Dirty Weekend

by Alan Scholefield

  He rose. ‘You want to come and see?’

  ‘No! No! I believe you!’

  She struggled up on to the sofa.

  ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘You better get out of here before the police find you. I’ve got some money. I’ll give you lots of money.’

  ‘I don’t want money,’ he said.

  She could not take her eyes off the knife.

  Keep him talking!

  ‘What do you want?’ she said.

  ‘I dunno.’

  ‘You don’t know? There must be something. I mean what do you want here in my house? This is my house you know!’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Hu . . . Terry.’

  ‘Mine’s Maria. Did you think you could hide here?’

  ‘We was looking for a place to live.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Gail and me. And my grandfather.’

  ‘Gail?’

  ‘Yeah. She and my grandfather. We goin’ to live together.’

  ‘Here? In my house?’

  ‘Just while I looks around.’

  ‘So you were already in the house when Jack . . . when the man came?’

  ‘I heard him. So I hid.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He sittin’ and someone comes to the door and he runs up the stairs and the man breaks down the bedroom door and – you all right?’

  She felt waves of sickness and pain break over her body. For a moment she thought she was going to black out again.

  Keep him talking!

  ‘Is Gail your girl?’

  He paused for a moment and said, ‘Yeah. She my girl.’

  ‘Tell me about them.’

  He told her about Gail. He told her about his grandfather and how he had run the four hundred metres for Jamaica. He told her about Arthur Wint and Herb McKenley and Harrison Dillard and Daley Thompson until Maria’s mind became fogged and bewildered. His speech became feverish. It was as though he could not stop.

  Then he began to talk about a man called Bobbie. The rushing pattern of his speech slowed. He began to pick his words. It was as though he was actually telling himself what had happened. Explaining. Arguing. Justifying. Rationalising.

  Halfway through this strange mixture Maria realised she knew who this boy was. The green woollen hat. There had been a description of him on TV and radio. And, as it clicked into place, she felt doubly afraid, for even if she had begun to believe him about Jack, she knew now that he had already killed a man.

  She realised he had stopped talking and had fixed her with a penetrating stare. Hastily, she said, ‘You say his name was Bobbie and he took you back to his flat. What then?’

  ‘He give me a sandwich and a cuppa tea. It’s cool.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I’m watching TV and he’s working at his desk. And then he says does I want a bath, right?’

  ‘And?’

  ‘So I gets in the bath and he wants to . . . Listen I can’t say no more.’

  ‘Yes, you can. For God’s sake I’m old enough to be your mother.’

  He thought about that for a moment and said, ‘So he starts messin’ with me, right?’

  She thought: Do I want to hear any more? But there was something in his eyes, an appeal, a need, to which she found herself responding.

  ‘Oh, God, Terry!’ she said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I don’t like it. So I get out and he comes after me so I break his cups and saucers. And he looks mad! Really mad!’

  ‘And?’

  ‘So I split and goes back to Gail. But he comes there. He wants, you know, to beat me. So Gail, she gives me the knife.’

  ‘Oh, God, Terry,’ she repeated.

  ‘Yeah.’ Then he said, ‘I didn’t mean it. He coming at me, right?’

  ‘Listen, I’ll help you.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Do you trust me?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Well, then we’ll talk some more. We’ll think of a way. But I’ll help you. I swear it. Just trust me.’

  ‘There’s nothing you can do.’

  There was something in the way he said it, a hopelessness, a finality, that touched her.

  ‘It was self-defence,’ she said. ‘They’ll find Gail. She’ll be your witness. Don’t you see? She’ll tell them everything!’

  ‘They never going to find Gail,’ he said.

  This time the emphasis was unmistakable. Oh God, she thought, he’s killed her too.

  ‘Terry.’ She tried to keep her voice calm and warm. ‘Terry, would you do something for me? Would you get me a glass of water?’

  He looked doubtful.

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Then we’ll talk some more. Then we’ll think of a way to help you.’

  ‘OK.’

  He turned slowly and sadly and went into the kitchen. She heard him turn on the tap. She pulled the phone from the coffee table and began to press nine . . . nine . . . nine . . .

  Suddenly the cord was ripped from her hand. Terry sawed at it with the knife blade.

  ‘I seen that on TV,’ he said. ‘They always doing that on TV.’

  They looked at each other. The light in his eyes had gone out.

  She felt a savage pain in her chest. ‘I’m sorry, Terry,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  He shrugged and went slowly over to the window and looked out. He turned back to her. ‘I’m going now,’ he said.

  Her heart lifted.

  Then he said, ‘The man who kill your fren’. He out there.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘He waitin’ in the car. The Japanese man.’

  He began to move to the stairs.

  ‘Japanese?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why do you say Japanese?’

  She rose and went to the window. Twenty yards along the mews on the other side was a Toyota station wagon. A man was standing next to it and he was wearing a trilby hat.

  The machinery inside her head was buzzing. Putting things together. The voice on the phone. Jack. The money. Nothing to do with Japan. Everything to do with Jack. Everything to do with Hong Kong.

  ‘Terry! Listen to me!’ Suddenly the scenario was all different. ‘I believe you! I really do!’

  He was halfway up the stairs.

  She came to the bottom.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I going before the man come back.’

  ‘There’s no way out that way! There no back door either!’

  ‘I know a way.’

  ‘Terry, don’t leave me!’

  ‘I gotta go.’

  ‘Terry!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Please. I beg you. If you know some way out of here then take me.’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Because I believe you.’

  He stared at her.

  ‘For God’s sake, would you have believed me if I’d come to you with that sort of crap? Four hundred metres. Daley Thompson! Don’t you understand? How could I believe?’

  But nothing had seemed confusing to Terry.

  ‘Listen. I think I know who the man is. No, not know who, but why he’s there. Why he did it. He wants money, a lot of money. And he’s going to come back into the house to look for it. We’ve got to get out of here. If you help me, I’ll help you. I promise. I swear it.’

  Terry looked at her with contempt.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I know what you must be thinking. You trusted me. I let you down. But listen. That’s what happens between people. We’re not perfect. We let each other down from time to time. What about Gail? Was she perfect all the time? We make mistakes, Terry. We’re only human!’

  He shrugged. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘But you better be quick.’

  She followed him up the stairs. He pulled down the trapdoor and the loft ladder swung down. Her left leg buckled as she put weight on it.

  ‘Help me!’ she said.

&n
bsp; He went up first and got his hand under her arm and used all his strength and slowly, like a sack of maize, she came up into the roof space.

  ‘Stay behind me,’ he said, bringing up the ladder and closing the trapdoor.

  She followed him blindly in the dark, scraping her knees and hurting herself on joists and pipes. She could not see him but touched his leg and crawled on. She heard him moving something, then suddenly she smelled the countryside: horses, manure, hay. In a moment she was deep in the hay itself and looking down on the broad backs of several animals.

  ‘Come on,’ he whispered.

  She followed him down the ladder from the hayloft. He paused and stroked one of the horses. He climbed up to a small window and looked out. Then he indicated that the man outside had gone into her house.

  There was a smaller door within the large stable door which was held by a bolt. He opened it and they slipped out into the mews.

  ‘Quick!’ he said.

  She began to run as best she could. The end of the mews was almost blocked by a car. It was a small white car and a man, also in a trilby hat, was sitting in the front seat. She had to squeeze past it. Their eyes met. They both knew where she had seen him before. She heard him shout, then Terry was pulling her arm and they were running across the Bayswater Road, dodging the traffic. ‘Here! Get through!’

  Terry was showing her a hole in the park fence. She managed to get through. He followed. Then he caught her hand and was dragging her across the dark wet grass.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  They had not gone fifty yards before they knew they were being followed. They had run past the fountains and the statue of Jenner and on to the west side of the Long Water, taking the path that would lead them to the Peter Pan statue, when they heard the sound of running footsteps.

  Maria was already dragging on Terry’s arm. Her breath was coming in painful gusts and there were spots in front of her eyes. She knew if she let go now she would collapse.

  Terry sensed this too and he pulled her off the path to the right. A low wall loomed up. It was exactly where he hoped it would be, where he had remembered it.

  ‘I can’t!’ she said, as Terry scrambled over the top. He tugged at her. She scraped her knees and shins. Then they were over the top and into the half-acre of rubbish and grass cuttings.

  Some of the grass piles were burning slowly, just wisps of smoke coming from them. Every now and then, as the icy wind blew out of the north-east, a section of one would light up for a moment and then die as the wind died.

  The grass cuttings had been brought in by a dozen powerful mowers and then heaped up by a bull-dozer. Some stood six to eight feet high. There was an eeriness about the area, as though fumiroles were venting steam in a volcanic landscape in the middle of London.

  ‘I can’t go on,’ Maria said. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘OK. We can stay here.’

  In his mind was his original plan, before the park worker had surprised him. Here was a sanctuary, a place where they could burrow down in the fermenting grass. Normally it would have been damp but the cold wind of the past few days had dried it out. He picked an area where there were no fires and they went in like hamsters burrowing into straw.

  ‘We be all right here,’ he whispered.

  She nodded. She was listening for the footsteps. Her mind was a jumble of thoughts and memories. Even as they had been running, her subconscious had been reminding her of the telephone calls to the house in Hampshire, the man in the street in the white car.

  Jack must have stolen someone’s money. It didn’t even surprise her. It had always been on the cards that he would do something criminal. That’s what had made him exciting. So now he’d stolen money and they had come after him. From what she knew of Hong Kong this did not surprise her either. Like most people she had heard of the Mafia-like organisation, the Triads.

  She longed to run out into the park and find one of the men and tell him exactly where the money was so that he could take it and leave her alone.

  But she knew that they were not the kind of people to say, ‘OK. Let’s shake on it.’

  It was like some awful Victorian cautionary tale of the fallen woman: a moment’s weakness and it was purgatory for ever.

  ‘You OK?’ Terry whispered.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s safe here.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Safe. It didn’t bear thinking about. Safe with a street kid who had knifed a man.

  The wind came again and she could hear the fire crackle in a great pile of dry grass to their right. She had a vision of Richard burning garden rubbish. Often he would leave a pile and it would burn like this, off and on all night, and in the morning there would only be ash.

  If only he hadn’t gone away. If . . . if . . . if . . .

  *

  On the Bayswater Road, Eddie Twyford said, ‘There’s the Duke of York, guv’nor.’

  ‘OK, pull up on the pavement.’

  Before they’d opened the door Silver had seen the gap in the railings.

  ‘It looks like a bloody highway,’ Macrae said.

  They squeezed through.

  ‘If he’s sleeping rough he could be anywhere,’ Silver said.

  ‘Woods said he’d first seen him behind the Peter Pan statue, in that waste disposal area. He was sheltering from the wind. Let’s try there.’

  *

  Maria heard a voice. Just a snatch of a shout on the wind. Then she thought she heard shoes scraping on the wall. Terry heard it too for he seemed to burrow down more deeply. She knew they were invisible to anyone without a torch.

  Then suddenly, so suddenly that she almost screamed, the pile of grass on her right burst into flames. One of the Chinese men was silhouetted against the orange light. He had a piece of wood in his hands and was lifting the grass so that the wind could reach into the heart of the mound.

  Flames shot up illuminating the area for several yards all around. Another mound spurted flame. Then a third. Grass and old newspapers and pieces of cardboard and plastic, all were catching alight now.

  There were several grass and rubbish piles which had not originally been burning, but the men began to throw lighted matter on these and soon they began to burn. It would only be a matter of moments before their own was burning.

  ‘We gotta go,’ Terry said.

  She flinched at the thought of movement. Her arm was aching, her legs felt weak. A stronger gust of wind blew across the park and the pile next to theirs went up with a woosh.

  ‘Now!’ Terry said.

  They scrambled from their hiding place and began to run towards the wall. A second Chinese man came from nowhere. He was almost on top of them. He dropped into a crouch, holding a gun in the professional way, with his two hands locked on the butt.

  Terry suddenly jinked like an antelope and, before the man could decide which was the target, Terry had pushed him with all his strength. His feet tangled with rubbish on the ground, he swung his arms like a windmill to regain his balance, then, in a series of tripping backward steps he overbalanced and, with a scream landed in the burning grass.

  The second man raced to him and managed to grip his coat. He struggled for some seconds. The man came out of the fire like a burning scarecrow.

  Terry, pulling Maria, scrambled over the wall. Ahead was the statue. But then he saw two men running towards them from the direction of the Bayswater Road.

  ‘This way!’ he said.

  But Maria could run no more. ‘I can’t!’

  There was only the water. He remembered the park worker pointing to the far side where there were reeds and overhanging branches and saying, ‘That’s where the ducks sleep.’

  He and Maria waded silently into the black water making for the shelter of the far side.

  Tendrils of weed slung to their bodies, under their feet was soft mud. Ducks quacked in fear and irritation and fluttered away.

  She wanted to say, ‘Leave me. They don’t want you.’ Then she thought t
hey probably did. She had involved him. No, that wasn’t true. He had involved himself.

  ‘Oh God!’ She felt an underwater branch scrape her leg.

  ‘We nearly there.’

  ‘You go on! You can run.’

  ‘In here,’ he whispered, parting the long branches of a weeping willow. ‘They never find you here.’

  But she no longer believed that. They had found them in the grass piles.

  ‘Terry, go now.’

  ‘But what you goin’ to do?’

  She was silent. She didn’t know. The water was up to her waist and she was beginning to freeze.

  *

  Macrae and Silver had seen the flames coming from the burning grass and, as they had run towards the wall, had seen two people, a woman and a boy, cross over in front of them and enter the water.

  ‘Terry!’ Macrae shouted. ‘Terry Collins!’

  Then Silver had shouted, ‘Watch out!’

  A man came out of the darkness on their right, his clothes alight. A second man, also burning but not so severely, raced past him. He was carrying a gun and fired once at Macrae then flung himself into the water.

  The burning scarecrow never made it. As he ran he created his own wind, and that, combined with another strong gust, caused him to go up like a torch. His steps faltered. He stood. And then, like a Guy Fawkes rocket that has not lifted off, he fell forward in a shower of sparks.

  Macrae and Silver ran down to the water’s edge. The first man was on his knees, the gun in his hand. Macrae hit him on the side of the head and Silver grabbed his gun arm. They dragged him from the water.

  ‘I don’t know what the hell’s going on, laddie,’ Macrae said. ‘But whatever it is, it’s disturbing the peace on Good Friday.’

  Silver waded into the water. ‘Terry!’ he called. ‘Terry Collins!’

  There was a movement under the trees on the far side.

  ‘Terry, listen! My name’s Leo. I’m a policeman. It’s all right. Nothing bad’s going to happen to you. Terry! Are you there?’

  There was a sudden splashing on the far side. Then the sound of running footsteps. Then a woman’s voice said, ‘Please help me!’

  Silver waded into the black water. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Here. Under the tree.’

  The water gripped him icily round the scrotum and then up his back. Macrae stood on the bank. ‘To your right!’ he called.