had never taught, an irritability and potential excitability combined in his darting glance. With the air of one putting another out of their misery, Harvey stood up, startling Maisie slightly as she was telling him about Bristol, and waved his hand.

  'Mr Simes?'

  'Yes. Mr Briscow?'

  Harvey got him settled in one of the low green armchairs with battered gold arms and then fetched him a hot chocolate from the bar. When he returned, the old man was telling Maisie about the headland outside and how in past times a hewer would sit in a little hut among the rocks and watch out for the schools of pilchards as they swam into the bay.

  'He would have a huge horn,' said Simes, 'and he would blow the horn when he saw the fish.'

  Harvey, who was behind Simes at this moment as he returned to sit down, caught Maisie's eye.

  'So, he had the horn at the end of the headland?' she said with great interest and Harvey returned to the bar. Once in control he sat and smiled at the testy but eager expression on Simes's face.

  'So, thanks for coming,' he said politely and Simes nodded. Harvey explained the purpose of their visit. When he had done so Simes regarded him with his head on one side, like a bird considering a brazil nut.

  'You want to know about Charles Odd. Well, that was a long time ago, of course. Although I do remember him well. And I saw him recently at the reunion. He was in the maths club that I used to run, and that was what he spoke to me about. He was very animated, telling me about how much the club had meant to him, as if he felt it necessary to thank me. But it was strange, like he was talking about something else altogether in a way.' He paused and looked thoughtful at that.

  Harvey was thoughtful too. He couldn't remember ever being invited to join the maths club, or in fact any club at all. Where was his club? He ignored the impulse to ask and instead said vaguely: 'Right, so a good student, yeah? But a bit knocked about, no? I mean, Bleeder Odd and all that.'

  Simes considered this illiterate response with a little grimace of distaste. 'If you mean Charles was badly bullied at school, then yes, I am inclined to agree with you. But I'm still not clear what your interest is. And . . .' he turned his attention suddenly to Maisie, 'I'm afraid I don't even know your name.'

  'Oh sorry. I thought you might have introduced yourselves. Maisie, this is Mr Simes, Mr Simes, Maisie Cooper.'

  'Cooper?' Simes jumped a little at the name and narrowed his eyes. 'You are Jeffrey Cooper's wife?'

  'Yes I am.' It was Maisie's turn to be surprised. 'Do you know Jeff?'

  It was a simple enough question but it seemed to stir Simes up to a great extent. He made as if to stand up and then stopped and perched himself on the edge of his chair, glaring at them both. 'I feel that I am here under false pretences, Briscow. You did not tell me that Jeffrey Cooper's wife would be here. I do not understand what you have come here to ask me, nor do I understand what interest you have in this murder.' White patches formed in his reddening cheeks, giving him, to Harvey's eye, something of the rosetted guinea-pig. Maisie glanced, for a moment uncertain, at Harvey and then she too sat forward so that her face was quite close to Simes's.

  'What do you know about Jeff?' she asked softly.

  The rosettes began to fade a little as Simes sat back and regarded her, then he said: 'It is history, of course. Old history. Hardly the need to dredge it all up now.' He looked at her for a while and Maisie had the good sense to sit quietly and let him think.

  Harvey sighed. If only he had ignored his probably imaginary concerns about Maisie's attitude and got a doughnut earlier it might be easier to concentrate. There was a bowl of them on the bar, fresh-baked and smothered in icing sugar. Shame to waste them. But as he was about to get up Simes spoke again.

  'But perhaps it is right that this story should be told. Perhaps to the police . . . well, I will tell you.' So Harvey sat back again and bit his fingernails instead.

  Chapter Thirty

  'It was in 1982,' said Simes, 'the year Trehendricks won the junior rugby cup, and your husband was one of the best young players we had, Mrs Cooper.' Maisie nodded with, Harvey was pleased to note, a long-suffering air. 'He was a bit of a rogue, I think, and he was a bit of a bully. All the rugby lads tended to be high-spirited. They played tricks and could be cruel, but he was the worst by some distance. He had, as I remember, a very domineering father . . .' He glanced at Maisie again and she did the nod with the same air and Simes copied it. 'Yes, very domineering, and Jeffrey brought the home into the school. He was unkind to a lot of the smaller, weaker boys and I was aware of that. For some reason mathematics seems to attract a disproportionate amount of such boys.' His eyes gleamed and Harvey and Maisie smiled on cue. 'Perhaps it is nature's way of compensating . . . Anyway, sev
eral of my boys were treated unkindly by Mr Cooper, but none as unkindly as Charles Odd. It was as if he had done something personally to enrage Cooper and he was brutally treated.'

  'Yes, I can believe that,' Maisie said quietly.

  'Well, one did what one could,' Simes went on. 'Although, looking back, I think we might have done more to protect poor Charles because Jeff Cooper seemed intent on bringing him misery. He would follow him home, ride up and down outside his house on his bicycle shouting out obscenities, singing cruel songs . . .' Harvey felt his bladder tighten and he gulped audibly. 'And then Mrs Odd would come out and chase him away down the road, no mean employer of obscenity herself, by all accounts. We knew of all this because there were complaints to the school, lots of them. From Mrs Odd herself, although these were somewhat confused and difficult to grasp, but also from other residents in the area. The pursuit of Charles Odd was known about and abhorred by many local people. But still it continued for some time until Cooper was caught.' Simes looked round impressively and Harvey realised just how much the old man enjoyed telling stories. He was aware also of the fact, felt instinctively, that he had not told this one before, that this was its maiden voyage.

  'He was caught?' Maisie spoke as if she was grasping something that she had missed and was needing to ensure that she heard correctly this time. 'Caught by the school, you mean?'

  'Oh no. We'd caught him lots of times, but a bit of bullying in those days, especially by the star of the rugby team, was not a very serious offence. No, this time he was caught by Mrs Odd.'

  'Oh right.' Harvey, who had had his head down, looked up sharply at him and then his eyes went very far away. 'Caught by Mrs Odd?'

  'Yes. Mrs Odd got hold of him. Perhaps she was lying in wait. She could be a rather frightening woman I found. Anyway she got him – knocked him off his bicycle. The bicycle was badly damaged. I remember that because it seemed to be the only thing his father was really concerned about. But she got him and took him inside her house. Charles was there too, of course. And she beat them. Both of them. Took them into a basement of the house, stripped them and beat them with a length of plastic tubing.'

  'She beat them?' Maisie's voice was clear and sharp now. 'These were children, twelve-year-olds?'

  'Yes, just children and she whipped them.' Simes nodded, more birdlike than ever. 'When he got home, Jeffrey Cooper's back was ripped to shreds. He had to go to the doctor, I believe. The school was appalled: it was about this same time of the year, early spring perhaps, and the rugby season was up and running. But of course the school did everything it could to help cover things up. That was what schools did in those days. Still do perhaps . . . Certainly, the Coopers were only too keen to participate in smoothing everything over. They didn't want any scandal in their family, though as I say Cooper senior was concerned about the bicycle.' He stopped and smiled without pleasure. 'Why some people have children I don't understand. But there we are. Jeffrey went into hospital but Charles was at school the very next day, business as usual for him. I only discovered the details of his beating because I found him crying outside the maths club. I made him lift up his shirt at the back. I'd never seen anything like it in all the time I was a teacher. I wanted to call the police, call social services, call someone. But the headmaster opposed it. Bad for the school. Not the done thing. So we did nothing and Jeffrey came back to school and nobody said a word. Even when it happened again a few weeks later, when someone else was caught by her and Charles was beaten again. Still, we didn't speak. All these years we didn't speak . . . And Jeffrey came back and the school won the Junior Cup. Glory days indeed. But the bullying stopped from that quarter at least. I don't think Charles Odd ever had to worry about Jeffrey Cooper again . . .'

  Simes turned again to Maisie. 'You didn't know of this, Mrs Cooper?'

  'No.' Maisie was seeing into another picture than the hunting scene on the hotel wall. 'No, I knew nothing about this. Jeff never told me. I wish he had.'

  'Well, of course, it is not an easy thing to speak of. For a proud, rather arrogant boy like that, and with those parents of his . . . very difficult.'

  'Yes, yes it would be.' Maisie nodded, as though solving a crossword puzzle clue.

  'Well now, was that what you expected to hear, Mr Briscow?' Mr Simes, kindly now, and touched by his own narrative, turned his eyes across the table to where Harvey was slumped. There was a silence for a moment and then Harvey roused himself as if slapped.

  'Er, yeah,' he said, 'good one. Thanks. Fast Times at Trehendricks High really. I don't remember that about Jeff, don't think I ever knew. I guess it makes sense of what he was saying in the shop, eh? And of course it gives him a great motive for murder.' He laughed loudly and then realised that he was doing it solo.

  'You know, really I think that is a dangerous thing to say.' Simes shook his head and Maisie joined him.

  'Yes, Harvey, please don't say that. This makes everything different somehow. Poor Jeff. And his God-awful father . . .'

  Simes's kindliness got even kindlier and while he was patting Maisie's hand Harvey snuck swiftly to the bar. He returned with a large white plate with two doughnuts on it and placed it with a little ceremony in the middle of the table. 'Anyone?' he said.

  Maisie gazed at him. 'I don't believe you're eating again, Harvey, and now of all times . . .'

  'Er, no, no, I'm not.' Harvey sought to clarify this point. 'I just thought Mr Simes might be hungry. He is our guest.'

  'Yes. Yes of course he is. Please do have some, Mr Simes.'

  'Oh, thank you kindly. Very nice.' So Harvey had to watch Mr Simes eat the two doughnuts.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  'You do realise that they are probably looking for me. When I didn't show up for the meeting with him Jarvin probably put out an APB on me across London.' Did they have APBs in England? Harvey wasn't sure, but for once the issue didn't seem that significant. He was dissatisfied and he feared that Maisie was sharing the emotion. 'I am on the run and you are my accomplice. Bonny and fucking Clyde.'

  Maisie took a chip from his plate and licked the salt from it with a certain disdain. 'I am not your accomplice. I am your girlfriend and I am helping you to sort out your life, not to flee justice. Anything you may or may not have done in the past I cannot be held responsible for.'

  Harvey did the sigh. From sex on the cliffs to the sigh in three and a half hours: not bad. 'I mean, I am in trouble and all you can seem to focus on is Jeff and his teenage angst. That was twenty-odd years ago, Maisie. I mean, I need help right now.'

  'OK.' She smiled, but registered, in a slight lift and drop of the shoulders, the hard work involved in doing so. Harvey was good at body language. On a clear day he could take offence at up to a hundred yards. He bridled at once.

  'Fucking hell, Maisie, we're meant to be saving me. Jeff is history, yeah? He's the past, your past. The future is me and you. Jeff, he could be in jail soon – the sooner the better really.'

  'He won't be in jail, Harvey. Or if he is I will be with him ...'

  They were sitting in the Greedy Mackerel on the high street and Harvey was eating his way methodically through the tastes of his past. On his plate were the remains of a large Cornish pasty, a pile of chips, half a gherkin, some tomato ketchup and an unused wooden forking device. Beside his plate was a large coke with lots of ice. Maisie had refused any sustenance, suggesting, again purely through body language, that she was too emotionally involved in what had recently passed to eat. This did not stop her nicking his chips, Harvey noticed. He would have liked to express with his own body language the fact that when emotional he preferred to eat. It didn't mean that he was insensitive, it was just his way, his form of compassion. This was a difficult concept to communicate non-verbally and he wasn't sure it had got across. He lifted the remains of the pasty to his mouth and forced most of it inside.

  'I wish I could just talk to Jeff. Maybe I should ring him. But I'm not sure where he is.' Maisie had produced a mobile phone on the walk from t
he hotel into town and she had been fiddling with it ever since. 'He said he might come to Cornwall but he didn't say when. He might even be in town right now. Perhaps I should just try our old number . . .' She looked across the blue plastic table with a picture of a large, grinning dolphin on it, for assistance. But Harvey had overused the rhetorical potential of the pasty and was now struggling with the implications. She sighed. 'I don't know what to do, this has completely thrown me. Why didn't he tell me?'

  Giving up the contest, Harvey simply swallowed a large chunk of crust whole and then sat with his eyes screwed up tight as it went down. 'That's the fifteenth time you've said that, Maisie, and I wish you'd like rest it, yeah? He didn't tell you because he's a closed-up English guy who keeps the family secrets rammed up his arse. Secrets are the currency, you know? You don't give them away, you store them up for the future.'

  'But I've left him, Harvey.' She looked at him with real sadness. 'What possible future could there be for us? What could he have been waiting for?'

  Well, Harvey could answer those: 'No future whatsoever', and 'Until after he had killed old Mrs Odd'. Easy. But women, of course, can never see these things and when he tried to explain it she returned to dissatisfied, if she had ever left it.

  'No, Harvey. Jeff can't be the killer. You must forget that. It's your fantasy.'