A Clear Conscience

by Frances Fyfield

  Cath found herself standing over the machine, looking for a way to play back the message so she could hear it again. She had liked the sound of insecurity and her own luxurious feeling of pity, and she had not thought of Damien for at least an hour.

  Joe Boyce walked towards the number 59. He had a satchel in which he carried some of the tools of his trade. He did not want them stolen, such as they were. A small knife with a comfortable handle, a shiny Thermos flask for mixing and shaking, a chamois leather, soft as silk, for polishing glasses to a high shine. Last month, someone had broken and entered the Spoon and removed all the spirits from behind the bar. Joe had only shrugged. He had told Mickey Gat more times than he could count that the back of the place was insecure and, besides, the loss of the spirits was not the end of the world. Cocktails were out of fashion; the buggers only wanted beer and wine in summer, apart from the strange old school from the jungles of Chelsea, living on pensions and borrowed time, who bundled themselves into a corner to drink one whisky sour after another. It was the younger varieties, throwing money around while they yawed in those dreadful voices, who got so far up Joe’s nose and down his throat he wanted to hit them, but they were the kind big Mickey wanted in the pub. Big Mickey knew nothing about fine wines, but was not a fool. Don’t encourage these slow, steady drinkers, Joe was told; nor the ones who come in for half a pint and stay for ever. Joe was respectful to the boss. Mickey Gat was an outstanding and unusual member of the British working class and Joe had plenty of time for those, even those coasting round the edges. Mickey may have been a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but still a wolf. If Mickey, born Michaela, had been a mere male, instead of a creature of male mannerisms and attitudes, that male would have been intimidating. As it was, Mickey the woman, with all the strengths of a man plus all the subtleties of her own sex, presented a combination fit to terrify.

  ‘’Ere’s a little something for your lady wife,’ patting Joe on the shoulder with a power which made him wince, one broad-built person to another. ‘She’ll like this. You could put yourself in luck, old son.’

  Mickey was all East End charm, laid on with a trowel, half of it genuine, half of it borrowed from a childhood fascination with the Kray brothers. She had little enough in common with Joe. Mickey’s sporting career had been successful for a start: she had been women’s weightlifting champion, and had dabbled with wrestling until it ruined her make-up. The muscles still showed. Joe’s inglorious boxing career had been monitored by Mr Gat, Mickey’s old man, once famous in the ring himself, wily enough to turn triumph into promotion and management, a good gambler, clever enough to diversify the business in all directions, make a pile and a retinue of friends; while Joe’s small stature and lack of discipline both inside and outside the army boxing ring had cost him a disgrace. Mr Gat (Harry to his friends) was now ‘him indoors’, wreathed in the cigarette smoke which had curtailed his career, and, without spite, Mickey liked it best that way. She wore the mantle of his local fame, the business of boxing and pool, the pubs, the merchandise, with the ease of a cloak. It was not anything she told anyone, Harry least of all, but it had always been she who had the brains.

  Takes one good bloke to know another. Mickey winked like some amateur comic performer about to tell a lewd joke, adding to the most innocuous exchanges an air of harmless conspiracy. What else Mickey did for a living, except own this pub and two more in Clapton to augment the market stalls, Joe did not know and made it his business not to ask. Mickey rarely came near the place at opening times, unless early or late when the bulk of customers were gone. The morning uniform of shiny shell suit was replaced in the evening by more glamorous gear. Even without the colours, the sheer size of Mickey would have terrified the regulars with their elbow patches. Despite the soft voice, her body seemed to have been poured into the mould of a muscle-bound character from a comic. Superwoman expanded into a mountain range without too many valleys. In comparison, Joe was only a miniature, just as he had been with his brother-in-law, Damien, Mickey’s best friend. When the takings were particularly good, Mickey would slip a paw into a capacious pocket and hand Joe perfume. From the outset of their acquaintance, Joe had been left in no doubt, without a word on the subject being spoken, that if his own hands extracted anything from the till of the Spoon, he would find his knuckles mashed to a pulp.

  Mickey had manicured nails, a curious affectation for such a masculine female.

  ‘Here, take it,’ thrusting the perfume again. ‘She’ll love it, I promise.’ A shiny fingernail with a half-sovereign ring tapped a sharp nose, knowingly.

  There was a small living area behind the bar, a bathroom and kitchen, full of boxes left by Mickey, all preserved in exactly the same state in which they had arrived. If you were loyal to Mickey, loyalty was returned, but what Mickey did not know was that the only occasion when Joe was ever tempted to laugh, was when that paw with the bright nails extended itself with a boxed bottle of perfume held in the palm.

  ‘Go on, Joe. You’d think I was giving you an f’ing bribe. Take it!’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Joe half adored Mickey, except for the sweet smell which accompanied all her gestures, and the scent in the back room, from the boxes.

  Present for Cath, just like Damien had done.

  Eleven thirty and all quiet tonight. He locked up, heady from the smell of the window-boxes, satisfied with a day’s work, soberly conducted, untroubled by the perfume in his satchel. The pretty mews, all low houses, solid doors and cheerful lights, was softly silent as he walked towards the main road for the bus. He had encountered nothing all day but open politeness and sweet-mannered customers, no drunks, no wrecks, no-one drowning sorrows and no aggression. Until that motley crew who had arrived just on closing: kids, already drunk and wanting to make it worse. He shut the door in their faces, listened to them banging on the windows for a while, took no notice, apart from sticking up two fingers in between wiping the bar. They had barked and sworn in upper-class voices, summer holiday kids. Leave them. That’s what Mickey said. No after-hours stuff, Joe, not ever. I’m the licensee, right? It just ain’t fucking worth it.

  He hit Sloane Avenue, walking with a lilt to his step, and it was there they began to follow him. It was not as if he ever aped Mickey’s appearance, not consciously at least, but he was a small, well-groomed man with fashionable baggy trousers, the short back and sides of his haircut artfully trendy; he was thirty-three and a man has to look to his youth. Even if he never could have looked a patch on Damien.

  ‘Wanker,’ someone said out of the darkness, three feet behind.

  ‘Fucking queer,’ said another.

  ‘Naa, just can’t get it up,’ said a third, and that last remark, intended to do no more than insult, but loaded with a horrible element of truth, made him turn. He saw there were five of them: one fat, bare chested, belly hanging down like a sumo wrestler; one thin as a rake, so the hand holding something in his pocket stood out from his skinny thigh like a growth; two others, middle sized, shifting and sniggering; one more little one, hanging back, as if in need of his mother. He eyed them for a minute, weighed the chances, his mind clear. One fat slob, three others more drunk than sober and a little frightened fairy. Enough, in terms of weight, but his legs could not move. He had a terrifying sense of déjà vu, as if he had been in the same place, same time, again and again. The whole scenario assumed a sickening familiarity: he should have braced himself to find that old aggression, the adrenalin sending heat waves to beat against his temples and make him mad, but instead he looked at their faces and heard the music of a siren in the distance. The faces were implacable. They all looked like Cath’s brother, features masked in a kind of genial malevolence, all of them twitching. He shut his eyes for a minute, blinking to blot out the presence of that dead man. When he opened his eyes again, the predators were that much closer, only a few feet away, circling with the inhuman technique of animals surrounding prey.

  Joe acted instinctively. He screamed at the top of his
voice, a shrill shriek, like the high-pitched wailing of a baby. Then he fell to the ground, clutching his satchel to his chest. ‘Oh! My heart, my heart! Help me please, help me please!’ The words stuck in his throat with their own indigestible hypocrisy, rising like bile along with the peanuts he had consumed behind the bar, with water, in lieu of drink. The effect was the one he desired. With his head turned south, he could look towards Knightsbridge, the bus stop and the presence of taxis. To the left, and a hundred yards away, there was Mr Eliot’s house, where he had once peered through the window and frightened a child; he could not stumble towards that source. He writhed in the dust of the pavement, moaning and twisting, not all of it feigned.

  They ran. He looked like he was dying, so they ran. Except the last, the little fairy who had hung back in the first place. He paused, then he stopped and then he kicked with remarkable precision. One to the head, his training shoe connecting with the swell of bone just below the left eye. Joe tried to shield his ears, crossing his arms across his face. The little fucker was not out of breath as his boot connected with Joe’s ribs, casual kicks which carried the whole weight of the body behind them. An agile body, bending to whisper in his ear. ‘Get you next time, sonny. Here’s one for luck.’

  One final kick which made him scream. He could not meet the eyes.

  Damien’s eyes, to the life. It was all so bloodless, so shameful.

  The conductor on the number 59 had an ebony face, stretched across beautiful bones, and soulful brown eyes which refused to connect. It was the distant expression of a man who has learned to see no evil. Joe stared at him, challenging him to say something as he got aboard, the only passenger clambering upstairs as the bus moved away, using his hands so that he practically climbed on all fours, clinging to the satchel like a lifeline. When he began to fumble inside it with trembling hands for his travel card, he started to feel the first sensations of sheer relief and the enormity of what he had missed. Christ, they might have got the keys to the pub, and what would Mickey have done about that? He dreaded to think: he would have had to go back and stay there all night, waiting for them to come back. There would have been no question of calling the police, that much was understood. The relief made him tremble more, so that when he held his card up for the conductor, it danced in front of his eyes. He was aware of the black man standing there, swaying slightly instead of moving away.

  ‘Hey, man, where have you been?’

  Joe thought the conductor must have noticed the mark on his cheek, the dirt on his clothes. He looked at him but the man was not looking back. He was simply standing there, wrinkling his nose.

  ‘You smelling real sweet, man,’ was all he said with a twisted smile, lumbering away to the only other passengers on the top deck, three girls, huddled together giggling at the front.

  Joe delved back into the bag. The smell was overpowering. Perfume, the box mashed where he had rolled on it, the liquid sending out fumes which seared his nostrils, made him close the bag and push it away from him.

  The shame of it. To lie down and scream like a baby, and come up smelling of roses.

  Joe hated perfume. He walked down the road to the place he called home. Perfume made him feel as though he should be followed by cats; it assailed his senses like the smell of manure; it reminded him of being clutched to the bosom of his mother, his grandmother, his aunts, and all those who had left him somewhere along the line. He never gave Mickey’s perfume to Cath. He could buy his own gifts for his own wife.

  He could not bear to fumble in the bag again, to contaminate his hands by looking for the key. He rang the bell and waited, imagined its throaty and croaking sound upstairs, another thing to be fixed. There was no answer. He rang again, started shouting, Cath, Cath! Let me in. He knew where she would be, up in the attic rooms, staring at photos of Damien, lighting a candle to his memory. The hands around the keys were unsteady: he thundered upstairs.

  She was there at the top, holding the door open, anticipating him with her timid brown eyes, dressed in nothing but a towel which she clutched to herself. He could see the faint shadow of bruises on her arms, and another wave of sickening shame swept over him. She saw his face, the bruise grown swollen and livid on the journey home.

  ‘I bought you some perfume, Cath,’ was all he said as he stepped inside.

  ‘Joke from Joe,’ he added. She looked at the bruise, without touching him, still holding the towel across her chest. Then she wrinkled her nose, slightly, smiled with the smile of a sphinx.

  He had no idea from where the blow came, only that it was he who had administered it. She went reeling back, into the living room, hitting the wall. He followed, feeling for his belt, panting. And then he was pinning her to the floor, pushing himself inside her, oblivious to the dryness, pumping his seed in there, quickly shouting as he came. Then he lay across her on the rough carpet, sobbing.

  ‘I love you, Cath. I love you.’ She stroked his head.

  ‘I know you do.’

  One hand stroked his hair against her chest. The other fingered the scar on her abdomen which made her so impossible to love. There had been the promise of a child, long, long since. She had not wanted it then, not while she was a child herself, and now, in her arms, she cradled this other.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘Why is it, Bailey, we offer you administrative jobs, suited to the rank you’ve somehow managed to achieve, God knows how, and you sidestep the issue? We send you for management training and you go straight back to the street. Like some bloody homing pigeon.’

  The blank face before him showed no glimmer of emotion, less of humour, a face carved from granite. It reminded Bailey of a gargoyle, weathered by centuries into something almost beyond further decay: not the face the divisional commander showed to his grandchildren.

  ‘I suppose I like nicking people, sir.’

  ‘You’ve got a degree, haven’t you? We need brains like yours in think-tanks, Bailey. We need you at the top.’

  ‘I don’t think so, sir. With respect,’ he added thoughtfully, to make it look as if serious thought was a habit, ‘I think you need me at the bottom.’

  ‘Of which heap, Bailey?’

  ‘The dung heap,’ said Bailey. ‘The septic tank, not the think-tank.’ The commander’s smile did not alter the gargoyle effect. They would speak again soon, he said, and to Bailey’s ears, the words contained more threat than promise.

  He walked down the corridors of New Scotland Yard towards the lift. Each floor was the same, built round the central shaft, with minor alterations to the layout. The gents lavatory was always in the same place, the senior command offices had similar styles, and on one floor, the number of which he could never remember by some Freudian convenience, there was a foyer of portraits of old commissioners and a dining room reserved for those en route to becoming the next. Bailey had indeed managed to skip his way up the ranks without ever resorting to politics or policy. All he had done was remain industrious and effective, but inconspicuous, making no complaints and telling no tales. For useful loose cannons like Ryan he had simply rearranged their duties; in the case of men with a propensity to violence or light fingers, he sidestepped the whole paraphernalia of discipline proceedings by telling them exactly what he was prepared to do to them should they fail to reconsider their careers. Turnover could be high under Bailey’s command. He could exert more quiet terror than a hanging judge and inspire the kind of loyalty reserved for the Queen. Ryan said he was a secretive bastard, who never caused embarrassment: that was all there was to it.

  Which meant those on high should let him alone to perform where he excelled: troubleshooting, organising an investigation wherever he was asked, a humble, only ostensibly obedient maverick, rolling with the punch of being landed with teams of inadequates. Some learned to take responsibility; others, like Ryan, would always be the second lieutenant in need of a leader. Most police officers were eminently adaptable. Except himself. He could no more live and breathe in this ivory tower than he co
uld have flown above it. Senior officers’ mess, waitress dining in cosy style, a corridor of portraits and committees, advancement beyond the stratosphere; speak now, the commander said with his forked tongue, and all this could be yours.

  Outside, there was another bomb scare. Bailey had to wait to get out from the underground car park while someone stuck a mirror beneath his car. Girls in skirts were asked to consent to the same examination on their way in to work, and he wanted to suggest to the man on duty that if he had brought in a bomb, it would have been gift wrapped.

  The sun shone, melting the irritation and sense of impending doom. Bailey might have lost that capacity for fury which had made him want to hit walls, but he could not shed his contempt for ambition, any more than he could rid himself of the far more corrupting force of pity; he looked to his own demise without a sense of tragedy. At forty-seven he was old, for a policeman. The equivalent of an honourable discharge would not leave him penniless. He just wished he had reached the age when he was really pragmatic enough to leave alone a delegated quick-result case like the murder of Damien Flood.

  He chuckled with a sense of freedom as he rounded Parliament Square, saw the traffic jam, stopped and ran his tongue behind his top teeth, executed a U-turn with the satisfying ease of a taxi driver diving towards the prospect of a fare and then found that the change of direction left him, suddenly, directionless. He was pointing towards Victoria when he wanted to go northeast to his own happy hunting grounds. There was no other immediate reason for Bailey to go for a drink at the Spoon and Fiddle. Owned by Mickey Gat from Whitechapel. Run by the brother-in-law of a four-month-dead, one-time athlete, pool player turned drunk, killed in the aftermath of a pub fight. Bailey could recall, word for word, the statement made by this brother-in-law, Joe Boyce, background material only.

  ‘I get one day off a week from being a barman,’ the statement said, ‘and when I do, I go to a different kind of place to drink. If Damien was around, I would go with him. To tell the truth, he wasn’t the best companion, since he could not hold his drink, always picked a fight, while me, I get quiet and sleepy. Anyway, he did pick an argument with someone in the pub, the Lamb it’s called, only round the corner from where I live, as a matter of fact, and it all ended up in threats, you come outside with me, all that stuff. Damien loved it of course, Damien would. He had three friends with him, big blokes, like himself, all ex-boxers, they could handle anything. I dunno why it is when blokes are big, they seem to attract trouble. One of them wanted to go home, so Damien said go then, but he didn’t, and then Damien says to me, stay, will you? And I said, the hell I will, if this lot are coming back for a fight, I’ve your sister to look after and I’m not getting hurt for anyone. Fine, he says, fine, and we get another drink. I don’t drink much myself; you can’t when you run a bar, but when I’m not at work, I take anything offered. They’re a good laugh, that crew of Damien’s, when they get together. That other team were long gone, I forgot about them.’