Decay Inevitable

by Conrad Williams

  It was nice, it was good to remember this stuff, but there was something unpleasant there too, as if another memory was itching to be seized upon, a memory that Sean had purposefully kept hidden because of the damage it might do him. The changes it might wreak.

  It was too seductive though, this business of remembering, to be able to stop now. He had not spoken to Naeem for nearly twenty years, but his voice was loud in his head now, his features clear. The way he Brylcreemed his hair to one side. The shirt and trousers and shoes, no matter what the occasion. Stealing through the windows of the lodge house to play interminable games of snooker. Finding a hospital gown and taking it in turns to wear it, pretend to be a patient, lumbering out in front of the traffic. Bored one day, they had followed a couple for a mile to a field full of haystacks and, giggling until Sean was sick, watched them make love.

  A police car had arrived and its occupants were now directing traffic around the collision. Feeling cheated, yet oddly relieved, Sean forced his mind back to the road and accelerated away from the accident. He steered the car around the large church, with its smoke-black masonry, and parked at a pub nearby, the Swan.

  He walked up and down Myddleton Lane, the street where, according to what Sally had told him, Peter de Fleche had built a house for his lover back in the 1980s. Yet none of the houses on this long street bore the hallmarks of the multi-purpose blocks that de Fleche had designed. An hour later, the air filling with flecks of rain, Sean went back and sat in the car where he tried to read through his notes again. But the words would not settle before his eyes. Little bits of the past were forcing themselves into his consciousness. How he had never shared any of the meals that were cooked in Naeem’s house because he had been scared of spicy food. He used to have beans on toast, or biscuits and milk. Or cream crackers, crumbled into a mug of coffee. He’d kill, now, for some of the dishes Naeem’s mother assembled in that large kitchen, infused with cumin and coriander and turmeric.

  He looked at his watch. The boys were meeting up at Victoria Park in half an hour. In the back of his car were football boots that hadn’t seen the light of day for ten years. Sean could almost feel what the pain in his body would be like on Sunday morning. He guided his car back onto the road and travelled towards town. This time, he studiously ignored the tower as he sped past it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: THREE IN A BED

  AT AROUND THE same time as Sean was receiving Rapler’s phone call, Will staggered out of a rapeseed field just south of Stockton Heath and flagged down the first of the early morning buses into town. He had just enough change on him for the short journey and huddled in the seat at the back, enjoying the heat of the engine and ignoring the distasteful glances his fellow passengers shot him. His arm was stiff and sore but it did not feel as though he had suffered major damage.

  The meal he had eaten the previous day was a distant memory. He was finding it hard to consider anything beyond the simple desire for food, yet this was good, he reasoned. It meant that, guilty though it made him, it was easier not to wallow over the fate of Elisabeth and Sadie. All he could hope for was that they had been collected safely by the police and were now being looked after. Any of the other alternatives he wouldn’t entertain for a second.

  It was less cold in the centre of town than in the fields, but he felt it more now, as he hopped from the bus, because he was no longer pushing himself. He was tired and hungry. The despair he felt at having no money to buy breakfast was compounded by the hostility with which he was greeted when he tried to ask the way to Sloe Heath.

  In the public toilet, he did his best to wash the grime from his clothes. He soaped his hair and face and rinsed them clean. He polished his boots as best he could, ignoring the looks of the men who came to use the urinals. When Superdrug opened, he sprayed himself with a little tester aftershave to mask the sweat that was permeating his clothes. One of the shop assistants smiled at him.

  He ordered breakfast at a small café, wolfed it, and ran away without paying for his meal when the waitress left the dining area. At the bus depot he talked to a driver who showed him on a map where Sloe Heath was. He didn’t have enough for a bus out there, but he reckoned he could walk it in an hour or so. He thanked the driver, who said something in return, a concerned look on his face. But Will didn’t hear him. The driver was retreating down a tunnel. Will reached out to grab hold of him so that he wouldn’t disappear, and the driver dropped his timetables. The sound was deafening as Will fell against him. Will was unconscious before he hit the floor.

  GOALPOSTS WITHOUT NETS, the sound of metal studs clacking on concrete, the smell of wintergreen and cold, wet earth. Sean left the changing rooms and their stale tang of exertion for the wintry field. His breath hung around his face as he checked the half-dozen pitches to see where his team mates were warming up. He saw them in a distant corner, making half-hearted attempts at stretching and jogging, seven heavy men in red shirts that were a size too small for them and black shorts that enhanced the lard-white horror of their legs.

  He trotted gently over to the pitch, where he was greeted by a stocky man with a goatee and gel in his hair. The man was rubbing his hands together and hopping from foot to foot like an overly enthusiastic games teacher.

  “Hi,” he said, breathily, and jutted his hand towards Sean, who shook it. “Danny Chant,” he said. “I’m the unlucky bugger who loses all blow-job privileges as of tomorrow.”

  “Sean Redman,” Sean said, smiling. He winked at Nicky Preece, who crossed him off a checklist that was fastened to a clipboard. Jamie Marshall, the guy who had joined the demolition squad on the same day as Sean, was stretching on the touchline. He lifted a hand in greeting. Robbie Deakin looked the part, lean and agile, running in short bursts and violently changing direction.

  “Ignore Robbie,” Nicky said. “He does triathlete stuff, so he doesn’t count. Everyone will be knackered after ten minutes. He can run after the ball when it goes out. Drinks like a fucking jessie. He might last an hour on the park, but he’ll be the first one home tonight.”

  Nicky introduced him to others whose names would be little more than a vomit-coated gargle by the end of the day. He paid scant attention to the Johns and Steves and Trevors, nodding and smiling and shaking hands. As they were taking up their positions on the pitch, Sean having been asked to utilise his “sweet left foot” in midfield, he saw Tim Enever sloping across the park, in danger of being swept away with the gusty wind, like the crisp packets and the dead leaves. He was dressed in a huge coat with a hood that, if it was deployed, would completely envelop his head. His legs were stork-like beneath the bottom of the coat, wrapped in the usual skin-tight black denim.

  The football match lasted for as long as the fair weather. In that time, Sean managed to make a few impressive passes and tackles and his team went a goal up. He was starting to enjoy himself when the light failed quickly. Sopping from a cloudburst after about a quarter of an hour, Danny Chant called out, “Cocks to this, boys!” and legged it towards the changing rooms.

  Back inside, socks downed, lolling on the benches as the steam from the showers mingled with the smoke from the gaspers, Sean gratefully accepted a bottle of Grolsch from a coolbox. Naked, misshapen men drifted through the steam, swearing and laughing, necking beer. One of them looked straight at Sean, swearing as he told some staggish tale of find ’em, fuck ’em, forget ’em, and then disappeared into the befogged showers. But the face lingered.

  “Shit,” Sean said, softly. He knew the face but he couldn’t place it. He leaned over and put his face in his hands. A name suggested itself to him. Futcher. Was that right? Eddie Futcher.

  Sean righted himself, and took another swig from his bottle. Had he, Sean, changed much, since coming up north? A haircut, the loss of a few pounds, a bit more pink to his cheeks? He hoped so. He hoped there was enough of an alteration to prevent Eddie Futcher – the first person Sean arrested during his stint in the police force – from recognising him.

  CHAPTER T
WENTY-SIX: MYDDLETON LANE

  IT WAS HARD getting up the next day. But Sean had a little trick when things seemed to get too much for him. He thought about Naomi, and how she couldn’t get up, as much as she would have liked to. In these moments, rising from bed became ridiculously easy.

  How much had he consumed the previous night? He pondered that while he showered and shaved, scrubbing the excesses from his skin, though he didn’t really want to put an amount to it. It was a lot. That was enough. A bruise had enveloped most of his left knee, another formed a blue grin across his chest where one of the boys had elbowed him during the football match. His eyes looked back at him from the mirror: someone else’s eyes, too small, too wet, red-rimmed. He chugged back a pint of Alka-Seltzer and went in search of coffee.

  Outside he bought a newspaper and ducked through the doorway of Charlie’s, a small greasy spoon that was about to go out of service now that the hospital across the road was opening its own café. He ordered a full English, whispering in the hope that his stomach wouldn’t hear what was coming to it, and settled down with the crossword. He couldn’t do any of the clues. He couldn’t eat his breakfast when it came. He thought of Naomi and the third de Fleche building. He thought of Emma. And found, once he’d started, that he couldn’t stop.

  He took out his mobile phone. Punched in some numbers.

  “Come and have lunch with me,” he said, and then: “Cancel it. Come and see me instead. At the Swan. In Winwick. Take you ten minutes to drive out here. Come. Please. One o’clock.”

  The rest of the morning stretched out in front of him, too many empty hours, too much bad booze in his veins. He sat back in his split plastic chair and stared at the traffic swooping under the railway bridge. He ordered more coffee and let it happen to him, every greasy, grizzly minute.

  How had he got through that nightmare? It was bad enough trying to dodge Eddie, but there had been one outlandish, Carry On moment that almost undid him. Assembling outside the changing rooms, in preparation to move on to the nearest pub to start the day’s drinking in earnest, Sean had cried off to Danny and Nicky, complaining that he hadn’t slept well and was feeling really washed out. He had batted away all protests and was turning to go when Danny told him that Eddie wasn’t staying either and could give him a lift into town.

  “Do you know,” Sean said, “I think maybe you’re right. Mullered as I am, it might just do me the world of good to get some ale inside me and have some fun for a change.”

  It had proved to be only a slightly better alternative to facing up to Futcher and risking his being exposed as an ex-cop. Punishing wasn’t the word. There hadn’t yet been a word invented to describe the hell Danny’s stag night visited upon him and, judging by the appearance of some of them come midnight, his companions too.

  After the football, relocating to the Cheshire Cheese for a restorative first pint, it was put forward that the logical progression for the day was to walk to town, dropping in at the pubs on the way, and then head in the opposite direction, stopping off for a few lanes at the bowling alley, then turn back into town for the evening slog, a curry, and on to a club.

  Sean did all that, and the last thing he remembered before the alcohol took him over and plotted its autopilot course for the evening, was how pleasant it was, really, to be legless in daylight. Tim Enever hung on the coat-tails of the pack, drinking orange juice and eating endless packets of prawn cocktail-flavoured crisps. He refereed during an impromptu pool tournament at the Lord Rodney. He got up at Tempo, a fun-pub with more video screens than punters, and sang an excruciating version of “All Time High” on the karaoke that shut up the entire pub and brought the manager downstairs to ask if it was possible that Danny Chant’s party could leave “before freakboy scared everyone away”.

  Sean remembered speaking to Tim, as well as Robbie – before he made his excuses – and Nicky Preece, but he couldn’t remember what it was they had talked about. All he could picture was Tim’s owlish eyes rotating in his head and spilling their rheum and Nicky with his arms around him, calling him his “Wonderwall” and asking if he was planning on knocking himself in with his lump hammer.

  He had pretty much dismissed all suspicions of the boys being in with Vernon Lord at all, or having anything to do with Naomi’s death.

  Two a.m., he had been sitting with Danny Chant and some guy called Norman who Sean was adamant had only just turned up but who, according to Danny, had been there from the very start.

  “And you were dancing with him, Redders, in the club.”

  They were sitting on a fence overlooking a bowling green belonging to a social club. A bottle of port nobody could remember buying was doing the rounds. As was a cold doner kebab. Danny’s eyes were doing figures of eight.

  “I pity the poor sod who’s getting married,” he said. “You’ll never catch me at that game.” Then he leaned over to vomit gracefully in the rhododendron bush, slipped and was asleep before he hit the deck.

  “I need to take a piss,” Sean said, and leapt down from the wall, landing a foot either side of Danny Chant’s head. Norman raised the port bottle in acknowledgement.

  “Don’t mind me,” he said, taking a swig.

  Sean staggered deep into the trees, enjoying the gentle striping of wet twigs against his face. The canal emerged through the knot of branches, coils of reflected white light mixing into the treacly water. Something thrashed against the surface, a pike maybe, before becoming submerged again, leaving only a cluster of bubbles and a spreading ripple to suggest a presence in the first place. It was impressive to think anything could survive in that soup. From here, the smell was brown and oppressive; it lingered like the urinous reek of scorched dinners in your clothes. Sean unzipped himself and added to the rich stew. He watched steam from his waste rise lazily and drift off to the row of gleaming black railings that separated the banks of the canal from a clutch of depressed shops and upper-floor bedsits.

  Sense descended on him; he recognised this place. He had rescued Emma from the bushes over there. Remembering what he had been doing around here was harder to dredge, but it came, when he recalled the route he had taken while running that morning, and the defunct ironmonger’s that he had observed Ronnie Salt enter.

  He was sobering by the minute thanks to the cold and this business of remembering. A pervasive mist was reluctant to leave the canal’s dip; it sat deep and itchy in the pit of his lungs. Sean slipped and skidded down to the fence that kept people away from the bank of the canal. As before, he leapt over it – somewhat less stealthily this time – and hunkered in the shadows, listening hard for any movement that his clumsiness might have provoked. The light here was poor, only just reaching him from the opposite bank of the canal, where an illuminated towpath accompanied the journey of the water. The diffuse glow bled through the mist, picking out broken computer monitors and the radiator grilles from cars that had ruled the road during his youth: Capris, Chevettes, Princesses, Cortinas.

  At the wall, and the high wooden gates of Boughey’s, the ironmonger’s, he tried to see through the cracks but the light here was not so generous. At least the building looked as dead as last time; there was no flicker of a lightbulb in any of the windows, no sound from a tinny radio station, or rustle of a newspaper page being turned.

  Sean rooted around in the grass and found an old carpet with more holes than weave to it. It smelled heavily of soil and mildew. He hauled it to the gates and rolled it as best he could before slinging it over his shoulder. He began to climb, jamming his boots sideways into the gaps between the wooden planks. Nearing the top, he let the weight of his upper body hang on his left hand, curled over one of the stiles that supported the gate against its hinges. With the other hand he shook the carpet open, gritting his teeth against the strain, and flung it as high as he could so that it dropped onto the razor wire, protecting him from it as he scooted over. He waited until his breath quickly returned to normal. Adrenaline was chasing the booze from his system. Again he listened
for movement within the building before sidling up close to a window. The view was as inky as that outside. He couldn’t see much beyond a few vague lumps that were outlined against a window on the opposite side of the floor.

  The back door was a bastard. No way that was going to budge. Sean had found an iron bar and was considering putting a window through when he saw the black zig-zag of a fire escape camouflaged against the sooty walls. He clambered onto it and skipped up the metal steps, making little ting-tang noises with the toes of his boots. At the top, the landing fed a fire door that was only slightly more substantial than the entrance to a Wendy house. Using the bar as a jemmy, Sean wrenched it away from the lock, almost splitting the puny wooden architrave apart as he did so.

  A breath of old things enveloped him. A smell of dryness and polish.

  Again, he listened. There was a metronomic plesh of water dripping from a tap or a crack. The fluting of wind through a chimney that had not exhaled smoke for decades.

  Sean pulled the door to behind him and let his eyes become accustomed to this fresh dark. He wished he had a torch, and considered coming back in the morning to explore properly, but realised there was no way he could do that now. When Salty saw that the door was broken it would be repaired and a better job made of it next time.