Dirty Weekend

by Alan Scholefield

  This was an extension phone, there was another downstairs. She turned – and saw in the doorway the fantasy that frightened her most, the image that had gone some way to making her decide to leave London, the image which paralysed young women and old alike – and most men too. In the doorway crouched a black man wearing a knitted cap and holding a knife in his hand.

  *

  Whatever courage had brought Terry this far had drained away like water in a desert. From his position in the bathroom he had seen most of what had happened and what he had not been able to see he had heard. Now he wanted support. He wanted his grandfather or Gail or both. He needed someone.

  He himself was not conscious of holding the knife as he crouched in the doorway and everything that happened now seemed to happen in slow motion.

  He knew she was going to scream and he didn’t want her to. He didn’t want to draw any more attention to the house. He knew he had to stop whatever train of events had started. He needed time to think. But first of all he wanted to tell the woman that whatever had happened in this house, in this room, had nothing to do with him. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

  He began to walk towards her. She backed away. She opened her mouth to scream.

  And then he saw the body. The face. The blood.

  His own blood surged into his head. Here it was again. The nightmare. The man under the bridge.

  ‘You little bastard!’ the man had said, climbing up into the den below the railway tracks. ‘You smashed them, you little shit, and now I’m going to make you pay.’

  That was when Gail had passed him her knife. The TV man hadn’t seen it in the half darkness because he had come on with his hand outstretched to grab Terry.

  If you trap a ferret or a rat, if you block all exits so that they cannot escape, then they’ll fight. Terry was trapped in his territory. There was no way past the man. So he had fought. As the man reached for him he had got to his knees and struck one blow. He had thought he was striking the man’s legs but at that moment the man crouched to get at him. Just one blow. That was enough.

  In those split seconds, as the tape was running through Terry’s head, Maria pushed him. He fell against the bed and rolled on to the corpse. She was past him in a flash, making for the stairs.

  But there vanity caught up with her. To make herself look as inviting to Jack as possible, she had worn a pair of very high-heeled black patent courts. They were shoes which showed her ankles and legs to advantage, but they were not the shoes to go rushing about in, especially on staircases.

  She went down like a nine-pin. Ceiling, walls, carpet, spun through her vision, and then she was lying at the bottom of the flight. She was conscious for a few seconds and aware that the black man was crouched above her.

  ‘Don’t hurt me,’ she whispered. ‘Please don’t hurt me.’

  ‘I ain’t gonna hurt you,’ Terry said, but the woman did not hear him for her eyes flickered and he saw the whites as they closed.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  ‘I’m getting too old for this sort of lark,’ Macrae said.

  He and Silver were standing in the foyer of a tower block in London’s East End. As with the Douglas Garden Estate, this was suffering from blight. The difference was that, although the elevators had been out of order when they went to see Mrs Collins, they had only to walk up a few floors. Now they had to walk up twelve.

  ‘You want me to go, guv’nor?’

  ‘I said I was getting too old, laddie. I haven’t got there yet. C’mon.’

  Silver started off as though he were racing up Everest. Macrae followed slowly. By the fifth floor Silver could taste pennies in his mouth. By the seventh he thought his heart was going to burst. He stopped and waited for Macrae to catch up with him.

  The older man was hardly breathing. He plodded past Silver and went on slowly up to the eighth and then the ninth floors. Silver came after him. Macrae, half-turning, said, ‘You watch a good man on the hill. He goes up slowly. There’s no prize.’

  Finally, they came to the twelfth floor. Here the wind was fierce, howling along the corridors and rattling doors and windows. Silver thought the top of the building was probably swaying. He tried not to think of a similar building less than half a mile away, like this one built in the 1960s, which had simply fallen down one day killing forty-three people.

  Macrae, holding his hat on with one hand, knocked at a door with the other. The door was covered in a protective wire screening and had a fish-eye security lens. A light came on inside the door and a voice said, ‘Yes? Who is it?’

  ‘Is that Mr Woods?’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Police, Mr Woods. You telephoned us.’

  There was a rattling of chains and the door opened slightly. ‘Have you got any identification?’

  Macrae held his warrant card at the narrow opening. Silver thought how much like his own door this was.

  Macrae withdrew his hand and more chains rattled. The door swung open. ‘Come in,’ Mr Woods said.

  ‘Who is it, Charlie?’ came a woman’s frightened voice from a room on the right.

  ‘It’s all right, love. Just friends from the club.’ He put his finger up to his lips then whispered, ‘I don’t want to scare her.’ He led them into a small sitting-room.

  He indicated a couple of chairs but did not sit down himself. He was a small man with a lined and weather-beaten face which looked as though it had been out in all weathers, which it had.

  ‘Excuse me.’ He went into the room next door and they heard the low murmur of voices. In a few moments he was back.

  ‘I told the wife you was from the fishing club. The season starts next month. She’d go into a panic if she knew you was coppers. Anything puts her into a panic. It’s because she can’t get out, see. Got a bad back and the lifts don’t work. Hasn’t been out of these walls for three years or more. Doesn’t even go out on the balcony because the height makes her dizzy.’

  Macrae said, ‘You phoned us about a young boy you saw in the park.’

  ‘That’s right. Day before yesterday.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Just getting dark. I remember that because the gates had been closed. He came running along like he was lost.’

  ‘What was he wearing?’ Silver said.

  ‘What I said on the phone. Those things the athletes wear.’

  ‘Track suit?’

  ‘That’s it. A black and green track suit and a green beret on his head.’

  ‘A beret?’

  ‘Ain’t that what they call them? Those knitted things. A lot of blacks wear them.’

  ‘All right,’ Macrae said. ‘Sounds like the boy we want.’

  ‘And he looked like him,’ Mr Woods said.

  ‘Charlie!’ came the voice of Mrs Woods from the bedroom.

  He went to the door. ‘What, love?’

  ‘You ain’t going out are you?’

  ‘No, love.’

  ‘What do you mean it looked like the boy?’ Silver said.

  ‘The picture on TV. You know, the one the police artists draw. It was in the papers too.’

  ‘The photofit?’ Silver said.

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘All right, Mr Woods, what happened?’

  ‘Well, the gates were closed, see. I was late myself. Now, when the gates are closed, you got to go right back to the Serpentine bridge to get out that way. But I catch my train at Lancaster Gate station so I was going to take a short-cut.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, I says to the kid he can come with me, otherwise it means he’s probably going to climb over the fence and we don’t want that. It’s high and it’s got spikes and last month a geezer tried to climb over in the dark and he slipped and the spike went through his thigh and he stuck there and someone had to call the fire brigade. Lucky it didn’t get him, you know, in the other place.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘So, I says to him, I know a way out but he’s not to say a thing about it. There
’s this loose railing.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Near the station. Opposite the pub.’

  The moment he said it he looked away as though he had made a mistake.

  ‘What pub?’

  ‘The Duke of York.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘That’s it. I let him through. Told him to forget about it. I went over the road to catch my train. I never seen him again.’

  ‘Charlie!’

  ‘Right here,’ he called.

  ‘You sure you’re not going out? You said you wouldn’t.’

  ‘I’m not going out, love.’ He turned to Macrae. ‘See what I mean?’

  Macrae said, ‘The problem is we’d like you to come and show us.’

  ‘Show you what?’

  ‘Where you first saw the boy. Where the loose railing is.’

  ‘Listen, mate. You can see how it is. I’m in for the weekend. Told her so. She’s been looking forward to it. I can’t go an’ leave her now. Not at night.’

  He looked appealingly at Silver.

  ‘I mean it’s the least I can do. Especially if I want to go fishing next month.’

  ‘All right,’ Macrae said wearily. ‘Let’s go over it again. This time in detail. Everything.’

  *

  Terry crouched over the woman. At first, he thought she was dead. The clatter of her falling down the stairs had frightened him badly. And, if she was dead, would they blame him?

  This was what preoccupied him now. Blame. It lay on him like a great black animal. When they caught him would they say he had done it?

  And it was no longer if but when, for beneath the layers of anger and resentment and rebellion, beneath the tough street-wise exterior, beneath the skin of Huntsman Collins, the World’s Second Greatest Athlete, there was, and always had been, Terry Collins of twenty-eight Thackeray House, the Douglas Garden Estate, London. And that Terry Collins was confused and scared as hell.

  When someone had a problem his grandfather used to say, ‘Mon, he up de creek widout a paddle.’

  Terry knew he was up the creek.

  Without a paddle.

  And yet nothing . . . nothing . . . had been his fault.

  He felt tears of anger and injustice come into his eyes. That was the thing. He hadn’t started anything.

  The man had come up to him near the bridge and said, ‘Hello, you look lost.’

  Well, he wasn’t lost. But Gail was zonked out. He had no money. He was hungry. And the man had spoken in a deep and reassuring voice.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ the man had said.

  Terry hadn’t replied.

  ‘I’m sure you could do with one. And a bacon sarnie?’

  It was the thought of the bacon sandwich that had done it. He hadn’t said anything, but his look must have spoken for him, for the man said, ‘I make the best bacon sarnies in London. And when we’ve had tea I’ll show you some videos. You like videos?’

  Terry had nodded. The man had smiled. The smile was reassuring too, full of dimples and white teeth. But what had reassured Terry most was that the man was black.

  He remembered the Rat pointing out a man in Soho and telling him that if he went with him and did what the man wanted there would be a tenner in it for him.

  This man didn’t seem like that. He was a brother. The same colour as Terry’s grandfather.

  And so they had got into a taxi. It was the first time he had ever been in a taxi. The man had asked him his name and Terry had told him it was Huntsman.

  ‘What a marvellous name!’ the man had said. ‘You can call me Bobbie.’

  They had gone to Bobbie’s flat and he had made tea and bacon sarnies and Terry had watched the afternoon children’s programmes. A feeling of cosy nostalgia had come over him. This is what he had done sometimes after he and his grandfather had finished the training. If his mother and sister were out they would make tea and watch children’s TV. His grandfather had liked Sesame Street.

  And Bobbie was kind. He had said to Terry, ‘You watch the TV and I’ll do a little work and then maybe you’d like a bath and then we can talk. OK?’

  And Terry had watched TV and Bobbie had worked at his desk and then after a while he had said why didn’t Terry have a bath because there was a lovely bath and lots of hot water.

  Terry could take bathing or leave it. But he thought it would be nice to be clean again. So he’d had a bath and Bobbie had come in and said, ‘I bet you haven’t been bathed for a long time. Did your father bathe you when you were little?’

  And he’d soaped his hands and used them to rub Terry’s body. All over his chest and neck and arms. He was pretending it was a game. And then, whoops, down under the soapy water to what Terry’s grandfather had called his ‘privates’. Terry had pretended it wasn’t happening and so had Bobbie. It had felt pleasurable. He had lain there in the hot water and allowed Bobbie to rub him wherever he liked but then Bobbie had got into the bath and it was as though Terry had woken from a dream. For Bobbie was big in more ways than one and he began to try and kiss Terry, to get his large pink tongue into Terry’s mouth. And Terry hadn’t liked that so he had got out of the bath and Bobbie had come after him.

  Terry couldn’t remember in exactly what order things happened next. He was trying to get dressed and Bobbie was trying to stop him and they were wrestling – Bobbie pretending it was still a game. But after a moment or two the pretence vanished and it became real.

  And then, slippery with soap, Bobbie had fallen and hurt himself and had started shouting at Terry and Terry had seen the china and smashed it.

  He didn’t know why.

  It was like setting fire to the project he had built. It had just happened. He had swept it from the table-top where it was displayed and it had smashed to pieces on the floor.

  Bobbie had been shocked and angry and had started to pick up the bits and Terry had grabbed the rest of his clothes and run. And no one was going to catch Terry when he was running.

  Not Arthur Wint. Not Herb McKenley. And surely not Bobbie.

  He had finished dressing in an alley and then begged small change from passers-by and taken a bus back to the West End.

  Gail was awake when he crawled back into the den. He told her what had happened. And they had talked about it for a long time while trains rumbled over their heads and darkness came. Gail had said he was stupid for not knowing what was in Bobbie’s mind.

  And then suddenly Bobbie was there, under the bridge, climbing up into the den, and the nightmare had begun.

  *

  He saw the woman’s eyes flicker and for a moment he was reminded of Gail. This is how she looked coming out of it: eyes flickering and trying to focus. In many ways the woman reminded him of Gail; same size, same shape of face, same short hair.

  ‘You all right?’ he said.

  She pushed herself up slowly to a sitting position. He wasn’t a black man. He was a black boy! She looked for the knife but did not see it. Then she looked at his face and thought there was something vaguely familiar about it. She moved again and groaned with pain. Her left shoulder had taken the brunt of the fall and she felt as though she might have broken her collar bone.

  ‘You all right?’ Terry said again.

  ‘What do you care?’

  The nature of her fear had changed since she had seen him more closely. She realised that her first view of him had been through eyes already programmed with terror. Then he had seemed the very stuff of nightmare. Now she could see he was a boy, maybe a dangerous boy, but a boy.

  ‘Why don’t you run?’ she said. ‘While you’ve got the chance?’

  ‘I didn’t do it.’ Terry said, with a mounting sense of injustice.

  She tried to rise but couldn’t. There was something wrong with her left leg. She had only one thought: to get this black boy out of the house, then to get help. Even though he was a boy he was a murderer and every second he was there she was in danger.

  Why in God’s name had he killed
Jack? Impulse? It could hardly have been planned.

  But . . . and this thought came to her on the heels of the others . . . if he had wanted her dead too he had had the perfect chance.

  While she lay momentarily stunned at the bottom of the stairs he could have . . . Her mind baulked at the thought of what he might have done. But he had certainly had the opportunity.

  ‘I swear on my dying solemn oath,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  This was the most portentous and awful declaration in Terry’s lexicon. It too had come from his grandfather.

  When you swear on your dying solemn oath God can strike you dead!

  Maria was engulfed for a moment in pain. ‘OK. I believe you.’

  Humour him, she thought. It was always best to humour them. Them? Who were they? She began to rub her leg and gradually feeling returned to it.

  ‘You stayed to tell me you didn’t hurt the man upstairs? Is that right?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘OK, you’ve told me. I believe you.’

  He looked confused. ‘And because you was hurt.’

  A bitter smile twisted her lips. ‘You stayed because I was hurt?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Bullshit, she thought. Bullshit.

  She said, ‘That was good of you. Kind of you.’

  Did he want her? He looked young to be a rapist but how could you tell these days?

  ‘Well, I’m OK,’ she said. ‘You can go. You’re free.’

  ‘You think I killed the man?’ Terry said. The way the light fell on his face she knew she had seen him before.

  ‘No. No.’

  ‘Yeah. You think so. I goin’ to show you sometin’.’

  He took out his knife. There was a snick and the blade shot out of the handle.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ she said, throwing up her hands.

  But he wasn’t threatening her.

  ‘This a knife, right?’ Terry said.

  ‘Yes . . . yes . . .’

  ‘I mean he ain’t dead from a knife. I seen it. I was in the bathroom. He got shot. He got bullet holes in him.’