Dangerous Things

by Claire Rayner

  ‘Hello, Ar— Vivian,’ she said and cursed herself for letting her tongue slip.

  ‘You might as well call me Arse. It’s what you’re used to. Everyone at school is,’ he said and still remained with his buttocks on his heels and his hands folded in front of him. ‘What do you want?’

  Sam took charge, moving further into the room, pushing a chair forward from the dining table, sitting on it astride and resting his arms on the back. ‘Pepper, Arse. It’s about pepper. In bullets.’

  ‘Oh, shit!’ Arse said.

  ‘No doubt. But all the same, we have to talk about it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Don’t be obtuse with me,’ Sam said sharply. ‘It won’t work any better here than it does at school. I know you’re a deal brighter than you let on, so let’s not waste time. It’s getting late and I’d like to have some of this evening to myself before climbing back on to the school treadmill. If you don’t mind.’

  ‘So,’ Arse said, not looking at him. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Did you and Dilly meddle with the ammunition they used for the display this afternoon?’

  ‘She had nothing to do with it.’

  He looked at her now, straightening his back like a soldier on parade and Dilly snapped, ‘Don’t be daft, Viv. Coming the noble protector — it’s a load of crap.’

  ‘Well, you didn’t.’ He looked at her, deflating a little.

  ‘I agreed it was an ace idea. Said it’d be great if you could do it. Kept a watch while you got the guns, ground up the pepper for it. I was up to my ears in it.’

  ‘Now, we make progress,’ Sam said. ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘Hasn’t she told you?’ Dilly threw a contemptuous glance at Hattie who reddened.

  ‘After what happened this afternoon I had to talk to someone, for pity’s sake. What would you have done, knowing that someone had been meddling with the ammunition with which someone else was later shot? Do be your age, Dilly.’

  ‘Well, I suppose so,’ Dilly said after a moment. ‘So what’s to tell him?’ She looked at Sam now. ‘It’s like I told her. We put pepper in some of the bullets so that they’d explode back in the shooters’ faces, make ’em think twice before they picked up guns again.’

  ‘Pavlovian conditioning,’ Sam said. ‘I like it. It sounds good. Were you sure it’d work?’

  ‘Couldn’t be. I tried to get hold of a gun to test a few bullets but they kept them too well locked up. So I had to settle for the best I could do which was to do the bullets and wait for the day to drop them in the kits, so they’d use them. Then no one’d know we had anything to do with it.’ He sounded bitter. ‘No one would’ve if Tully hadn’t been shot.’

  ‘I’m sure Mr Tully regrets having discommoded you,’ Sam said with so heavy an air of irony that the words lost their sting. ‘So, what happened?’

  ‘You saw what happened!’ Dilly said loudly. ‘You were there. Mr Tully got a bullet in his face and I got scared and in the middle of all the fuss around Mr Tully I went and took the bullets we’d done out of the boxes. We chucked ’em down a drain in the Highway. They’ll be halfway to the sea by now.’

  Hattie stared. ‘You just took them out of the boxes with everyone watching?’

  ‘That’s the point. No one was. They were all looking at where the fuss was, round Mr Tully. So I just did it. It seemed the best thing.’

  ‘It was marvellous,’ Arse said simply and looked at her with a gaze so bright and direct that Hattie couldn’t bear to look at him. It was like seeing someone naked who didn’t know you were watching. ‘Bloody marvellous. There’d be fingerprints on them and everything. I didn’t worry about that, didn’t wipe them or anything. Just did three bullets, dropped them in three boxes. And she went and took them out.’

  ‘How did you know which were the ones to take?’ Sam sounded genuinely curious. ‘Didn’t they look the same as the rest of the bullets?’

  She shook her head. ‘You heard what Viv said. They weren’t wiped or anything. I could see bits of pepper on them. It was easy.’ She giggled then, a little shrilly. There was amusement in it, but there was some hysteria. ‘It was bloody daft, it was so easy.’

  There was a silence and then Hattie said, ‘Well! Now what?’

  Sam looked at her. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Do we involve the police or don’t we?’ She looked at Dilly then as she heard her sharp intake of breath. ‘I’m sorry, Dilly, but you have to see we can’t just sit on this. Can we? Tully was badly hurt. Could die.’

  ‘But we did nothing,’ Arse said urgently. ‘I mean, nothing that could have hurt Mr Tully. It was just the shooters I wanted to get at. They — the way they talk to us, those stinking Cadets, when they’ve got their uniforms — I could kill them easily. But I never thought of it for Mr Tully.’

  ‘You make it sound as though you’d thought of it for someone else,’ Hattie said, and he looked at her sideways and then at Dilly and Hattie could have sworn he’d laughed. But he hadn’t, and his face was quite clear of any smile.

  ‘I can’t see why you have to tell anyone about this,’ Dilly said and her voice was high and tight. ‘I mean, no harm’s been done, has it? Not by us. We tried a gag and it didn’t work, well hard luck, you could say. But we did no harm.’

  ‘That’s not entirely the point —’ Hattie began and then the door to the living room pushed open and Freddy came in, walking backwards, carrying a bulky load in his arms. He turned and saw them and tried to grin a welcome, though it wasn’t easy because he had a flat box held between his teeth; and with some grunting and muttering he set his burden on the table and then bent to pull out the flex attached to it, found the plug and pushed it home into a socket beside the fireplace.

  ‘Hello,’ he said then, pulling the box from his mouth, his face wreathed in smiles. ‘Well, I’m glad to see you’re here! Very sensible of you to think of it. I heard your voices when I was still editing and I thought, Aha! They’ve realized and they’ve come to see. Very sensible. Have you given them a drink, Dilly? For heaven’s sake, girl, what are you thinking of? Coffee? Tea? Or would you like something a bit better? Got some whisky somewhere around …’

  ‘No, no thank you,’ Hattie said as Sam shook his head and Freddy went bouncing back to his machine and stood patting it for all the world as though it were a sentient thing, as he chattered at them.

  ‘There it is, all anyone needs to know. I mean, I know it was obvious, wasn’t it? Had to be the best way to deal with it, and I thought, Do I call the fuzz, and I didn’t fancy that at all, not that I’m anything but law-abiding, ha ha, but you know how it is, no need to get into bed with a dog that’s got fleas unless you have to, eh? If you see what I mean. Better to tell the school, I thought. Then we can see where we go from there, and then I hear the doorbell and there you are, and I thought, Now I know why I’m so glad my Dilly’s a Foundationer, like I was. Best school there is, intelligence crawling out of the woodwork, eh?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr — er —’ Sam began.

  ‘Langham,’ Hattie murmured.

  ‘Mr Langham, but I’m not quite sure — We came to talk to Dilly. And her friend Vivian, who happened to be here. I’m not sure what —’

  Freddy stared at him, his face crumpled with puzzlement. ‘You hadn’t realized?’

  ‘Realized what?’

  ‘Why, that I’ve got the evidence!’ Freddy cried and slapped his machine triumphantly. ‘Evidence about what happened this afternoon! Wasn’t I there all day, making my film for Hilary, Mr Roscoe, you know, wasn’t I there with my sound properly running and the camera looking everywhere? It had to be the answer, and those stupid police — well, as I say, no need to be nasty, but I speak as I find — those policemen never thought to ask me, did they? But here you are, so naturally I thought —’

  ‘Of course,’ Hattie said and laughed. ‘You’re quite right, of course, Mr Langham. Why didn’t we think of it?’

  ‘I was so sure you had.’ Fre
ddy looked first crestfallen then triumphant again. ‘Not that it matters that you weren’t as clever as I thought. I’ve got the evidence here and that’s what’s important. After all, I’d have told Hilary tomorrow anyway. I wouldn’t leave it to him to sort out —’

  ‘What evidence?’ Sam said bluntly.

  ‘Why, all that happened this afternoon at the display!’ Freddy seemed to swell a little. ‘I was sure to be at that, of course. Very visual part of the day, wasn’t it? Of course I was there. I’d covered most of the other bits of Founder’s Day so all I had to do was concentrate on the Cadets. Fine body of lads, aren’t they A fine body. I can tell you, I got a lump in the old throat looking at those boys, so intelligent, so hard-working and so steady for the old King and Country bit — or Queen and Country, I should say. It’s ridiculous, isn’t it, after all these years to —’

  ‘What does your film show, Mr Langham?’ Hattie said quickly as Sam took a step forward, clearly driven almost to rage by the man’s flood of nonsense. ‘Can you see who shot Mr Tully?’

  Freddy stared. ‘Oh, no. Of course not.’

  ‘Then what’s all the fuss about?’ Arse got to his feet and moved across to the table to stand beside the machine and stare down at it in some disgust. ‘If it doesn’t show you who did it —’

  ‘It shows you who didn’t!’ Freddy said, triumphant again, and now he began to fuss with his machine, peering through the viewfinder, fiddling with the tape feed. ‘Look, let me show you. I’ll give you a running commentary of what I’ve got here. Unedited, this is — I wouldn’t want to do anything to vital evidence, would I? That’d be tampering with justice, wouldn’t it? So, it’s the film as taken, wobbles and all.’ He laughed merrily. ‘A few of those, but never mind, soon get them out when we do the final cut. Now, here we go. Boys and their gun kits, moving up to the butts. Boys setting up the targets — here we are, nice close-up — back to the boys with their boxes, zoom, focus, close-up on box — right, gun is loaded, close-up on breech, bit of a wobble here, but a nice shot otherwise, but here’s another, steady as a rock, use that one, gun loaded, cocked, pull camera back, focus on boy as he closes eye and takes aim, there — fires, great recoil, looks fabulous, we cut to the target, bit of wobble again as my camera goes belting over, and we get close-up of target — not bad at all, one ear clipped, very neat, back again to the next shot —’

  ‘Let me see for myself,’ Sam said sharply as Freddy lifted his head from the viewfinder and looked up at him, opened his mouth to speak and then thought better of it.

  ‘I’ll just rewind,’ he said. ‘Here you are. Just sit there like that. Lean forward or you won’t see — yes, there you are, jerky because it’s just an editing machine, you understand, but the definition’s good, isn’t it? The definition’s good —’

  ‘Let me watch for myself,’ Sam said curtly. ‘Is there a soundtrack?’

  ‘Oh, there’s a soundtrack all right. Here you are.’ He fiddled at the side of the machine and then pushed a pair of earphones at Sam. ‘Try that for level. OK? Good. If it gets a bit heavy you can always turn it down like this, or up, this way, if you’d rather —’

  ‘Just leave it as it is,’ Sam commanded and sat down and fixed the earphones on and Hattie stood and watched as he began to run the machine. She could hear the thin clacking of the soundtrack as it spilled out of the earphones clamped to Sam’s head and she ached to see what there was to see; but she said nothing, just stood there and watched.

  Beyond Sam, Dilly and Arse stood side by side, not touching but seeming to stand inside the same protective bubble. Between them all, and behind Sam’s back, Freddy danced around, clearly yearning to fiddle with his precious machine but not daring to interrupt Sam.

  At last it was through and Sam pulled the earphones off and stood up and Freddy hurled himself into the chair and began to fiddle again, this time rewinding.

  ‘He’s quite right,’ Sam said. ‘You can see clearly every shot that’s fired. I listened very carefully. There are no shots on the soundtrack that aren’t accounted for by what you can see on the screen. There are only four shooters at a time and they all shot at intervals. You can watch each and every one of them. I counted. The Carter boy — I’m not sure which one, but a Carter twin — is diabolical. His shots hardly ever reach the target and God knows where they went. It had to be one of those that ricocheted, I’d say. There’s no other answer.’

  There was a silence and then suddenly Arse said loudly, ‘Yippee.’

  ‘Isn’t it great?’ Freddy cried, incandescent with delight. ‘Isn’t it marvellous? To be there when such a thing happens, to get the evidence like that on film —’

  ‘The non-evidence,’ Hattie murmured. ‘It isn’t positive, is it?’

  ‘Non-evidence is the same as hard evidence,’ Freddy said. ‘Isn’t it? I watched and watched and you can do the same. You’ll see no one aimed a gun at Mr Tully. I have the next set of tapes inside — the ones I took after he’d been hurt. Didn’t get in too close, you know, no need to be ghoulish, not my style, but I got some good shots and you can see easily where he is in relation to the butts, because I got some good long shots in and a few pans. I like the pan shot,’ he said ingenuously. ‘It sort of makes it all look so important, you know? And there it is on my film, it had to be an accident.’

  ‘An accident,’ Dilly said, and began to giggle. ‘Oh, Viv, he said it was an accident.’

  Arse stood there and slowly his face began to soften, widen and then split into a grin and Hattie watched, fascinated, as the old man who had stood there beside Dilly became a schoolboy, and not just a boy; a merry, happy boy full of joy and youth and excitement. It was a sight she couldn’t remember ever seeing before when she’d looked at Arse, and she stared as he turned to Dilly and laughed and then the two of them were clinging to each other and hooting helplessly, Dilly whooping loudly as she tried to catch her breath.

  ‘Listen to her,’ Freddy said indulgently as he went to slap her on the back. ‘Ever since she was little, she’s been like it. It’s why we called her Dilly you know, because she sounds just like someone calling their ducks to be killed: whoop, whoop, whoop, there she goes! So it’s Dilly instead of Monica which is her real name, not that she’d ever consider using it because she hates it so much. Oh, Tuppence, do stop, there’s a good girl. You’ll make yourself sick again.’

  And indeed Dilly was looking less than well now, still laughing and whooping but her face was pale and set and her eyes seemed to stare and certainly wept copiously.

  Hattie came and took her by the shoulders and pushed her down into an armchair beside the fire, and Arse came to stand beside her, leaning over to set one hand protectively on her shoulder.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘She’ll be all right now.’ And indeed Dilly was beginning to relax, leaning back, breathing more deeply to control herself. ‘It was just that —’ Again his face creased. ‘It was just you saying it was an accident, you see. It set us both off. An accident —’ And then they were both laughing again and this time they didn’t stop.

  Twenty-one

  The school was buzzing, a low humming sound that seemed to creep into her bones and vibrate there; everybody murmuring and whispering at each other, she thought as she hurried through the soggy fallen leaves in the quadrangle where boys stood about in tight little knots, and across into the main building by the Headmaster’s office corridor; everyone on edge, quivering like banjo strings, everyone frightened and excited because of what had happened on Saturday.

  It had been the same at home the night before last. She’d been late, of course, because of the visit to Freddy and Dilly’s flat, and had found both the girls wide awake and curled up on the sofa next door in Judith’s drawing room watching, with wide-eyed concentration, a programme about violence against women, long after they should have been in bed. Judith was sitting with them, looking not much older than the little girls in her pink track suit and trainers, a glass of wine in one hand and a ha
lf-eaten apple in the other, watching with as much absorption as the children; and she blinked vaguely at Hattie as she came in breathlessly and then smiled at her disarmingly.

  ‘Thought it best to keep them here with me, ducky,’ she said. ‘It’s the wretched girl’s night out. Where do all those girls go night after night? I’d forgotten that when you phoned to ask if she could sit in for you, and they didn’t want to go to bed in their own room with no one in the house, even though I was next door, did you, my poppets?’ Sophie and Jessica stared on at the screen, oblivious of her. ‘So I thought you wouldn’t be long and fetched them in here with me. Peter’s got a late call for a change. What’s up at school, ducky? You sounded madly mysterious when you phoned. Just talking about emergencies and not telling a person the gory details is the act of a sadist. I keep telling Peter that. Don’t you start it.’

  ‘Not now, Judith,’ she said, shepherding the children off the sofa to loud cries of objection on their part. ‘I’d really rather they didn’t watch stuff like this, you know —’

  ‘Oh, it’s terribly educational,’ Judith said blithely. ‘Then they’ I know what sort of chaps not to marry, won’t you, sweeties? Yes of course you will. Now, get them up to bed and come right back. I have to know what all this fuss is.’

  She’d had to go back of course, once the children were asleep — and it had taken ages to settle them, because they were so over excited by the television they’d been watching and so eager to tell her, in gleefully bloody details, all about it — because Judith would have given her no peace if she hadn’t; and truth to tell she wanted to anyway. It helped to have someone to talk to. So she rigged up in their bedrooms the old listening device from their baby days, and took the listener end of it with her to go and sin with Judith and tell her of the awfulness of Founder’s Day.

  Judith listened with a rapt expression on her face and there sighed with deep satisfaction when Hattie finished.