Mr. In-Between

by Neil Cross

  ‘You don’t know what Rickets was to me!’

  ‘He was nothing. Admit it. He was nothing. You’re angry because I did something off my own back for my own reasons. You can’t stand the idea that I made a decision!’

  ‘A decision?’ The accusing finger was so tense, it might snap. ‘Rickets was nothing. Do you know the value of nothing?’

  Jon clenched his fist in frustration, too angry to speak.

  ‘People saw him,’ muttered the Tattooed Man. ‘They saw him give you a kicking in that pub. How long do you think it’ll be before they start sniffing around you?’

  ‘So what if they do?’ replied Jon a trifle petulantly. ‘Do you think they’ll be able to prove anything? The day Rickets died I was at the funeral of my friend’s wife and child. Who goes revenge killing on a day like that?’

  ‘Don’t try to psychologise,’ warned the Tattooed Man. ‘Don’t try to second-guess. Rickets leads them to you. You lead them to me. For all I know they’re watching me now. For all I know they’re listening. Now, of all times.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be such a martyr,’ spat Jon. ‘The Law represents no threat to you. You’ve got them eating out of your hand.’

  ‘But it’s not just the Law, is it?’ The Tattooed Man advanced slowly upon him.

  Jon stooped and picked up the paper, flattened it. He held it aloft and pointed to the front page. ‘No, it’s not, is it?’ He stabbed at the lead story. ‘Look at what I do,’ he accused sadly. ‘Look at what I do for you.’

  ‘And I, of course, have done nothing for you.’ His jaw was set.

  ‘You can be such a fucking parasite,’ said Jon.

  The Tattooed Man bunched his fists at his sides. ‘I should have known,’ he said. ‘I should have known you for Judas.’

  Jon took a step forward. ‘The suffering servant, you bastard,’ he replied, and punched the Tattooed Man in the side of the head.

  Olly leaped forward, hand inside his jacket. Jon lashed out with his left hand and slashed Olly’s face lip to ear. He kicked him twice in the testicles. When Olly had fallen to the floor he kicked him twice in the back of the neck, once in the knobbly curve of his spine.

  Jon turned to the Tattooed Man, opened his mouth to speak, to accuse. The Tattooed Man reached out, grabbed his throat and squeezed. Jon gagged and his eyes bulged. Step by step, the Tattooed Man drove him backwards until he had pushed him flat against the cool wall. His breath was forced from his lungs, between the Tattooed Man’s fingers. His vision began to blur. ‘Don’t think you’re that good,’ the Tattooed Man warned quietly. ‘Don’t ever think you could ever hope to be anywhere near that good.’

  He released his grip. Jon fell in a heap, his hands at his throat. He fought to stand. The Tattooed Man kicked him half-way across the floor.

  He scrambled to his knees, his feet. He wiped his hand across his mouth. ‘Go on, then,’ he said. ‘Go on, if you think you can. Do us all a favour.’

  Olly had regained his feet. He looked like he’d gone face-first through a windscreen. He levelled a pistol at Jon. The Tattooed Man slapped the gun from his hand. ‘Don’t you dare,’ he warned. ‘Don’t you fucking dare.’ He turned on Olly and punched him full in the face. Olly’s nose splintered with a dry crack. He whirled this way and that, howling, and stumbled over the leather sofa which the Tattooed Man had purchased for Jon.

  Meanwhile, Jon had retreated to the bookcase, which he used to support himself. He was unable to catch his breath. ‘You ungrateful bastard,’ he said. The bookcase could not support his weight. It fell spectacularly to the floor, spilling across the carpet the volumes the Tattooed Man had given him.

  The Tattooed Man was breathing heavily through his nostrils. He stood like that for a long time. Then, lifting Olly to his feet by the scruff of his neck he turned his back on Jon and left the house.

  He left a vacuum behind him.

  Jon sat with his back propped by the fallen bookcase. He fumbled for the cigarettes that lay in his pocket. Each one was crushed and bent and beyond smoking.

  At length, he stood. He walked in a daze towards the Oblivion Suite. He walked, fully clothed and bruised, into its familiar frigidity, its comforting endlessness. He curled like a foetus on the floor. Infinitely reflected, infinitely repeated and infinitely meaningless. All the time he saw before him the image of a pair of bright blue shoes with a buckle on the side, and a plastic doll without a head.

  Two days later the police came for him. Plain-clothes detectives, one an asthmatic Welshman in a Marks & Spencer’s suit, the other a powerful man with fine blond hair and a face marbled and mottled like corned beef. They asked if they could come in. They showed him their badges. He said, ‘Come in, please.’ He offered them tea. They declined. He asked if it was about Rickets. They said yes it was and added his given name: Clive Thompson. Jon had trouble attributing the name. He found himself imagining Clive Thompson’s life. An incapable or unwilling student. Perhaps a violent father, perhaps a string of ‘uncles’. He wondered what was happening to him.

  As the two detectives sat, he noticed the eyes of the Welshman settling on the bruises he wore like a necklace. A professionally suppressed reaction. A mental note.

  They knew about the ‘incident’ in the pub. They had spoken to Ted the landlord and Fat Dave and Jagger. They had interviewed other patrons. They had spoken to Rickets’s mates, each of whom, Jon suspected, had been reticent in the extreme, for fear of sharing something like Rickets’s fate. Jagger and Dave, too, had been loyally evasive to effectively, if unintentionally, incriminating effect.

  Murder was easy and usually the murderer was a lamentably stupid creature, whose crime, though endlessly fantasised about and mulled over, was committed in haste and frenzy and stupid fury. Frequently, the victim was known to the murderer. Equally frequently, alcohol was involved.

  They asked him where he’d been and he said, ‘A funeral.’

  They asked him when the funeral had ended and he said, ‘I left the wake at about six o’clock.’

  The Welshman said, ‘Mr Thompson was last seen alive at—’ he checked his notes, ‘about eight fifteen or thereabouts. That would have given you plenty of time to leave the wake. Don’t you agree?’

  Jon shrugged. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Can you remember where you were at about eight o’clock that evening?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  The blond policeman withdrew a pack of cigarettes and said, ‘Do you mind?’

  Jon said, ‘Of course not,’ again. He offered an ashtray.

  In return the blond policeman offered him a cigarette which he took with a steady hand, and lit from the Welshman’s match, leaning into the flame.

  ‘Would you mind,’ said the blond policeman, whose name was Marlowe, ‘if we took a look around?’

  ‘For what? The murder weapon?’ He snorted. ‘How stupid do you think I am?’

  ‘It’s nothing personal, Jon,’ said the Welshman. ‘Do you mind if I call you Jon? It’s just procedure.’

  ‘Procedure,’ he mimicked. ‘Leave my house alone.’

  Each man regarded him through slow-lidded eyes.

  ‘Why, Jon?’ said Marlowe, the blond detective. He leaned forward a tiny increment.

  Jon smiled at him. He could see something in the detective’s eyes. He wondered how these men saw him, men who were attuned and immune to the inexpert mundanity of everyday violence. He wondered if they suspected, if they intuited, as he believed policemen were wont to do, the nature of the man to whom they spoke. He wondered if they had seen Rickets’s—Clive Thompson’s—body, or worse, if they had seen only photographs. He wondered if they had lain awake in bed next to their wives, or sat alone late at night in their kitchens, smoking themselves to a headache, wondering what kind of creature could do that to another human being?

  ‘I’ve always wondered,’ Jon said, ‘if the way the police are portrayed on television affects the way the real police behave. “It’s a fair cop” and all that. �
�You’re nicked”. You know.’

  ‘We’re only doing our job—’ Marlowe said.

  ‘There you go,’ said Jon. ‘There you are!’

  Marlowe shook his head. ‘That was supposed to be a joke,’ he said, ‘or aren’t you a man who appreciates a joke?’

  Jon shook his head once. ‘I enjoy a joke as much as the next man,’ he answered, looking pointedly at the sober-faced Welshman.

  Marlowe guffawed and slapped his thigh with a stubby-fingered­, powerful hand. ‘Very good!’ he congratulated. ‘Very good. Very dry. Did you kill Clive Thompson?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jon. ‘I broke into his flat and I hacked him into tiny pieces. I made him eat bits of himself. I made him eat his toes.’

  He almost laughed.

  Jon had seen many arrests, mostly on television. He stood, obscurely incredulous, as the Welshman, whose name he had forgotten, closed the handcuffs about his wrists. As they entered the unmarked car, Marlowe was barely able to touch the end of his cigarette to the wildly waving lighter he held to his face.

  Jon sat in the back seat and watched them. They didn’t exchange a word.

  He looked out of the window. Afternoon shoppers milled apparently aimlessly. Shop windows bore seasonal legends, each of which announced a SALE!, as if taken by a national mood of mad, seasonal philanthropy.

  ‘I expect when I tell you about the others,’ said Jon, ‘you’ll beat me up. I expect the tape machine’ll break down, and I expect you’ll take it in turns to take your righteous anger out on me. I expect you can’t wait.’

  Detective Constable Marlowe took a corner with studious calm. Jon saw his face reflected in the rear-view. His mouth was set firm, but the muscles of his jaw were working, grinding away.

  ‘I expect,’ said Jon, ‘that you’re worried I’m going to tell you about the others I did the same to. I expect you’re going through the missing persons list in your heads right now. I expect you’re picturing the mess all those missing prostitutes and schoolboys might be in. I expect you’re wondering exactly how they suffered, and for how long. I expect you’re wondering why I did it.’

  The Welshman swivelled in his seat and regarded him. ‘Shut up.’

  Jon grinned at him and rattled his cuffs. He had seen it in a film.

  Although he made a full confession, the interviews were interminable and infuriatingly repetitive. He never once wavered from the detail of his tale, because it was true and he had a memory for such things. He recounted exactly what he had done, and in what order, then recounted it again. He spoke to psychiatrists and criminologists, but mostly there was just Marlowe, the Welshman (whose name resolutely refused to stick in his mind), and one of any number of uniformed officers standing stony faced but clearly disturbed at the door.

  He was unsurprised to find that, on the third day of his interrogation (of his helping the police with their enquiries), the Welshman with the elusive name indeed took a suspiciously perfect opportunity to knock him from one side of his cell from the other until he fell, threatening to gag on his own vomit, to the floor. He was equally unsurprised to see a forged doctor’s report imaginatively recounting how his (rather minor, considering the beating that had been so skilfully administered) injuries had innocently been come across.

  The next day, before the tape machine could be turned on, he levelled his gaze at the Welshman and whispered, ‘I’ll have you next.’

  By then, Marlowe was red-eyed and sour smelling. The weight of Jon’s confession hung heavy about him. He seemed exhausted and penitent.

  Jon told him, ‘Don’t worry. None of this is your fault.’

  Marlowe stared at him for a long time before throwing a sheaf of photographs on the desk before him. He asked Jon if he recognised any of the faces. In truth Jon did not, with the possible exception of one or two he remembered from the television news, the school-photo grins of the recently disappeared, the recently deceased. Still, he denied knowledge of them with a smile which he hoped would be carried with them for many a fitful night. He fended off their questions until all were exhausted. As the tape was to be shut off, he said, ‘But I’ll tell you about the others if you want.’

  ‘What others?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘How many others?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  They pressed him for as long as they were able before concluding the interview. As Marlowe and the Welshman left the interview room, Jon said, ‘See you in the morning.’

  But he didn’t see them, or at least not together. He sat out a morning and afternoon alone in the cell. Finally it was another policeman who opened the cell door and told him he was free to go.

  He stood at the desk as they returned to him the belongings taken from him at the time of his arrest, with the exception of a small bag containing three grammes of cocaine, upon the existence of which no comment was passed. He nodded goodbye to the Desk Sergeant.

  As he turned for the door, his way was blocked by two men. One was Marlowe. The other took a second or two to register as the Yorkshireman with the oiled black hair who had shaken his hand at the cottage and greeted him and Phil with the word, ‘Lads.’ They exchanged a look.

  ‘Mr Bennet,’ acknowledged the Yorkshireman, who was considerably better turned out than the last time Jon had met him. Despite this, he looked strained and worn out. He looked at Jon with polite contempt.

  ‘Inspector,’ said Jon.

  Marlowe stuttered as he passed, ‘Mr Bennet?’

  Jon faced him and the detective recoiled slightly but noticeably. ‘Yes, Detective Constable Marlowe?’

  ‘I’d like,’ said the detective, ‘to apologise for any inconvenience we might have caused you.’

  Jon allowed himself to look once more into the eyes of the Yorkshireman. ‘Think nothing of it,’ he said. ‘I quite enjoyed myself. Give my regards to your colleague. Inspector—’

  ‘Llewellyn.’

  ‘Llewellyn, yes. Tell him I’ll remember him.’

  He walked out on to the street and hailed a taxi. Only when he was safely inside, and half-way home, did his composure collapse. He began to shake and laugh uncontrollably into his clenched fist for what he was capable of when betrayed, of what surprising mischief.

  7

  Idiot’s Limbo

  Stepping from the taxi Jon continued to stifle giggles of such a nature that the driver squinted at him through rheumy blue eyes as he handed over a twenty-pound note. He examined it minutely, holding it millimetres from his face as if to demonstrate his myopia. Jon could hear his laboured breathing, all the pies and chips and curry sauce hanging heavy on his slow-beating­ heart.

  ‘Keep the change,’ Jon suggested.

  He smelled of police stations, a vague, institutional odour of polyester armpits, filing cabinets and tepid coffee. He itched. The taxi pulled away, the driver throwing him one last glance as he performed an illegal U-turn.

  As he approached his front door, spinning a single key on a ring around his index finger, he heard the sharp beeping of a familiar horn. He turned, pocketing the key. Across the road he saw Phil, impassive at the wheel of the racing green Aston. He wore a pair of gold-rimmed aviator shades and a subdued chauffeur’s outfit: dark suit, leather gloves. He slid across the front seat, and pointedly opened the passenger-side door.

  Jon dodged traffic. He patted the boot of the car as he walked around it, then slid into the passenger side. He left the door open.

  ‘You look the part,’ he said.

  Phil brushed a lapel and smiled delicately.

  Jon lit a cigarette. ‘Watch what you do with the ash,’ said Phil.

  Jon inhaled. ‘I see,’ he breathed. ‘It’s like that, then, is it?’

  ‘And then some,’ Phil confirmed. He hesitated, then accepted a cigarette. The flame of the match as he bent to light it reflected on the lenses of his sunglasses. Jon flicked the spent match into the gutter. Phil sat back and looked ahead. ‘You should’ve been around him the last few days. It’s li
ke being a gofer for Jack the fucking Ripper. Do this. Do that.’ He blew smoke through the open window. ‘I need a holiday,’ he said.

  ‘I can well imagine,’ said Jon.

  ‘I’m not sure you can.’

  He thought Phil might be right. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I suppose that’s my fault.’

  Phil accepted the apology with equanimity. Then he said, ‘He wants to see you.’

  Jon felt sick. He put a hand on the dash to steady himself, although the car was stationary. He ran his tongue over his teeth. They were furred with plaque. ‘Give me five minutes,’ he said. ‘I need a wash.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’ Phil’s eyebrows rose above the thin gold rims of the sunglasses. ‘I think you’d better just come as you are.’

  Jon shrugged and pulled the door closed. He buckled the seat belt across his chest and waist, passed the cigarette to his left hand and rested his elbow in the open window frame. It made him feel oddly like a teenager.

  Phil avoided the necessity of further conversation by cranking up the stereo to a level which made it impossible. He had a weakness for American industrial music, relentless and electronically apocalyptic, which Jon shared only when under the influence of a chemically aided rush and at all other times considered somewhat juvenile.

  Without relinquishing control of the car, Phil beat the steering wheel in time to the sampled percussion and mesmerisingly repetitive riffing guitars: ‘Resurrection,’ he bellowed tunelessly and unselfconsciously, ‘Coming in stereo … If you think so!’ He had to swerve a little to correct the car’s course, brake a little to legalise its speed.

  Phil had once talked Jon into going with him to a nightclub which specialised in such music. Phil had supplied the drugs and had been eager for the night to be a success. Each of them had been dismayed by the age of the clientele, which, with exceptions, did not appear to rise much above twenty. Further, the unwillingness of either to participate in proceedings by dancing—even though, given the crowded conditions afforded by the squalid hovel they had paid seven pounds to enter, dancing consisted of little more than vigorously and enthusiastically attempting to maintain one’s balance on the circular dance-floor—compounded with the volume of both music and cocaine ensured that both were beaten into dumbfounded submission for the hour or two they were able to stand it.