How to Be Bad

by David Bowker

  I arranged to wait for her outside the pub in the marketplace while she walked down Holt Lane to pay her respects to Our Lady of Walsingham. The pub was closed, so I couldn’t get a drink, although I badly needed one. Instead I sat at one of the wooden tables outside, watching the priests, pilgrims, and backpackers happily milling about. There was a strong smell of dog shit, for which I charitably assumed the pilgrims were not responsible.

  I took no pride or pleasure in the events of the morning. I had gunned down three men, probably killed them. Indirectly, I was also responsible for the shooting of a waitress and an old lady. Five casualties, eight if you counted the car-crash couple and the epileptic.

  I had saved Caro. But I had also defiled England. The thought gave me a strange satisfaction.

  Ten minutes passed. By now, I was bored with waiting. I heard an ominous marching sound, accompanied by the clamor of many voices. Two coachloads of nuns swarmed into the little square, all laughing and talking at once. The noise was tremendous. Most of the nuns were under the age of forty, yet as far as I could see, there was not a single sex bomb among them. They clamored around a small dark-suited guide who was striving in vain to maintain order.

  “The historic village of Little Walsingham…” the guide kept saying, but the unruly women never let him complete the sentence.

  I walked to the end of Holt Road to see if I could spot Caro returning from the Anglican shrine. After a few moments of peering through the milling hordes, I saw her unmistakable cropped blonde head approaching. Then I saw something else. Coming up behind her, a full eight inches above the rest of the crowd, was a man with long auburn hair, a neatly trimmed beard, and a face so pale that it was startling.

  Bad Jesus.

  Caro was now less than fifty yards away. I pointed frantically and shouted out a warning, but she thought I was waving and waved back. I saw something glitter in Jesus’ hand. When the knife came down, Caro faltered. She put a hand to her shoulder, saw blood, and lurched forward. Then Jesus stepped forward to stab her again. With all the force available to me, I opened my mouth and roared.

  “Jesus!” I called.

  Something extraordinary happened. The river of bodies passing up and down Holt Road parted, clearing the way for Caro to run into my arms. A large patch of blood was spreading over her left shoulder blade. The nuns, all silenced by my shout, looked where I was pointing and saw a huge, pale man swaying in the street, his clothes stained with blood, his face shining with an unearthly waxen glow. Here was the man from Nazareth, returned to earth.

  There was a collective sigh, and as one the nuns surged forward. I hugged Caro to me as they rushed by, leaving a cloud of Bible dust in their wake. Jesus held up a hand to halt the holy sisters, but the sight of the gory hole through his left palm only served to increase their fervor. Bad Jesus spread his arms wide in one last desperate appeal for calm. Then he was lost to view as the black-clad bodies swept over him.

  * * *

  IN THE car, I examined the injury to Caro’s shoulder. It was an ugly slash, about five inches long, but it wasn’t deep, and it wasn’t going to kill her. I tore a sleeve from my shirt and pressed it against the wound to stanch the flow of blood.

  “Today in the café,” I said quietly, “when you told Jesus the baby was his. That was just a trick, right?”

  Her silence confirmed my worst fears.

  “How do you know it’s his?” I asked her.

  “Because I can count,” said Caro.

  CHAPTER 14

  IRON MARK

  I PHONED Detective Sergeant Bromley at work. He wasn’t there. Then I discovered that he was listed in the Richmond-Upon-Thames phone book. I phoned the number and his wife answered. She sounded friendly and bubbly. I guessed he was a jolly family man, when he wasn’t trying to bribe attractive female suspects to suck his knarled old cock. “Who is it?” she said.

  “Geoff Sadler,” I said. “We went to school together. Is he there?”

  “No, dear. Where do you think he is? I’ll give you one guess.”

  “In the pub?”

  “No. He’s playing golf, ain’t he? Right here in Richmond.”

  I knew I could get onto the golf course by cutting across the western boundary of Kew Gardens. It was a sunny afternoon in early spring. The green was so lush that it was almost a shame to walk on it. When I found them, Bromley and Flett were just about to tee off on the ninth. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I had no gun, and there were two of them.

  I was prepared for anything, but the police officers still managed to surprise me. Seeing me approaching, Flett dropped his club and started running. His flight was flabby and comical, punctuated by stops and starts and frequent glances over his shoulder.

  Bromley, too proud to bolt, plucked an iron from his trolley and brandished it like a weapon. A purple nerve rash showed under his chin and around his sagging jowls. “I’m warning you, don’t come any closer.”

  “Why? What’ll you do?”

  “Nothing.” His voice was trembling. “Just don’t come any closer.”

  My reputation had evidently preceded me.

  “We want our passports back,” I told him.

  “Yeah?” said Bromley. “I can do that. Yeah. Fine.” He was so relieved he almost wept. “No hard feelings, then?”

  “All I want is the passports,” I said.

  “Great. No problem. I’ll get ’em to you tomorrow.”

  “Today,” I said.

  Bromley hesitated, then nodded with excessive enthusiasm. “I could drop ’em off at your mum and dad’s. Sometime early this evening? That okay?”

  “Fine.”

  Bromley bared his teeth like a chimpanzee. “And that’s it? That’s the end of it?”

  * * *

  NOT QUITE the end.

  There was one more thing I had to do. Armed with a brickbat and a can of fly spray. I returned to the Wheatsheaf. I was ready to reclaim one of my favourite pubs. I invited Wallace but he turned me down, claiming he was staying in to wash his hair. I knew this was a lie. Wallace didn’t have any hair.

  It was just after seven. There were only about a dozen drinkers in the bar. Wuffer was already slouched at his usual table by the window, wearing the Hawaiian shirt he’d worn at our last meeting. Tonight he was alone, staring morosely down at his empty beer glass. I walked up to the bar and Phil the landlord raised his eyebrows in that slightly unfriendly manner he reserved for irregular customers. His carpet slippers were looking a little threadbare.

  “A pint of Guinness extra cold,” I said. “And don’t have one for yourself.”

  The landlord tutted and grumbled. I heard a shuffling sound behind me. Wuffer appeared at the bar beside me and placed his empty glass on the counter. Then he looked at me and nodded.

  “Do I know you?” I said.

  “Gah?”

  “Your face is familiar. Have we met before?”

  He shook his head humbly. “Ah gan nose yers, maid.”

  Wuffer wasn’t faking it. He didn’t know who the fuck I was. And suddenly my revenge mission seemed futile and vaguely shameful, like subjecting an old man in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s to a war crimes tribunal.

  The fly spray had been intended for Wuffer’s face. While he was choking and rubbing his eyes, I had planned to whack him with the brick. I felt it was the very least I could do. This malignant little bastard had attacked me twice and cost me a friendship.

  I had come here believing that a man has to do what a man has to do. I now saw that a man needn’t do what a man needn’t do. I didn’t have to fight to prove myself. Being unafraid was enough.

  “Ah, bin stinking whacker late, yeah?” Then Wuffer smiled. I looked at him in amazement. Unless I was much mistaken, Wuffer was making conversation about the weather.

  “Can I buy you a drink?”

  “Gah?”

  I pointed at his empty glass. “What are you drinking?”

  Wuffer blinked and stared as if he wa
s now trying to determine which language I was speaking. Then, in a perfectly clear, well modulated voice, he said, “Well, thanks very much. I’ll have a pint of best bitter, please.”

  CHAPTER 15

  THIRTY-ONE SENTENCES

  CARO AND I went to Switzerland, the traditional refuge for rich scoundrels with ugly secrets. That summer, we hired a house near Geneva while we assessed our situation. Our assessment was that we should quit murdering people while we were ahead. One lunchtime, we were walking by the banks of Lac Leman when I finally told Caro the truth, that until that afternoon in Southwold I had never intentionally killed anyone.

  It took a while to convince her. I thought she’d be angry or even disappointed. When she saw I was telling the truth she put her hand over her eyes and laughed. “You and Jesus had more in common than I thought.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He was no killer, either,” explained Caro. “That was why he was so upset when he walked into our house and found two dead people. He’d maimed and scarred a lot of poor bastards but for some reason had never actually gone the whole hog and killed anybody. He had a bit of a complex about it. So when he saw that he’d been outslaughtered by a book collector, he felt he’d been made to look weak in front of his men.”

  Instinctively, she placed her hand over the small bulge beneath her dress, and I knew what she was thinking. “It’s just a baby, Caro,” I said. “It may not really belong to me, but nor do you. You never have done. It hasn’t stopped me loving you.”

  Lately, my interest in owning Caro or anything else had greatly diminished. You don’t chase possessions when you’re self-possessed. Now that I could finally afford a signed, mint first edition of The Catcher in the Rye, I no longer wanted one. I had stopped falling over things, and the only lists I made were shopping lists.

  “You realize someone will come after us?” said Caro. “You know that, don’t you? We’ll never be truly safe.”

  “Who is?” I said.

  A nice old couple walked by. He had a gray mustache like Carl Jung; she had bright, intelligent eyes and a steady smile. They were linking arms, proud of each other and wishing harm to no one. “Do you think we could ever be as happy as that?” said Caro, staring wistfully after them.

  “Not a fucking chance,” I told her.

  ALSO BY DAVID BOWKER

  I Love My Smith & Wesson

  The Death You Deserve

  HOW TO BE BAD. Copyright © 2005 by David Bowker. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bowker, David.

  How to be bad: a novel / David Bowker.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-312-32826-5

  EAN 978-0312-32826-9

  1. Booksellers and bookselling—Fiction. 2. Women murderers—Fiction. 3. Serial murders—Fiction. 4. First loves—Fiction. 5. Lists—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6052.O879H69 2005

  823'.92—dc22

  2004065827

  First Edition: June 2005

  eISBN 9781466832015

  First eBook edition: October 2012