by Diane Janes
Sometimes he heard people whispering. Only that morning, he had heard them whispering about him when he woke up. Except that they couldn’t have been, because when he opened his eyes the room was empty and the door was closed, and there was nothing to hear except the sound of the television, intruding faintly from Michael’s and Rachel’s bedroom where she always had that dreadful, repetitive breakfast programme on, while she had a cup of tea in bed.
He remembered that he mustn’t be critical of his sister-in-law Rachel and her lack of taste when it came to either the television, or the fussy decorative scheme she had chosen for the guest bedroom which he had been inhabiting, because Rachel had been so kind to him – tremendously kind. So had Michael, and Monty, and Monty’s wife Sally, though the latter had initially been annoyed at his ‘involving’ Katrina in his wedding plans. As if turning up for half an hour at the register office constituted being placed in some kind of terrible danger.
He had endured a certain number of Prodigal Son type homecomings in his youth, but these had always involved his late father, (though he suspected that his brothers had often been aware of the circumstances). Nothing to compare with this one, of course. It was surely the ultimate humiliation to be driven from a police station, wearing clothes borrowed from one of his older brothers, which were at least a size too small. He had always cared about his appearance. The Thomas Pink shirts, Paul Smith shoes. His embossed leather wallet. No wallet that day, of course. No phone, no credit cards. The police had confiscated all the stuff he had been wearing in the boat, and everything else he had brought down from London was corralled at the ‘crime scene’ until further notice, while they proceeded with their investigation. In the meantime he couldn’t just walk out wearing a paper suit. It wasn’t Milan Fashion Week, after all.
It had taken him several hours to come round to it. Hours during which the police officers, while remaining polite, had pressed the questions ever more firmly. Who would he like to call, so that they could collect him? Who would be able to bring in some clothes for him?
He hadn’t been able to call a friend, because he wasn’t sure who his friends were anymore. Too many of them led back to Chaz, or to one of Chaz’s contacts, and he couldn’t afford to have Chaz find out his whereabouts. In the end he had crumbled in the face of the persistent sergeant who brought him cups of tea, and said that he would ring his brother, Michael. (His parents had been into alliterative names – his eldest brother, poor devil, had been called Montague, in honour of their maternal grandfather.) In the end, he had spoken to Rachel, wife of Michael and in the course of a confused conversation had managed to get it across to her that he needed someone to pick him up. ‘Yes, from Cornwall … yes, I know it’s a long way.’ When he told her that he would also need somewhere to stay, she immediately did that family thing of saying that of course he could stay with herself and Michael as long as he liked, which he had instantly recognized as a platitude, born of good manners, rather than sincerity.
The conversation with Rachel had been followed up soon afterwards by a call from his brother. When they told him that Michael was on the phone, Mark had steeled himself for a hostile interrogation, followed by some harsh and well-deserved criticism, but his brother had only seemed interested in whether he was all right and had promised to get there as soon as he could. It was this final shock in a topsy-turvy world, Mark thought, which had reduced him to crying aloud down the phone.
He had been reluctant to leave the small, anonymous room which had been set aside for him to change into his brother’s clothes at the police station, lingering in there just as he was lingering in the guest room now. He remembered the paper suit lying discarded on the floor, like a shed skin: the ghost of a person he had temporarily become. Another person had replaced the ghost. A non-person, wearing borrowed clothes a size too small. A new person.
If only it had been true – but you can’t just change your clothes and walk away. While he had been there at the police station, it had felt almost safe. Even reliving the nightmares of his short-lived, so-called marriage for the Cornish policemen and their friends, had been better than contemplating the horrors which lay in the future, where Chaz and his friends still awaited.
The scary policemen, who had appeared on the scene much later than all the others and said they were from the Met, had been very interested in the subject of Chaz. Among the dizzying numbers of police officers with whom he had been confronted, starting with the woman in the yellow oilskin trousers, whose patrol vehicle appeared to double as a fishing boat, and ending with the uniformed bloke who’d made it perfectly plain that he couldn’t stay in the police station forever, Mark had liked the Met chaps least of all. The nicest officers seemed to be the pretty one and the bloke with a haircut which reminded him of Tin Tin. They were off-comers too. They had told him where they came from, but he couldn’t remember now. It had been hard to keep track and he hadn’t always been paying attention.
He glanced around the guest room again. He had become fond of the view from the window. The trees at the edge of the garden. The birds which visited Rachel’s feeders. Having arrived reluctantly, he now found that he didn’t want to leave.
There had been a family council of war, soon after his arrival in Yorkshire, and the brothers and their wives had initially agreed, between the four of them – he had taken very little active part in the discussion – that he should stay with Michael and Rachel, at the very least until the trial was over. That would take ages, of course. Monty had talked it over with Old Hargreaves, who’d looked after the family’s legal affairs for years, and he had opined that it could take anything up to a year for the thing to come to court, with the situation exacerbated by the condition of the accused, who was still being treated in hospital for his injuries. (Old Hargreaves had also been very helpful in getting the London flat that he could no longer afford onto the market.)
In the meantime Michael had suggested that when Mark felt a bit more up to it, he might like to see what went on at Medlicott & Sons. ‘There would always be an opening for you … if you wanted to take it up.’ Needless to say, he hadn’t felt up to it. He couldn’t even manage to focus on Channel Four racing, let alone the prices of castings and spare parts for crushing machinery.
They hadn’t understood, of course, with their kindly suggestions of rebuilding a life for himself up there in the north. How could they possibly understand that Chaz would find him up there, or indeed wherever he went? Chaz had friends everywhere. And of course it had barely taken Chaz a couple of weeks to discover his whereabouts and contact him, with a request that they meet down in London. Michael and Rachel hadn’t known about Chaz at that point. The police had not wanted him to talk to anyone about Chaz and that suited him just fine.
After a last glance out at the blue tits jostling on the bird feeders, he opened the door and took the stairs slowly down to the hall, where Rachel was waiting for him.
‘Take care of yourself.’ She hugged him, as he stood alongside her, suitcase at his side, hesitating like a kid setting out for his first term at prep school. ‘We’re very proud of you, you know. It took a lot of courage, to do what you did.’
Mark accepted the praise in silence. He knew that it was a waste of time trying to disabuse Rachel of her conviction that he had turned out to be some sort of hero. He had worn the wire to the meeting with Chaz because the two scary-looking policemen from the Met had put it to him in a way which suggested that he had very little choice. They had explained it all to him, in a sympathetic sort of way. How Chaz had stitched him up. Lent him money, gained his trust, then fooled him into betting on the wrong horse. Handed him a spade with which to dig himself into an ever deeper hole until the next obvious step to escape the rearrangement of his features had been to engage in a spot of drug smuggling. He had done exactly what the police had asked of him. Allowed Chaz to outline a scheme in which he apparently agreed to collect a package from Turkey, as a favour for his friend.
According to the
scary-looking policemen (Smith and Jones? Crockett and Tubbs? Morse and Lewis?) Chaz and his various mysterious friends were involved in a whole lot of things which were of interest to scary-Metropolitan policemen in general, and to Starsky and Hutch in particular. Race fixing was just the tip of the iceberg. And according to Carter, or was it Reagan? Or maybe it was Tango and Cash, or even Buzz Lightyear and Sheriff Woody, his getting Chaz on tape that day at the Bannister Club, was going to provide a crucial piece of evidence which would see Chaz going to prison for a considerable period of time.
Unfortunately it was pretty well understood by everyone involved (including Captain Beaky and Reckless Rat, or whatever their damned names were) that as well as Chaz himself being very unhappy about this, Chaz had a lot of friends who would have a significant level of interest in Mark’s whereabouts, between now and Chaz’s coming up for trial, and possibly for quite some time after that. As a result of this, they had offered Mark a place on their Witness Protection scheme, and this was what now entailed him packing a case and heading off with either Beaky or Rat (he had never particularly differentiated between the two of them) to an unknown location.
‘When you’re able to come back,’ Rachel was saying, ‘you know there is always a room here for you.’
She was getting teary now. A good woman, Mark thought. A kind woman. Michael was lucky. He had chosen well.
He nodded and returned the hug, kissing her on the cheek. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to come back. Probably not for years, if ever. Rat – or was it Beaky? – had picked up his case and was carrying it out to the car. A plain, unmarked car, which might have been a taxi cab. Mark followed him, wondering where they were going. Somewhere which was probably not as nice as the spare bedroom, with its floral curtains and dried flower arrangement, and pretend hatboxes, arranged in graduations on the overlarge dressing table. When the initial revulsion had worn off, he had become very fond of the spare bedroom. He knew every inch of the wallpaper pattern, the shape and shade of every shadow that fell when the bedside lamps were lit. He had had plenty of time to get to know it all. He did not sleep anymore.
FIFTY-SIX
Peter stretched out a hand without opening his eyes and explored with it until he found the edge of the sun lounger, then the softness of the sun-baked beach towel and finally the warm smooth texture of Hannah’s skin.
‘Do you want another beer?’ she asked.
‘No thanks. Anyway, I’ll have to move in a minute.’
‘Why?’
‘The sun’s moved around. I need to get back under the umbrella.’
‘I told you that you’d fry in the Caribbean.’
‘It’s worth it for the scenery and the rum punch.’
‘It certainly feels a long way from Great Yarmouth.’
‘It is a long way from Great Yarmouth.’
‘Can I mention a work thing?’
‘No.’
‘OK. Can I mention a wedding thing?’
‘Only if it doesn’t involve bridesmaids’ dresses, or flowers. You know I’m no good at that sort of stuff.’
‘Actually, it involves the local paper.’
‘Which local paper? Not that awful free thing?’
‘Yup. The Crappy Chronicle, it is.’
‘Go on.’
‘Mum wants to get their reporter to cover the wedding. She says it will be newsworthy – two members of the local police force getting married.’
‘Oh please, no. Not one of those terrible pictures with a load of leering coppers, making us walk under an archway of truncheons?’
‘You know they’re going to do that anyway, don’t you?’
‘Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer the Register Office?’
‘It’s too late to back out now, Mum’s ordered the cake.’
‘Oh well – that obviously makes all the difference. Tell you what, seeing as how the cake’s ordered and you and your mother have had your way over just about every detail, from button holes to invitation lists—’
‘You’ve chosen the band, and they’re going to let you rip up a few numbers with them.’
‘True enough. But let’s just agree that you’ve chosen pretty much everything else – suppose I say “yes” to notifying the local press, on condition that when our firstborn son arrives, we call him Thierry Henry.’
‘Not a chance.’
‘Emmanuel?’
‘Emmanuel!’
‘Emmanuel.’
‘As in Petit?’
‘Oui.’
‘Non.’
‘Ian Wright Betts?’
‘Not on your life. Anyway, we might have a girl first.’
‘Dennis? As in Bergkamp?’
‘You don’t give up easily, do you?’
‘That’s because I’m a good copper, Hannah. What do you think about Charlie George Betts?’
‘Charlie George?’
‘Scored the winning goal in the 1971 FA Cup final. It’s a nice combination. Good enough for the royals …’