by Gerald Wixey
Don’t look at me like that, you’re the youngest, you carry the bread home.
My dream moved onto Wyn, how he’d stuck his life back together so many times. Twenty years ago when he got a glass pushed into his face. It wasn’t the end of the world, although it was the end for Wyn and Shirley. Wyn sat amongst us and smoothed talked and whispered with all the rhythm of a diesel engine, idling away in the heavy morning frost.
*****
The smell of last night’s beer and tobacco smoke battled with the polish applied to the cleaners mop. Slowly, after much buffing and huffing and against all odds, the polish took over and eventually overran last night’s staleness. Just like the Russians at Stalingrad I thought. Then I smiled – I enjoyed military analogies. I stared around the table; Harry had a glass of whisky.
Why not? After all it’s much too early for beer.
Stuart sat, elbows on the table, he glanced my way and smiled,
‘Here we are then.’
Harry barked, ‘What are you having?’
I shook my head, ‘Clear head Harry.’
I went through the order of things, ending up with a warning.
‘Whatever happens we must remain in control, try to stay calm. Stick together and see this through.’
‘I can’t see why you can’t just bubble him. Tell the police who he is and be done with it.’ Stuart stated the obvious with the obvious bad taste this left in his mouth. I mean, who would want to talk to… them?
Stuart felt that his father’s reluctance was based on the age old tenet of not grassing someone up. But it had nothing to do with that noble principle. The fact was, we had as much to lose as Teddy. Things from our collective past that just the three of us knew about. Events that could still mean long jail sentences. I shook my head and looked back at the other two.
‘We’re in need of some sound legal advice.’ I looked Wyn’s way.
Harry’s eyes flashed towards me, ‘Any lawyer that knows Wyn, will only be familiar with paternity and bankruptcy cases.’
Although under normal circumstances that would be worthy of a laugh, this morning we looked impassively down at the table. I stared at Harry – his temper was cause for concern. Discretion the order of the day.
Harry’s eyes came up slowly; he stared at me… and smiled.
Peggy made the coffee and a pile of sandwiches, placed them on the table, glanced at Harry and said. ‘It’s all too cloak and dagger for me, why do you need a solicitor?’
Harry grabbed a handful of sandwiches, talked through a mouthful of bread. ‘We don’t yet, but who knows what might come out if Teddy gets arrested or shoots his mouth off.’
Peggy stared at me, glanced across to Stuart, then back to me. Then she turned and wheeled out, leaving me wondering what she actually knew about her husband.
Wyn stared at me, Harry’s physical twin, identical except in their characters. One TNT explosive, the other a calm rather refined man not given to cursing or drinking. His face reflected pious corruption somehow I thought. Old fashioned manners, serious expression, matinee idol’s moustache. Never beaten, plenty of reversals – but he always won the war. Two brothers, a formidable pairing… and Stuart of course.
Harry said, ‘Well – when do we see your legal man?’
‘Woman.’ Wyn glanced down at his watch, Cartier he would surely tell anyone prepared to listen. I knew it to be a good copy.
‘Woman?’
Wyn pulled his packet of cigars out, gazed at his silver Colibri lighter. I smiled, he knew how to get under his younger brother’s skin all right. Harry tried hard, but the heaving, racehorse sized breaths rasping across the table suggested imminent explosion
Harry drummed the table with his stubby fingers, ‘Only you could have got a woman.’ He leaned across towards Wyn, ‘One of your harem I suppose?’
‘She’s thirty one years younger than me and a top class lawyer. She’s the best… simple as that.’ Wyn held Harry’s blistering stare and smiled back, ‘As Patrick’s just found out’
Library silence again.
Unimpressed, Harry lit another cigarette, threw the empty packet on the fire, smoke punched out of his mouth as he whispered, ‘A man with a speech impediment and just one eye in the middle of his forehead could have got Patrick out. What the big deal?’
*****
My phone burst into the silence of the office, with all the suddenness of a brick through a plate glass window.
‘We need to talk.’
Mably’s voice, singing Stuart’s hymn. I shook my head, it was as if he’d been put up to ask that question by my over inquisitive colleague. ‘Can you come up – sooner rather than later?’
The thumb and index finger of my free hand began to massage my temples. I sighed and stared frantically around the desk for my cigarettes.
‘Oh God.’
‘What’s up?’
‘Lost my cigarettes, that’s all.’ Lost my fags and losing my mind. I shook my head, Stuart mouthed, are you all right? I shook my head again and tried to concentrate, whispered down the phone. ‘What do you want David?’
He repeated his original question, ‘Can you come up here please?’
I felt like the fly listening to the persuasive spider, my neck constricted and my heart thrashed wildly too, I’d dreaded this moment. Attempts to sound normal as my voice croaked and broke. ‘Give me an hour or so. Who is it and how long has he, or she been buried there?’
I imagined Mably smiling, he never bothered to answer my question. His agenda and he was going to stick to it. ‘Pathologist needs a couple of days, but he said the carotid artery might have been severed.’
I groaned, well that’s no surprise, a knife carried in the left hand, a violent meeting between a thugs throat and a left handed assailant. A natural enough meeting place and I remember the noise of the impact. Not like an ostrich egg being punched by a steam hammer. A crushing, split second of impact as a skull is fractured. Just the quiet slicing of a sharp knife through soft flesh, no noise at all. Except for the gurgling a split second later and the screaming noise that only lasted a few seconds. How could I forget? It woke me every night for the next ten years. So frightened that I spent those years living in Harry’s pub, under his wing and happy to remain there.
‘Jack, Jack wakey, wakey.’
I shook my head, ‘Sorry – you were saying.’
‘In the jacket pocket, a court summons.’
I grabbed the table, this just couldn’t be. I’d told Wyn to empty the pockets. He always insisted that he did. Always assured me that he’d cleaned the pockets out. I tried to stop my head from spinning like a top and said, ‘Local man?’
Mably said, ‘The summons was from Clerkenwell Magistrates Court.’ He had more, it was obvious that he had a rabbit and like any top performer he wanted his timing to be spot on. I waited and waited, my heartbeat thumped away in my throat somewhere – tell me.
‘The date was the seventeenth of January – the day before that fracas down by the cottage where you lived. How’s that for a coincidence?’
I felt Mably was about to take a bow, but like a top class magician, he had another rabbit to produce. ‘Forensics have got it now, they should be able to make the rest of the letter out and soon I hope. Oh by the way, he had a gun on him and he was wearing the strongest pair of glasses I’ve ever seen.’
I could see Mably now, standing up, take a step towards his audience and showing them the palms of his hands. Inviting applause from his dumbstruck audience of one.
‘All these bodies all of a sudden, all of these rumours.’ Mably laughed, ‘All those headlines for you – how’s the circulation.’
I assumed he meant the newspaper; the movement of blood around my own body gave me cause for some concern however. Mably droned away, I struggled to listen.
Mably said, ‘Me and Don are going up to London this week – see what we can find out.
Oh God.
I placed the receiver back in the cradle a
nd my chin went down onto my chest. Stuart came up close, offered me my cigarettes and lighter. I grabbed them like you would a Red Cross parcel in a prison camp. I lit up and took the biggest drag that my already damaged lungs would allow. I held the smoke for a few seconds. Let the smoke out, sat forwards in the chair and took my glasses off, I rubbed my eyes and looked for a way out.
‘Jack – c’mon now. You look dreadful, you need the confessional box and I need to know what’s going on.’
He had his mother’s sensitivities… when he chose to use them that is.
‘Tonight, I’ll tell you the lot. Not in the bar – my place.’
He nodded about time too. Stuart said, ‘What’s a body that’s been buried for years suddenly a problem?’
‘It just might be connected to everything else that going on.’ I could see his glance my way out of the corner of my eye. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve said that I’ll explain everything.’
*****
Stuart’s hand shook when I passed the tumbler across and it soon turned from a calm sea of whiskey into breaking waves of good scotch in the glass. His shaking hand only calmed after he’d nailed most of its contents with the desperate swallow of a condemned man. I’d lectured Stuart enough times over the years and the temptation to tell him not to guzzle decent whiskey wasn’t far from my lips. He frowned a touch, the only expression that he got from his father. His father’s scowl, mother’s cheekbones and God knows where the soft, curly, brown hair came from. Some of his braver friends teased him unmercifully that it was a perm. A topic that guaranteed a flash of temper… his father’s son all right.
He leaned forwards, ‘Jesus, I can’t believe some of this.’
‘The way you’ve been acting, it’s you that might end up in trouble … Inspector.’ I raised my eyebrows at him, ‘You have to be more careful. It’s a dangerous game we’re all playing at the moment.’
He shrugged and stared down at the coffee table, eventually and apparently reluctantly, Stuart brought his eyes back to mine. ‘Please – tell me the rest Jack.’
Stuart held my gaze; I sighed and poured some more whiskey. ‘You listen and no more interruptions.’
I had a rapt audience that’s for sure. Stuart leant forward in his chair and never said a word. Just stared at me, smiled and shook his head whenever I mentioned Harry’s name, or Wyn’s come to that. For better or worse, the two major influences on his life, much to Peggy’s constant frustration. She wanted him to play the piano, which he did rather well. Harry wanted him to box or at least play football, again which he did better than well. Wyn only wanted him to be happy. A noble motive, but one tempered by his belief that any degree of happiness always involved the relentless pursuit of anything female.
I pushed the plate of sandwiches across the table, Stuart brought his hands up in a gesture that said enough. He lifted the lid on two bottles of Guinness and poured them. Pushed one my way, I took a sip of Guinness and then a nip of whiskey. Material in front of us to talk the night away.
Teddy - 1980
She stared, grey haired, confused and wild eyed. A puzzled look, like someone strapped into their crashed car, who stared blankly out of the shattered car windscreen at the motorway carnage all around her.
‘Why did you just punch me?’
He watched her swallow hard, stared as she closed her eyes as if that memory had become too painful for her. He’d forgotten about it – well she talked too much, worse than that she talked about Celia. He listened to her rhythmical breathing, he rested his hand on her thigh and she whimpered. He rubbed her thigh with the back of her hand and waited.
‘You’d better go’
‘I don’t think … you hit me. Why did you want Shirley’s address?’
‘Why did you hit me?’
‘Shirley Catmore’s into young men these days ….’
He punched her, the nose splintered – old bones are brittle I suppose.
He watched as she screamed and writhed – the blood bursting over the caravan door. She staggered towards the little bathroom.
He forced her down and bent her over the small bath, he didn’t want blood all over him after all. He hadn’t been that aroused for years. Fucked her from behind as she whimpered and cried and moaned – with pain. He pulled her hair and yanked her head violently forcing her whole body around. He could see her wild goggle-eyed stare and it made him come straight away. Teddy caught hold of her hair again and rammed her chin against the hard edge. Eased himself out, stood up and stared down at her. She started to retch into the bath, a splattering, stomach voiding vomit. He kicked her in the ribs.
Did he shut the caravan door?
When he walked towards his car the crows squealed, murderer … he laughed at them and pointed their way, what do you know? He looked down at his bruised knuckle and wondered.
How did that happen?
*****
‘Teddy?’
He didn’t know what to say. He went to put the phone down, but the blood on his hand had congealed and phone stuck to the palm of his hand.
‘What’s funny? Teddy, Teddy are you all right?’
He grunted something down the phone.
‘How are you – I’ve thought about you a lot today.’
He couldn’t speak, all these things to say. Shirley, I think you ought to know, I’m a murderer and I’m stood in a phone box, bathed in blood. He’s been inside my head and I always believed he’d never escape from the prison of my mind… but he got out. The cold damp recess of my mind, cold and damp like a crypt. It’s made me a God, what am I? Human? No, a God and every depravity is vindicated when you’re a God. No rules anymore, just dead bodies.
‘Teddy, what have you been up to?’
‘Nothing, this and that. Can I see you? Let’s get away for a few days – I love you.’
19
Jack -1945
Peace, a time to convalesce and eventually, recuperation. That sounds an easy enough concept for the road to a complete recovery. Perhaps I got the choice of my nursing care wrong. Instead of quiet country walks, listening to the radio, or reading something heavy, I preferred the snake oil salesman’s remedy. Treating myself with strong beer in the bar of the Bear hotel. Tempering my mood like a lump of wrought iron under a blacksmith’s hammer. Despite this crude and not especially effective treatment, I continued to medicate myself this way.
Forever terrified of the darkness, every time my head touched the pillow the same image battered its way inside my head. The picture of burly policeman unable to open a door because of a pile of well toasted bodies the other side. Melted skin stretched across cheekbones, insides well done, eyes popping out like agitated champagne corks. Locked into a crucible by the simplest of acts. By turning a door key, I had not only frazzled my mind, it had torched four men into melted, unrecognisable blob on the floor of an office.
A lifetime of constant pursuit stretched in front of me. Forever harried and pursued by a wolf pack of submarines. All out there somewhere, looking for me, a straggling, drifting merchant ship. Frantically semaphoring for a battleship to come alongside and guide me back to the safety of convoy.
I never made the connection to begin with. I thought the relaxed state was brought upon by the result of a couple of hours in the pub. It wasn’t, instead the warm afternoon September sun brought relief. Safe in arms of a deckchair and the massaging reassurance that the sun on my face brought me. Daylight had become my harbour, sunshine the key to avoiding the nightmares that crashed into my head as I tried to sleep. But even that was illusory, sunshine helped, it took a few days to realise that my main prop had become Harry. A praetorian guardsman, my own sentinel, a battleship and I followed him relentlessly.
Sat in the deck chair watching Harry. Gardening had become his therapy. One handed gardening to begin with. When the stitches were removed, he tended and nurtured and dug. Burying his memories while I tried to sluice and rinse and flush mine away. His therapy seemed to work better, despite his temper g
oing off like a hair triggered pistol most of the time. But that was pretty much normal for him anyway. I didn’t expect a transformation as grand as turning a urinal into the Chevy fountain for instance.
The point was, unlike me, he hadn’t changed much. Except for the fact that he’d taken up gardening. And I sat in the sun and watched him and felt secure. A bobbing merchant ship had its very own battleship support. I watched him take up his new hobby, just like I watched him box. He pursued the two with completely different approaches. For a man who had a temper, he boxed like the most philosophical of philosophers. A calm air of unconcern as he kept himself side on, taking a punch without alarm and dishing out his formidable armoury with a degree of amusement. Whispering into his opponent’s ear in clinches like he was offering sound advice to a wayward friend.
I never knew how his boxing had started, his gardening developed by chance. He’d found all of the garden tools in the garage and started digging. You would have thought that he’d done enough shovelling in his working life. Perhaps that’s why he did his gardening like he had gout, or toothache. He groaned and sighed, dug and hoed. No apparent pleasure, no obvious knowledge either.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked him.
He leant on his hoe and stared at me, rather like a pike-man watches the retreat of a defeated foe. No obvious pleasure, just relief and maybe surprise that another day would dawn tomorrow.
‘Dunno.’ Harry shook his head, ‘Pointless asking you.’
A reference to my city upbringing I guessed.