Born Guilty

by Reginald Hill

  ‘Independence? From what? They lose one yoke, they will rush to put on another,’ said Kovalko cynically. ‘Pray to God they can do it without finding an excuse to fight each other.’

  ‘I didn’t know there was any chance of that in the Ukraine,’ said Joe.

  ‘We are talking about human beings. Violence is always a possibility. All that the good society can do is minimize opportunity, either to perform it or provoke it. But absolute control is impossible. There must be streets and pubs even in Luton that you will not visit alone after dark, Mr Sixsmith.’

  ‘Because I’m black, you mean?’ said Joe. ‘Yeah, well, maybe …’

  I’m being diverted again, he thought.

  He said, ‘I don’t say I wouldn’t run for cover if the Nazis ever took over here. But doesn’t history show that in the end they always get beaten because there’s more inside most people that wants to live in peace with other people than wants to fight them? Shoot, you must know this better than anybody. Must have been times when the Nazis took over your country and started shipping off the Jews to the extermination camps and folk like yourself to the forced labour camps that you felt this was it, the end, nowhere else for the human race to go. But we won, and you’re here, and you’ve got your family, so the best is always possible as well as the worst. Nothing for you to feel guilty about.’

  ‘Guilty? What do you mean, guilty?’ demanded Kovalko, the hand on the table clenching into a fist.

  ‘Hey, it’s all right. All I meant was, people can get to feel guilty ’cos they made it through bad times while a lot of other folk didn’t. But it’s OK. What you’ve got here, you got for all those others too. They didn’t make it, sure, but the Nazis didn’t make it either. You’re here. The guys who ran the death camps aren’t. They’re long gone.’

  This was pushing it, but there might not be another chance to push so hard and test a reaction. There was none, unless absolute stillness, almost to the point of catalepsy, counted. Then George came back with the drink which he put down in front of his father-in-law with a cheery, ‘There you go, Taras.’

  The clenched fingers uncoiled, seized the glass and tossed the drink down in a single movement.

  ‘Hey, you must really have needed that,’ said George. ‘You in one of them moods, we’d better buy you a bottle!’

  A sudden explosion of microphone static removed the need for Taras to reply. A small man in a plum-coloured jacket had appeared on a dais alongside the door to the kitchen. When finally he got the relationship between his mouth and the mike right, he said, ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, nice to see so many of our members here with their families and friends. As you know, tonight’s the night when we entertain ourselves and hopefully each other. Everyone will get a chance, but to start with we have a very old favourite of us all with a song from the old country, your friend and mine, Yulia Vansovich!’

  There was an outburst of applause which didn’t altogether conceal a heartfelt groan from certain quarters. Then Mrs Vansovich, wearing a folksy skirt and blouse which Joe assumed to be traditional, was helped on to the dais. Clutching the mike in both hands, she began to sing in a pretty fair soprano voice, accompanied by a pianist who made up in flamboyance what he lacked in accuracy. The song was a nicely strophic melody with a foot-stomping chorus, which at least half the audience joined in.

  Taras wasn’t one of them.

  ‘What’s she singing about?’ Joe asked.

  ‘Some nonsense about a boy driving geese to the market and selling them to the butcher’s lovely daughter for a kiss,’ said Kovalko scornfully.

  Just when it seemed the song was set to go on forever, Mrs Vansovich had a fit of coughing. A glass of something long and red restored her, but by this time her place had been taken by a melancholy bass, and despite her game efforts to remount the dais, she was finally persuaded back to her chair. After the bass, the emphasis shifted from ethnic to pop. Gallie and her mother returned from the kitchen and the elder woman said, ‘I believe you sing a bit, Mr Sixsmith. Going to give us a turn then?’

  Joe made a few modest protests, but Gallie’s urging, plus the good smells coming from the kitchen which reminded him how badly he sang on a full stomach, persuaded him to step forward.

  Knowing from experience that no singer ever got booed off a popular stage for being too sentimental, he said to the pianist, ‘You know Two Little Boys?’

  ‘No, but I can get you a big fat tart if you’re desperate.’

  After that, Joe didn’t confuse the issue by suggesting a key, but started singing and after a while was pleased to hear the piano scattering a few notes in the general direction of the melody.

  At the end he got enough applause to encourage an encore.

  ‘I’d like to dedicate this song to the lady who started off the entertainment tonight,’ said Joe. ‘We haven’t met, but I thought she sang real beautiful.’

  And fixing his eyes on Mrs Vansovich, he sang Silver Threads Among the Gold.

  The applause at the end of this was augmented by the MC’s announcement that food was now ready for collection next door. The middle-aged couple sharing Mrs Vansovich’s table rose instantly and made off, leaving her alone. Joe stepped down from the dais and went towards her and shook her hand.

  ‘Lovely song you sang,’ he said. ‘Did you once do it professionally?’

  She laughed and shook her head.

  ‘But it is flattering to hear you say so,’ she said. ‘You too sing very well, Mr …?’

  ‘Sixsmith. Joe Sixsmith,’ he said, sitting down next to her.

  ‘You were here once before, I think,’ she said.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said, thinking she didn’t miss much. ‘Just for a drink.’

  ‘And tonight you are with the Hacker family and Mr Kovalko.’

  ‘Yeah. Nice people. I gather you and old Taras come from the same town.’

  ‘Vinnitsa. Yes. He told you that?’

  She sounded doubtful. Joe took the hint and said, ‘No, it wasn’t him, now I come to think of it. One of the ladies mentioned it when I was asking about the lovely lady with the gorgeous voice.’

  This made her raise her thin pencilled eyebrows. She must in fact have once been very pretty, thought Joe, regarding the highly made up, finely boned face. And if that steady querying gaze was any indicator, she wasn’t stupid either, so back-pedal on the flattery!

  He said, ‘The song you sang, is it traditional?’

  She said, ‘Oh yes, an old song my grandmother used to sing. She was a peasant woman. I was a girl of the city and I wanted to be modern and I scorned such songs when I was young. But now I am older, they are the ones that come back to me when I think of that time before the Germans came.’

  ‘Will you go back to Vinnitsa now things are easier over there?’ asked Joe.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I would like to, once, before I die.’

  ‘You still got family there?’

  ‘No. No family,’ she said. ‘My grandmother who sang the song was Jewish. They took her, of course, within a few weeks of arriving. My grandfather too, though he was not Jewish. And later they came for my parents because some neighbour had written to say that my mother was the daughter of a Jewess. I had just married. My parents, who had been worried about me seeing my boyfriend because they said I was too young, now encouraged this marriage. I understood later my father wanted me to change my name and move away from my home.’

  Oh shoot, thought Joe. He’d sat down with the old lady (whom he now realized was not so old, still in her sixties, he guessed) in order to pump her about Kovalko. Now she was no longer just an old gossip who might be useful, but a real live woman with a history that made his own life and background seem cosseted and secure.

  She went on, ‘When my husband was rounded up with all young men for forced labour, I went with him, thinking we might stay together. It was not possible. I heard later he died of hunger, sickness, some such thing, while working under the Nazis.’

/>   Suddenly she laughed and squeezed his hand.

  ‘But here come my friends with the food. In any case, I do not think you want to talk about these sad things, Mr Sixsmith. I think you would like to know whether Mr Kovalko and I talk about the old Vinnitsa. The answer is, no, we do not. He says he remembers nothing of the old days, but he was so ill when the Americans found him that the first part of his life had been wiped almost clean. Such things happen. We all have things we would like to forget … to be forgotten. But some things can never be wiped clean. Never!’

  She squeezed his hand fiercely then let go. Joe thought, I got it wrong. He’d assumed they called her Mrs Once-a-witch because she was a silly old gossip. But the disconcerting ease with which she’d spotted his real motives in talking to her suggested another reason.

  Not that it was all that clever, he reassured himself as he made his way back to the Hackers. She’d probably not been able to resist mentioning the nosey stranger to Kovalko and his reaction must have roused her curiosity. Now here was another stranger, and a PI at that (Joe didn’t doubt she knew all about his background).

  And to these people, probing questions about that terrible time in their lives must always come back to one thing. How did you survive?

  ‘Mr Sixsmith, sit down, eat!’

  There was food on the table, slices of thick round sausage and little dumplings, potatoes flecked with pepper, all giving off a strong garlicky smell which made Joe glad he didn’t have a date.

  Though the number of dates I do have, he thought glumly, I could eat garlic most nights of the week.

  ‘Liked the songs, Joe,’ said George. ‘Old Vansovich beating your ear?’

  ‘Interesting old lady,’ said Joe.

  ‘Old fool!’ snarled Kovalko.

  George hadn’t been joking about getting a bottle. It stood by the old man’s plate and was already a third empty. He refilled his glass. His daughter said, ‘Now, Father.’ His answer to this mild reproof was to down the liquor and fill the glass again.

  Not a man to cross, thought Joe. In or out of drink.

  He concentrated on his food for a while. It was very tasty and he said so, aiming at being complimentary without sounding surprised.

  Mrs Hacker looked pleased but her father snorted contemptuously.

  ‘You like this stuff, you must be used to swill,’ he said. The bottle was down to the halfway line.

  ‘Father!’ said his daughter indignantly.

  Gallie came in as peacemaker.

  ‘Grandda was a chef,’ she said to Joe, half apologizing, half boasting. ‘He’s very good, but it means his standards are too high for the rest of us. Isn’t that right, Grandda?’

  The old man drank another glass of vodka and smiled at his granddaughter. There was real warmth between these two, a depth of affection which underlined the pain the girl must be feeling if, as Joe suspected, no matter how tiny and unacknowledged, a grain of suspicion had got lodged in her heart.

  ‘Well, I think these little dumpling things are really tasty,’ said Joe.

  Kovalko’s gaze turned to him. There was no warmth there now.

  ‘You think so? Well, I tell you, when I was at the Hotel Pripyat learning my craft, if I had produced vareniki like these, old Leonid, the head chef, would have said, “Who has been out in the countryside gathering these sheep droppings?” And I would have been there till after midnight, mixing dough until I got it right.’

  ‘Must have been a hard life,’ said Joe. ‘Lousy hours. Did you always want to be a chef, Mr Kovalko?’

  The old man shrugged and said, ‘Take no notice of what I say. No longer my business. The vareniki are fine. Now I am artist of the pallet not the palate.’

  ‘Eh?’ said Joe.

  ‘One of his old customers in Manchester made that joke,’ said Mrs Hacker proudly. ‘Father paints pictures, you see, just as a hobby, and this chap when he found out said he was an artist of the pallet as well as the palate. Not bad, eh? That’s one of his there.’

  She indicated a strong watercolour of a curving river which hung beside the bar.

  ‘Very nice,’ said Joe.

  ‘Order, order, please,’ cried the MC. ‘I hope you’re enjoying your supper but there’s still a lot of people who haven’t sung for it!’

  The show got under way again. Kovalko relapsed into a dull silence, but any idea that he’d drunk himself stupid vanished when he got up to go to the gents and made his way across the room steady as a gymnast.

  Joe said, ‘I ought to be going. Busy day tomorrow. I’ve really enjoyed it. Thanks for inviting me along, Gallie.’

  ‘Thanks for coming. And for singing,’ said the girl.

  ‘Good night,’ said Joe to her parents. ‘Say good night to Mr Kovalko for me.’

  As he passed Mrs Vansovich’s table he paused and said, ‘Nice to meet you.’

  ‘You go so early?’ she said. ‘Well, come again.’

  ‘Oh, I will,’ said Joe. ‘By the way, do you recall a hotel in Vinnitsa called the Pripyat, or something like that?’

  She thought then shook her head.

  ‘Sorry, no.’

  ‘There’s a Hotel Pripyat in Kiev,’ said the male half of the couple sharing her table. ‘Big old place. I saw it when we were visiting our cousins there last year. You’d be better off trying the Dnieper or Moskva, I reckon.’

  ‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ said Joe. ‘Thanks anyway. Good night.’

  As he turned away, he saw that Kovalko had come out of the toilet and was standing in the doorway, watching him. He waved his hand.

  The old man didn’t wave back.

  9

  ‘My oh my,’ said Merv Golightly as Joe got into his taxi. ‘It’s a dressy up party, is it? Have to hurry, don’t want you to be any later.’

  ‘I’m not late,’ protested Joe.

  ‘Oh yes, you are. About thirty years in that suit, I’d say!’

  Merv, who appreciated a good joke, especially his own, laughed at this one for the first five minutes of the journey. Even Joe had to admit there was a real point to it. What to wear at Willie Woodbine’s party had exercised his mind greatly. The balding cord jacket was obviously out, though he had hopes if it got much smoother, it might eventually pass for a blazer in the dark with the light behind it. This left either the casual look, which meant his blue leather jerkin over a Gary Glitter T-shirt; or the formal look which meant his funeral, wedding, and choir performance suit.

  It was a good suit. He’d had it so long it had come back into fashion twice, and there was hardly a mark on it. Unfortunately, with its broad lapels, slanting pockets, triple-buttoned jacket and seventeen-inch trousers with a two-inch turn up, it was at the bottom of its fashion cycle just now.

  Also, since he’d bought it, he’d put on a bit of weight. His belt covered the fact that the top button of his trousers wouldn’t fasten, but the jacket presented a greater problem. Fastened, he could hardly breathe. Unfastened, it flapped open to reveal to an amazed world a flash of the technicolour dreamcoat lining which had so taken his young fancy all those years ago.

  But having decided Willie Woodbine’s party demanded formal, it had to be the suit.

  The other problem had been whether he should take something. Bottle of vino might be a bit naff, suggesting Willie couldn’t afford to provide booze for his guests. Flowers for the lady was the thing, and he’d inspired little Miss Leaf at the flower shop to lewd speculation by buying a big Cellophane-wrapped bunch of Chrysanths.

  Finally resolving that the reward for all this effort was going to be gulping down as much of the promised bubbly as he could lay his lips on, he’d ordered Merv’s cab.

  Now at last he was on his reluctant way to Willie Woodbine’s house on Beacon Heights.

  The Heights is Luton’s premier residential area, a fact which did not escape comment.

  ‘You ever wonder how come a poor underpaid pig gets enough money to live on the Heights?’ enquired Merv.

  ‘Superintende
nt must make a good screw,’ said Joe.

  ‘He ain’t been a superintendent more than two minutes,’ rejoined Merv. ‘And he’s been living up there ever since he got married, so they say, when he was still just a big-hat beat bobby. Now whose trough he got his nose in, do you think?’

  ‘I think he’s honest, if you must know,’ said Joe.

  ‘You say so?’ said Merv as they began their climb of the Heights. ‘Then he’s really out of place living round here. See that purple brick job with all the hysteria? He’s wrecked more companies than Colonel Custer. Always rises from his clients’ ashes. Been bankrupt so many times, that telly Watchdog programme is offering him a series. Now that place there with the turrets, they’re artistic. All free love and slap it in the blancmange, Julian. Come the hot weather, they run a chopper every hour from the airport, twenty-five pound a trip, money back if you don’t spot at least three bare-back bonks in the shrubbery. Guy next door made his money in the Golden Triangle and I don’t mean the Chinkie takeaway in Tongtown. Very close family. Well, the wife and kids are very close anyway, sharing a single cell in a Thai jail. He got away but it shook him up. Now he just stays home and tends his garden. They say when he has a bonfire, any bird lucky enough to fly through the smoke comes out the other side upside down and whistling Fly me to the moon. Up ahead, whitewashed paella type job, we’re into the toe-chewing set …’

  Joe clutched his Chrysanths like a talisman and let it all flow over him. Merv’s unquenchable cheerfulness had helped him through too many bad times to start complaining now. Made redundant together, it had been Merv’s determination to give the bastards the finger by flourishing like the green bay tree that had helped turn his deep hidden fantasy about being a detective into reality. At least it felt real to him, despite Mirabelle’s unshakeable conviction it was a delusion induced by something they put in the drinks at the Glit.

  ‘… and there it is at last, before your very eyes, Luton’s answer to South Fork, Willie Woodbine’s pig farm!’