‘I can’t, I can’t, I can’t …’ Out loud, a voice he did not recognise as his own, a howl of despair. ‘God help me, I can’t do this …’ Like the flash in the eyes of the drowning man he saw his orchestrated life, the love, the popularity, the carefully won respect, crumbling to nothing in the face of discovery. He could not move. The crane’s lights shot daggers into his own, fragmenting tears. Tom’s eyes, head lolling from sudden movement, caught the glimmer of water and the grave below their feet. He kicked, jerked, jackknifed his small body convulsively, and fell to earth. He curled where he fell, grasping the edge at Pip’s feet, grovelling for the ankles to hold, an attitude of terrible, unconscious supplication. Then he heard, over and beyond another crescendo of sound bursting in his head, the banshee yell of his father, saw the mud-splattered legs of Uncle Pip vanish, heard a thin, fading scream.
Bailey saw them. Others, running from the workmen’s shed, but not in pursuit, saw them. Boy and man, stumbling across the mud, Duncan in their clumsy footsteps, following. Watched the boy drop and Pip raise his hands in the air, gesturing to heaven. Duncan’s renewed howling as he reached them both and dealt Pip a massive blow to the small of his back. Running, running, far too slowly through the weight of the mud, Bailey saw Pip catapult from sight, Duncan upright, and himself still seconds away. Bailey slipped, fell, ran again. Their growls carried on the air like the piercing shriek of a woman, Duncan again, a dark silhouette, standing mammoth as Bailey drew within feet of him, a gorilla of a man holding aloft a massive stone, raised above his head to fling on the recumbent form of Pip which lay below. Bailey cannoned into him, dragged both of them to earth in snarling, spitting fury, Duncan fighting him, fighting mad, pressing his face into mud. And then the heavens opened in one almighty crash, even the earth trembled and the world was full of the sound of smashing glass, rending metal. With his head jerked forward, Bailey could see the crane wobble before everything round them fell into complete and eerie silence. From a great distance, translated through his own, thunderous heartbeat, there came the sound of cheering.
In the early hours of dawn, the population of Herringbone Parade began to filter back. They came in staggered groups of cars, coach or ambulance, hollow-eyed, suspicious and relieved. As well as slightly disappointed by all this damp normality, the sad minimum of mess, some expecting to find a miraculous change. Such a fuss about nothing. Mrs Beale junior was enraged. The windows facing the service road and a mere few at the front were smashed, a crumbling of glass which left fragments inside as well as out, a sort of implosion. ‘Bloody looters,’ she howled. ‘Where was those police boys then, shifting us all over the place. They should have bin here, watching.’
‘They should’ve been keeping out of the bloody way,’ Mrs Beale senior snorted with superior sense, clutching to the banister leading to her prison upstairs. ‘What do you want? Young lads risking their balls to guard apples and rubbish?’ She cackled. ‘Besides, it’s not looters, only the detonator. Same in the war, when they defused them. You don’t know nothing.’ Her daughter-in-law reflected how nimble she had become, as if the sudden change of scene had been a tonic: no talk of ulcers or heart attacks until she remembered the benefits of invalidity.
‘Oh, dear, I need my prescription … Oh dear, oh dear … Having a turn …’
‘Well you’ll have to do without. Chemist’s shut. Window boarded, police in there. See? Someone was robbed.’
Only Carlton’s seemed to have been burgled, and the off-licence video, swift action perhaps by returning children, the one shop abruptly sealed by police, the video man left to seal his own. He was disgruntled by this unfair division of labour, ceased grumbling when told Mr Caring was in hospital. Poor Mr Pip, hope he’s better soon. The bastards.
They seemed to like one another, Bailey sensed. Not, perhaps, destined to survive this particular emergency, but an easy attachment nevertheless, an exception to that strange and awkward shyness which seemed to afflict Helen amongst police officers’ wives, the same defensiveness which crippled him with most of her peers of either sex. Two independent women, not surprising: they had probably spent half the anxious night talking. The fact that Helen liked Kimberley and Kimberley liked Helen enough for them to remain with each other was perfectly satisfactory for present purposes. Standing against the wall of the white hospital room, he wished he could summon half an ounce of affection for Duncan.
‘I don’t need to be in bed,’ Kim said. ‘For Christ’s sake, they’ve taken samples of everything already. I don’t even feel sick, specially now I know … well, he didn’t quite get there, did he? I would have known that.’ Flashes of the old bravado, desperately returning in search of itself. ‘I’ve done a few things, but I’ve never been known to sleep through it. Have they finished with Tom?’
‘Soon.’
All present fell silent. Tom, carried back to the flat, had been strangely withdrawn. My ears hurt, Mummy, they hurt, feeling sick. Nothing else, just that again and again like a litany. Sick as a dog. You and me both, said his mother, unable to prise away either her arms from his or his from hers, his face hidden in her chest like a suckling baby. Don’t go, don’t go, the same as he was ushered into the room in the light of mid-morning and placed himself immediately as close as he could get, only just becoming self-conscious about this need for touch. The skin was pinker, the eyes brighter, the attitude returning to some approximation of normal, enough for the enormous bandage round his head to be an obvious subject of pride. Half of him wished to show this dramatic badge to the world: the other half wanted to stay still and never, ever go back to Herringbone Parade.
‘Do you want to tell us what happened?’ Kim asked, her voice gentle but with an edge like sandpaper. His own version of roughly known or guessed facts was vital, but he shook his head. Helen held back any prompt, hating herself for thinking, I need this child as a witness: of course a ten-year-old boy can take an oath and doesn’t even need corroboration. For seeing his mother prostrate, naked under the satyr-like figure of Uncle Pip, Tom had not quite forgiven her. For the rest, distortion was rife. He looked at them all. That woman, that man and Mummy. He was perfectly sure what he wanted to believe: there was a measure of hope in his voice.
‘Daddy rescued me, Mum. He did, Mum, honestly. He rescued me, he was brave. It was Daddy brought me back. He was great.’ The eyes held a challenge, a desperate dare, sliding away from Bailey’s distant gaze, expecting, and prepared for, denial. Helen met Bailey’s face across the tableau of the other two, noticed how no muscle moved, except to smile reassurance. ‘Daddy’s a big strong man,’ Bailey murmured, and again Helen felt the treachery of other thoughts. If this boy lies here like this, will he lie elsewhere in a statement? If I know his evidence is tainted or embroidered to suit his own memory, could I ever present him as a witness of truth if the time comes? Thinking like Redwood. Kim was watching closely, feeling the silence through tired limbs. Continued simply to embrace her boy and, on the subject of Daddy’s bravery, said nothing at all. Stretched instead. ‘Where’s you know who?’ she asked after an interval. ‘Getting better, is he? Only I am a pharmacist, and I’m worried about the shop. You know who can roast in hell, but I do care about the shop. Someone must watch it.’
Someone must watch, Pip thought. Someone is watching me now. Narcan, intravenously, dripping into his veins, the antidote for the methadone he had found in his muddy pockets and swallowed at the bottom of the pit, that damp hell where he had lain, weeping, listening to the world roar round him. In the moment of his own redemption, there had been that cataclysm of sound, like the thunderous voice of God, visiting revenge. He had lain there, staring upwards, his face half in water, proof against his own instinct to stand, watching the lights of the crane rock above him as if about to fall and crush his misery in one grand finale. He hauled himself to his knees in the pool, and his hands, not quite numb, fished in his pockets for some of the incrimination he carried. Returns from the shop, the same source of methadone he had give
n in that massive dose to Daniel the watcher, when Daniel was bemused by the blow. Raised and preserved in gentility, Pip the man had been almost proud of that blow. A step on the way to manhood, when no one was watching, a gesture disallowed in childhood when he was always watched. As he was watched now.
Someone watching him, someone always watching him, for ever and ever, amen. A life like this, no manhood, no privacy. When the nurse left him behind the screens, beyond which sat a man, Pip tried to pull the drip out of his arm. It was clumsily done, hurt with the dull insistence of toothache, but the plaster held it firm and he was weak. He did not want this antidote: he had not wanted to be alive. They knew more than he expected. Narcan, intravenously, not a stomach pump which would have hastened the end, and he cursed them for their knowledge.
He turned in the hard bed. With the one detached hand, he drew the sheet round his chin and shut his eyes. So he would tell them. Everything, why not? About how she would not have the window open, dear, darling Margaret. How Mama had tickled him to death. He would tell them all about chloroform kicks, write it down for them, and he would be watched all the time, never ever knowing what it was to exorcise passion. They would understand: he hoped they would understand what was, to him, perfectly obvious. Prison. More and more watching. Until, with his knowledge of pills, he could find another route to oblivion.
Please, please, would someone open the window?
‘It’s stuffy in here. Smells. Is that dead dry cleaning in the back? Why do you always forget it? Shall I open the window?’
‘If you like. Cold, though. You look terrible. Open it, I don’t mind either way. Better than hospital air.’
‘Sure you don’t mind?’
Helen stopped pulling at the elusive seat belt of her car, a tangled piece of webbing which either spun enough belt to cover three fat persons at a time, or refused to budge without a series of savage pulls, and laughed in sudden, uproarious amusement.
‘What’s so funny?’ Bailey was slightly injured to be the object of her infectious bark.
‘You. You ask me three times if I mind about the window being open: you dither about something so small. I can see you looking at the handle, absolutely indecisive about whether to touch it or not, I’ll watch you frown all the way home, wondering if you’ve done the right thing. Well, it is funny from a man who never thinks for a second about anything important. Leap into a pit of rattlesnakes, chase the devil barefoot over a minefield, juggle with bombs, no problem. Wind down the window, problem insoluble. Takes a good half hour to decide.’
He had the grace to smile, a full smile, reaching the eyes.
‘Are you, by any chance, angry with me?’ he asked.
‘Nope. Never for long. Frequently puzzled. I’m well endowed with confusion, badly off for anger.’ Her words, he noticed, always gathered speed and obscurity when she was tired. She started her car, which coughed into its own reluctant version of life. Bailey disliked being driven, hated the steam on the windows, wished she would consider a decent car for once. Then he opened the window.
‘She’s a great girl, Kimberley Perry. Will she go back to crazy Duncan?’
Bailey remembered the raging animal in the dark, ready to throw the stone which could murder, action without checks, strength without discrimination, love without analysis. ‘I sincerely hope not,’ he said.
‘I was thinking,’ Helen said, driving slowly, conscious of Bailey’s discomfort and the ice on the road. ‘I was thinking how it isn’t all Duncan’s fault. What he is, I mean. Somewhat abused. You told me he’s always used because of the width of his shoulders, like a fearless animal. The person you send into the fray, the portable battering ram. Programmed, psyched up in advance. Then when he breaks down the door or brings another gorilla to earth, everyone fêtes him, buys him drinks, says, great lad, Dunc, yeah. Bit like being some sort of soft porn pin-up. Feed booze to the animal door breaker, don’t encourage him to think, he’s so useful as he is. As subtle with women as he is with doors. Until suddenly, it all goes wrong on him and he doesn’t know how to change and being Mr Big Guy doesn’t work. If he’s got any finesse, he’s been taught to suppress it. Sorry, if I’m not being very clear.’
Again, he noticed the speeding up of words. Remembered Duncan by the bedside, caring less for the wife than the despoiling of his property. Caring less for his son than he did for revenge.
‘You’re quite astute and very forgiving,’ Bailey remarked, fishing for the cigarette which would shorten the journey, ‘but I doubt if Kimberley will see it quite like that.’
‘Oh I don’t know. I really don’t. He did come out, didn’t he? Stopped Carlton. Got you there? Christ, the law’s stupid. And slow. We mess round with statements and meetings and decisions and proof and personalities, while Hell freezes.’ There was a hard edge of bitterness to her voice. ‘And then it takes a drunken bum to do what we couldn’t. It makes me ashamed to be what I am.’ Angry tears were standing in her eyes, never to fall. They drove on in silence.
‘Nice little boy,’ Helen added, apropos of nothing, a very slight undertone of wistfulness in her voice.
‘Yes he is. Wouldn’t you like one?’
Helen was silent, thinking on another tangent. Changing from woman to lawyer.
‘Will he tell the truth, though? I want him to forget it all for his own sake, remember it for a statement,’ was all she said. Then, ‘I want to see what the chemist has to say. Why? Why did he do all this? What festers with him? What’s the background? He’s talking to Collins. Collins says he won’t stop. Good. We need confessions.’
The heater in Helen’s car was always slow. She was right: it was cold, inside and out. Bailey wiped the side window with the back of his hand, feeling as he did so the cold of the moisture and an indefinable sensation of sadness.
She was better frail.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
FRANCES FYFIELD has spent much of her professional life practicing as a criminal lawyer, work which has informed her highly acclaimed novels. She has been the recipient of both the Gold and Silver Crime Writers’ Association Daggers. She is also a regular broadcaster on Radio 4, most recently as the presenter of the series ‘Tales from the Stave.’ She lives in London and in Deal, overlooking the sea, which is her passion.
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ALSO BY FRANCES FYFIELD
A Question of Guilt
Shadows on the Mirror
Trial by Fire
Shadow Play
Perfectly Pure and Good
A Clear Conscience
Without Consent
Blind Date
Staring at the Light
The Nature of the Beast
Seeking Sanctuary
Looking Down
The Playroom
Half Light
Safer Than Houses
Let’s Dance
The Art of Drowning
Blood from Stone
COPYRIGHT
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This book was originally published in 2012 by Little, Brown Book Group.
DEEP SLEEP. Copyright © 1991 by Frances Fyfield. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition FEBRUARY 2014 ISBN: 9780062303967
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