Secret Story (19 page)

He managed to keep quiet as he reached the station. As the train moved off, the rhythm of the wheels set about repeating “His head, his head, his head . . .” The young woman sitting opposite him slanted her knees away from him and stared blank-faced past him. Before he could fit a single thought together, a metallic voice announced Birkenhead Park. The next stop was his, and it was hardly worth struggling to think while he was buried in the midst of a mass of people with no idea who he was. His surroundings were growing flat and unfocused when a phrase caught his eye.
MURDER FILM
, it said.

The newspaper was three seats away. He had to strain his already stinging eyes to be sure of the words. The remainder of the headline was covered by a thumb like a pallid caterpillar with a crimson head. The thumb stirred as if it was about to writhe across the paper, and then it slithered sideways to help the woman turn the page. The artfully tousled mass of straw that was the back of her head almost blocked Dudley’s glimpse of the entire headline.
VICTIM’S FAMILY CONDEMNS MURDER FILM
.

He nearly shouted at her not to turn over. Who else was reading that paper? By the time he finished twisting on the seat while he ignored the antics that the girl across from him performed to keep her knees uncontaminated by his, he’d located three copies. The train kept up its chatter on the subject of his head as lights embedded in the tunnel walls plucked at the underside of his vision faster than he could form a thought. He only just managed not to snatch the nearest of the papers as he sidled to the doors. The moment they parted he dug his fingers into their rubbery lips and sprinted across the platform.

He might have dashed up the ninety-nine steps to the street if a lift hadn’t been open and waiting. The instant he saw daylight Dudley squeezed between people and then the doors and ran along the parched swaying street. Cars screeched as he darted across the main road. He raced past the Bingo building and down the alley to the newspaper stand by the job centre.
REPORT: TOO FEW NEW MERSEY COPS
, the poster on the stand declared, which had nothing to do with him. He grabbed the topmost paper and forced himself to linger until the unshaven man in shorts gave him change of a pound coin, in case haste somehow betrayed him. He set about clawing the pages apart as he made for the nearest bench.

The lack of applicants to join the police took up the front page, but the item about a film wasn’t on the second, nor the third, fourth, fifth . . . Surely the headline couldn’t relate to him
if it was so far into the paper. He tore the next spread open, and crouched over it and a renewed cramp in his stomach.

VICTIM’S FAMILY CONDEMNS MURDER FILM

The family of Angela Manning, who was killed by a train at Moorfields Station in August 1997, have attacked plans for a new Merseyside film.

Based on an unpublished novel by local writer Dudley Swift, the film is to include a scene shot on location at Moorfields where a girl is pushed under a train by a serial killer.

Speaking for Poolywood Productions, American entrepreneur Walt Davenport said that the scene may not appear in the finished film. This is unlikely to satisfy Angela’s family. “They say it’s not about Angela, but leaving out the scene is as good as admitting it is,” her father Bob Manning said. “The film will still have a man who kills someone like her. It’s not letting us grieve in peace, and it’s spreading the idea that Merseyside is full of criminals as well.”

If he was saying that the area was full of Mr Killogram, Dudley supposed he might take that as a compliment, except that being branded a criminal angered him, though by no means as intensely as being called by the wrong name. He had difficulty in wielding his fingers to phone the
Mersey Mouth
. A machine responded with Patricia Martingale’s voice. “It’s Dudley,” he protested. “Dudley Smith. Someone ring me as soon as you’re in.”

He slapped the pages together and made for the nearest bin. Just as he reached it, he heard Mrs Wimbourne call “Dudley, don’t throw that away. I’ll have it.”

“No you won’t,” he muttered as he dropped it in the concrete barrel. It sprawled open at the story about him. He ducked to the bin so hastily that the edges of his vision blackened like the borders of an old photograph. By the time he flung the paper shut,
Mrs Wimbourne was upon him. “Do you think I would now?” she said.

She must imagine he intended to retrieve it for her. He had a panicky notion that if he left it she would change her mind just because she was a woman and pick up the newspaper. A can of lager was balanced on the concrete rim. It proved to be half full, and he emptied it over the paper. “Where was the sense in that?” Mrs Wimbourne demanded.

“You wouldn’t like some child drinking it, would you? Anyway, I thought you didn’t want the paper.”

She let her gaze bear on him long enough to establish that it was only a sample of her disapproval, and then she spun on her heel. “You’ve wasted quite enough of my time. Come along at once and make sure you’re some use.”

She wouldn’t like to learn the sort of use he could be. He was mouthing some thought of the kind at her waddling back when he saw that Trevor and Vera and Colette were watching from in front of the job centre. They turned away from him as Mrs Wimbourne jabbed her key into the lock. Having thrown the door wide, she retreated with heavy dignity. “I’ll just be a minute,” she declared. “All of you go along in.”

Nobody spoke until Trevor closed the door behind them, trapping the already oppressive heat, and then he said “What did you do to put her in a mood, Dudley? No need to make it hard for the rest of us.”

“I wasn’t thinking about you.”

“Not even Colette?” Vera rebuked him.

“Why did you throw away that paper?” Colette wanted to know or at least to interrupt.

“Were you thinking people should be reading you instead?” Vera suggested. “When are we going to?”

“The real girl’s family asked them not to publish his story,
remember,” Colette said. “You can understand how they must feel, Dudley.”

“Why must they?” He hardly knew what he was saying as he watched Mrs Wimbourne buy a paper at the stand. “Who says they must?”

“What I was getting at,” Vera intervened, “why don’t you bring in the story for us to judge for ourselves?”

He might have enquired who she thought they were that they could judge him, but he was meeting Mrs Wimbourne’s stare as she let herself in. “Thank you, Dudley, for the trouble and expense,” she said.

Colette fled to the Ladies’ while her colleagues trailed after Mrs Wimbourne to the staffroom. Dudley was the first to follow her in, despite Trevor’s murmur of reproof on Vera’s behalf. All that mattered was for Dudley to keep an eye on the paper until he thought how to prevent any of them from discovering his latest setback. When Mrs Wimbourne dumped herself in a chair he took the seat opposite and gazed at the blank page of the ceiling. At the raw lower edge of his vision he was aware of her leafing through the paper too swiftly to let him think. She’d turned over once, and now twice, so that at any moment—“I’m sorry you had to pay for it,” he blurted. “I’ll buy it if you like.”

“I think not, thank you. I’d rather keep control of it.”

He was growing desperate enough to consider promising to make her a present of it, except that this would solve nothing, when Colette reappeared. Mrs Wimbourne folded the newspaper before dropping it on the table on her way to the Ladies’. That door had barely shut when Trevor leaned across the table for the paper. “Leave it,” Dudley cried. “You heard her. It’s hers.”

“I didn’t know you were so scared of her.”

“I’m not scared of anyone. They should—” Dudley managed to head the boast off so as to confront Vera. “What’s funny?”

“Just thinking there’s someone I think you are.”

“I’m who?” As her meaning caught up with him Dudley struggled to restrain his voice. “I’m what, scared? Who of?”

“Maybe just a teeny bit of our Colette.”

“Her? I don’t feel anything about her. No wonder you were laughing. It’s a joke.”

He stared at the floor in the hope that they would see he needed to be left alone. When Trevor headed for the Gents’, however, Vera lingered as if to protect Colette. A taste as stale as the heat in the room had invaded Dudley’s mouth by the time the other man returned, at which point Vera made for the Ladies’ and Colette followed as far as the counter. Trevor sat at the table and waited for Dudley to meet his eyes. “What’s got into you today, lad? Won’t you be satisfied till you’ve upset the lot of us?”

“I’m trying to think of a story,” Dudley not much less than screamed. “I need you to shut up and stay away from me.”

Trevor gave him a look that laid claim to a lifetime of weary experience. “I don’t agree with the boss about a lot of things, but maybe you should leave some of what you think you are at home.”

“I know what I am. Don’t you go thinking you do.”

As Dudley strove not to let fly any more of the truth, Mrs Wimbourne emerged from the Ladies’. “Time we were at the counter,” she announced. “That’s everybody, even budding novelists.”

Trevor stood up with his hands in his pockets and sauntered to the door. “Better shake a leg. Sounds as if at least one woman wants you.”

He loitered in the doorway to leave him a doubtful frown that made Dudley feel immobilised by all his nerves. As soon as Trevor moved away, Dudley lunged for the newspaper and dragged the offending page out of hiding, along with its twin. He took a second to tidy the remains of the paper before crumpling his prize into a ball he stuffed in a hip pocket as he hurried to the counter. “Just going to the toilet,” he informed Mrs Wimbourne.

“In future please don’t leave it till the last minute.”

He almost retorted that it was her fault and everybody else’s that he had. He didn’t bother closing the door of the solitary cubicle as a preamble to shying the lump of newspaper into the toilet. He urinated on it for good measure and hauled on the chain, then strode back to the counter, suppressing a grin. He took his place at the counter as Mrs Wimbourne unlocked the door to admit Lionel and the public, represented by a man who, having drained a bottle of lager, threw it into the concrete bin and stumbled after the guard. Dudley thought there might be some violence to watch until the man brushed past Lionel and scurried to the Gents’.

There was nothing for him to find, and certainly no reason for him to mention anything he found to anyone. Dudley tried to drive away the threat by staring at the blank computer screen, then switched on the computer as the man reappeared. He made straight for the door, to Dudley’s stale-tasting relief. He’d almost reached the street when Lionel accosted him. “Aren’t you looking for work today? We’re not a public loo, you know.”

“You’re a public building, aren’t you? Should be when the public pays your wages.” The man set one foot on the pavement outside and tarried to add “Anyway, I left it how I found it. Someone’s chucked some newspaper in the lav and it won’t go down.”

“Not guilty,” Trevor informed whoever ought to know.

Mrs Wimbourne rose up in her booth and stared across the partitions. “Dudley?”

He kept his shrunken gaze on the screen as if the icons might offer him an inspiration. “Why would I do that?”

“Precisely what I’d like to know,” she said and marched to the staffroom. He heard a flurry of rustling that put him in mind of a poisoned rat seized by convulsions in its nest, and then her heavy tread closed in on him as her reflection walled off the glass of the booth. Her perfume merged with the acid in his throat as she said “What have you been playing at with my paper?”

“I offered to buy it from you.”

“Very well, you may.”

Her pudgy hand appeared beside his shoulder and came to rest palm upwards on the counter. The fingertips curled, urging him to contribute. How would they wriggle and jerk if he drove a ballpoint into the palm and leaned on it until the metal tip crunched through the flesh all the way to the wood? How might she scream and plead? Far too loudly when there were witnesses; someone or all of them might try to stop him before he was done. He fished out change and counted it onto her hand, but this didn’t rid him of her. Instead she brandished her moneyed fist above his booth. “Lionel, could you get me a paper?”

As the guard took the money Dudley crouched lower while a cramp jabbed at his guts. Mrs Wimbourne’s reflection looked close to engulfing the sight of Lionel trotting to the newspaper stand and returning with yet another copy of the paper. “Thank you, Lionel. Perhaps now we can establish what all this has been in aid of,” Mrs Wimbourne said as pages rustled above Dudley’s skull. The noises seemed to be pressing his cranium thin, and so did the silence that followed until Mrs Wimbourne’s voice added its weight. “At least your behaviour says it all, Dudley. You know exactly what you have to do.”

“I don’t know what you’re asking.”

“I’m afraid if you care about continuing to work here you’re going to have to keep your stories to yourself, and that includes your film.”

“You can’t tell me to do that. You said you had to ask the bosses at the top.”

“I need do nothing of the sort. This is my decision and London will support me in it. I presume you have your phone on you as usual.”

“I might.”

“For once you may use it here. I want to be able to hear what you say to your American.”

Dudley seized the edge of the counter to hold his prickly fingers still. “What are you expecting me to?”

“It’s immaterial how you achieve the result so long as it’s the one that’s required.” She leaned forward as if to ensure he couldn’t escape and moistened the nape of his neck with her breath. “You could explain that you’re undermining our reputation. Anything you do is associated with us now people know it’s you in the papers.”

He had a sense that she actually fancied she was extending him some help. He considered speaking to Walt in her terms and then calling him to take the nonsense back, but the immediate prospect was so demeaning that his entire body recoiled from it. Either she’d retreated or she hadn’t been as close as his sweaty neck suggested, because the chair failed to knock her down as he thrust it back and swung to confront her. “What kind of a reputation do you think you’ve got?” he demanded.