Two cars flashed between them. Jo waited until they’d passed, then nodded, mutely.
Nobody calls me Josie
Nobody ever called me Josie here
Saks? Oh my Sweet Lord
‘Just after eight, then. Okay?’
‘Yes,’ Jo nodded, ‘that’s… that’ll be…’
The jeep’s radio –having previously purred along in a thoroughly unobjectionable monotone –now began crackling at a prodigious volume. The female officer clambered back inside to deal with it.
‘That’ll be fantastic,’ Jo spoke into thin air.
Doc scowled at her. This girl was so… so gawky. So blundering. Useless at deceiving. Not a dyed-in-the-wool Behindling. Not a born sleuth by any stretch of the imagination.
‘Before we all get completely carried away here,’ the male officer strove –semi-jovially –to regain the assembled company’s attention, ‘your white van still needs moving, sir. And if I could possibly have a quick word…’ he switched his focus to Doc, ‘about…’ he paused for a second, as if considering how best to frame his enquiry.
‘She’s already told you,’ Doc grumbled impatiently, nodding his head towards Jo, ‘the boy’s in Benfleet, at the station, probably heading back here on foot, even as we speak.’
‘It’s not a boy I’m looking for,’ the officer butted in (he was thoroughly sick of this boy, and bemused by every mention of him), ‘I’m actually trying to track down Wesley. I’ve been informed that you’re the one person most likely…’
‘He’s over there,’ Hooch interjected (patently infuriated by the widespread perception of Doc’s Following seniority), pointing across the road towards Katherine’s bungalow, ‘in that house.’
The officer’s gaze followed the line of Hooch’s index finger. He scowled, ‘But that’s…’ He stopped himself, just in time, his eyes meeting Josephine’s, almost apologetically.
‘The whore’s house,’ Hooch completed his sentence for him.
The officer stiffened.
‘Are you able to confirm this, sir?’ He turned back to Doc who was staring over at Hooch, infuriatedly.
‘Is it a summons?’ Hooch brazenly enquired, apparently oblivious to Doc’s finer feelings, ‘because of all the trouble with those seagulls in Rye?’
This was one intervention too far for the officer, ‘If you really want a ticket, sir…’ he snapped.
Hooch looked to his laurels, swooping down –with a defiant snort –to grab Doc’s half-finished mug of tea, tossing the remainder into the gutter, throwing the cup into the back of the van and slamming the doors shut with a bang.
The officer returned his full attention to the Old Man, ‘I believe your people track Wesley by phone and the internet? We tried to do the same, but the lines are down. There were rumours of a virus on the site. Would you happen to know anything about that?’
‘Should I?’ Doc asked, unhelpfully.
‘The lines are down?’ Jo interjected, ‘and a virus?’
This was plainly news to her.
The police officer nodded, ‘Since earlier this afternoon, apparently.’
‘But has that ever happened before, Doc?’ Jo turned to the Old Man.
‘Skegness. About eighteen months back.’
Not Doc, but Hooch again, peeking out from behind the protective shield of his van’s front passenger door, ‘That site’s really losing its focus. Needs shaking up a bit if you ask me.’
The officer threw Hooch a look of such coruscating disparagement that had he been even remotely morally suggestible his cranial cortex would’ve withered and then disintegrated. Instead he simply cleared his throat, scratched his head and climbed back on board.
‘So are you filing a summons, then?’ Doc asked. The officer turned to face him again, shaking his head slightly, ‘That’s a private matter, sir.’
‘So you’re not filing anything?’
The officer raised his eyebrows, smiling warningly.
‘So it’s a family matter, then?’ Doc persisted, fully intent on maintaining the pressure. The police officer stepped back a few inches. ‘It’s a matter of some…’ he considered his words, carefully, ‘some sensitivity, shall we say.’
‘Ah.’ Doc rubbed his hands together, drawing another breath to continue his interrogation, but the officer was having none of it.
‘I’m afraid that’s the best I can do for you, sir.’
He bent down –as a final gesture –to stroke behind Dennis’s ears, but the terrier (in an arbitrary change of heart) curled his head sideways and out of the officer’s way.
The officer chuckled under his breath, smiled up at Jo, gave Doc a smart, half-salute and crossed back over the road again, tapping his hand onto the car bonnet as he circled his way around it to alert the woman officer –still on the radio –to follow him. This she duly did.
‘Find out exactly what it is that they want.’ Doc was handing out curt instructions before the pair had even made it through the front gate.
‘We weren’t even friends,’ Jo murmured (perhaps a little accusingly), ‘she was always really… well, bossy.’
Doc didn’t react to this. ‘We’ll be down at The Lobster Smack from here-on-in. We’re camping nearby. And remember,’ he warned, ‘they’re probably just as interested in us as we are in them, so be wary.’
‘Interested in us?’ Jo echoed blankly.
‘The Behindlings. They like to know what we’re doing, where we’re staying. Things about the competition. Contacts and stuff. Whatever we know about Wesley, obviously. His activities. Trespass, blackmail, the bribery, especially. Don’t even…’
‘Sorry –the… sorry?’
But before Jo could question Doc any further he’d slapped his thigh (calling Dennis to heel), and was heading briskly for the van. Hooch started up the engine. Doc picked up Dennis then paused, just for a second, before throwing him on board.
‘If you come into the pub later and there’s a blind man hanging around, don’t breathe a word of anything in front of him. He’s one of…’ Doc pointed towards the jeep. ‘Ex-special branch. Play it by ear…’ Doc swiped his hand through the air, ‘you know.’ Do I?
Jo nodded, bemusedly, then opened her mouth.
‘Know what I found especially interesting?’ Doc quickly cut in. Jo shut her mouth again.
‘The way he said, “It’s not about a boy.” With a special emphasis. Did you notice? That emphasis? Not about a boy.’
Doc gave Jo a significant look, tapped the side of his nose, then threw the dog on board and climbed in stiffly after him.
Hooch didn’t drive away immediately. He waited until the officers were standing at Katherine’s door and knocking, until their knock had been answered –by a flustered-seeming Ted –until they’d invited themselves in and the door was shutting.
Then he let rip; accelerating sharply from a standing start, his tyres squealing, his suspension crashing as he came down off the pavement, his exhaust rattling a coarse tattoo onto the tarmac. In a gesture of defiance, Jo supposed.
She stood and stared after the fast-retreating van, frowning at the prodigious volume of its exhaust emissions, and observing –quite dispassionately –how the back doors hadn’t been shut properly. The right one flew open. A rucksack (Doc’s) tumbled out and almost collided with a red Ford Corsa travelling –more sedately –in the opposite direction.
The Corsa sounded its horn, swerving. The van stopped. Its hazards went on. Hooch jumped out and ran around to retrieve Doc’s possessions, looking –as far as Jo could tell in the half-darkness –not even remotely concerned by the chaos he’d unleashed. Two further cars ground to a halt behind him. Then a third. One flashed its lights to speed him up. But he smiled and took his time.
Jo shook her head, appalled –
And these people are my allies?
God have Mercy.
Hooch climbed back on board, with a swagger (how did he manage it?) but this time pulled off quietly (Doc’s calming influence,
presumably).
Once the van had gone, Jo turned her attentive brown eyes back towards the neat white bungalow and stared at it for a while, inspecting every external detail, as if thoroughly engrossed by its neatness, its symmetry. After a while, gentle drizzle began falling. Jo continued standing. She continued staring.
Tiny droplets of rain soon formed a diaphanous cloche over her close-shaven head. But only when the water achieved sufficient density (once slightly larger droplets began dribbling down her forehead, the back of her neck) did Jo emerge from her reverie and shake it –twice, most expertly –like a small, damp, brown vole on the edge of a riverbank.
Then she pulled up her hood, as far as it would go, and gazed helplessly up the road. ‘But why won’t it go away?’
This querulous question emerged so quietly from the dreamy darkness where her face had once been, was framed so sadly, so meekly, that had –by sheer chance –a tiny muntjak been passing, it would’ve paused, lifted high its pale, soft muzzle and huffed a benign but inquisitive blast of sweet, straw-scented breath into the cold night air.
It would’ve shown no fear.
Jo’s hood swivelled around (a tiny Horsewoman of the Apocalypse, momentarily steedless), towards Dewi’s green bungalow (the lights were off. He was working late, presumably).
‘I’m so sorry,’ she murmured woefully, hunching up her shoulders, expelling a small, dry cough, adjusting her luminous plastic braces, wiping her ghostly nose on her harsh, woollen cuff and stepping –with a self-loathing splash – back (always back) into the gutter’s spurtling trough.
Twenty-two
Ten minutes later, they were arguing like lovers.
‘It’s a gift, you dolt. Where the fuck are your manners?’ Wesley was sitting at the kitchen table, surrounded by feathers.
‘Oh it’s a gift now, is it? D’you hear that, Bron? D’you hear that?’ Katherine raised her husky voice (and her pale hand, correspondingly; holding it high in the air, palm turned ceiling-wards, like an alabaster juggler) to include an –as yet –invisible caged animal in their conversation. ‘He calls me a cunt, Bron, he leaves a lamb’s tail behind him with no explanation, he steals my mango-stone creature, he messes with my hydrangea. And now this: a magnificent wild water-bird slaughtered for supper.’
‘Cunt?’ Wesley frowned, bemusedly (falling at the first fence –refusing all the others). ‘You’ve lost me there.’
Katherine paused for a moment, caught slightly off balance.
‘Was Dick an ancestor, then?’ Wesley queried, returning dutifully to his plucking (the only trace of implicit innuendo in this question evinced by the slight arching of his left eyebrow).
‘Dick who?’ Katherine scowled.
‘Turpin. I saw that huge pub named after him up on the motorway.’
‘A road,’ she demurred, ‘and there’s no real connection. Our ancestors were Dutch. The name was… was bastardised.’
‘From what?’
Katherine paused, wavering.
‘Brouwer.’
She pronounced it softly but with faultless inflections.
‘Oh yes,’ Wesley nodded, ‘yes, the phonetic link’s very explicit.’
Katherine poked out her tongue at him. Her tongue was long and deliciously pink.
‘Ouch,’ Wesley suddenly shoved his thumb into his mouth (as if her spiteful tongue had pricked him there), ‘this thing’s a tough old pluck…’ he sucked at it, thoughtfully, ‘although you’d think I’d be used to it; I’ve been living on seabirds since late November.’ He drew the reddened thumb from his lips and studied the pad, critically. ‘I was camping down in Camber,’ he looked up. ‘Ever been there?’
‘Never.’
Katherine shrugged her shoulders and lifted her jaw (projecting a steadfast impression of mulish obduracy). But there was a twinkle –he could sense it –lost in the ivory lamina of her skin, somewhere; the base of her throat, the tiny, fleshy pleats in the crook of her arm, or wedged tightly under a dirty finger nail, maybe (she had capable hands –the finger-pads criminally printed with thick slicks of black bike oil, the cuticles ragged and cygnet-grey).
When Wesley pulled his thumb free, a small piece of down remained just above his lip.
‘The Dutch have…’ he returned to his former subject, readjusting the heron expertly on his knee, ‘an extremely…’ he felt the tickle under his nose and scratched at it; the feather shifted a couple of millimetres, ‘a very troubled history in this area, don’t they?’
‘Do they?’
Katherine focussed in on the feather, pointedly. He caught a sidelong glimpse of her face, ‘Brought over to save this joyless crap-hole from the ravages of the sea –to build dykes –seventeenth century, or thereabouts. But were slightly too good at it, so –in the true spirit of British Hospitality –got treated like absolute shit ever after…’
He gave her a significant look, ‘I can only guess it must be he… hered…’ he sneezed, ‘… irary.’
He shook his head, snorting brazenly.
Katherine merely scowled (the Dutch stuff held no interest for her. Why should it? She was the mistress of her own destiny) and picked up her glass of liquor. But before she could sip at it, she sniffed (a lean white rabbit cordially inspecting a juicy sprig of peppery chard), put the glass down, pulled an old tissue from the cuff of her sleeve, and dabbed softly at her nose with it.
Wesley observed this apparently commonplace act with a quiet but still palpable satisfaction. Ah yes. She was duplicating. He was inveigling.
Katherine quickly shoved the tissue away and then defiantly topped up her drink. She took a large mouthful of it, tossed it back and swallowed, her ash-smoke eyes watering as she straightened her head again.
In the furthest reaches of the kitchen, meanwhile, a subterranean rustling –prompted, perhaps, by the glass and the bottle’s tinkling –made Wesley abandon his plucking for a moment and twist around on his stool.
Where did that spring from, exactly?
In a roomy cage balanced precariously on a butcher’s block in the far corner, he saw a large grey rodent lazily emerging from a pile of loose wood shavings, peering around him (eyes like immaculate cobs of smokeless coal), blinking, then yawning (one of those long, unimaginably thin-mouthed rodent yawns). Scratching his ear. Grooming.
Bron. Katherine’s chinchilla.
Wesley inspected this creature with the cool, level gaze of an experienced butcher. Plump, but mainly fur. Large eared. Betailed. Exquisitely bewhiskered; stark, white antenna, straight as power lines, centred on his nose, dynamically oscillating.
He chuckled, picked up the heron’s slack neck, supported its head in his bad hand and waggled it provocatively at the sleepy rodent. The chinchilla stared back at the heron, blankly, its two front legs held delicately poised in the air.
‘Would a heron predate on him out in the wild d’you reckon?’ Wesley queried, mischievously.
‘There’s only one merciless predator in this kitchen,’ Katherine countered sharply, ‘and it certainly isn’t lying dead across your knee.’
Wesley stopped his idle waggling to inspect the rodent more closely. The rodent, in turn, inspected Wesley. ‘Is that a male rodent you have there?’
‘Why?’
‘Because he seems to be…’
The rodent was masturbating.
‘Bron likes to touch himself,’ Katherine interrupted defensively, ‘it’s no big deal. He finds it comforting.’
‘Not an unusual predeliction,’ Wesley concurred, ‘but Good God woman,’ he pointed at the creature accusingly, ‘in the fucking kitchen?’
The chinchilla (as though chastened by Wesley’s finger) released his genitalia and bounded over to a small plastic tray in the corner of his enclosure. There he began digging –sand flew violently in every direction –and finally, rolling.
‘Now what’s he doing?’
‘He’s digging, you fool. He has a sand tray. He’s South American.’
‘And you th
ink South Americans like to dig, as a broad generalisation?’
‘The Aztecs:’ Katherine didn’t falter, ‘legendary excavators.’
‘Infamous,’ Wesley conceded.
The rodent shook himself clean and then dutifully recommenced his self-abusing.
‘Bron,’ Wesley muttered, mulling the name over, trying but failing to make a connection.
Katherine began hunting around for her cigarettes. She eventually located a packet in the cutlery drawer. She tore it open and drew one out.
‘Smoke?’
‘Thanks.’
She stuck two cigarettes into her mouth, strolled over to the gas oven, pressed the ignition button, fiddled with a knob on the hob and bent over.
Wesley watched her, with interest, plucking on, blindly; two thirds of the heron’s chest area now all but bare. Katherine lit both cigarettes, took one out of her mouth, padded over and placed it between Wesley’s lips.
‘You have…’ she leaned in close to him –
Violets
‘… a little piece of fluff…’
She plucked it off.
‘There.’
She returned to her place by the kitchen cupboards and lounged against the worksurface. Wesley dangled the cigarette loosely on his lip, barely inhaling on it. He glanced over towards the cage again. ‘Did you think to light one up for the little fella?’ he enquired, ‘I think he’ll be needing one shortly.’
‘I am…’ Katherine spoke with an especial languor, banging her rump sharply against the cutlery drawer, ‘I am killed by your wit.’ She thought quietly for a while, then added, ‘… and I’m certain there’s something Biblical about not eating predators. In Leviticus or somewhere…’
Wesley refused to rise to her.
‘Flesh is flesh,’ he pronounced flatly, ‘there can be no moral hierarchy when it comes to murder. But if you insist on such a thing –if there has to be –then this lovely creature would surely be at the top of it.’
‘You reckon?’
‘Of course: ancient, almost starving, very nearly dead from the cold already…’ He fingered the puny bare flesh on the chest, ‘no meat here to speak of.’
‘Had I only known…’ Katherine drew deeply on her cigarette, ‘I could’ve killed us a robin or a goldfinch or a rare species of woodpecker –fried it up in batter, for a tasty little starter…’
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