‘Probably for the best,’ she murmured.
Forty-one
The penny finally dropped on the short walk over. It wasn’t Wesley’s wife (Wesley didn’t have a wife), it was Pathfinder’s. It was Eileen.
Ted burst into the office just in time to witness an effervescent Leo (his moustache as wayward as an ill-constructed corn dolly) going online – the familiar whistle, the clang, the boink…
‘When I finally track him down,’ he said, pointing at Ted with one accusing hand, hurriedly typing in an address with the other, ‘I am going to swing for him first, then you, straight after.’
‘Is Eileen alright?’ Ted asked – his eyes travelling, ineluctably, towards the cloakroom door (the paintwork around the hinges still detectably shabby), the new mirror beyond it – however – in pristine good order (if fractionally larger). He swallowed hard but maintained a veneer of calm, removing his coat, his scarf, and neatly hanging them on the pegs provided.
He was certain Eileen must be okay. Fundamentally. Wesley was – he frowned, thoughtfully – like a funfair ride; if you agreed to climb on board (if you paid for your ticket and passed all the restrictions regarding age and size), then you were pretty much dutybound to feel a little weak and wobbly by the time you clambered off again at the other side. That was the whole…
But what if…?
No.
I need to believe… (Ted’s thoughts tripped over each other like the pages of an open book blowing in the breeze; like a daydreaming schoolgirl stumbling on a chink in a city pavement.)
I need to believe in someone –
So let it be him
‘Extremely distressed,’ Leo snarled, ‘her face – her neck – all scratched up. Her nails broken. Tearful. And refuses to breathe a word about it to anybody, has offered no convincing…’
The phone began to ring. Ted walked over to answer it, keeping his eyes fixed – all the while – on Leo and the computer.
‘Hello?’
‘I need you,’ Wesley said. ‘Bring me some rope. Heavy rope. At least twenty foot of it, and a box of eggs, and the librarian. Meet me by the flyover.’
He hung up.
Ted slowly replaced the receiver, feeling the strangely unruly burden of this new responsibility – and yet the corresponding lightness of suddenly not giving a shit about anything else or anybody.
I am his sop, he thought.
There
Leo was still frowning at the computer, twitching the mouse around, grumbling. He was patently accessing the Wesley site.
I should say something, Ted thought, but he didn’t. He merely watched on, instead, as the screen went dark, lit up, and the now familiar graphics for the Behindlings Home Page slowly downloaded.
‘Where is she?’
‘At home. Getting ready for work.’
‘Is there anything I can do for her?’
Leo was frowning at the screen and twiddling his moustache.
‘What possible good could you do anybody?’
‘I thought I might…’
‘Think again. It’s currently a police matter.’
Ted’s eyes widened, ‘She called in the police?’
‘Nope. I did. I bumped into Bo earlier, on my way over here. He said he’d seen her conferring with that Wesley character – yesterday – in the library. He said Wesley had a reputation for dalliances with library staff.’
‘That’s just a silly rumour,’ Ted asserted, ‘and Bo of all people should know better.’
Leo glanced up, combatively, and that exact-same moment – as if in retaliation – the computer commenced a quite abominable squealing. He winced. Turned. The screen went black. It went red. It went absolutely haywire.
‘What the fuck’s going on here?’
He fought with it for a minute, then swore, yanked the mouse from its socket and threw it into the air. He swiped it – like a shuttlecock – with the palm of his hand. Made a hit (brought down the details of a Shop To Let display in the forefront of the window with it).
‘That’ll be the virus,’ Ted calmly observed.
‘What?’ Leo turned. ‘You knew there was a virus and you didn’t think to warn me about it?’
Ted did not flinch. He stood his ground.
‘Everybody knew about the virus, Leo,’ he said –
Used the name
Must use the name
– then he tipped his head to one side, his face a mask of determined impunity. ‘I’m needed somewhere,’ he announced, looking on coolly – was there even a glimmer of mockery in that stare? – as Leo bent down to grapple with the plug, then banged his head on the drawer, then swore.
Ted walked to the door, took his jacket and scarf down from the peg, pulled them back on again. ‘What a terrible…’ he paused, turned, caught sight of the short-haired girl – Josephine Bean – rapidly disappearing down a skinny alleyway, the stately arrival of a police car, flashed back to that hollow moment the night before when he’d stood in the same spot and had witnessed Eileen scurrying past in her curious purdah (Arthur crouched down low in Leo’s chair)… and yet… and yet best of all – and most vividly - he saw that pond –
Pond
– in his mind’s eye; that floating pond; that exquisite unlikelihood of weed and water and fish and air…
‘What an unbelievable fuck up, eh?’ he sighed distractedly, feeling an impious flutter in his belly –
No –
– a capricious tingle (more-like), rapidly succeeded by a voluptuous spasm –
Oh God –
Oh Jesus Christ!
I finally belong somewhere
– as he nipped smartly, neatly, through the door.
‘I need you to come with me,’ Hooch informed her; appearing almost from nowhere, grabbing her arm as she stood by the counter, and then steering her – at full speed – out of the Wimpy and onto the High Street.
‘I can’t,’ Jo almost yelped, dashing down her money (he was pinching her, she was struggling to hold two steaming cartons of coffee), ‘I’m waiting…’
‘Doc,’ Hooch said, ‘I know exactly who you’re waiting for.’
They arrived on the pavement in perfect tandem with a police car which was pulling up, with sinuous efficiency, outside the agency (Jo thought she could see the agent inside, newly arrived; he hadn’t been there five minutes before – she’d checked – and another man, a short man with a mad, ginger moustache, sitting at his desk with a face as bright as a matador’s flag).
‘Double shit.’ Hooch swore, espying the police and yanking her a hard, sharp left into a thin nook between two shops. This unsalubrious alley smelled of piss and sulphur. It contained several rubbish bins and quantities of litter.
‘The fucking police are everywhere in this town.’
He let go of her arm and ripped off his hat (in such a way – with such gusto, such aplomb – that she wouldn’t have been surprised if a trained white dove had been left sitting there, its pink feet poignantly skedaddling on his waxy pate). He struggled to catch his breath.
‘I’ve had enough of you,’ he finally said.
Jo smiled. She thought he must be kidding.
‘And before you…’ he held up his hand, ‘before you do all of this blah blah blah…’ (he waved the hand around, dismissively), ‘I know exactly who you are and why you’re here.’
Josephine’s fingers tightened around her paper coffee cartons, but she didn’t utter a word, she just waited, benignly, for some kind of explanation.
‘The Turpin girl…’ Hooch continued (fully intent upon providing her with one), ‘rumour has it that you slept with her father. You were still a schoolgirl. He was the local headmaster…’ Hooch sounded unbelievably bored by the facts he was disclosing, ‘but you weren’t terribly discreet, were you? Or careful, for that matter. You got yourself pregnant. Katherine helped you to get rid of it – presumably to try and salvage what remained of her dad’s career. Your family became involved. Your three hulking brothe
rs… and whatever they did…’ he ruminated on this fact for a moment, ‘well, it must’ve been pretty, bloody persuasive, because everything suddenly got all twisted; what with the graffiti; your comparable hair colours – Katherine’s bad reputation…’
He shrugged, phlegmatically, ‘Somewhere along the line she got well and truly shafted, while you, on the other hand, toddled off to Southend and became…’ he grinned, devilishly (well aware of the irony), ‘an Angel of friggin’ Mercy.’
‘Who told you?’
She seemed astonished.
‘The local hack. We did a part-exchange with him. He was very forthcoming.’
‘No.’
She was definite. ‘No,’ she repeated, ‘Bo wouldn’t have had anything to gain from telling…’ She paused for a second, her mind obviously racing, ‘Was it the estate agent?’ she asked. ‘He’s the only real weak link here…’
Hooch shook his head (although patently now registering the agent’s involvement in the affair). ‘Let’s just say that I put two and two together. Stuff I’ve been observing since I first arrived in this town… the contents of a letter which I’d all but forgotten about…’
Jo’s eyes tightened. ‘Which letter?’
Hooch smirked at her disquiet. ‘Something I picked up over a year ago, sent care of a certain lunatic West-Country potter…’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘He had one of those free-standing postboxes at the end of his driveway…’ Hooch grinned as he described it, gleefully outlining the shape of it with his hands, ‘irresistibly easy to pilfer.’
Jo was aghast. ‘You stole my letter to Wesley?’
‘No big deal,’ he shrugged, ‘I always put everything back once I’ve…’ He put his hand into his pocket and withdrew a couple of neatly-folded sheets of paper, ‘once I’ve photocopied.’
Josephine stared down – aghast – as he unfolded them. She saw her letter, her handwriting. Hooch snorted at her expression. ‘Look,’ he sneered, shoving them away again, ‘before you feel the need to go and get all righteous on me, I don’t happen to give a shit about the various permutations of your vulgar little story. I only care about Wesley and his involvement with it.’
‘Well that’s touching.’ She sounded suitably caustic.
Hooch smiled, ‘He’s not a swan, darling. He doesn’t fuck a girl once and then bond for life with her.’
Josephine glanced off, sideways.
‘And even on the understanding that Wes knows or remembers – or gives a damn – about your sordid teenage activities,’ he continued, ‘that wouldn’t be enough. Because you Followed. You fucked up. And your case – no matter what it is, how worthy – will be permanently contaminated by that.’
Hooch placed his hat back onto his head again. Jo stared at it, at the distinctive logo, somewhat blankly, frowning slightly.
‘What does that mean?’ she asked, pointing.
‘He’s a creature of habit, our Wes,’ Hooch talked on, as if he hadn’t heard her. ‘He protects himself with these rituals. They give him a sense of security. They allow him to keep people at a distance, to push people away. I’ve seen it all a thousand times before, believe me.’
As Hooch spoke, Jo rolled her eyes skywards, staring intently into the thin, grey ruler of cloud neatly measuring the two buildings above them.
Hooch wasn’t buying her nonchalance. ‘You probably think it’s your charming personality that’s attracted him,’ he scoffed, ‘or your excruciatingly embarrassing display in the bar yesterday. But it isn’t. It can’t be. There has to be something extra. Or at least he thinks there is, and that’s what’s keeping him interested…’
‘Well there isn’t anything extra,’ she interrupted, defiantly, ‘and even if there were, I’d hardly go out of my way to tell you all about it, would I? Or him, for that matter.’
‘Not good enough,’ Hooch shook his head (delighted to have snapped her out of her complacent posture), ‘because Wesley never interacts with the people Following – and it’s not even because he doesn’t want to, but because he knows that it wouldn’t work; the whole Following system – the institution – would collapse, would lose all its meaning if he did. He knows that. And the Loiters – the Following – the Behindlings, are vital to him. He wouldn’t be viable, he wouldn’t be anything without them.’
Viable
– Jo frowned –
That word again
‘No,’ she eventually spoke out, ‘I’m not swallowing it. Wesley hates the Following. You’re totally deluded if you think otherwise.’
Hooch stared at her, in silence, for a short duration, then he continued on talking, as if what she’d just said had barely registered with him. ‘I’d’ve guessed,’ he mused thoughtfully, ‘on first glance – obviously – that you were working on behalf of local industry. But it doesn’t make sense. You’ve got environmental interests, so they wouldn’t touch you with a…’
Josephine snorted, under her breath, looked up into the air again. This did niggle him.
‘What’s so amusing?’
‘For all you know,’ she told him, ‘that might make me exactly the kind of person they’d want on side.’
‘Bollocks.’
He wasn’t swallowing it. But she expanded this idea, nevertheless, in a blatant attempt to provoke him, ‘For all you know, they might’ve offered me some kind of humanitarian incentive to trail Wesley around. Or maybe… maybe they thought my reputation as a local Mata Hari might work as a cunning smoke-screen to veil over some fantastically audacious plot they’re hatching… or… or perhaps they agreed to make some fundamental environmental concessions if I agreed to help them out with a little bit of harmless surveillance activity, or to fund a worthwhile… a… a pamphlet on The Pill or Cystitis or some other criminally under-publicised feminine health issue…’
Hooch was unimpressed. ‘Who do you think you are?’ he asked dourly. ‘The Joan of Arc of the fucking Uterus?’
She laughed out loud at this. An anxious laugh. He was too close for comfort. He was too close by half.
‘You must be very proud,’ he said, ‘to have made that difficult transition from local ride to local saviour.’
Jo gazed over his shoulder, her face hardening. ‘I’m meant to be meeting Doc,’ she muttered.
‘There’s something clever about you,’ Hooch whispered back, ‘and that’s precisely why I want you out of here.’
Her eyeline shifted.
‘I want you gone,’ he said (in case she remained in any doubt about what he’d meant the first time).
She shook her head, confusedly. ‘I really must be missing something,’ she murmured, ‘are you actually threatening me, Hooch? Or are you threatened by me? D’you think I’ve got too close to Wesley or to the big prize money? D’you think I might try and steal them both away?’
Hooch adjusted his glasses on his long, wide nose. They slid down again, immediately. ‘The Loiter isn’t an issue,’ he announced calmly, ‘the Loiter’s old news. It’s a done deal already.’
‘How?’
He shrugged.
She stared at him; his long face, his dolorous expression, his unbelievable aura of insufferable complacency. ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘You can believe what you like,’ he grimaced, ‘I don’t care what you believe.’
‘Then why haven’t you claimed it, yet?’ she persisted. ‘Why hasn’t there been any fuss?’
‘There are some things,’ he placed his hat back onto his head then calmly reached out his hand and took one of the coffees from her, gently prising the lid open with his thumb, ‘far more important than prizes, Bean. That’s something you don’t yet seem to have grasped about this whole situation. We were Following long before this competition ever began, and we’ll be Following for a long time after. It’s a long-term investment. We’re in this for the long haul.’
Jo wasn’t entirely satisfied with his answer, but before she could puzzle it out, he’d suddenly turned the
tables on her.
‘Tell me,’ he asked (taking a careful sip of his coffee, his glasses partially steaming up), ‘what kind of person d’you think you are?’
Jo was unimpressed by this question. It was plainly pure verbiage. Bored she fired it straight back at him.
‘What kind of person do you think I am, Hooch?’
‘I think,’ Hooch leaned back against the opposite wall, unmoved by her hostility, ‘I think you’re a fundamentally decent girl. And responsible. You obviously commit to things. You’re cunning. You don’t give up easily…’
He paused, took another sip of his coffee, pointedly ignoring her look of astonishment. ‘I definitely think you’re the kind of person,’ he continued, ‘who doesn’t like the idea of somebody else taking the rap for her.’
‘Why would you think that?’ Jo’s lips suddenly twisted, ‘since – according to you – I famously did once let somebody else take the rap for me?’
‘I think that,’ he replied calmly, ‘because of what happened in the bar yesterday.’
‘Pardon?’ Jo was having none of it. ‘My excruciatingly embarrassing display, if I recall your words correctly.’
She automatically placed her free hand onto the arm of her coat – underneath which the four stinging cuts lay – as if somehow hoping to defend her wounds from his cruel accusations of insincerity.
Hooch watched this movement. It was thoroughly instinctive. It reminded him of the way Wesley moved. The way he touched his cheek sometimes, or brought his good hand across his belly to caress his fingerless stump.
‘I’m pretty certain that the Turpin girl won’t thank you for sticking your oar in around here again,’ he said, moving on swiftly, ‘whatever your motivations are. Because the more fuss you cause – the more attention you draw to yourself – the more likely you are to stir up all those old…’ he paused, ruminatively, ‘those old complications.
‘And let’s face it,’ he continued, ‘that kind of scandal never really dies away in this kind of place, does it? The graffiti’s still there, still fresh, after all this time, which means that somebody in this town is still heartily committed to the whole affair.’
Behindlings Page 42