‘No, I’m sorry. Obviously I don’t mean to – insult your expertise.’
‘Expertise bollocks. I was just the biggest lad in me year.’ He finally swallowed what he had chewed. ‘Nah, any bugger can see what you see. But you’ve got to get it nailed down, man, every last fuckin’ thing. Or you’ve wasted years owa nowt. Some little turd of a brief gets in there and your man’s off. He’s clever, see. Caldwell, the boss man. Stevie’s pretty smart and all.’ Another sharp glance backward. Unlike you, was Gore’s inference. ‘Keeps everything in its own little strong-box. The body doesn’t know what the head’s up to. Stevie does, but neebody else. He’s got his lads, you’ve seen ’em, they’re thick as clarts, most of ’em, but they’re all tight as a gnat’s chuff. You can’t get him through his lads.’
In the silence Gore saw his moment, and its hated counterweight, the dread implications of where the moment might lead. ‘What about his women?’
‘Stevie’s? Which one?’ Chisholm chuckled. ‘They’re even tighter, them, man. Nah, I stay out of the red-light stuff, me. No point in nicking Stevie for indecency. Him or Caldwell.’
‘Red-light stuff?’
‘Aw, taught you summat now, have I? Naw, there’s a massage parlour on the Westgate Road. It’s Caldwell’s. Steve keeps an eye on it. One of his old girly-friends minds it for him. Though I reckon he keeps it on so he can help himself to the stock now and then.’
The disquiet Gore felt was a spider on the nape of his neck. ‘Which girl?’
‘Dunno. There’s a few of ’em, mind. I’ve not been in the place.’
‘Does it have a name?’
‘The Damask Rose. Interested, are you? You’ll find it in the personals.’ He wadded up the greasy wrappings of his supper. ‘Are we finished, then?’
The proposal had its dour appeal, offered an end to the interminable night. And yet, he had decided, he could no longer face himself if he shrank or flinched from his own logic.
‘No, there’s something else.’
‘Whey then, spit it out, man. I need me pit.’
‘The killings a fortnight ago, the men at that restaurant out in Shields?’
Robbie’s fingers drummed the steering wheel. ‘What of it?’
‘You know Coulson was involved, don’t you?’
‘I said, what of it?’
‘I have … I’ve heard something. I know somebody, who could tell you something, I’m certain. And then – there’s evidence I think I can obtain.’
For the first time Robbie shifted his whole body in the seat. ‘Who? What? Come on, divvint get all shy now.’
‘No, it’s not that simple. I need – you need to give me a day or so. I can talk it out with these people, then I can bring you something.’
‘Fuck off with that shite, if you know summat tell us now, I’ll talk to them.’
‘No, no, you have to understand. These are people who trust me. Vulnerable people. I can’t violate that. I have to protect them.’
‘You? Get away, man. Protect how? Now I’ve sat here with you and you owe us for that, so divvint make us lose wor patience.’
There was an irate finger jabbing toward his face. And yet he had seen this quandary coming, was not deterred. ‘I want to help, if I’m going to then it has to be done right. We have to agree, you and I. I have to know these people will be protected. Fine, if not by me then you.’
‘This isn’t for your benefit, man. You carry on like this and I’ll drag you in.’
‘You’ll be wasting your time.’
He couldn’t be sure, but there seemed a new level of interest in the look he was receiving, whatever its boiling disgruntlement.
‘Okay. Alright. You give us summat proper, and I’ll tell you what we can do about it.’
‘No, that’s not good enough.’
‘Listen, you, I’ve got a control and a senior officer to deal with, it’s not down to me. If it stands up – if, I say, whatever the fuck you’re talking about – then I’ll not ask you anything that doesn’t need asking. Alright? Now that’s a promise. Divvint you tell me what’s fucking good enough. That’s my word to you.’
Gore weighed the deal, tersely put and wanting, but from behind his back-seat cordon he saw no further room for manouevre in these talks.
‘In a day or so then. I’ll be in touch. How do I reach you?’
Robbie started reeling off numbers.
‘Hang on, I need to write it.’
‘No you don’t. Remember it.’ He nodded, winced. ‘Right. This is where you hop out.’
‘How am I supposed –’
‘There’s a taxi firm owa there.’
No sooner had he found his feet on the gravel than Chisholm was tearing out and away. Gore found the pen in his inner pocket, hurriedly etched the phone number on his palm. As he turned to the cab office, he saw the lights in the small premises blink out. He reached the door to see a shutter wrenched down behind the glass.
*
I have walked a crooked mile, he told himself, as he had been telling himself mindlessly for hours. He was wet with rain and there was nothing left in his legs, his level of fatigue surreal, near laughable. He had seen the sun struggle up over Dunston and Team Valley, the day break upon Gateshead. He had vied with early traffic across the Redheugh Bridge. Oakwell had slept without him. Now his front door was in his sights.
Shoving the key in the lock, he found it unmoving. Uncomprehending, his hand found the handle, turned it cleanly. Not possible. Heat rushed into his face. He stumbled over the threshold, down the hall, looked about the still living room, then made for the stairs.
‘You needn’t bother.’
He spun and saw Jack Ridley, emerging from the kitchen with a mug of tea. Saw, too, and recognised the particular smoker’s apparel arrayed on the sitting-room table.
‘God, Jack, you gave me a start.’
‘Aye well, sorry. I’ve had one and all. He’s gan off. The lad.’
His step unsteady, Gore returned slowly to the foot of the stairs.
‘Gone? Did he say where?’
Ridley threw him a chastening look. ‘What do you think?’
‘How did you find him?’
‘How? Whey, your door were open, so I just assumed, and then – y’knaa. He got a shock and all. Not as bad as what I did. He was putting some stuff in a bag, see, I could tell it were one of yours.’
Ridley sat down at the table. Gore could see his shirt cuffs were damp, as though he had been washing up at the sink. Gore, too, lowered himself into a chair. ‘What did you do?’
‘I asked him who he was, he telt us he’d been stoppin’ wi’ you but he was headed off now. I says to him, “Howay, I wasn’t born last night.”’
‘No, he was. Staying over.’
‘Aye, well, right enough, he seemed quite sure of hi’sel. I just stood and watched him and he didn’t panic or owt. Then he says, “Tell Gore he’s gotta keep his promise.” I says, “Oh aye, am I your messenger?” I let him gan, but. Seemed to know what he was talking about.’ Ridley took up his tobacco pouch. ‘Mind you, you’ll still want to check all your drawers.’
Gore nodded, weighing the damage, his inner calculations in ruins.
‘Was that your problem, then? What you wanted to talk about?’
‘You might say.’
‘Well then, it’s gone. You got lucky.’
Gore shook his head. ‘No, that was – that was just the start of it.’
‘He’s in bother, is he? The lad? With Coulson?’
Gore nodded.
‘Then he’s better off away. Your luck’s still in.’
‘Is that your answer to everything, Jack?’
Ridley’s expression was such as to imply that the folly of Gore’s remark carried its own punishment, with no need for rebuttal.
‘I’m sorry. I suppose … you can say you told me so.’
‘I try not to say things that are no bloody use when it’s all past helping.’
Gore low
ered his head toward his crossed arms on the table. ‘What am I going to do?’
‘I’d be surprised if there were owt you could. If there’s one thing I know, John, it’s not to get mixed up in other people’s problems.’
Gore jerked up his head, ready with a glaringly obvious rejoinder, and was gripped at the same moment by its glaring redundance.
‘I mean, you’ve got enough to manage, haven’t you?’ Ridley added in afterthought, and to Gore’s mind, needlessly.
*
They were good clean people, Barlow’s lot, no doubt about it, but for all the general efficiency of the set-striking operation certain detritus from the night before lingered in corners. From behind a curtain Gore turned up several piles of Shield Society pamphlets, and tossed them into a black plastic bin-liner. Shifting the chairs from stores, he proposed to Rod Moncur that they make the usual seating grid a good deal smaller, perhaps six rows of six. As it transpired, they could not fill even these.
As advised by Monica, Gore announced that the Saturday dance had raised a sum of four hundred and seventeen pounds for St Luke’s coffers. The news seemed to impress a good many of the old folk. There ought to be a party just for them, he decided – a farewell party, the sooner the better.
He felt his own exhaustion turning a touch slap-happy. For his reading he decided, for his own delectation, to preach a little fire and brimstone – just for the sport of it, to read the words as if he had written them. What would it mean, after all, to give oneself such power to judge? He turned to a long-favourite passage from Ephesians.
‘Finally my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.’
He had, at least, decided what had to be done. One door closed but another opened, and once one dragged one’s feet forward by one step, so many more became obvious, beholden, irreversible.
‘For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world. Against spiritual wickedness in high places …’
He paused and stared out intently at the drooping and the infirm, their weathered scalps and greying heads, some nodding, turning over in their hearts, perhaps, their own definition of the wicked in the world.
‘Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.’
Afterward the old lady from Old Benwell whose name he thankfully remembered as Lillian took his hand to assure him he was ‘doing very well’. In his nonchalance he suggested she take the lectern for the following week and read a lesson of her choice. She blinked agitatedly behind her heavy lenses, grew shy and flustered.
‘No, please, next week. So long as there is a next week, eh?’
And then she looked a little startled, wounded even, and he instantly rued both his restive mood and his thoughtless phrasing. Had they but the time and she the interest, he would have taken her aside and outlined the whole nature of his preoccupation.
*
He was ready to keel over by the time dusk drew in. But he girded himself and dialled her number. Very soon he had some cause for regret.
‘Can I call on you tonight?’
‘No you can’t. I’m working anyhow.’
‘Where?’
‘In town. It’s not your business.’
‘Lindy, I need to see you.’
‘I don’t want to see you.’
‘Lindy, don’t – please.’
She replaced the receiver and left him with no choice. He slumped toward the kitchen, intending to brew strong black coffee, something sour and sharp enough to slap his face into the right-facing vantage of what remained to do with this day.
Chapter III
RED LIGHTS
Sunday, 24 November 1996
Was this, then, a customer? He answered all too many descriptions – a pudding of a man in work suit and anorak, bespectacled, briefcase in hand, a shaggy skirt of hair round his bald monkish crown. Even from twenty yards, through the fallen dark, past the traffic lights and across the road, Gore could make out a womanish bulge of white-shirted gut over belt.
He slowed as he reached the end of the presentable Victorian terrace, where the lights glowed homely just as in every other window, and he bent and pushed open the gate, plodded up the steps, buzzed at the door. Within moments he was admitted and out of the cold.
My double, my brother, Gore chided himself.
And then: No. He knows what he’s doing and he just does it, goes about it normally, as if it were normal.
And perhaps it was – more so than this watching and waiting, this queer and questionable compulsion into which he had lapsed.
Enviable, even. He strolls right on in without a qualm.
At this moment Gore would sooner have walked into freezing waters until they closed over his head. But he had seen her go in, and so he had to follow. Had seen Yvonne go in and her go out of her front door. Had trailed her up the Hoxheath Road, onto the Westgate, a little heartbroken by the unenthused slump in her gait. She was wearing her long skirt and short red jacket, just like their first long afternoon together, save for a knitted scarf at her neck. He was in his seaman’s coat and jeans, just like their first tryst, save that he had shoved a claw-hammer down into the deep inner pocket before leaving his door – a lunatic’s notion, one over which his conscience still glared at him in disbelief. And yet it seemed the night for such, a night when all fond reason seemed to have fled the house.
His back to the wall, he heard church bells chime. Could it be seven? From this same cold spot he had seen boys tramping home from Sunday sport, seen bored men and women through the windows of cars and buses, hastening home from work. And her, only just arriving for the start of same. All the world was industrious but he. He needed to move his feet.
But it seemed a hard threshold to cross. He couldn’t conjure a picture of what lay beyond, knew only that his expectations were at rock-bottom. And still a traitor in his head was poking him with the notion that he didn’t have to do what he had told himself he must – that he could yet melt away.
It was true, he could have begun to question his corporeal existence, to doubt he even cast a shadow, were it not for the knot in his stomach, the dragging wreck in his mind that was the pile-up of days, weeks, months of ruined judgement. There was, he knew, nothing left for him, no alternate reality other than the need to finally see what he so long feared – see it under lights with his own two eyes – the evil spirit in the corner.
*
The choice was made for him, the door opening before he could prod the buzzer, opened by a gentleman making haste and seeking no eye contact. Gore wiped his feet on a bristly mat and mounted the stairs, each of them groaning beneath the poor carpet, a white-gloss door gaining ahead of him. It was ajar and, gingerly, he pushed it open, to be confronted by an unpeopled tableau of modest domesticity.
A small cubby of a white kitchen, deserted, the breakfast bar strewn with papers. Low fluorescent light, modest accoutrements, an aluminium wall clock ticking along, the Sunday Sun spread open, kettle on the boil and microwave oven shuddering on full power. Somewhere else in this flat, he knew, a television was on, and a man was expressing himself behind a closed door. He looked to his left, saw a pair of tubular nesting chairs around a low table strewn with pornographic magazines, their corners flipped and frayed. Save for this wrinkle, he could have claimed to have waited for doctors in some less salubrious receptions. But never alone, never so full of foreboding.
He looked over the kitchen counter – drawers half open, an open ring-bound book, names over columns on a ruled page. LEANNE, KIRSTY, SUNEE, LANA, BARBRA.
‘You getting seen to, pet?’
He turned as if stung and saw a woman – fixed his eyes instinctively to her face rather than her babydoll nightie and briefs of matching black. Her eyes were small and close around a promin
ent nose, lacquer making a starched gable-hood of her long black hair. She had the manner of one cosily at home for the evening, but none too bothered by intrusion.
‘Is Claire seein’ to you, pet?’
In the silence the microwave oven began to ping.
‘Aw, bugger.’
The dark woman moved swiftly past him, took up oven gloves, was calling through another archway to this Claire of hers. Then the telephone on the counter was ringing too. Gore sidled into the long corridor from whence the woman had emerged. He was confronted by an open door through which were framed a glum assortment of women, all bare shoulders and pale legs, slumped into a tatty once-plush settee, curtains drawn, television glowing. Heads and eyes slowly revolved to him, sluggish smiles in tow.
‘Sorry …’
He ducked out, saw nowhere to go but the end of the corridor – took hesitant steps further, past a closed door, past a doorway into a bathroom that exuded a dank odour not quite masked by the sickly deodorant smell he realised he had been smelling since he came through the door. Now he was staring into a gaudy pink-painted bedroom – a bed-and-breakfast option for a teenage female runaway.
‘’Scuse me?’
Behind him another jaded woman was now filling the corridor, bottle-blonde, sunken-eyed and ballooningly plump in a jumper and sweatpants. She seemed familiar, was giving him a close look in turn.
‘Hiya, sorry, I was on the lav. Can I help?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Well, why don’t you step back into the lounge there, have a bit shufty? I’m off now, see, but me colleague’ll assist you. Lindy?’
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