The Bright Face of Danger

by Roger Ormerod

  ‘You’re being too clever.’

  ‘Logical.’

  ‘You could’ve asked me. Instead of arguing all the time, you might just have said: George, isn’t there a logical explanation?’

  ‘And what would George have said?’

  ‘He’d have told you that a gun can go off if you throw it around. A finely-trimmed trigger, a branch, anything like that.’

  ‘But nevertheless you’d still like to look at the view from Fletcher’s end window?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’

  It was all friendly enough, a reasonable discussion between partners. But George knew what I had suspected, and the resentment was there in his voice, veiled, but there.

  ‘So all right,’ I said. You can’t apologise to George.

  And as he tried to pull out, a cyclist without lights swerved violently to avoid the off-side wing, and for a moment was held, wobbling and frantic, in the dipped heads.

  ‘That’s Goldwater,’ I said, and he had come from the direction of Firbelow.

  George juggled with the clutch, and the tyres spun on the soggy grass. He cursed, wrenching the wheel, and the car bucked, tilted its nose upwards, then plunged forward. George righted it.

  ‘Stable old bitch!’ he shouted. ‘I’m getting to like her.’

  We set off in pursuit.

  A length of downhill had assisted Reuben Goldwater. He must have been doing a very precarious thirty when we came up behind him. I’m sure George only wanted a word, a quiet word, about hanging round the bungalow, and why, but he had to go and toot that horn, and as everybody knows there’s a special effeminate aggressiveness about French warning devices. It probably scared the poor devil to death.

  He wobbled, skidded, then dived into the ditch, right opposite Jonas Fletcher’s gate.

  George backed up until the headlights shone full on the scene. We jumped out and ran to his rescue. He was under the bike. I took the crossbar and George an arm, and together we hauled them out, wet and bedraggled, but as far as we could see, still serviceable.

  Goldwater was jabbering, incoherent with indignation. ‘...the hell you’re playing at...’

  George heaved him up. ‘Only wanted a word, Mr. Goldwater. We didn’t mean to startle you.’

  Goldwater had at last recognised him. His jaw became locked between ‘stupid’ and whatever word might have best linked with it, and, while he was staring, an avalanche descended on us and scattered all three of us into the ditch.

  George came up fighting. I got off my knees quickly enough to restrain him, or Jonas Fletcher would have been nursing a broken jaw.

  Fletcher stood above us. ‘You leave him alone! I saw that. Assault! I’ll ‘ave the police on ya.’

  George straightened slowly. Deliberately he ran his fingers down the whole muddied length of his coat. ‘I wanted a word,’ he whispered. ‘Quietly and without fuss. Now you...’ He jabbed Fletcher in the chest with a forefinger like a marlin spike. ‘...you, friend Fletcher, just get away from me. Now, Fletcher. Away!’

  ‘Please do it,’ I said, not wishing to see blood.

  Fletcher backed away. George paced around the front of the car. I went to the passenger’s door. George said: ‘Don’t hit him, Dave. I want him alive.’ I got in the car, and George drove away.

  I suffered. One elbow had contacted a pedal. I was in agony, otherwise I would have asked to drive. I should have insisted. For one panic moment a deer stood stark in the lights, then sprang away. George slowed to sixty. The car steadied. His voice was even.

  ‘We could’ve belted him then, Dave, carried him into the house, then while you phoned the doctor I could’ve got up to that room.’

  ‘You didn’t think, that’s your trouble. You’re getting slow.’

  He grunted. His damp coat smelt of stale glue.

  When we got a look at the damage, it wasn’t too bad. The black coat would need a dry cleaner and my elbow a plaster. George was more relaxed. A touch of violence does him the world of good.

  ‘Coming down for a drink?’

  ‘It’s barely opening time,’ I said.

  ‘We’re guests!’

  ‘I’ll see you in the bar, then.’

  I went out into the street. It was unreasonably mild for February, and the mists were creeping in already. Down there in the valley it came in from all sides, with no way out. The streetlights were dismal, and footsteps echoed. From a café opposite, hard rock pounded out, stirring the mist, and a woman screamed. It was nothing: they’re always screaming. A motorcycle revved away with open exhausts.

  In the entrance hall to their chic new Station, I asked for Sgt. Williamson. The desk sergeant was doubtful about it but said he would try, and what was that name again?

  Williamson ambled down a corridor after about five minutes, during which I read the poster about the man wanted for rape and murder. They hadn’t taken it down. Didn’t they think they’d caught him?

  ‘Just enquiring,’ I said.

  ‘No harm in that.’

  ‘You charging Andy Partridge?’

  ‘Well now...there’s harm in that. You surely don’t expect a reply.’

  ‘A hint. You’ve got a footprint or two...’

  ‘They fit. But d’you know, Mallin, they all wear loose boots. Something to do with warmth. Size 10 is the most popular. Now isn’t that a bit of bad luck!’

  ‘And the tyre tread?’

  ‘Fits. But there again, a nearly standard tyre for that sort of bike. Three two five by sixteen. Would you believe that?’

  ‘From you, Sergeant, yes. And the jacket?’

  ‘We were lucky there. Sort of. It’s real leather. Plastic and he could have washed it clean. But not leather. We reckoned, you see, that with a close shot, there’d be some spray of blood. Spots and speckles on the chest, that’s what we looked for.’

  ‘And you found them?’ I couldn’t understand his attitude.

  He shook his head, pursing his lips. ‘On the chest, no. But there’s the damndest thing, there was blood on the back.’

  ‘So you reckon he fired over his shoulder?’

  ‘It’s a mistake to confide in you, I can see that.’

  ‘And the gun?’

  ‘The one we found? Ah...now, here’s a thing about shotguns. You can’t pin them down to one specific gun. No rifling, you see.’

  I nodded solemnly, humouring him. ‘You’re not sure it’s the one you found?’

  ‘It’s just one of a thousand shotguns around here.’

  ‘But it had been fired.’

  ‘One barrel. The ballistics people say it could’ve done that itself. Impact. There’s such a thing as a hair trigger, Mallin.’

  ‘I’d heard.’

  ‘And there’s such a thing as medical evidence that the wound wasn’t made with just one barrel. Collis got the charge from two. Isn’t that convenient?’

  ‘Not for Thwaites. And I bet Partridge has never owned a shotgun.’ He nodded. His eyes were watching me carefully. There was no sign of disappointment in his expression; he was simply keen and intense. ‘So,’ I went on, ‘you’ll hardly be able to hold him.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that. We like to put on a show.’

  ‘You’re cynical. The poor young bugger must be suffering.’

  He laughed flatly. ‘Can you hear the screams? If you do, it’ll be Thwaites. It’s a tough one, this.’

  He was too bland. Too co-operative. The eyes never left me, measuring my reactions. I tried to be casual.

  ‘Don’t push it too far. You’ll make a martyr of him.’

  He grinned as I turned away. I looked back after two paces. He hadn’t moved; his eyes hadn’t moved.

  ‘Tell your big friend,’ he said, lifting his chin.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘The gun and the trigger.’

  ‘He’s figured it out for himself.’

  I left, tense, feeling that he was tempting me to continue with it. Perhaps he had expected me to argue about it being a t
wo-barrel discharge. I wouldn’t dare. George is the expert. George would argue it, because, even to my relatively inexperienced eyes, that had looked like a single-barrel discharge.

  I reached the Crown before I saw that this was what he wanted. I stopped and lit a cigarette. My motoring coat was inside, with drying mud flaking from it. It was colder than I had thought, but I could not yet face George. I started a circuit of the town square, which was guarded by a pedestrian rail.

  The metal was damp to my right hand. I felt like an old man, reaching for it, but for a moment I had wanted security. There are things in life you rely on because they are always so, always there as you expect. But sometimes you reach for support and abruptly the security is no longer there. A wall, or a convention, or a myth crumbles away.

  I moved away from the rail. My hand had slipped on it, and I resented its false offer, even as I hated my sudden desire for solid reality. The square was not the place to be in, in that frame of mind. Nothing was real. Depth dissolved into grey, and across the open space there was nothing. I realised I was walking faster, and deliberately slowed. Let my mind race, but my legs deliberate! I crossed one street before I noticed it was policed by traffic lights. I searched for the next, and cursed my agitation when I went on and on, and seemed to have lost it. The traffic had melted away. I reached the lights, abruptly and weirdly above my head, and deliberately stepped out, inviting the comforting hoot of a horn. But no car crossed my path.

  Ahead of me, light streamed in strained white across the pavement from the café. I felt the impact of the amplifiers. Again the woman screamed, and I realised it was what they called singing. The café was empty, the sound itself a ghost. Perhaps it was a man’s voice after all. Unreality pursued me, but the sound seemed to cling to me.

  I was nearly running when I reached the Crown again. The light from the public bar was warm. I was utterly chilled. I turned into the car park, rejecting the comfort.

  George had left the Renault unlocked. I slid in and sat behind the wheel. He always left his vehicles unlocked, as a challenge to life. Touch my car if you dare! I had to quell an overwhelming desire to start it up and drive straight out to Filsby, and have a look at that phone box. Ridiculous. And in any event, why not use the Porsche? It would be feeling neglected.

  But the tenuous warmth of the Renault held me. I lit another cigarette and wished I’d got my pipe, and searched around for the tape recorder we had been using. Senseless to drive out to Filsby. Of course the number in that box was as George had said, otherwise he would not have invited me inside it to phone Collis’s office. He’d have known Dave Mallin’s well-known reputation for remembering such details as the number of the box he’s phoning from. The trouble was that Dave Mallin couldn’t remember it, and it didn’t help to fight it. You had to relax — which was out of the question.

  I played with the recorder’s switches. You drop in at all sorts of places. My own voice:

  ‘…going to go insane, sitting in this damned car park. Why doesn’t he do his trips when I’m on, that’s what I want to know. You get all the fun, George...’

  That was before Collis took me up to the log house. Before George’s trips were all of a sudden not so much fun.

  I wound on a few feet and pressed the Play again.

  ‘...was going to mention that, Dave...’

  Mention what? I re-wound and tried again. My voice:

  ‘...I was thinking we ought to lay on some system in case of emergency. Phone back to the pub, George, how’s that, and always be on hand...’

  Funny, I didn’t remember saying that, but I’d been on hand when it happened. There’s a special thing about phones. You never know where your caller is. He could say he’s in the next street, and he could be in Scotland. He could say he’s calling from Filsby 73, and be miles away at the time. Close enough to get to Filsby 73 before I could, but not actually there.

  Lay off, Dave. Get inside and ask George about the double-barrel discharge. Go on, man, this is doing you no good.

  I flipped the wind button, searching for it. And got it.

  ‘...slipping out under my nose, the crafty so-and-so. No, there she is. What’s all the dawdling for?’

  I wound on a bit.

  ‘...pulling out a few stops now. Wish I’d got the Porsche. Come on, you beauty. That’s my girl...’

  I flipped again.

  ‘...look at that, will you! Two bloody great trailers. I ain’t going through that till she’s clear...’

  I cut it, wound back, and tried again.

  ‘...ain’t going through that till she’s clear. Easy now. That should do it. Cor strike — the spray! Clear through, now. Where you gone, you bitch! Where you gone?’

  I sat with the machine silent on my lap. I wanted to run through more, but I couldn’t face it. Silently to myself, comfortingly, I repeated his own words to me. ‘Stable old bitch. I’m getting to like her.’ All cars are female to George; he has a sentimental attachment to them; they respond to him. George, did you mean the car? Did you, George? Or the driver?

  Ridiculously, almost self-consciously and certainly ashamed, I put on the interior lights and searched the back seat, where he might have tossed Fletcher’s shotgun, and where it might have left no trace apart from a smear of gun oil. I don’t know whether I was pleased to detect nothing. It could have lain there, or on the carpet behind the front seats, for days, and left no sign. Until the time came to use it, and then toss it into the ditch.

  But that gun had been fired only once.

  Miserably I forced myself to climb from the car. I locked it, not having George’s faith in humanity, and took him the keys.

  He was in the public bar. George is a man who likes company, and delights simply in watching movement, and listening to human noise. The bar was filling. George was at a table with a pint of bitter and a huge pile of sandwiches. His face was warm, his eyes amused.

  ‘Enjoying yourself?’ I asked.

  ‘Where’s your drink?’

  ‘He’s bringing it. What’s so funny?’

  ‘Those two over there. Fletcher and Goldwater. Every minute or two Goldwater tries to get up from the table, and Fletcher drags him back.’

  ‘Perhaps Fletcher’s treating. His birthday.’

  ‘No. Goldwater’s trying to get to me.’

  ‘He’s fallen for your charms.’

  He grinned. ‘He’s terrified, Dave.’

  I put the keys under his nose, and my beer arrived. I said I’d share George’s sandwiches and he said you won’t you know, so I ordered cheese and told George he’d left his car unlocked.

  ‘Nobody’s ever pinched one of mine.’ His voice was even. ‘Why’d you go to the car, Dave?’

  ‘To listen to the tape.’

  ‘They’re at it again. Look.’

  Sure enough, Goldwater was trying to get to his feet, and his eyes were for us. Fletcher’s hand was clamped on his arm.

  George bit into a sandwich. ‘Hear anything interesting?’

  I find it difficult to lie to George. For one thing, because he sees through you, and for another, because I expect him to tell me the truth.

  ‘Not a thing,’ I lied, because I wasn’t sure he had. ‘I’ve spoken to Williamson, too.’

  ‘Ferreting all the time. You’re not going to get anything out of him.’

  ‘He said the same thing as you, that the gun could have gone off on impact.’

  ‘You see...they’re not as daft as they seem.’

  ‘But you didn’t hear it go off?’

  ‘Can’t say I did. It’d be muffled, firing way down the bottom of a ditch, and I was accelerating hard.’

  ‘Was somebody after you?’

  He considered me, then shook his head. ‘Dave, you know me. I’m impulsive. I have to control myself. There was this Fletcher, just tried to blow my head off…’

  ‘You said he didn’t fire it.’

  ‘I was speaking figuratively. Good Lord, I’ve got to spell everything ou
t for you. He’d pointed it at my head, Dave. I’m fussy about my head; I live in there. So I was mad. If I didn’t get away quick, I’d have done something nasty and probably permanent to his face.’

  ‘That sounds like you, George. Still, we don’t have to go near him again.’

  ‘How come?’ He seemed unsuspicious still.

  ‘Because that wound in Collis’s chest was from the discharge of two barrels. The gun from the ditch had only one fired. So it doesn’t signify what you might be able to see from Fletcher’s window.’

  He put down his glass. For a moment he leaned forward, staring down at it, then quickly his head came round and he was looking at me sideways.

  ‘Is that the truth?’

  ‘I don’t know whether it’s the truth. It’s what Williamson said.’

  ‘It was he doing the lying, then.’

  ‘As a change from me?’

  ‘You’re saving me from saying it.’

  I steered round it. ‘You want it to be that gun, don’t you, George?’

  He did not answer at once, then: ‘You know how we’ve always worked. You did it your way, and I did it mine, and somehow, when we got it together, something came out of it. But we had to get together. We had to trust each other, Dave.’

  ‘You don’t have to go on...’

  ‘I know your methods. I know your twisted kind of chat, implying, sliding in bits, linking up unrelated remarks. You’re using it on me. I can’t say I like it.’

  ‘I didn’t think you’d realise.’

  ‘So it’s all right if I don’t?’

  I was wishing he wasn’t so sad. Like a great, hurt sheepdog, he studied me, wondering what he’d done to deserve it. You can’t look into eyes like that and not relent.

  ‘I think you killed Collis, George.’

  He raised his glass and paused, then he lifted it towards me, his eyes mocking. ‘To you, Dave. At least, you’ve got round to being honest.’ He took one great gulp. ‘Mind you, not honest enough. If you really looked at yourself — try it, Dave, some time, one honest look — you’d admit that if you really thought I’d done it you’d be slapping me on the back.’

  ‘No!’

  He laughed. ‘And while you’ve been talking, he’s slipped away.’