Devil in the Detail

by Leo McNeir

  “What’s the matter, Rajeev?”

  “I told them you weren’t like that. If you said you had no houses, then you had no houses. It was nothing to do with them being Asian.”

  Marnie blushed with embarrassment. “With being …? Good God, no. Of course not. I’m telling the truth. The cottages really are all let, just as I said. I assure you.”

  “Thank you for your time,” said the young man, getting back into the car.

  *

  Marnie could see Anne and Ralph through the window in the galley on Sally Ann. They were putting out cups and saucers. Ralph was pouring water into the coffee pot. It looked very civilised, very English. Except they were on a narrowboat, which gave the scene a faintly exotic appearance. She had been wondering about assumptions as she had walked through the spinney. Having spent most of her life in London, she had grown up in a multi-coloured world surrounded by people of every shade imaginable, who spoke more languages than she could name, and she had regarded it as the norm in her country. She knew that most eating-out in Britain was in Indian restaurants, and the most popular British meal was chicken tikka masala.

  Now suddenly she had met young Asians who had suspected her of racial prejudice. It was inconceivable, but they had lumped her in – however loosely – with the Ku Klux Klan!

  On reflection, she was glad she had not tried to explain herself by telling them about her good friend Faye Summers, whose father was from Trinidad. She winced at the thought that she might have said, “Some of my best friends are …” It was too awful to contemplate.

  She stepped down into the cabin on Sally Ann.

  “Out on bail?” said Anne.

  *

  There was moonlight on the water. Marnie heard the sound of a fish jumping without seeing it in some dark margin of the canal. But she saw the trembling wave of ripples that disturbed the smoothness of the surface. She was standing at the stern door on Thyrsis, as she often did after taking a shower. Wearing only a thin cotton bathrobe to ward off the cool of the night, she let her thoughts drift back to the Indian couple who were still disturbing her below the surface.

  There was a muffled sound behind her, and she felt the boat move gently as Ralph came along the corridor, past the shower room, the second sleeping cabin and the engine compartment to join her. He slipped an arm round her waist and kissed her hair. She leaned against him without looking round.

  “Perfect,” Ralph murmured quietly.

  “Mm.”

  “Or nearly perfect, anyway,” he said.

  “Why nearly?”

  “Because something’s bothering you, enough to take the edge off the scenery.”

  “Am I so transparent?”

  “Well, if I can’t judge your state of mind by now, it’s a sorry state of affairs.”

  “Because you’re a sensitive man?”

  “No, because your chin has been trailing on the ground since you came back from meeting the Indian couple.”

  Marnie laughed. “You’re right, of course. It really got to me, the idea that they could think I was prejudiced. Me! I’m going to strangle that bloody Dyson. He’s no right to interfere in my affairs. I’ve told him a hundred times, I’m not selling the cottages.”

  “He’s probably hoping you’ll be tempted by the cash. They’d fetch a good price.”

  “And he’d earn a good commission. Too bad. I’ll phone him tomorrow, tell him to back off. I’m really annoyed he put me in the position of making that nice young couple think they were up against prejudice.”

  Ralph nuzzled her head. “They probably meet it in various forms a lot of the time. It’s no wonder they thought you might not want them to move in.”

  “I bet if they did come to live here,” said Marnie, “the village would make a huge fuss of them. They’d get thoroughly spoilt. And if they had kids, everyone would be all over them.”

  Ralph put his other arm round her waist and pulled her closer. “Yes, I wouldn’t be at all – Gosh! What was that? Did you see it?”

  “A flash in the sky?” said Marnie. “Over there …”

  They quickly stepped up onto the tiny stern deck – the counter – and peered into the distance over the darkened fields, balancing themselves against the cold steel of the tiller. Over the horizon hovered a pinkish glow, as if someone had suddenly switched on the lights of a big city.

  “What direction was it?”

  Ralph said, “It must be Northampton way, at a guess. I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

  Marnie shuddered. “I have.”

  5

  At breakfast time on Sunday Ralph looked out into the spinney from the galley window on Sally Ann where he was laying the table.

  “Does Anne know breakfast’s ready?”

  Marnie was taking rolls from the oven. “Don’t worry. I saw her going for her shower when I went to get the papers from the office barn. She’s fitted with the same radar system as Dolly, programmed to appear at mealtimes.”

  Gentle purring sounds were rising from the direction of the cat’s feeding bowl by the fridge.

  “You know what I mean,” said Ralph. “I was just wondering where she is.”

  “Oh, I can guess where she is. I’m surprised you can’t.”

  Ralph thought about it. “Of course. Silly of me. She’s probably polishing inside the hub caps on the Mini.”

  “Ralph, you can’t blame her being excited about having her first car.”

  “Not a bit. I’m delighted she’s so thrilled with it. Everyone gets obsessive about cars when they first have them, I suppose.”

  “Obsessive,” Marnie said. “That’s the in-word at the moment. That’s how Philip described Estelle.”

  “Huh! I don’t think Anne’s such an extreme case as Estelle. Mind you, that would be difficult.”

  Marnie put the basket of warm rolls on the table and turned to pick up the coffee pot. “There. Look at that. What did I tell you? Perfect timing.”

  Through the Venetian blind Ralph saw Anne jogging out of the spinney. She flashed past the window and seconds later burst into the cabin.

  “It’s OK,” said Ralph. “No need to rush. We haven’t fed your share to the cat.”

  “You were right, Marnie,” Anne said breathlessly. “It was an explosion.”

  “Now that’s what I call a dramatic entrance.”

  “An explosion,” Ralph repeated. “How did you find out?”

  “I went back to my room to see if there was anything on the television news, and there it was. I’ve videoed it. You can see it after breakfast.”

  *

  It was like a scene from an American action movie, a huge explosion, flames and smoke billowing, the hero flinging himself away from the blast, miraculously missed by debris flying in every direction except his. Only here the aftermath was all that could be seen, and there was no hero, just a TV news reporter holding her microphone, with a building blazing in the background. The report had evidently been filmed the previous night soon after the explosion.

  Anne adjusted the volume with the remote control. All three of them were perched on Anne’s bed in the loft, concentrating intently on the report.

  … and it was a miracle that no-one was killed or seriously injured by the explosion. The caretaker, Mr Winston Coolidge, had left the premises only minutes earlier after locking the club at the end of the evening.

  The image changed to a worried-looking Afro-Caribbean, with balding head and gold-rimmed glasses standing in the street. They had positioned him so that the glow from the fire was reflected in his lenses. A microphone was hovering under his chin.

  I shut up as normal and checked everything was all right. We’ve got alarms and a security camera ’cos of the insurance, and it all seemed OK.

  Mr Coolidge, did you specifically check the boilers for the heating system?

  I just had a look round like I always do. You don’t expect this sort of thing. We’re just a social club, not political or anything.

&nb
sp; Have you had threats of any kind?

  No, nothing like that. Never.

  Do you get on with the people living in the area?

  Sure. Well, we’ve had one or two complaints about noise, you know, music, people dancing in the street after coming out late, but not recently. We’ve had to be strict because of keeping our licence, you know.

  Back to the building. A blackened shell half-hidden in smoke, flames still leaping upwards from window openings, silhouetting fire-fighters and their ladders, lighting up the water covering the ground. The reporter was talking to the presenter at the studio news desk.

  Yes, the authorities haven’t yet issued a formal statement on that, but the senior officer I spoke to a short while ago said he couldn’t rule out that the fire had been started deliberately. A statement will be made at a press conference in the morning. Until then, the emergency services don’t wish to comment.

  The report ended, and Anne switched off the recording.

  “And you actually saw it happen,” she said.

  “Though we didn’t know it at the time, not for certain.”

  “But you suspected it was an explosion, didn’t you, Marnie?” said Ralph.

  “It took me back to the boat explosion that I saw in London in the winter, only last night’s must’ve been much bigger. I mean, Northampton’s fifteen miles away, and we saw the flash from here.”

  “Do you think it was an accident?” Anne said.

  Ralph stood up. “No way of knowing.”

  “I agree,” said Marnie. “But something tells me …”

  6

  That Monday morning there was little time to talk about the weekend. Marnie and Anne moved busily around the office assembling papers and drawings. Willards had invited Marnie to their headquarters in Leicester for a progress review meeting, and Anne checked each item off her list. She was aching to tell Marnie about her drives to home and back the previous day.

  No shinier car had ever been seen, and no prouder driver since the first hardy motorist on the highways of Britain, Henry Hewetson, took his Benz for a spin in 1894 – behind his manservant carrying a red flag. For the first time in British history a red flag had heralded a revolution. Now, on a sunny Sunday morning, a bright red Mini had made its way through Knightly St John, revolutionising the life of a budding interior designer. Stopping only briefly to collect Ronny Cope from his house near the church, Anne had driven off to spend the day with her parents, to show them her new possession and introduce her friend. She planned to tell Marnie all about it that evening.

  As usual Anne took the call when the phone rang.

  “It’s Mr Jeffries at Willards, Marnie. Wants a quick word before you leave.”

  Marnie rolled her eyes. Jeffries was always fussing over trivia. He could get old women a bad name.

  “Morning, Neil. I was just about to leave.”

  “You’ll probably think I’m fussing –”

  “Heaven forbid.”

  “Quite. But nonetheless, I think there’s something you ought to know for your journey.”

  “For the journey?”

  “I saw diversion signs as I drove into town this morning. I thought you’d want to know, to avoid any inconvenience.”

  Jeffries was a stickler for punctuality.

  “I’ll keep a lookout. What is it, roadworks? Gas board digging up a water main?”

  “No. There’s some sort of ceremony, apparently. It was on the radio. A minister from the Home Office opening a community centre or something like that. You could have problems.”

  “OK, Neil. Thanks for the warning. I’m on my way.”

  *

  “I will personally throttle that man, Dyson.”

  Marnie found herself smiling at the memory of her talk in bed with Ralph that night after the young Indian couple had come to Glebe Farm. He had been indignant that she should have been suspected of racial prejudice, indignant to the point of threatening violence on an estate agent who was, after all, only trying to earn a living in a tough world. Ralph! She could never imagine him attacking anyone. Though when she had made the point that he was unlikely to do anything physical in any circumstance, he had done his best to dispel that illusion. She smiled at that memory, too.

  Diversion signs sprang up as she reached the city, just like Jeffries had warned her. The problem was that every traffic light on the route was programmed to turn red as she approached, and the diversion meant that there was more traffic than usual.

  Muttering under her breath, she accelerated away from the penultimate set of lights. Up ahead she could see pinpricks of red from the next traffic lights and adjusted her speed with the aim of reaching them as they turned to green. That at least would be a source of satisfaction, and she concentrated on getting the speed just right to sail through in triumph. Her judgment was perfect, and with twenty metres to go, the red changed to red and amber.

  She was congratulating herself on her skill, when a pedestrian stepped off the kerb and began crossing the road, followed by another and then another. Marnie eased back on the accelerator, muttering again. She gritted her teeth, musing on the prospect of flooring the pedal and scattering the pedestrians like ninepins, when it became clear that the line of jaywalkers was growing.

  She shifted her foot to the brake and slowed. And still they came on, an unbroken line walking singly or in groups of two and three, all of them young men. It reminded her of an army on the move, though this column of troops looked more like a band of brigands with more than a passing resemblance to the orcs in a Tolkien novel.

  By now the brakes were firmly bringing the car to a halt as the lights changed to green. Marnie thought of hooting to make them move aside, but suspected it would be a waste of effort. This gang was not even glancing at the traffic, but trudged on at a steady pace looking ahead, like an occupying force beyond the reach of normal conventions, sure of their strength and their ability to have their own way. Other drivers around her were similarly watching the procession, silently waiting.

  A strange feeling came over her. Later she would look back on that moment as a premonition that events were taking a turn for the worse.

  The green lights taunted Marnie as she sat in the Discovery immobilised, looking down at the rebels. Despite the warm weather, they seemed to favour black leather jackets with jeans, and heavy boots laced up their ankles. Their heads were shaved, almost devoid of hair. Light glinted on studs and rings in noses and ears. Their march was a kind of determined slouch with attitude and a dash of swagger thrown in.

  And then she realised why thoughts of armies had come into her head. Several of the men were carrying flags over their shoulders. Most were furled, but some hung open. They were black with a diagonal red stripe. Many of the men wore armbands: red with an emblem in black. Marnie strained to study them. The design seemed to be a capital N, an italic letter like a bolt of lightning. One man turned his head in passing to scowl at her, and she quickly looked down.

  Slowly she eased her right arm back from the steering wheel, finding the lock button on the door with her elbow. She pressed it down gently and heard the sharp click of the central locking mechanism securing all the doors. Her sense of relief lasted only two seconds, as three or four of the skinheads hesitated in their march and looked her way. She felt like a fugitive behind enemy lines, trying not to draw attention to herself. The men tramped on, a battalion of irregulars moving up to the front, needing only the beat of a drum to complete the scene.

  Marnie asked herself what was going on. Why the ugly crowd of thugs? Then an image flickered across her mind. Community centre … Neil Jeffries had mentioned the opening of a community centre by a government minister. Could all this be connected with the opening ceremony? Ridiculous! But in her mind she saw a pink flash on the horizon in the night sky, television images of burning and devastation, ladders and hoses, an anxious caretaker with fear and flames in his eyes. Perhaps … She focused again on the now diminishing band of marchers.

 
There must have been hundreds of them, and the crowd had now passed, followed by a few stragglers hurrying to keep up. With the gear lever in first, Marnie began easing up the clutch, feeling it engage just as the lights turned to amber. And red.

  *

  The return journey was easy. The traffic lights seemed to have other things on their mind and were no longer looking out for Marnie, no longer turning red every time she approached. She wondered if they had been demoralised after being ignored by the rag-tag army that had shown them so little respect that morning. There were no more lines of skinheads on the march, and she put them out of her memory.

  The meeting had been a doddle, and Marnie was on a high. They had reviewed every project, in preparation for a board meeting that Neil Jeffries would be attending the following week. He described Marnie as a ‘safe pair of hands’ who never let him down. She had said she hoped he also regarded her as a good designer, and he had waved that aside with a casual – yes, that as well … the best.

  She made good time and was soon turning off the dual carriageway to take the country road home. It always pleased her when she passed the name board for the village: Knightly St John – Please drive carefully. Even though she worked hard and for long hours, she only ever thought of the village as a place of calm, a peaceful haven in a busy world. On the high street she saw George Stubbs coming towards her in his Range Rover, and they raised a hand to each other. How different, she thought, from the anonymous bustle of working in London.

  She parked the Discovery in its usual space and climbed out. Anne came hurtling from the office barn. This was not her customary friendly welcome home. She looked worried, annoyed and fearful in equal measures.