The Big Snow

by David Park

  ‘Well, wasn’t the car still there in the morning.’

  ‘The car? Not a taxi?’

  ‘A car,’ she said, patting the armrests as if beating out the rhythm of truth. ‘Not a taxi. Bold as brass.’

  ‘And do you remember the type of car?’

  ‘Now, I don’t know about cars.’

  ‘Big? Small?’

  ‘Quite big. Black car, I think.’ She sighed as if the effort of memory had tired her.

  ‘You ever see the driver?’ Swift asked.

  ‘Not exactly, but it must have been the man I described to Mr Burns, the one you’ve arrested.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Swift said, ‘That’s right. You’ve been very helpful.’ He stood up to go. The cat was an unbroken black ring which revealed no seam where head joined tail. ‘And just one last thing. Who sold the house to Mrs Simons?’

  ‘Sold the house? No one sold her anything – it’s a Corporation house. Last family left to go to England. And who’ll ever want to live in it now I don’t know. Gives me the shivers just thinking about it.’

  It was snowing again, a dogged, sullen fall, with no sense of joy or surprise. Swift knew he would have to return to the barracks and his spirits sagged as he imagined what would await him. At the end of the street, he hesitated, then turned back towards the entry and returned to where he had worked earlier. Already the new layer of snow had skirmished out most of his earlier traces. He stood tight against the wall where he could not be seen from next door and watched it fall. All the curtains of the house were closed, just as they had been the first time he had seen it, but now only darkness seeped through the thin material. He wasn’t sure, he wasn’t sure but there was something that pushed him on. There was fear, too, but this time it was edged by something else, a feeling of anticipation, the tremble of excitement that pleasures a child when it confronts the very thing that seeks to frighten. He felt the key in his pocket, the key he had taken from the drawer in the barracks, and its coldness stung him into movement.

  After he entered the kitchen he locked the door behind him and stood listening. It seemed as if that great weight of silence was still pushing down on the house, pressing itself into, every room, every cupboard and corner, seeping so thickly that he felt he could almost stretch out his hand and touch it, the way he had touched the falling flakes of snow. He stood still for a moment, afraid that he, too, would be smothered by what was freezing everything around him and he shivered from a coldness that he hadn’t felt outside. There was a musty smell, spreading like spores into the empty spaces, and through it drifted the vestiges of cigarette smoke and perfume. Swift understood about empty houses. All his life he had known them. It was what he had returned home to each day after school. To a house that was already too big. His mother worked as the receptionist in his father’s surgery and it was several hours before she returned home. His mother never wore perfume, or if she had he couldn’t recall it. What she brought back was the scent of the surgery, the medicinal, something he imagined was the amalgamation of everything that formed her day. Inching to his father also – it was what they shared. But in their absence the house was his, whether he wanted it or not, and so he came to know it in a way that he couldn’t when it was shared with others. And if he treated it with respect, brushed it only lightly with his hand, it would tell him its secrets – the things it kept from him as he slept in his wood-panelled room under the roof. Sometimes he would take off his shoes and climb under the great mountain of blankets and eiderdown that was his parents’ bed, always resisting the temptation to slip into the danger of sleep but at times flirting with it, only pulling back at its very edge. He wondered what it felt like to feel his mother this close, this warm, and sometimes he imagined her whispering things into his ear – little pulses of love that fluttered across the white starched pillowcases like moths. Afterwards he would smooth and straighten the sheets, careful above all to erase the faint impression of his head on the pillow.

  It was Alma Simon’s bed he now lay on. The scent of her was everywhere and for a second it made him feel as if he was in a meadow filled with wild flowers. He imagined the sun warming his face. She had brought a picnic, all pretty and planned with care. He lay on his side and pushed his head into the pillow. Into her lap. Now there was no sense of time, only boundless space and air that could be breathed, and afterwards they’d walk and she’d know that he would give her something different from all the others, that in return for her love he’d provide and take care of her. Real care, so that nothing bad would ever happen to her again. Once as a boy he’d found a tiny feather from the eiderdown sticking to his jumper. He’d been more careful after that – it was the sort of thing his mother noticed. He put his hand in his shirt pocket and pulled out the ring, then placed it on his finger. But he knew enough about houses to know, too, that they were faithless, and that for every secret it had told him there were a score of others that it took perverse pleasure in hiding. So it was no good then as he lay awake, straining to hear the whispers and even the shouts that came from down the stairs, the house would never let him hear them clearly, never fully let him grasp their meaning. He put his hand under the pillow and pressed it to his ear as if listening to all the seas of the world inside a shell, and wondered what secrets this house kept from him.

  Just as he had done all those years ago, he closed his eyes and waited for the slow, almost imperceptible approach of sleep, then started himself awake just when it seemed he would be touched by it. His mouth was dry and his throat a little sore. Sleep was an enticing pleasure and for a second he thought of not resisting it, but there were other things that invited him and after replacing the ring he got off the bed and straightened the covers, slowly smoothing away every crease or wrinkle. Then for the second time he opened the narrow wardrobe. The door stuck a little and he had to pull it, so when he opened it the half a dozen dresses quivered on their hangers and moved towards him. He calmed them, then, as if turning the pages of a book, let his hand linger on each of them for a moment, feeling the material between his finger and thumb. Cheap cotton prints all of them but to his touch they felt strangely beautiful. She liked blue. She must have looked pretty in this with its sailor collar and pleated skirt. The type of dress that might be worn to the seaside. Maybe that was where they went for their picnic, their day out, and he imagined a couple huddled together in a small car parked facing the sea. As she stares out at the white-combed sea he lets his fingers touch the wave of her hair, then gently he moves it from the nape of her neck and he bends his head towards it. The sound of a key in a lock. Turning. He felt in a second as he had when he knew it marked the return of his mother and so he threw the wardrobe door closed and the rattle of the hangers was their plea not to be shut away again. It must be Burns or Gracey and anxious to put on his uniform, his outer self, he shouted that he was upstairs, but there was only the sudden banging of the back door and when he hurried down the stairs there was no one there. As he stood in the open doorway, staring at the scurry of footprints that had spumed across the yard and disappeared into the entry, a little flurry of snow fell from the roof and landed on the sleeve of his coat. For a second before he brushed it away, the thin tremble of white seemed to flutter like a feather.

  As soon as he entered the barracks Maguire winked conspiratorially and summoned him with an exaggerated flick of his fingers. Swift watched him move to the side of the desk and wondered if he ever went home, or had any life other than in this place and his seemingly endless job of guardian of the entrance. He gestured Swift closer while he rested his weight on the wooden counter, as if what he had to say could be transmitted only by the lowest of whispers.

  ‘Listen, Swifty, I don’t know where you’ve been but Gracey’s lookin’ for you and if I were standin’ in your shoes I’d get along there quick. And he’s hurt his neck shovellin’ snow in his yard – tryin’ to clear a path to his coal bunker – so he’s like a bear with a sore head.’

  Swift pushed through the
swing doors, rehearsing his story as he went. He could hear Gracey’s voice coming from their office and there was the sound of coal being rattled on to the fire. Swift hesitated, then pushed the door open.

  ‘Well, well, look what the cat’s dragged in,’ Gracey said as he moved the thick stump of his neck from side to side and rubbed the back of it with the great towel of his hand. ‘Nice to see you grace us with your presence, Swift. Now, would you like to tell me where the hell you’ve been and just what you think you were doin’ talkin’ to Linton this mornin’?’

  ‘I thought I should look in at him, seeing you were delayed, Sergeant Gracey, and mindful of the state of mind he was in. When I spoke to him I had concerns that there was a risk of him attempting to injure himself,’ Swift said, staring at the slumbering grey-smoked fire.

  ‘Don’t give me that shite, Swift, son. Do you think I came up the Lagan in a bubble? That nancy boy hasn’t the balls to hurt himself and what was he going to do – beat himself to death with that oily quiff of his? So let me guess: he blubbered on your shoulder, told you how much he loved her and that he didn’t do it.’

  ‘Yes, Sergeant.’

  ‘Shut your trap. I’ve got my eye on you, Swift, son, and I don’t think I like what I see. So no doubt you fell for all his fuckin’ fairy stories and told him you believe him.’ Burns sniggered into his mug of tea. ‘And you can shut up and all,’ Gracey said, jerking his head in anger and then wincing at the pain. ‘So, Swifty, if Johnny lover boy thinks he’s found someone dough-brained enough to believe him and who encourages him to keep spewin’ out all those lies, I’m not goin’ to be best pleased with you. And when I’m not best pleased, you better look out.’ Gracey paused to squirm his neck into the pillow of his shoulders. ‘For I’ll have you out there traipsin’ the streets lookin’ for missin’ dogs.’

  ‘There was someone in Alma Simons’s house, someone with a key. They ran off before I could see who it was,’ Swift said, abandoning his prepared story of being called to help out with an accident in the snow.

  ‘And what the frig were you doin’ round at that house? – no don’t answer that for I know already. And after me spellin’ it out for you in black and white. Mister Burns go and check the prisoner, me and Swift need to have an urgent discussion.’ Burns stood up and as he passed behind the bulk of Gracey he looked at Swift and sawed his hand across his throat.

  When he had gone Gracey sat down on one of the chairs and dropped his head back over it so Swift could see the sagging folds of his chin and his eyeballs slowly draining white. He thought of the open razor that had glinted on the grimed floor of the bar toilets and for a second wished he held it in his hand. Gracey righted himself again, then stared at Swift as if seeing him for the first time.

  ‘Swift, from the moment I met you, I could see you were a snotty-nosed little twat with your education and your head full of half-baked ideas from too many films and detective books. A regular little Sherlock Holmes who thinks that on the basis of five minutes in the job he’s got it cracked. Well let me tell you this, son, that while I might not have any fancy certificates hangin’ on my walls, I’ve thirty years of puttin’ scumbags like Linton behind bars. And I’ve done big murder cases – not like this poxy murder of some tart, but cases where they flew over boys from the Met to show us how to do it and I’ve wiped their arse and wiped their eye, so don’t you think that you can play clever bugger with me, for I won’t have it. Do you understand? Not for a second.’

  ‘Yes, Sergeant.’

  ‘Now, you hand that key into the desk and under no circumstances are you to go anywhere near that house again. Is that understood?’ Swift nodded. ‘And don’t even look sideways at Linton or you’re finished. Now piss off out of my sight before I say any more.’

  ‘Where should I piss off to, Sergeant Gracey?’

  Gracey stumbled to his feet, knocking his chair over, and the sudden movement flapped a swirl of smoke from the fire. ‘To the fuckin’ North Pole for all I care,’ he said, his frog-cheeked face pulsing red, ‘and try to be smart with me and I’ll crack your jaw. Report to Maguire, see if he wants any snow shovelled.’

  At the desk Swift looked at the Occurrence Book. It was the familiar story of minor accidents, call-outs to help doctors reach patients, checks with old people, abandoned cars and lorries causing obstructions, complaints about hooliganism. A swan had been trapped in the ice-bound Lagan near Balfour Street and a rescue party in a rowing boat had to break the ice foot by foot. Caretakers of public buildings were constantly being sought as burst pipes flooded building after building. Police Land Rovers with supplies of food were being sent to cut-off villages. Up on Divis Mountain at the transmitting station, a rescue party finally reached the engineers after they had been stranded for two days. There seemed no end to it, and the great fist of snow that held the whole country in its grasp showed no sign of relenting. Even Maguire seemed a little morose as he watched Swift read the ledger.

  ‘You got a bollockin’, then,’ he said. Swift nodded without lifting his eyes from the book. ‘Don’t take it to heart, son, there’s not many in this barracks hasn’t had one of those from the same man. Hurtin’ his neck hasn’t helped – you were a bit unlucky there. Still, no bones broken. Look on the bright side, Swifty, for sure, doesn’t it beat shovelling snow?’

  Swift moped about the barracks until his shift ended at six. He balked at the prospect of another evening trapped there, with only the radio for company and his mind turning over Gracey’s words like little pebbles in his hand. He had already contemplated some of the possibilities for his future but found no clear way forward: he couldn’t ask for a transfer and the only option was to accept defeat and request a return to uniformed duties. To do that was to spend the rest of his career shovelling snow. To jack it in altogether was to admit defeat, and that prospect left a bitter taste in his mouth, made worse by the knowledge of how self-satisfied it would leave his father, his instant prediction confirmed. As he wrote up his journal on his bed, he listened as the twangy guitars of the Shadows’ ‘Dance On’ jangled out of someone’s tinny radio, but while he pondered what to write for the events of the day, his mind turned more and more to the flurry of footprints scurrying acoss the yard. Heavy prints, bigger than his own and wide-striding. He had followed them out of the entry until they blurred and vanished in the criss-crossed mesh of the street. Big enough to be Gracey’s. He twisted the delicious prospect in his head, weaving it towards a public denouement, hearing the click of the cuffs when they shackled those thick wrists. He remembered that Gracey had said her face was familiar, that somehow that morning he had hurt his neck. Running, maybe. The radio was playing ‘Bachelor Boy’. But now the voice was laughing at him, at his pathetic, stupid ideas, at the single bed he slept in, and he remembered lying on Alma Simons’s with his head pressed to the pillow, her scent all around him. He thought of the white swell of her breast, the fire of her fingers and toenails. A bachelor boy until your dying day. He turned over on his side and tried to shut out the stupid, sneering voice. He’d have asked her to come away with him – not somewhere like the black back streets of Glasgow, but somewhere far away from this place where there’d be the wash of sunlight and the sweep of space. Maybe even as far away as America.

  He had to get away from the barracks. There was somewhere he had to go, and after he checked the address he had written on the piece of paper, he slipped it into the back of his journal, then put on a second pair of socks and as many other pieces of clothing as he could find. Walking was the only means of travel now. Almost instinctively he touched the ring which was still in his breast pocket. The only way out was down past the front desk and he tried to hurry, hoping that he’d make it without comment, but Burns was there with another detective. Money and a parcel were changing hands. Maguire was nowhere to be seen and when Burns saw him he stuffed the notes into his back trouser pocket and called after him, ‘Hey, Swifty, are you doin’ a Captain Oates – walkin’ out into the snow to give y
our mates a better chance of survival?’ ‘I may be some time,’ Swift said without looking back at him.

  The cleared pavements were black-skinned with ice, making them more hazardous than where the snow remained uncleared. Great, jagged teeth of ice, jutting from guttering and leaking pipes glittered like frosted fairy lights. Swift had gone only a little way when there was a power cut and all around him plunged into a sudden rush of darkness, leavened only by the seep of light from a full moon and a nervous scatter of stars. He wondered whether he should turn back but thinking of the alternative made him press on, and, taking his torch from his pocket, he shone it ahead as he walked. The ridged banks and wind-blown terraces of drifted snow seemed shrunk tight and enveloped by a blue membrane which trembled in the smear of light. Each step he took echoed with the gritty scrunch of freezing snow in the eerie silence that had settled on the city, while the few people he met flitted noiselessly in and out of the shadows like hooded monks.

  The street directory he had looked up had given the name of the occupant as Ernest McGrath and his occupation as unemployed. It made him think about the Simons house again. There was something strange about what he had found – it was as if she had just appeared in that space, because there was nothing that anchored her to it or established her relationship with any part of it. And it was almost as if someone had sifted out everything that connected her with the outer world. There wasn’t a rent book or any receipts, no visible means by which she supported herself. She appeared to hang suspended in a kind of limbo world where she didn’t work, she didn’t sign on and there was no obvious network of friends. He turned it over and over in his mind as he walked. A phone with no book of phone numbers, a boyfriend who seemed to know so little about her.

  As he walked his breath streamed in front of him, his breathing heavier as his pace slowed. Deep drifts of snow had swept against gable walls and advertising hoardings and, everywhere his torch shone, glittered and winked coldly back at him. He was deep in the mire of back streets where from every window shuffled and whispered the lull of candlelight. Some of the terraced streets had cleared pavements with the road left untouched, others had the dug spines he had seen earlier. They all had open curtains and the tiny front rooms were like little grottoes which flickered thin shards of yellow into the night. He wasn’t sure what he would say when he found the house and he knew there was a high chance his would be a wasted journey, but it felt like one more step he had to take. Eventually he reached the address he was looking for, and when he did he switched off his torch and stood in the shadows.