by John Burdett
“Violent crime is mostly committed by young men between the ages of fifteen and thirty from what sociologists call the lower-income groups. Nonviolent crime is slightly different. Women and middle-class kids feature more frequently.”
“Well, so says one expert. What about our other expert?”
Thirst was listening.
“Why does a nice boy like you turn to crime?”
Her voice carried no hint of sarcasm.
We all waited for his answer. I expected him to shrug or mumble, but when he spoke, his voice was unexpectedly strong.
“I didn’t; that’s where you all get it wrong. We don’t turn to it, it starts when you’re born, only after a while they lock you up for it. Then you start running into people like you lot, telling you there’s another way of living, only you’ve got to wipe out your past, haven’t you? To stay out of prison, I have to act like I was born yesterday, start again, a twenty-year-old baby. Don’t ask why we start—ask why we carry on. Because changing is so hard, that’s why.”
“But you’re an expert, too,” I said to Eleanor. “Why do you think people become criminals?”
“For boys like Oliver it may be social programming, at least in some measure. For my son it was, I suppose, our fault, Tom’s and mine.”
“Our fault be damned.” Tom suddenly woke up.
Eleanor rose from her chair, walked over to Tom, and put her arms around him. He held her hands. We all waited for her to speak.
“I’ll tell you what I would like to do, if Oliver agrees. It goes like this. With the exception of one person here, we can all more or less guess what makes each other tick. I bet I know without being told, for example, what made James Knight become a barrister, what James Hogg gets out of being a vicar. Daisy, despite the fact that she’s American, I feel as if I’ve known all my life, though I’ve only been with her a couple of hours. Tom I have known almost all my life. One person, although I know what he’s done, I haven’t the faintest idea why he’s done it. I don’t know what makes you tick, Oliver, not at all. I’ve read all the theories, but I’m not an inch closer, really. One reads about sociopaths, one knows of the damage they do, the misery they cause, but one never really understands the reasons why they do it. I wondered if you would like to tell us.”
Thirst’s face was the color of an eggplant. He stared at her.
Eleanor walked over to him to put her hand on his shoulder. “You misunderstand, Oliver, that’s why you’re getting so upset. I don’t want a long sob story about your social programming; I want to get some sense of the thrill of it that makes you keep doing it. Do you agree, James, that it would be interesting if Oliver would explain? We must all swear secrecy, of course.”
“Certainly it may have a sublimating function if he shares it with us.” Hogg sounded doubtful.
“Will you, Oliver? You have a perfect right to refuse, of course.”
—
Thirst stood up. He wasn’t blushing anymore. He was quite pale.
“You’re all sworn to secrecy, right?” He turned to Eleanor. “I’ll show you,” he said. He walked toward the door, then turned. “I would like you to come outside,” he said to Eleanor. Then to me: “You, too.”
“We shall all come,” Tom said.
“Yes, you can all come,” Thirst said.
Eleanor and I were the first out of the door, after Thirst. He was already at the Range Rover, twisting something in the lock on the driver’s side. Within seconds the door was open and he was inside the car, unlocking the door on the passenger side.
He motioned to Eleanor and me to come forward. Sure that Eleanor was waiting for a signal from me, I walked resolutely forward. She followed. As we approached, Thirst bent down by the steering column. The engine burst into life while we were climbing into the car. I sat in the front, next to him; Eleanor sat behind me. He turned on the headlights. I saw Tom’s red face and Daisy behind him, looking startled.
“Seat belts on.” He did not fasten his.
He made the engine scream before letting out the clutch so that we flew forward. I could hear gravel shooting out behind us.
“We’re stealing my car!” Eleanor’s voice was girlish with excitement.
Thirst used the four-wheel-drive function to climb up the hill over the grass, under the cypress and oak. There would be black tracks in the morning. We emerged by a side entrance to the church. For a moment I thought he was going to drive through the heavy wooden door.
He lurched to the left, disengaged the four-wheel drive, raced the engine again. We made a screaming circuit of the church. Centrifugal force pushed me against my door. The headlights picked out patches of old stone, medieval tracery, the molding on a Gothic arch.
The car was not really built for speed. Thirst made it feel fast by using low gears, racing the engine, and double-clutching. When we came around by the main entrance, I thought he would perhaps make another circuit, then take us around the driveway, back to the vicarage. Instead he flew down the hill to the street, not pausing at the exit, turned right into the road on two wheels, roared through the village in seconds. Eleanor made a strange sound—a moan of pleasure or misery.
On the outskirts of the village the headlights picked out an animal form for a split second: long vertical ears, large startled eyes, pear-drop body. There was a thud.
“What was that?” Eleanor asked in a quick, nervous gasp.
“Hare,” I said.
“Dead one,” Thirst said.
We were in the unlit narrow country road now, the headlights picking off the broken white lines, which passed in a blur. I saw that we were doing eighty.
I glanced back at Eleanor, who was gripping the back of my seat.
Thirst switched off the lights and accelerated. “I’ll turn them on again when one of you begs me to,” he said.
I expected Eleanor to tell him, or beg him, to switch them on again. I looked back at her. Her mouth was slightly open, but she said nothing.
Thirst looked confident and alert—driving, I supposed, by a residual light still in the sky. I felt a wonderful excitement. For a second I loved Thirst.
There was a bad moment at a bend in the road. We were going so fast I was sure we were about to crash. Thirst would not brake, although he slowed, came out of an ugly front-wheel skid, accelerated again. Still Eleanor said nothing.
The needle was at ninety-five before she screamed: “Stop! This is stupid!”
“Beg.”
“I beg you, Oliver, for God’s sake.”
He ran down expertly through the gears, executed a hand-brake spin that set us pointing in the opposite direction, switched on the lights, and drove us back through the village at a sedate twenty-five miles per hour. He stopped just before the driveway and turned to face me.
“I hope nobody felt threatened and that you’ll be supportive of the way I handled the task Eleanor set me.”
We both looked back at Eleanor. She shifted seats to be behind him, then put both hands around his neck. I could see by the way his veins bulged—and her cheeks puffed out—that she was squeezing as hard as she could in the effort to strangle him. He did not resist. Suddenly she let go.
“Well, I suppose I asked for it, but that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t like to kill you.”
“You understand, then?” I said. “Oliver’s point, that is.”
“It was very thrilling and insanely dangerous.”
We sat, the three of us, in the stationary car. Thirst seemed to be waiting patiently for something to happen.
Eleanor burst into a peal of laughter. She put a hand across her mouth. “Tom’s probably had six heart attacks.” She giggled.
Thirst put the car in gear again, drove up the drive a short way, stopped.
“Do you happen to have the keys?” he said over his shoulder.
Eleanor found them in her pocket, gave them to him. He bent down to do something at the base of the steering column. The engine stopped. He put the key in the ignition.
>
“You’d better drive the rest of the way,” he said to me. “If anybody wants me, I’ll be in the woodshed.”
He got out, gave Eleanor a long look, walked away.
“Haven’t felt this good since I pinched an XJ6,” I heard him say into the night.
—
I drove only a short distance up the drive, stopped the car, turned off the engine and the lights.
“I think it best if we surprise them,” I said. “Let’s walk the rest of the way.”
I felt protective of Thirst, who had been provoked by Eleanor. I knew everything would depend on how she handled the situation when we got back, and I wanted her recovered from the hysteria by then. I glanced at the car as we passed. I thought I saw a dark patch near the offside fender.
We walked slowly. When we came within sight of the lights and the vicarage, she stopped.
“Hug me a moment, please.”
I assumed that what was required was the sort of thing recommended for shock in first-aid courses. Dutifully I put my arms around her. She snuggled, then I felt her knee insert itself between my legs. She wriggled sensuously, made me kiss her full on the mouth, then pushed me away.
“That’s better. Fast cars and beautiful young men can quite turn a girl’s head.” She touched her hair. “I was young in the sixties, you know.”
She reentered the vicarage with her customary nonchalance, humming a tune.
“Thank God!” Tom rushed up to her.
I glanced at Daisy, whose features were clenched like a fist. Hogg looked miserable.
“What on earth happened? Are you all right?” Tom said.
“Of course I’m all right, darling. Oliver just wanted to make a point, that’s all.”
“Point be damned. He stole my car.”
“Our car, darling, and it can hardly be called theft with all of us looking on, an eminent barrister in one seat, and the co-owner in the back.”
“Cunning blighter!”
I stood next to Daisy on the other side of the room from Tom and Eleanor. “Tom was going to call the police,” she told me in a savage whisper, “and James Hogg wouldn’t do anything. I had to stop him. We had one hell of a fight. That would have been the end of the line for Oliver, wouldn’t it, if the police had been called?”
“It would have been very awkward.”
“I had to say some hard things about Eleanor,” Daisy said. “I hope she forgives me. She’s rather magnificent, isn’t she?”
“Oh, yes. I think she enjoyed herself. So did Thirst.”
“Where is he?”
“In the woodshed, lying low.”
“Let’s go and see him.” Her eyes were shining.
—
On the path to the shed, I held Daisy’s hand. I could feel her excitement, her eagerness to make him notice her, perhaps even to have him see her as a co-revolutionary and colleague in crime. She wanted credit, too, for saving him from the police.
The door to the woodshed was ajar, spilling a soft glow of light from a kerosene lamp he had placed on the floor. His shadow, which we saw first on opening the door, occupied the whole of one wall and loomed over us from the roof. He stood over an ax that had been driven into a chopping block. His giant black hand grasping the giant black ax handle dwarfed the frail human at the center of the drama. Wood splinters and the dismembered parts of trees were strewn all over the shed. Without comment he grasped the handle of the ax as we entered.
He found a chunk of wood, a cross-cut from a chain saw, placed it on the block. He looked at Daisy shrewdly. “This is what villains do after a job, to relax.” He lifted the ax, split the cross-cut effortlessly with one blow. He arranged the pieces on the block, brought the ax down again. He repeated the performance several times.
Finally, with terrific violence, he drove the ax into the block.
“I’m really pissed off.” He looked at me. “With myself—you know?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” Daisy said.
He ignored the question for a moment, then said, “Ask him—he understands.”
Daisy looked hurt.
“They were going to call the police. Daisy stopped them.” I said it for her, because she wanted me to.
“I told them it was Eleanor’s fault, for provoking you.”
“Eleanor!” On the wall, the black giant shook his head. A wicked grin twisted Thirst’s features for a moment. “How did Tom take it?”
“Badly. Very badly. He’d have your balls if Eleanor would let him,” I said.
“He’d have his own balls if Eleanor would let him.” He chuckled. “Want a beer?”
He fetched a six-pack from the other side of the shed, pulled three out of the plastic rings, gave one to Daisy and one to me.
“Sorry I haven’t got a glass,” he said to Daisy.
“It’s all right,” she said shyly.
He threw his head back, poured some beer down his throat, gazed at Daisy contemplatively.
“You know what I would give this for?” He held his right arm with his left hand and shook it.
“What?”
“His control.” He pointed at me, took another swig of beer. “You don’t know how lucky you are,” he told her. “Most men are either bastards or cunts—’scuse the language.”
“Or faggots,” I said, slipping unthinkingly into his conversation.
“Or faggots. So how did he take it?”
“Ask Daisy. I wasn’t there, remember?”
“Who? Oh, you mean James Hogg. He was pissed off but couldn’t decide who with. Mostly with Eleanor, I think. And then Tom and I had a fight, which upset him even more.”
“It can’t hurt your parole,” I said, “not with the chairperson of the parole board joyriding with you, and it was her car. You took care of everything.”
“Not the point.”
“I know.”
“Why? I don’t get it,” Daisy complained. Thirst, who seemed to find Daisy irritating, shot a glance at me. I had the impression that he wanted to talk to me alone.
“Daisy thinks you’ve struck a blow for freedom with your escapade. She can’t understand why you regret it so much.”
“Didn’t it feel great?” she said.
“Course it did.”
“So what’s the problem?”
He brushed a hand over the top of his head, looked at me. Is she really that stupid? his eyes asked.
“Daisy believes in liberation, you see. Free spirits like you will knock down the walls that imprison us, burst the chains that bind us—at the same time you’ll be respectful of women, kind to children, vegetarian, anti-apartheid, and concerned about the third world.”
“I’ve had it,” Daisy said. Her face was flushed. She stared at me. “You can make fun of me as much as you like behind my back.” She flounced past.
“I should have sat there and took it,” Thirst said as she slammed the door. He was as oblivious to Daisy’s anger as he was to her. Her exit might have been a puff of air.
Sitting in the woodshed, I was unrepentant about having mocked Daisy. She struck me as a ridiculous figure. I liked his powerful presence, his daring, his wildness, his contempt for white-collar values. I liked the smell of the wood and the kerosene lamp, too. In the back of my mind was the knowledge that the weekend had been engineered by Hogg and was out of my control. I had the perfect excuse, as Hogg had intended. I could afford the luxury of relaxing with Thirst because I would never agree to see him again.
“Eleanor should have known what she was doing. It was her fault.”
“Yeah, but I mean for the future, see? If I can’t sit there and eat shit without doing my nut and pinching a motor, what chance have I got? All that time in the Scrubs I promised myself I wouldn’t do that. I know now that it’s weakness, not strength.”
“Can I have another beer?” He handed me a can. “What will you do?”
“See my time out with that silly faggot—what else?”
I swallowed some more
beer. His last phrase hung in my mind. Perhaps some of the exhilaration of the joyride was still in my blood. I started to laugh.
“Silly faggot,” I repeated. “He probably dreams about you every night.”
“Yeah, dressed up like a choirboy.”
“No. On a cross!”
“Yeah!” He let out a yelp. “That would be it, on a cross! He thinks I’m going to have a religious conversion any day now—or get myself crucified. He doesn’t know how determined I am.”
“To do what?”
“Not to go back, of course. When I told you I’d rather die, I meant it.” He took a swig of beer. “It’s good talking to you, James, a kid from the neighborhood. Here, was old Glenda Feswick around when you lived in Camberwell?”
“Big tits but cross-eyed?”
“Yeah, I met her just before I went in the Scrubs. On the game, of course; she’s been working the Arabs up in the Haymarket. Made so much she got her eyes fixed. Bit of a stunner now. We had a great laugh down the Elephant one night, her and me.”
“I groped her once,” I said.
“You and the rest of South London. Here, I’ll tell you what—your missus is called Daisy Smith?”
“Right.”
“Do you remember the other Daisy Smith, used to live in Gladstone Buildings?”
“Good looker. On the game at thirteen.”
“Still is. Uses the prostitution to support her smack habit nowadays. Glenda told me; they keep in touch. Six kids. Two are supposed to be by her cousin; they’re a bit soft in the head.”
He found another six-pack, which we finished slowly, reliving our memories of the neighborhood.
“I remember the first job I did,” he said. “I suppose everyone does. Real job, I mean. A vicarage, as it happened; I can still smell my own fear. Had so much adrenaline I more or less flew back over the wall. Felt let down when there was no sign of the Old Bill, so I pinched my first motor that same night. First one on my own, I mean. Did a ton down the MI, dumped it in Finchley on the way home, and had to walk because the buses had stopped. Never made that mistake again.” He gulped some more beer. “You remember your first job, James?”
I decided that he was drunker than he looked. I stood up. “I’d better go. Daisy…”
He stood up, too, held my arm in his powerful hand, looked me in the eye. “Do you remember your first job?”