‘No lights,’ the doctor instructed, dumping Arthur’s bag with a grunt and pointing to the swivel chair, ‘put him down on that. Do you have a bathroom, a secure room? Anything approaching?’
Ted pointed, ‘But it isn’t very…’
The doctor indicated towards the front door, ‘I want you to lock it and stand guard. And you…’ he nodded to Arthur, ‘help me push him out into the back space.’
Arthur did as he was instructed. Wesley sat slackly on the chair, meanwhile, emitting a curious whistling sound – as if communicating in whale – while they struggled to shove him. The chair’s wheels kept buckling. He almost fell off and tried to stand. The doctor pushed him back down again, a fraction aggressively, Arthur felt – no finesse – Arthur hated doctors. They were all fucking Luddites.
Once they’d found their way into it, the small bathroom did indeed seem exceptionally cramped. Smelled of… (Arthur sneezed. He was echoed, in kind, by Wesley)… of wax. The doctor had a torch in his pocket. He took it out and turned it on. He shone it into Wesley’s face. Wesley closed his eyes.
‘Owwwwww,’ he groaned, abandoning all pretensions to bravery.
‘Open your eyes,’ the doctor said.
Wesley just smiled.
‘You need to help me, Wesley, to help yourself,’ the doctor yapped.
Over by the front door, meanwhile, Art noticed how –
Oh come on
– greasy-locks was trying to persuade Ted (through the window and by a series of intimidating mimes) that he should open up. Ted was at the point of yielding when Art swung rapidly past him to check on his bag. The buckles were all secure, but he still wasn’t…
‘Journalist?’ he muttered, keeping his head down.
‘Uh, yes,’ Ted said, nodding, smiling bravely at Bo, trying to look obliging.
‘Hand the keys over,’ Arthur straightened up. He tried his best to look officious. To look menacing.
This small charade had little effect, however, since Bo had already been distracted by a second man at the window who was mouthing the words, ‘My case… he’s got my…’
‘Go keep an eye on Wesley,’ Art said.
Bo was now engaging in conversation with this second man. A woman joined the fray. She seemed equally fascinated by what he was saying.
‘I don’t know if Wesley mentioned,’ Ted murmured as he made his way haltingly over to the back room, ‘but he did say you might take a look at my…’
He pointed, limply –
Computer
The woman was now indicating to Arthur that he should unlock the door. She was very pushy. Arthur recognised her from the bar as the infernally opinionated blabbermouth who’d been bending the local girl’s ear – Bitch
‘Not now, obviously,’ Ted continued, ‘but maybe…’
He stopped abruptly.
‘Oh.’
Art glanced over his shoulder, ‘What’s up?’
Ted was frowning back at him, through the half-light. The bossy woman was now knocking on the glass, very emphatically.
‘I’m afraid the doctor’s locked the door,’ Ted announced.
‘You locked the door,’ Art answered, ‘and I’m glad you did. This woman’s a bloody menace.’
‘Her name’s Anna,’ Ted mumbled, ‘and she’s a plain clothes police officer.’
‘Balls,’ Art turned back to inspect her properly. She’d taken out her wallet and was holding up her badge.
‘… although for what it’s worth I actually meant the bathroom door,’ Ted tentatively continued.
‘Huh?’
Arthur wasn’t concentrating.
‘I said the doctor’s locked himself in with Wesley. I just heard the catch slip…’ Ted tried the handle. It was definitely locked.
‘What?’ Art was befuddled. He turned back around again. Ted had his ear pressed to the crack.
‘and whatever’s going on in there, it doesn’t sound… well not… not medical… more…’ Art jogged over, tried the handle, pushed the door, swore.
‘more like a kind of water torture,’ Ted finished up.
Art put his own ear to the doorframe.
Yes indeed
Something…
Something distinctly liquid…
The policewoman was now knocking so loudly that he could barely make out the words… but what he could hear sounded suspiciously…
Phlebas? What’s that all about, huh?
(Water splashing)
Huh?… The… stupid cat poems. I know exactly what you’re playing at…
(More water)
Are… hearing me, you slippery little…
(Still more water)
‘How could we be so stupid?’ Arthur yelled, and kicked the door in fury, then looked down at the offending boot, slightly shocked –
Did I just say that?
Out loud?
Did I just…
He spun around. ‘We need to get inside there, and quick,’ he said, ‘that guy’s obviously some kind of maniac.’
Ted nodded – but nervously – as if Arthur himself might just as easily be the one worth worrying about. He stood awaiting instructions, though, perfectly obligingly.
Arthur was inspecting the handle. He tested it again with his hand. His mind was turning –
If this man…
If he…
It’ll save me the…
‘We’ll have to knock it down,’ he announced, ‘go and let the cop in.’
He threw the keys to Ted. Ted missed the catch. Arthur took a few steps back and braced himself. Ted picked up the keys and ran. ‘You could always try…’ he called.
Arthur threw himself, bodily – shoulder first – against the doorframe. The door shook.
‘… reasoning with him,’ Ted concluded, wincing in tandem with the wood’s shuddering. He unlocked the front door and Anna charged in, dragging another straggler behind her but slamming it – unceremoniously – in Bo’s face.
‘This man has had his case stolen,’ she announced. ‘Where’s the light?’
She found the light switch and turned it on just in time to see Arthur flinging himself against the door for a second time. It shook again, but not very impressively.
‘Police!’ he gasped, trying to put the impostor on his mettle.
‘Don’t be yelling that,’ Anna calmly interrupted, walking over, ‘it’s not your place.’
Arthur turned and gave her a look of critical incomprehension.
‘The doctor’s got Wesley locked in the back,’ Ted jumped in, ‘we think he’s…’.
‘It wasn’t one of these two,’ the new man clarified (over the babble), ‘but a tiny, funny-looking little chap…’
A loud crash resounded inside the small room. A subsequent kerfuffle (rather drawn out) sounding not unlike a fist fight interspersed with successive shards of glass falling.
Ted covered his mouth with his hand. ‘Not the mirror,’ he whispered.
‘Stand back,’ the officer instructed. Arthur was barely out of the way before she’d karate kicked the door open (it shuddered defiantly in its frame, but remained aligned) and entered. Shit
Wesley stood, his hair, face and chest dripping wet – eyebrows raised slightly – over by the toilet cubicle, brown tape looped around his wrists and covering his mouth. The doctor was crushed behind the door, bent over the sink, his forehead bleeding (the swivel chair pinning him into an uneasy submission).
‘I want to charge this man with assault,’ he gurgled in a worryingly high-pitched voice, pointing over towards Wesley.
‘I want this man charged with theft,’ the second stranger announced, pushing his arm around the door and pulling his briefcase out of the fray.
The officer yanked off Wesley’s mouth tape, ‘Well we’re certainly keeping very busy tonight, aren’t we, sir?’
Wesley drew a deep breath.
She was standing very close to him.
Arthur could’ve sworn –
Oh God forbid
– that some kind of subterranean sexual frisson passed between them.
Wesley turned to Arthur. ‘Never the shoulder, Art,’ he panted informatively, trying to flick some of the water from his eyes, ‘always the foot…’ he tiredly re-enacted the relevant manoeuvre, ‘and as near-as-dammit to the lock.’
The policewoman pulled the tape from his wrists as Arthur watched on. Ted continued staring at the doctor as if still unable to entirely comprehend his shattered credibility. The doctor –apparently in no hurry to make any kind of escape –was gazing into the only remaining piece of mirror still hanging above the sink –a tiny oblong –hungrily exploring the depth and extent of the wound to his forehead.
‘I just don’t understand…’ Ted said (suddenly almost angry), ‘why you’d tape up his mouth if all you wanted was answers…’
Wesley smiled at Ted’s indignance. ‘This is Furby, Ted,’ he explained gently, pulling some extraneous tape adhesive from around his lips, ‘he’s my greatest fan. He gave me…’ he pulled back his sleeve –matter-of-factly –to reveal the vicious scar from what looked like a long stab wound to his left forearm, ‘this little beauty while I was still sleeping, Christmas morning, two years ago, and this…’ he pulled back his shirt collar to reveal a shorter less specific area of scarring across the top of his right shoulder, ‘last February when he ran me down on a stolen moped. He isn’t really interested in answers. He’s much more interested in…’ he chuckled, almost fondly, ‘in celebrating the whole process of asking.’
Ted frowned. He didn’t understand why it was that Wesley was being so flippant. Shouldn’t he at least be angry –or indignant –or… or scared?
Wes pointed towards the mirror, weakly, ‘Seven long years… huh?’ He rubbed his hands over his face, slicked back his wet hair, grinned.
‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist that you accompany…’ the female officer interrupted him (as further back-up started arriving).
‘And screw me…’ Wesley deadpanned smartly –
He loved the pain
Oh God he loved it
‘if it hasn’t already bloody started.’
Twenty-seven
Her face was now so well acquainted with the tiles at the base of the toilet that the shallow dip – the path, the furrow, the indentation – between the particular two upon which she’d rested her heavy head had etched a matching ridge into the soft flesh of her cheek. Even her lower lip had a special… a brief and tender little pucker in it.
Katherine gently ran her thumb across this fault-line – this rift – as she gazed – red-eyed – at her reflection in the mirror. Her bath was running –
Hot
Steaming
– and the mirror was gradually condensing over. She coughed, clutched at her head, shivered –
That’s no bad thing, either
– and turned away.
In the roar of the water she could just about decipher the softest –
Knocking, was it?
– pounding.
A fault with the plumbing? A kink in the boiler? Her heart racing? Her blood pumping? The early warning signs of a migraine?
She slowly rotated her head on her shoulders – so stiff it made a sound like a pepper grinder – then took off her apricot dress (the burn on her lap made her tut, miserably), her vests, her shift, her bra and dropped them all onto the floor. She stood there in her knickers, pushing a heavy hand through her knotted hair. She rubbed her eyes and suddenly remembered that her essential bath oil –
Six sweet drops
Lavender
– was still sitting on her bedside table, next to her oil-burner.
She staggered to the door, shoved back the bolt and yanked it open; a plume of hot, misty air burst out ahead of her, almost entirely enveloping the person standing there.
Katherine screamed.
Even as she screamed she realised that she wasn’t really the screaming kind. Her voice was too low. She sounded like a drag queen who’d just broken a false nail five minutes before a big show. It made her head hurt, her throat, tensed the muscles in her neck; and valuable seconds were all but throttled inside this vile and piercing clamour.
But –
Aw, heck
– it was too late to take it back.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Eileen gasped – pushing herself up hard against the opposite wall, utterly panicked (almost tripping over a broken coffee percolator Katherine had casually stored down there) – ‘but the front door was… and I wanted… I’ve come about… Wesley said…’ She was staring – round-eyed, aghast – at Katherine’s breasts.
Katherine made no effort to cover herself up. She stood tall and puffy-eyed in just her knickers and her scratches.
‘Wesley isn’t here,’ she put her hand to her throat, scowling, ‘but it’s open fucking house in this place today, so you just come right in – stroll through my front door – swan about in my hallway – kick my old percolator – gaze at my tits like they’re out on display in a tabloid fucking newspaper. You do just as you like, okay?’
Eileen shifted her stare. Her eyes were almost teary. She was shaking slightly.
‘I came about the… the bird,’ she murmured –
Not… Not… Not…
Katherine continued to scowl at her. ‘It’s in the kitchen,’ she pointed – slightly mystified, ‘through there.’
Eileen followed the direction of Katherine’s finger with her dreamy blue eyes –
‘Is it alright if I just…?’
She ducked her head, apologetically.
‘Sure.’ Katherine grabbed a towel and wrapped it around her as Eileen scurried on ahead. She was wearing a pair of tan, stretch-fabric ski-pants, some little brown boots, a caramel-coloured winter coat with a silk scarf tied around her head. The scarf was pink with tiny, beautifully-painted cowrie-shells and whelk-shells and sting-winkles on it.
‘I like your scarf,’ Katherine growled, still finding some difficulty in placing one foot in front of the other.
‘Thank you.’ Eileen smoothed a nervous hand over it as she disappeared into the kitchen.
When Katherine re-entered this room herself, everything seemed very bright to her. She tried to adjust her eyes, blinked a few times. The whole area was still awash in feathers. Wesley’s rucksack sat in the corner. It was very hot – smelled of booze and sweat and cigarettes.
‘So he invited you to dinner?’ Katherine croaked, trying not to see the room the way Eileen was seeing it, but grabbing a broom from behind the door and circling the table, leaning heavily on it. She bent down – almost lost her towel, nearly toppled right over – and picked up the heron’s wings; hanging the one still on its wire over the back of the chair, placing the other onto the seat.
Eileen was looking around her, confusedly. She was staring at the wings, frowning at the feathers.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said, ‘where is he?’
She gazed over towards the chinchilla’s cage, almost as though half-expecting to see the wild bird crammed in there.
‘The oven,’ Katherine indicated with her head (winced), ‘it’s been cooking for just over an hour.’
Eileen still didn’t seem to understand, so she pointed towards the bird’s head, still lying – gold-green-eyed, harpoon-beaked – on the table. Wesley’s vicious bone-handled hunting knife lay just beyond it.
Eileen’s scarf fell back from her face. Her mouth dropped open. She put up her hand to try and disguise her astonishment.
‘Oh my God,’ Katherine murmured, ‘how did you scratch…’
And then – hard upon it – ‘Oh fuck, my bath.’
She careered off, unsteadily, down the corridor.
When she finally got there the water was almost running over. She turned off the tap, reached down for the plug, released it, discovered – with a gurgle of rage and a shudder – that the tap had run cold. The bath was lukewarm.
She let it drain –
S
crew the bloody environment
– cursing.
When she returned to the kitchen, pulling on her clothes again –catching her fingers in her clasps –noisily haranguing her ineffectual water-heating system; the librarian, the chief librarian: her brown boots, her shell scarf, her ski-pants, her scratches, her look of gently haunted bemusement, had all miraculously evaporated.
Along with –Katherine harrumphed so violently that a single, thin apricot strap fell charmingly from her shoulder –Wesley’s best knife, and that poor, that old, that undeniably beautiful but exceedingly dead heron’s head.
Twenty-eight
Doc held up his hands to silence the others.
‘Furby’s back,’ he announced (to general consternation), ‘and there’s been an almighty rumpus. Wesley got punched out in a bar by a local man. The girl –Josephine Bean –stepped in and saved him; breaching pretty much every notable Law of Following in the process, God Bless her. Then immediately after, Michael Furby –posing as a doctor –locked Wesley inside a toilet cubicle, gagged him, bound him, and tried to drown him in the pan.’
Doc’s initial words were greeted by a shocked –if appreciative –silence, but by the time he’d finished, derisory snorts and hoots were sounding from all quarters. Ale had been drunk (in prodigious quantities. Even the terrier had partaken –his blood-sugar levels having been soberly calculated, well prior). A game of trumps was still in progress.
‘I’m serious,’ Doc hotly defended his bulletin, ‘the shit’s really hit the fan out there. Wesley smashed Furby into a bathroom mirror –my source tells me that they were in the toilets out the back of the estate agency –gave him thirteen stitches in his forehead, apparently, and now he’s fully intent on pressing charges.’
Hands of cards were placed down onto the table. Shoes had been winning. He placed his hand down last of all.
‘What happened with the girl?’ he asked –he had a special interest in the girl; the nurse. ‘How exactly did she save him?’
At this point Herbie arrived back from the urinal, his white stick tapping firmly into legs and tiles and tables, his free hand still fiddling with his fly.
Behindlings Page 28