“But you came to an agreement with him.”
“After a time. Had to play with him a bit, leave him to stew. Second time I rang we struck a bargain. I’d have kept him on the hook longer, because he was dead keen, but if Mark’s stupid dad knew, it could have been around the parish in no time.”
“How much did you get out of him?”
“A hundred. Not bad for a bit of paper with an address on it.”
“And how did you receive the money?”
“He handed it over, in the park at Saltaire. It was late, ten o’clock, and practically dark. I can get out of and into my room at home whenever I like—just down the kitchen extension roof my stupid oldies had built a couple of years ago. Most of the time they don’t know if I’m at home or not. Anyway, I insisted he wouldn’t get the address until he’d handed the money over. He huffed and puffed, but in the end I had him cornered, he wanted it so much. I used Mark’s name, because he knew all about the Learys. Told him he’d be along, and he was a champion athlete.”
“And he did come along, didn’t he.”
“Course. I wouldn’t have gone without backup.”
“And in the end, Horrocks handed over the money and you handed over the address.”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
Lennie blinked.
“Then nothing. He nodded and went off to his car. I gave Mark his wage and we went home.”
“You didn’t split fifty-fifty?”
“Just for standing there? You must have taken leave of your senses, black boy.”
“So what else happened with Cosmo Horrocks?”
“Nothing else happened. Over. Finished. Kaput.”
Charlie raised his eyebrows.
“Tell me about the Indian club from the Learys’ sports cupboard.”
“Indian club? Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“An Indian club went missing from the Learys’ cupboard and was put back after the murder. I think you took it.”
“Give it a rest! Why should I do that? And why would I want to murder the git from the Chronicle? I just made a packet out of him.”
And that, Charlie thought, was really the nub.
• • •
Mark Leary was sweating now. He had had an hour back in the cells and his brain, which was self-obsessed but sharp where his own interests were concerned, had, as the minutes ticked by, come to terms with the mess he was in. Unfortunately it had not come up with any fail-safe idea of how to get him out of it.
“Now, Mark,” said Oddie quietly, “I don’t think you should keep up this pretense that you had nothing to do with the Father Pardoe business. We know from Lennie that you were on hand when the cash and the address were exchanged.”
Mark put on an expression of hauteur.
“Lennie would say that.”
“Would he? My impression from Sergeant Peace is that he’s quite willing to claim sole credit, if that’s the word, for most of his scams.”
“Stupid jerk. That’s what comes of getting involved with kids.”
“You could be right, there. I think you’d better tell us exactly what went on in Saltaire Park.”
Mark thought it over and looked at his father, who shook his head. But when the boy spoke again it was clear he’d decided that Oddie was right.
“I just went along as observer, that was all.”
“What exactly do you mean, as an observer?”
“To see fair play. To make sure he didn’t pull a fast one. If he had, I’d have stepped in.”
“But he didn’t.”
“No.”
“I’m having difficulty with this, Mark,” said Oddie softly. “Because there’s this matter of the disappearance of the Indian club from your basement cupboard. Now, I’m willing to bet that when forensics go over that, there will be things that tie it in with Lennie that they will pick up, but nothing that will have been left on it by you. That is, unless you picked it up to examine it after it was returned.”
There was silence and then Mark said, “I didn’t. I was scared. I didn’t want to have anything to do with it.”
“That’s about the first wise thing I’ve heard of you doing. What I’m wondering is why you’re holding back on me, why you’re shielding this boy if you yourself weren’t involved in the most important thing that we’re investigating.”
Mark muttered something. Oddie couldn’t quite hear, but it sounded like “He’s gruesome.”
“Come on—tell us what happened. In Saltaire Park, or afterward.”
Mark swallowed. Oddie guessed suddenly that he was afraid.
“It happened like we planned—Lennie planned—up to the handing over. There was a bit of argy-bargy, then Horrocks agreed to hand over the money and then be given the address. We were all standing by one of the seats, well away from the road or railway line. He handed over the money, Lennie gave it to me, and I retreated under a tree in case he tried any funny business. Somehow you could tell he wasn’t just going to accept tamely anything Lennie told him to do. Lennie puts people’s backs up. He puts mine up.”
“I can understand that.”
“Then Lennie got the address out of his pocket and handed it to Horrocks, and as he took it with his left hand he grabbed Lennie’s arm with his right and sat down on a bench. He dragged him across his knee and began spanking him.”
“Spanking him?”
“Yes. It was brilliant. Like he was just a little kid. Lennie went nuts. He screamed blue murder and kicked and spat, and I just saw the funny side of it, this smartarse kid with the big opinion of himself being treated like what he really was—no more than a child. I roared with laughter. It was just what Lennie needed.”
“It was very clever,” agreed Oddie. “Cunning too. That’s what Horrocks specialized in: humiliating people. Bruising their egos at the most sensitive point.”
“Eventually he just chucked Lennie away and walked coolly off. I really admired him. But Lennie was exploding with rage. His face was brick red and he was crying, and he started shouting at Horrocks’s back: ‘I’ll get you, Horrocks. You’re a dead man. Start counting the days.’ Stuff he’d heard on television. And then he turned on me, and started pummeling me in the chest. I took it for a bit, and then I pushed him away too. But he was terrifying. His language was like I’d never heard before—it was so intense, so crazy, almost. Horrocks was ‘dead meat,’ he was going to get more than a spanking back, he was going to die facedown in a pool of his own blood. Then he’d turn his fury on me and say I’d pay for laughing at him, not coming to his rescue. ‘Don’t think you’ll get off scotfree, you useless git’—that kind of thing, but said in such a way that it made me shudder, somehow.”
“Why on earth did you let him into your house after that?”
“He came up to me in school next day, said he was going to forget about the whole thing, after all we’d got the money, hadn’t we? So things went back to normal. All the things I’d been imagining seemed—well, a bit far-fetched. A few days later we’d been playing snooker in the basement and I went upstairs for a leak. When I’d finished I came out onto the landing and saw him going out the front door, walking a bit funny. I guess that’s when he took it. He was holding it in front of him.”
“And when did he return it?”
Mark swallowed.
“A couple of nights ago. Came around when he knew I would be at home, and tapped a little grille that gives out onto the front garden—that was our usual procedure, because I was always down in the rec room after I’d finish my homework. I went up to let him in, and he marched past me and down to the basement, carrying the club. When I got down there he was putting it back in the cupboard. He turned around and said, ‘Just borrowed it for a bit of practice,’ looking me straight in the eye. I was terrified. What can you do with one club? Anyway, Lennie wasn’t interested in sports, or anything like that; said it was just for kids. He kept on looking at me for what seemed like ages, then he marched ou
t, up the stairs, and left the house. I just stood there—it was like my blood was frozen. I knew what he’d done, what the club had been used for, but I didn’t know what to do.”
“So in the end you did nothing.”
“Yes. What could I do?”
He spoke with the naïveté of his age, looking down at his father, who had his head in his hands. To Oddie, Mark seemed the perfect example of a man without principles who has got himself well out of his depth. But there was one unusual ingredient added: the odd spectacle of a confident near-adult who could not disguise the fact that he was terrified by a child.
• • •
When Lennie came back into the interview room two hours later with his lawyer, he had lost none of his swagger. In fact, being investigated and interrogated, having the details of his petty-criminal schemes laid out before him, seemed only to have ministered to his monstrous self-love. Oddie had joined the Shipley investigating team, now that it was clear Lennie Norris was into something much deeper than school playground scams. He chose to talk to him in the tone that would aggravate him most—the tone of talking to a naughty boy.
“Well, Lennie, things are becoming a bit clearer to us now.”
“Good, then you can let me go.”
“I don’t think that will be in the cards for quite a while yet. After all, you haven’t been straight with us, have you?”
“Straight as you fucking deserve.”
“For example, the exchange of the money and the address didn’t go as smoothly as you said, did it? Or as painlessly, you might say”
The boy looked at him hard, his face becoming brick red, his eyes dilating.
“What’s that jerk Leary been saying?”
“What we’ve heard is that when you came to hand over the address, Horrocks took it, but took you as well, and put you over his knee and gave you a jolly good spanking.”
At this the boy exploded. He erupted out of his seat and stood flaming with rage and wounded vanity, stabbing his finger in Oddie’s direction as if it were a stiletto.
“And he fucking paid for it, didn’t he? I said he would and he did. Thought he could treat me like a kid. I showed him I wasn’t a kid, didn’t I? I said he’d die facedown in his own blood, and that’s what he did. That’s what happens to people who mix it with me. You’ll find that out, dickhead. That clown Leary would have been next. Will be next. I’m already thinking out what I’m going to do to him, and I’ll do it, however long they put me away. Am I the youngest murderer you’ve ever arrested? The youngest ever? I’d like that. People are going to have to take notice of me. You’d never have caught me if it hadn’t been for that arsehole Leary. I’ll know next time: act on your own. Keep everything in your own hands. You’ll be hearing from me in future. You’ll be hearing from me for the rest of your fucking career.”
But Oddie felt he had heard more than enough already.
“Interview terminated at nineteen forty-three hours,” he said, and switched off the tape.
CHAPTER 21
Afterword
Some days change lives: other days seem to symbolize the fact that some lives will never change.
The days after the arrest of Lennie Norris, and of Mark Leary on less serious charges, were just such days for many of the people in Shipley. Many of them had only the vaguest idea of what was going on, for the papers were circumspect in not naming anyone “for legal reasons.” Parents were forced for once to listen to their children’s stories, especially if they went to Bingley Road Comprehensive, or had played cricket or other sports with the older of the boys. The news passed from mouth to mouth in a pre-twentieth-century fashion.
Two people whose lives were changed were the Norrises. The day of Lennie’s arrest was the day their world collapsed around them. When, after three days of terrible suspense, he finally consented to see them, the interview was so terrible as to invade every minute of their waking days thereafter, and form the stuff of their nightmares: The abuse, the contempt, the vile language, above all the cockiness about what he had done and the boasting about what he would do. Norris was a broken man. People even stopped coming into his shop out of curiosity, because the spectacle was too painful. Bettaclothes just waited for an opportunity to sack him without attracting adverse publicity. Mrs. Norris flitted to her nearest shops and straight home again, not attracting adverse comment now because she was obviously a shattered wraith. Aunt Becky suggested they should get in touch with Julie, but Daphne vetoed this. In any case, she would probably not have responded.
Janette Jessel’s life also changed dramatically. She moved into the guest bedroom, and when her husband asked her why said she was fed up with being married to an adultery addict. It might suit the American First Lady, she said, but after twenty-five years she had decided it didn’t suit her. She added that she was contemplating a more decisive break, particularly if she could get a job. When Derek made feeble (and rather ignorant) remarks about her faith, she said her faith was not such an ass as to condone the sinner and condemn the victim of the sins. She hoped she was right.
Other lives resumed the course that the Father Pardoe case had interrupted. Miss Preece-Dembleby swelled with gratitude that family disgrace was not about to overwhelm her, and that the murder had been found to have had nothing to do with her brother and the Father Riley Fund. She reflected, though, that men, as exemplified in her brother, seemed to need all kinds of inducements to stay on the straight and narrow, and that even so, all kinds of precautions needed to be taken to ensure that they did so. They were, she concluded, undoubtedly the weaker sex morally. She had, in fact, decided this in her late teens, and recent events only strengthened her attitude and her thankfulness at her escape from the closest kind of involvement with them.
Mary Leary spent the days in feverish activity on behalf of her son. Donna regarded her—initially distraught, but then determined and effective—with an amused exasperation. Both women knew she would never change; that she would go on—knowingly, regretfully, reluctantly—in the path she had been trained in, ministering to a man’s world, accepting all it threw at her. Her brief days of militancy had been not an advance but an aberration.
Father Pardoe, when he attended the interview at the Bishop’s office the following Monday, was surprised at the perfunctoriness of the questioning, astounded when, at the end of the session, he was told by the chairman that his account of the matters under investigation was entirely consistent with everything else the examining committee had been told, and that he was free to take up his duties in Shipley at once. In the outer office he had his hand shaken by the Bishop, who said they would need to have a chat in the near future. Pardoe responded gravely and with few words.
He packed his few possessions, said good-bye to Margaret, and was close to tears when he kissed her inside her front door. There were so many things that both of them could have said, but absolutely no need to say them. Pardoe felt he had never known any woman so well. And if Margaret felt for the first time that there was cruelty in a system that kept apart two people as well suited to each other as they were, her upbringing and her natural discretion ensured she remained silent. They arranged to have a meal together every few weeks.
Some days later, when he had seen Father Greenshaw off to a small and undemanding parish in superrural North Yorkshire, he went in his old way to visit Julie Norris in the early afternoon. He cherished her smile as she opened her front door. She put Gary down on his little bed but said, “Better not draw the curtains.”
“Of course you must draw the curtains,” said Father Pardoe. “He’ll sleep better. And not drawing them would be like an admission of guilt in the past.”
Then they went into the kitchen, and over endless cups of tea talked and laughed about the Bishop’s committee, about people’s reactions to the newspaper stories, about Julie’s parents and her prospects in the world. Doris Crabtree, going a very long way around on a visit to her friend Florrie Mortlake, saw them through the kitchen window and cu
rled up her lip in a gesture of contempt. They didn’t fool her!
Cora Horrocks was relieved at the arrest, though she was unwilling to admit that it lifted from her mind a burden of doubt and uncertainty. She had already become aware of the paradox that Cosmo’s death made her and her daughters more of a family, not less. One night, after Adelaide had gone to bed, Samantha confided in her the truth about herself and Cassie Daltrey, and her determination not to be hurried into a relationship that might be contrary to her nature and spring from a sort of adolescent hero worship. Cora, with her past, was fairly unshockable in sexual matters, but warmly seconded her daughter’s decision. She too began wondering what jobs might be available to a woman of her age and lack of training.
And one night, when all the case’s paperwork was done, Charlie and Felicity sat over a bottle of wine after a good meal cooked by her and talked about the future.
“It frightened me, that case,” said Charlie. “That terrible boy: How did he get like that? All those parents cut off from their children, knowing nothing about them. How did that situation develop? How can I make sure it doesn’t happen to me and him or her?”
“It won’t. You’re not that kind of person.”
“But they’re perfectly normal people. Not the Norrises—they’re weird—but Mary Leary, for example. Typical old-fashioned mother, but she produces this narcissistic prat of a son.”
“There are a hundred ways of being a bad parent, but I’d guess that there are a hundred ways of being a good one too. Tolstoy got it all wrong, as he usually did. There are infinite varieties of happy families, as well as infinite varieties of unhappy ones.”
“I just hope you’re right.”
“I’m going to be here for him or her, but I’m not going to be a smothering, overwhelming parent either.”
“We both come from pretty odd home backgrounds,” Charlie said. “Who knows: that may be an advantage.”
“It’s something to cling to, as a hope.”
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