by Baker, John
‘Yeah.’
Geordie picked up another sugar lump and popped it into his mouth. He ground it down with his teeth and reached for the remaining cold dregs of coffee in his cup. He swilled it around and swallowed it. ‘I wish mine had been like that,’ he said.
Sam smiled. He didn’t have to say anything.
‘If she walked in here now,’ Geordie said. ‘Say if she came up to the table and said, “Hello, I’m your mother. D’you wanna buy me a cup of coffee.” And she was normal about it, and wanted to be friends. If she said she wanted to forget the past, and for us to carry on as though nothing had happened. Something like that. I’d agree to it. I’d say, “Yeah, mum. I’ll get you a coffee. What about a piece of carrot cake?” Then after she’d drunk the coffee, eaten the cake, I’d take her round to see Janet. It’d be great.’
‘Not likely, though,’ said Sam.
‘No, not likely at all. About as likely as angels.’
The allotment shed where India Blake’s body had been found was still there. It stood apart from the other sheds around it with an aura of neglect. The outer walls were clad with tarred canvas, and the windows had been boarded up. The whole edifice was raised up on red bricks, three high. The roof timbers were bare. There was an eerie feeling about it. As though the suffering it had contained had somehow pervaded the timbers. Geordie walked along the rough grass pathway and pushed open the door of the shed. There was a roll of scene-of-crime tape, left behind by the police. The shed floor had been taken up completely, and every inch of the earth underneath had been dug up and sifted. Geordie didn’t go inside. He thought it would have been like walking on India Blake’s grave.
Next to the shed was something that looked as if it might have been a greenhouse. There was no glass left and the structure looked dangerous, as though it was about to fall in on itself. It was boarded up with rusty, pitted corrugated iron, wire mesh, and the base of it was formed from stone paving slabs. Alongside it were a couple of worn car tyres, different sizes.
‘You looking for something?’
The man was stocky, sergeant-major build, with thinning hair and floppy ears. He had a bristly moustache and lived in his shoulders and upper chest. He was carrying a spade. Geordie showed him his ID. ‘We’re retained by the insurance company,’ he explained.
‘Nobody’ll take it,’ the man said, nodding towards the length of the garden. ‘There’s a waiting list for plots, but nobody wants this one. Not after...’
‘... the murder?’ Geordie prompted.
The man nodded. ‘Makes me feel strange coming here now. After that. I used to enjoy coming before.’
‘Which is your plot?’
‘Right here,’ the man said. ‘Next door.’
Geordie looked along the length of the plot. This man’s shed was completely different. One end of it was built out of corrugated perspex, the other end with boards encased in a bitumen sheath. Between the two sheds was a sheltered alcove with a corrugated iron roof and an open front. Along the back wall was a seat taken from the back of a car.
‘And you never heard anything?’ Geordie asked. ‘Saw anything?’
The man shook his head, as though he couldn’t believe it himself. ‘Never dreamed,’ he said. ‘You don’t. It’s a garden. You plant seeds and watch the vegetables coming. Keep the Weeds down. I come here to get away from the telly. All that violence.’ He looked up at the sky, as though someone up there had played a dirty trick on him.
‘What about the other gardeners?’ Geordie asked. ‘Didn’t anyone see anything?’
‘We’ve talked about it,’ the man said. ‘And the police have been here. We had to give statements. They had a picture of her husband, and wanted to know if we’d seen him around. But he wasn’t the type you get round here. I don’t think anybody saw anything. Sometimes somebody will walk through, taking a short cut, or maybe looking to pinch some tomatoes or sprouts. We lose a lot of sprouts in the winter. People just come in and help themselves. Cheeky buggers. But that, what happened in that shed, that was something else.’
‘You think there’s any point in talking to the other gardeners?’
The man shook his head. He stuck his spade in the earth and leaned on the handle, scratching at the growth of hair under his nose. ‘They’ll tell you the same as me. Whoever it was done her in was real quiet about it. While that woman was dying in there we didn’t have a clue about it. The police, their forensics people, they say she was there for weeks, and we can’t do anything but believe them. But gardeners on the allotment couldn’t hardly believe that. What we thought was, she’d been killed somewhere else, and the body dumped here. Maybe if someone brought it here one night and dumped it, that might explain it.’
‘Thanks, anyway,’ said Geordie. He left the man leaning on his spade and walked towards the gate of the allotment. All the other plots looked as though they were being used. There were stacks of timber, green and blue plastic water barrels, cloches, heaps of cow dung and horse manure. Some of the plots had their own lavatories, just big enough for one man and a newspaper. Each plot was defined by wonderfully inventive fencing, the intrepid gardeners seemingly ready to use whatever came to hand. Geordie identified asbestos sheeting, car doors, hardboard and cardboard, woven string and electrical flex, plywood, pallets, tree trunks, plastic sheeting, and even offcuts of carpet. Geordie stopped to admire one beauty of a shed, made up entirely of old window frames. Many of them had been relieved of their glass, boarded up; but nevertheless there was nothing identifiable in the make-up of the place that at one time or another hadn’t been a window frame. And stacked beside it, waiting for their destiny, were another two dozen window frames. From the road he watched some horses exercising on the Knavesmire, a grey and a chestnut mare, being galloped. Geordie turned his thoughts back to Janet, hoping her mother had gone home.
He stood at the gate to the allotment, wondering what to do next. Maybe he should talk everything over with Marie, see if she’d come across anything that would lead them in another direction. He’d already decided to go back to the office, when the sergeant-major type called out his name. Geordie turned and watched the man leave his spade behind and stride out towards him. Geordie walked back to meet him.
‘One thing you could try, is old Male,’ he said. ‘He’s here at night sometimes. Or he used to be. He kept budgies on the other side of me, in his shed, he’d had it kitted out as an aviary in there. Bred them and sold them to pet shops. And he took them to shows and won prizes.’
‘But the police’ll’ve spoken to him?’
‘No, I don’t think they did. He’s been having heart attacks and surgery all year. Had another one a couple of days before they found the body, and he was laid up in hospital. His son came down and took the birds away, but old Male himself was hit bad. We don’t expect to see him down here again.’
‘Is he fit enough to talk?’ Geordie asked.
‘If he is, he is, and if he isn’t, he isn’t,’ the man said. ‘You’ll find out if you go round his house.’
‘You got the address?’
‘No. He’s in South Bank. ’Bout halfway down. Everybody knows him. Ask for old Malc.’
The guy in the corner shop knew the house number. When Geordie knocked, the door was opened by a woman with a fresh perm. She looked like Janet’s mother. Not exactly like her, but she was the same size and age and class, and the sound of her voice was almost the same. The thing that was different was that the woman who opened the door had a smile on her face, whereas Janet’s mother’s face had never managed to put a smile together. Not in Geordie’s experience, anyway; and as far as he knew, and suspected, not ever.
Old Malc was sitting in a huge armchair in the back room. There was an open fire burning, and the room was too warm. He looked like an old sailor, mainly because of the tattoos on his forearms, a curled python on one, and a skull and crossbones with a galley on the other. He noticed Geordie looking at them. ‘Got a gorilla on me chest,’ he said. ‘Been t
here forty-eight year.’ He began pulling his shirt out of his trousers, but the old woman stopped him.
‘Give over, Male,’ she said. ‘Nobody in their right mind wants to see your chest.’ To Geordie she said, ‘It’s not a gorilla anyway. It’s a monkey.’
‘Supposed to be flying through the trees in the jungle,’ old Male said. ‘When I was younger I could make it wink. Flexing me muscles.’
His wife shook her head and raised her eyes to the ceiling. She went to the door. ‘If he takes his shirt off give us a shout,’ she said to Geordie.
Old Malc watched her leave the room. ‘Did you see my shed down the allotment?’ he asked.
‘Yes. I didn’t go inside.’
‘Next time you’re there, have a look inside. Let me know what it’s like. ’Spect it’s been vandalized.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Geordie told him. ‘It looked fine from be outside. Most of the sheds down there look as though they’re on their last legs, but yours’s been painted regularly. Looked after.’
‘Yeah. I looked after it. Spent all my time down there. Get away from the old woman. Used to, anyway. Now I have to sit here all day, ’cept when she wants to take me for a walk.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Geordie. ‘You can’t get out, then?’
‘Never mind sorry. You’ve come to see if I saw the murderer? And you’ve come to the right place. I told her I’d seen him hanging round. She could’ve rung the police but she doesn’t believe what I say. “They’ve arrested the husband, without your help,” she says. “Well, I don’t know if it was the husband or not,” I tell her. “I only know it was a young chap, hanging round in the street, then going over to that shed when he thought no one was around. The police’ll be looking for witnesses.”
‘ “And a lot of good you’ll be as a witness,” she says to me. “Laid up on your back, half dead.” Because that was just after I had the attack. I was in no state to argue with her. Even when I was fit I couldn’t argue with her. Couldn’t be bothered, to tell the truth. Arguing with a woman who can’t ever be wrong. I’d rather eat bird shit.
‘Then the next thing we hear they’ve let the husband go. And when I see his picture in the paper, he’s nothing like the young chap was hanging round the allotments. Then I thought she should ring the police, tell them to come round here. But she’s: “It’s too late now, after all this time. They won’t want to be bothered with something you might’ve seen and not seen. Police tramping through the house, I can’t be doing with it.” So I just think to me self, Oh, to hell with it, I’ll watch the telly instead. It’s nothing to do with us. But I thought somebody would come round enquiring sooner or later, and here you are. What’s your name?’
‘Geordie Black.’
Old Malc took Geordie’s card and squinted at it. ‘Geordie Black, private investigator.’
‘This man you saw,’ Geordie asked. ‘You didn’t see him with a woman?’
‘No, he was always by himself. He came at night. He’d walk up and down the street a couple of times if anyone was around. Then, when he thought the coast was clear, he’d be over to that shed sharpish, like. Inside, and he’d be in there twenty minutes, half an hour, then he’d be away again.’
‘How many times did you see him?’
‘Three nights on the trot he was there, before I was taken bad the first time. I couldn’t work out what he was up to. I was going to have a peek inside the shed after he’d gone, but then I had the heart attack, and that was that.’
‘Can you give me a description? What did he look like?’
‘It was always at night when I saw him, but I watched him good, because I couldn’t work out what he was up to. He had a broad forehead. He was young, like I said, and he was thin. When he moved it was more like a woman than a man. I don’t mean he was a woman. He was a boy. Not sure of himself. He was small and dark, not a working man, more like somebody what works in an office.’
‘Like me?’
‘Could’ve been, I suppose. But you’re taller.’
When Geordie glanced back to say goodbye, at the door of Male’s room, the old man was smiling. Didn’t improve him, though. Looked as ancient as God.
30
Joni Prine was the kind of girl who’d squeeze her friend’s blackheads in the street. The village pub in Wheldrake had, of course, seen her like before, but had not become enamoured through the exposure.
Marie tried repeatedly to get Joni to keep her voice down, but it seemed like a physical impossibility. Even when Joni whispered, the locals took in every word. Eddy had been nice to her in the beginning, when they had first met. But for the last year she’d felt trapped, ever since he’d got her pregnant with Jacqui. Now the physical violence was getting worse. Eddy also threw his weight around with the younger girls. One of the ones in the cottage tonight had a cut lip. Almost impossible for a girl to work with a cut lip.
Marie had a miniaturized recorder, which she kept running while Joni talked. But at eleven o’clock they drank up and walked to the outskirts of the village where Edward Blake’s cottages were situated behind a tall beech hedge. In the drive was a sleek Hertz rental with tinted windows, a sure sign that the gentlemen had arrived.
They were playing music inside the cottage, sounded like Cliff Richards’
‘Summer Holiday’, which put a certain vintage on the politicians, and pointed up the absence of taste which had led them, ultimately, into the hands of Edward Blake.
‘I want to get this right first time,’ said Marie, taking a small video camera from the bag on her shoulder. ‘We don’t go in unless we know we’ll get some good footage.’
Joni held up a bunch of keys. ‘We can go in the back Way,’ she said. ‘Through the kitchen. They’ll all be pissed anyway, and we’ll be able to watch without them knowing we’re there.’
Marie followed her round the house. They crept into the darkened kitchen, where Joni pushed open a serving-hatch A tangle of naked and semi-naked bodies was revealed in the room beyond. A portly man with silver hair on his head and chest was kneeling on a cushion on the floor. He was the owner of a short, fat penis, which was fully and comically erect. The girl on his left, who was dressed in a pyjama top, was holding his member between thumb and forefinger. The girl to his right, who was tall and thin and brown, seemed to be licking out his ear. When the serving-hatch opened he was caught squealing with laughter, his red face blotchy with alcohol, and his mouth open in a roar of abandonment.
‘Bobby!’ he shouted. ‘Tina wants us to make a daisy-chain.’
Bobby wasn’t fully visible. He was stretched out on his back on the floor. Like the first man, he was completely naked. Only the base of his penis and a few red hairs were visible, the rest of it being subsumed in the mouth of a girl with a badly cut lip who knelt between his thighs. At the other end there was nothing to recognize, as a dumpy blonde with long nipples and a bored expression was sitting on his face.
‘Let’s get to work,’ said Marie, flicking on the video camera. Joni kicked open the door, and the two of them tumbled into the room.
‘Wheeeee,’ screamed the silver-haired man. ‘More girlies. Hey, Bobby, we’ve got more girlies.’
Bobby moved the blonde off his face and peeked out between her buttocks. ‘More the merrier,’ he said. ‘Have a drink. Take your clothes off.’
Then he disappeared again under the blonde. Marie only caught a glimpse of him, but his face was almost a national icon. Robert ‘Bobby’ Neville was only a junior cabinet minister, but heavily tipped for one of the major jobs in the not-too-distant future. The Home Office and the Treasury had both been mentioned by political speculators.
His swift rise to prominence had been accomplished by a couple of veiled racist speeches, in which Bobby had partially concealed his misanthropy behind the cloak of patriotism.
But, like others who used flag-waving tactics, Bobby’s only real love was himself. Marie reflected that patriotism was nothing more or less than the conviction that a cou
ntry is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.
She let the camera run. Who knows, she might be making history, recording the formative moments of a future prime minister. Not exactly an in-depth interview, but revealing nevertheless.
The girl with the cut lip drew back from Bobby’s sex and left it standing there, glistening with saliva. She looked at the camera. ‘What the fuck’s going on?’ she said.
Bobby must have picked up on her tone, because he sat up quickly, and his engorged member went down like a pricked balloon, disappeared into that red bush real fast.
‘Minister,’ said Marie, zooming in on his face, ‘is it true that when your dick gets hard, your brain gets soft?’
The minister’s reply would have been censured in Hansard. His choice of words was not exactly considered, and there were far too many adjectives for the one sentence.
31
Before he went to the paper shop, Sam looked again at the photograph album Diana had found for him. They were all there, Arthur and Dora, Diana and Billy. There were a couple of photographs of Dora’s parents, portraits gone yellow with age, people with spines so straight and rigid that today they would be regarded as abnormal.
The wedding-day photographs. Arthur standing tall with his bride on his arm. Dora smiling at the camera, her young face bursting with anticipation, her eyes innocent of the complications and hardships that the years ahead might hold. She looked too young to be married. Like a schoolgirl in a pageant that had nothing to do with real life, a child dressing up, pretending to be adult for the cameraman. Looking hard at the wedding photograph Sam couldn’t detect much of the woman he now lived with. The girl in the photograph remained static, gazing into the dark aperture of the camera, fixed in the moment, unaware that another husband far in the future was looking back down the years at her through the same lens.
Sam sighed and flicked over a couple of pages. There was Arthur with Billy. Father and son in a studio portrait. Arthur would be around forty, the young Billy five or six years old. Billy had long curly hair and was dressed in a short linen coat, white ankle socks, and tiny sandals. Arthur was looking down at his son, who was standing on a chair. There was no physical contact between the two, but it was as if they were one being. The man’s gaze encompassed the totality of the child, so that Billy was unaware of the precarious nature of his perch. He was aware of the undivided attention of his father. He was too young to recognize that the camera was there to make a statement, but the core of him, reaching out a tiny hand towards his father, illuminated an action that perhaps still continued down to the present day.
