I don’t know what to do or say except “I haven’t got one.”
“We’re getting an echo but all right, don’t stop now. Just keep it as brief as you can.”
“I don’t know what was said between them. Something was too much.” I’m hurrying to the corner of the empty house as I say “I see him lashing out. It only took a moment and one blow. It broke her jaw and knocked her out, and before he knew it she was in the canal. Why didn’t he try and rescue her? Maybe—”
A face looms at the window of the office. There’s a shout of “It’s you, you cunt” and the sash rattles up. In my ear Dennison protests “What was that?”
“I didn’t hear. I’m saying maybe he couldn’t bear anyone to know he’d—”
“You cunt,” Kylie’s father yells again, “you fucking cunt,” and lurches away from the window.
I’m not about to flee—very much the reverse. I switch my phone to loudspeaker mode and hurry to meet him in front of the open workshop. “That’s the man,” I say and hear my enlarged voice burst out of the office. “I won’t name him, but—”
“I’m sorry, Gray. I won’t have that kind of language on my show even if you would on yours.”
Dennison says this in my aching ear and much louder in the garage; he might almost be alerting Robbie Goodchild. “Wait, Derek, Derry,” I hear myself plead in at least two places at once. “Don’t you realise—”
I’m already talking to myself. My voice is no longer at Robbie Good-child’s back. As my fist clenches on the useless phone and sinks away from my face, Dennison booms in the garage “Any children who heard that, just you go and wash your ears out and never talk that kind of privy talk. It’s never clever and it isn’t funny either.”
I’m in front of the garage now, and pathetically relieved to see several men at work in the depthless shed. One is underneath a car on a hydraulic platform, while a second is removing the door of a van, and their colleague has just fitted a wheel on a jeep. None of them is looking directly at Goodchild as he stalks fast across the concrete floor littered with tools and vehicle parts, and surely that means they don’t approve of his behaviour. They don’t look even when he yells “You’ll be sorry, you cunt” and strides at me.
“Think what you’re doing. There are witnesses this time.” When he doesn’t falter I shout “You can’t ignore this, any of you. He needs to stop before he goes too far again.”
The younger men seem to be busier still. Only the eldest—the man under the platform—stares at me. “Deserve everything you fucking get, pal,” he says, and at least one of the others nods.
Perhaps the loss of an eye has blacked out part of my brain, because I’ve made just about every mistake I could. I’m staying in sight of the mechanics for want of any better scheme when Goodchild swings a hulking fist at the blind side of my face. Up to this moment I managed to delude myself that he wouldn’t give way to actual violence. I must be as naive as any of Frank Jasper’s faithful. I step back so fast that it feels like flinching, which inflames my anger. “That’s like the one you gave Kylie, is it. Bob? When did you find out Wayne’s stepfather was black?”
Something makes him hesitate. Perhaps I’ve roused a memory he’s done his best to stifle, unless I’ve said more than his employees knew. I’m not sure they can hear me above the ad for Frugrab bargain offers that Dennison is playing, and I raise my voice. “Don’t you realise you’re showing I told the truth? Was that your drawing of Mohammed in her book? You used to phone in attacking anyone who wasn’t white. You even said Blackley shouldn’t be pronounced how it is.”
“Fucking shouldn’t either,” the man under the platform shouts, and both his colleagues nod.
I still have to try to appeal to their better selves. There’s nobody on foot along the Blackley road, and no sign of the kind of vehicle I’m just about praying to see. At least Goodchild has halted while he scoffs “Took you all this time to work that out, did it? You’re no more fucking psychic than I am or any other cunt.”
I’m overtaken by an insight, and I blurt it out. “You never believed in Frank Jasper any more than I did. You hired him because you thought he’d be no use. It made you look as if you’d nothing to hide and like you cared as well.”
“Don’t you fucking say I never cared,” Goodchild snarls and lurches forward.
“How did it feel, pretending to respect her boyfriend? How does it feel to have to hide what you did from her mother?”
I need him to betray himself in front of the only witnesses that are left—to say something even they can’t ignore. I have to stay out of his reach as he takes another vicious swing at me, but I can’t back into the traffic. I retreat along the pavement just far enough to avoid the blow. I’m still in front of Goodchild Motors when I say “How did it feel to have to pretend at Kylie’s funeral?”
“Hello to Eunice from Sale,” Dennison says several times louder, as though he has to shout over the rattle of a power tool on a hub-cap in the garage. Too late I realise the mechanics may not be hearing me or Goodchild any longer above all the noise. They’re certainly determined not to watch him throw another hefty punch at my face. “Fucking leave her out of it,” he says through his bared teeth.
I can scarcely believe he said that, but it’s no more incredible than the situation I’ve put myself in. My plan has failed, and I’ve nothing left except rage. When I back out of reach of yet another swing that looks capable of splintering my jaw, I can’t be seen by anybody in the workshop even if they would have come to my aid. I won’t let Goodchild glimpse my apprehension or make Kylie’s error of allowing him too close. “You know I’ve seen the truth,” I tell him. “I’d have seen it sooner if you hadn’t called yourself Bob on the air. Who didn’t you want to recognise you?”
“Just you and me, cunt.” Goodchild shows me his teeth again, practically grinning. “I’m the last fucking thing you’ll see,” he says and lashes out at my remaining eye.
The fist looks weighty and yet less substantial than I know it is. I only just back out of range—I feel in danger of fancying it isn’t as lethal as he means it to be. He’s still coming at me. Perhaps he thinks nobody else can see him now. The passing drivers can, but nobody is even slowing down, and it would be gullible to expect them to intervene—I’d be as deluded as any of Jasper’s victims. I take another hasty step backwards, and the uneven pavement catches my heel.
The cracked flagstone has been raised at least an inch. No doubt it’s where a truck was parked. I haven’t regained my balance when Kylie’s father lurches at me, swinging his fist. My other foot catches the edge of the flagstone, and I sprawl on my back.
The impact jolts a fiery pain the length of my spine and thumps all the breath out of me. The mobile, which I’d forgotten I was clutching, flies out of my hand. Goodchild grins at the phone and takes a heavy step towards it before swerving back to me. “Say ta-ra to the one you’ve got left,” he says and stamps on my face.
I almost can’t believe I’m seeing the heel of his boot swell into my eye. With so little perspective all the substance seems to have been squeezed out of it, and I barely have time to roll out of its way. Pain flares along my spine while grit and flagstones scrape my cheek, almost dislodging the eye-patch. I shove myself onto my agonised back to find Goodchild waiting for me to show my face. As he tramps at me again I hear a distant siren.
It’s a police car, and in a moment I see its glaring lights. Goodchild glances furiously over his shoulder and then comes faster at me. The police are hundreds of yards away, and he has plenty of time to injure me or worse. I plant my hands on the hot prickly stone and lever myself upright—into a sitting position, at any rate. It’s as much as I can do before he kicks me in the eye.
I jerk my head away, not fast enough or sufficiently far. The steel toecap misses my eye but slices open my cheek, grinding against the bone. The sight of blood doesn’t satisfy Goodchild. It seems to encourage if not to excite him, and he kicks out with more force. I’m just in time to grab
the boot with both hands to prevent it from bursting my eye.
He leans all his weight on it, forcing me backwards. My whole body shudders with the effort of fending him off, and then my spine lets me down. My shoulders thump the pavement, and the boot descends towards my face to grind my eye under its heel. I can’t tell how few inches it is from me—perhaps I’m no longer misjudging the distance, which is no distance at all. My fingers are trembling with the strain, and the flagstones have scraped my elbows skinless, when the howl of the siren swells in my ears. It sinks to a growl as car doors slam, and Goodchild is hauled away from me. “Get your hands off,” he protests and attempts to stop shouting. “I’m not the villain. He was robbing from my business.”
When I manage to support myself with my twitching hands and shaky arms I see him in the grip of two burly policemen. He’s doing his best to appear reasonable, even cooperative. “Ask his workers if I was,” I say in a voice that feels as if it doesn’t belong to me. “I don’t think they’ll all lie for him.”
I could be wrong, but what else can I do? I’m groping for a handkerchief to press against my cheek when the driver of the police car steps onto the pavement. “We heard what happened. I’ve called an ambulance.”
What did they hear? As I struggle to my feet and then hold the handkerchief against my streaming cheek I grow aware of a small voice repeating a word. I can’t locate it or identify it until the police driver stoops to retrieve my phone. “I think someone’s calling you,” he says.
“Hello? Hello? Can somebody answer?” It’s the girl on the Dennison Deal switchboard. She’s been speaking for just a few seconds, but I have to learn “Did you get all that?”
“The police did. They told us to keep the line open for them after you went off the air.”
“The police did.” So they’ve been listening as I asked them to once I’d called the show the first time. I see Goodchild understand, and not just his expression but the whole of him seems to collapse, growing smaller and less substantial. Despite the throbbing of my face I feel almost sorry for him. He looks like a man who can no longer avoid knowing what he’s done and what he is, and perhaps that’s the worst punishment of all.
37: Christine
As I step out of my apartment building a train sends a prolonged whine through the overhead track. It sounds like a tool in a workshop, and my fingers stray towards the stitches in my cheek, although the memory hasn’t revived any anger. I don’t think even meeting Walter Belvedere would now, and I glance up at his window, but if he’s home he’s staying out of sight. The sun is packing the shadows away under the sides of the street, but it feels less pitiless this morning, more like an omen of renewal. While the office workers are at their desks there are still people at large in the streets. Most of them look at me, and I tell several “The other fellow came off worse.”
Kylie’s father is in custody, though the media have yet to say so. Presumably they’re waiting until he has been charged. I wonder how the Clarion will report the story and whether Alice Francis or the editor will take back their comments about me. Just now I’m concerned only that Christine should hear I’ve been exonerated. Even if it’s too late to make a difference between us, I want her to know she mustn’t blame herself. I can’t help suspecting she does, even though she never had a reason.
She isn’t to be seen as I cross the road to the apartments. She wasn’t cycling in the window of Corporate Sana, and I hope she wasn’t elsewhere in the gym; it ought to be too early for her to have left for work. Even if I still had a set of her keys I’d ring the bell; in any case, my mother exchanged them for Christine’s set of mine at the hospital. When Christine visited the ward I said I couldn’t see her, but now I feel as though it was a hole in my head that spoke. Perhaps I’ll tell her so if I have the chance. The intercom grille comes to life with a click, and I’m opening my mouth when a metallic voice says “Ambler.”
“If I were you I’d amble off.” I don’t have the right to tell the man that, even if his presence has taken me off guard. Why should I have expected Christine to stay on her own? I do my best to feel reasonable for only saying “Graham.”
“Yes.”
This doesn’t sound much like an acknowledgment, still less an invitation. “It’s Graham,” I attempt to establish.
“You said so. What can I do for you, Mr Graham?”
I gather that he hopes the answer is very little if not nothing at all. “Graham Wilde. Is—”
“That still doesn’t signify anything to me.”
I can’t believe Christine hasn’t mentioned me, if only in the context of her work. Or has she a reason to pretend there was nobody before he came along? Has she ended up in another abusive relationship? I seem to feel my temperature flaring, not just with the sunlight. “Graham Wilde of Wilde Card,” I say louder. “Graham Wilde of Waves.”
“Is that the radio station? I don’t patronise it, I’m afraid. If you’re conducting some kind of audience survey you’re wasting your time with me.”
“I’m no more interested in you than you are in me as long as you’re taking care of Christine. Can I have a word with her? She doesn’t have to see me unless she wants to.”
Ambler is silent, and I’m growing furious with the suspicion that he’s cut me off when he says “Who?”
“Christine. Christine Ellis. The girl whose flat you’re in.”
“I know nothing about any such person, I’m afraid.”
“What are you trying—” As I grow nearly incoherent with the kind of rage I thought I’d left behind, my gaze drifts to the cardboard strip in the metal frame above the bellpush. I hardly bothered glancing at the printed name, but now I see it says CHARLES AMBLER. “I’m sorry,” I babble. “I’ve been, I’ve been away. Doesn’t Christine live here any more?”
“That’s my perception of it, yes.”
I can’t afford to let him enrage me further. “Can I ask when you moved in?”
“Not long ago.”
“Would you happen to know where she went? She must have left a forwarding address.”
“I know nothing about it, and now you must excuse me. I’ve business to attend to,” Ambler says and shuts off the intercom.
I stare at the grille, which puts me in mind of a fixed mocking grin with bared teeth. I’m tempted to lean on the bellpush, but suppose Christine forgot to leave her address or disliked him as much as I do—too much to entrust it to him? They’ll have it at Waves, and surely Shilpa will take pity on my state. If she won’t give me the address I can wait for Christine by the counter where my photos used to be.
There are no posters for Jasper outside the Palace. He’s moved on and good riddance, despite the help he inadvertently gave me. As I make for Waves I wonder if the last call Bob from Blackley made to Wilde Card was an attempt to pretend everything was normal, since he’d already killed his daughter. The automatic doors slide apart for me, and the left one appears to vanish. Vince is at the security desk, and his expression has to catch up with his stare. “God almighty,” he says. “Did you get your fight at last?”
“I was never looking for one and I’m not now, Vince. Can I go up?”
“Nobody’s told me different.”
Nevertheless he seems doubtful, and I hurry to the lift before he can change his mind about me. The metal cage looks smaller than it used to and approaching two-dimensional. The possibility that I might be faced with Megan makes it feel even more cramped. I’m reminded how determined Goodchild was to be polite to another receptionist, and how I didn’t realise that his wife thought he was making too much of Shilpa because it was so untypical of him. The lift doors open once the floor number has fitted together, and I’m relieved to see Shilpa, whose expression turns sympathetic faster than Vince’s did. “Oh,” she says, “Graham.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not quite as bad as I look.”
As I wonder if she’s taken aback just by my condition or because I’ve shown up at Waves, she says “What happened t
o you this time?”
“Nothing worth a news report. It’s all right, I’m not blaming anyone.”
Perhaps the police are withholding the information until they charge Kylie’s father, if they bother releasing it at all. “Were you here to see someone?” Shilpa says more in the tone of her job.
“Now who do you think she might be?”
“I didn’t realise. She didn’t mention you’d be coming in.” Shilpa seems pleased for me, if a little puzzled. “Is it to do with yesterday?” she says.
“How do you mean yesterday?”
“The call you made to Derek’s show.”
“You’re right, it’s because of that. I can’t really tell you how much of a difference it’s made.”
Presumably that information hasn’t reached her either; perhaps the police have told anyone who knows how the call continued off the air to keep it to themselves. “I’m glad for you, Graham,” Shilpa says. “Let me tell her you’re here.”
She puts on half her headphones and flicks a switch on the board before laying the headset down. “Can you wait? She’s engaged.”
“On the phone, you mean.”
It isn’t much of a joke, and Shilpa seems to think it’s even less. “Would you like me to get you a drink?”
“It’s a bit early for the kind I like.”
“I expect so.” Apparently to take us past any unwelcome implication she adds “You can have a sweet instead.”
When it becomes clear she isn’t offering me one I say “Which sweet is that?”
“One of the ones on her desk.”
“When did she start going in for those?” I can’t help feeling guilty; it must have been since she couldn’t see me at the hospital. “So long as she still goes to the gym,” I say, trying to make it sound like a joke.
“Graham, you can’t have forgotten. She’s always kept some in her office.”
So I’ve been making jokes without knowing, and perhaps I’m something of one. “Sorry, have we been talking about Paula? I’m here to see Christine.”
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