Primal Cut (33 page)

‘Can I help you, love?’ Jack Chissel asked. As he spoke a piece of pig kidney fell out of his mouth and on to his apron.

‘What are you eating?’ she asked.

‘It’s called “Pig’s Fry”, darling,’ came the greasy response. ‘You want some?’

The market swam around her; the noise receded and then welled up into a terrible scream. Dexter felt Garrod’s presence suddenly at the front of her mind; his hands pulling her guts from her stomach, his teeth tearing the flesh from her bones; the grease of her body smeared on his lips; the machinery of her body stripped and dismantled; the monstrousness of the world she had chosen to inhabit.

She suddenly, inexplicably, missed John Underwood.

Underwood collected Alison Dexter from the Cambridge Holiday Inn, and headed towards the M11 just outside Cambridge. He drove them south towards London, eventually leaving the motorway at junction four. The grey complexities of London unwound around them. Dexter began to recognise the roads as they drove through Wanstead towards Leyton.

They met DCI Paddy McInally at Leyton CID. He drove them down to the Blind Beggar on the Mile End Road. Underwood found McInally excellent company. The man’s profoundly filthy sense of humour had him laughing into his pint glass. Dexter seemed to be enjoying herself too. Underwood noticed that her voice and manner had changed slightly. Maybe it was the presence of her former boss, more likely it was the effect of being in London. The city had an energy, a tension that Cambridgeshire lacked. Dexter was back in her natural habitat.

McInally took an enormous swig of London Pride beer and launched into another joke.

‘Here’s one for you, Dexy,’ he spluttered. ‘There’s this poof in the back of a squad car, right?’

Dexter rolled her eyes. ‘Right,’ she said with mock weariness.

McInally grinned. ‘So the copper asks him “Have you ever been picked up by the fuzz before?” And the poof says, “no but I’ve been swung around by me bollocks.”’

He laughed uproariously.

‘Isn’t that called a “Hampstead Handshake?”’ Dexter replied.

Underwood listened enviously to the exchange between his two colleagues. He had rarely enjoyed any banter with Dexter. There was a warmth between her and McInally that he could never hope to replicate. Now Garrod was out of the picture, Underwood feared the worst. McInally seemed to anticipate his concern.

‘Look, I have an ulterior motive for bringing you down here today, Dexy. I mentioned it to John on the phone the other night.’

‘I knew that if you were buying there had to be a catch,’ Dexter shot back. ‘Let’s have it then.’

McInally looked over at Underwood who was staring intently into his pint glass. ‘An opening has come up here in Leyton.’

‘What sort of opening?’ Dexter asked suspiciously.

‘I’m taking early retirement,’ McInally continued. ‘That means there’s a DCI job going.
You’ve got local knowledge. I could recommend that you replace me.’

Underwood shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He tried to smile but could not look Dexter in the eye. He knew this was coming but it still made his guts churn horribly.

‘I don’t know,’ Dexter responded. ‘It’s a huge job.’

‘You’re going to get upped sooner or later,’ McInally said. ‘This could be the opportunity. You’re a London girl, you even know some of the villains we deal with. I can’t think of anybody better.’

The ground opened up in front of Underwood. His saw the long, twisting slide to Hell.

‘Besides, you’ve got the energy, Dexy,’ McInally continued. ‘I’ve let things sink a little bit over the last year or two. This department needs a pocket battleship.’

Dexter watched Underwood’s expression carefully. The man was staring at the carpet now. Only his drumming fingers betrayed his inner turmoil.

‘I don’t know, Paddy,’ Dexter said. ‘I’d have to think about it, but thank you.’

‘Don’t thank me, thank old Johnny boy here.’

Dexter’s shock was profound. ‘This was your idea?’ she asked Underwood.

‘I know you’ve been unhappy,’ Underwood replied. ‘When Paddy told me he was thinking of packing it in, I thought of you.’

Dexter was unsure whether to be angry or grateful at Underwood’s latest intervention in her life. The prospect of returning to London was an alluring one. She had always found Cambridgeshire desperately empty: at least, until recently. There was an obvious logic to her replacing McInally. She was his protégée but she had been away from the area long enough to be apolitical. That would make her an attractive candidate. It was tempting. In London she could rebuild an infrastructure to support her. Why then was she not jumping all over McInally’s offer?

An hour later McInally said goodbye to Underwood and Dexter outside Leyton police station. Dexter promised to call him the following day with a response. Underwood began to weave his way through London traffic.

‘So that was your idea then, John?’ Dexter said eventually.

He nodded. Despair was eating at his soul.

‘You would be happy for me to leave?’

‘I wouldn’t be happy at all,’ he said. ‘But that’s not really the point is it?’

‘The point is that you are prepared for me to leave,’ Dexter said.

‘You are a London girl, Alison. Always will be.’

‘You know something, John. You are the only person that calls me Alison.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I didn’t mean that,’ Dexter corrected him. ‘You heard McInally back there. To him I’m always “Dexy” or even “Sexy Dexy” for God’s sake. The people in the office all call me “Dexter”, “Guv” or worse. Kelsi Hensy called me “Ali”. I’m tired of people reshaping me into a form that makes me manageable, palatable to them.’

‘I don’t see your point.’ Underwood frowned.

‘My name is Alison,’ she said. ‘But only two people have ever called me that. You’re one of them.’

Underwood’s emotions tore at him. Dexter was speaking in code. She still was oblivious to the fact that he had discovered and befriended her father: the man that she hadn’t seen for over twenty years was lying in a hospital bed not two miles from their current location. Had she suffered enough? Could he bear to inflict more pain on the woman he loved? He saw no answer to his dilemma on the chaotic London streets or the patterns of dirt on his windscreen.

‘Do you ever think about him? Your dad, I mean?’ he asked tentatively.

‘Sometimes. My memory of him is vague though. I try not to dwell on it. If he was interested in me he’d have stayed in touch.’

Underwood turned towards Leytonstone.

‘What if he thought it was in your best interests that he stay away?’ he said.

‘I’d say that the only person who should decide my best interests is me.’

‘Supposing he was a criminal,’ Underwood speculated, ‘an armed robber or something. Getting in contact with you might damage your career. If he loved you he might stay out of the picture.’

‘Unlikely,’ Dexter mused. ‘In any case, I did a Police Records Check on him a few years ago and it turned up nothing.’

There was no emotion in her voice to help him. Underwood tried to consider his options. His instincts told him that Alison Dexter would accept McInally’s offer and return to Leyton CID. If that happened, then his last tenuous grip on her life would be torn away. It suddenly occurred to him that the decision was not his to make. In his experience, Alison Dexter’s cold logic rarely let her down. His duty, as her friend, was simply to present her with all the available information. If he truly loved her, he would have to trust her to use that information properly. Only she could judge her interests. He would have to let go.

Underwood turned into Leytonstone High Road.

‘You’ve got a bit lost,’ Dexter observed, recognising some local landmarks. ‘Take a right at the next lights.’

Underwood’s heart raced. ‘Alison, I need to make a stop. It’s only a few minutes out of our way.’

‘A stop where?’ she asked, unable to fathom what possible connection Underwood could have with Leytonstone.

‘Trust me,’ he said without looking at her.

Underwood followed a black cab to the traffic lights. He turned left instead of right then crossed the next two sets of roundabouts. A few moments later he pulled up outside the Beech View Care Centre in Wilding Road.

‘What’s this place then?’ Dexter asked, peering through the passenger window.

Underwood wondered for a moment how to answer. ‘I want you to know that whatever happens, whether you stay in New Bolden or go back to London, you are not alone.’

‘What are you talking about?’

Underwood climbed out of the car and walked towards the building. Leaves swirled on the ground. The cold, dry London wind scraped at his throat. Dexter joined him at the front entrance to the building.

‘John, what is going on?’

Underwood didn’t reply. He pushed open the door to the Beech View Care Centre and stepped inside. Hannah looked up from the reception desk.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Underwood,’ she said brightly, ‘nice to see you again.’

‘You too, Hannah,’ Underwood said. ‘Is it all right if we go up?’

‘No problem. He’s awake. He’s listening to one of those football phone-ins on the radio.’

‘Thank you.’

Underwood headed up the stairs with Alison Dexter snapping at his heels.

‘John, are you going to give me a straight answer or not?’ she asked irritably. ‘You are beginning to freak me out. I though that we’d decided to be straight with each other.’

‘You are a very suspicious person. You have to be more trusting.’

‘Oh! That’s rich coming from you,’ she snorted. ‘You are the most cynical old sod I’ve ever met.’

They arrived at the first floor landing. Underwood led her to room seven. He turned to face her lowering his voice to a whisper as he spoke.

‘You need to be strong, Alison.’

‘What are you talking about?’

Underwood pushed open the door. The room was small and square with whitewashed walls. An old man lay on a bed in the centre of the room.
Alison Dexter found herself looking into a pair of familiar green eyes.

‘Hello, Alison,’ said Gary Dexter softly.

Dexter found herself standing in stunned silence inside the little bedroom. The radio babbled. The pale, tired face in front of her concealed a person that she recognised. Slowly her mind broke down and reformed the man’s features into those of the father she barely knew.

‘I always said you’d turn out to be a right heartbreaker,’ he said.

Unable to respond, conscious of tears building behind her eyes, Alison Dexter turned to John Underwood for an explanation.

But he had gone.

Outside, Leytonstone was laughing at him. People pushed past him on the pavement as he walked. Minutes slipped into oblivion. He wondered at the monstrosity he had become. Bartholomew Garrod had physically consumed his victims, assimilated their primal cuts into his own being. Was he any different? He had tried to absorb Alison Dexter’s life, her very personality, the essence of her being into himself. Love is the ultimate act of
consumption. There were dark holes in his soul that he had desperately hoped she would fill. He had wanted to feel her strength, intelligence and fire within him as if they would burn away the cancers that dwelled there.

In the cold hard reality of that East London evening, Underwood could see the folly of his actions. Redemption was uniquely personal. His unrequited love, his failed consumption of Alison Dexter, had merely debased him further: it created more questions than it answered. Now it seemed that she would leave him altogether and return to the city that had fashioned her. Terrible though that prospect was to him, it did resolve the equation that had been infecting his thought processes. If she left his life there would truly be nothing in it worth clinging onto. That thought came not as a dark revelation but as a relief.

An hour passed. Underwood found himself back in Wilding Road. He tried to find consolation in the concrete rolling beneath him. At least her memories of him would be positive. At least he had shown the courage to let her go. In the darkest moments of the decay that lay ahead of him he could find some solace in that act of selflessness. It might be the only redemption he could hope for.

Alison Dexter was waiting for him by his car. He could see she had been crying. Her face was
streaked and exhausted. Underwood felt a surge of shame as he sensed her pain and shock. He stood directly in front of her unable to find any words. It was obvious to him that he had said and done enough.

Without speaking, Alison Dexter suddenly enfolded her arms around him. Underwood was uncertain how to react. He stood awkwardly as she hung onto him in the quiet desolation of the roadside. He began to feel the warmth of her body streaming into him, filling the dark spaces, cauterising the cancers inside. Perhaps he could find sustenance in a friendship. Perhaps it could feed him with the will to fight.

And perhaps, in the months of adjustment and renewal that lay ahead, Alison Dexter might even begin to find some small comfort in him.

For John Underwood, that was the most encouraging thought of all.

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