Born Guilty

by Reginald Hill

  Fearful of the woman’s ridicule, however, he took the precaution of slipping Little Perce up his jacket sleeve before pursuing her.

  ‘Joe, what are you doing here?’ she demanded as he caught up with her.

  ‘I promised Mirabelle I’d see you safe,’ he panted, thinking maybe he should take up Merv’s invitation to start working out with him at the Hoplite Health Club.

  ‘Now look, Joe,’ she said, beginning to sound angry, ‘I can look after myself …’

  ‘You can, maybe,’ he interrupted. ‘What about me? You want I should be more afraid of you than of Mirabelle?’

  She shook her head, laughing.

  ‘Joe, sometimes you’re so down to earth, I can’t see how you can bear to keep on playing this PI game. You must be able to see you’re not cut out for it. Most of the time you make no money, so all you’re doing being so-called self-employed is stopping your entitlement to benefit.’

  ‘You think I’d be better sitting on my butt, waiting for my giro?’ he said fiercely.

  ‘Could be. In any case, things are getting better, or so they keep telling us. There’ll be jobs to go for …’

  ‘You taken a good look at me lately, girl? Jobs will come slow and I’ll be way, way down the queue. Also, what do I want with another job so I can punch a clock for a few more years always wondering when it’ll punch back and tell me I’m surplus to requirements again? Leastways, being my own boss, my so-called friends can tell me I’m useless, but they can’t dump me for it!’

  They strode on, each so deep in a confusion of feeling that they could probably have run a whole gauntlet of flashers without noticing. When they reached the buildings, Joe stopped and said, ‘I’ll be on my way now.’

  ‘You still here, Joe?’ she said with a good affectation of surprise. ‘Well, thanks for the lift.’

  ‘Yeah, well, that’s OK,’ said Joe, feeling both wretched and indignant. He turned to go but had only taken a few steps when she caught his arm.

  ‘Hey, don’t I get a farewell kiss?’

  He aimed at her cheek. She gave him her lips, briefly but fully.

  As she stepped away she said, ‘Friends don’t think you’re useless, Joe. They just worry about you. That’s what friends are for. You fall out, then you kiss and make up.’

  ‘Don’t think I’m quite made up yet,’ he said, moving towards her again.

  She turned away, laughing.

  ‘Only way to get another kiss here is have a heart attack, Joe,’ she tossed over her shoulder.

  Could be that’s what I’m doing, thought Joe, watching her go. The way her body moved beneath the blue and white skirt, sturdy was no longer the word that came to mind.

  He wandered back beneath the arching trees, letting his fancy drift at will. No harm in thinking, was there? But he was no sadist, so why was his fancy making Beryl scream as he unbuttoned her uniform?

  Suddenly he was out of his imagined embrace and back in the real black autumn night with a chill wind rustling the dead leaves at his feet and somewhere to the left of him where the darkness was deepest the tail end of a long scream fading away into the night.

  ‘Oh shoot!’ said Joe.

  Then he was off running, he had no idea where. He just hoped that the sound of his approach might scare any attacker off. Ahead loomed a clump of trees, blacker lines against the blackness. He swerved to skirt them, then one of the black lines moved and hit him so hard in the stomach he collapsed on the grass retching.

  A moment later he was dragged to his feet by his collar and a torch beam shone in his face.

  ‘Gotcha!’ said a voice. ‘Hey, don’t I know you?’

  There was something familiar about the voice … an accent … and in the light spilling back from his own face to his captor’s he made out just enough to trigger his memory.

  ‘You’re Forton’s mate,’ he croaked. ‘Sandy … last night … St Monkey’s … Joe Sixsmith …’

  ‘That’s right. Deano warned me about you but he didn’t say you were into this!’

  ‘Into what?’ gasped Joe. ‘I’ve just been up to the hospital … one of the nurses …’

  He made the mistake of gesturing with his arm in the direction of the hospital. There was a dull thud as Little Perce shot out of his sleeve and hit the ground.

  ‘And what’s this? A prescription?’ demanded the constable, scooping it up. ‘Sixsmith, you’re nicked!’

  7

  In The Lost Traveller’s Guide, a page and a half of Luton’s ten-page entry is deservedly set aside for the Central Police Station. Designed by the same hand that conjured up St Monkey’s, it is as much a monument to secular law as the church is to divine. No citizen can pass by that imposing façade without feeling the safer for it. No criminal can pass beneath that blue-lamped portico without feeling the sorrier for it.

  Lutonians are proud of their police station, but it must be admitted it wouldn’t have survived the bulldozing sixties if some foresighted councillor hadn’t got it registered as a listed building. From time to time plans are still put forward to build a glass and concrete blockhouse on a few acres of green belt and turn the old building into a heritage centre or DIY supermarket or something. But the City Fathers, aware that cold, draughty and damp conditions produce a certain desirable cast of mind in crooks and cops alike, wisely refuse to be moved.

  Joe Sixsmith, as a good citizen, approved their wisdom. Seated in a barred-windowed, cracked-panelled, flaking-painted, musty-smelling interview room which not even the presence of a piece of hi-tech recording equipment could drag out of the Middle Ages, he felt ready to confess to anything.

  What PC Sandy Mackay wanted him to confess to was being the Infirmary flasher. Joe was the young man’s first significant collar and he was reluctant to let him go without a result. In this he was actively encouraged by Detective Sergeant Chivers who, though less deeply persuaded of Joe’s guilt in this particular instance, had a somewhat démodé belief that all things evened themselves out before the Great Chief Constable in the sky, and low lifes like Joe got away with so much that sending them down for anything was a kind of wild justice.

  An hour’s hard questioning had reduced even Chivers’s hoped for options.

  ‘Whatever happens, we’ll do you for carrying an offensive weapon,’ he assured Joe.

  ‘Defensive,’ said Joe.

  ‘Offensive,’ said Chivers grimly. ‘That’s what I reckon you are, Sixsmith. And that’s what I reckon anything to do with you is.’

  The door opened. Willie Woodbine’s head appeared. He said, ‘Sergeant, a word.’

  Chivers noted the suspension of the interview and the time on the tape and switched it off. Then he followed Woodbine out into the corridor.

  The door which looked like it had been used as an interrogation aid in the unreconstructed past didn’t fit properly and eased back open an inch. This was enough to permit Joe and PC Sandy to overhear what was being said.

  ‘What the chuff’s going on in there?’ demanded Woodbine.

  Chivers explained, or tried to.

  Woodbine interrupted, ‘This nurse who was flashed at tonight, the one who screamed, you’ve talked to her, I presume?’

  ‘Yes, of course …’

  ‘And did she say it was a black man or a white man who did the flashing?’

  ‘Well, it was pretty gloomy …’

  ‘Come on, Sergeant, she’s a nurse. First thing they learn is to tell the difference between a black dick and a white dick. Which did she say it was?’

  ‘White, she thought, but …’

  ‘And this nurse Sixsmith claims he was escorting to the wards, she confirms his story?’

  ‘Yes, but she’s his fancy woman, isn’t she? Say anything to get him off the hook …’

  ‘That’s right. And do anything too, you’d say? Well, I’ll tell you what she’s done, Sergeant. She’s rung that bitch Butcher, and that bitch Butcher’s rung me and demanded to know if we’re holding her client Joseph Sixsmith,
and has he been arrested, and on what charge? And she says this isn’t the first time her client has been harassed by my officers and this time she’s going to see he sues the arse off us. And she’s on her way now, Sergeant, and what am I going to tell her?’

  ‘Well, there’s always the offensive weapon, sir …’

  ‘Offensive weapon? That’s Joe Sixsmith you’ve got in there. You may not like the man, and maybe you ought to ask yourself why you don’t like him, but please reassure me, you’re not so far gone you don’t know he’s not violent! Offensive weapon? If you gave him a sub-machine gun, he’d probably try to get Radio 2 on it! No, you want violence, you ought to listen to that bitch Butcher! Get out of my way!’

  The door swung fully open. Joe and Sandy who’d been sitting looking at each other expressionlessly turned their heads to see Woodbine smiling down at them.

  ‘Joe, how’ve you been? It’s good of you to help us out like this again. Sorry we had to put you in here while I was on my way, but I don’t leave Chivers the key to the executive washroom, you with me? Come on upstairs now. Sergeant, rustle us up some coffee, will you? And I daresay I can find a drop of the Caledonian Cream to keep the cold out.’

  Two minutes later Joe found himself in a deep armchair in Woodbine’s office. Here the oak panelling shone with a deep sheen, the broad windows were covered with rich brocaded curtains, and the paintwork was as smooth and perfect as a model’s make-up.

  ‘Now, take me through it again,’ said Woodbine, putting on an expression of fascinated interest.

  ‘Er, through what, exactly?’ said Joe.

  ‘Through your very brave attempt to apprehend this weirdo who’s been terrorizing those poor nurses,’ said Woodbine.

  So Joe took him through it again. When he reached the point of his arrest, the superintendent sucked in his breath and said, ‘Silly lad. But he’s young, Joe. And Scottish. You’ve got to make allowances. I’ll see he apologizes. Some more Scotch? No? So how’s life treating you, Joe? Anything I can help with, you’ve only got to ask.’

  Well, you could tell me about your wife’s sex life, thought Joe. No, perhaps not. His eye ran over Woodbine’s untidy desk. There was a file open on it, and some photographs.

  Joe said, ‘That boy in the box at St Monkey’s. Anything on him yet?’

  ‘What’s your interest?’ said Woodbine sharply.

  ‘Well, I found him, didn’t I?’ said Joe defensively.

  The smile which had vanished from Woodbine’s face returned and he said, ‘So you did. Can’t stop running into trouble, can you, Joe?’

  ‘Thought I wasn’t in trouble,’ said Joe.

  ‘Of course you’re not. As for the boy, can’t tell you anything, sorry. Not my department really, not unless it turned out to be murder, which I doubt.’

  As he spoke, he swept the papers on his desk together and closed the file.

  And Joe, though he couldn’t be absolutely sure upside down, wondered why, if it wasn’t Woodbine’s department, the super happened to have what looked very much like a photo of the dead boy’s face in front of him?

  There was a tap at the door and Chivers’s head appeared.

  ‘Miss Butcher to see you, sir,’ he said.

  Butcher was only five-two and built like a Third World waif, but she came in like the Queen’s Champion at a trial by combat.

  ‘You OK, Joe?’ she asked. ‘Superintendent, I’d like a word alone with my client.’

  ‘By all means,’ said Woodbine. ‘We’re finished here anyway. Thanks again for your help, Joe. By the way, I’m having a little do Sunday lunchtime to celebrate my promotion, say thanks to everyone who’s helped and encouraged me. It wouldn’t be complete without you. Do try to make it, midday, very informal, bubbles and a bit of a buffet is what my good lady’s got in mind. Do try to come.’

  He put his arm across Joe’s shoulders and urged him gently to the door.

  ‘Yeah, well, thanks a lot, Superintendent …’

  ‘Make it Willie on Sunday, eh?’ breathed Woodbine in his ear. ‘Keep the formality for in front of the troops!’

  ‘Yeah sure,’ said Joe. ‘Willie on Sunday it is. Goodbye now.’

  As they walked down the ornate Victorian staircase, he said, ‘Hey, thanks for coming.’

  ‘Don’t know why I bother; Woodbine’s obviously got you all dusted down and gift wrapped. So fill me in. Just what happened to put you into bed with that smarmy fascist?’

  ‘He’s OK, really,’ said Joe. He described the evening’s events which Butcher listened to with much shaking of her head.

  ‘Sixsmith,’ she said, ‘you’ve got such a talent for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, I bet you were born in a different hospital from the one they took your mother to.’

  This was a touch too subtle for Joe so he let it go.

  Outside, he found his car parked in front of the station with Little Perce on the passenger seat. Butcher headed for hers which was parked in a space marked Chief Constable.

  ‘Hey, I’m sorry you got dragged out like this,’ he called after her.

  ‘That’s OK. It was worth it. Sight of me made him ladle on the old pals act so much, you got an invite to his party. Now you’ll be able to take a real close-up look at Mrs Georgie, won’t you?’

  ‘Hey, no,’ said Joe in alarm. ‘I’m going to no party …’

  ‘You don’t, I’ll go and I’ll say you sent me,’ she retorted. Then she began to laugh.

  ‘What?’ said Joe.

  ‘Willie on Sunday it is!’ she gurgled. ‘Sixsmith, one way or another, you may yet be the death of me!’

  8

  Saturday night came and Joe found he was greeted at the Uke with much less hostility from Gallie’s parents than he’d expected.

  As he helped the girl carry a round of drinks from the bar, she whispered in his ear, ‘By the way, I told Mum you were gay. You know how they worry.’

  ‘You what?’ said Joe, but she just laughed and then they were back at the table. So much for innocence. Now he’d have to find a way of disabusing the Hackers. Not because he felt demeaned or anything. Nothing wrong with being gay. If you were, that is. But if you weren’t, and the Hackers found out he wasn’t, they might start thinking he’d told their daughter he was to lull her into a false sense of security before he pounced. Or was he being paranoid?

  Whatever, here and now wasn’t the time, not till they’d got to know him a bit better. But he was dismayed to find himself checking his speech and gestures for anything camp!

  A native Lutonian, George Hacker was easy to get on with once he discovered in Joe a shared interest in the ups and downs of the town’s football club. Galina, his wife, eyed Joe much more warily at first. She was a broader, less angular version of her daughter and still retained the strong Manchester accent of her youth. She hit Joe with a volley of probing questions which he answered with an openness as natural as her curiosity till Gallie said, ‘What’s up, Mum? Think Joe’s an illegal immigrant or something.’

  ‘Don’t be daft!’ said her mother flushing. ‘I just like to know about folk. I’m sure Mr Sixsmith is just as interested in knowing about us.’

  ‘Course I am,’ said Joe, seizing this heaven-sent opportunity. ‘You from the Ukraine yourself then, Mrs Hacker?’

  ‘Not me,’ she laughed. ‘Manchester born and bred. My dad settled there after the war, isn’t that right, Father?’

  Taras Kovalko took enough time to give the impression this was a question needing serious consideration before he nodded his head. It was a fine head with a strong-featured, deep-lined face beneath a crown of unruly white hair. His daughter had inherited his shrewd watchful eyes, but while her gaze had the unselfish wariness of a mother concerned for her daughter, the old man’s had more of the suspicious cornered animal in it …

  Steady, boy, thought Joe, uneasy at this sudden flight of imagination. You’ll be writing poetry next.

  ‘Must’ve been hard, settling down in a new country like tha
t, Mr Kovalko,’ he said.

  ‘You say so? How did you find it?’

  The overlay of Lancashire on his native accent gave a rather comic effect, but it would have taken a braver as well as a ruder man than Joe to show amusement.

  ‘I was born here in Luton,’ explained Joe. He’d already told the daughter this and the old man had been listening keenly. So was his reply an attempt at diversion?

  He said, ‘You ever go back home? To the Ukraine, I mean? Vinnitsa, isn’t it?’

  The mention of the city brought the eyes into direct contact with his for a moment, then they dropped to the half empty spirit glass before him.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘There is nothing for me there. No family, no friends. My life is here now. Has been here for nearly fifty years. I am an Englishman now. Like you.’

  He tossed back the rest of his drink and put the glass on the table with an emphatic bang.

  ‘English he might be but he still likes the old firewater, isn’t that right, Taras?’ laughed George Hacker. He picked up the glass and headed for the bar.

  Joe said, ‘You still come here though, to the Uke.’

  Kovalko shrugged.

  ‘Old parents need a place to go so they are not always under their children’s feet. This is as good as any other place.’

  ‘Must bring back memories, all the same,’ said Joe. ‘Just hearing the old language for instance.’

  Kovalko said, ‘Look around, Mr Sixsmith. How many here speak the old language, do you think?’

  ‘How many’s it take to have a conversation?’ said Joe. ‘In any case, aren’t there more people coming now from the old country, especially since it got its independence back?’