by M. P. Wright
“He’s a traveller fella that’s been helping me out.”
“Traveller, you talkin’ ’bout a pikey?”
“A Gypsy . . . he’s a good man.”
“Good man, shit. You sure you still got a damn shirt on your back?” Vic sighed for the third time and began to laugh. “JT, brother, you done some crazy-assed shit in your time, but knockin’ ’bout wid pikeys, well, that’s gotta be takin’ the fuckin’ biscuit fo’ sure. Don’t you know a pikey would thieve the goddamn eyeballs outta a corpse? You’ll be lucky if you still have any hair on that stupid black head o’ yours by the time I get down there to ya.”
Vic kept on laughing to himself. Finally, I managed to interrupt my cousin’s new-found sense of mirth.
“We ain’t got much time here, Vic, I think tings are gonna start to turn real bad, real soon.”
“You just do as I say, an’ stay cool an’ hang in there. I’ll be with you fast as I can.” Vic then repeated what I’d already told him. “You gonna be in Cheddar village, the White Hart pub. The two o’ you’ll be waitin’ in a barn way out the back o’ the place.”
“That’s it. Thanks, Vic, I appreciate it.”
“Sure you do.” I heard my cousin about to drop the receiver back into its cradle and I shouted out after him.
“What’s the matter wid you now?”
“Best make sure you bring along that old Colt o’ yours.”
“No shit, JT. What, you tink I was gonna drive all that way down there to ‘behind God’s back’ an’ turn up just holdin’ on to my dick? Brother, sometimes you can be a bigger damn fool than I took you for.”
31
I walked down the dingy passageway into the kitchen and found Truth, Milo and Bodden standing outside under a bright moon drinking steaming tea from large earthenware mugs. Bodden heard me approaching, swung his head around and looked at me with piercing, accusatory eyes that were filled with the kind of hatred normally reserved for the gaze of an overseer of a slave plantation. As I walked out to join them, the corner of his mouth turned down into a cruel sneer. I watched as he put the rim of the mug up to his lips and then gulped back the remainder of his tea. Bodden hung the empty mug in front of my face as I stood next to Milo. “You want some, boy?”
I shook my head slowly. “No thanks, I’m fine.” Truth caught sight of me, pushed between the two men and grabbed hold of my hands, squeezing them tightly. Milo turned, took hold of my elbow and led me and Truth quickly back indoors. Bodden followed, locking the kitchen door behind him.
“Ah, Joseph, there ye are. Come on, best we stay outta sight, even at dis time o’ night. Did ye find yer man on the blower? I nodded and said nothing. Milo was on a roll and continued his patter. “Wilf here’s just bin telling me how he tinks it’s way too risky for the two of ye to be wandering out there with all these gavvers about looking for ye and the young chavi here. He’s gone an’ offered to put you up while I go and fetch me a van an’ a couple o’ hefty fellas who could come in handy if there’s a bit o’ a ruck. Whaddya say, fella?”
“Like hell are Truth and me stopping here” was what I wanted to say, but I guess fatigue and the need to keep both Truth and me out of sight and away from the grasping hands of the law prevented me from opening my mouth and speaking my mind.
Bodden looked me up and down and sniffed to himself. “Boy, you paid me enough of your readies. I don’t see how it’s going to do me any harm to have you pair here while Hughes fetches one of his wagons.”
I looked at Milo then suspiciously across at Bodden. “Why the sudden change of heart, Mr Bodden? A few minutes ago you wanted the two of us outta here faster than a kid chasing an ice-cream truck.”
Bodden smiled again, a scornful, deeply covert smile that only I appeared to witness. “Ain’t a man allowed to change his mind?
I shrugged at Bodden’s reply and kept my mouth shut. This got the man on his high horse.
“Look, sonny, I don’t give a bugger if the two of you piss off now. I’m doing a favour for Hughes here.” Bodden stabbed his thumb in Milo’s direction then kept riding that high horse of his. “You don’t want to be under my roof, that’s fine by me, you can leave the same way you bloody well came in.” Bodden shot his arm out and pointed down the passageway to the front door.
Milo quickly stepped in to placate Bodden’s fit of bad temper, his voice calm and slow. He walked in close to my chest and looked up at me, then winked and began to speak under his breath. “Joseph, fella, listen ta me. The two of ye have come dis far. It’d be a shame to let the gavvers get a hold of ye when ye’re so close to having yer kin from Bristol come pick ye up and get ye outta here. I’ll be back in two hours, no more. Have ye on yer way. You’ll be back in da big city before ye know it.”
I looked down at Truth, who had wearily sat herself down on one of the dining chairs at the kitchen table. She looked beat. Bodden was leant against his kitchen wall, staring down at the floor.
Milo squeezed at my arm. “So, what’ll it be, fella?”
I looked uneasily at Milo. “You say you’ll be back in two hours?”
“No more. What’s that timepiece o’ yours say it is now?”
I glanced down at my wristwatch. “It’s one forty-five.”
“I’ll be back here just after three, give or take a few minutes. Sun comes up around five. Ye’ll be outta that barn and well on yer way by then.”
I nodded at Milo in agreement. “OK, but if you ain’t here by t’ree fifteen, I’m gone.”
Milo looked down at Truth then back up at me, and smiled. “Then I’d better get a wriggle on then, hadn’t I?” Milo turned to Bodden. “I’ll bring me wagon round the back, take ’em down the poachers’ track inta Cheddar village. Have yer gates open for me ta pull in.”
Bodden nodded his head. Milo spat into his palm, stuck out his hand and the two men shook.
As a kid, my momma had a saying for those she mistrusted or felt to be dishonest. As Milo walked out to leave, I nervously shifted my gaze across to Bodden and her wise words echoed through my head: “You know what them say ’bout slugs, Joseph? They always leave slime in their tracks.”
I got the feeling that Wilf Bodden could not believe his good fortune. They say luck favours the brave, but I didn’t think that was true in the case of our grasping host. His new-found prosperity had little to do with personal courage and had simply been derived from my willingness to pay him handsomely. He had swiftly pocketed himself the tidy sum of a hundred quid’s worth of hard cash all for a phone call and the prospect of a two-hour babysitting job. I watched as he followed Milo down the hall, heard him letting him back out into the night and then the dispiriting sound of the front door being closed and locked. As Bodden returned up the passageway to the kitchen, I stuck my hand into the holdall and pulled out my service revolver then quickly stuffed it out of sight inside my waistband.
When I was a policeman back home, after many years of witnessing so much crime and violence, I’d come to believe that ordinary folk could sometimes, if pushed in the wrong direction, do terrible things to each other on the flip of a coin. Something inside told me that Wilf Bodden was one of those kinds of people, and that the time for him to spin that single bit of spare change into the air was close at hand.
I sat down next to Truth and waited for him to join us in the kitchen. He prowled back into the room like a bloodhound sniffing out its quarry and forced a twitchy smile.
“Milo tells me you’ll be heading for the old barns down at the edge of Cheddar village, that right?”
I nodded in reply. Bodden wasn’t satisfied with the answer and like any good hunting dog kept on snuffling for more tidbits of information.
“He told me you’re being picked up by family, that right?”
I gave another nod.
His hackles rising, Bodden sucked in his cheeks in exasperation at my lack of interest in making conversation with him, then exhaled a heavy breath of air from his mouth, unhappy that he had been summarily
dismissed by me in such an offhand manner. I could see his conniving little mind ticking away behind those ball-peen hammer eyes of his. When he spoke to me again, he chose a less probing form of the third degree than his previous quizzing.
“The two of you need anything?”
I looked at Truth. “I’d be grateful for a blanket for the child here, and we could both do with using your bathroom if that’s all right with you?”
Bodden pointed a scrawny finger above his head. “Bathroom’s at the top of the stairs. I’ll get that blanket for you.”
I picked up the holdall and took hold of Truth’s hand, and we walked back down the passage and up the stairs. The place stank worse on the landing than it did in the kitchen. Bodden called after us as we reached the top step.
“Light for the bathroom’s on a pull cord on your right-hand side.”
“Got it, thanks.” I tugged at the cord. The bulb flickered on and I shepherded Truth inside. “You go first, remember to wash your hands afterwards. I’ll wait outside just here for you, OK?” Truth nodded at me and went in.
I rested against the wall and listened to Bodden walk back into his parlour and snap the door shut quietly behind him. He knew he was about to flip that coin. A man alone in a room, with a phone, cunning, with a pocket full of money and the chance to make a hell of a lot more by giving us up. What was that old bastard up to? The toilet flushing broke me out of my stark reverie. I heard Truth turning on the water tap and I knocked at the bathroom door.
“You can come in.”
I turned the doorknob and went on in then reached over Truth’s head and turned both sink taps on full.
Truth, confused, looked up at me. “What are you doing?”
“Giving us a bit of privacy, that’s all.” I dropped the holdall on to the floor and knelt down and fished out my pocketknife and the box of shells for my service revolver.
“Milo’s right. This place smells like cow’s poo. I don’t like that man downstairs, Joseph.”
I broke into a smile at Truth’s apt remark, but it soon fell away when I thought of Bodden downstairs. I put my finger to my lips and whispered to Truth, “Me neither. But we ain’t gonna be here for long, little one.” I dropped the knife into my hip pocket along with a couple of handfuls of cartridges then took my gun from my waistband and broke it open. I took out the six cartridges from the swing-out cylinder and rotated it a couple of times to check the action was smooth then returned the bullets into their cradle, snapped it shut and returned it out of sight underneath my jacket.
“Is there going to be more shooting, Joseph?”
“I hope not. You never can tell with people like Mr Bodden downstairs. Let’s say it’s better to be safe than sorry.”
I stood up and looked at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. I was a mess. I could have hung laundry in the bags that fell beneath my eyes, and the salt-and-pepper growth of stubble that had sprung around my cheeks and jowls reminded me that I really had begun to resemble my father. I reached behind me and felt at the heavy metal pistol nestled under my coat. My daddy had been a great shot with both rifle and handgun. What he aimed at, he always hit. I hoped that I’d have some of his sure hand and keen eye should the need arise later. I leant across to the toilet and flushed it again then turned off the taps, took Truth by the hand and gave it a warm squeeze.
“I’m scared, Joseph.”
“I know you are. But it’s gonna be fine. I promise.” I smiled at her and opened up the bathroom door. “Come on . . . Let’s go see what ole stinky’s up to, shall we?”
We walked out to Bodden, who was waiting for us at the foot of the stairs, one hand on the banister, the other holding a tatty-looking dark-blue woollen blanket. “You want to come on through to the sitting room, wait for Milo there?”
“We’ll be fine as we were in the kitchen, Mr Bodden, thanks all the same.”
“Suit yourselves. I’ve gathered already you ain’t the talking type; I don’t see any point in forcing our company on each other unnecessarily if that’s how you feel. I’ll be back here if you need me.” He handed me the blanket and wandered into his front room, closing the door behind him.
I walked Truth down to the kitchen then sat her down on one of the kitchen chairs and wrapped the old blanket around her shoulders. I walked across to the kitchen door and quietly turned the brass handle. It was locked and there was no key to be seen. I looked around for another way out. On the right-hand side was a pantry. I walked over, opened up the door and peered inside. It reeked of damp. Four shelves hung on the back wall with a few tins on them. There was clearly no exit out into the back yard. As I walked out of the pantry I could hear the sound of a woman’s voice singing. There was music coming from Bodden’s sitting room.
I knelt down in front of Truth. “I’m just gonna have a word with Mr Bodden. I want you to stay here and you are not to move till I return. You hear me?”
Truth nodded. “Are we leaving soon, Joseph?”
“You bet we are. We leave as soon as I’ve spoken with ole smelly drawers back there.” Truth began to giggle. I put my finger to my lip again to hush her then tipped her a wink. “Be back real soon.”
I trod softly along the passageway until I reached the sitting room door then took out my revolver and let it rest behind the back of my right leg before knocking. I gave the wood panel of the door a single hard tap. Inside I could hear Patsy Cline’s “You Belong to Me” playing on the gramophone. There was no sign of Bodden coming to the door. I rapped at the panel again, only this time a hell of a lot louder. I put my ear to the wood and listened then heard Bodden grumbling to himself as he rose out of his chair. He called out over the music, “Yeah, what is it?”
I took a step back, waited, then saw the handle of the door beginning to drop towards the floor. As Bodden drew it open, I raised my leg and kicked out hard at the centre of the door, sending him flying backwards across his living room. I rushed in, slamming the door shut behind me. Bodden, clearly dazed, desperately tried to pull himself up onto his elbows, but I was on him like a mongoose on a cobra. I kicked at his chest with the heel of my shoe, knocking him back onto the floor, then dropped down on his torso, pinning down one of his arms with my right foot.
“What the fucking hell are you playing at, you dirty wog?”
I pushed my revolver into Bodden’s cheek and reached across to the volume dial of the gramophone and turned it up. Patsy Cline’s voice filled the room.
I cracked the back of my hand hard across Bodden’s left cheek and dug the gun’s barrel a little harder into his face.
“Who’s coming for us?”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, man.”
“Don’t piss me ’bout. Who’d you call while we were upstairs?”
Bodden squirmed under my weight, his face flushed with anger and desperation. White spittle formed at the sides of his mouth. He bellowed at me over the din of the music. “I didn’t call anybody, you fucking dolt. I’m trying to help you, for Christ’s sake.”
I jammed the gun barrel underneath Bodden’s nose then pulled back the hammer and watched his petrified eyes follow the cylinder holding the bullets slowly revolve. I screamed down at him, “Bullshit, Bodden! Either you start talkin’ or I’m gonna put what little brains you got all over the tiles of that nasty-lookin’ fireplace you got on your back wall. Now, no more o’ your crap. Tell me, how long is it befo’ Paxton and his cronies get here?” I saw a scared man’s eyes become even more fearful when I called out the name of the Yankee copper. I quickly swung my arm up and pistol-whipped it across the side of Bodden’s head then immediately stuffed the gun barrel into his already bleeding ear.
The music stopped and a deafening silence enfolded inside the sitting room. I screwed the barrel a little deeper into Bodden’s ear. “How long befo’ he gets here?” I felt Bodden’s body almost shrink under the weight of my own. His face went white and his lips turned a nasty tinge of blue as he resigned himself to the i
nevitable. He tried to pull his head away from the gun barrel, but I applied more pressure, pushing his face against the harsh fibres of the carpet.
He breathlessly rasped out the answer I’d been waiting for. “Not long, he’s on his way now.”
“And Milo, was he part of all this?”
Bodden shook his head weakly under the heavy pressure I was applying to his skull with the gun.
“No, damn it. He knew nothing about them coming here for you.”
I rose up off Bodden’s body and slammed the side of the revolver into his guts. His legs instantly drew up into a ball as he writhed in agony on the floor. He pulled himself up tight into the fetal position and started to cry.
“Where’d you put the back door key?”
Bodden, rocking back and forth, coughed. Flecks of light crimson-coloured saliva and blood flew from his mouth, spraying the beige tiles that ran along the foot of the hearth. He gasped and croaked out a faint reply. “It’s in my back pocket, you black bastard.” I reached down and yanked it from out from his trouser pocket then quickly backed myself out of the room without saying another word.
As I rushed along the grimy passage back to the kitchen and Truth, Bodden yawped pathetically after me. “You’re fucking dead, nigger! Dead, that’s what you are. You hear me?”
I didn’t want to hear him; I never wanted to hear his ugly mouth utter another filthy word again. The only thing that I could discern coming out of Bodden’s sitting room as I began to swiftly unlock the kitchen door was the loud, repetitive clicking noise of a stylus head as it bounced in and out of the final grooves of the record he’d been playing.
32
With both arms stretched out in front of me. I pointed my service revolver into the pitch black of the night. Across the yard I could just pick out a wire fence that separated Bodden’s property from the inky void beyond. I turned to Truth and beckoned her over to me with a nudge of my head. The little girl stood up and let the blanket around her shoulders drop to the floor. She picked up the holdall at her feet, ran across to me and stood close at my back. I leant across to the light switch by the kitchen door and flicked it off, took the holdall from Truth and slung it over my shoulder, then grabbed the little girl’s hand and made a run for it across the backyard. When we got to the fence I picked Truth up under her arms and lifted her across the wire then climbed over to join her. I immediately dropped on to one knee, dragging Truth down beside me. I could feel her body trembling against my arm and I pulled her close to me.