by J M Gregson
‘I don’t bloody know, do I? If you’re so fucking clever, you can work it out for yourself. Just leave me alone to get better, will you?’
He turned away from them in the bed. The pain it caused him was real enough, but his groan was highly theatrical.
Mark Rogers was reading Winnie the Pooh to his seven-year old-daughter. Even ten years ago, he would never have seen himself doing this. A night on the booze with the boys had been much more in his line then. He had been a reluctant father; it had only been at Samantha’s insistence that he had agreed to parenthood in his late twenties. Left to himself, he would have gone on postponing conception indefinitely.
Now, at thirty-seven, he could not imagine life without his children. Indeed, it had been Samantha’s firm decision that they should stop at two, and even so there were occasions when, after a bottle of wine, he tried to convince her of the rewards of larger families. He was a doting and indulgent father. Samantha maintained cheerfully that it was as well his work at BT kept him as busy as it did, because it was only that which prevented the children being ruined.
Mark and his daughter laughed again over the wonderful Shepard illustrations of Pooh Bear stuck in the entrance to Rabbit’s burrow. Then he resumed the familiar text. ‘“I thought at the time,” said Rabbit, “that one of us was eating too much,”’ Ellie joined in with him, ‘“and I knew it wasn’t me.’” Father and daughter dissolved into laughter together at the familiar text and the joke they had been waiting for.
It wasn’t until she stopped joining in that Mark realized that Ellie was fast asleep. She looked just like one of the sentimental Mabel Lucy Atwell drawings he had always derided, with a contented smile on her smooth round face and a forehead which was totally unlined. He bent down and touched her brow softly with his lips, then went and looked in on his son, who was eighteen months older than Ellie. Samantha was in the last stages of his story; the boy waved a tired hand at his father, then resumed his concentration upon the tale.
Mark Rogers poured a glass of cool white wine for his wife, then took his own glass and sat down on the sofa in the living room. He felt a pleasant lassitude creeping over him as he picked up the copy of the Citizen he had bought on the outskirts of Gloucester on his way home.
It was a small paragraph at the bottom of an inside page which told him that a twenty-seven-year-old Gloucester resident, Darren Chivers, had been assaulted and severely beaten on his way home. He was receiving treatment in the city hospital, but it was understood that his injuries were not life-threatening.
Mark was looking thoughtfully at the sports section when his wife came into the room and sank down beside him with her wine.
Eleven
Darren Chivers was out of hospital in two days. He didn’t want to stay there any longer than he had to and he wasn’t the sort of patient the nurses wanted to tend for any longer than was necessary.
The registrar told him he was lucky to have escaped broken bones and advised him to stay under medical supervision for another day whilst they checked out his concussion, but Darren had heard enough and endured enough. He discharged himself from hospital and went back to his bedsit and his packet food and his television, like a wounded animal retreating to its lair and gathering its strength to meet the challenges of the hostile world outside it.
He would go back to selling drugs in due course. Dealing was lucrative and it was a world he felt he knew. Like most petty crooks, Chivers was far more confident than he should have been, incapable of taking the long view of his position in a dangerous trade. In the end, such people almost always fail. They are used for as long as they are useful, and then dispensed with ruthlessly.
The fact that he could not see his position on this wider canvas did not mean that Darren Chivers was stupid. His intelligence was above the average; moreover, experience had developed in him the low cunning which is an aid to survival. He would not give up his blackmailing activities, which could be highly rewarding, even if more dangerous than he had realized at first. He would need to be more careful, that was all. He would avoid the sort of lonely late- night backstreet situation where those thugs had waited for him.
He would also need to equip himself with some form of protection.
Each day his injuries hurt a little less. Over the weekend, he dug out the newspaper cuttings he had squirreled away for occasions such as this, and quickly found the one he sought. He read it several times, until he could recite it almost verbatim.
You didn’t want to have to produce bits of newspaper to explain yourself - that would make you look like a novice.
The weather broke over the weekend, so that there was a thin drizzle dampening the air and shining the streets as he collected his unemployment benefit. The sour-faced young woman behind the counter scarcely glanced at him. He was a little disappointed. If she had challenged his failure to find work, he would have enjoyed showing her the plaster he had kept on his head and then perhaps revealing the vivid green and yellow bruising on his body.
The clouds were very low now, seeming to peer into the narrow streets of the old city and follow his movements as he left the centre and padded his way to the gun shop. He was pleased to find a man behind the counter who did not look much older than he was.
He knew exactly what he wanted. ‘Could I see a Brocock ME 38 air pistol, please?’ Darren Chivers found it difficult to deliver this precision with the casual attitude he was aiming for.
The assistant looked at him warily, as if committing his image to memory. ‘May I ask what you will use this weapon for, sir?’
‘Just a little hobby of mine. Shooting practice on paper targets in my cellar. Nothing more. I use harmless pellets. Perhaps a little plastic ammunition occasionally.’ Darren delivered the prepared phrases between stiff lips. He needed to seem relaxed. He tried a smile, then gave up the effort when it wouldn’t work for him. He would assert his citizen’s rights if it came to it, tell the man he had no right to question him like this.
But the young man behind the counter nodded. He had been through the motions of checking. The purchase of air pistols was perfectly legal and there was a good profit on them. ‘I think you’ve made a good choice, sir. Precision instrument, the Brocock is. Made in Germany and imported through our Birmingham supplier. Excellent value at one hundred and eighty pounds.’
Darren made a token inspection of the pistol, holding it in his palm for a moment, testing the weight and squinting along the barrel with what he hoped looked like expertise.
‘I am required to warn you that these things can be dangerous if not handled carefully. They should be stored well away from any place where children might get hold of them.’ The assistant dropped his formal tone as if it were an embarrassment to him and moved comfortably into the sales flattery he thought worthwhile even for this unpromising customer. ‘But I can see that you are an experienced man who is well aware of such things.’
Darren concluded the deal quickly, accepting the offer of some plastic ammunition as a goodwill gesture with a forced smile of gratitude. He wanted to be out of the shop with his purchase as swiftly as possible.
Michelle de Vries lay back exhausted on the blue silk sheet.
‘You’re good for me, Guy Dawson!’
‘And you for me, Michelle. I’ve been looking forward to Tuesday evening ever since you were last here.’
Even in her present state of relaxed, uncritical, post-coital bliss, Michelle wondered if that was really true. She stretched her arms luxuriously above her head against the headboard and said, ‘I must take a shower, Guy.’ But she made no move to vacate the bed in which she was so happy.
Although the bedroom faced the west, the sun had set some time ago and only the very last of the summer daylight was left in the room. Guy reached his hand out towards the bedside light, but she put her hand upon his arm to stop him, running her fingers down the inside of it in a last, lingering caress. ‘We don’t need the light. Light isn’t kind to a woman of forty-four.’
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br /> It was a daring demonstration of her confidence, speaking her age like that. He knew how old she was, of course, but voicing it was another assertion of the intimacy which she had savoured so boisterously with him over the last two hours. He said, ‘You’re pretty fit for an old ’un! Very fit indeed. I’d say!’ He took her in his arms again, running his fingers down her spine, holding her hips and pressing her firmly against him.
She felt the familiar surge of desire, stirring deep within her. ‘You can’t, Guy, you surely can’t! Not again. And I’ve got to leave!’
He held her for a couple of seconds, then rolled away with a secret relief that his manhood was not to be re-tested. ‘I could, but I won’t. It might not be as good, because you’ve exhausted me, you young hussy!’
She loved the way he breathed the words into her ear, turning even the most facile of statements, even the small jokes of the sexual ritual, into declarations of intimacy. She stretched again, making herself as long as she could, thrusting her toes as far as she could towards the bottom of his bed, wanting to retain the feel of it for the rest of her week. Then she stared up at the almost invisible ceiling and said very quietly, ‘Someone knows about us, Guy.’
He reached across and switched on the light beside her, and this time she did not attempt to prevent it. ‘Who? Is it Gerald?’
‘No. That’s the threat, though.’
‘The threat?’
‘He’s threatening to tell Gerald.’
‘That mustn’t happen.’
She was a little put out. She would have liked him to say, ‘Let him tell him! Let’s have it out in the open, let’s have this sham of a marriage of yours out of the way! I want to marry you more than anything in the world, Michelle!’ But she knew those words belonged in romantic novels, not in real life. That wasn’t Guy Dawson, and she didn’t want him any different from what he was, she told herself firmly. And she didn’t want a divorce herself. She was fond of Gerald, in a very different way from Guy, and she certainly needed his money to fund her life. Boutique Chantelle might eventually prosper and be self-supporting, even highly profitable, but she needed her husband’s money to get it off the ground and sustain it through the early, crucial years.
But she did want Guy to share this crisis with her. She said firmly, ‘Of course we can’t allow it to happen.’
He was staring hard at her now. The mood of luxurious relaxation, with their limbs comfortably entwined, felt days behind them, not minutes. ‘You’d better tell me all about it.’ She told him about the shifty man who had come into her shop, the man who had seemed such an unlikely customer and proved to be so. ‘He wants two thousand pounds. He’s coming back for it tomorrow.’
‘And have you got it for him?’
‘Yes. I’ve got an account just for the shop and I’ve taken it out of that.’
‘Is there any chance that Gerald will spot this?’
‘No. I think I can cover it up, for the present. The auditors won’t be in until the end of the financial year. I’ve got months to bury it under orders and receipts.’
‘That’s good.’
He nodded and relaxed a little, and again she had that little tremor of disappointment. She said, ‘But I can’t go on doing it, if he comes back for more.’
‘They always do, people like that.’
‘So what are we going to do?’ She was determined to make him see that they were in this together.
‘I don’t know.’ He shook his head irritably. ‘How did he find out about us?’
‘I think he must have been watching us for some time.’
‘You, you mean? It could only have been you coming here.’ That was true. Guy had been very reluctant to enter into her life, making sure instead that she came always to him. They hadn’t even been away together, though he kept promising her that they would, when her marital arrangements allowed it. She said, ‘He gave me the number of this house. Quoted the time I left here last week.’ She shivered beneath the sheets, could not help noticing that Guy did not move to comfort her.
‘Yet you came here tonight. Even though you knew he might be watching you.’
‘I looked out for him on my way in. I didn’t see him.’
‘And when you go out? Will you spot him if he’s hanging about in the dark?’
‘Probably not.’ Michelle didn’t like Guy’s reaction. He was behaving as if he wished she had not come here - almost as if he wanted to call the whole thing off after this setback. ‘It doesn’t matter whether he’s there or not now, does it? He knows about us.’
‘I suppose you’re right. What are you going to do about it?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve racked my brains for almost a week without coming up with anything. I hoped you might have an idea.’
He thought for a minute, then shook his head glumly. ‘There isn’t a solution, is there? Once he knows, we can’t alter that. Even if you stopped coming here, even if we stopped seeing each other, he’d still know what we’ve done, if he’s got the times and the places the way you say he has. He’d still be able to tell Gerald if you didn’t pay up, wouldn’t he?’
‘Yes ... Is that what you’d like to do then? End the whole affair because of some dirty little snooper?’
‘No, of course it isn’t. I’m just trying to get the facts clear in my mind.’
Michelle wished he sounded more convincing. ‘I’ll give him his two thousand tomorrow and tell him that’s it. We’ll just have to hope he doesn’t come back for more.’
‘He will.’
‘We could go to the police, I suppose. I’m told they haven’t much time for blackmailers. Perhaps they’d protect us from exposure.’
Guy shook his head vigorously. ‘You mustn’t do that, Michelle. Even if they kept your identity secret you’d have to go to court as a witness. Gerald would be sure to find out.’ She wanted to ask him if that would be such a disaster, to make him avow his unconditional love for her. But she sensed he wouldn’t do that, and she knew that she had too much to lose herself from any such romantic declarations. She had a bleak sense of her own worthlessness as well as of the shallowness of her lover.
She was getting dressed after her shower when Guy Dawson said quietly, ‘The only way out of this is to get rid of this sneaky sod altogether.’
The sneaky sod in question did not hear this dialogue of course, but it would scarcely have ruffled him if he had.
Darren Chivers enjoyed examining the weapon he had purchased, enjoyed the feel of it even more. He even enjoyed looking at the picture and reading the written details on the box. He took out the pistol and put it away again with great care, so that even the container of his splendid purchase would remain in pristine condition. Darren had had very few brand new things in his life. When he was a boy, his toys as well as his clothes had been hand-me-downs, things his feckless mother had acquired from other parents. He had been grateful for his few presents at Christmas and birthday, but they had come from charity shops or other, more mysterious, sources. They had rarely been boxed or wrapped.
On Wednesday morning, he pressed the trigger a couple of times without ammunition, enjoying the crisp click of the mechanism, the feeling of smooth oiled metal beneath his fingers. Then he put the Brocock in the pocket of his anorak and set out for the centre of Gloucester.
His exchange with Michelle de Vries was swift and efficient. She had the money ready for him and she paid up with scarcely a murmur. He made a token show of counting the notes, but he knew she wouldn’t short-change him on the two thousand - she had too much at stake for that. She looked rather pale, he thought, but she gave no trouble. That was almost a pity, for he would have enjoyed emphasizing how he held all the trump cards to a haughty, expensively dressed woman like this, the kind of woman who would have treated him like dirt in other circumstances. Life was changing for him, and he liked the changes.
She said, ‘You promised me this would be a one-off payment. I must emphasize that it is exactly that.’
‘Of course.’ He gave her a knowing smile, tried to convey by his manner that both of them knew that she couldn’t possibly control this. But he had enough sense to leave it at that, to get out of Boutique Chantelle as quickly and quietly as he could. It was fine now, with a promise of sun to come above the clouds. He mounted his bike cheerfully, secure in the knowledge that one pocket of his anorak held two thousand pounds and the other one the instrument which would secure his continuing safety in his new ventures.
His ribs still ached, but the pain was a little less severe with each passing day. He took his time, but the three-mile ride did not have any severe ascents to add to his discomfort. The sun was breaking through the cloud and there was a patch of blue sky by the time he reached his goal. There was a man talking to the garage owner, detailing the sort of service he wanted on his car and the make of the two replacement tyres it needed to pass its MOT.
Darren rode his bike round the side of the garage and waited beside the high brick wall, silent and invisible, until the car owner departed. Darren Chivers was good at waiting in the shadows. He had done a lot of it in his short life.
The man in the garage workshop recognized him immediately and motioned him through to the smaller room at the back, where a different sort of engineering was conducted. The fifty-year-old man with the straggling moustache was expecting this visitor and did not waste time on preambles. 'What is it you want?’
Darren took the Brocock ME 38 from his pocket and laid it carefully on the workbench in front of the man’s oil-blackened leather apron. When the big man did not immediately react, he said, ‘It’s not stolen. I bought it over the counter on Monday.’ The man smiled for the first time. He said grimly, ‘Anyone over seventeen can do that, Mr Olivers.’
Darren liked that form of address. He didn’t like it from the police, when the title seemed to carry an ironic ring and meant they were trying to rig up a charge against you. But from this man it made him a customer, with a service to buy and money to spend. Money brought you the sort of respect he had rarely experienced. ‘I want it converting. I want it made into a shooter. I’ve got the money.’