Mountains of the Moon (43 page)

“You have come into the police station of your own accord this evening?”

“Yes.”

My leg rattles the table. Spills all of the coffees. Soaks all of the cigarettes. DI Webb pauses the tape.

“Do you need to see a doctor?”

“Have you got a habit, Kim?” DI Wilson says. “Something that you’ve not told us about? Do you need a doctor?”

“No.” I put the plastic coffee cup down with both hands cos it’s hopeless, my hands and legs are storming; nerves can’t handle the sea of calm inside me.

“It int
cold
turkey, it’s
frozen
fucking solid.”

“About that blanket?” Mr. Book says.

I know that soon, when we are final finished here, in the morning, tomorrow, day after, there will be a proper place for me. Lots of coal making lots of heat. Lucky we int in America really, one enormous electric chair.

“Can we turn this fan off?” DI Wilson wonders out loud.

Mr. Book tries the control panel on the wall. DI Webb comes back in with a blanket, stinks of piss.

“Put this over your legs, flower.” He kneels down to tuck my frozen bare feet in.

We all has a nap. Wakes up just fore my nose touches the table. Tips back my head; shoulder blades come up to hold it.

“Shall we get it over with?” DI Wilson says. “Are you OK to continue?”

I keep my eyes closed and nod my chin onto my chest, bones shift in my neck like plates.

Resume.

“Why have you come into the police station tonight, Kim?”

“To confess.”

“What is it that you want to confess to?”

“The kidnap and shooting of Quentin Sumner at number 3 Park Lane, the night before last.”

“Do you know which day that was?”

“Firework Night.”

“Did you act alone in the kidnapping of Quentin Sumner?”

“No.”

“Will you name the people you were involved with?”

“No.”

“Kim has been offered witness protection and has declined it. Is that true?”

“Yes.”

“Why have you declined the offer of police protection?”

“I don’t believe the police can or will protect me.”

“Why should you take all of the blame?”

“I’ll take the blame for my part.”

“What was your part?”

“The ransom note was made with words cut out of my dictionary. I knew he was hostage in the house. I shot him.”

“Who did you shoot?”

“Quentin.”

“Why did you shoot him, Kim?”

“I was aiming at someone else, Quentin got in the way.”

“Who were you aiming at?”

“I’m not prepared to say.”

“Was it your gun?”

“No.”

“Where is the gun now?”

“I threw it off the Suspension Bridge.”

“When you pulled the trigger did you know what you were doing?”

“Yes.”

“You intended to kill?”

“Yes, the person I was aiming at.”

“Why did you want to kill the person you were aiming at?”

Mr. Book shakes his head and throws his cigarette packet down. His lighter skids. We’ve been all over this, how a court will regard my lack of cooperation, how many extra years it will cost. But any minute now, how many years will be irrelevant.

“I’m not prepared to say.”

“You shot Quentin Sumner by mistake?”

“Yes.”

“You were aiming at someone else?”

“Yes.”

“Quentin’s condition is critical; he’s not expected to last the night. How do you feel about that, Kim?”

“Sorry.”

“Is there anything else you’d like to add?”

“Yes,” I say.

All three men look at me, we haven’t rehearsed this bit. I rattle the plastic cup to my mouth, lap at the lukewarm sweetness.

“What is it that you’d like to add, Kim?”

“Kim?”

“I’d like some other deaths to be taken into consideration.”

We listens to the recording machine, crunch and whirr and stop by itself. Finished chewing up the entire tape.

“Bollocks!” DI Wilson says.

A policewoman lets Mr. Book into my cell. I didn’t hear them coming over matey in the next cell, kicking off and rattling his cage. Drunk and disorderly. My solicitor, that is. He’s brought me forty Silk Cut, though, and a bottle of Lucozade from the chemist.

“What time is it?” I ask him.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Does it matter?”

“No,” I say.

He wants to sit on the metal bunk but there’s a rubber fried egg and folds of boozy puke in the blanket on it.

“It’s about 2, 3, 4 a.m., something like that. That’s disgusting,” he says.

“Wouldn’t mind if it was mine,” I say.

He’s in jeans and a sweatshirt, scratches at stubble on his jawbone. He leans one shoulder on the wall. The concrete floor is numbingly cold but the steel pipes are hot behind my back. Mr. Book has caught hailstones in the top of his moccasins. The orange cellophane wrapped around the bottle squeaks as it untwists; the glucose bubbles race to escape.

“Thanks very much, for this.” I drink it shaking like a junkie.

Silk Cut filters are perforated.

“Have you got a light? They’ve taken my lighter off me.”

He hasn’t, he’s having a nap, with his head tipped to the wall.

“About the first one,” he says.

“Shush,” the beech trees say.

The branches is snapping, the wind is cutting me, the dark is pushing
me, thick with frightened eyes shining up in headlights. The ladder bounces on my branch. Bryce comes bigger and bigger up it.

“You are fucking dead!” he shouts.

“No, Daddy! No, Daddy!”

“Come on, son,” Bryce says.

But Baby Grady won’t look.

“No, Daddy! No, Daddy! No, Daddy!” He screams and kicks and clings to me.

“Give him to me,” Bryce says.

I change my hand grip on the branch above and move a little bit nearer to him.

“Good girl!” someone shouts.

“No, Daddy! No, Daddy!” Baby Grady squeals.

“You motherfucking cunt,” yells matey in the next cell.

Memory fills my ears with the sound of Sheba’s punctured lungs. With the sound of the belt on Pip’s back.

“I’m going to kill you,” Bryce said to me.

I put my foot on the top of the ladder and shoved it as hard as I could. It skidded sideways and off the bough. Bryce turned, jumping out from the fall.

Forward.

Catching hold of nothing, of nothing. His arms went out like on a cross, his head dropped onto his chest; the fence post passed up under his ribs and came out between his shoulder blades. There was agony of wind in trees and lights and silent screaming mouths. He kicked and jerked and his neck twisted, oh God, he might have said. A hot stream flooded down my legs and splashed on and off my feet. Everything emptied out of me. A fire engine came, spinning blue lights through the trees and blackness. Spotlights waved about and fixed me up blind in the beam.

“Shush,” the beech trees said.

Baby Grady was tight and warm against me. I turned my head; saw through razor blades of light shining wet streaks on his chubby cheeks. But his blue-gray see-through eyes were floating away, high up with lights on the golden leaves.

“Stand back! Please! Everybody back!” the Sandwich Man said. “Let’s let the firemen do their job.”

The metal fence post screamed, sprayed out a wheel of burning sparks.

“Pretty,” Grady said.

I heard the hum of a hydraulic lift and Baby Grady’s chortled delight. I kissed my baby brother good-bye and handed him to the fireman.

“The charge against you was dropped,” Mr. Book says. “There was insufficient evidence. The prosecution lost their two main witnesses.”

What was his name, my barrister then? He always was brand new. I remember Red Roofs and Detective Cooper; my scrapbook was on the table fat with leaves and pressed flowers.
Dead.
It didn’t seem like the right word, I wrote the word big and small copperplate, wrote it swirly-wirly joined up. There it was stuck on the page, the torn photograph of Bryce, wagging with a stick in his mouth. I sent the half with Sheba on it to Pip.

“The charge against you was dropped, Kim.” Mr. Book thinks I didn’t hear. “The prosecution lost their two main witnesses.”

“Will you do it?” I arsts him.

“I’ll do it,” Angel Michael says.

I forgot him up on the laundry yard fence. White angel in a hospital gown. He’s got blood all down the front and zigzag stitches up his arm, from Monday and his fist through the winder.

“You int old enough, Michael,” I says. “For the part.”

Anton’s clothes on the washing line is an English cottage garden. The buckit is overflowing with bubbles, splashing on the paving and his bare feets. He’s got friendly toe beards and especial stuff for hand washing, can’t trust his silk and broidery down the laundry chute. This new drug has made him beautiful gain, his shirt is so white and his eyes and teefs, with his hair tied up and fanning out he minds me of a gray orchid. He reckons the new drug stinks, though, in his blood, in his sweat. But he smells sactly same to me, lavender and linseed oil.

“Shame Shirley isn’t still about,” Anton says. “Reminds me, we got a postcard yesterday, it’s in my jacket, in the inside pocket.”

I get the postcard out.

“Morocco!” I says.

The Winnebago broke down in the Atlas Mountins. I look at the picture gain. Probably sand in the air filter. It’s all right now. They seen a room full of human skulls. Shirley fell off a camel, then it spat at Trevor. Trevor spat back.

“Morocco,” I says.

“Burleigh?” Anton is still thinking on the other question. “Never heard of the place. What’s he like, your boss, this Bernard?”

“Sideways a bit like a golden eagle.”

“I mean, what does he do for a living?”

“He’s got a car showroom in Egham, sells Silver Shadows and Jaguars. His wife died last year, found him loads of times crying and shining the horses. I just said chin-chin, Mr. Ripley, and it always cheered him up. Cept now I call him Bernard, we is a proper good team. Look,” I says.

Two butterflies has landed on Anton’s candytuft hanky-chief. Red admirals.

“Red admirables,” I says.

“And what is it you’ve got to do?” Anton pours soapy water down the drain and fills buckits for the rinse. I wait for him to turn the taps off.

“Has to wear a costume with an apron and a black bowler hat, and sit on the back of the carriage, nice and smiling, and hold the horses’ heads for the judging.”

Int sure about the hairnet.

“So what’s the problem?” Michael comes back from out of the sky.

“We has to be there for
two days
and stay in a hotel. Bernard wants to come to my house
in the village
, wants a
mum or dad
to say:
yes
.”

“You’re killing me, you know that, don’t you? After dinner,” Anton says, “shall we go down there?”

Yes!

Blacksmith is coming at seven.

Anton loves the tack room, sniffs it in, the leather polish, metal polish and hayloft sweetness. Even the straw on the floor is shining; last sun comes in the barn door. I been all week cleaning the harnesses ready and the carriages side by side is gleaming. Sees Anton’s face in the coachwork, smiling.

“It’s Victorian, this one,” I says. “Me and Bernard has been restoring it. Once upon a time it was Queen Victoria’s. Her arse was right here, on the selfsame cushion. We got a photograph to prove it, on the wall behind you.”

Anton looks at it.

“Sepia,” he says. Every word he says is beautiful.

Then we go around to the stable yard; Misty always neighs when she see me.

“She’s beautiful, int she?” I says. “Her real name is Mistress Dappleday.”

“Huge,” Anton says.

“You can stroke her nose, she don’t bite, she’s gentle, kind and always willing. Was half dead when Bernard got her.”

“She won’t like the smell of me,” Anton says.

“Come and see Fritz, he’s around the back. He int big like her, he’s a little pony stallion. Especial thing about Fritz, he’s total, absolute black. Uh-huh. Most times a dark horse has got brown hairs mixed in or brown shading somewhere, but not Fritz, he’s total black.”

Blacksmith’s van is parked outside the stable door, he’s got a gas furnace in the back. Air smells of the hot shoe burning onto the hoof.