4 Bones Sleeping (Small Town Trilogy)

by Gerald Wixey

  My breathing eased a touch, enough for me to shrug naturally enough. I shrugged, ‘I didn’t see him, a stranger according to the Demon Barber.’

  Saved by Stuart’s quick thinking and not a lie either. I no longer felt like a Tory cabinet minister, caught in a public toilet with a small boy. Mably shuffled his sparse notes, ran his finger around the notes until he found the name, he brought his eyes up to me. Throughout this brief interview he never looked Stuart’s way once. As though he never existed. Mably sat back and began to tap a pencil against his beautifully white and even teeth.

  Finally he said, ‘I’d have liked to get it all tied up tonight and get off home. But it’s pretty pointless until forensic have finished down there. You saw her?’

  I shook my head, too scared to cross the threshold. Mably grudgingly asked Stuart the same question.

  He shrugged, ‘It was just a stinking, smelly, congealed mess. It didn’t look like a person.’

  We spent ten minutes writing our statements, the desk sergeant came through with three coffees and to collect the statements at the same time. He never acknowledged me, gave Stuart a withering glare and said, ‘Beat anyone up lately?’

  Mably stood and pointed his sergeant towards the door. ‘All these things going on.’ He hissed, ‘We’ve had our legal advice – any forensic tie up and I can’t believe that he won’t be back in here and we’ll charge him.’

  Charge Patrick.

  He threw me completely with this information.

  I felt Stuart tense alongside me, ‘There won’t be any forensic connection.’

  Mably stared at him.

  And how would you know?

  Stuart smiled at me, then asked the question. ‘Can we go now?’

  A small cloud passed slowly across Mably’s face, blocking the well-being of his sun momentarily. He shook his head, ‘I’ve got more questions for you.’ We sat in silence, eventually Mably said, ‘What’s going on Jack?’

  He shook his head; Mably looked bemused by it all, dispirited, stirring his coffee like a dejected cricket fan watching live coverage of an ashes series from Australia. He looked up and said, ‘Have you ever hit anyone?’

  Where did that come from?

  ‘No!’ I didn’t need to think about that one, ‘No.’

  He glanced over at Stuart, I thought that he considered asking him the same question. But that would only be a waste of a good question. Instead Mably shook his head, ‘This is all a bit of a fuck up.’

  I raised my eyebrows, first time for everything I know, but David Mably swearing? A bit like a middle aged curate suddenly taking up swearing at his aged mother. We sat in silence until he placed his cup carefully back on the desk and said, ‘I’ve had an interesting day. An eventful day, it’s time like this that I wished I smoked.’

  Here it comes.

  ‘What have you found out?’

  ‘Nothing personally, Don’s got his teeth into this one. Anyway, Joseph Lewis, known in the criminal fraternity as Eyeless. Brother of one Teddy Lewis, both thought to have died in a fire. Along with two other men that I now know to be very much alive.’

  He looked down and then pushed a photo copy across the desk my way. The same photo that Harry kept in his scrapbook. The picture of Harry with the southern Area belt held aloft in one gloved hand. His other arm around Wyn, the boxing glove resting on Wyn’s expensive shirt. Both of them grinning from ear to ear, one of Harry’s eyes shut, but he wasn’t winking. Two other pictures, mug shots of Teddy and Eyeless staring at the camera. I stared at the headline and I felt the blood rush up my cheeks.

  Boxer perishes in club fire

  Written by Michael Parlane, I couldn’t take my eyes away from the photograph of Harry and Wyn, arms wrapped around one another. Stood in the middle of a boxing ring. Wyn’s sartorial sophistication catching your eye. Bedecked in an astrakhan fur coat, brand new trilby and smiling broadly at the camera. I read on, Light heavyweight boxer Harry Watkins and his brother, Major Wyn Watkins perished in a raging inferno at the Swinging Spoon Nightclub in Piccadilly. Two others died, one of whom is believed to be business man Teddy Lewis.

  I felt Stuart crowding around me, his words in my ear, ‘We’ve got that photo at home… fucking hell. You never told me that …’

  I never told you what – that they were both killed in a fire?

  I had left that one small fact out of my account the other night.

  Mably took a deep breath, rubbed his eyes, then brought them up to mine. The appearance and demeanour of a teacher suddenly having to confront a model student’s sudden aberration. He shook his head, ‘Where do we go from here?’

  Mably picked the offending pictures up, inverted and then slapped them back onto the desk, sighed and said. ‘She’s smart – that young girl.’ He stared hard at me, canted his head and whispered, ‘The solicitor I mean, I think the three of you might need her services.’

  ‘We’ve done nothing wrong.’

  Mably jabbed his finger down at the photograph, ‘No doubt about who those two are. And funnily enough, now they’ve got different names. Major Watkins?’ Mably sneered my way, ‘He’s never been near the army for a start.’

  My vow of silence lasted seconds, ‘Fighter’s names – they all use nom de plumes.’

  ‘No Jack – funnily enough, you’re the only one that exists.’ Repeating himself now, ‘The other two haven’t even got National Insurance numbers – they don’t exist.’

  I stared at the table, you didn’t need National Insurance numbers back then to open a bank account. Wyn probably had a dozen different bank accounts, many with different names to them I shouldn’t wonder. Neither Harry nor Wyn ever needed a doctor and they were both self-employed. No tax or national insurance to worry about.

  I stood up, ‘I’m going.’

  ‘I don’t think so Jack.’ Mably gestured towards my recently vacated chair, ‘Sit down. You’ve all done something wrong… although I haven’t figured out what it is yet.’ He squinted at me. ‘I missed something didn’t I?’

  I frowned back.

  ‘Down at the old mill.’

  ‘I don’t think so, even if you did, it wouldn’t look good something coming to light thirty five years later.’

  I shouldn’t have said that, did it sound like a mild sort of threat? He stared at me and began to tap his teeth again. Finally he said, ‘Please tell me there wasn’t some sort of burial ceremony and you three were all involved? All three of you will be in tomorrow, lots of questions to ask.’

  I stood, rather unsteadily considering I hadn’t had a drink, squeezed Stuart’s shoulder and said, ‘C’mon.’ We walked towards the door, Stuart opened it and I turned and said, ‘Thanks, we’ll talk soon I’m sure.’

  ‘That woman, the dead one, Daphne Miller. She was there when I interviewed you wasn’t she? Now she’s had her head smashed in.’ His mouth turned down and I left him holding the old newspaper headline, as we scurried down the corridor Mably shouted after us, his voice chasing us down the corridor. ‘Don’t leave the country.’

  Teddy - 1980

  ‘I’ve got to go home and tidy a few things up. Will you stay here?’

  She nodded, ‘I’ll stay as long as you want me to, honest, I mean that.’

  He drove back to Sonning in a stupor, his mind all over the place. What is a life? Not one of those dead-beats sleeping in a shop doorway. But even they had more of a life than my stupid daughter. My stupid daughter… it’s so lonely without my stupid daughter.

  ‘Talk to me… Dad, please, you know I can’t talk to her.’

  Say her name… say her fucking name.

  But he couldn’t.

  What had he just done? He burnt his clothes, but kept the photos.

  The photographs, the black girl twenty years ago. Built like a discus thrower. Not the skinny birds that all of the other models looked like. This girl had tits and a spanking arse.

  ‘Do you think I’m too big to be a model?’

  The accent,
rich Caribbean. She saw him excited, taking pictures of her with a fucking hard-on.

  ‘Shall I take my top off?’

  White bra on black – yes.

  White knickers.

  He fucked her in the shoe-box that was his studio.

  Smaller than the prison cell he never talked…

  All that black skin.

  ‘Don’t come in me.’

  He looked for her photographs. It was there somewhere. Never throw any away, Connie always told him that.

  Keep everyone, you never know.

  So he did.

  And all of those of his stupid daughter, it was so lonely without her.

  He heard his wife, creep up to the door and knock gently.

  ‘Berni – Berni, can we talk?’

  ‘No!’

  There was only one woman he wanted to talk to. Only one woman he wanted, only one woman that could save him now. Save him from this latest plunge into the inferno. Shirley would save him.

  He leant against the sink, his chest aching. Sweat pumping out of his forehead. He shut his eyes, clamped them tight. Tears can’t escape from a locked prison cell.

  ‘Berni?’

  Deep breath.

  ‘Just coming.’

  23

  Jack -1946

  We sat around the kitchen table. Wyn glanced at his brother who kept his gaze firmly anchored at the door.

  Here we are then.

  The lights had been flickering all evening, from the stark artificiality to Gothic darkness and back again in a split second. Harry’s crowbar sat in splendid, solitary isolation on the table. His meaty hand hovered close by.

  ‘Was he on his own?’

  I glanced at Wyn, puffed my cheeks out, ‘Far as I could make out.’

  Why was he on his own? A bit like Harry’s crowbar, Eyeless sailed along, a solitary gunboat heading upstream to bump the natives back into line. More than bump, a beating at the very least. But one man? Harry primed and crowbar at the ready, I prepared myself for a brief and probably bloody encounter. My chest tighter than the skin on a snare drum, my sphincter looser than the pyjamas worn by an inmate of Belson.

  Daphne bustled around us, serving our dinner. She leant across me and I stared at the top of her right breast. Through her loose blouse, I could see the top of her bra and just make out the darkness of her nipple against the whiteness of the bra cup. The tension did it, craving to slide my hand inside both blouse and bra. Hold her breast, then fall asleep with my mouth around her nipple.

  All the time Wyn gazed my way and smiled at the same time. Daphne turned away and went back into the kitchen. He leant close and whispered, ‘Do you want some company later – she’ll help you sleep if nothing else.’

  He grinned and then winked. An understanding father offering his favourite son a generous gift. I took my eyes sharply away from him and across to Harry. He had pushed his dinner across and away, untouched.

  You can’t fight on a full stomach.

  Harry huffed and puffed, stood and paced around the room. I half expected him to start shadow boxing. Instead, just the heaving, great intakes of gulped air. He stared, squinting looks from the door to his cigarettes. Cocked his ear like an inquisitive dog, certain that someone will be along soon. I thought Harry may bark, or more likely, at least growl like an angry, suspicious bulldog.

  The lights flickered, once, twice, three and out. Plunged into a world of blackness, a voice from upstairs. ‘It’s dark.’

  ‘Get into bed and go to sleep, I’ll bring you a cup of tea when the power comes back on.’ I imagined Wyn smiling away at the implication. His voice came back my way, ‘Unless you want to take it up to her?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Maybe I would too, then go to sleep with her breasts against my chest. I said it again, ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Listen.’ The dog growled, cocked an ear to the world outside and then spoke to the door. ‘I’m not waiting in here. Let’s walk up the lane.’ Another growl, feral grumbling deep in his throat. Not human, a primitive warning of danger.

  Wyn and me gnawed away at this instruction. Savouring the implications, meet him head on, well that might be Harry’s way, but not mine or Wyn’s either.

  ‘Why not just lock the door and wait?’

  I reinforced Wyn’s statement. ‘He might not even come down here.’ Said more to convince myself, rather than any sense of how things might develop.

  ‘We don’t even know if he’s alone.’

  But Harry opened the door nonetheless and went outside. The wind whistled and snowflakes elbowed and blustered their way past him, quickly settling. A brief life, sharp, clean and cold one second, a tiny puddle the next. Wyn followed Harry and I fumbled my way across to the draw. Felt around and pulled out a carving knife. Slashed the air wildly a couple of times. I shook my head, this was silly. A bit like putting a knuckle duster on a short sighted Boy Scout.

  I crept outside.

  Total blackout, no lights, but the blizzard and the deep snow meant a strange sort of vision. The ground a featureless desert of white. When Harry’s frame passed in front of something snowless, the garage wall in this instance. He stood out like a bluebottle on a white plate of porridge. Blurred movements of the two brothers’ drifted along the drive and towards the gate like phantoms. Silent and indistinct, I followed trusting that they knew what they were doing.

  I wondered about all the ways possible to kill yourself. This, although probably effective, never struck me as in any way efficient. Jumping from a high window, too messy. A hot bath, half a bottle of whisky and slash the wrists. Half asleep and watch the life drain away, messy again, but relatively painless. Gas oven, not messy but smelly. Hurl yourself in front of a speeding train – the most efficient surely? The messiest as well. Thirty strong sleeping tablets seemed to have the most to recommend it, throw more whisky into the equation and a method that was tidy, silent and trustworthy.

  But stood in a garden during a blizzard? A homicidal maniac on the loose, all too random for me. Who would get the baseball bat over the back of the head? Harry probably, and all the while the other two of us would watch and listen to the mayhem. Unable to make out with any distinction what was going on. My mind rambled away; here I was supposedly logical, capable and prepared, stood in a blizzard hoping for the best.

  Teddy - 1951

  He woke up in hospital.

  ‘What?’

  Uncle Jim said he had been sectioned.

  ‘What?’

  Complete breakdown.

  ‘You said that you’d been talking to the stuffed fox, he told you to do it.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The fucking fox.’

  ‘Made me do what?’

  ‘You boarded the Alicante to Majorca ferry and began slashing at cables until a lifeboat fell onto the crowd stood on the jetty. Lucky you never killed anyone. Put nine in hospital though.’

  ‘The fox?’

  ‘Don’t keep saying the fucking fox. I’ve got you a passport, keep your mouth shut.

  According to the beak, you’re a danger to yourself and others. Tell me something I don’t fucking know.’

  ‘The fox!’

  ‘And you can eat the food, no one’s trying to fucking poison you, for fuck’s sake.’

  ******

  She was nearly sixty, spoke no English, never said no anyway. Owned a café, her old man sat and drank most of the day as she worked her arse off.

  ‘A coffee please you slag.’

  She wagged her finger under his nose and shook her head, ‘No, no en Español por favor.’

  ‘Un café por favor que la escoria.’

  She nodded and waited.

  ‘Can I fuck the arse of you… please?’

  She shook her head again, ‘No, no en Español por favor.’

  ‘Puedo joder el culo de ustedes?’

  She nodded, ‘Si.’

  He stared at her, what did it matter? Thirty five years older, what did it matter?

&nbs
p; ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Por supuesto puede.’

  ‘Yes!’

  One day a week, every week, every month for three years. She even let him take pictures, he’d never used the time-lapse button. Teddy used to stare at the pictures. Her face, her eyes shut, her head back, lips drawn back over her teeth. He never got the movement of her billowing breasts though.

  Still, he really liked her. Her husband worked one day a week in the café, while his wife got fucked all day long upstairs. Then she got cancer, gone in three months. He stared at her lazy husband who had stopped working altogether after the funeral. Bullshitting with his mates, how he always kept her in line. He opened the palm of his hand and his cronies all laughed.

  Teddy got the best pictures together. Put them in an envelope and gave them to the drunken fucker as he slugged his first brandy of the morning. Teddy watched his face as a terrible realisation gripped.

  The old man’s face hung open, he pointed at Teddy. ‘Usted.’

  Teddy nodded. ‘Every week mate, she loved it.’

  The old man frowned.

  ‘Amaba mamando mi polla.’

  ‘Usted? Hijo de puta.’

  ‘Fuck off you cunt.’

  He felt better, the woman had helped, so did letting the old drunk know about what went on.

  He felt better, no doubt.

  Teddy stood up and walked across to the old drunk and stared down at him.

  Finally the old man looked away.

  ‘You need someone to look after this business for you mate.’

  ‘Español por favor.’

  ‘Protection – protección you slag – you need me to look after you.’

  Teddy put his arm around the old man and felt him shiver.

  24

  Jack -1980

  We left early the next morning, well before an invitation to an interview at the police station landed on the front door mat. Stuart drove, leaving me to consider everyone’s position. Preoccupation had bound us together, wrapped its cloak of anxiety and a veil of curiosity around his broad shoulders. Wyn sat in the back reading the afternoon’s racing card from Towcester.