Mrs Thornley stopped stirring, and looked up at her son for the first time. ‘I think you must be goin’ off your head,’ she said.
‘Yeah,’ Bazza agreed, ‘I think I must.’
He turned and walked into the front room, with its dilapidated furniture – with its oilcloth-covered floor sticky from so many beers which had been spilled and never properly mopped up. He went over to the window and looked through the dirt-streaked glass at the street outside. And suddenly he felt an overwhelming urge to hurt somebody.
Rutter was still searching for his keys when Janet, Louisa’s nanny, opened the front door and said, ‘Welcome back, Mr Rutter. Did you have a good trip?’
‘Not bad,’ Rutter replied, looking over her shoulder and down the hallway. ‘Where’s Louisa?’
‘She’s out in the garden, playing with Sergeant Paniatowski,’ Janet told him.
‘Does Sergeant Paniatowski come round here often?’ Rutter wondered.
‘When you’re not here, she comes around really every day.’
And when I am here, she hardly comes at all, Rutter thought.
He walked into the living room, and looked out through the big picture window on to the garden. Monika and Louisa were crouched down, studying something that was obviously of immense importance to his daughter, and though it must have been cold out there, neither of them seemed to notice.
His relationship with Monika had followed a twisted, unpredictable path, he thought. Once they had been rivals, vying with each other for Charlie Woodend’s approval. Then a sharp bend had been turned, and suddenly they were lovers, wrapped up in their mutual passion. His guilt over that relationship was still with him – had survived Maria’s murder. It was one of the things he and Monika still shared.
And what else did they share? Not the passion any more – at least from his side.
They shared, he supposed, a job in which they had both invested so much of themselves – and soon even that bond would be gone.
And Louisa, of course. They shared Louisa. But for her, they’d probably see nothing at all of each other, except when they were working on a case.
The door to the garden opened, and Louisa rushed into the room and flung her arms around his leg.
‘Daddy, Daddy!’ she screamed with delight.
Rutter picked her up. ‘How are you?’ he asked. ‘And what were you doing out in the garden?’
‘We found a dead robin,’ Louisa said. ‘I was very sad at first, but then Auntie Monika told me I shouldn’t be, because all life had a natural cy … cy …’
‘Cycle,’ Paniatowski supplied.
‘Cycle,’ Louisa agreed. ‘And she said that when it’s your time to go, it’s your time to go.’
Rutter looked questioningly at Paniatowski.
‘She asked,’ Monika told him.
But what she really meant was, ‘I’m sorry if you’d have preferred me to tell her something else, but you weren’t here to consult.’
Rutter gently lowered his daughter to the ground, and Louisa immediately whirled round to face Paniatowski.
‘Can we read a book, Auntie Monika?’ she asked.
‘Not with the state your hands are in, we can’t,’ Paniatowski said sternly, then laughed to show she wasn’t to be taken seriously.
Louisa held up her hands, and gave them an earnest inspection. ‘What’s wrong with them?’ she asked innocently.
‘You know what’s wrong with them,’ Paniatowski said. ‘They’re filthy dirty, aren’t they?’
‘Maybe they’re a little bit dirty,’ Louisa conceded.
‘So before we go anywhere near a book, you’re going to have to wash them,’ Paniatowski told her. ‘And do it properly – the way I showed you.’
Louisa nodded obediently, ‘Yes, Auntie Monika,’ and headed for the stairs.
Paniatowski was so much better with his daughter than he was himself, Rutter thought. She seemed to connect with the girl in a way that he was completely unable to.
With Louisa’s departure, an awkward silence had descended on the room. For perhaps a half a minute, Rutter stood perfectly still, then he walked over to the window and looked out on to the garden again. A robin had died out there, he reminded himself – but that was all right, because its time had come.
He turned again, to face Paniatowski.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
What was wrong, Rutter told himself, was that there was something he needed to say to her, but he had no idea of how to say it.
He took a deep breath. ‘I renewed my house-contents insurance last week,’ he told her. ‘Everything’s very well covered.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ Paniatowski said flatly. ‘You’ve always been a very careful man.’
Except for that one occasion – when we became lovers – a voice screamed in both their heads. Except for that!
‘In fact, the only thing that’s not properly insured is Louisa,’ Rutter ploughed on.
God, this is awful, he thought. And God, you’re making a real bloody mess of it.
‘Is it normal to take out insurance on children?’ asked Paniatowski, who, having none of her own – and without any prospect of ever having them – didn’t know how these things worked.
‘I wasn’t talking about life insurance,’ Rutter said. ‘I was talking more about insurance for life.’
‘You’re not making much sense.’
‘No, I suppose I’m not. The thing is, most children have two parents, so if anything happens to one of them, they’ve always got the other in reserve. But it’s not like that for Louisa. She’s only got me.’
‘And what do you think is going to happen to you?’ Paniatowski asked, starting to sound alarmed.
‘Nothing,’ Rutter said.
‘Well, then?’
‘But we can never be entirely sure, can we? I could get run over by a bus, like poor Philip Turner’s wife did. I could go completely off my head – God knows, I’ve felt as if I’ve been going mad often enough, in the last year or so – and have to be locked away. And if one of those things – or anything else, for that matter – occurred, what would happen to Louisa?’
‘I don’t know,’ Paniatowski said. ‘I haven’t given it much thought.’
‘Well, I have. So what I’d like to do is to name you as Louisa’s guardian, should circumstances mean that I can’t take care of her myself,’ Rutter said, in a rush.
‘I see,’ Paniatowski said, in a deadpan voice.
‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’ Rutter demanded. ‘I thought you’d be delighted.’
Delighted? Paniatowski repeated silently to herself. At what?
It hadn’t been easy for her to learn to accept the inevitable. But how much harder it would be to be given some hope of attaining what she most wanted in the world, and yet still know – deep down inside herself – that that hope would never be fulfilled.
‘You don’t have to make a decision right away,’ Rutter told her. ‘Take a day or two to think it over.’
‘A day or two?’ Paniatowski repeated, in disbelief. ‘What’s the rush?’
Rutter smiled. ‘You know me,’ he said. ‘Once I’ve made up my mind about something, I like to set the wheels in motion as quickly as possible.’
Twenty
Night had fallen, and the gang had congregated outside the chip shop. Bazza had been given a hero’s welcome – as befitted a man who had been abroad – and for well over an hour the rest of them listened, as Bazza talked about clear blue skies, pubs right on the beach and – most importantly – birds with big knockers who wore hardly anything at all.
Yet even though he spoke with great enthusiasm about the whole experience, it seemed to Beresford that – underneath it all – he was not happy in himself.
And perhaps that was because he didn’t actually know who himself was, any more.
Beresford had come to the chip shop armed with a plan – or maybe, he admitted to himself, it was not so much a plan as a line of appr
oach – but it was another hour before he could get Bazza far enough away from the rest of the gang to be able to put it into effect.
And even then, he hesitated.
‘Tread very carefully,’ Woodend had warned him, and he’d promised he would.
What he was about to do was not careful at all. It was fraught with dangers and pitfalls, and if it went wrong, he would get a stomping which could cripple him for life. But he still wanted to please his boss – wanted to prove that the faith Woodend had put in him had been justified – and sitting on a wall with Bazza, both of them with legs dangling down, he decided that if he didn’t force himself to do it now, he would never find the courage to do it at all.
He took a deep breath. ‘Where’d you get the money from to go to Spain, Bazza?’ he asked.
Bazza grinned. ‘That would be tellin’.’
Beresford looked troubled. ‘It’s none of my business what you get up – or who you get up to it with,’ he said.
‘Too right,’ Bazza agreed.
‘But I’m startin’ to think of you as a good mate, Bazza, even if you are a bit … a bit …’ He hesitated for a second, then finished off weakly with, ‘… well, you know.’
‘No,’ Bazza said, slightly menacingly. ‘I don’t know.’
Still time to back out, Beresford told himself. Still time to smooth over the cracks.
‘It’s because you’re a mate that I want to warn that you shouldn’t believe everythin’ that people have written on the bog walls in the bus station,’ he ploughed on.
Bazza started to relax a little, and grinned again. ‘You mean all that stuff about which girls will give you a shag an’ which girls won’t?’
‘No,’ Beresford said. ‘I mean the other stuff. The stuff that says homos can’t catch VD.’
One second they were sitting a good three feet apart, the next Bazza had pulled Beresford off the wall, and had him by the throat.
‘Are you sayin’ I’m a poof?’ he demanded.
The rest of the gang had noticed what was going on and started to move towards them.
‘Stay out of this,’ Bazza called to them. ‘I can handle it.’ He tightened his grip on Beresford’s throat and moved his head closer, so that their faces were almost touching. ‘Are you sayin’ I’m a poof?’ he repeated, in a hoarse whisper.
‘Not me, no,’ Beresford gasped. ‘I didn’t start the rumours that have been goin’ round since you went away.’
‘What rumours?’
‘That you’ve got a rich boyfriend. That’s he’s the one who took you on holiday.’
‘Who said it?’ Bazza screamed. ‘What’s their names?’
‘Don’t know,’ Beresford gasped. ‘It’s on the wall in the bus-station bogs, like all the other stuff.’
Bazza relaxed his grip a little. ‘You’d better not be makin’ this up,’ he said. ‘If I go down to the bus station myself, it’d better be there on the bog wall for me to see.’
‘It’s there,’ Beresford promised.
At least, it had been there three hours earlier, when he’d just finished writing it, he thought.
Bazza’s hold loosened even more, so that his fingers were hardly pressing on Beresford’s neck at all.
‘You read it, an’ you believed it,’ he said, and now there was more sorrow than anger in his voice.
‘Of course I didn’t believe it,’ Beresford assured him. ‘Not at first, anyway. But then the more I thought about it, the harder it was to think of any other way you could have got the money.’
Bazza stepped back. ‘If I tell you how I got it, you’ll have to promise not to tell anybody else, not even the lads in the gang,’ he said.
‘I promise,’ Beresford agreed.
‘Most of the fellers who run things in this town care more about Pakis, gyppos an’ tramps than they do about their fellow Englishmen,’ Bazza said. ‘But there’s one important man who thinks differently – who wants to purge the town of the scum, an’ give it back to the ordinary decent white people.’
‘Purge’ was not a word that Bazza would normally use, but Beresford could think of one ‘important’ man who used it regularly.
‘You’re talkin’ about Councillor Scranton,’ Beresford said.
‘I’m explainin’ how I got the money for my holiday, not namin’ names,’ Bazza said.
‘So it was this “important” man who gave you the money?’
‘That’s right. An’ he didn’t give it to me because he was havin’ me up the bum, he did it because I’m helpin’ him to purge this town.’
‘It … it was you that set that tramp on fire, wasn’t it?’ Beresford said, feigning amazement.
‘An’ how would you feel about it if it was?’ Bazza asked.
‘I’d … I’d … I’d think you were a bloody hero.’
‘Honestly?’
‘Honestly. I mean to say, I’ve beaten up a few Pakis in my time, but I don’t know if I’d have the balls to actually kill anybody. An’ what a brilliant way to do it – burnin’ the tramps alive. Was that your idea? Or was it his?’
‘It was—’ Bazza said, stopping himself just time.
‘It was …?’ Beresford prompted.
‘If I said whether it was my idea or his idea, that’d definitely be admittin’ I’d done it, wouldn’t it?’
‘You’ve already as good as said you did.’
‘But I’ve not said nothin’ that would stand up in court,’ Bazza said craftily.
It wasn’t working, Beresford thought. He still didn’t have enough to take to Woodend. He was going to have to push Bazza even harder.
He grinned, and said, ‘You had me goin’ there for a minute.’
‘What do you mean?’ Bazza asked.
‘I really thought you’d done it.’
‘I … I …’ Bazza said helplessly.
‘I should have known you were only havin’ a laugh.’
‘I wasn’t. I was dead serious,’ Bazza said – sounding like a hurt child.
‘But serious about what?’ Beresford wondered. ‘Listen, do you remember when I told you that I’d beaten up that Paki in the pub in Accrington?’ he asked.
‘Yes?’
‘An’ you said it was easy enough to talk about havin’ beaten up Pakis, but that wasn’t the same as actually doin’ it?’
‘What’s your point?’
‘So I beat up the next Paki who came along, didn’t I? Just to show you that I wasn’t just full of piss an’ wind!’
Bazza licked his lips. ‘Look, you showed me, an’ I admire you for it,’ he said. ‘But this is different.’
‘Is it? How?’
‘You, you’re your own boss. But I’m not. I’m workin’ for the Movement. I’m the Avenger!’
The Avenger! What pride he took in saying those two words, Beresford thought. It was pathetic, and for a moment he almost felt sorry for Bazza – and then he reminded himself of what the hard mod had done to the tramp.
‘You understand what I’m sayin’?’ Bazza asked, with a pleading edge to his voice. ‘I want to tell you all about it, but I can’t.’
‘Then I suppose I’ll just have to take your word for it,’ Beresford said dubiously.
‘Maybe … maybe if I ask him, the Boss will let me tell you more,’ Bazza said desperately.
‘Why would he?’
‘Because I’ve got one more job to do, then I’ll be retirin’.’
‘So?’
‘So somebody else has to take over from me – an’ that somebody could be you.’
‘Just give me the chance! Do that, an’ I promise that I won’t let you down,’ Beresford said.
And now the hectoring tone had quite vanished from his voice, and had been replaced by one of pure admiration.
Bazza smiled. ‘I know you won’t. The rest of the lads are my mates, an’ I’d do anythin’ for them. But you – you’re somethin’ special. I knew that the first time I saw you.’
‘So when are you goin’ to do this
last job before you retire?’ Beresford asked. ‘Tonight?’
‘No, not tonight,’ Bazza said.
‘Then when?’
‘When the time is right. When I’m told to do it.’
In the distance, the town hall clock struck ten.
‘What say we go an’ have a beer – just you an’ me?’ Bazza suggested.
‘Can’t,’ Beresford told him. ‘I’m meetin’ somebody.’
‘A bird?’
‘A feller.’
‘Why are you meetin’ a feller?’
‘Because we’ve got a little breakin’ an’ enterin’ that needs doin’.’
‘Better go an’ do it then, hadn’t you?’ Bazza said, trying not to sound too impressed.
The gang had moved on from the chip shop, and ended up in the Corporation Park, but there was nothing much happening there.
Bazza was almost tempted to go home, except there was nothing there for him, either. Besides, it didn’t seem right to quietly crawl into his bed while Col was out doing something as exciting as breaking and entering.
‘Anybody got a fag?’ he asked.
The rest of the gang shook their heads. It was the day before payday, and if they’d had a couple of bob between them, it would have been a miracle.
Bazza reached into his pocket, and pulled out a pound note. He held it up against the light – well aware that everyone’s eyes were fixed hungrily on it, then said, ‘Well, I’ve got the money for fags, but I don’t feel like walkin’ all the way to the pub for them. So what are we goin’ to do?’
‘I’ll go,’ Scuddie said, hardly able to restrain himself from grabbing at the money. ‘I don’t mind a bit of a walk.’
‘Will your mum let you buy cigarettes?’ asked Bazza, who had still not quite forgotten – nor quite forgiven – Scuddie’s suggestion that he might himself be under a curfew.
Scuddie shrugged. ‘Do you want me to go, or not?’
‘You might as well, I suppose,’ Bazza said lazily. He held out the note. ‘Get three packets, so there’ll be enough for everybody. An’ make sure you get the right change – ’cos I’ll count it.’
‘An’ you’re sure Barry Thornley’s not just spinnin’ you a line?’ Woodend asked, reaching across the table for his fresh pint of best bitter. ‘You’re sure he’s not just lyin’ about his involvement in the murder, to make you think he’s tougher than he is?’
Dying Fall Page 18
