Bent

by Joe Thomas

  Ford is jiggling his knee and smoking furiously and Challenor is calmly taking down his antecedents. Challenor is not engaging with Ford one bit and Ford is not enjoying this.

  ‘Can I speak to you, guv?’ Ford says.

  Challenor looks up from his paperwork and smiles. ‘Nothing would make me happier, Jonathan. It is Jonathan, is it not?’

  ‘I-’

  ‘And let's not forget that you’re still under caution here. I wouldn’t say or do anything, and so on, as you well know.’

  ‘That's all right,’ Ford says. ‘I’m knackered anyway, but don’t get the wrong idea. This is all a take-on, know what I mean? A mickey-take, that's all it is, a leg-pull. Joe Oliva and a few of the boys have been taking the piss out of him, out of Gardiner, that's all it is. He's a ponce, and we’re mucking about, that's all. We wouldn’t have had his money, it was just frighteners. That's all it was, frighteners.’

  Challenor smiles. ‘Frighteners?’

  ‘Yeah, just frighteners, straight up.’

  ‘Either way,’ Challenor says. ‘I’ll show you to your room.’

  *

  Your head thrums. Your head zips. Your head zings. Your head —

  Your head is in a bloody right old state when you wake up. Tojo doesn’t look too clever either, but your very old Italian peasant goat herder friend is up with the chickens, as they say and humming a tune — some bloody opera, you expect — and preparing you a breakfast of goat's milk and chestnut bread.

  You wolf down this breakfast, and then have a second go, and a third, and your host is looking very pleased with himself as you do it.

  What a lad this very old Italian goat herder is, you think.

  Tojo says nothing. Tojo looks mighty confused, you reckon. You smirk, quietly. Booze, eh? What a leveller.

  As you trudge off, eventually let go by your new friend, Tojo says: ‘They should bloody put that in our training, Tanky.’

  ‘What's that, sir?’

  ‘A good old smash-up. Our survival courses never made any mention of the therapeutic qualities of a good smash.’

  You smile. ‘It's an excellent point, sir.’

  ‘I haven’t felt this good in ages,’ Tojo says. 7 mean, I feel rougher than a buzzard's crotch, but my spirits, Tanks, my spirits — I’m soaring.’

  ‘Flying like a buzzard, sir,’ you say.

  ‘Well played, Tanky,, Tojo says. ‘Well played.’

  You walk. Seconds turn to minutes turn to hours turn to days.

  You walk. Sunshine turns to clouds turns to cold turns to rain.

  You walk. You walk. You walk.

  One foot in front of the other —

  The other foot in front of the first —

  The first foot in front of the other.

  Time dissolves.

  Weather changes.

  You sleep when you can.

  And on you walk.

  *

  September the 23rd and Challenor is with Police Constables Peter Warwick Jay and George Mcintosh Laing and they are out and about in Soho and they are looking for Joseph Oliva.

  Challenor has heard that Oliva — in light of the recent arrests, not to mention Wilf Gardiner's treatment of Maria Pedrini - has threatened to firebomb the Phoenix club. Oliva, Challenor has heard, knows full well that Wilf Gardiner is doing his best to cooperate with Challenor, to grass, and help break up Olivas little gang of racketeers and hoodlums.

  That is the word on the street, so Challenor has decided to go out and make this happen, to get the arrest that he wants above all the others.

  At 11 p.m. there is a sighting of Oliva in the Coffee Pot on Brewer Street with two young women, Jean Marie Murray and Jane Anna Ryan. At about 11.15, the party leaves the Coffee Pot and gets into a white Renault and drives off. Challenor, Jay and Laing are in an unmarked police car also on Brewer Street, four cars behind the white Renault.

  The traffic on Brewer Street is heavy, heavier than usual, and there are some repairs being done at the Old Compton Street end, and the cars are barely moving despite the late hour. The pubs are closing, the lock-ins under way and the basement jazz clubs throbbing, and there are young men thronging in suits and shirts and ties, and women with cropped hair and cropped dresses light each other's cigarettes under streetlamps, and the queues for the basement clubs are friendly and the streets buzzing, no doubt buzzing on the cheap Yank amphetamine pills Challenor knows are being flogged by jittery young men in suits to make sure everyone has a good time.

  The barely moving traffic then comes to a standstill as a lorry turns the wrong way down the one-way system on Great Windmill Street, and is consequently forced to reverse back into Brewer Street.

  Challenor sees this and realises that Oliva's car is not moving and won’t be for a good minute or so.

  ‘Let's go,’ Challenor says to Jay and Laing as he spears the passenger door open and runs down Brewer Street.

  Challenor knocks on the passenger-side window and grins. ‘Well if it ain’t fucking Oliva,’ he says.

  Jay and Laing pull open the driver's door and Laing pulls Oliva from the driver's seat.

  Challenor is showing Jean Marie Murray and Jane Anna Ryan his credentials, his warrant cards, and he's opening their doors, and he's grinning, and he's got his palms out to indicate to these lovely young women, these poor slags, he thinks, that they should remain calm and not worry and that everything is under control -

  Oliva is kicking and yelling and not coming at all quietly so Laing shuts him up with his truncheon, doubles him over and buckles his knees and handcuffs him, and gets him rather more easily now over to the unmarked police car and into the back.

  And Challenor brings the two women over to the unmarked police car.

  Jay is searching the white Renault.

  Laing hands Challenor a flick knife. ‘Oliva's,’ he says.

  Challenor nods. ‘Arrest the two girls, too,’ he points at Jean Marie Murray and Jane Anna Ryan. ‘Just in case he calls them as witnesses.’

  Laing nods and does as Challenor says. The girls are too shocked, Challenor thinks, to make any kind of fuss.

  Jay is waving from the white Renault.

  He shouts, ‘Guv, you need to see this!’

  *

  Time stretches.

  Time stretches and time passes. The moments collapse into one long moment, one long reaction —

  To heat, to rain, to pain, to fear —

  You close your eyes from time to time and let your feet guide you, and they do, it seems, they guide you and you walk with your eyes closed and your ears and your skin, they react, and still you walk.

  Weeks pass.

  You are truly feral now. This Apennine range is now your home. Some days you have food; some days you do not. Some nights you sleep; some nights you do not. Some days you see the enemy, pockets of movement near villages; some days you do not.

  One day, as you trudge — as the mud climbs up your trouser leg, as the rain drips down your jacket, down your collar, down your back — you realise you are no longer looking at all. Your eyes are open but you are no longer looking.

  And you walk right into Tojo's back.

  Jesus,’ Tojo says. ‘What's the matter with you, man?’

  You mumble an apology.

  ‘Look,’ Tojo is pointing ahead, ‘look. What do you think?’

  About a hundred yards away are a pair of German soldiers and an Italian woman. They are huddled together in the rain and the mist, stamping their feet and lighting a cigarette, you reckon, from the shape of the huddle they have got themselves into.

  ‘They seen us?’ you ask.

  Tojo's nodding. ‘I reckon they have.’

  They don’t look too bothered, you think. Frankly, you think, you wouldn’t be too bothered either, in this rain, this damp, this cold. Couple of enemies can whistle, frankly, in this bloody weather.

  The two Germans flanked the woman who was clearly labouring under an enormous bundle of laundry. What a day to do the w
ashing, you think, and you chuckle to yourself at the thought.

  You can see that they have seen you.

  ‘They’ve seen us, sir,’ you say.

  Tojo is nodding. ‘We can’t turn back,’ he says. ‘They’ll definitely know we’re not one of them if we do and then we’ll be found in double quick time.’

  You’re nodding now.

  Tojo says, ‘We’ll bluff it, hope our uniforms pass muster.’

  ‘Right oh, ‘you say, and you tighten the grip on your Schmeisser, your finger curled around the trigger —

  And you remember the Italian farmer poking you with his foot, and you realising that he knew straight away that your uniform was very definitely not German issue.

  Could a soldier be more easily fooled?

  Gawd hope so, you think.

  You approach. You can see that the Germans are looking at you and are themselves looking more and more uneasy. This is clear from their manner, which is outright jumpy, and from the way they are shooting glances at each other, but neither is saying anything, and neither is saying anything to the Italian woman who is doing her very best to look down and concentrate on being weighed down by the enormous bundle of laundry.

  You are metres away. The path is wide enough for you to pass —

  If they — or you —yield a little.

  Either side of the path there is a scattering of trees, though no real cover.

  To the right, the land dips down, rolls down a slight slope. To the left, it's level for a dozen yards, then pitches up.

  ‘Go to the right, if they engage,’ Tojo says.

  You nod. Your heart thumps. You’re not scared. You’re bloody hungry, you’re bloody alive, you’re itching, you’re itching and you want them to bloody engage, you know that now, now that you are metres from them.

  You think — if they try to stop us, I’ll cut them down, but I have to fire tight, I cant hose the bullets or the Italian woman — this Italian woman who is desperately trying to pretend she isn’t noticing what is happening — the Italian woman will buy it too.

  Your training has prepared you, your work has prepared you, your life has prepared you. You are detached, cold. You are a bomber pilot raining death on an unseen target; there are no consequences. That is your training.

  You both look like rats drowned in shit. The Germans do not like the look of you. You see their faces, their young, young faces, the same age as you, younger than you, and you can see in their young faces that they know exactly who you are.

  Their faces are young and full, flabby and soft, and their figures are soft, full, flabby, they are base troops you reckon, and you can see that they have absolutely no desire, zero desire, none whatsoever to tangle with a couple of swarthy, bearded, heavily armed men.

  You come abreast, they step slightly, imperceptibly back —

  It's enough. You nod cheerily as you pass them, as if to reassure them there is no trouble here —

  Unless they want it.

  They don’t.

  There's a bend up ahead. You turn it, and greyhound away, sprint thirty yards, duck down behind shrubbery, wait —

  Nothing. They’re not coming after you.

  You’re not surprised. They wouldn’t have stood a chance. They’d be dead before they’d unslung their rifles. Tojo was right: a skirmish, the sound of shooting, two dead bodies —

  You’d be wanted men and this daytime hiking would be all over.

  ‘They’ll never report us,’ Tojo says. ‘They daren’t. What are they going to say? That they let us stroll past without even challenging us?’

  It's a fair point.

  ‘Not a great sign though,’ Tojo says, ‘running into them like this.’

  This is also a fair point. Makes you think, it does, this fair point, this conclusion.

  Makes you bloody well think a little, about what's next, about what to do.

  What are you going to do about it, though, eh?

  *

  Challenor quick-marches up the street back to the white Renault -

  ‘What you got for me?’ he says to Jay, who is grinning, grinning away, gurning, really, he is, like a right happy bugger.

  Jay points. ‘Down there, by the driver's seat, just about where Oliva's right foot would have been.’

  Challenor leans through the back window ‘You smell that, son?’ he asks Jay.

  ‘I do, guv.’

  ‘What do you think that smell might be, then, eh?’

  ‘I’d say turpentine, guv, or gasoline, or a form of it. Turpentine my best bet.’

  ‘I think you’re right. Hang about, let's have a look at it.’

  Challenor leans further in and picks up an oval-shaped bottle, which is about two thirds full with a colourless liquid. Challenor examines the bottle. It is the type of bottle, he realises, that would normally have a screw-top cap. This particular bottle, however, has no cap, no lid. Instead, there is a piece of towelling sticking out from the neck.

  Challenor gives a manly sniff. ‘It certainly does pen, this bottle. And this,’ he gestures with the towel end of the bottle at Police Constable Peter Warwick Jay, ‘is what you might call conclusive evidence of intent to wrongdoing. Wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘I would, guv.’

  ‘Let's have him, then,’ Challenor says. ‘You call this in and get a squad car down and sort it here. I’ll go back to the Mad House with Laing and book the fucker.’

  Jay nods. ‘Will do, guv.’

  Challenor quick-marches back to the unmarked police car -

  Oliva is handcuffed and steaming, writhing about the place, complaining, quite loudly, about the way his evening is turning out.

  ‘You’re fucked, my old beauty,’ Challenor says through the window. He waves the bottle. ‘You are well and truly fucked, my old son.’

  ‘That ain’t mine,’ Oliva says, flatly. ‘You’ve stitched me up.’ Oliva looks at Laing. ‘That weren’t there when you dragged me out the car and you know it. Your guvnor's a plant.’

  Laing says nothing, doesn’t look at Oliva.

  ‘You were going to use this to have a go at Gardiner's place. And these two — ‘ he points at the young women, the girls ‘— they’ll confirm it. Both of them used to work for old Wilf. And I could mention solicitation, couldn’t I, girls?’

  Oliva says nothing, but he gives his two girls the old sideways fisheye, he certainly does not look too pleased that Challenor knows this about his two girls.

  ‘Well?’ Challenor says. ‘You want to own up to your malicious intent now, or have I got to get you into a cell, son?’

  ‘Cell,’ Oliva says. Then: ‘Fact is though, if I don’t burn him, someone else will.’

  Challenor grins. He slaps the roof of the car. He climbs into the passenger seat. He levers himself into the seat, folds his legs into place. ‘You got enough leg room there, Oliva?’

  Oliva says nothing.

  ‘Let's jog on,’ Challenor says to Laing.

  Only one more to go now. Young James Fraser. Oliva's mate -

  Fraser the razor.

  *

  You’re hiding out on Mamma Eliseio's farm near L’Aquila.

  How you got there, you’re not entirely sure.

  What you do know:

  Your malaria has engaged again. You think back to Algiers, when you refused to take your tablets, when you’d beaten the bloody mosquitoes through sheer will, through a triumph of the will, to coin old Adolf's phrase.

  And you’re jaundiced, too. You know this by the thick rust-coloured stream of urine you pissed the day before. And Tojo's feet are so bad he can hardly touch the ground with them.

  You remember being led to a house in Coppito not far away You remember injections. You remember lying on a dusty floor, shivering. You remember the doctor who tended to you, who administered these injections, you remember him performing an operation on a sow, right outside your window. You remember Tojo's feet bathed and dressed by a different doctor. Or a nurse, you’re not sure. You reme
mber practising your pidgin Italian, talking with these doctors, this nurse.

  You have no idea what month it is.

  What you do know:

  Near L’Aquila there had been a prisoner-of-war camp, and when the Italian army surrendered, hundreds of allied POWs had scarpered and were now scattered about nearby, some of them hiding in farms like Mamma Demenica Eliseio's.

  You work out you’ve come well over two hundred miles from where you were dropped in that cool, cool, deep-blue black night some days, weeks, months ago.

  You meet three POWs who are hiding out at Mamma Eliseio's farm.

  What they know:

  The Allied advance has been halted at the River Sangro, and at Cassino, about eighty miles away These POWs have heard that this state of affairs, this stalemate, may last through a cold, hard winter, through all of it. This means, you realise, looking at Tojo, that the lines are static, unmoving, and this will make it extremely hard to cross. You’d both been hoping for fluid lines.

  You begin to think about leaving.

  ‘No, no, ‘Mamma says. ‘You stay. You stay with us.’

  This seems like a very good idea indeed. You’re malaria-heavy and Tojo is crippled by his blistered feet.

  You hand over some money and Mamma arranges a couple of Italian suits for you. You look good. You’re shivering, but you look good. And you look local.

  And you settle in. You settle in for a few weeks, you keep your heads down, you help on the farm, and the war suddenly feels a long way away, and you watch as Mamma's twenty-one-year-old son Mimino becomes a man when he kills a pig with a thin blade.

  And gawd knows they know how to use this slaughtered pig!

  The bristles for brushes, the blood for black sausage, the nails and bones for soup, the intestines for sausage skins —

  But the chops and wine for you, for all of you. More and more chops and wine —

  And soon, it is Christmas. It is cold, bitterly cold, and it is Christmas.

  Here you are in Italy, fifty-odd miles north-north east of Rome, on Mamma Eliseio's farm at the southern end of the Apennine mountains, and here you are and it's bloody Christmas, and you really have no idea how that has happened.