4 Bones Sleeping (Small Town Trilogy)

by Gerald Wixey

  Always your adoring Shirley.’

  He wiped a tear from his cheek.

  ‘Always yours adoringly Shirley. Anything to say?’

  ‘I meant everything, I loved you so much.’

  ‘Not even my baby was it?’

  Silence, the silence of the guilty.

  ‘Catastrophic Schizophrenia, that’s what the Spanish doctor said. What else would he have to say about me? Complete breakdown, listen will you. Catastrophic schizophrenia has an acute onset and rapid decline into a chronic state often without remission.’

  He couldn’t stop laughing.

  She never thought it was funny.

  ‘You can still get away. Why don’t you just slip off?’

  ‘Has he just fucked you?’

  ‘Don’t, please – let me call an ambulance? Please.’

  His mind wandered again, just malicious gossip, that was her stock in trade. Everything speedily memorised. Whereas he couldn’t think straight, a tectonic shift is taking place, namely the transition from a man in which information is transmitted down the pyramidal structure that used to be his mind. Now he couldn’t form an opinion or make a decision about anything.

  The room began to spin, as he saw all of these slags swimming about in a protoplasmic mess of titillating supposition. No doubt about it, he thought, he lived in an interregnum between madness and complete lunacy and in such times, as Marx observed of political interregnums, the strangest of bed-fellows will arise.

  ‘Teddy? Don’t cry, you know it upsets me when I see you crying.’

  He shook his head. She came back into sharp focus.

  He spoke slowly.

  ‘I used to take her out in the car. When she was six or seven. We laughed and talked and loved each other. That flabby cunt out there was fucking her. Barely fifteen and he used to take her out in his police car. Did you know that?’

  ‘No, please let me ring…’

  ‘He was fucking my daughter.’

  She gasped.

  Teddy looked at her. The movement in the door caught his eye.

  Where’s that knife?

  Jack -1980

  We left Teddy’s house … snow, not a blizzard yet, but a heavy, soundless blanket of tumbling snow twisted its erratic way into the windscreen. A tortuous drive home in rush hour. Happy to leave the busiest traffic behind, somewhere between Streatly and Blewbury. The eastern edge of the Berkshire downs, snow settling on the meadows and hedgerows, tyre tracks visible on the roads. And all the time feeling of déjà vu overwhelmed me.

  Snow and the implication not lost on Stuart either.

  He glanced over, ‘Like this was it?’

  I nodded. ‘It was a blizzard.’

  By the time we had crossed the roundabout at Rowstock, driving had become difficult. I felt safe enough with my chauffeur, it was the others snaking and twisting and braking that unnerved me. We stopped at Hendred and I used the phone box to ring Harry. No use, some moron had ripped the phone out and it sat on the floor in a miserable isolation. I swore my way back into the warmth of the car.

  ‘Vandalised.’

  ‘Relax - we’ll get back soon enough.’ I couldn’t smile at the optimism of a young man.

  I craved something sweet, some of Wyn’s strong black coffee laced with sugar, or a jam doughnut. Now that would hit the spot. Instead my throat remained dry and my hands sticky and damp. I fumbled for my cigarettes, just the thing when your throat’s drier than a Saharan pebble. He drove into the pub car park, spun through one hundred and eighty degrees in a decent impression of a rally driver. Stuart jumped out and ran around the car. He opened my front door, watched me as I pulled my cap low on my head, crossed my scarf and buttoned my coat.

  ‘Mum dressed me like that when I was six.’

  I told my chauffeur to fuck off, and braced myself for whatever the evening had in store for us. Stuart stared down at me, his hands came my way and he lined my scarf precisely up at my throat, patted me on the head and took my hand.

  I shook him off me, ‘It’s not funny.’

  ‘C’mon, it’s likely that Shirley’s on her sofa, watching the television.’

  I stared at him, he might be right. I hoped that I looked at the face of a survivor. Not much guile, but strong with a brutal edge. Fear never travelled along their bloodline, bred out over the centuries. Selective breeding in action, Stuart smiled, raised his eyes and tipped his head a touch.

  Here we go then.

  I said, ‘You shouldn’t be here.’ My turn to feel uneasy. He had three young children and a wife close by. You think that might make him a touch more cautious. More careful with his life, many more things to hold him to this world than me. But repercussions and nervousness weren’t apparent in his make-up. Stuart just saw it as an opportunity to fight and a chance for glory. Never just an exercise in self-sacrifice either.

  ‘Why don’t you go and have a pint?’

  I said nothing, just hurried after him, my last day on earth and once again I followed someone like a well-trained poodle. A poodle whose temples throbbed like that of an Olympic sprinter. I walked on, my vision blurred by the snowflakes tumbling into my eyes. Or perhaps they were tears. Civilisation had ended, the silence broken by an owl somewhere in the distant, hooting away, telling me to go home.

  I trudged after Stuart, the unspoken words between us perfectly audible. The muffled, soundproofed world of snow. The soft, feathery stuff drifted down from a windless sky. It clung desperately to branches and crunched underneath our feet. The terrace of twenty odd houses had the angles and edges of rooftops blurred by the snow. The one streetlight midway down the length of the houses, turned the scene to crystal where the shadows disappeared. What struck me was the normalcy of the scene, gas heating outlets vented their steam, windows condensed, water trickling down in irregular channels. Wood smoke mixed with that of coal. Fighting for dominance. The smell a mixture of the sulphur and burnt wood. A cat looking for a snow free haven, scuttled across in front of me.

  Was it black?

  Shirley lived opposite the solitary streetlight, Wyn used to say that the light cast by the lamp, set the most erotic of moods into in the bedroom. Soft light merged with vague shadows, a light for love making. Oh and Shirley’s presence helped the ambience as well.

  Stuart’s signal slid into my world, a finger up to lips. He nodded towards an open back door. I groaned silently, Shirley never locked the bloody doors. I watched Stuart as he slipped through. Turned and waited for me. His murky figure stood stock still. Listening and sniffing the air like a lion out on the prowl. Stuart’s shadowy features deepened by the gloomy light. Deep shadows ran across his face, ageing him, hardening him into a wanted picture of some tough criminal.

  We stood in the small kitchen, the radio filtering in from the living room. A nauseating country record’s lyric taunted me.

  ‘Everyone considered him

  The coward of the county’

  Stuart smiled at me and tiptoed to the door and stared into room. The radio teased away.

  ‘Walk away from trouble if you can’

  Seconds later he turned back towards me. Gestured with his eyes, skywards - upstairs. I screamed, the silent scream that those in fear of their lives are familiar enough with.

  The layout of the house was simple enough, two down, three up. Stuart placed one foot on the stairs, I grabbed his sleeve and pointed at the open knife draw. Gaping like some lantern jawed freak - mocking me with its implied threat. He shrugged and crept up the stairs. I followed and heard two people talking.

  Not the hushed, low voices of lovers.

  The middle of an argument more like.

  What were we doing here?

  We stood at the bottom of the stairs with a lover’s sense of the highly strung. Temples pounding, we stood on the brink, a couple of pearl divers about to take their leap into the emptiness. The soft light cast a corridor of blurred radiance that tumbled across the small upstairs landing.

  Instead of
the hushed tones of lovers, a small noise, a grunt. Not of pleasure either.

  Shirley’s voice broke into the groan. ‘No, please. Not this way.’

  Shirley’s whispered instruction a command or a plea? Had we crept in from a twilight, snowy world and intruded into a lover’s province?

  No, another groan, a low moan. A deep sigh and then air whooshing from – who?

  At the top of the stairs, a pair of bare feet.

  I peered around Stuart. Don was lying on his back staring at Stuart with glazed eyes. His mouth hung open, the usual olive skin a deathly white. Both of his hands holding a three inch gash together in his stomach. A towel soaked in blood. Pints of it laying on the carpet. Sticky like a puddle of bitumen.

  A voice from the bedroom, my heart stopped for a second when Teddy said, ‘You lying, fucking scrubber.’

  ‘Please no…’

  Stuart stepped over Don and pressed himself against the wall of the short landing. I did the same, only at a slightly wider angle and I could see into Shirley’s bedroom. The end of her double bed and what I saw punched me between the eyes. A pair of highly polished, handmade, black brogues of someone sat on the edge of the bed.

  Shirley stood in the middle of the room, a silk robe wrapped tightly around her. The stomach still flat, narrow waist, breasts heavy, but no longer the gravity defying miracles they once were. The rise and fall of her chest an indication of the tension inside of her. Pale skinned and natural. Stars glitter and die, but Shirley had remained ageless. Apart from her neck and the tell-tale lines. Just beginning to criss-cross and encroach, looking a bit like the lines on a map of the railways. Making their inevitable, creeping routes and their predictable indicators of the march of time.

  I stared, transfixed, rooted to the spot. She saw me, just a slight raising of the eyebrows, never tried to cover herself up. Never acknowledged me, never screamed, never called me a fucking pervert. Never shut the door, just stared at the man lying on the bed.

  Then a voice deep and loaded with distress. A voice that found all humankind to be the biggest collection of two faced liars and back stabbing women.

  That voice.

  ‘He was fucking my daughter.’

  Those few words became a starter’s pistol for Stuart. He went around the door and into the room.

  29

  Jack -1946

  We had waited until four in the morning, our arguments for the course of action we were about to take seemed impeccable. After all who would ever believe us? In all likelihood, we’d be hung. If not, a prison sentence meant certain assassination by Teddy’s friends. We had no choice, apart from how we disposed of the body. It might be days before we could get the car up Lock’s Lane. It had to be tonight and quick.

  We wrapped Eyeless in an old rug, Harry threw the big man over his shoulder and carried him over the footbridge and along to the paddock. The big house was two hundred yards away. A bizarre convoy made our way in the fag-end of the blizzard. Snow easing all the time, not the wind though.

  Buffeting us down through the darkness.

  Wyn had scrapped the snow away, then carefully removed the turf. Laying the neatly squared turf out exactly as he had just cut it from the ground.

  ‘C’mon for fuck’s sake, hurry up.’

  ‘Patience – let’s do it properly.’

  The ground still firmish after days of frosts. A day later and it would be saturated. Harry made the most of it and dug the four feet or so down in a blind fury. I stood guard like a panicky sheepdog.

  The snow had stopped by now, clouds scudded across a full moon. When it peeped through, an eerie, silvery world exposed itself. A maniac digging, a man leaning on another spade and a length of rolled up rug laying close by.

  Twenty minutes later and Harry leant on the spade, breaths snorting out. He stayed like that for a few minutes. Took a couple of deep breaths, walked over and picked the rug up. Grunted and expelled the air like a champion weightlifter. Lined it up, lowered it feet first, then let it go. Immediately started to shovel the earth back into the hole. Jumping up and down to compress it as he went along. Despite all of his efforts, a fair amount of soil remained. He scattered it around an area, a thirty yard radius.

  Wyn began his systematic turfing, lining every piece up like a jig saw champion.

  ‘C’mon for fucks sake. It’ll be light soon.’

  ‘Shhhh… let’s get it right.’ Wyn patted his turfing down with the spade. Scrapped and spread the snow back. ‘We’ll have to see how it looks in the daylight.’

  The rain started as soon as we got home. Cleansing the blood stained snow from the garden. Washing any evidence away down the hill and into Letcombe Brook.

  I walked by the paddock the next morning, alone and in the rain. The horses had walked over the grave by now. Hoof prints had churned the whole area, milled it into something resembling a First World War trench in November. No one could ever guess what lay beneath.

  Except me.

  Teddy - 1969

  He never went near London until he took Celia to the Shaftsbury Theatre. Afterwards, they ate in a small Greek restaurant in the Charing Cross Road.

  Celia? He’d just said her name.

  As they walked north, Celia pointed at the garishly lit Strip clubs and the queer boys clubs along Old Compton Street.

  ‘Can we walk down there, please daddy?’

  The street names came back and smacked him between the eyes.

  Right down Wardour Street.

  Quick left along Peter Street.

  Right into Lexing Street.

  There.

  He couldn’t look, but his eyes went upwards… there.

  Beak Street.

  He hurried her along, his chest tight. Pulse throbbing.

  ‘What’s the rush?’

  Into the broad avenue that was Regent Street and his breathing slowed.

  ‘Are you alright?’

  He nodded, Regent Street, the last time he walked along here…

  Him and Eyeless – both bathed in blood.

  He stopped and held onto a lamp post.

  ‘Daddy…’

  I’m a bit dizzy babe. Give me a minute.

  30

  Jack -1980

  I stared, for the briefest of seconds I thought I was having a stroke, my eyes blurred and I felt someone punch me in the temple. I steadied myself against the door jamb. Not a stroke, just fear and I couldn’t suppress its rise through my body. I had gone mad and craved an arm around my shoulder.

  Seconds before, Stuart had just raised his eyebrows. Gestured with a flick of his head for me to get out of the way. He tiptoed around the door and launched himself across the small bedroom. An Olympic sprinter out of his blocks. I leant around the door and watched the human missile throw himself at the man sat on the bed.

  He drove his forehead into Teddy’s face, connecting in a bone crunching collision.

  Teddy’s eyes went from wide eyed shock as they watched Stuart’s forehead close the gap between them at an alarming velocity. Wide eyed shock to eye rolling unconsciousness within the time it takes to crunch an egg shell under your foot. Egg shells breaking, that’s exactly what it sounded like. Teddy rolled back across the bed. On his back, one arm draped across a pillow.

  I heard a groan, but not from the bedroom. I glanced down.

  Don!

  I quickly glanced into the bedroom, then doubled back down the stairs. I rang for an ambulance, never mentioned a knifing. An accident I said, a man bleeding to death. The police would be here soon enough without me tipping them the wink. I rushed back up the stairs and knelt alongside Don.

  ‘Hang on Don. Don – Don. Won’t be long.’

  He blinked, in slow motion a couple of times and then they closed. Forever?

  I’d seen three men bleed to death in front of me. This looked like becoming a four-timer. I leant over and looked into the bedroom. Two men on the bed, one dressed like an undertaker in his black suit and Stuart. Sat up groaning and h
olding his head like one of those bad actors in an Aspirin advert. He had swelling above the right eye, which had begun to close. Like a cartoon swelling that manifests in a split second. He just needed some cartoon birds twittering their way around his head to complete the scene. The memories of Harry’s boxing opponent’s eye closing in the same fashion came sweeping back. Perhaps an ending was close by – maybe.

  Shirley’s voice jolted me back. ‘Are you ok? Stuart? Stuart?’ I stared at her stood wrapped in a deep red, silky dressing gown around and tied it off at her waist, she stared at me. ‘Have you rung the police?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘And don’t either.’ Stuart, with just his left hand on the point of impact now. Brought his head up and looked at me. Rather like a man shielding his eyes from the strong sun. ‘Ring Dad and Wyn.’ Stuart took his glance across from Shirley and lined me up. ‘Get them both down here. Don’t stare at me like that, just get them down here, quickly.’

  The knock on the head had scrambled his brains. But my mind was knotted too. My heart wouldn’t stop thumping. I wondered if my fear could be catching. Contagious like an infection. I was a carrier of panic and I didn’t have a cure.

  ‘We have to get the police and finish this charade once and for all.’ A thought swept over me, making me shiver. ‘Please don’t tell me that you’re going to bury the body?’

  ‘Get me some ice Shirley.’ Stuart glanced over at her and attempted a smile. ‘You didn’t have to get dressed up just for me.’

  She stonewalled that remark, walked across to the bedside table. An ice bucket and a half empty bottle of white wine nestled close by a box of chocolates. A long night had been rudely interrupted. She fumbled around in a draw, found a sock, grabbed a handful of ice and poured it down the neck of the sock.