The Smog (A Jean Clarke Mystery Book 1)

by Timothy Allsop

  *

  Harry became aware once more of the cold and the dark and the terrible smog that cloaked the city around him. He had no idea how long he’d been standing there. The absence of a horizon and the lack of any buildings made him feel as though the joints of his thoughts had unhinged themselves from his consciousness. He began to feel light, almost as if he might disappear. Instead of looking through the smog he tried to look directly at it and now it seemed to him like the whole world had turned to gas and that the acrid vapour was the conflation of not just his memories but those of the entire city’s population. His body felt small and frail. A new thought dropped in, sharp and clear. Those men were going to hurt Phyllis, perhaps even kill her. He knew he had to stop them. That was his purpose now.

  FIVE

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Jean answered, feeling for a lump on her head where she had knocked it against the window.

  Charlie opened the door on his side and climbed out.

  ‘They’ve driven off, the sods.’

  He walked around to the front of the van to look at the damage.

  ‘How is that possible? We weren’t going that hard,’ he said.

  ‘Is it bad?’

  He came back and tried to start the engine but it wouldn’t oblige.

  ‘Damn thing, start.’

  This time the engine gave a flutter but then conked out defiantly. Charlie slammed his hand against the steering wheel and swore under his breath before clambering out a second time, looking first at the van and then in both directions down the street, weighing up what needed to be done.

  ‘Look. My mother’s place isn’t far from here. I’m going to run down there and get me younger brother to help us shift the meat.’

  ‘I can walk to the station,’ Jean said.

  ‘Would you be able to wait with the van?’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Hang on,’ he said, and leaned into the van. He released the hand brake and started to push the van backwards.

  ‘Shall I get out?’

  ‘No, you’re all right.’

  Jean sat as Charlie put all of his weight into pushing the vehicle. He moved it a few feet and then with one hand on the steering wheel he eased it back against the kerb. The exertion and the filthy air made him cough.

  ‘My God, this stuff is thick. Look, I’ll be ten minutes at most. Then I’ll walk you to the station.’

  He shut the door and walked off, his silhouette swallowed instantly into the fur of smog. Jean was left sitting in the gloom of the van. She could hear the engine ticking as it cooled down, like a half-hearted clock that could not be bothered to keep time. Her breath misted in the air and it was so cold her bones felt as sharp as knitting needles. She pulled her jacket close about her and wondered whether she should make for the station rather than wait for Charlie to return but something was stopping her. She believed that both he and Elma had been playing dumb about Phyllis’s whereabouts or at the very least they knew who she was.

  The smell returned. It wasn’t exactly rancid, but it didn’t smell like a butcher’s either. Jean leant round in her seat and stared into the darkness of the van’s interior. The scent of dead animal became even more intolerable. She looked to her side and found Charlie’s box of matches sitting on his seat along with his cigarettes. Her fingers were numb and she found it hard to open the box and grasp hold of a match but she finally managed to get one. She turned once more to face the back and, holding her arms out into the darkness, she struck a light.

  Even though she only saw it for a moment, the image fixed itself in her head. The sight made her drop the match, and the flame went out instantly. There was a whole pig in the back. Its head was propped up on a pile of old newspapers fewer than six inches from the back of her neck. In that momentary flicker of phosphorous light, it had glared at her with a pair of eyeless sockets; its jaw was locked in a garish grin that only dead faces could make. The rest of its body was slumped on a dustsheet.

  She sat there, stiff, aware of the problems that had brought her life to this moment of crisis. No amount of running would devour the past and yet here she was, all the same, running headlong into her brother’s life. Her thoughts flitted between Harry’s marriage and her own as she speculated at what point in their respective marriages had the rot set in. There was an obscure connection in their unhappiness but as yet she could not pinpoint exactly what it was. She closed her eyes and massaged the bridge of her nose with her finger and thumb and as she did she pictured her husband at the washstand in their bedroom, shaving. In the early days she used to love to watch him shave. He would fill the sink with hot, almost scalding, water and then slowly massage his face with soap until he had worked up a good lather. Only when he had a beard of white foam, did he bring the razor to his skin, moving up and down the length of his neck in long slow sensuous glides. Every now and then he would flick the lather into the sink with an ornate twist of his hand. He worked silently and in those few minutes the ridiculousness that formed the better part of his character was absent and was replaced with a level of dignity that she found attractive. The whole act seemed to take so much time and felt as solemn and mysterious as going to church.

  *

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ she said.

  The razor slipped, as she knew it would. For a moment there was nothing to see but then a dewdrop of blood appeared, swelling until it was almost the size of a button. Frank watched it grow without any attempt to stem the flow, but then the blood became too heavy and dripped down towards his collar.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he answered, reaching for a flannel.

  She detected a torrent of hope in those three words, but she could feel the heat of something new in her body, a question mark in her stomach that would grow bigger and bigger.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then we better let the doctor check you over.’

  He daren’t show a flicker of excitement but she could feel the change in him; he attended to her again with the care he had shown when they were first married. He bought her gifts and made her dinner. He even read to her in the evenings.

  ‘You have to want this,’ Frank said to her one evening.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Our child. I want you to want it as much as I do.’

  ‘What a silly thing to say.’

  ‘It’s just…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sometimes you look like you’re going through the motions. I need you to be positive. It will give the baby a better chance.’

  She felt his eyes reprimanding her.

  ‘It doesn’t help to simply hope for the best,’ she said.

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault, you know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What happened before. It wasn’t my fault.’

  ‘I didn’t say that it was.’

  ‘You were implying.’

  ‘I wasn’t implying anything. I simply want you to be excited.’

  ‘Yes, well, don’t crowd me so. You’re making me anxious and that won’t help the situation at all.’

  *

  She didn’t know it at the time, but now she realized those changes marked out the contract of his love: the way he would clean up after himself, the way he complemented her, even the way he smiled. She began to resent him for how easily he had modified his behaviour simply because she was expecting.

  She shook herself free of the thought and tried to come back to the problem in hand. Harry’s wife was missing and that was all that really mattered. She wanted her brother to be happy. That was something she hoped for and had done so for a long time. The war had certainly darkened his spirits but even from the age of twelve she had noticed a change in him. He had become quieter and less eager to be outside, though as a boy he’d always been in the woods or the fields, down by the river with his friends or birdwatching. He had been able to name, by sound alone, all the finches, thrushes, swallo
ws and larks. It made her stomach hurt to think how happy he had been and how shriveled and empty he now seemed.

  There was a tap on the window of the van which made her jump.

  ‘Are you all right to walk?’

  It took a moment for Jean to readjust to her surroundings. She was still lost in the memory of her younger brother. Her fingers were numb from the cold and she realized her entire body was sore from sitting hunched forward in her seat.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  She got out of the van and noticed a boy standing on the pavement, holding onto the handles of a wheelbarrow. He looked about sixteen though could have been a little older but in comparison to Charlie he was slight and vulnerable.

  ‘This is my younger brother Arthur. Arthur, this is Jean.’

  Arthur glared at Jean and gave no more than a twitch of his lips by way of a greeting before turning to his brother.

  ‘Are we gonna have to lug this pig all the way back?’

  ‘It’s not far.’

  ‘But you can see bugger all.’

  ‘Well I can’t leave it here, can I? You think when this smog clears in the morning it’ll be any easier? When every nosy sod can see what we’re up to? Use your common sense boy.’

  ‘Come on then. We got to get back. Mother shouldn’t be left alone and you’ve been gone all day as it is.’

  Charlie locked the front doors, and he and his brother moved round to the back of the van. Jean walked around to join them but she kept her distance from the vehicle, having no desire to smell the animal any longer.

  ‘Get in the back and lift it up from its head,’ Charlie said.

  ‘Why do I have to get in?’

  ‘Just do it or I’ll clout you.’

  The van shifted from side to side as Arthur climbed into it.

  ‘Well push it towards me.’

  ‘Bloody hell. You got the head an’ all.’

  ‘I’m not wasting good meat. Now will you concentrate? I want to get back.’

  Arthur snorted, shook his head at his brother and moved round to take hold of one of its front legs.

  ‘Just keep thinking of all that crackling. We’ll have enough meat to see us through the rest of winter,’ Charlie said, almost salivating at the thought of it.

  They slid the carcass out of the van and onto the wheelbarrow. The animal’s body sprawled in a contorted drunk-like fashion. Charlie clapped his hand on the back of his brother’s shoulders and they both smiled. Jean looked in disgust as Charlie brought out the head, his appearance momentarily resembling that of an executioner. He locked up the van and they began a slow procession with the barrow along the pavement. Arthur insisted on pushing the wheelbarrow while Charlie walked beside Jean, smoking a cigarette, the pig’s head tucked under his left arm.

  The trio made their way through the streets, the only steady noise being the rattle and squeak of the wheelbarrow as it strained under the weight of the carcass. Victorian terraced homes emerged from the smog, each one alike, so that it felt to Jean as though they were constantly walking the same patch of road. They were dismal looking buildings with two windows and a door. Only the rougher houses were noticeably different, with their ragged curtains, cracked windows and heaps of rubbish lying outside on the pavement. She had not seen this kind of poverty before. As a child, during the summer months, she had seen the odd tramp pass through the village. Her father had always taught her to steer clear from them, but the scale of the deprivation before her now was overwhelming.

  ‘I suppose a lot of people have got themselves lost,’ she ventured.

  ‘In this weather, I should say so,’ Charlie said.

  ‘Do people know each other round here?’

  ‘Everyone knows someone.’

  ‘But do you speak to your neighbours?’

  ‘Sometimes. People seem less willing to talk than they used to be.’

  ‘My brother’s wife is like that. I feel I barely know her.’

  Charlie lit a cigarette and put it to his mouth.

  ‘I worry she’s fallen into some terrible business,’ Jean continued.

  ‘Well that’s London for you.’ He paused. ‘What does your brother do?’

  ‘He works in insurance. Why do you ask?’

  ‘No reason. I just wondered whether they had money troubles.’

  ‘No.’

  Charlie’s step seemed to falter slightly, as though he didn’t believe what he was being told.

  ‘And a fellow in insurance marries a girl from the east end?’

  ‘I didn’t say she was from the east end, did I?’

  Arthur turned and looked at Charlie.

  ‘No. But Elma only uses local girls,’ Charlie said, calmly.

  Jean could tell that Charlie was thinking hard about something.

  ‘And Elma is an Italian?’

  ‘She came over from Malta straight after the war.’

  They walked on in silence, sticking to the shadows and alleyways as much as possible. It made for a slow walk and it took about twenty minutes before they reached Charlie’s road.

  ‘Thank the lord,’ Arthur said, wheezing, as he came to a stop outside a house.

  ‘Get the door open and let’s get this thing inside,’ Charlie said.

  The door clattered against the wall as they lifted the pig off the barrow and hauled it over the doorstep, the animal’s stiff legs knocking grimly against the wall as they maneuvered it inside. Jean waited by the door.

  ‘That you Charlie boy?’ called a hoarse voice from somewhere inside the house.

  ‘Give us a minute.’

  The hall was thin and where the stairs grew up it became so narrow that Charlie’s left shoulder rubbed along the wall knocking a picture frame wonky. He disappeared into the back of the house.

  ‘Charlie, you’ve left the door open. I’m freezing enough as it is,’ the voice shouted.

  Jean stepped into the house and shut the door.

  ‘Is there someone with you?’

  Jean took a couple of steps and straightened the picture frame that contained a photograph of a group of Victorian woman sitting on a bench cross-stitching and looking into the distance. They all wore stern expressions and Jean felt a great sadness passing between their eyes and her own.

  Charlie came back into the hall.

  ‘I said have you got someone with you?’

  ‘Yes mum. A lady I met needs a lift to the station. You can come through Jean.’

  ‘I don’t want this house overrun with people.’

  Jean edged her way through the door and into the front room. On the wall to her right was an ill-kept fireplace, which threw out shrugs of light and even less heat. In the corner by the window there was a dirty lamp, but like the fire, it gave little more than a gesture of light. The rest of the room glowered in shadow and smoke. A makeshift washing line had been constructed with a piece of string which had been tied to the stand of the lamp at one end while the other was held in place on the mantelpiece under the weight of a tatty brown carriage clock. On this washing line were several pairs of female underwear, a couple of yellowed vests and several pairs of socks, all darned in some place or other. Copies of the Evening News and other local newspapers lay on the floor by the fireplace in piles, ready for burning. There was also a cast iron bed pushed up against one corner of the room, festooned with stained sheets and hessian blankets, looking to Jean like something out of a fairy tale.

  Jean turned around and in a large high backed oak chair sat an ancient woman.

  ‘Jean, this is my mother.’

  She was covered in a thick horsehair blanket and apart from her face all Jean could see were swollen knuckled fingers which grasped the top of the blanket with such ferocity it seemed as if she thought someone might steal it. Her face was that of a fish, long and grey and wrinkled with hundreds of lines, which pulled in the direction of her mouth each time she coughed.

  ‘Put more coal on the fire boy, I can’
t feel my toes.’

  Charlie went over to the scuttle next to the fire but it was empty.

  ‘Arthur, fetch us some more coal from the bath,’ he shouted.

  ‘Hang on. I’m washing the meat off my hands.’

  Charlie went over to his mother and adjusted her blankets, holding her hands as he did so.

  ‘This is Jean mum.’

  ‘I don’t know any Jean, do I?’

  She glared at Jean, as she tried to work out who Jean was, looking her up and down.

  ‘You get lost, did you?’

  ‘I’m looking for my sister-in-law,’ Jean replied.

  The woman started to cough and Charlie handed her a handkerchief which sat on a three-legged stool next to her chair.

  ‘Arthur, will you move your backside in here and get some coal on the fire.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Jean said, picking up the scuttle. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘No you’re all right, I’ll do it. It’s in the yard.’

  He went out of the room and Jean stood overlooking the old woman, not knowing what to say. The old woman started coughing again. She struggled to get her hand to her mouth.

  ‘Water,’ the old woman said, gesturing to an empty glass on the table next to the chair.

  Jean picked up the glass and ventured into the hall. She could hear noises from the kitchen at the back and was about to make her way through when she noticed the door to the back room was ajar. She pushed open the door a little. From what she could make out in the dim light the room was packed with of all manner of things: papers, books, boxes of badly stained cutlery, two folded wooden tables, eight or nine dining chairs stacked on top of one another and those were only the things she could see at a glance. In the corner was a small sofa and hung over the back were a couple of dresses and on a table next to it a lady’s hat. She switched on the light to get a better look at the clothes.