I look over at the doorway to the front hall, to the line Mum nearly made it to before the poison got properly snarled around her insides. You never would have guessed she was dead when I found her, for the first couple of seconds. It was more like time had frozen with her there on the carpet, and when it got started again she’d jump up onto her feet and peg it the hell out of the flat and away, away, away. An accident, for fuck’s sake. Now it turns out that even Auntie Alice reckons the police were being crooked about that, but that don’t make me feel even a tiny bit happier.
Me and Gail are back on the tequila. This time I’m properly up for it.
“It’s better off dead,” I say, pointing at the screen.
Gail can’t keep her sobbing to herself any more. She’s hugging that toy giraffe I used to like, hugging it tighter and tighter like maybe she actually hates it. Her whole body’s going up, down, up down with all the crying. She’s the one who looks like something deflating, not the shot-to-buggery Blighter.
“I’m serious,” I say. “Look how it all turned out. Too many people all after one Blighter. It’s not like anyone was going to get any good out of it. Alright, maybe royals and politicians and Justin Bieber—is he from Canada? But you and me and anyone like us, we wasn’t going to get to go and pat the Blighter on the head.”
Gail glares at me through her tears. Suddenly I clock what I’ve been saying, and what it means.
“Fuck. Gail. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, ‘and here’s us just a few miles away from a Blighter all of our own, and hardly no-one knows about it, so why the hell aren’t we up there rolling around on the ground and partying like it’s 1999.’ Right?”
“Right.”
There’s a word for this. Painting yourself into a corner.
Gail’s watching me and watching me. Them car keys of hers are digging right into my leg. There ain’t no way I’m giving them back and there ain’t no way I’m driving her up to that bloody bothy myself. I don’t want to end up at a funeral like someone from Canada, or like me all them years ago, saying goodbye to Mum and Dad.
The TV’s moved onto something else now. Something about antiques or car boot sales or whatnot. Gail’s lost interest. I look around the lounge, hoping to see something that might distract her off the subject of Blighters and give me five minutes’ peace. I look at the framed pictures on the wall, one by one. I never noticed it before, but all them pictures show places from other countries, not in England, or Great Britain, which is what you’re supposed to call it now. There’s a train going through mountains in maybe Italy or that country with the cheese. There’s a hot air balloon way up over a desert with elephants looking up and watching. There’s one of them old-fashioned little planes zooming up to the clouds, and all the way underneath it I’m pretty sure there’s a bunch of penguins, and not in a zoo neither.
It was Dad who put up all them paintings of far-away places. There’s only one picture in this whole room that Mum wanted sticking on the wall. It’s tiny, almost hidden by Gail’s armchair from where I’m sitting. It’s a little drawing of Dad, maybe from a few years after they got together, done in pencil by Mum. I always thought it was shit. His nose is wonky and he had more teeth than that.
But suddenly I’m thinking a thought about all them pictures, a thought I never had before. Mum’s drawing might be kind of crap, but it shows something. She drew it because she loved Dad. She drew it because she was happy, at least back then. And all them paintings of far-away places, what do they tell you about Dad and how he felt?
There’s only one thing it looks like to me. Looks like he wanted to get the fuck out of here.
Gail’s still watching me. I clear my throat and make out I was thinking about her and all her stupid problems. If I really cared about her, maybe I would have been.
“We could go look for Ralphie,” I say. “My January cash just came through and first of the year is always bigger than the rest. Dad liked to pay his bills at the start of the year. Made him feel like he was winning.”
Gail rubs at her eyes with Dad’s Rush T-shirt that she picked out of the drawer herself. When I saw she’d taken to wearing it, I didn’t have the guts to tell her that nobody, not nobody, gets to wear Dad’s stuff but me.
“But you don’t have any bills,” she says. “I mean, isn’t this place all paid up from his savings? From his will?”
I shrug. The suicide note Dad left was clear as crystal. Bank account details and everything. Enough money each month to keep his little girl going, but not enough to turn me into a trust-fund smackhead or nothing.
“Who knows what he was thinking,” I say, meaning, ‘No more talk about Dad.’ “All I’m saying is that we can go find Ralphie. Bring him home.”
It’s like something’s blocking the light onto Gail’s face all of a sudden, cause it’s turned proper dark. She’s scowling, too. “I don’t want him home.”
She looks at me, eyes all glinty, and then the light’s back again. I think to myself, oh-ho, something’s going on here.
In a flash she’s jumped halfway over the room and onto me. The chair she was sitting on judders on its four legs, like Dad’s old gramophone cabinet, even though there’s no Gene Vincent shouting.
It feels sort of like an attack and sort of like the other thing. At first I’m pushing her away because it’s Gail, isn’t it, but still it feels nice to have her lips pressed against mine even if they’re cracked and her breath’s a bit rank.
Before you know it we’re heading up the stairs, all clumsy like it’s a three-legged race. Gail don’t even seem to notice that my bed’s not made and there’s this awful mossy smell that never goes away even after old Mrs Baines the cleaner has been around to sort things out.
She pulls Dad’s T-shirt up over her head and I only wince a tiny bit when she chucks it away to crumple on the floor. She might not be your glamour model type, but it turns out she’s got a neat little body, all curves in the right places. But I’m not even paying it all that much attention, truth be told, because actually the nicest thing is just looking right into her eyes while she’s pulling at my clothes. When she’s not looking angry she’s really beautiful, suddenly, which weirdly makes me angry instead, so when I think any thoughts at all I just think, ‘Ralphie, you utter tail-end.’
We’re tangled up in bed and it’s all hands and hips and skin and lips. And everything’s going great guns until I realise that the sound Gail’s making isn’t a good one no more. I push her away, gentle. She’s crying.
“Take me back,” Gail says. “Please.”
’Course, she means the bothy.
“No.”
“I can get a gun. Ralphie’s got a hunting rifle.”
“No way. You’d get us killed.”
Hang on.
“Is that why you’re doing this?” I wave my hand to show her her naked body, which looks weirdly pale now. “You just trying to sweeten me up?”
I don’t really want to hear the answer. I want her not to say anything, maybe ever again. I just want all that tangling up in bed and that’ll do for me.
She don’t say anything for a while. Then she nods.
“I made a mistake,” she says.
I pull my clothes back on and then I’m outside and I’m sicking up tequila onto the pavement.
10
THE POLICE STATION’S only a few streets away. My whole life, that felt like a practical joke, designed to make my life just that little bit shitter. There’s me in my flat on Dockray Hall Road, there’s the police station over on Busher Walk, and there’s the magistrates’ courts stuck in between. Any time things get out of hand, I just bounce from one of them buildings to the other until they’re done with me. When the cops pull me in, for public disturbancing or smacking a slag or whatever, I always think about that bit in American films, when they pack the suspect up into a van and ship them off. I always thought that must be nice. At least that way you get a bit of time to think; and a free ride, too.
> This is the third time ever I’ve gone to the police station off my own bat. The second time was after we saw Lee and Owen get done in. The first time was back in 1999, when I tipped the cops off about Auntie Alice and all that evil inside her.
You have to go through two sets of doors to get into the police station, like an airlock except the other way around—the air’s outside and inside it’s just cops. The second set of doors are fucking heavy, like they’re saying, ‘You sure you want to go in here?’ But I do; this time I do. Even though Auntie Alice is probably about as nasty a piece of work as they come, she got one thing right. The police were playing at being crooks, back then. They didn’t investigate about Mum and Dad, not properly. When the whole business got to the courts, the lawyers and the judge made out like the only point of us being there was to have a good old sob about how sad it was—this accident—not to figure out what the hell actually went on that day.
But I’ve been walking around and around for like an hour and it’s cold and dark out here and I’m actually pretty drunk from all that tequila and, more than all that, this needs doing. So I pull the door open and in I go.
The woman behind the desk is all round-faced and smiley and she nearly makes me forget my angriness. Mum would have said she took the wind from my sails. But then actual real wind blows from outside and slams that heavy old door and I think I bet that cracks the window and then I think I bet they pin that on me and then all the angriness is back and even though the window’s fine and not cracked, I turn back to that smiley woman and my face says I ain’t going to take shit from her.
“I want to speak to someone,” I say.
“Go ahead.” You’d have thought her smile couldn’t get no bigger, but there it is.
“Not you. A policeman.”
She don’t even look upset by that. She knows I’m not being sexist. It’s just that you can tell she’s not properly one of them, because no policeman or police-lady ever smiled like that.
“I’m sorry, miss. The officers are all attending a briefing right at this moment.”
I put both hands on the desk and pull myself up so my feet are off the ground. It makes me a bit queasy, to be honest, and I can’t help wishing Gail preferred beer to tequila. The lady makes a teacher face, but she don’t know how to stop me. Now I can see through an open door round the back. There they all are, all them cops I remember from each time I got nicked. I ain’t got many people in my life, so these guys are like family to me, in a way. I can tell which one’s Hutchy right off, even from the back—he’s always had them slouched shoulders—next to the others, seven of them in all. They’re all standing looking up at some older cop who’s talking at the front, standing behind a podium just like the President of the United States of America on the news. He’s even got the same screwed-up face, trying to do an impression of someone who’s surprised and sad. It’s like all them other cops are kids and he’s their dad. They’re all shuffly like they wish they was playing Xbox instead of standing here listening to him.
“What’s this briefing about?” I say. It’s one of them questions that you don’t expect an answer to.
“I’m afraid that’s police business, miss. Can I help you?”
“Doubt it. He’s the one I want to speak to. Clutchy Hutchy.”
I point over the lady’s shoulder. She don’t even turn around. Hutchy does, though, like something tells him he’s being talked about. He does one of them cartoon double-takes. He looks at me, then at the cop who was speaking at the front, who’s finished up and about to wander off, then back at me, and his eyes are wide as anything. He’s waving his head around so much his floppy fringe won’t settle down in one place.
The lady budges over and blocks my view. Her voice gets all hard. “Officer Hutchinson isn’t available. You can talk to me.”
“Let me go back there, then, if you won’t call him.”
“Absolutely not. Where do you think you are, young lady?”
“You telling me this ain’t KFC?”
She don’t like my joke one bit.
“Hutchy!” I shout.
Hutchy’s sitting at his desk now, but he’s still facing my way, and even when he tries to hide behind his computer I know he knows I’m watching. Even from here I can see how edgy he’s getting. I bet he knew I’d come for him. He weren’t on the force back when Mum and Dad died, but I swear he knows all about what went on. The way he’s always treated me, it’s more than just feeling sad and sorry in the normal way. His pals back there in the police station, they’re the ones who called the whole thing an accident and I bet Hutchy feels proper knotted up about it. It might be partly the tequila, but I ain’t never been more certain about anything. He can tell me the truth.
The lady’s reaching under the counter now. If this was America there’d be a gun under there, but seeing as it’s Kendal it’s probably just a buzzer.
I make sure Hutchy’s looking at me and I point right at him. He’s shitting bricks.
“Young lady, I’m giving you thirty seconds to—”
Over her shoulder, I see Hutchy jump up from his desk. He’s making for the door.
I’m still half-up on the desk. Before I hop down, I pat the lady on the shoulder. “No need. Thanks love. Big help.”
There’s only one way in or out of the police station and I ain’t letting Hutchy past. And there he is, a blurry slouchy Bigfoot through the thick glass. I yank open that heavy fucking airlock door and I’m all like ‘Aha!’ But Hutchy ain’t there.
I push through the second door and run outside. All the cop cars are parked up in neat rows. One time someone left one unlocked and I got in and started up the siren. They didn’t have ASBOs back then and that’s the one time I pretty much got away with it, because the cops were proper red-faced about leaving the keys in the ignition. That just goes to show they’ll cover up anything when it suits them.
Anyway, Hutchy’s not out here. So back inside I go.
There’s only one other door in the airlock. Us normal people can go into the first couple of rooms, because that’s where you go to be interviewed by cops or counsellors or whatever when you’ve pissed somewhere you shouldn’t. I look in each room but they’re both empty, so then I peer through the big locked door that leads to the cop desks.
Still no Hutchy, though, so there’s only one place he could be.
I don’t even stop to think twice before I charge into the gents. Some lasses wouldn’t dare, like there’s a fucking forcefield around them or something. But I’ve seen enough, in pubs and whatnot, to know that men’s toilets are basically like women’s, except there’s never a sofa but a lot more puddles of piss. Still, I’m glad to see there’s no-one standing at the urinals. Seeing a cop’s cock would pretty much cap off a shitty old day.
There’s only one cubicle and it’s shut tight.
“Open the fucking door, Hutchy.”
’Course, there’s no answer.
“I ain’t going to knock,” I say.
Hutchy’s voice comes out all muffled. “Don’t you dare, Becky. Criminal damage.”
“What you going to do, call the cops?”
I give him a few seconds, but I swear I’ll break the door down.
The door swings open and there’s Hutchy, crouched double with his bum and his feet on the closed lid of the loo. The police force spends a ton on adverts trying to make cops seem more human. Hutchy right now is the kind of sight that’d do that for anyone.
“It was a cover-up, wasn’t it?” I say.
Hutchy’s face is the same dirty white as the toilet paper.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I got proof,” I say. “I got me a fucking witness.”
I still hate the thought of asking Auntie Alice to help, getting her to tell what she knows about the cops making out like Dad didn’t kill Mum. But it’s the only way of opening up the case all over again, and then—
Then maybe I’ll get Auntie Alice put inside for her part in the
whole thing.
It’s only right this second that my whole plan seems a bit off. Why would Auntie Alice do anything that would help make her look guilty? But, then, why did she say anything about the cops making shit up, back there in the alley?
None of it makes sense. Right now I can’t even remember why it’s so important to prove that the ‘accident’ was murder, after all. Whichever way you look at it, it was Dad who did Mum in, not Auntie Alice. The guilty party’s already got himself a gravestone.
Suddenly I feel as drunk as I’ve ever been in my life. Hutchy must notice me swaying and all mixed up.
“I didn’t know,” he says.
It takes me a few seconds to clock what he’s saying.
“So it’s true?”
There’s panic in his eyes. Now he thinks maybe I was doing a double-bluff. But then he just goes all crumply and I can see the same six-year-old Hutchy I used to know.
“I’m so sorry,” he says. “I know you and he were friends.”
“Friends? Is that the best you can manage?”
“Oh. More than that, then?”
I don’t know what to say to that. Maybe he’s drunk too. Maybe everyone is, all the time, and I just never noticed.
“It’s just when I saw you in the library, you didn’t seem...”
Oh, fuck.
Hutchy ain’t talking about Dad. He ain’t talking about the ‘accident’ or about anything that happened back in 1999.
“Frodo,” I say. Then, “What’s happened?”
Hutchy’s feet drop down onto the tiled floor, making two little sploshes in the piss puddle.
Invaders From Beyond Page 18
