Rules of Engagement

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘What are you doing?’ Gillespie said. ‘What is all this?’

  Annie didn’t answer for a moment, telling the editor to run into the next roll of rushes. Only when the screen was blank again, the editor looking for the right cassette, did she turn back to him. He recognized the change in her voice at once. She was defensive. She was uneasy. She didn’t know quite what to say.

  ‘It’s a kind of profile,’ she said, ‘warts and all.’

  Gillespie nodded, looking at her, leaving her no place to hide.

  ‘Profile of who?’

  ‘Goodman.’

  ‘Ah.’ He smiled. ‘Our Controller. The man in the middle.’

  Annie glanced up at him, uncertain.

  ‘Sure,’ she said, ‘it must have been difficult for him.’

  Gillespie nodded, the smile widening. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘you’re right.’

  There was a long silence. The editor loaded another cassette. Pictures of the dockyard. Shots of the deep water channel. Annie leaned forward, her hand on the editor’s shoulder.

  ‘Five minutes,’ she said apologetically, ‘I’ll be back.’

  She opened the door and stepped outside. Gillespie followed. The corridor was empty. He looked at Annie. She was still preoccupied. She led him along the corridor. At the end there was a door. She opened the door, and pulled him inside. When she found the wall switch, there were shelves and shelves of theatrical props, kitchen implements, cups, saucers, books, vases, trivia, each tagged with the name of a programme. It looked like a department store, the place where you shopped for the TV version of reality. Gillespie gazed round, fascinated.

  ‘Wonderland,’ he said, softly.

  Annie ignored him. ‘Tell me,’ she said urgently, ‘I have to know.’

  Gillespie looked at her, enjoying the moment, knowing at last that he’d made the right decision. He smiled.

  ‘Nice of you to ask,’ he said, ‘but I’m OK.’

  Annie gazed at him.

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  ‘I know.’ He smiled again. ‘But it’s still true.’

  Annie hesitated a moment, time ticking on. Then, quite suddenly, she relaxed. She smiled.

  ‘You know what I want,’ she said, ‘you know why it matters.’

  ‘I do?’

  ‘Yes.’ She reached out for him, one finger up the lapel of his denim jacket, up the line of his throat, to his chin. ‘So tell me,’ she said.

  ‘Tell you what?’

  ‘Tell me why you were interested in the man? Tell me why you took the photos. I’ve got a week to get this thing right.’ She paused. ‘Do you know what that means?’

  Gillespie shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Do you care?’

  ‘No.’ He paused. ‘Should I?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it matters. Because I’m interested in the truth.’

  ‘Ah…’ he nodded, ‘the truth.’

  Gillespie looked at her for a moment, then cupped his hands behind her head, pulling her gently towards him. He hadn’t felt so good for months. It was a feeling of wholeness, of renewal. He was back where he belonged. In command.

  ‘You took the film,’ he said slowly, ‘you should know.’

  ‘I did,’ she admitted.

  ‘So…’ he shrugged, ‘you tell me.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I never saw the prints.’

  Gillespie kissed her softly.

  ‘No?’ he said.

  She shook her head, her tongue sliding between his lips, her hands falling away, down, over the denim jacket.

  Gillespie said nothing, letting the conversation find its own path, her hands at the waistband of his jeans, pulling gently at the buckle on his belt, easing the loop of leather wider and wider.

  ‘You going to tell me, or not?’ she said.

  He smiled.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m not.’

  She sank to her knees, easing the tongue of leather back through the buckle.

  ‘You’re a difficult bastard,’ she said, looking up. ‘Always were.’

  ‘I am?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  She undid the belt, and tugged at the zip on his jeans. He felt her hands exploring inside, fingers teasing up towards his crutch, lips and hot flesh and the long slow curl of her tongue. He leaned back, transferring the weight of his body against the wall, feeling the hard ridges of the shelving against his back. Her fingertips began to dance, way down, underneath, the subtlest rhythm, while she licked and licked, cat-like, and took him in, as deep as she could. He looked down, watching her head, the slow rhythm, the noises she made. Then, very gently, he sank to his knees, his face to hers. She looked at him, blinking.

  ‘Nothing personal…’ he said, ‘but don’t think…’

  She put a finger to his lips.

  ‘I know what you’re going to say,’ she said, ‘and you’re quite wrong.’

  She looked at him, her hands beginning to dig again, her fingers exploring the moistness between his thighs.

  ‘This is because I love you,’ she said. ‘The rest of it is shit.’

  Annie finished at the studio at eleven. Gillespie had long gone, walking out through the big double doors, his point made, some kind of relationship back on offer. Annie couldn’t be sure where the latest encounter would take them, but she knew enough about this man to recognize that he meant what he said. Business was business. Friendship was friendship. Whatever he knew about Goodman was strictly confidential. No kiss and tell. No pillow talk. No short cuts to get her off the hook.

  She rang Bullock’s home number from a phone in reception. It answered after about a minute. He sounded groggy. He’d probably been asleep.

  ‘Annie,’ she said tersely, ‘your fearless sleuth.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said.

  She told him what she’d been up to, the progress she’d made, the fact – now confirmed – that the dead boy’s mother had no interest in talking to the media. When she’d finally traced the woman to her new council house, a quiet estate in the north of the city, she’d simply said that the incident was over. Her Jason was dead, and she just wanted to be left in peace. She wasn’t bitter. She didn’t blame anyone. She was just tired of it all. Annie had done her best, getting as close as she could to the woman in the ten brief minutes they’d shared in the tiny back kitchen, giving her every opportunity to open up, to sound off, to heap the blame at Goodman’s feet, but the woman refused to even discuss it. Her washing was flapping on the line outside, there was a casserole in the oven for lunch, and she was far too busy getting on with it all to worry about fancy interviews with the press. The boy was dead and buried. So be it.

  Bullock listened to her on the other end of the phone. He shared her disappointment. It showed in his voice. Despite the absurd deadlines, she thought, despite the evasions, he obviously still cared. Whatever pressures he was under hadn’t quite killed off the journalist within him. She hesitated on the phone, gazing out at the darkened car park.

  ‘So that’s it,’ she said, ‘Goodman still calls the shots.’

  There was a silence. Bullock was obviously thinking.

  ‘What about your friend?’ he said. ‘Your ex-Marine?’

  ‘Gillespie?’

  ‘Yes,’ he paused. ‘Would he know anything?’

  Annie nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘he would.’

  ‘Is he worth a tickle?’

  Annie smiled, the sweetest of memories.

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Will he come across?’

  ‘No chance.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She hesitated again, interested herself in the answer, as uncomfortable as it might be.

  ‘Because he thinks we’re schmucks,’ she said finally. ‘Because he thinks we’ve sold out.’

  Martin Goodman was the last into bed. He cleane
d his teeth in the bathroom, cupping his hand under the tap and sluicing the cold water around his mouth. Then he dipped a finger into Joanna’s jar of Astral, and rubbed the cream into his face. At the hospital, they’d told him that the gash in his forehead would probably leave a permanent scar, but already it was barely visible, the faintest track running obliquely towards the hairline above his right eye. Long afternoons on the beach at Lavagna had helped. So had Joanna and this new life of theirs, an unspoken agreement to begin again, to bury the last few years, his weakness and his greed, and simply level the ground between them. Total honesty. Total frankness. A life they could truly call their own.

  He dried his hands on the towel and walked through to the bedroom. Joanna was sitting up in the big double bed reading a book about alternative medicine. They’d discussed it on holiday, something new, something to share. She’d explained about homoeopathy, and the extraordinary benefits of tricking the body into healing itself. She’d taken to carrying a small supply of the more important remedies, Arnica, and Rhus Tox, and Sulphur, tiny white tablets in small patterned boxes, and one morning, when Goodman had awoken with a headache and the beginnings of a temperature, she’d made him submit to treatment. By lunchtime, at a favourite restaurant in a narrow shadowed alleyway three streets from their hotel, he’d felt better, and she’d been delighted, reaching across, patting him on the arm, doctor and patient. He’d smiled at her, indulged her, enjoying her simple delight, not bothering to explain about the two Paracetamols he’d taken when she was in the shower.

  Now, while Goodman shed his dressing gown, she laid her book on the bedspread. He glanced down at it. The chapter heading read ‘Understanding Acupuncture’. Goodman folded the dressing gown over the back of a chair, and climbed into bed, mentally preparing himself for a discussion on Chinese medicine. His wife was watching him carefully, speculative, curious.

  ‘Tell me something,’ she said.

  Goodman nodded.

  ‘Of course,’ he said.

  She looked at him for a moment.

  ‘Do you ever see her?’

  Goodman blinked. For a month, they’d never mentioned Suzanne. Neither by name. Nor in any other way. She had become dead ground between them. A locked box. By pretending she had never happened, she had simply ceased to exist. He shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t.’ He paused. ‘In fact I can’t.’

  ‘Can’t?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Goodman didn’t answer for a moment, wondering what had prompted the question, wondering how far to go, how many risks to take with the reality of what had happened.

  ‘She’s gone away,’ he said finally. ‘She’s not around any more.’

  Gillespie got to the cemetery past midnight. It lay off the main road out of the city, acres of headstones and withered bunches of flowers, and a dark, gloomy chapel in the middle surrounded by trees. The area reserved for welfare funerals lay close to the wall, within range of the street lamps. He’d been there three weeks before, the only mourner at the burial. There’d been a bald, two-line announcement in the paper two days earlier. Suzanne Wallace. Recently deceased. To be buried at 2 p.m.

  Gillespie had gone along in the rain, an act of simple respect. A vicar had arrived on a bicycle, a small thin man in glasses, removing his cycle clips under the sodden cassock, leaning the old black Raleigh against the iron railings. He’d taken a prayer book from his saddle bag, and intoned the simple service over the grave as the undertaker’s men lowered the coffin into the earth. Gillespie had bowed his head, muttering ‘Amen,’ wishing her luck and a safe journey.

  Afterwards, the vicar had pedalled away again, one hand for the bike, the other hitching up the long cassock, while the undertaker’s men returned to the empty hearse, and the cemetery staff rolled up the plastic grass. At the time, Gillespie had wondered at the absence of mourners, the grim austerity of the ten-minute commital. There’d been no wreaths, no bouquets of flowers, no eyes to dry. Just a single bunch of freesias, laid carefully to one side while the men from the council buried their spades in the mound of loose earth, and began to shovel soil back into the grave. He’d glanced down at the freesias before he’d left. There were a dozen of them, wrapped in cellophane. A hand-written note had smudged in the rain. All he could read were three words: Chagrin, and Pitié, and Paix. They looked French. They’d stuck in his brain. One day, he promised himself, he’d get hold of a dictionary.

  Now, he walked carefully between the rows of headstones, looking for her grave. Across the main road, on the other side of the wall, he remembered a shop selling electrical goods, and a telephone box. He saw them now. He stopped. He looked down. At the spot where they’d buried her, there was a new headstone. It was small, and plain, gold letters inlaid on the black marble… SUZANNE WALLACE, it read, BORN 29 JUNE 1962 LOVED AND MISSED.

  He stooped and briefly touched the headstone. It felt cold and damp. He stood there in the darkness for a moment, hearing the vicar again, the old assurances, the soft patter of the rain on the wet earth. Then he stepped carefully away.

  Albie Curtis glanced at his watch and yawned. The Jersey boat was late. At the desk, in the Ferryport, they’d said an hour at least. A labour situation in St Helier, wildcat stoppages amongst the stevedores. He’d grunted at them, asking about a Mr Cartwright. Was he on board? Did they have a passenger list? The girl behind the desk had tapped the name into a computer, and nodded. Yes, she’d said, a Mr H. Cartwright, travelling alone, vehicle registration HC 179.

  Now, Albie watched the big white boat easing slowly backwards into the berth. The rear door was already opening, and ten minutes later the first cars began to roll off onto the dockside. Cartwright’s white Mercedes was the third car to appear and Albie recognized the small, familiar figure behind the wheel. He saw the Mercedes drive into the Customs shed and reappear seconds later. The car came to a halt outside the main terminal. Cartwright disappeared inside.

  Albie sauntered across the road and got into the Mercedes. He could see Cartwright through the thick plate-glass windows. He was buying a paper. Albie reached forward and turned on the cassette player. Something classical. Some opera or other. Big voices. Nice tune. Cartwright hurried across the pavement, head buried in the paper. He opened the door, only aware of Albie sitting beside him once he’d slid in beside the wheel. He looked at him. If he was surprised, it didn’t show. Albie nodded.

  ‘Morning,’ he said affably. ‘Good trip?’

  On Albie’s instructions, they drove south, across the city, to the tiny dock near the harbour mouth. Albie indicated his white van, parked near the pub.

  ‘There,’ he said, ‘park there.’

  Cartwright did what he was told, an air of slight irritation. Whatever he’d been up to in Jersey hadn’t included days on the beach. He was as pale and white as ever. He pulled the car beside Albie’s van and switched off the engine. The tide was high, and the Timothy Lee was clearly visible at the quayside. Albie nodded at it.

  ‘You owe us,’ he said simply, ‘and I’m here to it collect.’

  Cartwright looked at him, a busy schoolteacher with a difficult pupil.

  ‘What do you want?’ he said.

  ‘Only money.’

  ‘There is no money.’ He paused, choosing his words carefully. ‘In fact we’re in a refund situation.’

  Albie gazed at him. ‘A what?’

  ‘A refund situation.’ He paused again. ‘As you know, things didn’t quite work out the way we planned. The cash we took at the dock, the up-front money, that all went back.’

  ‘I know,’ Albie nodded, ‘I was there. I’m talking about the rest of it.’

  ‘Rest of it?’ Cartwright looked pained. ‘What rest of it?’

  ‘The rest of the ticket price.’ He bent towards Cartwright, crowding him towards the door. ‘We’re talking thousands. Remember?’

  Cartwright looked at him. ‘We were. But we didn’t deliver.’ He smiled. ‘Reme
mber?’

  Albie shrugged. ‘Makes no difference. You did some kind of deal. Must have done. All I’m asking for is our cut. As agreed.’

  Cartwright shook his head, the action of a man in the presence of an imbecile. He began to reach back, one hand stretching for the briefcase on the back seat. Albie stopped him.

  ‘Do you want to see the figures or not?’ Cartwright said. ‘Only I’m a little busy.’

  Albie shook his head. ‘I’m a bit old for fairy-tales,’ he said. ‘Thanks all the same.’

  Cartwright shrugged, his duty done.

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  There was a silence. Albie eyed the dashboard. The milometer read 276 miles.

  ‘Nice new motor,’ he said.

  Cartwright ignored the comment, reaching for the ignition keys, the conversation over. Albie stopped him.

  ‘I’ve got some white paint I’d like you to buy,’ he said.

  ‘Some what?’

  ‘White paint. Quite a lot of white paint. You can have it cheap.’ He smiled. ‘Old times’ sake. I want it paid personally. In cash. To me. To this address. By tomorrow lunchtime. OK?’

  He produced an old envelope with an address pencilled on the back. He put it on the dashboard, in front of Cartwright. He began to get out of the car. Then he paused, looking back.

  ‘Ten grand,’ he said, ‘non-refundable.’ He smiled again. ‘OK?’

  He got out of the car and slammed the door behind him. Cartwright started the engine, not looking up. The car purred away, and Albie watched it disappear around the corner of the pub. Only when it had gone did he associate the hand that had emerged briefly from the driver’s window, and the ball of crumpled paper on the cobbles, with the address he’d just left on Cartwright’s dashboard. He shrugged, kicking the remains of the envelope into the water. Fine, he thought. If Cartwright wants to play games, that was his affair. One way or another, he’d get his money. If not ten grand, then something close. He strolled across to his van and wrenched open the door. The lock had long gone, and he’d stopped worrying about it years ago. His most valuable cargo for months had been the big drums of white emulsion, and even then no one had bothered to nick them. Pity, he thought, climbing into the driver’s seat.