The Devil's Home on Leave (Factory 2)

by Raymond, Derek

  ‘My dad? Yes, last time I saw him he was in the sitting room there with a bottle to hand. In his chair. After what the others did to him he couldn’t properly use his legs any more. Good builder, mind, a brickie, but he’d turn his hand to anything in the trade; you wouldn’t find a harder worker in the six counties, I’ll say that. It’s this deal that’s arranged between us, the fifty thousand, I reckon that’s what makes me really feel like talking to you – we’ve got confidence between us now, haven’t we? Yes, my old man: but he was marked down as political, no boss wanted to hire him. Anyway, things being as they are in Ulster there was never any work. No point rebuilding a place if it’s just going to be knocked down again, is there?

  ‘My mother? I hated her. I tell you, there was no pity to be had from that woman. Big, prissy, Protestant bitch – couldn’t get her legs open if it was to have a piss. My old man must’ve forced her to get us, me and the kid brother. Religious. Opinionated. Bigoted. Not that it helped any of us. I tell you, what a life for a kid – drunken father, upstage mother, everyone screaming politics, no money in the house. You call that a life for a kid? I don’t call that a life at all. Lucky for me, I was strong and I was fast. I moved fast, I always did. Playground terror, I was. I still am, only on a big scale now. Good in school, too. I’ve got a good brain, see? Figures? Reading? Christ! Even then I thought: knowledge, that can be useful. Authority? I liked it. Very soon I was it. Authority punishes, and I like to see people punished. I always wanted authority; that’s one of the reasons I joined the army. But I never took any shit; that’s why Brownlow went down. Only I was careless that time, acted too hasty; I should’ve waited. But I wasn’t careless any more after that.

  ‘What my mother taught us was discipline, I’ll say that for her. You made a mess anywhere in the house and it was a backhander. Yet it kind of stunts you in the end, backhanders – stunts like the growth of your mind. My brother? The Kid, Kid McGruder they used to call him – he’s dead. He was in a fight he couldn’t handle outside a dance-hall in the city and got his head kicked in at seventeen.

  ‘You know the Red Devils. I saw them as a kid doing exhibition parachuting on TV. That turned me on hard. It meant getting around, too, joining a parachute regiment, and I like that. Our mother with her punishment, Dad hurt like that, the law and the army always around the place – there was nothing at home. Ah, fuck it, I thought, I’m eighteen, I’m off. And I went down to the recruiting office.

  ‘Yes, I liked the army, liked it a lot. But I tell you – no shit. There was a young officer thought he could fuck me about. You know; we got up each other’s nose. He was hard, big bloke, pretty with it. One day I’d had enough and I went up to him quietly, just us two, and I said, what’s it to be, then? Karate, he said. That suited me. We met in the gym. Word had got around; the whole unit turned out. He thought he was good – Christ, I nearly massacred the cunt; it took eight men to get me off him. And you know what? I was booed! Yes! By my so-called mates!

  ‘I’m violent. But it’s a very cold violence I’ve got now – that comes with practice. I like to be cool; I don’t like a load of mess when I do a man, blood all over the pad and that. No, I like things clean. Quick, clean and final, that’s the way I like things. Kill, wash up and away on your bike, yes, that’s the trick.

  ‘Army training? Action? Jumping? Heights mean nothing to me. They didn’t to my dad either; I’ll say that for him. And I tell you I was fast. I may have had a drink now, but it’s true.

  ‘Villains? I’m a villain! You’ve got my record to prove it. Another villain in the unit – I’d spot him. Yes, any military villain’d come to Billy McGruder.

  ‘The colonel didn’t like me, nor the company commander, Major James. I did that nine months at Shepton, and when I got back to the unit the colonel and Major James sent for me and told me: You’re a good soldier, McGruder, but you’re a most unpleasant man, and I said yes, sir. He said, the colonel, we don’t want you with us, you can get out now. I said, but I want to stay on, sir. Major James said, we’ve had psychiatric reports on you, McGruder, you’re a very unstable character. Well, sir, I said, but there’s my service record. True, said the colonel, there is that. He said, you don’t seem to know fear, McGruder, but the trouble is, you inspire it, and in your own mates. I’ll try and do better, sir, I said. He thought for a time and said well, I’ll give you one more chance. I’d been stripped down to private, of course. Three times I was busted from corporal. Three! Well, I said thank you to the colonel and that first night, a Saturday, I went out into the town to sit somewhere quiet and have a soft drink in the dark because I’m no drinker – besides, they’d cropped my head in the prison and I didn’t want to be seen like that in the town. So I took my Pepsi into a park and was sitting drinking it alone and then suddenly they were onto me, two sergeants and a corporal. They jumped me and really hurt me for what I’d done to that man with my messtin. And do you know what they did to me when they’d given me a stamping? Well, you mayn’t believe this, but they all three got their cocks out and pissed all over me. They put the boot in while I was down and said, that’s all you’re good for, McGruder. Yes. That’s what they did. The corporal was Corporal Brownlow; we’d never got on. Well, you know what happened to him.

  ‘What I liked best was action! I lapped it up, what we called the bother spots. I’d pick my weapon, something silent that I happened to fancy, and go off patrolling on my own. Just wander around near where they were, you know. I’m very, very quiet, and I’d be well stocked with my gear, everything to hand and not a sound. No rifle, no grenades. A needle now out of my sewing kit, a cut-throat, a knife even. Or my hands. I’m useful with my hands.

  ‘The piano wire at Saighton that time? Yes, I don’t know, I just fancied that for Brownlow. I got the idea when I saw three defaulters knocking down that old piano behind the officers’ mess. I thought, well, I think I’ll just help myself to a wire when they’re gone to dinner. Yes, I’ve always had an eye for an unusual weapon. Something easy to use and dead silent. Why silent? You’re right, yes, it’s not just that it doesn’t draw attention. Shall I tell you something? There’s the satisfaction that in the silence you can hear him go, it makes a noise like a woman when she yields.

  ‘Later? After I’d done my bird? Yes, well, then I found there were plenty of other armies. Pay was better, too – very good. Angola, Guatemala, Middle East – what the fuck did I care if the money was right? Liberia now, that’s a handy place. And Central America again – El Salvador. I don’t have to worry about the fare; they pay it this end and expenses. No mess, a little finesse, and that’s Billy McGruder for you.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said, ‘the devil never comes cheap.’

  43

  As we were going to Stoke Newington, a squad car overtook and forced us up on the pavement.

  Bowman got out and came over. ‘Won’t you ever get a radio in that heap of yours?’ he shouted.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I yelled back. ‘Get that bloody car clear.’

  ‘Now, now,’ said Bowman, grinning, ‘don’t panic, I’m not going to do you for speeding.’

  ‘Don’t get funny,’ Foden told him, ‘you cut no ice with me, mate.’

  They stared coldly at each other; it was amazing how Bowman inspired immediate dislike in people. Bowman turned away from him and said to me: ‘There’s no more danger of anybody topping Bartlett.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ I said. ‘Did nature get in ahead of the bullet?’

  ‘No,’ said Bowman. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a mid-afternoon edition of the Recorder which he passed to me. ‘You seen this?’

  I looked at the headline on page one; I hadn’t. The headline shrieked: ‘Defence Minister Dies’ and underneath in smaller print: ‘Crisis Through Overwork Suspected’.

  ‘It’s the kind of crisis the work he was doing does bring on,’ I said.

  ‘But the part they haven’t printed,’ said Bowman, ‘because they don’t know it y
et, was that a constable patrolling the street he lives in pulled him for being apparently totally pissed in a public highway. The officer didn’t recognize him because what was really the matter with Bartlett was, he was dying, which kind of changes a man’s appearance, doesn’t it? He died in a cell at Gerald Road. The doctor over there thought it was just alcohol – but it wasn’t, it was barbiturates. He’d drunk whisky as well and then managed to tumble out of his front door into the street – maybe he’d changed his mind and wanted to call for help. Anyway, they reckoned you ought to know.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, after a moment. ‘OK, where are you going now?’

  ‘Over to the McGruder woman’s place, same as you are – and that’s the other thing. We’ve got McGruder’s money with us OK, all old notes, tens and twenties, brand-new British passport, new name, the lot.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I know about the name. Gordon and I thought of it.’

  ‘If that’s how it goes, mind,’ said Bowman, ‘and nobody tries to get in any shooting practice.’

  ‘That’ll depend on them,’ I said.

  ‘You armed?’

  ‘No. Inspector Foden here has a pistol. I never go armed.’

  ‘What you mean is,’ said Bowman, ‘you never learn. OK, I’ll see you over there.’ He got back into his car and shouted at the driver: ‘All right, come on, then, let’s move!’ The car left with a rich burst of speed to the ascending whoop of the siren.

  We left our car at the tapes that had been put across both ends of the street; uniformed police were rerouting traffic and moving on the few rubbernecks. Foden was close behind me as we walked up to the street door of Klara’s block, his right hand inside his jacket. The only people left in the street were a few inconspicuous men standing around; there would be marksmen on the roofs opposite. I felt very small. My cock felt very small too, trying to wrinkle itself up into my testicles, and my legs were like strips of old newspaper. The rain had stopped and a weak sun was shining. I remember all that plainly, but every nerve I had was aflame with fear; even the cool air burned me. I looked up at Klara’s window and saw a face – a man’s face, sudden and indistinct behind the dirty panes. He was looking down into the street and disappeared abruptly when he saw me. For some reason, as we went into the evacuated building, where the tenants had been told there was a gas leak, and started walking up to the second floor, I found myself thinking back to when I was a child, remembering my relatives who had come back from the war after missing death by a stroke, haunted and pale. Then I banged on the door and Hawes’s voice said: ‘Who is it?’

  ‘You know who it is,’ I said. ‘Now open up and let’s get this over with.’

  ‘All right, then,’ I heard McGruder say, and the door inched open. Foden and I walked slowly into Klara’s flat; I was thinking about nothing now, just moving with my empty hands at my sides. Klara was lying on the couch I had sat on the time I talked to her. Her face was upside-down to me, hanging down near the floor, and there was blood on her teeth from a split lip. Her legs were exposed to her waist; they were grazed and dirty. She was wearing just her dress; her underwear lay scattered on the floor around her. I looked again and saw semen running down the inside of her thighs.

  I said: ‘You people never let up, do you?’ She had a big bruise on the front of her forehead and more on the sides of her neck. She was still breathing, though; that was the main thing. I took her pulse; it was weak but steady. What looked like her coat was flung over a nearby chair and I covered her with it. Hawes and McGruder didn’t move, just stood there looking at me.

  ‘What did she do wrong?’ I said. ‘Tell a dirty joke?’ When I said this Hawes moved the sawn-off twelve-bore he was holding and went back to stand in the bedroom doorway.

  ‘Which of you raped her?’ I said. ‘Or was it both of you?’

  ‘Why should you fucking worry, where you’re going?’ sneered Hawes, moving the shotgun again.

  Behind me Foden said: ‘See this pistol, Hawes? It’s a thirty-two – it makes a terrible hole in a man.’

  Hawes shifted the shotgun in his grip. ‘So does this, copper.’

  I was standing in the middle of the room facing Hawes; McGruder had gone over to lean against the far wall. He looked relaxed and expressionless, as usual, and was unarmed as far as I could see. Hawes’s eyes were red and bitter. He had been drinking export beer with whisky chasers; cans and bottles lay around the place. He pushed his safety-catch forward to the firing position; it made a deadly little sound.

  ‘I’m telling you, put that gun down, Hawes,’ said Foden, ‘it’s your last chance.’

  But Hawes didn’t move. I said to McGruder: ‘Your money’s ready for you downstairs, all fifty thousand of it.’

  His tongue flickered over his lips. ‘Cash? Used notes?’

  ‘Old tens and twenties.’

  ‘They’d better not be marked.’

  ‘They’re not,’ I said, ‘and so now only one problem remains – if either myself or this other officer gets as much as a cut finger from you two, the deal’s automatically off.’

  ‘You’re in no position to say what’s on or off,’ said Hawes.

  ‘I wasn’t talking to you,’ I said, and McGruder said easily: ‘Yes, that sounds very reasonable – when do I see the money?’

  ‘The moment we get the woman out of here,’ I said. ‘They’ll bring the money up with them when they come to take her down.’

  ‘I’m not having any more coppers up here,’ said Hawes, ‘there’s more than enough with you two.’

  I shook my head. ‘She goes down,’ I said to McGruder, ‘the money comes up.’

  ‘Where’s she going?’ sneered Hawes. ‘Down to the Factory to make a statement?’

  ‘She’s going to hospital.’

  ‘Yes, it’s fair enough,’ said McGruder. He just couldn’t wait to get hold of the money; it showed all over him. I said: ‘Ernie, would you just get a party up with a stretcher for Mrs McGruder? And tell them to bring the money, but no weapons.’

  McGruder bent over Klara and said: ‘She’s not really hurt.’

  ‘Oh no,’ I said, ‘I can see she enjoyed it.’

  ‘It wasn’t rape anyway. Pat screwed her, that’s all, and I watched them. Christ, he’s screwed her often enough before. She was willing.’

  I said to Foden, who was on the walkie-talkie: ‘Yes, when they arrive, tell them to knock and wait, they’re not to come in; you just take the case.’ I tried to forget that Hawes’s gun was covering me; tried not to show any fear. I did as little as I could with my hands. I glanced at Klara McGruder, then back at Hawes, red-eyed, dishevelled and armed. It was a disgusting scene in a disgusting room, charged with desperation, greed and terror. I said to Hawes: ‘Put that gun up now.’

  ‘Why?’ said Hawes. ‘All you lot are fucking barmy.’ He said to McGruder: ‘And I’ve had it up to here listening to you yap on about your money, Billy – what’s going to happen to me?’

  ‘I’ll square you, Pat,’ said McGruder calmly. ‘I told you before, I’ll work you in on the deal.’

  ‘I’ve only your fucking word for that.’

  McGruder took no notice of him. He said to me: ‘It was all right while they were screwing. But she’d been hitting the bottle with him, and after they were through she started giving Pat a bit of blag and there was a battle, see?’

  ‘It’s like living in a farmyard with you lot around,’ I said.

  ‘You can count me out,’ said McGruder, ‘I don’t even drink.’

  ‘You make me feel like killing you,’ Hawes said to me suddenly, ‘and what’s more, I’m going to.’

  Foden had finished talking to downstairs. He said to Hawes: ‘You’d do better to see how you can get out of the jam you’re in, son. Listen to reason.’

  ‘I’ve got my reason right here in my hands,’ said Hawes. ‘You listen to it.’

  There was nothing left to say. Once Klara McGruder groaned under her coat; otherwise the room was quiet. Hawes’s gu
n was pointing at my balls; I felt perched on the very edge of life like a bird sitting on the last slate of a roof. Hawes grinned at me, his teeth glittering in a mouth that looked like a new moon bent out of shape. Then his twelve-bore rose lazily to the level of my face, and I was looking straight into the two black eyes of death.

  ‘I can do it now,’ he said. ‘I’m ready, you bastard.’

  ‘You haven’t got your money yet, Billy,’ I said, without taking my eyes off Hawes’s gun. I thought, he hasn’t got his money; he isn’t even armed; he’s going to drop me in it. I knew that the triggers of the twelve-bore would be wired together. Hawes only had one shot and I was going to get it; Foden would be too late, and when Hawes pulled the back trigger my head would disintegrate like red ice sprayed out from under a sleigh. My brains would alter a section of the ceiling; shards of my skull would shower the wall behind me. Without moving I said to Foden: ‘I think this is it.’

  ‘So do I,’ said McGruder. There was a bang on the outside door out of my line of sight. McGruder said to Foden: ‘Well, open it. Go on, just open the bloody door.’ When Foden didn’t move McGruder went to the door himself with two strides, moving directly between Hawes and me. McGruder took the briefcase that was offered through the open door, while I was still listening to the click of Hawes pulling the trigger. My head was where it had always been and I heard Foden saying to Hawes: ‘You can give me that now, son.’