GBH

by Ted Lewis

  Back at the Monastic Habit, Derek says, “I reckon you’re on to something.”

  “Really,” I say, slipping onto the stool.

  “Shall I get you a drink first?”

  “Yes, do that, and of course, yourself.”

  Derek does that, serves another customer, slips back.

  “Well,” he says. “I done it like you suggested; laid right back.”

  “Go on,” I say to him.

  “First off I just pass the time of day with him; haven’t seen you since last time sort of thing. I always have a word with him, even if he is a-couple-of-tomato-juices-and-that’s-it man. We cover a couple of things, the weather, the midweek match, and after that I say to him, on your own today, are you? He says, how do you mean? I give him the wink. Your friend, I say; the young lady. A lovely lady. Oh, he says, her. You what? I say to him. You dropped lucky there. I wish I’d been sitting at that side of the bar when she drifted in, I can tell you. Oh, it wasn’t like that, he says. It never is, I say. No, seriously, he says. Sure, we got talking, he says, and, well, I’d have to be blind not to realise how tasty she was, but I’m a married man, he says. Aren’t we all, I say. Honest, he says, I’d never risk it with my old lady; she’s telepathic. Give over, I said, that’s what the afternoons are for, these days. If you got a job that gets you about a bit. It was nothing, he said, they just had a couple of drinks, and when she was leaving I asked her if I could drop her anywhere. Which according to him, he could, and he did.”

  “Did he say anything about her; who she was, what she did?”

  “He was close about her. As close as he could be without appearing to be. He said she was some kind of demonstrator. I said I bet she was. No, he said, she was in cosmetics, ran a group that demonstrated house to house. For one of the big nationals.”

  “And that’s all he said about her?”

  “That’s all he said about anything. He waited a bit longer, so’s not to seem to rush off. An’ then he rushed off.”

  “Well,” I say to him, “thanks a lot. You did well.”

  “So what do you think?” he says.

  “Like you say, I think you got on to something. That’s probably why he used the phone, to rearrange the meeting place.”

  “He used the phone?”

  “Yes. On the way out.”

  “Well,” Derek says. “There you are then.”

  I nod, at the same time reaching into my inside pocket.

  “Thanks a lot,” Derek says, slipping the envelope discreetly into the back pocket of his trousers. “If there’s anything else I can do …”

  “Sure,” I tell him. “I’ll let you know.”

  He shakes his head.

  “I dunno,” he says. “This divorce business.”

  “You’re right,” I say to him. “Be warned.”

  THE SMOKE

  IT WAS ON THE ten o’clock news. Shots of the exterior of the hotel and the room, after Glenda’s body’d been taken out. Plenty of close-ups of the bloodstained sheets and the splashes on the headboard. Glenda was described as having been a dancer. She’d booked into the hotel at two o’clock that afternoon. Since then she’d remained in her room. According to the desk clerk, to his knowledge she had no visitors. But, said the man with the microphone ominously, as he stood in front of the hotel, Glenda Hill had had a visitor. Or visitors. Who they were remained to be seen. It was believed that Dutch police were examining certain items they had removed from the hotel bedroom. What these items were the Dutch had so far declined to disclose; but it was a possibility that due to the very savagery of the attack, the killer may have left some vital clue as to his identity which he’d overlooked in his haste to escape from the scene of the crime. And because of Glenda’s nationality, the possibility that her killer was British could not be excluded. Andrew Webber, News at Ten, Amsterdam.

  The first phone call was from James.

  “Have I ever held anything back from you, James?” I said to him. “What do you think I am, stupid?”

  “I just wondered if perhaps something had gone beyond your control. Out of hand, so to speak.”

  “I’ll repeat what I said; the last time I had anything to do with her was on the phone this morning. And when we got there, she was gone.”

  James was silent for a moment.

  “It’s very off colour, isn’t it?” he said.

  “That’s one way of putting it.”

  “Have you talked to our friend?”

  “I should imagine he’s poised with his pennies over the slot at this very moment. Not that he’ll have anything to tell me. He’ll be phoning to see if it’s safe for him to turn up to work in the morning.”

  “I’ll get off the line, then. I’ll be round in about an hour.”

  I put down the phone. I was right. It began ringing again immediately.

  “Hello, Dennis,” I said.

  “What’s going on?” said Collins. “I’ve just seen—”

  “I know what you’ve just seen. And I don’t know either.”

  “But you told me—”

  “What I told you was right.”

  “Look, if I’m to help you—”

  “You’re the second person that’s said that tonight,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Forget it. Listen. This isn’t down to me, right?”

  “Then who—”

  “All in good time, Dennis. Christ, as yet, it’s nothing.”

  “At the moment, but—”

  “At the moment, Dennis,” I said, “just put your slippers back on and stop worrying. I’m not involved.”

  “That’s not the point,” Collins said. “People could—”

  “I know what people could do, Dennis,” I said. “There are some things I do know. So stay there until I phone you.”

  I put the receiver down.

  Yes, I thought; I certainly knew what people could do.

  THE SEA

  ALL RIGHT. SO MAYBE I’ve been wrong. Maybe she wasn’t press. But what else could I have done? Just stand around hoping I wasn’t right?

  Of course, I’m still not ninety-nine percent certain. You can never be ninety-nine percent. That’s why I phoned James earlier in the afternoon with the number of the crossword man’s Cortina; after he’s checked the number with the contact in Records I’ll be able either to associate him with the girl as a fellow member of the press or accept what he’d told Derek at its face value.

  As to the girl, I’ve nothing to associate her with whatsoever. James, when I’d phoned, once again told me that as far as O’Connell was concerned, Fleet Street is still becalmed; not a ripple, not a murmur to disturb the stale air. As far as James and O’Connell are concerned, the girl doesn’t exist, except in my stir-crazy imagination.

  Let them try it, I think to myself. Let them try living the way I’ve been living these last months, after what I’ve seen.

  I blink, as if to guard against a glare that can only be shielded by something in my brain, and then I concentrate on the road as a temporary screen.

  After I’d talked to James, I’d had a few more drinks. Then I’d gone to see another movie. After that, I’d picked up my motor from the multi-storey and I drove out of Grimsby, on to the coast road that leads towards Mablethorpe. I want to see if there’s any sign of life around the bungalow. I don’t expect there will be, not now. And if there isn’t, then I’ve decided I’ll spend the night there and phone James to check again about the papers in the morning.

  So I drive slowly along the coast road, its slightly elevated position between the dykes making the coastal plain seem like a tideless imitation of the placid sea beyond the dunes, a mile away to my left.

  Ten minutes out of Grimsby and the late afternoon traffic begins to thin out; it’s not quite late enough for the early starters to be off their marks from their shops and offices. Still, one or two of them scud past me as though the weekend starts here. The trouble with this road, although the surface is new, is that it follows
the old route, which dog-legs its way down the coast, twisting and turning, hardly a straight stretch longer than two hundred yards. Of course, the minute there’s more than a couple of yards in a straight line, the cowboys in their Escorts and their Allegros start playing at Brands Hatch between the beads, which you’re pushing on this stretch of road if you go into them at more than twenty-five. And even though there isn’t a great deal of traffic about, it doesn’t take much more than two or three at a stretch to create a racetrack. So as usual on this road I stay at my steady speed, letting those who wish to chance meeting their maker sooner than I do pass me by with plenty of room to spare.

  I’m just the other side of Marshchapel when the tail back starts. At first I can’t see to what extent because of the trees that surround the unused church that stands silent on the bend. At present there are only eight cars as far as I can see. Then we all shunt forward and the first car in my line of vision slowly disappears around the bend. This process continues for about five minutes, until it’s my turn to round the corner.

  Then I can see what the blockage is all about.

  There are two cars involved and a transit van. But they’re not all together. The transit van is half on its back, in the dyke. The only way they’re going to get the two cars to the breaker’s yard is the way they are now, fused together. One of them must have tried overtaking the transit at just the right moment. From the way the Law and the fire-brigade and the ambulance men are working there must still be people in the motors although I doubt very much if they’ll be in the singular any more. The petrol tank of one of the motors must have gone up, but from where I am, all I can see is smoke drifting back across the flat fields towards the dunes. A couple of bodies are lying on the grass verge, under blankets; the authorities are too concerned with whoever is left alive or dead in the motors to shift the bodies any further. An officer of the Law is holding us at bay, while some of his partners and members of the fire brigade work away at the twisted metal like ants on a dead spider.

  The traffic controller waves two cars at the front of the procession forward and they move past the accident at a funereal pace. I move forward too and that leaves me in second place behind the leader. The bodies under the blankets are a few yards ahead of me on the grass verge, just the feet and the lower legs showing, two men. One of the men has lost his shoes; just the remains of his socks, burnt and fused to him like nylon blisters, point upwards to the clear, cold sky. Protruding from the other blanket, the nearest one, are the bloodied legs of a pair of overalls. I can see part of an ankle between the top of a boot and the bottom of one of the overall legs, burnt the deepest of possible reds.

  I turn my attention to the soldered motors. It is hard to say which was coming from what direction. They must have spun half a dozen times, locked together. One is a Vauxhall Viva, but that is not the one they’re presently working on, the one presumably with somebody still inside. That one’s the other car, a Cortina, but it’s impossible to see inside it because of the concentrated activities of the authorities. There are a few flames licking out from between one of the no-longer-flush rear doors of the Cortina, the boot of which is pointing in my direction. One of the firemen is squirting in foam through one of the shattered windows. The whole frame of the Cortina has been twisted, like an empty cigarette packet that’s been squeezed in the middle. Its number plate is parallel to my windscreen but at an angle to the horizon.

  It takes a minute or two for me to realise where I’ve seen the letters and the numbers before.

  Just to be certain, I take the piece of paper from my breast pocket and unfold it. The letters and the numbers are the same.

  I look up from the piece of paper and through my windscreen at the Cortina.

  Two things happen at the same time: the fireman with the extinguisher shouts something and hurls himself away from the car for a second, leaving a gap through which I can see into the car. There’s someone moving in there in the passenger seat, a girl in a maroon PVC raincoat. Before the total realisation registers completely, the second thing happens; the interior of the Cortina fills with a sheet of flame, lightning-like, then billows out of the shattered windows like a soundless explosion. Now everybody around the car hurls themselves backwards, and then comes the real explosion, as the flames hit the petrol.

  Involuntarily, although the blast is relatively small, I twist my body away from the flash, screwing my eyes tight shut. When I open them again, I’m looking at the grass verge. The blast has lifted a corner of one of the blankets, revealing the face of the shoeless man, the man with the crossword puzzle, eyeless as well as shoeless, because of the glass and metal he’d absorbed on impact, the sockets just blood-black, blood streaked down his cheeks, as regular and as sharply defined as the motley of a clown.

  I look back at the Cortina. Everybody is standing back, helpless and motionless in the face of the flames. The figure in the passenger seat is still mobile, though not because of any brief retention of life, but because of the effects the flames are now having on the girl’s totally fire-enveloped shape, like a coarse charcoal drawing as it totters slightly to one side, already becoming one with the carpet and the upholstery and the melting plastic.

  THE SMOKE

  “I’VE JUST HEARD,” MICKEY said, sitting down. “So that’s where she went.”

  “That’s where she went,” I said.

  “A bit close to home, wasn’t it?”

  “In more ways than one,” I said.

  “I mean, they couldn’t be much nearer home if they tried.”

  “You’re right about that,” I said.

  “Parsons’ll be happy.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Mickey drummed on the table with his fingers.

  “I’m surprised at Ray,” he said. “Involving himself with a slag and then knocking her off like this. I mean he could have told her to stay put and let us do the job when we went round to see her. I mean, if he’d already gone, what could she tell us: that he’d already gone?”

  “Perhaps she could have told us all sorts of things he didn’t want us to know.”

  “Stupid,” Mickey said.

  “You haven’t seen the photographs?”

  “No.”

  I pushed the envelope across the desk towards him. He took the photographs out and leafed through them, shaking his head.

  “Stupid,” he said. “Crude. Not the Ray we all knew and loved. Not his style at all.”

  “No,” I said.

  Mickey slung the photographs on the desk.

  “Stupid,” he said again.

  “How do you reckon it?” I asked him.

  “Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? She calls Ray to say we’re coming over. He tells her to get out of it and join him in Amsterdam. When she gets there, he knocks her off, or has her knocked off, because of things she may know that we don’t, and also seeing as how he’s decided that with the kind of money he’s got stacked up he can in future do better than the Glendas of this world.”

  “They’d been together eighteen months. Like we said, it could have been love.”

  Mickey shrugged. “Maybe she did it a new way that he’d never come across before. In any case, all good things come to an end, in time.”

  “There’s certainly a lot of truth in that, Mickey,” I said.

  “So what you want me to do?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “At the moment, nothing. James is coming round shortly. I’ll send for you after he’s gone, if I need you.”

  He stood up, and looked at the top photograph. “Now if I’d been doing a job like that …”

  I nodded. “I know. They wouldn’t even have had to change the sheets.”

  THE SEA

  ONCE I’M IN THE bungalow, with the doors locked behind me and a drink in my hand, I sit opposite the picture window and stare out at the broad sky as it changes from late afternoon to early evening and think about the events outside Marshchapel.

  Could it have been jus
t what it appeared to be? That she’d got talking to the crossword man and they’d got something started and he was so shit-scared of his missus that the minute even a barman makes a few remarks he calls her up and changes the meeting place and they drive out into the country for a session of al fresco, resulting in a permanent end to the affair?

  Just that, that simple?

  But what about the Mablethorpe Lesley? What is she playing at, slumming around local Amateur Nights looking like an out-of-season hippy, then appearing in Grimsby all wigged up and well turned-out, like a different person altogether? Maybe she was a different person altogether. Maybe—

  I take another deep drink of my scotch, then another.

  If only I’d had one more look at her, just to be one hundred percent certain, the way she’d looked the first time I’d seen her, not the way she’d been this afternoon, her body shuddering because of the blanket of flame that wrapped itself around her.

  I have to stop thinking like this, or I’ll begin to be like I was the time when I was shown what had happened to Jean.

  THE SMOKE

  “ALL RIGHT,” JEAN SAID, “let’s pursue all the propositions to their logical conclusions.”

  “You sound more like James every day,” I said.

  “Good,” she said. “That means I’m likelier to arrive at a reasonable solution.”

  “All right,” I said, “go on. State your case. Or cases.”

  “Right,” she said. “From the beginning; it wasn’t coincidental that Ray went when he did, and he didn’t go because he was frightened we were on to him; there was no way he could know; Henry Chapman wouldn’t, Tommy Hales isn’t in a fit state to talk to anyone yet, and Mal Wilson isn’t in a fit state for ever. And why should they? If they knew anything they’d tell us, not Ray. He was responsible for their having to undergo the treatment. And his mother, he’d been setting that story up for a long time. He knew nobody would check it because he didn’t know anybody suspected he was up to anything.”