GBH (22 page)

“Yeah. What about him?”

“You may not have realised it when you were chatting with him the other evening, but he’s not Farlow’s grass at all. He’s been Collins’s grass ever since England had a decent football team.”

Johnny didn’t say anything. I looked at Mickey.

“Did you know that, Mickey?”

“No,” Mickey said. “I didn’t know that.”

THE SEA

“D
O YOU MIND IF
we light the fire?” she says.

“The central heating seems to be working all right.”

“I know. But looking at an empty fireplace makes me feel cold.”

I kneel down and pick up the box of kitchen matches off the hearth and strike a match and light the fire. The newsprint crackles like the sound of small bones breaking.

“You were saying,” I say as I stand up, “what, with your talent, you’re doing taking up with a group like Eddie’s.”

“I wasn’t,” she says. “You were asking.”

The flames settle into the bark of the logs and some of the bark flakes off like dead skin.

“I mean, you got relatives in this area, or what?”

“I haven’t relatives in any area. I’m a single girl.”

“So why have you ended up here?”

“Why not? You’ve got to end up somewhere.”

I pour us both another drink.

“You’re hardly of an age to end up anywhere.”

“Like you, you mean?”

“I’m only here temporarily.”

“Like me, passing through?”

“You said you’ve ended up here.”

“No, you said that,” she says.

I hand her her refilled glass.

“Anyway,” she says. “All these questions. I could be asking you the same ones.”

“You could.”

“I mean, I could be asking you who you are. Why you choose to spend your time in this dead-and-alive hole.”

“Perhaps you don’t ask,” I say to her, “because you think you already know.”

She looks at me, blank.

“Know?” she says. “Know what?”

I smile at her.

“Never mind,” I say. “I don’t think you’d be that stupid. Not a second time.”

“A second time what?”

I shake my head.

“Forget it. It’s just a thought I had.”

“About what?”

“About you. About why I interest you.”

“You interest me, do you?”

“Well,” I say, “what other reason would you be here for?”

“Perhaps it’s just for the sake of something to do.”

“You mean, a way of passing the time?”

“That’s right. You don’t necessarily have to be interested in someone to pass the time with them.”

“Not necessarily,” I say, “no.”

THE SMOKE

“Y
OU SEE
,” I
SAID
to Johnny, “even Mickey didn’t know Wally Barling was on our team.”

“That fucking bastard,” Johnny says, “I’ll—”

“You’ll what, Johnny?”

Johnny became silent.

“And I bet,” I said, “I bet Mickey’ll be even more interested when you tell him what you told Wally.”

“Listen—”

“That’s what we’re doing, Johnny. Listening.”

I picked up the matchbox and shook it in the palm of my hand.

“I didn’t tell him nothing, honest,” Johnny said.

“You didn’t tell him, like, how you and your brothers knew we were on to Ray. That that information came from Mickey. Because you’d been blacking him for over a year, because you happened to come across some pictures he had taken in his spare time with a fourteen-year-old who hasn’t seen the light of day for the last twelve months.”

Mickey looked at Johnny. Behind Mickey, Jean held the pump action pointed straight at the middle of Mickey’s back.

“Is that what he said, guv’nor?” Mickey said.

“That’s what you said, Johnny, wasn’t it?”

“I never.”

“Didn’t you? And you didn’t tell him that the only way you
got to Glenda before I did was because Mickey phoned you up before we set off on our way. You didn’t tell him that either, did you, Johnny?”

“Look, I’m telling you—”

“Oh, I’m forgetting,” I said. “You also said that Mickey topped Ray, because we were getting too close. But that Mickey didn’t know about Glenda until I called her up. And when he phoned you up to get there first, you decided to use her to try and drop me in it. That Mickey furnished you with the effects he’d taken off Ray’s body.”

“Listen—”

Mickey interrupted him, very quiet, standing very still.

“Is that what you told him, Johnny?” he said.

“Mickey, listen—”

I stood up and took out a match and Johnny stopped talking and looked at the match as I held it against the striker. The caravan was full of silence.

“Guv’nor,” Mickey said.

“Yes, Mickey?”

“You don’t believe all this shit, do you?”

“Well, let me put it this way. I wouldn’t like to think you’ve been slagging me behind my back after all I’ve done for you over the years. I’d hate to think after all that I couldn’t trust you.”

“I thought all that was understood between us.”

“That’s what I thought, yes.”

“But now you don’t.”

“Well, I’m just going to find out, aren’t I?” I said, striking the match.

THE SEA

“A
LL RIGHT
,” I
SAY
, “if you don’t want to tell me why you’ve chosen this place, where were you before?”

“Before?”

“Where were you working?”

“All over.”

“In London?”

“I tried London, yes.”

“What happened?”

“What didn’t? A chapter of accidents.”

“Did you get close to making it?”

“I think so.”

“What went wrong? It can’t have been your ability.”

“It wasn’t.”

“What, then?”

“Like I said. A chapter of accidents. Instead of being in the right place at the right time I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-two.”

I light a cigarette.

“Sounds to me as if you gave up very easy,” I tell her.

“Does it?”

“I mean, twenty-two. Hardly too late for a comeback, is it?”

“You don’t know what happened.”

“What could have happened? You missed out first time round. Who doesn’t? And you’re hardly going to get a second chance round here.”

“Aren’t I?”

I shrug.

“Want to manage me, do you?” she says.

“All right. You know what you’re doing.”

“Yes. I know what I’m doing.”

The Carly Simon record stops. Silence.

“You mind if I put on another record?” she says, getting up. “No, I don’t mind.”

She picks out one of the albums. It’s a Barbra Streisand,
Live Concert at the Forum
. It was Jean’s favourite.

“Not that one,” I say to her.

“You don’t like Streisand?”

“There’s some others there of hers.”

“I haven’t heard this one.”

“Another time,” I say.

She shrugs, replaces the record, searches for another, pulls out one of Stevie Wonder’s, turns to face me with the cover.

“This one in order?” she says.

THE SMOKE

T
HE MATCH SOUNDED LIKE
a gun going off in the caravan.

“Mr. Fowler,” Johnny said. “George—”

“It’s George, is it?”

Johnny started to try and wriggle his wrists out of the ropes behind his back. I knelt down and put the match to the paraffin on Johnn’s leg and retired quickly.

Blue flame danced on the sickly pinkness of the smooth plastic.

Johnny screamed and thrashed about as the flame darted up his leg to the knee part, where the folds of his shoved-up trousers began.

“Christ!” Johnny screamed. “My Christ!”

“What, Johnny?” I said. “Now what have you got to say?”

Johnny was lying on his side on the bench, trying to tug himself away from the table leg, like a man in a gin trap, only in this case the spirit was paraffin.

“Well, Johnny, is that what you told Wally?”

The flame leapt at the squeezed-up cuff of his trousers. I picked up the paraffin can and shook a few drops on to the other trouser leg, the one with his good leg inside, and struck another match and dropped it on the material. A patch of paraffin sprung to life.

“Christ,” he screamed. “Yes, yes, Mickey done it, Mickey copped for you. He did, he did, he copped for you.”

Mickey screamed even louder, in a different way.

“You dirty fucking cheating bastard,” he shrieked, drawing his shooter from his shoulder holster. “You fucking wanker!”

Mickey aimed at Johnny’s head.

Two things happened simultaneously.

Mickey fired, and Jean fired. The combined noise was like a bomb exploding.

Because of Johnny’s thrashing about, Mickey missed.

Jean didn’t.

The barrels were only six inches from the small of his back when she fired. Mickey was lifted up off his feet and thrown across the table and landed on top of Johnny, his blood and insides reaching Johnny before Mickey did, making Johnny’s face and shirt and jacket scarlet, as though someone had splashed a full paintbrush all over him. His screams became even louder as Mickey slid off him and lay on his back on the floor, his legs across Johnny’s burning legs, a great black-red bubbling hole where his stomach had been.

I opened the door and Jean went down the steps still holding the pump action. I picked up my shotgun and emptied the rest of the paraffin over Johnny, and slammed the door on his screams as the flames began to blossom all over him.

We were almost at the Mercedes by the time the flames got to the Calor gas and the whole caravan went up, illuminating the night sky like the centrepiece of a firework display.

THE SEA

T
HE
S
TEVIE
W
ONDER RECORD
finishes. I stand up.

“Another drink?” I ask her.

She looks at her watch.

“I haven’t time.”

I look at my watch. It’s ten past twelve.

“Got a prior engagement, have you?”

She smiles at me, as warm as ice.

“I might have.”

It’s my turn to smile.

“Is this the moment you make the move?” she says.

“I’m going to make a move, am I?”

She maintains the smile.

“Actually,” I say to her, “it’s the moment I ask you if you’d like another drink.”

She hands me her glass. Unmelted ice slides about the base.

“All right,” she says. “I’ll have one more. Before I go.”

“Fine,” I say, and begin to make the drinks. When I’ve done that I give her hers and go and sit down opposite her again.

“In any case,” she says, after taking a sip, “I’m frigid. So it wouldn’t really be worth it, would it?”

“I don’t suppose it would.”

“Or would you consider that a challenge?”

“Some men might. If they believed it.”

“And you?”

“I thought you’d got me all weighed up.”

She smiles her smile again.

“There’s always rape; meant to be more exciting if the woman’s frigid, isn’t it?”

“So they say,” I say.

“Or are you more of a watcher. Yes,” she says, “at your age, I’d say you’re more of a watcher.”

“Would you?”

She raises her glass in the direction of the screen in the ceiling.

“That’s what that’s for, isn’t it?”

“Is it?”

“Hardly had it installed just for home movies, did you? Although there are home movies and home movies, aren’t there?”

“So they say,” I say again.

“I did some once,” she says. “In London.”

She takes another sip of her drink. I don’t say anything.

“One of my accidents. The money was good, though.”

“It would have to be,” I said. “Seeing as you’re frigid.”

“I’m a professional,” she says. “At whatever I do. I always give a good performance.”

“I’m sure.”

“Besides, it was lesbian stuff. Which doesn’t mean to say I’m a dike, because I’m frigid.”

“Of course not.”

“Are you taking the piss?”

I shake my head. She takes another sip of her drink.

“Is that how you spend the long winter evenings, then? Watching blue movies?”

I shake my head. She smiles the smile again.

“Of course not,” she says. She drains her glass. “You don’t do things like that, do you?”

THE SMOKE

“Y
OU FUCKING IDIOT
,” J
AMES
said. “My Christ Almighty. After
The Music Lovers
, I’d thought I’d seen everything. It’s me that must be stupid, to think you have sense.”

I gave him his drink, frowning, hearing James swear like that.

“And you, Jean,” he said, after he’d downed half his brandy. “At least I thought you’d be able to prevent something like this. At least attempt to.”

He swallowed the other half and I took his glass from him.

“And now I find you were actually a party to it.”

“It was quite some party,” I said, handing him back his glass, refilled.

He took another drink and sat down.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I just don’t know.”

“Well, I do,” I said. “We did what had to be done.”

“Like what?” James said. “With all the means at your disposal?”

“What means? Mickey was my means of disposal. I trusted him. Who else could I get to do it for me, if I couldn’t trust him?”

“I don’t mean that. I mean the bodies. Why didn’t you do it
Sonet Lumière
at the Bloody Tower? It mightn’t quite have attracted the same amount of attention, but I suppose it would at least have been appropriate.”

“It was appropriate, all right. It spelt it out in fire, like at
Belshazzar’s Feast. In big letters, so that even the Shepherdsons can read it.”

“Parsons can read as well,” James said.

“And what’s he going to do, when all the time I was sitting here in the bosom of my family, entertaining various well-known and well-paid friends?”

“And well-trusted, I suppose?”

“Look, nobody’s going to risk talking to their own reflection in the mirror after this. And what’s Parsons going to do? Wait for some more secondhand furniture from the Shepherdsons?”