Weirdo

by Cathi Unsworth

  Darren’s blue eyes looked iridescent in the golden evening light.

  “You can say that again,” his gaze travelled from Debbie to Al and then back to his girlfriend. He was just as relieved to see the back of this relationship, which at one point seemed to him would end up ruining their own.

  He leaned in to kiss her. Debbie closed her eyes, the sweetness of his breath and sensation of his lips on hers merging into the yearning tilt of the song, the distant sigh of the sea against the pebbles on the shore.

  * * *

  Fishing around in the cooler box Marc had brought with him for a decently chilled bottle, Julian watched Alex and Bully dance into the pillbox and crash onto the old sofa they had put in there for the party. Corrine, sitting on the other end of it with Bugs, fell about laughing. Julian smiled as he watched, trying to shake off the absent presence that was also weighing on his mind.

  Samantha had waited for him at the end of a corridor last Friday, stepped out and hissed in his ear: “I’m gonna make you pay for what you did, you sneaky little freak.”

  Julian had flipped his middle finger at her, told her to get lost. But the look on her face had actually scared him. And when he had gone to his locker at the end of the day, someone had written POOF across the door in black marker pen.

  From inside the pillbox, Alex looked up into Julian’s stare.

  “’Scuse me a second,” he disentangled himself from Bully, got to his feet and walked out into the sunlight towards Julian, hoping the right words would come that could make up for the embarrassing fool he had made of himself in the market square. “Julian,” he said, dropping down beside him. “I owe you an apology. What I said the other day, it was stupid, I didn’t mean it like it came out …”

  Julian’s smile widened into a grin. “Don’t worry about it,” once more the younger boy cut him off with the shake of his head. “I know what you meant. At least, I think I do.”

  That gleam of understanding was back in his eyes, Alex felt sure now, as he offered his hand to shake. “I’m quite into Soft Cell myself,” he said.

  * * *

  Inside the pillbox, Corrine stared intently at the tattoo on Bully’s arm: a silhouette of the profile of a man, coloured in black, but with his eyes left as colourless slits. A man who looked like an avenging angel, made from smoke and soot. Down the side, in what looked liked stencilled letters, was the word: VENGEANCE

  Corrine got a funny feeling when she looked at it. “That’s fucking brilliant,” she said, her hand hovering over the surface.

  “’S’all right, you can touch it. The scab come off weeks ago,” said Bully.

  Gingerly, she put her fingertips onto the inked skin. The feeling intensified. It was as if some long-forgotten dream was trying to push its way to the front of her mind. “Where do it come from?” she whispered.

  “Funny you should ask,” said Bully. “Kris!” he shouted. “Put the Army on!”

  “Right you are,” Kris nodded. From the pile of tapes around the ghetto blaster, he selected a cassette. Ejecting Julian’s compilation, he loaded it and pressed play.

  A tense pattern of notes sprung out, loose as an elastic band but still deadly precise. A bassline that seemed to call out to that feeling of expectation blooming inside Corrine, that propelled her to her feet.

  The notes got louder, more urgent, the drums joining in, quickening the pace. Bully took hold of her hands, pulled her into a dance. Corrine had never danced with a man before but the music told her what to do, stomp her legs to the persistent beat, sand flying across the concrete floor of the pillbox from her twisting feet and Bully’s boxing boots.

  A man began to sing, simmering rage compressed into each syllable. His voice bounced along the surface of the song, like a pebble skimmed across the sea. Corrine couldn’t make out exactly what he was saying, but as the verse built towards the chorus, she felt she knew his intentions clearly – he was enunciating something she had yearned for all her life. Freedom …

  “I believe in justice.”

  Bully threw his arms in the air, singing out the words.

  “I believe in vengeance.”

  Made his hands into fists, leaning towards her, a wild grin cracked across his face.

  “I believe in getting the bastard, getting the bastard, NOW!”

  Yeah, thought Corrine, yeah.

  Retribution.

  Faces flashed through her mind as she laughed and danced on. The faces of the dirty old men under the pier, the sad cavalcade of twisted souls whose only release from the shame, disgust and hurt inside them was to inflict it on others, to corrupt as they had been corrupted. Psycho, Scum and Whiz, laughing their dull, deadly laughs. Rat and his knife, the knife she had dreamt of turning back on him over and over, plunging it into him and seeing the red come out, the evil gushing forth from his guts, one sweet, visceral purge. Making him feel all the hurt he had inflicted on her, but worse, making him feel it forever, making him watch the life draining out of him, horror and sheer disbelief in his eyes.

  Oh God, that dream, she had had it so many times. It almost felt as if she had actually looked down on her own bloody hands, with the knife clasped inside them.

  And Gina – what would she do with Gina?

  “I believe in justice,” the chorus kicked in again.

  Make her take all of them. All of them that had been forced on her.

  “I believe in vengeance.”

  With her watching, her laughing, her holding up Rat’s head on a stick. A legion of townsfolk behind her, bearing torches and whooping with laughter, curses crackling on their lips like fire. Preparing the scaffold for Gina. A man made of smoke and soot rising up behind them all, bigger than the sky …

  I believe in getting the bastard

  Oh yeah, and one other.

  Getting the bastard

  Samantha Lamb. Yes, Samantha Lamb must die!

  NOW!

  Bully grabbed hold of her hand again, spun her round in a circle. Corrine saw passing through her mind’s eye in rapid succession, like a carousel wheel spinning: Knives. Blood. Black hair. White skin. Mouths open, screaming.

  Then they crashed down on the sofa. Bully’s laugh shook the vision away.

  Corrine looked through the door of the pillbox at her friends outside, their faces flushed with joy. Happiness poured through her veins like molten gold.

  The sun was nearly set now, the sky painted crimson, the still sea the palest of blues.

  “You gonna help me build this fire, then?” said Bully.

  * * *

  Up on the Iron Duke forecourt, Gray responded to the call-out. “I’m up North Denes now,” he told the controller, “I’ll go take a look. Let you know if I need back-up.”

  The dog started whining, straining on the leash.

  “What’s that, then?” said Gray, following the direction of the animal’s snout. He raised his palm over his eyes and saw a plume of smoke drifting up into the dimming light, coming from the middle of the sand dunes. “That’s where they are, is it boy?”

  * * *

  No one saw him coming. The music was too loud and they were all too intoxicated – by the beer, by the songs, by the sense of euphoria that had grown since they lit the fire. Out here in the primal, beautiful night, by the sea, at the edge of the world.

  The first that Corrine knew of it was a dog pushing its snout into her palm as she was sat sideways on the sofa, looking into Bully’s eyes while he talked about this band. When she looked up, that policeman was standing over her, the one from under the pier, the dog’s lead in his hand.

  “Corrine,” he said, and though he was trying to look stern, there was a glimmer of amusement in his eyes. “Sorry, love, but the party’s over. Time to put that fire out.”

  No one saw them, except for the person who had made the call of complaint from a seafront phonebox and now crouched in the darkness, watching the policeman bring events to a premature conclusion, making the gang kick sand over the fire and pick
up all their empties. Then escorting them back across the dunes and up onto the sea wall, fun and games over for the night. Watched the deflated procession walking back along the promenade towards town.

  The sound of soft laughter drifting in their wake, ringing around the walls of the pillbox.

  Part Four

  RUB ME OUT

  31

  Spiritwalker

  March 2003

  At the same time the fax machine pinged and whirred into life, Digby, the larger of the two black Labradors lying in front of the fire, began to whine in his sleep. Mr Pearson, who had been staring into the flames ever since he took his daughter’s call, returned from the world of memory with a start.

  He looked down at the dog. His front paws were moving, as if he was trying to give chase, and he gave out another strangled-sounding whine that provoked his brother, Lewie, to a response in kind.

  “What you dreaming about, boys?” asked Mr Pearson, getting to his feet.

  His eyes drew level with the picture on the mantelpiece. It showed him with darker, more luxuriant hair, his arm around a woman of about thirty, clouds of black curls snaked around her shoulders. Between them, a skinny young girl with her hair tied back in a red bandana, wearing a huge smile. Both females fixed the camera with arresting, turquoise eyes. Behind them lay an azure sea and craggy mountains rising into a clear blue sky.

  “Sophia,” not for the first time, he asked his favourite image of his wife, “what am I going to do with her?”

  Sophia smiled back, sphinx-like. Digby, in contrast, rolled right over and lurched to his feet, shaking himself vigorously awake. He pushed his nose into Mr Pearson’s hand, looked up at him with searching brown eyes.

  “Let’s take a look then, boy,” his master said, padding out of the living room and across the hall into the crowded, book-clad room that Francesca called her office.

  Pages of paper had begun to spew out of the fax machine.

  * * *

  “Leonard Rivett,” said Francesca.

  “The very same.” He took a step forwards, doffing his hat with one hand, offering her the other. Francesca looked down at it, big and spotted with age, each finger encircled with a band of gold. And the thumbs of a murderer, she thought.

  But she gave him her most charming smile as she placed her own slim palm in his. “Then I don’t believe I need to introduce myself,” she said.

  “Indeed not, Miss Ryman,” Rivett agreed. He did not apply any pressure, just the merest of touches, before he let her hand go. “I know you weren’t expecting me, but I’m afraid DCI Smollet’s been delayed, he ran into a spot of bother on his way out of the station.” Rivett shook his head and raised his thick brows. “You know how it is in our line of work. So he asked me to go ahead and meet you.”

  He turned, indicating the table. “I’m sure he won’t keep you waiting long, half an hour tops, he reckoned,” he said. “In the meantime, I took the liberty of ordering myself a drink. Would you care to join me?”

  “Thanks.” Francesca nodded politely, sat herself down at the side of the table with the empty glass, taking in the label on the bottle of red as she did so. It flashed through her mind whether Rivett already knew what she liked drinking – and if so, how he had found that out. From the moment he’d stepped out from behind the door, she’d realised that his presence here was no accident.

  “Good, good,” he followed her gaze, lifted the bottle up.

  “Only,” she put her hand over her glass, “unfortunately, I came here in my car. I don’t think I should risk it, do you? Especially not in front of a member of the constabulary,” she smiled sweetly. “Could you order me a mineral water instead?”

  “Of course.” Rivett refilled his own glass, then leaned back in his seat, pressing a little button on the wall next to his right hand, summoning another dapper little man in a white jacket and black bow tie, who took her order with a bow and shut the door behind him.

  “You know,” said Rivett as the waiter departed, “that I’m no longer an official member of the constabulary, don’t you? So,” he leaned forward conspiratorially, nodding back towards the wine, “we don’t have to play by the normal rules.”

  Looking at his pointed yellow teeth, Francesca fought down a feeling of revulsion that was stronger even than the first jolt of fear she had got from seeing him emerge.

  “Is that why the DCI sent you?” she said.

  * * *

  As she came out of her front door, Noj wasn’t sure which was the right direction to take. She stopped for a moment, her eyes travelling around the square. Her instincts told her that Sean was close. Maybe he had gone back to Swing’s? Yes, that felt right.

  As she hurried across the street, she heard the distant sound of dogs barking.

  * * *

  “I had an interesting chat with Mrs Linguard today,” said Sean, “up at your old school. She told me you were in with a pretty bad crowd yourself at one point, and that you wouldn’t mind admitting it.”

  Smollet gave a smile that was intended to look rueful. “She mean Shane Rowlands and Neal Reeder, the village idiots of Ernemouth High. She’s right, they were bad lads – even the special class kids were scared of Rowlands. You could say he were the ringleader.”

  Smollet nodded to himself as his memory spooled back. “I s’pose I got swept along with it, you know, the folly of youth. But fortunately, I seen the error of my ways. I washed my hands of them at the start of the fifth year. Didn’t have no more to do with them until I was in uniform,” he started to smile again, “and they tried to rob a Post Office in the March of ’89. First people I ever nicked, Rowlands and Reeder.”

  He was about to say something else, when a light flashing on his telephone caught Smollet’s attention. He frowned. He had given orders that he was not to be disturbed.

  “Excuse me one moment,” he said, lifting the receiver.

  * * *

  Mr Pearson’s eyes narrowed as he took in the information on the fax and his stomach hollowed. Old, bad memories suddenly crowded in.

  “Oh, dear God,” he said. “I hope this don’t mean what I think it do. Not again …”

  Digby, who had been standing in the doorway, staring at him while he was reading, gave a loud bark. In the next room, Lewie whined and rolled out of the basket.

  * * *

  Rivett chuckled. “Now that’s a leading question,” he said. He raised his glass, studied Francesca over the rim of it. “You think he wants me to soften you up before the interview, do you?”

  Before she could reply, the waiter came back with Francesca’s bottle of water. She watched him break the seal, then pour the bubbling liquid into her glass, trying to still the effervescence in her stomach, to think one question ahead. Telling herself she had dealt with his kind before, dirty old men in every newsroom she’d ever worked in. That he wasn’t any different.

  She kept the smile fixed on her face as the waiter bowed again and left them.

  “Why?” she said. “What kind of interview did you think it was going to be?” She took a sip of water, parrying his stare, raising her own eyebrows in what she hoped looked like amusement. “I think your press officer must have got a bit over-excited. This is what we call in our trade a puff piece. I’m sure you know what that means, Mr Rivett. A profile of an upstanding member of the community, what they’ve gained from their time in Ernemouth and what they’re giving back.”

  “Is that right?” Rivett put his hand inside his jacket, pulled out a box of slim cigars and a long, thin, gold lighter. “Mind if I …?” he asked.

  “Not at all,” said Francesca.

  “Thanks,” he said, clicking the lighter into a flame. The end of the cigar crackled as it ignited, turning a glowing red. Rivett inhaled, blew out a plume of smoke.

  “Go on,” he said. “What’s he giving back to this fine old town of ours, then?”

  “Well,” she said, “I know DCI Smollet is keen on maintaining links with his old school. I’m assumi
ng his motivation is to set a good example to the pupils of Ernemouth High, that they could follow in his footsteps if they work hard enough.”

  “Very noble,” said Rivett. “So what give you the idea for that?”

  “You know,” Francesca put on a serious face, leaned forwards into his smoke, “one of the things that bothers me the most about society today is the breakdown of the family. You would probably know more about this than I do,” she looked at him earnestly, “but so many boys today are growing up without a father, or even a decent father figure. It’s no wonder there’s been such a rise in youth crime and anti-social behaviour. They don’t have any positive male role models, do they?”

  Rivett nodded. “Sad but true, Miss Ryman, sad but true. We have lived through godless times,” he said, his countenance becoming grave, in a mirror of her own, “and now we reap what we have sown.”

  * * *

  “Jason,” said Smollet, still looking at Sean, “I thought I told you …”

  Whoever was on the end of the line cut him off mid-sentence. Sean couldn’t hear the caller, but as Smollet ducked his head, eyes sweeping down to the desktop, he guessed that this was unexpected news being relayed. Either that, or a prearranged decoy.

  “You what?” said Smollet, frowning. “Slow down a minute, Jason, you in’t making no sense.” He looked back up at Sean for a second, mouthed the word “sorry”.

  “Who?” he said, sounding astonished. “What? My orders? I don’t know nothing about it …”

  His eyes shifted focus, so that he now appeared to be looking straight through Sean at the wall behind. That muscle beneath his eye began to flicker again.

  “Enough, Jason,” he snapped. “I’ll be right down.”

  He replaced the receiver, staring down at it with a look of disbelief. Then, gathering himself swiftly together, he looked back up at Sean.

  “I’m ever so sorry, Mr Ward,” he said. “But I’m going to have to leave it here for now. Duty calls.” He pushed his seat back, got to his feet. “We’ll continue tomorrow morning,” he looked down at his wristwatch. “Nine-thirty all right with you?”