If I Should Die (Joseph Stark) (13 page)

‘For the record,’ said Maggs, sarcasm tingeing his gruff voice.

‘For the record,’ agreed Stark.

Maggs’s eyes flitted back and forth between Stark and Groombridge, distrustful. Eventually he leant in again. ‘All right. It was a warmish night so I was sleeping. When it’s cold it’s better to move about at night, sleep in the daytime. But I was sleeping. I heard ’em coming, but yelling and shouting don’t mean much to the likes of me, none of my business. Only they don’t pass by, they stop. “Oi!” they shout. “Get up”, “Lazy fucker” and the like. I ask for some change, or a drink, seems like they’ve had their share. They tell me to get up but I’m pissed and tired and I can’t be arsed.’

‘What time was this?’

‘Don’t know, late. After midnight, before dawn.’

‘You can’t narrow it down?’

‘Well, forgive me, I know I was sleeping at the very home of global timekeeping but I couldn’t see the observatory clock through the trees in the dark at three hundred yards.’

‘You don’t wear a watch?’

‘What good is a watch to me? It’s just booze you haven’t cashed in yet.’

‘What about clock bells?’ asked Stark.

Maggs looked at him, then sat back thoughtfully, nodding. ‘Yeah. Maybe. Next bell I heard might have been two. Couldn’t swear to it.’

‘OK. So then what?’

‘One kicks me. Not hard, more scared, not like he means it. So I get up. They’re young, teenagers, you know, dressed up in their stupid tracksuits and their stupid trainers and hats on under their hoods, lads and one girl.’ Maggs shook his head. ‘Wasn’t even raining. Little fuckers
wouldn’t know about rain. Never sat out a night in their soft lives. Mummy keeps ’em full of fish fingers, wipes their arses and gives ’em video games instead of books. Could all do with a spell of freezing rain and sleet on a cold fucking mountain with the enemy on the high ground’ – he looked at Stark – ‘or a foot patrol through a desert town where the only difference between the civilians you’re there to protect and the shits out to kill you is the blink of an eye. Let them watch their mates bleed out and see if they think their shoot-’em-up video games are so hilarious.’

Groombridge sat back and let him continue.

‘Anyway, I try to pick up my stuff, to leave, turn the other cheek and walk away, but they shove me, call me lazy like they’re something else, something better, and all the names they know. They should spend time on a navy transport, expand their vocabulary.

‘I tell them what I am, what I was, I suppose, but they just laugh and take the piss. So I tell ’em they’re a bunch of spineless little gobshites. I know what’s coming, they don’t need the excuse, so I give it anyway. So in they come. Shy at first, eggin’ each other on, like bleating sheep. She’s the worst, the girl. She’s the one pulling their strings.

‘Anyway, I’m not fighting back so they get braver. The main lad, not the biggest but the sharpest, he starts gettin’ serious. She’s shouting at him, telling him what to do, baying for blood. I’m only offering limbs and muscle, nothing soft. I’ve taken worse beatings in Basic. But she’s screaming at him now and he’s really goin’ for it. Sooner or later he’s gonna hurt me, so when a couple of the others try their luck I serve ’em out. Main lad keeps his distance after, sees things have changed, sharper than the average sheep. But she’s still shrieking and he doesn’t want to look scared so he pulls a knife. He shouldn’t have done it but he doesn’t know better. Doesn’t know the rules.’

‘Rules?’ Groombridge frowned.

‘The rules. As the man without the knife, you know you’re gonna get cut, no question. As the man pulling the knife, you should know that you’ve just upped the ante, and if you lose, and you still might,
you
might now get cut.’

‘Or dead?’ suggested Groombridge.

‘Or dead. That’s the rules. Live by the sword, you gotta be prepared to die by it.’

Stark saw Groombridge roll his eyes. Maggs saw it too. ‘You think I’m just some macho thin-dick sounding off.’ He shook his head. ‘Your STAB here knows better. The key to violence is the readiness to act without hesitation or restraint. A knife fight ain’t Marquess of Queensberry Rules, it’s war. The boy should’ve known that, but kids, these days, they think a shiny blade gives you balls when it’s what’s in here,’ Maggs tapped the centre of his forehead, ‘that counts.’

‘You had a knife too, though, didn’t you? We found blood on it,’ said Groombridge. Maggs smiled, amused. ‘Do you think this is funny?’

‘Do you think I brought my own knife into a fight but stabbed him with his? Or did I stab myself afterwards with mine to make it look like he did it?’

‘We’ll see.’

‘I suppose we will,’ agreed Maggs. ‘Until then, would you like to hear the rest of my current confession?’

Groombridge gestured invitation.

‘OK, then. At first he comes at me half-hearted, like he doesn’t really want to. I’m telling him what I am again, that this ain’t a game any more, but she’s still winding him up and he’s getting more dangerous by the second. So he has a decent go and I break his nose as a warning. Now she goes mental. Starts into him, calling him all the things a girl can to rile a lad, and now he’s coming at me proper. Maybe it was the video games, maybe he thought you get three lives, but he’s too stupid, too scared, too weak to stop. And he’s stronger than me, younger, quicker. I block some but he nicks my arm. I punch him in the throat but it’s not good enough to stop him – he’s too quick. I give him an opening to get him in close but I’m too slow and he gets me one in the guts before I get the knife off him. Like I said, you’re gonna get cut.’

‘So you get cut, but now you have the knife. How did he get dead?’

‘There wasn’t any time between the two. Most of me didn’t want to hurt him, I’d given him enough chances, but part of me did. You know which part.’ He nodded at Stark. ‘The part that takes over, thinks quicker than the rest of you, does what needs doing.’

‘What needs doing?’ Groombridge’s voice was cold.

‘To survive. There wasn’t time to stop and consider the niceties – I
had the rest of ’em to worry about. He should’ve known that. I tried to warn him.’

‘So the part of you that thinks quicker than the rest did what needed doing.’

‘That’s right. There’s no sugar-coating fighting wars or sleeping rough.’

‘Still, hardly the warmest words to put before the jury.’

‘I’m not wagging my tail for a pat on the head.’ Maggs’s face said he meant it. The part of him that thought slower, the considered, non-instinctive part that held sway the rest of the time, was long past caring. Stark felt a rising sadness in that.

Groombridge pursed his lips. ‘What happened next?’

‘So there he is, face down with the handle sticking out. And for the first time the bitch doesn’t have a word to say. It takes ’em all a few seconds to work out what’s happened. Then she turns and runs and they all follow. I check to see if he’s breathing but he’s not, so I get my old field-kit out and stop myself following him. I think about trying to find someone, a blue top maybe, but I figure you lot are all tucked up nice and warm and I need some anaesthetic, so I have a medicinal and do likewise. I wake up, I go to the cop-shop, but your lot don’t want to know, and you barely looked at me.’ He pointed at them both with a thick finger, nail cracked, dirt ingrained despite a wash. ‘Anyway, I figure you’ll find me once you’ve worked it out. But you don’t. So I decide it’s my civic duty to try again and here I am, coddled in the warm embrace of your hospitality.’

Maggs was sweating now and pale. The doctor checked his pulse. Groombridge had to be quick. ‘So, self-defence,’ he said. ‘Will our other witnesses tell a different tale?’

‘Witnesses? Is that what you’re calling them? So you haven’t charged them yet? It’s my word against theirs, is that it, Detective Chief Inspector Groombridge? The word of a drunk of “no fixed abode” against the fine upstanding youth of today?’ The story had stoked Maggs’s anger visibly.

‘That remains to be seen. I have some mugshot folders here. Perhaps you can pick out the upstanding youths in question.’

‘That will have to wait,’ said the doctor. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t allow this to continue. You’ll have to come back tomorrow.’

Groombridge sighed but there was no point in arguing. ‘OK. Thank you for your cooperation, Mr Maggs. This can’t have been easy. Thank you, gentlemen.’

Maggs was wheeled away.

‘Convincing.’ There was a hint of query in Fran’s tone.

‘Perhaps,’ said Groombridge, thoughtfully. ‘It’s the only statement on the table.’

‘We haven’t spoken to everyone yet,’ said Stark, without really thinking. To their looks, he continued, ‘Outnumbered eight to one, he said.’

‘A figure of speech?’ suggested Fran.

Stark shook his head. ‘He counted.’

‘What makes you so certain?’ asked Groombridge. Not sarcastic, more intrigued.

‘I counted them too, on the CCTV. It’s automatic, training. If you know how many there are to start with, you know when you’ve accounted for them.’

‘Accounted for them?’ said Fran. ‘Soldier-speak is worse than copper-speak.’

‘And he said he’d “served them out”, two of them. That doesn’t mean politely asking them to go away. No one we interviewed seemed injured. But we haven’t spoken to Naveen, Tyler or Colin yet.’

‘No, but we checked A-and-E,’ said Fran. ‘You checked.’

‘Yes. I even took copies of the mugshots.’

‘Who went to the Queen Elizabeth?’ asked Groombridge.

Fran pursed her lips. ‘DS Harper said they got nothing.’

‘And the QE is nearer to the Ferrier so they were more likely to go there. Maggs can’t have hurt them that badly,’ said Groombridge to Stark. ‘I guess we’ll have to ask him tomorrow. Anyway, until he’s picked out photos I want to hold off questioning the others.’

‘Just so you know, Guv … Forensics called while you were in there.’ Fran smiled archly. ‘The blood on Maggs’s knife … duck, pigeon and squirrel.’

Stark couldn’t prevent a laugh escaping. No wonder Maggs had been amused. Groombridge glowered at him. ‘Sorry, Guv.’

‘You can get the first round.’

‘You said one drink.’ Stark stifled a yawn.

‘To start with. We’re celebrating your first murder arrest.’

‘Over
a
quiet drink. As in one.’

‘Don’t be a shandy, come on!’

Rosie’s was midweek quiet, though coppers still outnumbered the civilians. ‘Usual please, Harvey, and two packets of salt ’n’ vinegar,’ called Fran.

‘Always a pleasure, Detective Sergeant. How about your friend?’ asked the landlord.

‘Double whisky no ice, thanks.’ He could feel Fran’s eyes trying to bore into him as he paid. He should’ve taken the pills in his pocket before they left; she’d notice now. They took the same tiny table by the door she habitually occupied with Groombridge.

‘You’re sweating,’ she said casually, as he slipped off his jacket. ‘And limping.’ She took a long slug of her large dry white wine and pulled open a packet of crisps. Stark went to pick up the other and she slapped his wrist. ‘This is my dinner, get your own.’

He sipped his whisky instead. It was better than the cheap crap he had at home – marginally.

‘Neat spirits? Your usual?’

‘It’s quicker.’

‘For what?’

‘Dulling the pain.’

She met his eyes. ‘That’s either the first real thing you’ve told me or another fob-off.’

‘Yes,’ replied Stark. He still couldn’t tell whether she liked him all that much but he was starting to enjoy her relentless directness. It was refreshing after months of medical platitude and familial sympathy. She had a touch of the army about her but without the restraint. She didn’t seem to understand or care where the line lay between privacy and prying. He could live with that. It didn’t matter so much in Civvy Street. Here you could choose your comrades, choose who to like, interact with little fear of watching them get blown to bits. No soldier expects to catch it, but the guy next to you? You kept something back, you all did, and stuck to the bullshit and banter.

‘Are you going to tell me what happened in Afghanistan?’ she asked suddenly.

I take it back, he thought. ‘To me personally?’

‘Yes.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because all the hero crap is bollocks. That’s what you want to hear, isn’t it?’

‘Aha, touchy subject,’ she crowed. ‘Not to worry, I’ve got time on my side.’ She necked her wine and rattled the empty glass on the table. ‘Same again, thank you, Trainee Investigator Stark.’

Trainee Investigator. There were three steps to putting a D before your C. Phase one of the Initial Crime Investigators’ Development Programme (ICIDP) was the eighty-question National Investigators’ Examination, which Stark had aced. He considered he’d been at an unfair advantage, given the spare time he’d had to study, convalescing. Phase two was the six-week full-time course, which had been problematic for the same reason. Now embarked on phase three, he must build up his Professional Development Portfolio, an exercise in logging practical experience to demonstrate competency in core areas, ensuring he ‘met a set of occupational standards within the workplace’, in other words ticked a load of boxes and got it countersigned. This normally took up to or more than a year. Only upon completion would he join the illustrious ranks of the Criminal Investigations Department as Detective Constable Stark. His rehabilitation would inevitably handicap him but he was in no particular hurry. The last nine months of his life had been an impatient drive to recover, to get back his physical ability, to beat the odds. Now he was here and this was it. Either it would work out or it wouldn’t.

He got stiffly to his feet, stifling a grimace. While he was at the bar he took two tablets and washed them down with the last of his whisky. Guessing she had a tab he put the round, including two packets of crisps for himself, on it without telling her and returned to his seat with an inward smile.

Sipping his whisky and looking around the pub, at Fran tucking into her crisps, at the knots of coppers at the bar, the dartboard, the pool table, Stark reflected on the strange dichotomy of human existence that allows us to subsume our pains, to ride on a wave of contentment in the moment, forgetting for a time the darker current beneath. He could feel it there, the chilling deep tugging at him, but it
seemed powerless against the buoyancy of this room, these people, this moment. Perhaps he’d found his place, laid a new foundation. Perhaps this room of strangers would become family to him, this city home to him, this job purpose for him. He’d led a lackadaisical existence, following paths of least resistance, major decisions making themselves, life always working out for the best; an apathetic optimist, cheerfully coasting along. Iraq, Afghanistan and the months of recovery since had clouded that thoughtless, peaceful clarity in ways he perhaps hadn’t fully acknowledged.