Death Minus Zero – Complete Novel

                                                                            . . . . . . . . . . chapter 1              

When the politicos hit the transport Norman got out of there.

                Some moments passed after the explosion when he didn’t do anything.  Maybe it took a minute for the men in masks to come in and get the Eye-talian out, whatever they called him.  Isaac, something like that.  Two of them led the guy to a motorbike, gave him a crash helmet and he was on the pillion and away.

                Then there was just Norman and the black guy.  Both of them sitting there like old age fucking pensioners on a bench.  Norman couldn’t think later which of them moved first, but suddenly they were both on their feet and heading for the gap where the cab of the transport used to be.

                Jesus, what a mess.  The cab, the guys who were driving, the whole front section of the transport had gone.  You can say what you like about the politicos but they don’t do things by halves.  Norman knew about guns, hand guns, rifles, things you might call weapons.  But these guys were using artillery.  What did they use to do that?  Mortar bomb, some kind of rocket launcher?

                Norman didn’t know the answer, only knew he was glad the guy who pulled the trigger actually hit the target.  If he’d hit the transport a yard and a half further back Norman would’ve disappeared.

                The lead escort car had been hit as well, with something smaller, though, as it hadn’t actually disintegrated like the cab of the transport.  There was an acrid smell in the air and something that made your eyes smart, though there were no actual fires.  One of the filth from the rear escort car was crawling about on the road, and behind him was another one, limping but trying to help his mate.  They didn’t look at all interested in Norman or the brother.

                Most of the masked politicos had gone already.  Norman caught a glimpse of the last of them closing the back doors of a van.  They had a gun in there big enough to kill Jesus.  Blow Him to Kingdom come.

                There was the road and there were fields, open country.  A tall chain link fence alongside the road.  The brother was already heading towards it.  If you’re gonna go, go, Norman said to himself.  Any way you like, but move.

                The alternative is to stay banged up for the rest of your life.  The governor had told him that’s what it had come to.  “We’re never going to let you out, Norman.  Even when you’re old and grey.  The only way out for you is in a coffin.”  Norman ran faster than he’d ever run before.  That ‘old and grey’ bit really put the shits up him.  If this was his chance, well, take it man.  Let’s show this brother what running is all about.

                He hit the fence at a hundred miles an hour, taking off and up from about six feet back.  The black guy was only a yard ahead of him now.  Norman clambered up behind him and they both got to the top at the same time, slowing down a little to get past the barbs.  The brother got his trousers caught there and had to leave a piece of them behind.  Norman didn’t get anything caught.  He was flying.

                Crash landed and cracked one of his toes.  An instant later the brother was beside him, both of them on all fours.  Like the beginning of a race at the Olympics, sprinters waiting for the gun.  The filth who was still on his feet was coming up behind them now, but a long way off.  Neither Norman nor the black waited for the gun.  They were off out of those starting blocks like a simultaneous ejaculation at an adolescents gang wank.

                Heading for the horizon.  Norman could see the brother on his right, sticking close.  Norman veered slightly to the left and the brother stayed with him.  He veered further left and still the brother was with him.  Jesus, he thought, the daft bastard’s following me.

                One thing Norman knew for certain.  The brother was not gonna get far.  Even the dimmest cop in the country would spot him a mile off.  The guy was six foot seven, maybe taller, slim, nothing to him but he was really high off the ground.  He had that flat top haircut, tribal scars on his face.  Wherever he ran the cops would pick him up before nightfall.  And he was following Norman.  Jesus, this guy’s gotta be unloaded.

                Norman spurted ahead and veered to the right, try to shake him that way, but still the guy followed him, like he couldn’t think for himself.  Norman just stopped running, let the brother go wherever he would go, then took off himself in another direction.  The filth was still behind them, but he followed the brother, leaving Norman alone on the map.  Every time he looked around the brother and the filth were further away, over to his right.  Eventually he looked around and there was no one behind him at all.  No one in front of him.  He couldn’t hear anything either, couldn’t smell anything except fresh air. 

                Norman just kept going.  He kept going till nightfall, only stopping to lay still when one of the helicopters came overhead.  When it got dark he stopped for a while in a ditch, get some of his breath back.  Then he carried on.  He had to be well clear by morning, out of the county.  The dogs would be out.  The man hunt would be on.

 

*

 

If he knew something about the stars Norman would have been able to work out where he was.  But they were just pretty.  He had the feeling he’d been travelling south, which was not ideal, because it meant he’d be travelling back towards the prison and have to pass the moor again to go north.  He knew enough though to find a fixed point in the sky and keep going in the same general direction he’d travelled already.  Parts of the moor turned to bog from time to time, and he had to make detours, still keeping his eyes on that one point in the heavens. 

                At least it was warm.  Make a break in the winter and trudge through snow, you’d never make it.  Now though, in June glorious June, with the whole summer coming up round every corner, shit, it couldn’t have been better if he’d planned it.

                Another two hours brought him to a road, and shortly after that a little outpost called Poundsgate.  Should be able to find some wheels here.  Norman was wary, though.  Lot of screws lived in these villages on the edge of the moor.  He left the village behind and followed signs toward Widecombe.  But less than a mile down the road he heard the sound of a car approaching.  Norman headed for the ditch, but stopped before he got there.  The sound was obviously not a police car.  More like one of those old bangers, what they call them?  Vintage cars.  Jesus, at this time?  Must be three o clock in the morning.

                Norman laid himself down in the middle of the road.  Stretched out full length, his head on his arm so he could see the car approach when it came into view.  Norman playing dead or injured, thinking whoever it is in the car, he probably smokes.  Norman hoping the guy has plenty of cigarettes and maybe half a bottle of good scotch in the glove compartment.  With a bit of luck he’d have a daughter too, or a new wife, then it’d be party time.

                The car’s beam came over the brow of the hill, then the lights themselves hit the straight and Norman felt himself illuminated, bathed in light.  It was like a play they’d done one Christmas at school about a million years ago.  Only then it was shepherds.  Norman had been the one who was supposed to shine the light on the shepherds as soon as the angel began singing, but he shone it on Annie Bristol instead, the girl who was playing the Virgin Mary.  That would have been all right most times, except that this time Annie Bristol wasn’t on the stage.  She was in the girls changing room in her knickers and vest, and when the light hit her she set up a scream which drowned out the angel and evacuated the audience because they thought the place was on fire.

                But this was now, and it was a game of chicken.  Norman was stretched out on the road and the car was heading towards him.  Maybe the guy behind the wheel was blind and couldn’t see him, didn’t seem to be slowing down.  Norman was on the point of rolling over to the side of the road when he heard the car change down.  One, two little pumps on the break, and then it changed down again and came to a stop about fifteen feet away, the engine idling.

                First thing the guy did was to kill the beam, then he switched off the engine.  Norman didn’t move a muscle, just listened to the silence.  As soon as the engine died the quiet rushed into all the spaces of the night.  As the car cooled down there was the odd creak or crack as metal parts contracted, but none of these sounds were anything like the car door being opened.

                Norman counted seconds like a gym teacher had once taught him, putting an AND between each number. . . one and two and three and. . . until he counted a full sixty seconds.  Then he started again.  The guy sat behind the wheel trying to make a decision for a full two and a half minutes before he opened the door and got out of the car.  Norman watched his shoes walking along the road towards him, brown brogues with some kind of patterning, little holes punched in the leather and those big floppy tongues.  The only other thing Norman could make out was the bottom of the guy’s trousers.  Grey cotton, probably a suit.  Norman guessed the guy was old.  There was something uncertain about his step, which might have meant that he was old, or it could be he was young and frightened.

                He stopped about a yard away, shifting on his feet and spoke with a northern accent, could even have been Scottish, said, “Are you all right?”

                Norman closed his eyes but didn’t move or reply.  He needed the guy to come just one step closer, then he’d have him.  The guy said, “What’s the matter?  Can you hear me?”  He leant forward but still didn’t move his feet.  Norman waited.  He’d waited seven years behind the tall walls, what was a few seconds more?

                When the guy straightened and came over to him, actually touched him on the shoulder, Norman took hold of both his ankles and yanked him over on his back.  The guy squealed as he went over, and then squealed again as his head cracked on the road.  He squirmed a little, but not with enough conviction to stop Norman sitting astride him, pinning his arms to the ground, and giving him a couple of good cracks on the nose.  “Help,” he said.

                Help!  Jesus, Norman looked around, like the guy was expecting the US Cavalry to come down the road.  “We’re on a moor,” he said.  “It’s the middle of the night.  Where you gonna get help?”

                Norman looked down at him.  Yeah, he was old.  Sixty, maybe sixty five.  His eyes staring up at Norman, real surprised looking little eyes, as if he’d been attacked by the devil.  “I want your clothes,” Norman told him.  “I want your car.  That’s all.  I’m not gonna hurt you.”

                The guy didn’t say anything.

                “You listening to me?” Norman asked, slapping him across the face.

                This time the guy nodded.  Whimpered a little.

                “We gonna exchange clothes.  OK?”

                “Yes,” the guy said.

                “You drive a hard bargain,” Norman told him.  He pulled the old guy up by his shoulders, careful not to make too much of a mess of the suit.  The guy’s nose was bleeding a little.  A trickle running down by the side of his mouth and heading for the neck of his shirt.  Norman wiped it clean with his hand.  “Don’t wanna mess that nice shirt up, now do we?” he said.  He managed to get the guy to his feet, but as soon as he let go of him the guy started tottering around and ended up back on his butt again in the middle of the road.

                “What’s wrong with you, man,” said Norman.  You gonna ruin the fucking suit before I even get it on.”

                He stood the guy up again and pulled him over to the car, propped him against the bonnet.  “Take your clothes off,” he told him.  Jacket, pants, the whole lot.  Just leave them on the car.”  Norman pulled his own clothes off and threw them on the ground.  He put his shank on the bonnet of the car.  He stood in his underpants and vest and waited for the guy to get a move on.  But the guy’d only managed to get one arm out of his jacket.  “Jesus,” Norman told him, “we ain’t actually got all night.”

                He took the guy’s jacket off and unbuttoned his shirt, let his trousers fall down around his ankles.  Then he put the guy’s clothes on.  Everything several sizes too big, but felt a whole lot better than prison clobber.  He had to roll up the waistband of the trousers, and they were still too long.  He left the guy sitting on the road in his undies while he put on the shirt, knotted the tie, and fitted the jacket.  The sleeves were three inches too long, so he turned them up.  He picked up the shank and tucked it away in the top pocket of the jacket.  Finally he sat down next to the old guy and put on the socks and the brown brogues.  When he stood again, he said, “Trouble with guy’s like you, you don’t have no taste.  I had a choice of anything else I’d put all this stuff in the ditch.”

                The shirt, the jacket, everything smelled of the old guy.  The kind of smell you wouldn’t find anywhere, ’cause you’d never go anywhere where people smelled like that.  You knew anyone who smelled like that you’d tell them to get lost.

                He helped the guy into the discarded prison clothes with great difficulty.  The guy didn’t say anything but he was shaking all the time, couldn’t seem to keep anything still.  His hands and legs were shaking, his head nodding away like a puppet.  “The fuck’s wrong with you?” Norman asked him.

                He got the guy back on his feet again and dragged him over to the ditch.  “Lay down there,” he said.  “And don’t even think about moving.”  The guy was flat out on his belly, his face in the dirt.  Norman went looking for a stone, something heavy.  He found a big one, could hardly lift it, and brought it back.  He dropped it on the guy’s head.  Something cracked, Norman didn’t know if it was the stone or the guy’s head.  He lifted the stone again, high as he could, and threw it at the guy’s head one more time.  The stone hit the head and bounced away along the bottom of the ditch, rolled out of sight.  The guy’s face was half buried in the boggy ground now.  His left leg was doing a kind of dance on its own.  The other leg was completely still.

                “What do you think about that?” Norman asked him.

                But the guy wasn’t saying.  Never breathed a word.

                “They find you,” Norman told him.  “They’ll think you’re me.  At least for a while.  Till they get an I.D.  By the time they find out who you really are I’ll be long gone.”

                He walked over to the car and got in the driver’s seat.  Leaned over and opened the glove compartment to see if there was a bottle.  There was no bottle.  A pair of gloves though and a big bag of sweets.  Those boiled ones, all different colours, but they all taste the same. 

                Norman shook his head.  He felt in the jacket pockets for a pack of cigarettes, but only came up with a small bar of chocolate.  He threw it out the window.  He got out of the car again and walked back to the ditch, said to the guy down there, “You eat this kind of shit, man, you just end up with bad teeth.”

                But the guy didn’t say fuck.  Never moved a muscle.

 

 

 

. . . . . . . . . . chapter 2

“You should get a dog,” Geordie said.

                “I shouldn’t get a dog,” Sam Turner said.  “I’ve got enough on my plate with your dog.  I spend half my life taking your dog for walks so he can do his pee-pees. I feed your dog at least as many times as you feed him.  I wake up in the morning and find your dog sleeping in my flat, while you’re upstairs in your flat without a dog.  So tell me, for why do I need a dog?  I ain’t got a dog, that’s true, but it seems equally true to me that if I got a dog of my very own I’d have two dogs instead of the one I haven’t got at the moment but that lives with me.”

                “It would be company for you,” Geordie said.  “And if you got a big dog instead of a small dog like Barney, I don’t know all the names of dogs, but maybe an Alsatian, or one of those others, what’re they called?  Really fierce fuckers?”

                “Canine psychopaths?”

                “No.  Like a bulldog, but that’s not it.”

                “A pit bull?”

                “Yeah, pit bull terrier, one of those.  Then you could train it like a guard dog or a police dog, and then you can get them to smell things, like if you’re looking for a guy who’s hiding out and you don’t know where he is. What you do is, you give the dog something belongs to the guy, like an old jacket, or something he’s worn, and then the dog starts sniffing along the street and leads you straight to the guy.”  Geordie hobbled across Sam’s sitting room with only one cross trainer on, retrieved his missing shoe from under the sofa and sat on the floor to put it on.  “I’ve seen it in the movies.  S’real cool.”

                “Why’d you think I need a blood hound?”

                “Who said anything about that?” Geordie asked.  “I’m talking about normal dogs here, like what you really like.  I’m up in my room at night minding my own business playing some music or reading a book or something and when the music stops I can hear this droning coming from down here, so I open the door to find out what it is.  You know what it is?”

                “Could be a model aeroplane,” said Sam.  “Or a model submarine, anything that drones could produce a sound like that.”  Sam fingered his chin, the bristles there, and found himself thinking about his face.  He was forty nine years old now and looked all of those years plus a few more.  He had started out as a young man with boyish good looks, fine features that had hung around until he was well into his thirties.  But the last decade had visited his face with a vengeance.

                “It’s you,” said Geordie, finishing lacing up his shoe and springing to his feet to check it.  “It’s you sitting down here talking to Barney.  God alone knows what you’re talking about, because, like I say, by the time it gets to my room it’s just a drone.  But it sure goes on a long time, like you’ve really got a lot to say to him.  And Barney, being like I’ve brought him up to be polite and have good manners and that, he doesn’t interrupt, he just sits there and listens to whatever kind of drivel people have to say to him.” 

                “That’s how he is,” said Sam.  “The dark silent type.  He doesn’t say much himself, but he files it all away in his doggie brain, and he thinks about it.  One day he’ll come out with a real gem.”

                “I’m not talking about Barney, here,” said Geordie.  “I know Barney’s all right.  What I’m talking about is someone who hardly ever goes out of the house any more, and who spends almost all his spare time talking to somebody else’s dog.  I’m talking about somebody who’s supposed to be a private detective, living an exciting life of adventure and mayhem and anarchy and stuff like that, but who actually doesn’t do nothing but talk to dogs that can’t actually understand what he’s talking about.”

                “Tell me if I’m wrong, Geordie,” Sam said.  “But I get the feeling you’re upset with me.  Could this actually be the case?”

                “Why?  Because I think you should get a dog?  You’re paranormal.”

                “Noid,” said Sam.

                “Noidnormal?”

                “Paranoid,” said Sam.  “And I’m not.  I just don’t want another fuckin dog in the house.”   Sometimes people said he looked like Gene Hackman.  Well, to be honest a couple of women had said that, but then one of them had gone on to say he looked like Gene Hackman after Gene Hackman had fallen off a cliff and been involved in major surgery.  The other woman, after Sam had got through explaining to her who Gene Hackman was, said the resemblance was astonishing, she’d just not noticed it until Sam pointed it out.  She also said that Gene Hackman, if indeed it was Gene Hackman she was thinking about, had more hair than Sam.

                If his face was shot, his main torso had managed to stay fairly trim.  He kept himself fit, worked out in the gym a couple of times a week, but two days ago the doctor had told him  that he should stop smoking.  Sams blood pressure was too high.  Nothing to worry about, yet, but he should do whatever he could to get it down.  That’s what he had been talking to Barney about the last couple of evenings.  His blood pressure.  Stopping smoking. Well, who else was there to tell?

                “I know something’s wrong with you,” Geordie said.  “You’re not so much fun.  You don’t even play your tapes anymore.  Look at you, you didn’t even get shaved the last couple a days.”

                Geordie had the ability to drag up out of himself the most despairing look imaginable, and he did this now, at the end of his little speech.  He showed Sam two empty palms and put on that look which was designed to get a compassionate response, and never failed.

                Sam began to melt.  “OK,” he said.  “I’ve been a bit depressed.”  He told Geordie what the doctor said about his blood pressure and stopping smoking.

                “Well, at least you know about it,” Geordie said.  “Like you’ve caught it in time.  You just stop smoking and you’ll be all right.”

                “Uh-uh,” Sam said.

                “You don’t think it’s that simple?”

                “Maybe.”

                “You mean there’s something else?”

                “Hell, I don’t know,” Sam said.  “You gotta start worrying when your body fails.  You start coming unglued, things dropping off.  Christ, I need to understand it.”

                Geordie didn’t reply immediately.  He knelt down on the carpet and scooped Barney up into his lap.  He held the two parts of the dog’s jaw together, so Barney had to struggle to get free.  Sam was not sure of Geordie’s age, but there seemed to be some kind of consensus that he was now eighteen years old.  After a period in various children’s homes in the North East, Geordie had been homeless, hanging around various doorways in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds.  When he arrived in York Sam befriended him, and managed to get him installed in a flat of his own.   Geordie also had a job.  He was an Assistant Trainee Private Investigator in the Sam Turner – Investigations Detective agency.  He looked at Sam from across the room, released Barney’s jaw and let the dog back onto the carpet.  “When did you last have a screw?” he asked Sam.

                Sam laughed, got out of his chair and filled the kettle with water.  “Thank you, Mister Freud,” he said as he plugged the kettle into the mains.  “But I don’t think that’s gonna solve my problems.  In fact it’d probably give me more.”

                “No, it’d cure you,” Geordie said.  “I’ve seen you before, when you’re in love, or even when you’re not in love, but somebody you fancy fancies you as well, and you turn into a different person.  It’s true, Sam.”

                “You know,” said Sam.  “People like you put back the cause of female emancipation a hundred years.  Like, what you’re saying here is that if I get a dog or a woman I’ll be cured.  Correct me if I’m wrong, Geordie.  But that is what you’re saying?”

                “You should start going to the Singles Club again.”

                “Geordie,” Sam said.  “Give me a break.  I’m trying to rethink myself right now.  A woman wouldn’t fit into the picture.  Christ, I’m still reassessing my image since I realised all the women I attract are menopausal.  I don’t want more of that.”

                “Menopausal?  What’s that.”

                “It’s one of my problems,” Sam said.  “Nothing for you to worry about.”

                “Like an old woman?  Is that what it means?  Come on, Sam.  I’m trying to learn new words.”

                “Yeah,” said Sam.  “Not old.  Oldish.  Someone who’s finished with child bearing.”

                “What’s wrong with that?  A guy your age doesn’t want a young woman.  You could get really unlucky and end up marrying one of those high pitched voices.”

                Sam placed two mugs on the counter and poured a jot of milk into each.  “Listen,” he said, “if a woman happens, that’s OK.  I wouldn’t say no.  But I’m not gonna push anything at the moment.  Thanks for your concern.  It’s good to know you care.  But don’t push it anymore, not tonight, anyway.  If I want any shit out of you I’ll squeeze your head.  Savvy?”

                Geordie came over to him and reached for the tea pot.  “Friends at last,” he said.

 

               

. . . . . . . . . . chapter 3

It wasn’t a vintage car, it was just an old banger Renault 4, must be ten years if it’s a day.  Shit, when it was new it wasn’t much.  Now it was a liability with only one speed, like slow.  Not even a radio.  And it smelled like the old guy, the old guy’s clothes.  Have to get rid of it quick, find something with a bit more class.

                Norman headed for Exeter, get a new car there before going on up to Bristol, then change again before heading north.  Keep changing.  Make sure if they were following him they couldn’t follow him far.

                Shit, that carnival going on at the transport, the politicos playing at target practice. the authorities wouldn’t know who was alive and who was dead.  Might be days before they sorted out all the bits of bodies.  By that time he could be miles away.  If Norman had his way he’d be hundreds of miles away.

                When they finally found out he was missing they’d expect he’d gone back to London, start hitting his old haunts.  But Norman had no intention of going anywhere near the Smoke.  Once he ended up there they’d pick him up within hours.  Norman wasn’t gonna be stupid this time.  He was going somewhere nobody knew him.  Somewhere he didn’t even know himself.

                On the outskirts of Exeter he pulled into a side street and took stock.  The old guy’s wallet was stuffed with credit cards and a hundred and forty pounds in tenners.  There was a driving license in there as well, in the name of George Sketch, photographs, a library membership card for Carlisle Library, in fact a whole new identity kit.  It wouldn’t last for long, once they found George’s body and identified it the credit cards would be useless, but for the time being it was a ticket to ride.  Should he find himself anywhere near Carlisle, which he hoped wouldn’t ever happen, shit, he could get something to read.

                In the boot was a small bag – must be George Sketch was going on holiday or something – full of almost unbelievable clothes.  That smell again.  Jesus, didn’t the guy wash?  Norman didn’t want any of these clothes.  The size was wrong, but even if the size had been right they would still have been shit.  He found a wire coat hanger which would certainly come in useful, and a wrench, stuffed both of them into the pocket of his new jacket.

                Norman took the gloves and the car keys, took George Sketch’s little bag after he’d emptied the contents into the boot, locked the car and walked away from it.  Didn’t even look back, didn’t ever want to see it again.

                Dawn found him in the middle of a housing estate, still on the way into Exeter.  All the curtains drawn, everybody sleeping away in their cozy little beds, dreaming about all the sex and violence they ever wanted.  Nice little black BMW, probably souped up, parked outside its garage, with real leather upholstery inside, teak dashboard, radio and stereo tape deck there too, with a little cabinet full of tapes.  Looked promising.

                Norman unwound the coat hanger he’d taken from the Renault and pushed it down the side of the drivers window, felt around for about a minute until he located the lock mechanism.  A sharp pull on the hanger, then, while he held the door catch, and he was inside.

                Oh, nice smell, all that leather to breath in.  He used the wrench to smash the plastic around the steering column and hot wired the beast.  Before starting it he pushed it out into the road.  Didn’t want the sound of the engine to wake the owner, have him legging it down the road after his favourite car, reporting it to the police before Norman got off the estate.

                The engine sounded like the growl of a lion.  Norman put it in gear and headed back the way he’d come, out to the M5 which would take him all the way to Bristol.  Exeter wasn’t gonna be worth a visit, too close to the scene.  The place would be crawling with cops. 

                The tapes were a mixed bag, but he found one of Tina Turner, picture of her on the front, all legs.  And inside, Jesus, picture of her wearing hardly nothing at all.  He put that picture on the dashboard so he could see it good while he was driving, and he slipped the tape into the system and switched it up real loud.  He felt good for several minutes after that, before he remembered he hadn’t eaten in a long time.  Then he felt crap, aware of a big hole in his stomach.

                He had the money and the credit cards, could easily stop at the first service station, get a fucking big big breakfast, and have something to eat and drink after it.  Get a carrier bag and fill it with sandwiches, enough to last him for a week.

                But he wouldn’t do it.  They’d be sure to have police in all them places.  Christ, they see him walk into a cafeteria in a suit fifteen sizes too big for him, Mister Plod would have him in the back of a van in two minutes flat.

                Norman checked the petrol gauge and then sang along with Tina for a few minutes.  Simply the Best. . .  Could just imagine putting your hand up that little bead dress of hers.  Wouldn’t have to go very far before you lost it.  Norman did a smile and settled back in the leather bucket seat.  A full tank, and just feel the power every time you touch the accelerator.  Who needs food?

                Well, yeah, you can tell yourself you don’t need food, but your stomach doesn’t listen.  Just keeps on rumbling away there.  Your mouth goes dry.  You feel like shit.  Especially now while you’re sailing past a service station at ninety miles an hour. Slow down man, you wanna get picked up for speeding?  Sailing past a service station so close you can smell the bacon and eggs.  Double bacon and eggs.  Sausages.  Coffee in one of those glass jugs.  Toast and fried bread, two slices of that.  Tomatoes.  Little side order of mushrooms.  Beer on the side.  A pack of cigarettes.  Little waitresses looking like Tina, butts sticking out in those tiny black skirts.

                Christ, it’s turning into a torture chamber.

                One cigarette would solve the hunger.  But he couldn’t afford to take the chance of buying any.  Maybe pick up a hitch hiker?  Ask him if he smokes before you let him get in the car.  The guy doesn’t smoke he can wait for another ride.  What do you think this is, man, a fucking bus service?

                Only nobody was hitching.

 

*

 

By the time he got to Bristol the morning traffic was building up.  Lots of cops around.  Best to change the car quickly and get out of here.  Don’t get caught on the street.  He followed road signs to a multi-storey car park and drove straight up to the top level.  A couple of wiggers were trying to break into a Vauxhall Astra, and when Norman drove past they left it alone and made out they were taking a morning stroll.  Shit, fifteen years old, maybe less.  But the youngest one was about Norman’s size.  Black jeans, sweatshirt, something you could walk in the street with.

                Norman drove around the top level again and slowed down to drive alongside the wiggers.  He hit the window switch and leaned his elbow on the door.  “Mornin’ Gents,” he said.  One of the kids was ready to run, the eldest one, but the younger one stayed cool.

                “Mornin’,” he said, glancing over at Norman.  “You lost something?”

                “Might have found something you want,” Norman told him.

                The kid looked straight ahead, but he was interested.  “What’s that?” he said.

                “These wheels,” Norman said.  “Real fast, and nobody round here’s looking for them.”  He pulled into a parking space, killed the engine and left the car in gear.

                The kid stopped, walked alongside the car and glanced at Norman again.  His eyes went past Norman and took in the broken steering column.  “Jeez,” he said, “did you wire that?”

                Norman put his smile on.  Didn’t say anything.  Just let the kid appreciate his work.  “How’d you get into it?” the other kid said.  “The lock’s still sound.”

                “Course the lock’s still sound.  You punch the lock out, you might as well put a sign in the windscreen:  This is a fucking hot car.  Anyway, it spoils the look of the thing.  You wanna drive a car round, or you wanna drive a wreck?”

                “How’d you do that?” the youngest wigger said.  “How’d you get the door open?” 

                Norman looked into his eyes, his fresh face.  Never had a shave in his life.  Well,  he thought, kid’s’ve got to learn somewhere.  They won’t learn nothing useful in school, nothing they can actually use in real life.  Might be years before they go to prison and start learning real skills.  “I could show you that one,” he said.  “Maybe one or two other things.  But we’d have to make a deal.”

                “What’s that?” the youngest kid asked.

                “I don’t wanna show on the street,” Norman said.  “But I need something to eat.  Also I need some real clothes, get out of this shit I’m wearing.  You get me some food and give me your clothes, I give you a few lessons on how to open a car properly, and you get to keep this one with the radio and the stereo.  Everything ‘cept the Tina Turner tape.”

                “You’re not having my clothes,” the kid said, backing off a little.

                “Shit, I’ll give you the money,” Norman said, taking the old guy’s wallet out and fanning the tenners.  “You can go down to the shop and get new ones.”

                The eldest kid said, “You give us the money, we can buy you sandwiches and clothes.”

                Norman felt like kicking the shit out of him.  “Hey,” he said, “you think I’m from the moon, or what?  I give you money and you’ve spent it before I’ve put my wallet away.”   He flipped the wallet closed and put it back in his pocket.  “Fuck you,” he said.  “I’ll find someone wants to do business.  Someone can understand a good deal when it’s staring them in the face.”  He started the car and put it into reverse.

                “Hang on,” the youngest wigger said.  “I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it.  How much money you gonna give me for the clothes?”

                “A hundred,” Norman said.  “For the jeans, the sweatshirt, the shoes if they fit.  I don’t want the cap or the jacket.”

                “Two hundred.”

                “I’ll go a hundred and twenty,” Norman told him.  “That’s all I’ve got.  And a credit card.  You can have one credit card.”

                The kid scratched his chin.  “OK,” he said.  “Let’s do it.”

                Norman switched the engine off again.  Got the wallet out and held up two tenners.  “Get in,” he said to the youngest kid, and waited until the kid walked around the car and got in the back seat.  To the other one Norman said, “You get the food.  I want pies with meat, meat sandwiches, a six pack of beers.  As much as you can get for twenty.  You don’t come back I’ll eat your friend.”

                The kid smiled as though he thought Norman had made a joke, took the two tenners and went for the sandwiches.

                Norman told the youngest kid to get his clothes off.  He undressed himself, stripping back down to his prison underwear, passing old George Sketch’s clothes back to the kid.  When they’d finished the wigger was dressed in the old guy’s pants, shirt and jacket, even the brogues.  Norman was sporting a sweatshirt which had Orlando Magic emblazoned on the front, black jeans, and a pair of Nike shoes.  Feeling good, cruising around the car with a swagger he’d misplaced somewhere seven years ago, and was only now beginning to find again.  The shorn wigger stayed in the car, saying if anybody saw him in this shit he’d kill himself.

                When the other wigger returned with the food Norman ate a meat pie and swigged off a can of cold Bud.  The youngest kid asked for his money, and Norman smiled and gave it to him.  “Now I’m gonna show you how to open a car properly,” he said.

                He led them over to a Scorpio Auto on the other side of the car park.  Blue job with black leather inside.  Norman checked through the window to make sure there was some sound equipment inside.  Using his bent coat hanger he had the thing open in about ninety seconds.

                “How do you do that?” the youngest wigger asked.

                Norman locked the car again and fitted his wire hook down inside the window frame.  He fiddled for a moment, said, “Now you try.”

                The youngest wigger took hold of the coat hanger and jiggled it about.

                “Just about there,” Norman said.  “You feel the little lever inside?  Don’t pull so hard.  That’s right, you can feel it moving.”

                “Yeah.  I got it,” the kid said.

                “OK,” Norman told him.  “Push the handle in and pull it up slowly.”

                The door of the Scorpio opened.  “Easier than a can of sardines,” Norman said.  He told the eldest kid to get his bag from the BMW.  When he brought it Norman shoved it in the back of the Scorpio.  “And the Tina Turner tape,” he said.

                “I’ve got something else to teach you,” he said to the youngest wigger.

                “What’s that?”  The kid was eager to learn everything this character could show him.

                “Put your back here,” Norman said, pointing to the door of a VW Camper.  “And hold the door handle with both hands.”

                The kid did as he was told.

                Norman came over and stood in front of him.  “You got hold of it with both hands?” Norman asked.

                The kid nodded and Norman butted him hard in the face.  The little wigger dropped like a stone.  His friend ran off down the car park, putting about seventy yards between himself and Norman.  “You’re a fast learner,” Norman told him.  The little wigger was sitting on the concrete shaking his head from side to side. 

                “That’s the best lesson you’ve had today,” Norman told him, retrieving his hundred and twenty pounds from the kid’s pocket.  “Don’t forget it.”

                Norman left him there, got behind the wheel of the Scorpio and wired it to go.  He waved to the elder wigger as he drove on past, slammed Tina into the tape deck, and stuck a chicken sandwich into his mouth. 

                Bristol was humming.  Cars and pedestrians everywhere.  The shops buzzing so you could almost hear all the cash flowing into their tills.  Plenty of cops as well, some of them in pairs, looking for escaped convicts.  They look at a Scorpio and they think businessman or executive or something, never dreaming that what they’re after is behind the wheel.  Norman just kept going, remembering everything anyone had ever told him about the Highway Code.  Stopped at all the red lights, even slowed down a couple of times when there were no lights showing, let a woman with a dog go across the road.  Shit, he could’ve been a driving instructor, didn’t hit the horn even one time.  Twenty minutes later he was back on the M5 heading towards Birmingham.

                Those kids learned pretty good, he reckoned.  If he’d been born on the other side of the tracks Norman thought he could have been a school teacher.  He’d have been a much better teacher than any of the teachers who taught him.  The kids would respect him for a start, not run rings around him like they did most teachers these days.  First thing, first time he walked into the class room he’d tell them, OK motherfuckers, you might be thinking you got a ticket to ride, but while I’m standing up here and you lot are sitting at your little desks, only one thing’s gonna happen.  I’m gonna spout and you lot are gonna shut the fuck up and listen.

                He reached for the inset of the Tina tape and stuck her picture up on the dashboard.  Maybe he’d get himself one like her in Birmingham.  He shook his head.  Maybe not.  In Birmingham he’d change cars again and head on out for Manchester.  Get one there instead.

 

*

 

He had to take stock, try to think the thing through.  Maybe make some kind of plan.  The first day after the riot in the prison Norman and two other so called ringleaders had been taken to a transport.  The Eye-talian Norman had never seen in his life before.  Either they’d had him banged up in solitary, or he’d not been there long.  The black brother he’d seen before, in fact he’d followed him for a while during the riot.  Just after it started.  The screws’d got out immediately, kitted out the mufti-squad, started bolstering up no man’s land between the buffer and the perimeter fence, bringing filth in from the neighbouring towns.  The way it looked that first day it wouldn’t be long before they brought the army in.

                Guys were already up on the roof, throwing slates at anything that moved, making banners out of sheets and somebody’s blood.  Probably one of the nonces they kept wrapped up in cotton wool.  Serve the bastard right.  But it just went to show, Norman thought, the worst kind of shit can come in handy in an emergency.  Use the fuckers as blood donors.  Everybody running around like it was a carnival.  Least that’s what it looked like.  The library and two kitchens were on fire, smoke everywhere so you could hardly breath.

                He followed three black guys who’d made a crowbar out of some piping and looked like they might have a plan.  They made for the admin office which was swarming with cons, must’ve been about six fires going in there.  Filing cabinets were overturned, records being heaped on the flames.  Guys were smashing desks, ripping calendars and charts off the walls.  Anything wasn’t smashed already they would smash it.  The black guys didn’t stop there, but went through another door into a little pantry the screws used to make tea and coffee.  Everything in the pantry had already been smashed.

                There they started levering the bars off the window.  That’s where he had seen the brother.  The one in the transport.  Looked like he could’ve just bit through the bars, but he didn’t, he levered them out of the stone and mortar like they were daffodil stems.  Every time one of the bars came out the other two brothers cheered and said something in that language they use.  Norman couldn’t understand a word of it.  He just felt happy for them.

                When the bars were all out the brothers went through the window and Norman followed, keeping some distance in case they turned on him.  They seemed to know the lay of the land, and as long as they knew that he was quite happy to follow.  In a little alley now, high walls on both sides.  The brothers were running along it and turning a corner at the end, heading towards the sounds of shouting and something exploding.  When he got to the corner the blacks had disappeared. 

                Still from inside the alley Norman could see the buffer fence, a long way off, but there it was.  Cons were running towards it from all directions, slates and bits of drain pipe coming down from the revellers on the roof, sirens screaming like it was a war.  Some of the cons were climbing over the buffer fence and being chased by screws on the other side, having their heads opened with batons.  Norman could see this wasn’t gonna be a normal prison day.  Maybe not even a normal prison week.  He didn’t intend missing any of the fun.  He had a little shank he’d made out of a spoon, sanded it down real good so it’d cut paper.  Originally as protection, like a defensive weapon against some mad bastard who kept touching his ass; but now it would be an offensive weapon, help him get over that buffer, maybe even over the perimeter and out into the world.  Shit, just do it, Norman told himself.  If one of them tries to stop you, stab the bastard.

                Once outside of the alley he saw the three brothers again, half way across the open area now, heading towards a place on the buffer didn’t seem to have any screws at all.  Norman took off after them.  They’d been good luck up till now.  Might as well stay with them till it runs out, then dump them.

                 A slate from the roof whistled past his head so close it almost took a layer of skin off, but Norman didn’t stop.  Didn’t stop until he was over the buffer and one of the screws smacked him across the head with a baton.  Then he stopped good.  Woke up in hospital and missed the rest of the fucking riot.

 

*

 

Norman left the M6 at Junction 21 and drove through Salford into the centre of Manchester.  He was behind the wheel of a white Escort Diesel, which was the best Birmingham had had to offer at short notice.  He double parked behind the Royal Exchange Theatre, took the bag and left the car with the keys in the ignition.  Somebody’d use it.

                The weather was hot and dry.  Manchester, shit, it should be raining.  But the air was dry, too dry.  So you had to take it in short gasps through your mouth.  Women had sleeveless dresses on, and the men were all carrying their jackets over their shoulders.  Norman leaned against a shop window and had a good look at some of the women.  Legs, hair, occasionally caught a sniff of perfume when one or the other passed real close.  They’d pretend he wasn’t there.  But they knew OK.

                Completely new territory, but it felt good.  Norman had been born in Southampton and moved to London as a teenager.  Before today he had never been further north than Watford and had half expected to meet peasants and wild animals.  He smiled to himself at the thought.  Manchester looked just like parts of London, hardly any difference at all, even some of the shops had the same names.  Good job as well.  He’d come up against peasants and wolves, shit, he’d probably be making his way back south again. 

                He went in a burger bar and got a double cheeseburger and two cups of coffee.  Winked at the waitress who sneered at him in return, asked him if he had a problem with his eye.  Norman asked her if she got many tips with an attitude like that.  She came back with something else, ‘nother mouthful of garbage, but Norman picked up his tray and found a table by the window.  Shit, the first woman he’d talked to in years and she gives him a mouthful.  Fucking accent like Coronation Street.  Maybe works in the Rovers Return at night, but Norman wouldn’t give her a job cleaning dishes.  Face like a dog.  Shit, no body.  Greasy apron.  Great fat legs.  Like a peasant.  Even if you put her on the street she’d be trouble.  Have to smack her every day.

                Norman understood women.  Knew how to handle them.  He hadn’t had to learn it either. It just came natural.

                Norman went to the Gents and counted his money.  He put six tenners in the pocket of the sweatshirt, another two and a fiver and the loose change in his trouser pocket, and the rest of the tenners he put in his sock.

                When he’d finished eating, drunk his second cup of coffee, he walked down the street to a taxi rank.  “I want a girl,” he told the driver when he’d got himself settled in the passenger seat.

                The driver sniffed, glanced at his St Christopher dangling from the rearview mirror, and said, “Anything particular?”  He was a little guy, face furrowed like a ploughed field, wearing a sweater and sweating, long thick nails on the ends of his fingers.  Like claws, Norman thought.  Maybe he was one of the wild animals

                “Black,” Norman told him.  “Something like Tina Turner.”  He laughed.  “She don’t have to sing, though.  I mean, she can sing, that’s OK; but she don’t have to.”

                The driver didn’t say if he thought that was funny.  His face said he’d heard all the jokes before, and even if he hadn’t heard that one before he still wasn’t gonna find anything funny.  His face was so cracked already, it wasn’t gonna crack any more.

                “Where we going?” Norman asked him.

                “You wanna black girl,” the driver said.  “Place called The Star, they got Indians, Chinese, and real black blacks.  Even got whites if you change your mind.”

                “Star?”

                “Yeah.  It’s not a house.  Jus’ a pub.  You buy a drink and the girls’ll find you.”  He glanced at his St Christopher again, then started chewing something, though there was nothing in his mouth.  Then another thought somehow got into his head.  “Won’t be busy tonight,” he said.  “Too bleedin’ hot.”

                The cab stopped outside The Star and Norman got out and gave the driver a tenner.  The driver handed him a fiver and two pound coins, and Norman took the fiver and left the two pound coins in the guy’s hand.  “Buy yourself a new face,” he said.

                The guy looked at him deadpan before pulling away from the kerb.  Norman watched him go, then stood and wondered at the vision of Tina Turner coming down the road towards him, wobbling along on heels like stilts, wearing a pair of bright red shorts and a black sequinned shirt that was tied round her middle.  She started smiling as she got closer, then swept round into the entrance of The Star and said, “I have to buy my own drink, or we going in together?”

                The smell of her.  Jesus, this was a woman.  He’d forgotten that, that they smelled so different.  “Shit, babe,” Norman told her.  “You’re not going anywhere without me tonight.”

                There was around half a dozen people in the bar, men and women.  The room was no bigger than an average living room, but the ceiling was higher and supported a large brass fan.  A couple of girls like Tina, though not so lush, were talking to their Johns at a table behind the door.  They both said something to her as she passed, but Norman still hadn’t got the Manchester dialect and assumed they were using too many words to say Hello.  The bar was six or eight feet long with a middle aged woman behind it.  She gave Tina a grin and asked what Norman was drinking.  Tina was drinking scotch and Norman had  the same with a beer chaser and turned his attention to the next most interesting thing in the room.

                At the far end of the bar was a brother must’ve been over seven foot tall.  His neck was the size of a bucket.  Rings everywhere, ears, nose, hands.  The front of the guy’s shirt was open and there was a ring through his left nipple.  Norman couldn’t see the guy’s toes, but he would’ve bet there were rings there as well.  The brother didn’t move apart from a slight twitching of his nostrils.  There was a mirror behind the bar so he could see everything was happening without moving. 

                Tina went over to him and put something in his pocket.  Norman assumed it was money.  The guy still didn’t move.  Norman hoped he never would.

                When Tina came back, Norman asked her, “That your daddy?”

                “Sometimes,” she said.  “Shall we sit down?”

                She led him to a table behind the black giant and asked him his name, said she was called Sue.  Norman told her he was gonna call her Tina and she said that was cool and what was he looking for.

                “I’ve bin away,” he told her, “so I want everything at once.”

                “A girl can only do her best,” Tina said.

                Norman drank half the whiskey, put the glass down and swigged a quarter of the pint of beer.  “How about a good fuck now?” he said.  “When we’ve finished this.”  He motioned to the drinks on the table.  “Then we come back here and have a few more beers, maybe get a bit sloshed.  Then we go back to your place and take it more slowly.  Finish up about two or three in the morning.  I got to be on the road by then.”

                Tina looked at her watch.  “Sounds cool,” she said, reaching into her bag and putting a small calculator on the table.  “Can’t add up,” she explained.  She punched a couple of numbers on the keypad.  “You gonna want a blow job?” she asked.  “Anything kind of specialised?”

                “Maybe a blow job,” he said.  “I don’t know yet.”

                Tina punched more numbers on the keypad, said, “We’re talking between eighty and a hundred quid here.”

                Norman pulled the six tenners out of the pocket of his sweatshirt and counted them onto the table.  “That’s all I’ve got,” he said.  “You ask daddy if we got a deal?”

                Tina reached for the notes but Norman covered them with his hand. As she moved forward he found himself taking in a good lungful of her scent.   She went over to King Kong at the bar and talked some.  The guy didn’t move.  Norman watched very closely and he didn’t see anything move, not even an eye.

                Tina came back to the table, sat down and showed Norman her teeth.  “It’s a quiet night,” she said.  “And I like you.”  She picked up the six tenners and went back to the brother at the bar.  When she came back the tenners were gone.  “I’m all yours,” she said.  “But you leave at midnight.”

                Norman shrugged, he’d been away a long time.  “Jus’ call me Cinderella,” he said.  Then he had another thought. “Don’t suppose you’ve got a dress made out of beads?” he asked.

 

*

 

They left The Star and went round the corner to a house that was falling down.  Two brothers in the hallway downstairs, playing cards.  Loud music coming from one of the rooms behind them.  Norman followed Tina upstairs to a tiny room with a bed and a table and chair.  Nothing else.  “How you wanna do this?” she asked.

                “Quick,” he told her.  “But check this out first.”  Norman loosened his belt and motioned Tina to put her hand down the front of his trousers.  “Surprise for you.”

                “It got teeth?” she asked, reaching down there.

                Norman drew in his breath when she made contact.  “Lower,” he said through his teeth.  “I got four balls.”

                “Jesus,” she said, her hand deep in his trousers.  “You ain’t bullshitting.”  She felt some more, her eyes wide with something only a little short of wonder.  She unzipped him and let his pants fall to the floor, then she got down on her knees to get a better look.  “I’ve come across singles,” she told him.  “They’s a lot more common than you’d think.  Two’s, of course.  Though most of the guys with two, to hear them talk you’d think they had more.  And I came across a three once.  Guy who had two normal ones and a little one, could actually have been a piece of gristle or something.  I mean it might not have been a real ball.  But let’s give him the benefit of the doubt.  He had three.  But this little cluster, here,” she said, weighing them in the palm of her hand, “it sure takes the biscuit.”  Her eyes opened wider.    “Honey, if you never say or do anything else, you certainly made a little history for me.”

                She gave him a condom and began undressing.  Norman put the condom on and told her just to take her shorts off.

                Seven minutes later they were back in the bar.

                Norman left his bag in Tina’s room.  You carry a bag around people think you’ve got something worth taking.

                When they walked into the bar the big black guy still didn’t move.  Norman knew the man was never gonna be impressed.  He ordered drinks and they sat down at the same table, talked about the state of the world, how everything used to be good and was now turning sour.  “The fucking thing is,” Norman told her.  “Jus’ when Margaret was beginning to get everything together the bastards got rid of her.”

                Tina nodded through her glass.  “She was good for us,” she said.  “Wanted the cops to leave us alone and chase real criminals.  Terrorists and that.  People making money, she was into that.”  She took another swig and looked at her empty glass.  “I think she’ll be back.”

                “Hope so,” Norman told her, picking up Tina’s glass and his own in one hand.  He went to the bar and looked at the giant while he waited for the drinks.  Fucking neck! The guy didn’t move.  Norman thought if the guy would look at him he could give him a wink.  But the guy didn’t look.   Screw you, he thought.  Bit too big to take on, though, unless you wanted eating.  Even though he did have all that money.  Maybe after a few more drinks he wouldn’t look so big.

                “What’s with him, anyway?” he asked Tina when he got back to the table.

                “Nothing,” she said.  “He only gets involved if there’s trouble.  Long as he’s there there’s no trouble.”

                “He your pimp?”

                “One of them,” she said.  “It’s all family down here.  Sisters do the work, brothers collect the cash.”

                “Nothing wrong with that,” Norman told her.  “You know anywhere it’s different?”

                “Heaven?” said Tina, and swigged more whiskey.  She put her glass down and licked her lips.

                “Heaven, shit,” said Norman.  “It’ll be jus’ the same up there, ‘cept with wings.”

                The third time he went to the Gents Norman had some difficulty getting through the door, like it had got narrower since the last time he went.  He had a long piss and shook the drops off, then stood in front of the mirror smiling at his reflection.  “How long since you had a good skinfull?” he asked himself.  “And a woman?”  Hell, he was free.  Getting shitfaced.  Sitting in there having a normal conversation, talking ’bout politics and religion,  gonna fuck himself stupid in an hour.

                On his way back to the bar the door had got narrower still.  Had to go through sideways.

                “You gotta wife?” Tina asked him.  “Family?”

                Norman leaned forward and had another sniff of her.  “You looking for a husband?”

                She laughed.  “Christ, no,” she said.  “I’m just interested.”

                “Why should I get married?” Norman said.  “Everybody I know got married, they’re all trying like hell to get unmarried.”

                “I was married twice,” Tina told him.  “The first guy was a hundred and eighty years older than me.  We lived together two years and at the end I was a hundred and eighty years older than him.”

                “You work that out on your calculator?”

                “The second guy was gonna put me in pictures, but somebody stoled his camera.”

                “What happened to him?” Norman asked.

                “He’s still there,” she said.  “The brothers chased him off.  Comes in here occasionally, complains about the price, but he always pays.”

                “For his own old lady?”

                “Johns like to pay,” she said.  “They don’t pay they don’t think they’ve been screwed.”

                “Yeah, I know,” Norman said.  “Used to run a couple a girls one time.  You ever need a new pimp, you can look me up.”

                Tina looked around, see if anyone was listening.  “The brothers run everything here,” she said.  “There’s no opportunities.”

                Norman eyed the big one at the bar, see if he’d got any smaller.  Maybe a little.  Now he was only medium huge.  “I can hear what you’re saying,” he said.

                “What about girl friends?” she asked.  “You must have somebody.”

                “I told you.  I’ve bin away.”  He picked up a packet of cigarettes off the table and shook one out.  Lit it up.  “I had a girl before,” he said.  “Snow White.”

                Tina laughed again.  “Snow White.  Shit.  You putting me on?”

                Norman laughed along with her.  “No, it’s true,” he said.  “She was called Selina White, really.  But when I first met her, she signed her name S. White, so I called her Snow White after that.  Everybody did.”

                “She work for you or the seven dwarfs?”

                “She worked for me a while,” he said.  “But when I went away she split with my stash.  Cleaned me out.”

                “Sometimes happens,” Tina told him.  “Not very often.  A girl goes astray here the brothers find her before you can say jack shit.”

                “I’ll find her,” said Norman.

                “You know where she is?”

                “Yeah.  She married a guy and went straight.  Living in York.”

                “She know you’re coming after her?”

                “Not yet,” Norman said, finishing the last of his drink.  “But she will when I get there.”

 

*

 

Back in Tina’s room Norman checked his bag.  Somebody had been in it, but nothing was missing.  He got undressed and took sixty quids worth of flesh and sweat off her, then slept for an hour.

                “It’s ten to twelve,” she said, waking him.  “You’re not out by twelve they’ll come up for you.”

                “Did I get my blow job?”

                “You got everything you’re getting,” said Tina.

                He dressed and left her.  “I come by again I’ll look you up,” he said.  At the bottom of the stairs the two card playing brothers had gone.  The big one who’d been in the bar was standing by the door.  Norman waited for him to move out of the way.

                The guy eyed Norman’s bag.  “You got a long piece of wire in there,” he said, “with a hook on the end.”

                “The guy’s got x-ray eyes,” said Norman.

                “What’s it for?”

                “Hot weather,” Norman told him.  “My ass sometimes gets sticky.  I can put the wire over my shoulder and scratch my ass with the hook.  It saves me turning ’round.”

                The guy thought about it a moment, then moved aside.

                Norman took a few steps along the street, then turned round and  went back to the brother.  “From time to time,” he said, “I come across cars and dope and shooters, things like that.”

                “Ain’t you the lucky one?” the brother said.

                Norman shrugged.  “I got a market already,” he said.  “I jus’ thought I could combine it with Tina up there.  She’s my kind of girl, and if I was coming through with merchandise I could put her on my expense account.”

                The brother looked down on Norman from a great height.  “Shooters?” he said.

                Norman nodded.

                “We’d look,” the guy said. 

                “You got any more questions?” Norman asked him.

                The guy said nothing.  He’d gone away again.

 

*

 

Norman found a little Fiat Van, something he could stretch out in.  Drove it out of town and parked in a lay-by.  He got in the back and slept until noon the next day, dreaming of Tina and all the things he’d forgot to do to her.

                When he woke up he ate a sandwich out of his bag.  Opened a can of beer.  There was no tape deck, only a radio, so he listened to the news.  The authorities said the rioting inmates had caused more than ten million pounds worth of damage.  One prisoner and one prison officer had been killed.  The prison officer was a married man with two small children and had been well loved by colleagues and prisoners alike.  Norman couldn’t think who that was.  No one he knew had loved any screws.  Wait a minute, still more to come.  Three prisoners were still missing after the politicos had hit the transport carrying some of the ringleaders of the riot.  Isaac Bova, white, five foot eight, 45 years old, serving twenty years for terrorist activities, and two other men.  There was some evidence to suggest that one of these men was involved in the murder of the well loved prison officer.  All three men were believed to be making for the London area, though travelling separately, and none of them should be approached by the public.  Christ, Norman, they’re trying to pin the murder of the screw on you.  Shit, he thought, I never even had the chance.

                And what was this shit, anyway?  Isaac Bova and two other men?  How come they give out the name of some twat called Isaac Bova, and Norman Bunce doesn’t even get a mention.  Like fucking Isaac is important and Norman doesn’t even exist.  How many people did Isaac kill, for Christsake?  Who is this guy, the world record holder?

                But Norman smiled.  They didn’t know where he was.  Thought he was on his way to the Smoke.  Maybe he should go to York, like he’d told Tina.  It was true that Snow White had moved up there, and he might look her up for old times sake.  Maybe get something out of her.

                Norman switched the radio off, then he found the M62 and drove to Leeds.  Last leg of a long journey. 

                He parked the Fiat outside the railway station.  Went to the ticket office and got a single ticket to Scarborough.  “That’s seaside, right?” he asked the guy behind the glass.

                “Seaside?  Sure,” the man said.

                Norman held up his bag so the guy could see it through the glass.  “Got my bucket and spade in here,” Norman said.  “Little swimming costume.  Might do a bit of fishing as well.”

                He walked off down the platform.  Sat in an orange plastic bucket and lit up a cigarette, watched the ladies while he waited for the train to arrive.

 

 

                                         . . . . . . . . . . chapter 4 

“Could I speak to Gus, please?” 

                It was a voice with a slight German accent, a sweet voice, a low voice, a voice that had waited and thought about it before picking up the telephone and dialling the number.  It was a voice that had counted the number of rings, and had hoped that it would be Gus who answered. And then when Sam Turner had picked up the receiver and said whatever he said into it, the voice had gone automatically into secondary mode, trying to sound like a general enquiry and failing badly.

                “Gus’s not here,” Sam said.  “Can I take a message?”

                “Oh.  No, it’s not important.  I’ll try later.  When is the best time to catch him?”  Sam ignored the words.  They didn’t mean what they said.  Each syllable was tinged with disappointment.  Something else as well, a barely concealed Teutonic accent.

                “Try after four,” he said.  “Between four and five.  He should be here then.”

                “Thank you.  Bye.”

                Sam put the ‘phone down.  On the office floor, where it lived for the moment, there being no furniture in the room.  Jesus,  he thought,  the stupid prick’s having an affair.  He brought the makings out of his pocket and rolled a tight cigarette.  Lit it up and looked round the room.  Then he remembered his blood pressure and stubbed the cigarette out on the wooden floor.

                Gus was Sam’s oldest friend.  Long before the private detective business got under way they had played snooker together, shared the same musical tastes, and driven thousands of miles backwards and forwards to rock concerts all over the country.  Even made the occasional foray into Europe.  The last Dylan concert in Oslo.  They had a date lined up for the coming autumn when the Cocker was playing Amsterdam.

                But Sam had known Marie, Gus’s partner, for longer than he had known Gus, and the thought of her being cuckolded again was enough to remind Sam what the world really smelled like.  Someone had told him a long time ago (or maybe he read it in a book – he couldn’t remember) that under the toothpaste and the powder, civilization stank pungently of stale cooking and piss.

                Sam drove the Volvo over to The Stonebow and went down the cellar steps to the snooker hall.  “Must be the coolest place in town,” he said to Gus and Geordie when he got to their table.  Barney, Geordie’s dog came over to Sam and rubbed up against his leg.  Sam bent over to pat the dog on the head.

                There were two other tables occupied, four women playing doubles on one of them, and two old age pensioners on the other.  “Is this a game?” Sam asked.

                “No, we was jus’ practising,” said Geordie.  “Gus’s bin showing me how to put backspin on the ball.”  Geordie was dressed in white Reeboks with black jeans about four inches too long for him.  Today he was sporting his purple New Deal sweatshirt and a baseball cap with Indianapolis 500 written on the front.  Only when he played snooker he wore it back to front, so the legend was at the back, and at the front a little leather tag to adjust the size.  Gus called it Geordie’s IQ reducer.  “When he wears it normal,” Gus would say, “It reduces the IQ to about half.  But when he wears it back to front, like that, then the IQ goes through the floor.”

                “Backspin?  Maybe you should learn how to pot them first,” Sam said.

                “I can, Sam,” said Geordie, “I potted two the other day, including one was a black one.”

                “Yeah, and the other was the white one, which is not supposed to be potted.”

                Geordie laughed.  “It was a fluke,” he said.  “Watch this.”  He put the blue on its spot in the centre of the table and the white midway between the blue and one of the centre pockets.  “I’m gonna pot the blue and bring the white back into this pocket,” he said.

                He chalked his cue and got right down on the table, feathering the white carefully, then drawing his stick back and striking the white hard and low.  The blue missed the centre bag, ricochetted off the heel of the pocket and broke up the reds.  The white stayed in the middle of the table.

                Geordie stood up.  “See,” he said.  “That was bloody close.”

                Sam and Gus both laughed.  “OK,” Sam said.  “It only takes practice.  You’re better than you used to be.”

                “He’d have to be wouldn’t he,” said Gus.  “Time was when he’d miss the white.”  Gus was thirty two years old, slightly built, an inch taller than Sam.  He wore the same slacks and shirt he’d worn for the last five summers, and sandals over black socks.  They began collecting the balls, putting the colours on their spots.  Geordie racked the reds and rolled the white down to Sam at the baulk end of the table.

                “So,” Sam said.  “We cracked another case.”

                “We?” said Gus.  “Don’t remember seeing you there.  Me and Geordie cracked another case while you were painting and decorating the office.”

                “Jesus, Sam,” said Geordie, “we was shitting ourselves in that restaurant.  If it’d been the Mafia instead of those kids they’d've burned the place down with us in it.  Turned us into pastrami, whatever it is they eat.”

                “Mafia don’t work like that,” Sam told him.  “If they’d been involved there wouldn’t just be a few cases of arson, they’d have blown the place off the face of the earth.”

                “Yeah, that’s what I mean,” said Geordie.  “Then where would we be?”

                “I give in,” said Gus.  “Where would we be?”

                “Fuckin vanished,” said Geordie.  “Sam’d be playing this game with nobody.  Every time he missed a pot it would still be his turn.”

                “You know there’s a reward?” Sam asked them.

                “How much?” said Gus.  “Will we be able to retire?”

                “Dunno exactly.  Couple of thou.  Buy you some records and a new suit.”

                Geordie got down to play the ball and then stood up again.  “Jesus,” he said.  “I’m gonna get one of those CD players.”

                “Yeah,” said Sam.  “And you could take some driving lessons.”

                Geordie was down on the ball again, but couldn’t concentrate enough to hit it.  “Me and Gus get a thousand each,” he said.  “Is that enough to buy a car?”

                “Maybe,” said Sam.  “But you should take the lessons first.”

                Geordie nodded, not convinced.  He feathered the white again, then stood up to ask another question.  “If I get a car,” he said, “and I get a licence to drive it, can I go abroad and drive it?”

                “Sure,” said Sam.  “You just remember to drive on the other side of the road.”

                “Yeah,” said Geordie.  “I heard that.”  He got down on the table again, then looked round at Sam.  “You’ll be telling me people in Australia are upside down next.”  He looked back at the ball, then stood up again.

                “Jesus Christ,” said Gus.  “Are you gonna hit the ball?”

                “OK,” Geordie told him, getting down on the table again.  “I was only asking a question.  How’m I supposed to learn things if I can’t ask questions?”  He struck the white and potted a red.  The white ball finished straight on the pink.  “Look at that,” he said.  “Steven fuckin Hendry, look out!”

                “So, what’s next?” Gus asked Sam.  “Much lined up for tomorrow?”

                “Only the slush pile,” Sam said.  “Forester, the solicitor, we’ve got a few jobs outstanding for him.  Be a chance to clear up.”

                “We should close down for the summer,” said Gus.  “Get a villa in France.  Something like that.  We could all go together”

                Sam shook his head.  “We’ve just finished the office,” he said.  “Something’ll turn up.  This weather people go crazy.”

                “We run out of jobs?” Geordie asked.

                “Not quite,” Sam told him.  “Only they’re not very exciting.”

                “Jesus, I don’t care about that,” Geordie said.  “Long as there’s something to do.  If there’s nothing to do then I get restless.”

                “Yeah,” Sam told him.  “You never miss your water till your well runs dry.”

 

*

 

“There was a call for you,” Sam told Gus.  They were sitting together in the car outside Sam’s flat.  Geordie had already got out of the car with Barney and disappeared into his own flat.  “At the office.”

                “Any message?  Who was it?”

                “No message,” Sam said.  “Woman’s voice.  I said you’d be there after four.”

                “Probably Marie.”

                Sam looked across at him.  “I’d know if it was Marie,” he said.  “I’ve known her a long time.”

                “Yeah,” Gus said absently.  “I wasn’t thinking.”

                “I got the impression it was somebody Marie wouldn’t be too happy to hear about.”

                Gus turned toward him.  “What are you, then, an oracle?  For all you know it coulda been my grandmother, my auntie Doris, my niece from Edinburgh.  Sam, just because a female voice asks for me on the telephone and it isn’t the female voice that I live with, you immediately have to think I’m having an affair.  I don’t know what’s wrong with you, less it’s that you’ve got a dirty mind.  I mean, think about it a minute.  Is it at all conceivable that you could be wrong about this?”

                “No, Gus, it’s completely inconceivable that I’m wrong about this.  I heard the woman’s voice on the ‘phone.  When she said your name her tongue was hanging out.  Don’t ask me why her tongue was hanging out.  Because if thinking about you makes her tongue hang out she must be blind as well as stupid.  But that’s about her, and I never even met the woman.  What I want to talk about is you.  And you I have met, more than once before, and this isn’t the first time I’ve met you in the same kind of situation.  That is with your prick hanging out for some floozie that for reasons which will always escape me, thinks it’s the best thing she’s seen since celery with mayonnaise.  And you know for why?  I know you know for why, because Marie is a friend of mine, and friends of mine I take care of.  You wanna go round screwing some little baggage you just happened to run into, that’s fine, it’s actually none of my business, and under some circumstances I’d even be happy for you.  But under the present circumstances all I see coming out of it is a friend of mine, namely Marie, getting hurt.  And she’ll be the only one in the whole situation who didn’t do anything to deserve it.”

                Gus opened the passenger side door and got out of the Volvo.  “I don’t have to take this shit,” he said.  He slammed the door and walked off down the street.

                Sam got out of the car and followed him.  “You can’t run away, either,” he said.  “Every time you look round I’ll be sitting on your shoulder.  I’ll haunt you, Gus.  I’m telling you, you gotta sort this one out.”

                But Gus kept on walking.  Didn’t look back.  Didn’t say another word.  Sam looked after him in disgust.  Socks and sandals.  No wonder the guy had no self respect. 

                What did these women see in a guy like Gus?  Sam couldn’t understand it.  Socks and sandals?  It wasn’t like he was a dork, more like a blank.  He was like a blank canvas, the kind some women like to paint their dreams on.

 

 

. . . . . . . . . . chapter 5

When he got to Scarborough Norman followed the signs down to the front, stopped at a shop and bought himself a sleeping bag and a pair of shorts.  At a grocery store he spent the rest of his money on sandwiches and beer, some cigarettes and matches, filled up his bag.  Then he walked along the cliff, south, away from the town.

                He took his sweater off and tied it around his waist, get a little sunshine on his body.  After another half hour, when there were few people about,  he took his trousers off and put them and the sweater into his bag.  Got his new shorts on and felt the sun on his legs.  Maybe the first time in twenty years.  Last time that happened Norman had been a schoolboy.  But Jesus, who wants to remember that?

                Norman intended to sleep under the stars, find a little nook in the cliff somewhere and curl up.  But after he’d been walking for a couple of hours he came across a small shack half way down the cliff.  He climbed down to it and kicked in a couple of planks to get inside.  The place had been built as a small cafe, but abandoned for some reason.  Maybe because of the recession, or probably because it had been built in such an isolated spot that it never got any customers anyway.

                There were some items of crockery, an old coffee making machine that was corroded and would never be used to make coffee again, a tea urn with a stiff lid.  There was one broken chair and a table that still had three legs.  At one end was a long counter covered in dust, made of solid deal.  Behind the counter were sliding doors, and when he opened one of these Norman found a place a little longer than himself, about four foot wide, that would make an ideal bedroom.  He got his new sleeping bag and unrolled it into the space.  Perfect.  He could get in there and pull the sliding door closed from the inside.  Sleep like a baby.  During the day he could sit in the sun and drink beer, eat a sandwich, have a paddle every now and then.  Spend a few days like that until the heat died down.  By then he’d have a beard.  When he arrived in York even Snow White wouldn’t recognise him.

 

*

 

The evening of the second day Norman walked to the village and emptied the local telephone box to see if he could still do it.  It was easier than slipping on a banana skin. 

                The morning of the third day he was half asleep under the counter when he heard sounds.  Somebody coming into the shack.  Quiet voices, whispering.  First he thought it was the law tracked him down and what he was hearing was some kind of armed assault force coming in to get him.  He kept completely still, barely breathing.

                “It’s a cafe,” one of the voices said, not whispering any more.  A high pitched voice, could have been a woman, but it wasn’t.  Must be kids.  That was a boy’s voice.  Young boy, so young his voice hadn’t broken.  Norman kept still.  With a bit of luck they’d go away.

                “This’s for making coffee,” said another voice.  “Sound.  We could make a den here.  Look at all this stuff.”  Another unbroken voice, like the first one.

                Oh, Jesus, don’t make a den here.  Go and play on the beach.  Make sand castles, whatever it is you’re supposed to do.  The trouble with kids today, they’ve no respect for private property.

                There was only the two voices.  No more.  One of them jumped up on the counter and did a little dance.  Jesus, like being inside a drum.  Then he jumped off onto the bare boards of the floor, and the other one jumped up on the counter and did the same.

                Norman wanted to get out of there and sort the little bastards out.  Scare the living shits out of them.

                “There’s a cupboard here,” the first voice said.

                “Where?  Let’s see.”

                “Under the counter.”

                The door at the far end of the counter opened about eighteen inches.  Norman watched the light stream in.

                “Anything in there?”

                “Can’t see.  It’s too dark.”

                Then a head and a hand appeared through the cupboard door.  Norman stopped breathing.

                “There’s something,” the voice said.  “Feels like a blanket.”

                “Anything else?  Any money?”

                “No.  There’s something wrapped in it.  Feels like a. . . like a. . . foot.”

                Norman said, “Jesus.  This’s all I need.”

                The kids panicked and were out of the shack before Norman could get rid of the sleeping bag and crawl out from under the counter.  When he got outside the shack the two boys were about twenty yards up the cliff, unsure if they should carry on going up or come down and see what the foot had been attached to.

                “Come back,” Norman shouted.  “I’m not gonna hurt you.”  Jesus, he’d have to play it by ear, but kids like these he could get to do whatever he wanted.  They were about twelve, maybe thirteen years old.  A small blond one and a dark one, slightly taller than his mate.  They came down the cliff slowly, the dark one first.  Norman watched them and waited.  Both wearing shorts and a T-shirt.

                “Christ, we thought you was a ghost,” said the dark one.

                “Or a dead man,” said the blond.  “I thought you was a dead body.”

                Norman laughed and went back inside the shack.  The two boys followed him.  He reached under the counter for his bag and opened a can of beer.  He took a swig and passed it to the tallest of the two, obviously the leader.  Then he shook a cigarette out of his pack and handed the pack to the boys.  They each took a cigarette and Norman lit them all up with one match.

                He reached into his bedroom again and came out with a plastic bag and emptied it onto the counter.  A million ten pence and fifty pence pieces spread themselves over the surface, some of them rolling off onto the floor.

                “Jesus,” said the little blond kid.  “It’s a fortune.”

                Both pairs of eyes shone at the sight of the money.  “Where’d you get all that?” the dark one asked.

                “I could tell you,” Norman said.  “But I don’t know if you can keep a secret.”

                “Oh, we can,” they both said in unison.  And only a fool would have believed that they didn’t mean it.  Shit, whatever it was, they weren’t gonna tell anyone.  Not ever.

                Norman passed the can of beer around again.  “Broke a telephone box open,” he said.  “Last night.”

                “Sound,” said the little one.

                “Yeah,” said his friend.  “How’d you do it?”

                “Can opener,” Norman said, taking the beer from the blond one and sipping a little.

                “What you sleeping under there for?” the dark one asked.

                “I’m on the run,” Norman told him.  “Police’re looking for me.”

                The two boys exchanged glances.  This was turning into the best summer they’d ever had.  The blond one shook some ash from his cigarette and looked at Norman with his mouth wide open.  Like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, something unheard of, like a sea monster.

                Norman shrugged.  “I suppose you’ll turn me in?” he said.

                The little blond one shook his head.  “No,” he said.  “We wouldn’t do that.”

                “Why’re they after you?” the dark one asked.

                “I escaped from prison,” Norman told him.  “Been on the run for three weeks.  Trying to set up a record.”

                “Record?”

                “Yeah.  The record for staying out of the joint I was in is four weeks.  I wanna try to stay out five weeks.  Then I’ll break the record.”

                “No one’ll find you here,” the dark one said.  “You could stay here for ever.”

                Norman laughed.  “No,” he said.  “After five weeks I’ll turn myself in.  I’ll be a hero when I get back.  No one ever stayed out that long.”

                “We won’t spragg you,” said the little blond one.

                His friend agreed.  “No,” he said.  “We’d never do that.”

                Norman smiled at them.  “Good,” he said.  “Maybe you could help me?”

                Two voices said, “Yeah.”

                “You could take some of the money,” he said.  “Get me something to eat, a newspaper, some fags.  I can’t go out during the day.  Get something for yourselves as well.”

 

*

 

Norman only needed a couple more days.  He knew when they returned with a chicken tika sandwich and a blackberry pie, that he could string them along that long.  Shit, something like this happening, they’d probably keep it a secret the rest of their lives.

                The following day they brought him fish and chips from the van at the caravan site, a new six pack of beers, and forty cigarettes.

                A couple of nights later Norman broke into a house on the outskirts of the village, got himself some clothes more suitable for the town, and a hundred and seventy pounds in cash.  Could have taken a car as well, just standing there outside the house, but he would have to dump it in York, and that might lead the police to think he was there. 

                Norman didn’t want anyone to know he was in York.  Not yet.  Not while he was on holiday.

                Not until he found Snow White.  After that he didn’t care what happened.  By that time he’d prolly be finished with the town as well as the girl.

 

 

                                                                                    . . . . . . . . . .  chapter 6     

They brought the desk up the stairs and placed it next to the window.  “You wanna look out the window or have your back to it?” the chief humper asked.

                “Have my back to it,” Sam Turner said, following them into the room with a swivel chair.  “Need to get this between the desk and the window.”

                “It was my office I’d have it so I could see out,” the humper said.  “See the grand ladies going into Bettys, all those little students with next to no clothes on.  Can’t blame ‘em though, in this weather.”  He went to the window and looked down on the square.  “They could go naked for me,” he said.  “I wouldn’t make no complaints.”

                “I’ve got to work,” said Sam.  “Pay the landlord for all this space.  If they take their clothes off I don’t mind standing up to get a look.  I think that’s a better way of handling it, don’t you?  Rather than arranging the whole office on the off-chance that I might see somebody’s bare ass?.”

                The humper and his mate went back down the stairs muttering something about work and bringing the drawers up and why in God’s name was it so hot?

                The room still looked bare, but what the hell?  Sam smoothed his hand over the surface of the desk.  Old, weathered oak.  Here and there someone had gouged a piece out of the surface, but it would do fine for Sam’s use.  He picked the telephone off the floor and placed it on the desk.  It didn’t ring.

                Sam took a large glass ashtray off the window sill and placed it next to the telephone. 

                He rolled a cigarette and put it to his lips, let it dangle there, unlit.  He sat in the swivel chair with his feet up, looked around the room.  There was a radiator under the window behind him.  On the far wall was the door and a filing cabinet.  The filing cabinet was locked, and in the middle drawer was a small pistol and ammunition, and an empty bottle of whiskey.  The pistol was for emergencies.  The empty whiskey bottle was a symbol of the full bottle of whiskey that all private detectives keep in their filing cabinets.  All private detectives except this one, who couldn’t handle it.

                The right hand wall had a sink and a small draining board, place for a kettle and some cups.  Then there was a door to Celia’s room. To the right of that was a bookcase with nothing in it, but Sam had some books at home he would bring tomorrow.

                Over to his left were two more desks, one each for Geordie and Gus, and a shelving unit which housed a radio and tape deck together with a stack of tapes to keep them occupied when they weren’t solving cases or reading books.  There was also a spare chair over there.

                There was another chair in front of Sam’s desk, for clients.  But no one had ever sat in it yet.

                Behind him the window had been stencilled so that the name of the business showed itself to the square outside.  Sam got up from the swivel chair and walked round the desk.  He sat in the clients chair and looked down at the front of his shirt.  He had to move the chair slightly to get the effect he wanted.  Then he smiled.  The shadow of the stencil had thrown itself onto his chest, and proclaimed:

                                                Sam Turner

               Investigations

 

                Sam was wearing a green Chino short sleeved shirt with a button down collar and a pair of loose cut gabardine trousers with metal buttons on the pockets. He was too hot.  He got out of that chair and went over to the entrance door.  This led to a small anteroom, so when they had customers queuing up to get in they would have somewhere to wait.  There was nowhere to sit in there yet, but a couple of chairs would arrive soon by the sound of the noise coming up the stairwell.

                The pubs looked more inviting in this weather.  But it was a trick played by the subconscious and the booze.  They got together and ganged up on you.  Would take you for a sucker if you insisted.  Like you might find someone in the pub, behind the bar, at the bottom of a bottle.  He laughed to himself.  That was the trick the booze played.  There would be somebody at the bottom of a bottle, only you might have to go through more bottles than you could drink before you found who it was.  Then when you found who it was you’d remember all the other times you’d drunk your way to a slobbering drunk.

                He’d stay off it, though.  One day at a time.

                Sam walked back into his office and put New Morning on the tape deck, ’cause that’s what it felt like.  Then he went over to Celia’s door.  He opened it and poked his head through.  “How’re you doing?” he asked.

                “Oh, Sam,” Celia said.  “I’m doing fine.  Thought I heard you through there.”  Celia had compromised with her desk, placing it at right angles to the window so she could look out or not, depending how she felt.  Celia Allison was Sam’s secretary, sixty eight years old and going strong.  When he talked to guys who told him their secretary was a treasure, Sam would tell them, “Hell, mine’s a gold mine.”

                She was dressed in a navy button through top with short sleeves and a matching spotted skirt with pleats.  Shoes were navy too, with pointed toes and little heels.  She wore a three colour gold Russian bangle on her left wrist.  Tiny wrinkles on her wrist and ropey veins running down the back of her hands.

                Her room was not large, slightly smaller than Sam’s.  She had a new computer desk with a modern system on it.  Multisync monitor on a tilt and swivel stand.  Laser printer.  Scanner.  Little mouse on a mouse mat which Sam had not mastered yet.  Every time he moved it the pointer disappeared off the screen.  Worked OK for Celia though.

                There was also a combined FAX and telephone on the desk, and one of those little trays with three tiers so you could have IN, OUT and PENDING all going at the same time.  Celia had also brought a small carpet from home.  “To make the place a little cosier.”

                On the wall behind her desk she had a filing cabinet and several shelves containing discs and the programs she used on her computer, accounts, desktop publishing, word processing, and other things Sam couldn’t understand.  He knew how to use the database though.  Had found his way around that little cookie.  And if anyone could ever explain to him how a spreadsheet could help improve or simplify his life, he’d crack that one too.

                “There’s some mail for you,” she said.

                “Anything interesting?” He took the sheaf of papers from her and looked through them.

                “Not much,” she said.  “Couple of cheques.  Oh, and you’ve been invited to join the Rotarians.”  She laughed.

                “God,” said Sam.  “Few months ago I couldn’t fall out of a tree and hit the ground.  Now I’ve solved a couple of cases, had my name in the paper, everybody wants me to come to dinner.”

                “You’re a celebrity, Sam.”

                “Hell, Celia, it’ll be the Masons next.”

                “What shall I tell them?” Celia asked.

                “To get stuffed,” he said.  He walked over to the window and looked out at the square.  All the bench space was taken up by tourists.  People were queuing to get into Bettys for a cold drink.  A couple of buskers were playing an old Charlie Parker number and a hoard of Scandinavian teenagers were crowded around taking photographs or dancing, some of them doing both at the same time.

                The humpers got to the top of the stairs and banged their way through the anteroom with the remaining drawers and chairs.  Sam went through to be with them and Celia followed.

                “I like the desk,” she told him.  “Where did you find it.”

                “I’ve got another just like it,” the chief humper said.  “Could deliver it tomorrow.  Matching chair as well.”

                “No thanks,” she said.  “We’ve got two desks.  Yesterday we didn’t have any and we managed all right.”

                When they left Celia went back into her office. Sam followed and found her  trying to open the window, but it had been jammed for centuries.  “I can’t open any of ‘em,” he told her.  “Leave it.  I’ll get somebody to fix them tomorrow.”

                She left the window and turned to face him.  “You got anything else to do here?” he asked.

                She shook her head.  “No.  All done and dusted.”

                “We could go over to Bettys,” he said.  “Have a lemonade or ice cream, something to keep the heat at bay.”

                “That would be lovely, Sam.”

                “I dunno why people want to go to Italy,” he said.  “Weather like this.”

 

*

 

Sam walked past the queue of people waiting for a table at Bettys, Celia following him.  He caught the eye of the maître d’ and was shown to a small table by the entrance to the kitchen.  The maître d’  held Celia’s chair until she was settled, winked at Sam, and left them to it.

                “I don’t know how you do it, Sam,” Celia said.  “Some of those people have been waiting for ages.”

                “Just a little arrangement,” Sam said.  “Saves me a lot of time.”

                Celia shook her head.  “Goodness,” she said.  “There’s corruption everywhere.”

                “Yeah,” said Sam.  “Even at Bettys.  The last bastion of the British Empire.”

                A waitress who looked like the coolest person in the whole place took their order, ice cream and coffee for Sam and ice cream and Earl Grey tea for Celia.  A couple of minutes later she came back and served it.

                “How are things going with Wanda?” Celia asked.

                “So so,” said Sam.  “She’s been going out with this guy from the Solo Club.  Big mistake.  Turned out to be married.”

                “Oh, no,” said Celia.  “Poor Wanda.  Why don’t you marry her and get it over with?”

                Sam choked on a piece of ice cream.

                “Celia,” he said.  “I’ve been married twice.  I’m not gonna do it three times.  Not unless I start drinking again.  That usually does the trick.”

                “I can’t think why not, Sam.  You really like each other.  It would be good for both of you.”

                “Celia,” he said, “give me a break.  It could also be bad for both of us.”

                She shook her head.  “It would be lovely,” she said.  “For those two girls as well.  Little children like them, they need a father.”

                “Christ, Celia.  I don’t wanna be a father.”  Sam scraped the last of his ice cream out of the tall glass  and put it down in front of him, pushed it away.  “Wanda’s a good friend.  I’m a good friend to her and she’s a good friend to me.  We look after each other.  I look around at other people’s marriages and I don’t see much of that going on.  I don’t want a wife if it means losing a friend; and that seems to be the equation.”

                “It’s not that you’re frightened, then?”

                “Frightened?  Hell, if it comes to marriage I’m terrified.  Wanda would have a nervous breakdown if I asked her to marry me.  Christ, terrified.  Wouldn’t you be?”

                Celia laughed.  “Yes,” she said.  “But at my age it’s not really on the cards, is it?”

                “Oh, I don’t know,” Sam said.  “Everybody should try it at least once.”

                Celia took a sip of her tea.  “Anyway,” she said, “we’re not talking about me.”

                Sam sighed.  “Let it go, Celia,” he said.  “Last time I got married I bought myself more troubles’n God gave the Jews.”

                “Someone keeps ringing for Gus,” Celia said.  “A woman.”

                Sam didn’t meet her eyes.  “Yeah?” he said.

                “Yes,” said Celia.  “A woman. Not Marie.”  She looked hard at Sam.  “Do I have to spell it out for you, Sam?”

                “What, like a femme fatäle?”

                “Maybe.  I’ve only spoken to her on the ‘phone.  She sounds like somebody who’s very keen about Gus.”

                “Someone lusting over his body?”

                “Sam,” Celia said.  “I do believe you’re trying to shock me.”

                “I should know better,” he said.

                “Also, you know more about this than you are saying.”  She was silent for a moment.  “Does Gus have trouble keeping his zip up?”

                Sam laughed so loudly people at nearby tables put their cups down.  The waitress hovered on the borderline between kitchen and restaurant.  Sam covered his face with his hands and regained control.  “Yes, you’re right,” he said, still wreathed in smiles.  “He’s having an affair.”

                “Does Marie know?”

                “No.  Not yet.”

                Celia pursed her lips.  “He’s a silly boy,” she said.  “If he loses Marie he’ll have lost more than he could ever replace.”

                “I tried to tell him that.”

                “Try again, Sam.  I don’t want to stand around while he hangs himself.”

                “Yeah,” Sam said.  “I’m just waiting to catch him in a more amenable frame of mind.  Women make him stupid.”

                “Don’t make sexist remarks,” she said.  “Gus, all of you chaps, you don’t need women to make you stupid.”  She pursed her lips tightly together and glared at Sam.  Then had another thought.  “Oh, my goodness,” she said.  “I almost forgot.  My niece, Jennie, is coming today.  She’ll be staying with me for a while, and I’ve managed to rent her a little room down the hall.  Somewhere she can work”

                “Didn’t know you had a niece, Celia.  Does that mean you’ll be spending time with her?”

                “A little,” Celia confessed.  “But not as much as I’d like.  She’s going to be working.  You should take the time to meet her as well, Sam.  She’s a psychologist.  She’ll be working with some of the people over at the Women’s Prison.”

                “Askham Grange.”

                “Yes.  She’s involved in some kind of research project.  You’ll probably get on quite well together.”

                “Is this another attempt to get me fixed up, Celia?”

                “Good gracious, no,” said the old lady.  “Jennie is my own flesh and blood.  My little brother’s girl.  I wouldn’t throw her to the wolves.”

               

 

. . . . . . . . . . chapter 7

Norman was surprised at York.  It wasn’t that it was big, but it was a hell of a lot bigger than he’d expected.  He couldn’t exactly remember what it was he had expected now, not really that he’d get off the train on a little wooden platform, see a town with fields around it.  Maybe an old station guard with a white beard, doddery old fucker.  And Norman would go up to him and ask him where Snow White lived, and the guy would say, “Oh, yeah, Snow White.  She lives in the house on the hill.”

                Yeah, that was what he’d expected.  Something like that.

                What he hadn’t expected was a station with several platforms,  modern trains, and when you got outside the station, modern cars and shops and thousands of people walking around the town, many of them talking in foreign accents.  Not just north of England foreign accents, but real proper German and Japanese and American foreign accents.  That was what he hadn’t expected, and together with that he hadn’t expected all these new looking glass fronted hotels to put them in.

                Norman was surprised at York, and after walking around it for an hour or two he didn’t mind being surprised.  It was a place you could get lost in, and that was a real nice feeling.

                Only problem was, how would he find Snow White?  Norman wasn’t even sure if he wanted to bother finding Snow White.  The prospect of hurting her made him think it would be worthwhile.  But he had the feeling that a whole new world was about to open up for him, and he didn’t want aspects of the past to clutter it up.

 

*

 

One thing Norman discovered on his first day in York was that he was the only tourist without a camera.  He realised this when he followed a party of what he assumed were Scandinavians and Americans up an artificial mound to a huge castle keep called Clifford’s Tower.  When they got to the top of the mound the cameras started clicking and everybody except Norman was looking at the world through a viewfinder.  For a minute Norman didn’t know what to do.  He tried to remember his classes in social skills in Dartmoor, and although he knew that a situation similar to this had been discussed, he couldn’t remember exactly what it was.  While he was still racking his brains he became aware that the guide was talking about William the Conqueror.

                William the Conqueror had been here.  The guy had actually built a fort on this hill.  There’d been riots here as well, against some Jews, battles, and at one point someone had blown the roof off.  Norman couldn’t remember a time before when he’d stood somewhere that William the Conqueror or any of those historic types had actually stood.  For a time there he had a really strange feeling about it, made him forget all about being the only one without a camera.

                On the way down he sidled up to the guide and asked him, “When was that again?  William the Conqueror and all that?”

                “Ten sixty six,” the guide told him.

                “Jesus,” Norman said, but was distracted by the sight of a Japanese woman placing a Nikon with a huge lens on the grass at the bottom of the mound.  She just left it there.  Put it down on the grass and walked away after one of her children.

                So it was Norman the tourist, with a camera he’d probably never learn to use slung over his shoulder, who walked away from Clifford’s Tower, past the fire station, and into the heart of the city. 

                Jesus, York was the place to be.  No wonder William the Conqueror came here.  Not surprising at all, though, ‘cos like the tour guide said, old William, he was a Norman.

               

*

 

Night time. 

                During the afternoon Norman had checked into a boarding house run by a Mrs. Lee.  Middle aged woman who wore thick glasses and had no husband.  A kid somewhere at a boarding school.  Been doing this job for ten years, five years in Brighton and five years in York.  Lots of other things she’d told him about herself, couldn’t seem to keep her mouth shut for more than a minute at a time.  Norman got her life story between her opening the door and her showing him the room.  But she never asked anything about him.  Just gave him the Yellow Pages when he asked for them, together with What’s On,  The Good Beer Guide, and several maps of the city.

                Night time. 

                Norman had found the address of the Gun Club in the Yellow Pages and borrowed a car to get out here on the ring road.  Done a complete recce.  Round about now it looked as though the place was closing down for the day.  Most of the cars had gone from the car park.  Only two left.  One of them a truck, the other a silver Merc.  There had been several trucks earlier, farmer type trucks, and the farmer types had come out of the Gun Club and got into them and driven away.

                Another one came out while Norman watched.  Great fat guy with a white handle bar moustache and side whiskers, checked jacket.  Got in the truck and left.  Now there was only the silver Merc.  Norman waited twenty minutes, smoked a cigarette while he sat there.  The guy who came out and locked the door was about Norman’s size.  Looked like an ex-cop.  That’s the kind of thing they do when they take early retirement.  They buy a pub or become security advisers or start a Gun Club.  What would he be, maybe fifty, fifty five years old?  Silver hair to match his Merc.  Probably got a silver watch in his pocket, a little silver haired wife at home.

                When the Merc pulled out of the car park Norman took off after him.  Followed the ring road for a mile or two, and then instead of turning back into York, the guy turned the other way and headed for the outskirts.  Eventually he entered a new housing estate and pulled into the driveway of a detached house.  The garage door opened all by itself, like it had just been waiting there for the guy to come home, and the silver Merc disappeared into it.  After a moment or two the guy came to the garage door and closed it.  He closed it so that he was inside.  Must be a door in the garage that led into the house.

                Norman noticed there was a large bell box above the front door, probably with infra-red sensors inside, maybe pressure mats.  The guy obviously had something to protect.  Find out tomorrow.  For now there was still time to get back to York before the pubs closed.  A few beers and early to bed seemed like a good idea.  Maybe watch the TV for a while in Mrs. Lee’s lounge.

 

*

 

Next day Norman decided to have another look at York.  Played the tourist still, the camera slung over his shoulder, the shades keeping out the glare of the sun.  There was always the possibility that he would bump into Snow White on the street.  Say “Hi, babe.  Remember me.”  Then watch her face.

                He could imagine her doing the double-take.  Sucking in a little breath and her eyes glazing over as she decided if she should run or try to brazen it out.  He’d play with her.  He’d be a big cat with a baby mouse.  Except this particular baby mouse had previous experience of Norman.  She would know all the way along the line that he wasn’t fooling.  She’d know she was going to die, but that wasn’t the most important thing.  She’d also know that she was gonna see a lot of pain.  So much pain that by the time her death came round she’d be begging for it.  He kept seeing the meeting, like constantly rewinding a video tape.  He turned a corner and there she was.  “Hi, babe  Remember me.”  Then watch her face.  Then rewind the tape.

                But that didn’t happen.  Only in his head.  He didn’t know how he’d find her.  York was a neat little town draped alongside a neat little river and Norman the tourist half an hour after his walk round the city centre, sat on a bench in an historic square, a bag of fish and chips on his knee, his new camera between his feet, listening to a couple of buskers singing Why do They  Fall in L-ove?  While he was listening he looked up at a large stone building on one side of the square.  Large wooden doors, and at the top of the building in gold letters, carved out of the stone, it said, Yorkshire Insurance Company – Established MDCCCXXIIII.  Norman knew about Roman numerals, and tried for a moment or two to work out what the total number was.  But he didn’t know these Roman numerals.  He knew the X and the I, and thought maybe the C was a hundred, but the rest he couldn’t work out.   His eyes caught a sign on one of the windows in the building, and suddenly he smiled.  The sign said, Sam Turner – Investigations, but Norman smiled because he knew how he would find Snow White.  He’d get a private detective to do it.

                Easy as that.  One minute you have a problem, the next minute you’ve solved it.  Just like with the camera.

                Norman didn’t intend to go see the private detective right away, first he’d have to think up a good story, why he wanted to trace Snow White.  He’d think about it today, come back again tomorrow, then go see the man.  But he had a good look at the building, make sure he’d remember where it was.  While he was looking at the building Squishsquash came out of the door.

                Norman’s first impulse was to run.  If it hadn’t been for the fish and chips, the camera between his feet, he might have done just that.  But he didn’t.  She hadn’t seen him, and even if she did see him she probably wouldn’t remember him.  She’d never seen him with a beard.

                She stood outside the door to the building for a moment, as if she didn’t know what to do next.  Then she walked across the square, passing within six feet of Norman.  She looked in the window of a shoe shop for a moment, and Norman watched her back.  Yeah, it was definitely her.  He remembered her long legs, her butt, her black hair cut off short at the bottom of her ears.  Squishsquash, Jennie Cosgrave, psychologist.  Norman had spent six weeks on one of her research projects in Dartmoor.  Filling in questionnaires, answering bloody stupid questions like,  How Far Would You Go?  e.g. (a) Steal a Raincoat, or (b) Kill Someone on a ‘Contract’.  There were lots of other questions as well, Norman couldn’t remember them all, parking a bike illegally, or robbing a bank at gun point, questions like that.  You had to tick the ones you’d do, then they put all the answers in a computer and sent you back to your cell.  Never did tell you what they found out.  Maybe they found nothing, or maybe they found out what colour to paint the bogs.

                She turned now and walked back across the square, wearing a short yellow dress in silk with a V-neck, buttons all the way down the front, canvas shoes.  Norman crumpled his bag of fish and chips, picked up his camera, and followed her.  At the corner of the square he threw the bag of fish and chips at a rubbish bin about five feet away.  Went in first time.

                Norman smiled at her walk.  All the cons called her Squishsquash because of that walk.  Little steps, one after the other. She’d take two steps to every one of Normans.  On the first step the top of her tights, the bit you couldn’t see round her thighs, would go squish, and on the next step they would go squash.  That’s how she got her name.  Walking around Dartmoor, squishsquash, squishsquash, squishsquash.  Nearly caused a riot.

                She walked past MacDonalds and turned right, past the theatre.  She stopped there for a moment to look at the photographs of some dancers in a glass case.  Then down a long street with cars backed up bumper to bumper.  Ended up taking another right and going into a big house in Lord Mayor’s Walk.  Got you, Norman thought.  While the private detective was tracking Snow White Norman could have a bit of fun with Squishsquash.  Give her some questionnaires to answer.  Every time she put a tick in the wrong place she’d have to forfeit something.  He could teach her social skills she hadn’t even dreamed of.

 

 

. . . . . . . . . . chapter 8

The guy who came into Sam Turner’s office the following day was about five ten.  He was slim but solidly built, and wore a yellow jacket with white jeans.  Under the jacket a white T-shirt.  He sported a short beard, clipped close to his skin, and he carried an expensive Nikon camera over his shoulder.  Didn’t look as though he had a problem in the world.

                Sam was playing the Budokan album when the guy walked in.  He stood and turned the tape deck off, offered a chair.

                “You could have left the music on,” the guy said.  He looked around the office, flared his nostrils.   “Stinks of paint in here,” he said.  “Are you open?”

                Sam smiled and went behind his desk, sat down and looked over at the man.  “What can I do for you?” he asked.

                The guy shook a cigarette out of his packet and lit it with an expensive and kitsch lighter.  Didn’t offer a cigarette to Sam.  Sam pushed the ashtray over towards him.  I can manage this, Sam thought.  Let him smoke.  I’ll be righteous.

                “I’m looking for a missing person,” the guy said.  “A woman.  Are you the detective or the painter?”

                Sam reached into his drawer for a pad and pen.  “You want your house painting?” he said.  “Business is slack at the moment.  I could do either.”

                “Shit,” Norman said.  “I wanna detective.”

                “Can I get some personal details down?” Sam said.  “What’s your name?”

                “Norman Brown,” the guy said.  “Call me Norman.”

                “Address?”

                “Yeah,” Norman said.  “I’m actually working for someone else on this.  I wanna be anonymous.”

                Sam put his pen down and looked across the table.  “I might need to contact you,” he said.  “Who’s paying the bill?”

                “I’ll leave some money with you,” Norman said.  “I’m doing a lot of travelling at the moment.  I’ll look in every other day or so.  See how you’re getting on.  Keep you topped up with cash.”

                “D’you wanna start at the beginning?” Sam said.  “Tell me who we’re looking for?”

                Norman smiled.  “She’s called Snow White,” he said.

                Sam looked at his pad.  He’d written Norman Brown, and then an S for Snow White, but hadn’t gone any further.  He put his pen down again.  “She’s been missing a long time,” he said.  “From all accounts she was some kind of nymphomaniac.  Into little chaps, preferably in gangs.  Not that I’ve got anything against that sort of thing.  Always think it’s OK, whatever it is turns you on.  What people do behind closed doors, so long as it doesn’t hurt somebody else.  That’s fine.  A girl gets off on a gang of dwarfs, and they decide to live together and run a family business, that’s up to them.  It’s not even against the law, so far as I know.  Except maybe if they’re keeping her there against her will.  But from what you’ve told me so far, well, what I’m trying to say to you is that I don’t think I’m the right guy for the job.  In fact, I don’t think you’ll find her.  In my opinion, Mr. Brown,  you’d have better luck flying.”

                “No,” Norman said with a smile.  “That’s not her real name.  It’s like a nick name.”

                “Good,” said Sam.  He wrote on his pad, Snow White alias, and then looked over at Norman again.  “What’s her real name?”

                “She used to be called Selina White,” Norman said.  “But then she got married, so maybe she’s changed it now.”

                “How old is she?” asked Sam

                “Yeah,” Norman said.  “She was twenty three seven years ago, so she’ll be . . .”  He closed his eyes to work the sum out.  Sam watched him count it out on his fingers.  “Christ,” Norman said, “She’ll be thirty.”

                “Do you know her date of birth?”

                Norman shook his head.  “No, but her birthday was the twenty fourth of June,” he said.  “I remember that ‘cos it was the day after mine.”

                Sam wrote on his pad.  Without looking up at Norman he said, “My secretary’s got a computer.  If we feed all this info in, we might get her date of birth.”  He looked up and smiled.  “What do you think?  Is it worth a try?”

                “Go for it,” Norman said.  “Might even tell us where she’s living, computers these days.”

                “You don’t know where she was born?” Sam asked.

                “She came from Leicester,” Norman said.  “Had some family there, but she didn’t keep in touch.  Little sister.”

                “And a wicked step mother?” Sam tried.

                “Dunno,” said Norman, missing the joke.  “Could’ve had.”

                “What about a photograph?”

                Norman shook his head.  “There was some photographs, but I don’t have them now.”

                “Just a general description, then,” said Sam.  “What she looked like.”

                “Yeah.”  Norman leaned forward, put his elbows on the desk.  “You see that Star Wars film?” he said.  “She was like the girl in that.  The princess.”

                “Princess Leia?” said Sam.

                “Yeah.  That’s her.  Could have been a film star.”  Norman nipped the lighted end of his cigarette into the ashtray and put the butt into his top pocket.  Sam inhaled deeply, got as much as he could of the remaining secondary blast.

                “You sure she’s in York?” Sam said.

                “Yeah.  She’s here,” Norman said.

                “Only, from the description you’re giving me,” Sam said.  “I think I’d remember her.  You know, she should sort of stand out.”

                “Shit, you’d remember her,” Norman said.  “Snow White, she’s a good looking girl.  You see her one time you’d know what I mean.”

                “I bet,” said Sam.  “But I don’t have a lot to go on.”

                Norman stood, pushing his chair back.  “You don’t want the job,” he said.  “I’ll find somebody else.”

                “I didn’t say that,” Sam told him.  “We could give it a go.”

                “OK.  How much you want?”

                “Couple a hundred,” Sam said.  “I’ll keep detailed accounts.  Anything we don’t spend you get back.”

                Norman fished in his back pocket and brought out a wad of notes.  “I’ll give you a hundred now,” he said.  “Drop the rest off tomorrow.”  He wet the tip of his right index finger to count the money.

                “You can give me a cheque if you like,” Sam told him.

                Norman was concentrating hard on the counting.  He stopped when Sam spoke, then carried on again without replying.  When he’d finished, pushed the cash over the desk, he said, “No need to get complicated.”

                On his way out Norman stopped at the door to Sam’s office and turned back, looked around the room.  “This must be a really old building,” he said.

                “It’s not modern,” Sam agreed.

                Norman laughed.  “You can say that again.”

                “It’s not modern,” Sam said, deadpan.

                Norman shook his finger at him.  “Says when it was built outside,” he said.  “I reckon it was built by the Romans.”

                After Norman left Sam put the Budokan tape back on and sat down in his chair.  The guy was an ex con.  That business with the cigarette, nipping the end off and then stowing the tab away in his top pocket.  Only place Sam had ever seen that was in prison.  And the guy was mean as well, trying hard to cover it up, but underneath the mask he was someone you wouldn’t want to trust.  Look out, Snow White, Sam thought.  If this guy finds you, you could end up with the poisoned apple treatment.

                Still, he thought, it’s a job.  First of all find the girl, see what she thinks.  If she wants Norman Brown to find her that’s OK.  If she didn’t wanna be found Sam’d give the guy his money back.

 

 

 

. . . . . . . . . . chapter 9

George, the founder of the men’s group, a twenty eight year old of Italian descent who had recently taken to calling himself Giorgio because it “sounded softer,” introduced the theme for the evening: Betrayal.

                “We all know about the outer betrayals,” he said, “how we manipulate and fight each other for the possession of a female, or the possession of anything really.  All material goods.  But I hoped we could talk around the inner betrayals a little, the ways in which we betray ourselves.

                “Our instincts, for example, especially sexual instincts, driving us to procreate.  We just follow them blindly, though we know it’s not in our best interests.  Our bodies betray us as well, leading us into emotional situations we aren’t equipped to deal with.  We are betrayed on all sides, by apathy, ambition, pride, greed.  And as long as we are unconscious of these processes we are at their mercy.”

                Bock, the guy who looked like a Christmas tree because of all the rings in his ears, nose and on his fingers, had four children all under four and whatever theme was introduced he always thought it was about them.  He said, “I only rely on my instincts.  They’re all we’ve got left.  I look at my youngest, Rosy, and I don’t know what to think, she’s so helpless, man.  I’m giving her a bath, or I’m changing her nappy, whatever it is it’s all the same.  She’s reaching out to me and I’m reaching out to her, and there in the middle, between her reaching and my reaching, right there in the middle is love.  And I see that love, and Rosy, she sees that love, and I don’t think either of us is being betrayed.”

                Sam was getting to like these guys.  It had been a long process.  It was hard work because they were as full of shit as Rosy’s nappy.

                But who wasn’t? 

                That’s the way he thought about it now.  He knew he’d betrayed himself in countless ways.  He thought wryly that he might even have been betrayed once or twice, as well as betraying others who had relied on him.  To Sam, the whole thing was an ecological whole now.  Whatever went round would always come round one of these days.  And everything went round.  There were no exceptions.  Some things only limped round, others went past doing a ton, but nothing ever stopped or got spun off, everything was contained within the totality. 

                These guys in the group seemed to think they could stop everything.  Like if they met together and talked about it the world might suddenly one day fall into a different shape.  And they were right, of course.  They believed in magic.  They believed in the reality of magic.

                At least they got out of the house, they didn’t sit at home being programmed by the box.  They were searching for something, bringing all the baggage of their preconceptions with them.  But still searching.  For the wild man, for the feminine side of their nature, hell, they had all kinds of names for it, this something they had lost along the way, or that had been stolen from them.

                You go on a search, you look long enough, hard enough, sooner or later you’ll find something.  It doesn’t matter if you’re blind, you’ve been blinded by everything you ever read, or by everything you ever learned.  Get down and start searching, sooner or later you’ll stumble across it.

                They were all detectives, even Bock with his Rosy.  They didn’t have a clue.  Just a hunch that some day they’d find one.

                This meeting had some of the same qualities as the AA meeting.  Sometimes in either meeting, Sam could find himself wondering which one it was.  In both meetings the participants were reaching out for another kind of reality, something which alone they were not capable of achieving, but which together they might occasionally grasp.  Both groups had grown in numbers over the past few years, in direct proportion with a recession that was itself approaching drinking age.  The main difference between the two groups was that this one closed down for the summer.  This was the last meeting they would have until the autumn.  Whereas the AA meetings went on for ever.  The day they stopped the world would start to wind down.

                Sam didn’t say anything about inner betrayals.  He kept those for the AA meetings.  He listened to the discussion with one ear, Bock talking about his daughter brought back memories for Sam of his own daughter.  Of Donna, his first wife, and their small daughter mowed down by a hit and run driver.  Bock’s image of his Rosy reaching out in the bath became Sam’s own image.  The picture filled his mind for a time. 

                Bronte had been two when she died.  Slim and dark like her mother, but still with all that puppy fat little kids have.  For an hour after the accident they hadn’t found her body.  They’d found Donna by the side of the road, still alive, unconscious; but without witnesses no one had thought to look for Bronte.  A man coming home from work had found her in his front garden, nearly every bone in her body broken.  The impact had sent her through the air, nearly fifty feet.  The driver must have been doing ninety, the coroner said.  And then he’d said, “Accidental death.”  Sam had to shake his head to make it go away.  The picture.  It hung on for a moment, then it collapsed like the pieces of a kaleidoscope, turning slowly into something else.

 

 

. . . . . . . . . . chapter 10

Norman opened up a Nissan Stanza 1.65SGL hatchback in the Castle Museum car park in York.  Chosen because it had a sunroof and he’d been sweating all day.  Central locking with electric windows and power steering.  He’d never opened one before but had heard how to do it in the slammer.  Learned it good as well, took him about eight minutes.  Next time he’d do it in four.  The time after that probably two.

                He drove out to the ring road and followed the route to the house of the guy who ran the gun club.  Pulled into the drive way and parked in front of the garage.  The street was quiet.  Norman kept his gloves on, took his holdall from the passenger seat and got out.  He walked round the garage to the back door and leaned on the bell.

                The woman who answered the door was around fifty, a little younger than her husband.  She wore glasses with thick lenses and pale blue frames, and her hair had one of those blue bits at the front, dyed, all heaped up and bouncy like she’d just been to the hairdressers.  She had long teeth.  “Yes,” she said, looking at Norman with his holdall like he’d just crawled out of a hole in the ground.

                “Fuck this,” he said pushing her back into the house, closing the door behind him.

                She staggered back into a kitchen area, nearly fell over but not quite, and steadied herself against a cooker.  “What on earth do you you think you’re doing?” she said, still with that tone that made Norman want to slap her.  Made him want to spit.

                “Doing?” he said, putting his smile on to show he wasn’t intimidated.  He put his bag down on the carpet tiles and took the washing line out.  “I’m tying you up.  That’s what I’m doing.”

                She started to scream then.  It was going to be long and loud like they do in those horror movies, so Norman had no option but to smack her in the mouth.  He hadn’t thought about hurting her, cutting her lip like that, sending her glasses across the room.  That wasn’t part of the plan.  But a man has to do what a man has to do.  She stopped the scream immediately, started whimpering, saying her husband would be home soon.  Saying Norman could have the money, take anything he wanted, only please don’t hurt her.  She was pushing herself back into the corner, like she was trying to get through the wall.

                “Where’s the money?” Norman asked.

                She took him upstairs to a large blue bedroom, blue curtains and carpet, blue cover on the bed, with a little pink patch in the centre of it.  A pink diamond.  Norman told her to keep away from the window.  She took a cash box out of the bottom drawer of a chest.  Inside the cashbox was a wad of notes, about four inches thick.

                “How much is there?” Norman said.

                She shook her head.  “I don’t know.”

                “What about guns?” he said.  “I need a gun.”

                “He doesn’t keep guns here,” she said.  “Sometimes there’s one in the office.  I don’t know.”  Her speech was hesitant and she didn’t seem to be in control of her body.  She was twitching all over and every now and then she took in really deep gulps of air.

                The office was next door to the bedroom.  It had a desk and a filing cabinet.  On one wall was a bench with gun parts, a couple of dismantled pistols.  The stock of a rifle and a few cartridges.  “That’s all there is,” the woman said.

                Norman pushed her back into the bedroom and made her lie down on the bed.  He hog tied her, legs tied together and pulled up her back so that her feet were tied to her hands.  She was whimpering all the time, saying the rope was cutting into her skin, could he not tie it so tight?  Norman pulled the rope tighter, then took it around her neck so if she struggled too much she’d strangle herself.

                He found her underwear drawer and shoved a pair of smalls into her mouth, stop her from trying that scream again.  Then he went back into the office for the parcel tape and wrapped it a couple of times round her head and mouth.  She looked ridiculous, just her eyes staring at him.  He put his hand down the front of her dress to see if there was anything doing, but there was only skin there.  “The story of my life,” Norman told her.  “Thirty years too late.”

                Then she wet herself.  Just let it go.  No control.  Norman shook his head.  People were unbelievable.

                He opened the door of a wardrobe and shoved her in there, on top of all her shoes.  He pulled out four matching suitcases from the top shelf.  Closed the door and went downstairs with the suitcases.  Wait for the hubby.

 

*

 

The Chief was confronting a load of women anti-abortion demonstrators, but Norman switched it off when he heard the silver Merc arrive.  It was too complicated to be a good programme.  Abortion, anti-abortion, who cared about stuff like that?  People like those women, they don’t live in the real world.  The real world’s different to that, about life and death, about filling the space inbetween with as much as you can cram into it.  Nothing to do with abortion.  And that Chief,  Jesus, he was a complete fantasy.  Who ever heard of a cop with a conscience?  Or a cop who gives a toss about anybody else who’s not a cop?

                Norman didn’t like television.  They always did things like that on television.  Told lies.  Made out like there were cops who were human beings, when in reality everybody knew they were pure shite.  Norman had his way he’d ban television altogether, just have videos.  Bring some reality back into the world.

                Key in the front door, the guy would be a bit narked because somebody’d blocked his way into the garage.  Norman didn’t move from the leather armchair in front of the box.  He reached for his glass and had a little sip of the old malt he’d found in the sideboard.  Kept it in his mouth until it got warm, started tingling on the back of his tongue, then let it trickle down his throat.

                The front door opened and closed.  The sound of it being locked.  Then the voice, “Helen, I’m home.”

                And there he was, framed in the doorway, large leather briefcase in his hand.  Looking a little tired after a hard day at work.  A smile on his face that slowly drained away when he saw Norman instead of the little wife.

                “You don’t look too happy to see me,” Norman told him, placing the empty glass on the small round table in front of him.

                The guy was confused.  He blinked a couple of times.  Came into the room then, blinked again and said, “Do I know you?  Where’s Helen?”  Looked around the room, like he thought she was there, only he hadn’t located her yet.  He looked at the four suitcases Norman had left by the wall.

                “She’s not here,” Norman said.  “Been kidnapped.”

                “What?”  The man’s head wasn’t working.  Either that or he was deaf.

                Norman raised his voice just a little.  “I know it’s a nuisance,” he said.  But she’s been kidnapped.”

                The man put his briefcase down.  “I don’t understand,” he said.  “Who are you?  Are you from the police?”  He looked over at the stack of suitcases again.

                Norman reached for the bottle of malt and unscrewed the top.  “Sit down,” he said.  “I’ll explain it to you.”  He poured from the bottle, kept pouring until the liquid reached the top of the glass and spilled over on the table.  The guy stood and watched him.  “I said sit down,” Norman said, this time getting an edge to his voice which shook the guy.  “On the fucking chair.”

                The man went to the chair and sat down.  “What’s going on?” he said.  “You’re not the police.  Where’s my wife?  Why are these suitcases here?”

                Norman carefully lifted the glass and took a sip off the top.  “Cheers,” he said.  “Now you ask the questions one at a time, and I’ll do my best to answer you.”

                The man wasn’t comfortable in the chair.  He didn’t sit back and relax, just sat on the edge there, like he might get up any minute and do something.  But he couldn’t think of anything to do.  His head was nodding up and down and from side to side, like he’d lost control of it.  Nodding away there, twenty to the dozen.

                Then he formed a question.  “Who are you?”

                “Isaac,” Norman told him.  “The name’s Isaac.  Israeli Secret Service.”

                The head began nodding even faster.  If the guy kept it up his head would come off altogether.  Go bouncing over the carpet and out the front door, down the street like the meatball song.  “Where’s Helen?” he said, with a big gap between the two words.  “Where’s  . . . Helen?”  He licked his lips, wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.

                “I don’t know the answer,” Norman said.

                The man looked at him, looked away, then looked back again.  “You said she’d been kidnapped,” he said.

                Norman nodded.

                “But you don’t know where she is?”

                Norman nodded again.  “You’re starting to get it,” he said.

                The man licked his lips.  “And you said Israeli Secret Service?”

                “You’re the memory man,” Norman told him.

                The man wiped his brow.  He looked down at his hands, trying to put the information together.  Norman took another sip of the malt while he waited.  The man looked over at the suitcases, like they might be a clue.

                “I don’t get it,” he said.  “What do you want?”

                Norman smiled.  “You’re slow,” he said, “but you’re getting there.”  He put the glass back on the table.  “Guns and ammo and money,” he said.  “We get guns and ammo and money, and you get the little wife back, if you want her.  What I saw she’s not the best woman in the world.”

                The man stood up, made as if he was coming over to Norman, but thought better of it.  “If you’ve hurt her. . .” he said.  “Jesus, if anything happens to her. . .”

                “Sit down,” Norman told him.  “She’s OK.  You’ve got two hours to get back to the club, load up the guns and the money.  Don’t forget the ammo.  One hour after I leave here with the goods she’ll be released.”

                The man sat back on the chair.  “And if I don’t?” he said.

                Norman smiled at him.  “My boss,” he said.  “He can be a real cruel bastard.”

                The head just nodded away faster than ever, this time with its eyes closed.  Eventually he opened his eyes and licked his lips.  “OK,” he said.  “OK.  OK.”

                “You take the suitcases,” Norman said.  “I want the guns packed in suitcases.”

                The man went over to the stack of suitcases and began tucking them under his arms.  Norman walked to the front door with him.

                “If you want to see your wife again, don’t do anything stupid,” he said.  “I leave in two hours whether you’re back or not.  And if I leave without the goods the little lady gets the chop.”

                The guy knew what he meant.

                “We want hand guns mostly,” Norman said.  “Handguns and silencers.  Plenty of ammo.  A few shotguns and a couple a rifles.  Don’t forget the money.”  He pushed the guy out into the street and closed the door.  Then he had another thought, opened the door and walked down the path to where the man was getting into the Merc.  “Another thing,” he said.  “You got any shoulder holsters?  Y’know, you can put a pistol under your arm, so nobody knows you’re carrying.”

                “You want some of them?”

                “Jus’ one,” Norman said.  “I jus’ want one of them.”

 

*

               

The Chief was still at it, fighting the anti-abortionists.  Norman switched channels and watched a guy who was a DIY disaster area, but after about five minutes he turned the sound down and had a think.

                Guys in prison talked a load of bollocks most of the time.  When I get out, when I get out.  It was always the same thing.  When I get out I’m gonna get drunk every night of the week.  When I get out of here I’m gonna have the longest fuck of my life.  When I get out I’m gonna be really clever.  When I get out.

                Norman had never got into that.  He’d really thought he would never get out.  And look at this.  All those cons still giving it When I get out, while here was old Norman with his feet up drinking best malted scotch, nearly five grand in his pocket, and a woman upstairs in the wardrobe he didn’t even bother fucking because there was better meat about.

                He’s got a private detective working for him, searching out Snow White, another guy getting some guns together.  There’s Squishsquash waiting in the wings for Norman to arrange her tick tests.  He’d already had Tina Turner.  Jesus, sitting in a cell for seven years he’d forgotten what life outside was like.  But now he was starting to remember.  It was all coming back.  So long as you didn’t get picked up you could do anything you thought of.  Anything that turned you on.

                You had to be straight with people, make sure they understood what was going on.  But if you wanted something you only had to ask, most people’d get it for you right off.  And when you did come across somebody who wouldn’t play.  Well, you just blew the fuckers away.

                You needed some kind of talent to be able to read people, but once you had that you were almost untouchable.  This guy, for instance, the guy was out getting the guns for him.  He wouldn’t try anything.  He’d just do exactly as he was told.  Somebody else might drive straight round to the cop shop, or come back into the house with a gun in each hand.  But not him.  Right now he’d have loaded his silver Merc with everything he could find in the gun club and be bringing it all back home.  Pleasure to do business with him, a guy like that, you knew exactly where you stood.

 

*

 

It was the same as before.  The silver Merc pulling up outside, the door slamming, and then his key turning in the lock.  He didn’t say anything this time, didn’t shout his wife’s name.  And when he came to the entrance of the room he didn’t stand framed in the doorway.  He walked straight in, stood a few feet away from Norman and said, “It’s done.  All the suitcases are packed.  This is all the money we have.”  He handed over an envelope, felt like around another grand.

                “You haven’t got any money here?” Norman asked, pushing himself out of the chair.

                The guy shook his head.  “No,” he said.  “You’ve got everything now.”

                Norman shook his head.  “That’s not right,” he said, “telling porkie pies like that.  Thing like that could get you into real trouble.”

                The guy hung his head, knowing he’d been found out.  Looked like a schoolboy in front of his headmaster.

                Norman waited a few seconds, just make sure the guy didn’t have another stash somewhere else in the house.

                “We found the cash upstairs,” Norman told him.  “The money box you was hiding from the tax man.  Very naughty.”

                “OK, you’ve got everything,” the man said.  “Can I have my wife back?”

                “I jus’ wanna check the car,” Norman said.  “Now we know you don’t always tell the truth.”  Norman walked past the man, taking the keys to the Merc from his hand, and left the house.  He went to the Merc and opened the boot.  He took a hand gun and silencer from the first suitcase and loaded it as he walked back up the path to the front door.

                The man was still standing in the same position when Norman came into the room.  He was watching the television, the pictures with no sound.  He didn’t turn around, just stood there watching the pictures.

                Norman said, “Apart from that one little porkie you’ve done real good.  So we’re not gonna penalise you.  Your wife’s upstairs.”

                The man didn’t take it in immediately.  He stood staring at the pictures for about fifteen seconds.  Then he shook his head and went to the stairs.  Norman followed him.

                The man took the stairs two at a time.  Halfway up he shouted, “Helen, are you there?”  He walked into the bedroom and came out again as Norman got to the top of the stairs.  “Where is she?” he said, going into the office.  Then he stood at the entrance to the office, and his head began nodding again.  “You bastard,” he said to Norman.  “She isn’t here.”  His knees began to sag and Norman thought he might cry.

                “She’s in the wardrobe,” Norman said.

                The man pushed past Norman, back into his bedroom and walked to the wardrobe, opened the door.  “Oh, my God,” he said, going to his knees.  “Helen, are you all right?”  He began dragging his bound wife out of the wardrobe.  Pulling on the ropes, bringing her out of there head first, a few shoes coming out at the same time.

                The smell of piss again.  Almost too much to bear, yet the guy didn’t seem to notice.

                Norman put the gun to the back of the man’s head and touched the trigger, shot him once.  The man slumped forward over his wife, and they lay together there in a tangle of shoes, half in and half out of the wardrobe.

                Norman reached over and pulled the man off his wife, so he could give her the same treatment as her husband.  But there was no need.  She was dead already, must have suffocated.  Norman shrugged.  That’s why there had been no sounds of her struggling or kicking.  And he thought she was being a good girl.

                Norman put the gun in the man’s right hand, wrapped his index finger around the trigger, so it would look as though he’d killed his wife and then shot himself.  The filth would think it was an open and shut case, for a while anyway.  It was difficult working with gloves on, but he managed it OK.  Shit, if they found Norman’s dabs anywhere in the house they’d close the town down and bring the military in.

                He looked through the wardrobe at the guy’s clothes.  There was a lightweight suit in there, pale blue with a label said it was made in Finland.  Norman threw it on the bed and looked through the man’s shirt drawer.  He took a couple of good ones, one with short sleeves, and another with pockets the same blue as the suit. Then he found a packet of unopened socks and carried them all down to the silver Merc, only stopping briefly in the living room to pick up what remained of the good malt.

                He drove back to York and parked behind the railway station.  He put his new clothes into one of the suitcases and then carried all four of the suitcases around to the Station Hotel.  They were heavy too, he had to stop every few yards to put them down, give his arms a rest.  At the entrance to the hotel a couple of porters came to help him and Norman went over to the reception desk and asked for a room.

                For a moment or two it looked as though they weren’t going to give him a room because he didn’t have a reservation.  But then they changed their minds and the porter and a young lad showed him up to a room on the second floor.

                The room had its own shower and a colour TV, and Norman turned the TV on and stretched out on the bed.  After a minute or two he opened the bottle of malt and took a swig from the neck of the bottle.  He kept the liquid in his mouth to warm it up, only letting it trickle down his throat when it began prickling on the back of his tongue.

 

 

 . . . . . . . . . . chapter 11

Sam was out of bed and wandering around the flat at six o clock in the morning.   Geordie had stayed out the previous evening, and Sam had spent it with Barney, Geordie’s dog, played a couple of tapes and ended up with a book Celia had lent him.  Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro.  The book had disturbed him.  He had not identified with the characters who were situated in a different time and connected to an order Sam knew nothing of.  But there were echoes of Sam’s own experience in the book.  Nothing concrete, nothing he could definitely say, Yes, I remember a time like that.  Only echoes.  Echoes that went on through the night, so that he slept fitfully and found himself with wide staring eyes at first light.  Wide staring eyes and a mouth felt like it was a camp site.

                Barney couldn’t tell the time.  He slept in his basket until someone else got up then whatever time it was he thought it was breakfast time.  He was usually right.

                By seven the two of them were in the office.  Barney curled up in his office basket, and Sam looking out at the Square, wondering why he hadn’t waited for Geordie at home, had breakfast together, started the day slowly.   The only thing on the cards for the day was Mister Norman Brown coming in with a hundred quid.  And it was going to be another scorcher of a day.  Not a cloud in the sky.

                Every time there was a foot on the stair, or the street door opened Barney would lift his head and look at the office door.  “Geordie’s stayed out rutting,” Sam told him.  “Took a little break.  It’s just you and me.”

                The dog looked as though he understood.  Didn’t make him feel any better though.  He wasn’t used to being without his friend. 

                Sam had always been alone.  Apart from the time with Donna, and a brief time with Brenda, his second wife.  Brief?  Yeah, about forty eight hours as he remembered it.  Forty eight hours before they both realised they’d made a terrible mistake.

                There’d been other women along the way.  Some of them seemed to count for a time, but when he looked back there was always something missing.  He couldn’t remember her name, or maybe it was what she looked like.  Others he couldn’t remember a single thing they’d said to each other.  There was one called Samantha, couple a years back.  Call me Sam.  It’d seemed to be really hot for a month or two, all he could think about was being with Sam.  But when he tried to bring her back now that’s how it was.  He couldn’t remember one conversation they’d had.  He could remember waking up in the morning, looking at her lying next to him, sleeping, and thinking: Where did you come from?

                Hell, she could walk past the window now and he probably wouldn’t know who she was.  That’s how it went, people drifted into and out of each others lives.  Every once in a while one of them would be right, or nearly right, right enough for you to tell yourself they were right.  Once, maybe twice in a lifetime one of them would be it.

                Wanda was nearly right, and Sam he was nearly right for her.  They were both right for each other, most of the time.  Sex was good with Wanda.  And they could talk, it didn’t seem to matter what the other one said.  They could certainly talk, most of the time.

                “Tell you what, Barney,” he said to the dog.  “If this guy comes in before twelve we’ll take a little holiday.  Drive to the seaside for the afternoon.”

                Barney lifted his head, cocked one ear, then put his head down again.  He looked at Sam with one eye, his mouth open and his tongue out.  Sam did the same back to him.

 

*

 

When Bettys opened Sam went down there for coffee.  Sat at a table by the window and rolled a cigarette.  Watched the door to his office so he wouldn’t miss Norman Brown when he came with the money.  The only person went in was a woman, thirty four, thirty five years old.  Long legs and a distinctive walk, taking little steps one after the other so you couldn’t help but watch her.  She had black hair cut off short at the bottom of her ears and wore a yellow dress in silk with a V-neck, buttons all the way down the front.  Sam shook his head and stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray.  Best thing he’d seen all day.

                When he got back to the office he walked over to the tape deck.  Put Planet Waves on to try and change his consciousness.  Did a little dance to the opening bars of On a Night Like This as he walked back to his desk.  Barney nearly got out of his basket, but changed his mind when Sam sat in his chair and put his feet up on the desk.

                The Bluesman had moved on to Something There is About You by the time Norman Brown arrived.  One knock on the door and he was in the office before Sam could get his feet off the table.  “Hey, caught you at it,” Norman said, coming over to the desk, a broad smile on his face.

                Dressed all in blue today.  Light blue poplin suit, same colour shirt and a matching tie.  Little boy blue.  He put the hundred down on the desk and sat on the chair.  “Thought I wouldn’t show up, didn’t you?” he said to Sam.

                “You left a hundred yesterday,” Sam said.  “When a man does that I feel like I’m gonna see him again.”

                “Too true,” Norman said.  “You make any progress?”

                “Haven’t really got started yet,” Sam said.  “Things’ll start moving tomorrow.  You didn’t come up with a photograph?”

                “No,” Norman said.  “You know as much as I do.”  He reached into his pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes.  Lit one up and sat back in the chair with his legs crossed.  Looked across the desk.

                Sam didn’t like him.  Even while it was happening he wanted to push the guy’s money back over the desk, tell him to go find somebody else.  If there had been one more job lined up Sam wouldn’t have bothered with him.  But there were bills to pay, and the guy hadn’t done anything obviously wrong.  Somewhere inside, buried deep, there was a little voice telling Sam to cut his losses, get rid of the guy.  But it was only a small voice, and reason had no difficulty in swamping it.  Sam thought he would like to throttle the little runt and steal his cigarettes.

                “This’s the same you was playing last time,” Norman said, indicating the tape deck.  “Kind of jazzy like.”  He drummed his fingers on the desk.  He laughed.  “Jazzy but not funky.  Know what I mean?  Tina Turner, now she can be funky.”

                “Yeah?” said Sam.

                “All them spades can be funky,” Norman continued.  “Specially the women.  The guys can as well, good movers.  Know what I mean?  But Tina, shit, she’s some woman.  Every little bit of her.”

                Sam sighed hard.  “Yeah,” he said.  Then tried even harder.  “I know what you mean.”

                “I’ve got this photo,” Norman told him.  “Tina in a dress made out of beads.  Well, hardly a dress at all, jus’ a few beads.  Might be stuck on her skin for all I know.  See her move around in that, man.”  He fished around in his pocket, pulled out the cover from a tape and slid it across the top of the desk.  “Feast your eyes on that.”

                Sam unfolded it and feasted his eyes on Tina Turner standing with her legs apart in high heeled shoes.  Apart from the beads she was naked, oiled all over, standing with her arms above her head.  Her breasts were almost naked, only the nipples covered with a bead or two.  He pushed it back at Norman.  “Shaves under her arms,” he said.

                Norman looked at the photograph.  “Yeah,” he said.  Then, almost to himself, “She’s real chocolate.  Don’t see many about like that.”  And looking back at Sam,  “Know what I’d like to do with her?”

                Sam shook his head.  “But I get the feeling you’re gonna tell me anyway.”

                Norman laughed loudly.  “Hey,” he said.  “You’re dry, you know that?  You got a sense of humour.”

                “You’re just saying that,” Sam said.

                “No, it’s true.”  Norman stopped and then looked back over the desk.  “Hey, there you go again.  Putting me on, man.  You’re sharp.”

                Sam smiled at him, wishing he would go.  “Have to keep the customer happy,” he said.  He stood and took the hundred pounds from the desk.  “I’m expecting another client in a moment,” he said.  “If there’s nothing else.”

                “OK, OK,” Norman said, getting to his feet.  He walked to the door and opened it, stood outside in the passage, still talking.  When he opened the door Barney left his basket and went out in front of him.   “I’ll call round in a couple a days, see how you’re getting on,” Norman continued.  Then he said, “Shit,  I’ve let the dog out.”

                “Don’t worry,” said Sam.  “He won’t go far.  I’ll get him.”

                “Stay cool,” Norman said as he left.

 

*

 

Sam gave the guy a minute to get clear then went out of the office to look for Barney.  He went down the stairs to the square, trying to give that little whistle Geordie used when he wanted Barney to follow him, but not making a very good job of it.  When he got down to the outer door he saw Norman going towards the corner, walking with that characteristic swagger, ogling all the women as though they were wearing bead dresses.  There was no sign of Barney, but Geordie and Gus were coming across the square from Bettys.

                “Much on, boss?” Geordie asked.

                “Not a lot,” said Sam.  “The guy in blue,” he indicated Norman, who was now only a few paces from the corner.  “Calls himself Norman Brown, and doesn’t want us to know where he lives.”

                “Say no more,” said Geordie.

                Gus nodded, and the two of them took off after Norman, who had now disappeared from sight.

                Sam went back up the stairs and found Barney in the arms of the woman in the yellow dress.  She was standing there in the anteroom, and when Sam opened the door she turned and said, “Oh, hello.  Does this little fellow belong to you?”

                “Yeah,” Sam said.  “Well, he doesn’t exactly belong to me.  I’m his minder for the moment.  Not making a very good job of it.”  From a distance she’d looked neat, up close she was really something.  Maybe a little older than he’d first thought, past her mid thirties.  Approaching forty, but along an elegant route.  She was as tall as Sam, and with flat shoes.  Her face was open and she looked straight into his eyes, listening carefully as he spoke.  There was a touch of eye shadow, but no make up on her face, nothing on her lips.  As she held Barney to her breast Sam noticed her hands, long elegant fingers, and a fine down on her arms.  Her neck would have made Modigliani reach for his brush.  “Where’d you find him?”

                “He came into the ladies.”  She smiled and stroked Barney’s ear.

                “That’s typical,” Sam told her.  “He’s done it before.  Bit of a perve deep down.”

                “I don’t think so,” she said.  “He was just looking for company.”  She transferred Barney to her left arm and offered Sam her right hand.  “Jennie Cosgrave,” she said.  “I work in that little cupboard over the corridor.  And I think my aunt works in here.”

                Sam took her hand, cool and slightly moist.  “Sam,” he said.  “Sam Turner.  Yeah, Celia told me you would be around.  Me and Barney are supposed to work in here, but there’s not much doing at the moment.  Thought we’d go to the seaside this afternoon.”

                “Oh, I thought you had a client.  I heard someone talking.”  Sam forgot to let go of her hand, but she prized it free with a smile.

                “That’s right,” he said.  “He was just leaving.”

                Jennie Cosgrave did something with her face, either an attempt at a frown, or maybe she was just wrinkling her forehead.  “I thought I recognised his voice,” she said.

                “Calls himself Norman Brown,” Sam said.  “In this business you never know if the client’s on the level.”

                She shook her head.  “The name doesn’t mean anything.  I just thought. . .”  Her voice trailed off.  “Never mind.”  She looked down at Barney.  “Do you want to take him?”

                Sam opened the door to the inner office.  “Put him down,” he said.  “He’ll go to his basket and be asleep in two winks.”

                “Well, it was good to meet you,” she said.  “And Barney.  I work over there, you know, I hear sounds, people moving about.  It’s good to be able to put a face to the voice.  Plus I’ve heard lots about you from aunt Celia.”

                “Yeah?” Sam said, walking back to the corridor with her.  “We only moved in a couple a days ago ourselves.  You’re the first person I’ve met.”

                Jennie opened the door to her room and turned back to face him.  “It’s really hot in here,” she said.  “I can’t seem to open the window.”

                “I’ve got a guy coming to fix our windows,” Sam said.  “I’ll send him over.”  He looked past her into the tiny room, there was one small window and only enough room for a desk and a chair.  The desk had a portable computer on it.  By the side of the computer and under the desk were about a hundred books, white paper bookmarks sticking out of them.  “What do you do in here?”

                “I’m a psychologist,” she said.  “I’m doing some work at Askham Grange.”

                “Oh, yeah, Celia said.  The Women’s Prison.”

                “Still at the preparation stage.  Start in about a fortnight.”

                “We work with the same kind of people,” Sam said.  “Should compare notes sometime.”

                “Yes, it would be interesting.”

                There was a long silence.  Sam couldn’t think of anything else to say.  “Well,” he said, taking a step back.

                Jennie smiled.  “Yes,” she said.  “Back to the grindstone.” 

                “Thanks,” he said.  “For Barney. . .”

                She smiled again and closed the door.  Sam walked back to his office.  The Bluesman was on the last track.  Barney was curled up in his basket.  Sam picked up the kettle and went to fill it at the sink, then changed his mind and sat down at the desk.  “You’re a good dog, Barney,” he said.  “You know that?  You’re a real good dog.”

                When the tape switched itself off, Sam looked over at Barney again.  “She looked at me really weird,” he said.  “As if she knew my face, but couldn’t place it.”  He shook his head.  “She was probably thinking of Gene Hackman.”

 

 

. . . . . . . . . . chapter 12

Geordie fell in behind the guy Sam’d said was called Norman Brown, kept himself about twenty paces behind, like they’d done in training sessions.  While he walked he pinned his radio microphone to the lapel of his jacket and fitted the Walkman earphones on his head.  Gus had adapted the Walkman cases so they acted as receivers as well as playing tapes.  Gus could do things like that, build computers, put a transmitter into the body of a pen, anything with electronics. He was a whizz.  Recently he’d been talking about a video camera so small it could fit in a matchbox.  But something that small, Geordie couldn’t imagine how you’d work it, where the knobs and buttons would be

                “You there?” Geordie asked, speaking in the general direction of the microphone but trying not to look at it.

                “Check,” Gus said, because he knew and understood the right things to say when you had somebody under surveillance.  “I’m on the other side of the road, ’bout ten yards behind you.  Don’t look.”

                “I know that,” said Geordie.  “What you want to tell me that for?”

                “Over and out,” said Gus, and the earpiece went dead.

                “Fuckin check,” said Geordie.  Over and out?  Christ, that didn’t sound right.  Check was something else.  Fitted in with the whole scene.  But Over and out. . .  That was something those pilots in fighter planes said, like in those old movies about the war.  Biggles, guys like that.  Chaps like that.  The Brylcream boys.

                Norman Brown cut down New Street to get into Coney Street, and Geordie dropped back another couple of paces as the volume of pedestrians thinned out.  “Don’t lose him,” Gus’s voice said in his ear.  “Drop back and wait; I’ll stay with him.”

                “Check,” said Geordie.  He stopped for a moment and gazed into the window of an Estate Agent.  Then he crossed the road and took over Gus’s former position as the anchor man.

                This was more like proper detective work, like in those books Sam was always reading, stacked up in his room.  And like the Humphrey Bogart films.  Usual detective work wasn’t like in the books and the films.  It was boring, put you to sleep.  Consisted of waiting around in stationary cars, or standing on the corner of the street, maybe hours at a time.  You got cramp.  You froze to death in winter.  Baked in summer.

                In the books and the films they made it romantic and exciting all the time, but that was a lie to keep you turning the pages or watching the box.  In real life when you met somebody and they found out you was a private investigator, they always said, Oh, how exciting, tell me all about it.  And you had to really wrack your brains to think of anything to say about it.  Oh, well, today I stood on a corner for seven hours.  Nothing happened.  Then I went home. . .

                But then, occasionally, it came alive.  Like now.  Things moved.  Geordie knew nothing about Norman Brown, not even if it was the guy’s real name.  Didn’t know where he’d come from, or where he was going.  Only that Sam wanted an address for him.  Jesus, the guy could be dangerous.  Like the mad guy Geordie heard about on the news, one who killed an old couple in Haxby.  For all Geordie knew, this could be the same guy.

                Norman Brown went into W H Smith’s and Gus went in after him.  Geordie waited on the opposite pavement, chatted for a while to Tombo who was in his usual spot selling The Big Issue.  “Lot of people in town,” Tombo told him.  “More women and girls sleeping in the parks.  Waiting for the end of the world.  Lot of coke about, too.  Every other person you meet has a busted nose.”

                “What about you?” Geordie asked.

                A smile passed over Tombo’s battered face.  Then he touched his nose briefly with the fingers of his left hand.  “Yeah,” he said.  “Me too.”  The smile stayed put.  It had taken a while to get there, as if it had pushed itself through his crusty skin, used a lot of effort to get to the surface, and now it had made it it didn’t want to give up too soon.  Geordie wanted to hug him for the smile, but didn’t know him well enough.  There was something in the unwritten code about not hugging the guy you get your newspaper off.  He didn’t understand it, but he’d talk to Sam about it later, or Gus, or Celia.  One of them would know.  Between them they knew just about everything.  Like the other night they’d all sat around talking about invisibility.  Yeah, it was true:  infuckinvisibility.  Geordie couldn’t believe it.  Thought it must be a joke at first, but they was serious.  Celia had started them off saying women started becoming invisible when they got to be forty years old.  Oh, yeah, Celia?  Keep it coming.  Like she’s finally blown the last gasket.  By morning she’ll be barking.

                “But then around, well, sometimes after sixty, or between sixty and seventy they start coming back again,” she said. 

                “You sure about this one? Celia,” said Gus.

                “Absolutely,” she said.  “No doubt whatsoever.  I became invisible on my thirty seventh birthday, and I stayed completely out of sight until I was sixty two.”

                “You’re out of sight, anyway,” said Sam.  And he looked over at her to check she knew what he meant, and she did.  Geordie had noticed that before, the glances Sam and Celia gave each other from time to time.  The glance always said something like, Do you read me?  And whichever one of them asked the question the other one always seemed to say Yes.  This was odd, because if Gus or Geordie or maybe anyone else in the world had used the expression out-of-sight, Celia wouldn’t have understood what it meant.  But when Sam used it she knew right away.

                Anyway, that was another story.  In this story Sam had asked her what happened to men, and Celia explained that men hung on a bit longer than women, not becoming invisible until they were in their middle or late fifties, but that once they disappeared they were gone for ever.  Men didn’t come back again.  “That’s why,” she said, “When you walk through the town you see lots and lots of old ladies, but no old men at all.”

                “Where are they?” Geordie asked.  “What’s happened to them?”

                “Oh, they’re there,” Celia said.  “You just don’t see them.”

                Christ.  Invisible.

                “Coming out,” said the voice in Geordie’s earpiece.  “Over to you.”  Norman Brown came out of W H Smith’s, walked along the pavement and went into Woolworths.  Geordie tapped Tombo’s arm, said, “See you,” and trotted over the road and through the swing doors behind Norman.  Geordie wished he was invisible.  Be great in a job like this.  You could do it single handed, like in that film on the box, The Invisible Man.  Old Geordie there, unwinding the bandages, stashing his shirt and trilby and tailing Norman Brown in the nude.

                Bit parky in the winter, but weather like this, running round Woolworths in the nude, yeah, why not.  Nobody would see him.  He’d thought about it before, not in relation to the job, but just for the fun of it, being able to see people without them seeing him.  Following girls into the Ladies.  Being in all the places he wasn’t supposed to be.  Wandering into a restaurant when he was hungry, helping himself to a chicken leg.  Chicken breast actually.  The whole chicken if he wanted.  The waiter walking by with one of those silver salvers on his shoulder.  Geordie lifting the lid and running off with the chicken, gravy dripping all over the floor.  But Geordie completely invisible, so the chicken looks like its had enough and flying away.  Maybe he’d make the wings flap, do a loud cock-a-doodle-doo, and then pause for a moment at the door to do a final wave.

                He smiled, imagining having all that power.

                Norman Brown was watching a girl at the makeup counter.  The girl pocketed a lipstick and went out the door, with Norman on her heels.  “He’s coming out,” Geordie reported into his microphone.

                “Check,” said Gus’s voice.

 

 

. . . . . . . . . . chapter 13

Jennie Cosgrave sat at her desk and looked at the blank screen of her computer.  Seemed like a nice man, she thought.  Had a nice dog, if that was anything to go by.  You can judge a man by looking at his shoes, her father had said, how many years ago?  Funny, the things you remembered.  The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.  Clothes maketh the man.  You can’t judge a book by the cover.

                She wondered if she’d closed the door too soon, whether if she’d kept it open he would have said something else.  She wondered why she was thinking about him instead of pressing on with the work she had to do.  She got up from the chair and moved over to the window, sat on the edge of the desk and looked out at the square below.

                She told herself it was the weather.  It was too hot to work, too hot to think properly.  Then she smiled, knowing it was an excuse.  Thinking about the excuses criminals give after they’ve been caught.  The classic ones:   It was the others did the job, I just hung about outside.  If she’d done what I said she wouldn’t have got hurt.  They kept needling me; what did they expect?

                She looked back at the blank screen of the computer and sighed.  She had to prepare a tick test to measure the motivation for change in a group of violent female prisoners.  It meant eliciting from them the factors which they saw as positive in a life of crime, and then measuring that against the factors which they saw as negative.  She had done a similar test with a group of male prisoners at Dartmoor, finding that the most significant factor for a life of crime in that group was that it got them female attention.  After that particular result she had not expected the Home Office to continue its grant.  But here she was, still working.  Not with as many resources as the job merited, but beggars can’t be choosers.

                Jennie had another go at the window, but it was jammed with several coats of paint.  The effort made her hotter and more uncomfortable than before.  She was wiping her brow with the back of her hand when there was a knock on the door and Sam Turner’s head appeared.  The door opened wider and he came in with Barney on a lead.

                “We’re going to the seaside,” he said.  “D’you wanna come?”

                Breeding, modesty, and natural reserve all conspired together, telling her to shake her head, send him packing with his dog between his legs.  She had to swallow really deeply to make herself say, “Yes.  I’d love to.”

                “Car’s just round the corner,” he said when they got outside.  “Over the bridge.”

                “I haven’t got anything with me,” she said.  She had a small shoulder bag with a purse inside, the keys to Celia’s house.  Nothing else.  “I feel naked.”

                He glanced across at her.  “It’s all right,” he said.  “Everything’s covered.”  Her hair kept falling over her right eye, so she changed position, walking behind him and over to his right.  All the better to see you Mister Turner.

                Jennie was not used to making impulsive decisions like this.  She didn’t want to change her mind, felt good about leaving the office behind, but somehow the whole thing would have felt better if she had more money with her.  And it would have been perfect if she had her big straw bag with a swimming costume, a towel, perhaps a few sandwiches and a flask of coffee.

                “Where are we going?” she asked as he opened the door of the Volvo for her.

                “You know Filey Brigg?” he answered.

                Jennie got into the passenger seat.  She waited until he came around and got behind the wheel.  “I don’t know the East Coast at all,” she said.

                Sam looked over at her before reversing the Volvo out of the parking space.  She caught his eyes for a moment and something inside her settled down.  In her work Jennie came across all kinds of men, on both sides of the bars.  Some of them were incapable of negotiation in a one to one situation.  But this man was not like that.  He was not straight forward, far from it.  But he would listen, and he would try to understand.  In fact, she thought, if the day was going to be good or bad it was not possible to foretell.  But it would certainly be interesting.

                “You’ll like the Brigg,” he said.  “It’s wild.”

                Now why should he think I’ll like something wild? she thought.  She didn’t doubt that he was right, that he’d discovered something in her she was not conscious of projecting.  Only she could not help but be interested in the mechanism.  Jennie was careful about the signals she sent out to the world.  She studied and understood body language, but was often reminded that she read the body language of others much better than she understood her own.  Especially with men.  You could tell a man one thing, quite categorically, and very soon discover that he’d heard the opposite.  You could say, listen, I’m being polite, I find what you’re saying interesting, but I’m not at all interested in you physically.  And before you’d turned around the man would be saying, Hey, we’re getting on really well, shall we go to bed?

                Arrogant.

                She hoped he wouldn’t be.  But it was too soon to tell.

                “Do you want to talk about your work?” he asked.  “I’m not entirely sure what you do.”

                “I’m mainly interested in education,” she told him.

                “Educating cons?”

                “There’re different approaches,” she explained.  “People used to believe that a criminal was evil.  You just had to punish him.  You had to drive the evil spirit out of him.”  The man was listening.  He drove his car and he listened, didn’t interrupt.  “For a while after that it was fashionable to think he wasn’t evil, he was sick.  You had to treat him, make him well again so that he could rejoin normal society.  Nowadays people working in the field believe that it’s possible to educate criminals.  What I do is research around the possibilities.  See if convicted criminals respond to education.”

                “And do they?” Sam asked.

                “Yes.  If you can find the right way of introducing it.”

                “And what is that?”

                Jennie shook her head.  “That’s what I’m trying to find out,” she said.  “It’s quite a complex set of circumstances, first what it is that makes someone turn to crime, and then what it is that makes them stop offending.”

                “Probably as many reasons as there are criminals,” said Sam.

                “Yes,” she agreed.  “There’s a woman in Askham Grange,” she said.  “Well, not now, she’s been out for a time.  But she went in when she was twenty, served something like fourteen years for murder.  They let her out on license, and six months later she was back again for GBH. Did another seven years, was released for ten months and then went back in for another six years, threatening behaviour, she threatened to kill someone.  In all she’s served over thirty years.  Every time they let her out she never lasted more than a few months.”

                “Jesus,” said Sam.

                “I was talking to her,” Jennie said.  “She’s sixty years old, and she’s been out of prison and out of trouble for nearly five years.  When I asked her what had changed, why she wasn’t still being violent, you know what she said?”

                “Tell me,” said Sam.

                “She’s got a dog,” Jennie said.  “She’s worried what’ll happen to the dog if she goes back in prison.  She’s so worried about it she stays out of trouble.”

                Sam smiled and shook his head.  He took his eyes off the road for a moment to look over at Jennie.  “You think we should all have one?” he asked.  “A dog?”

                “I think we’ve all got one,” Jennie said.  “We’ve all got something like that, something that keeps us out of trouble.  Most of the cons I’ve met have lost theirs, or they never had one.  If we can help them find it, they might stop re-offending.”

                “You’re an idealist,” Sam said.

                She looked over at him to see if it was an insult.  No, just an observation.  He didn’t disapprove.  “Aren’t you?” she asked.

                He nodded assent.  “A cynical one,” he said.  “Social theories are interesting, but there’ve been quite a few since Lazarus finished his nap.  None of them ever stopped a psychopath with a persecution complex.”

                Jennie smiled.  A very cynical one.  “Where’s the idealism in a statement like that?”

                “We’ll find the answer one day,” he said, glancing over at her.  “Maybe tomorrow.  Just because we haven’t been so clever up to now, doesn’t mean we should give up.”

                “Prison itself is a big problem,” said Jennie.  “Especially in this country.  At any one time we have more than fifty thousand people locked up.  We have more people in prison than any other major European country, including Turkey.  And the government just goes on building more prisons.  In a few years we’ll be locking up more than seventy thousand.”

                “You think we should let ‘em all out?”

                “For all the good it does, yes.  Most of them anyway.  One in five of them has not been convicted of any offence, a quarter are teenagers, and at least two thirds of them are non-violent.  The vast majority of the prison population could be handled more economically and more humanely by extending hostel options, and expanding the probation service.”

                “You feel passionately about all this, don’t you?” Sam said.

                “Sorry,” she said.  “I’m getting on my hobbyhorse.  But it’s such a terrible waste.  The largest section of the criminal population are fifteen year olds.  Kids of that age don’t have to be anti-social.  With the right policies we could turn them around.  If we lock them away they just turn into professional criminals.”  She shuffled down in the seat, suddenly feeling uncomfortable.  Spouting away at this man she’d only known for half an hour.  Could be a right wing hang-em-and-whip-em-and-lock-em-up-and-throw-away-the-key campaigner for all she knew.  “I’m sorry,” she said.  “I’ll shut up.”

                He didn’t say anything.  Jennie bit her bottom lip and waited.  She wasn’t going to say anything else, feeling she’d exposed herself enough.  Now it was his turn.

                She wound down her window a fraction more, feeling the breeze on her face, breathing deeply, wondering if she could actually smell the sea, or if it was her imagination.  They turned off the main road, following a sign towards Filey, and Sam laughed.  She looked over at him, and he glanced back at her.  “I was just thinking about your woman with the dog,” he said.

                “That’s funny?” she asked.

                “No,” he said.  “But some of the guys I meet in this job, you give them a dog thinking, you know, it’d keep them out of trouble.  Next time you go round they’d have eaten it.”

                Jennie didn’t laugh.  When the car pulled to a stop at the top of the cliff and the ocean spread out before them, she was already beginning to think this trip was a mistake.

                When they’d climbed down the cliff and were walking along the edge of the sea he said, “I said the wrong thing back there.”

                “Say what you like,” she said, wishing it hadn’t come out so sharply.  “I mean, I’m not the police.  I don’t want to control your opinions.”

                “I was just following a train of thought,” he said.  “I found something funny.  It doesn’t mean I don’t take you seriously.”

                Jennie shrugged.  She’d been in this position before.  Sometimes, especially when she got into her pet subject she lost her sense of humour.  She tried a half smile on him.  “Shall we drop it?” she said.  “Go back to where we were before.”

                “OK,” Sam said.  “But just so it’s straight, you didn’t say anything I’d disagree with.  I hate the system as much as you do, only I don’t think it should stop me having a laugh every so often.”

                That touched a nerve in her somewhere.  She took her shoes off and let the water run over her feet.  “I needed to meet someone like you,” she told him.  “I know too many people who are politically correct, and I appreciate them, even admire them for standing up to be counted.  But we don’t do a lot of laughing.”

                Sam took his shoes off and joined her in the water.  “Hell,” he said.  “I used to be in with that crowd.”

                Jennie kicked sea water at him.

 

 

. . . . . . . . . . chapter 14

Norman met Janet in Woolworths.  He watched her steal a lipstick from the cosmetic counter, then followed her out the door and took her by the arm when she hit the street.  She froze, then started shaking, so tense he thought she might snap in two.  She opened her hand and offered Norman the lipstick.  He took it from her, pocketed it, then, still gripping her arm, walked her away from the store entrance.

                There was nothing to her arm, just a thin bone with a covering of skin.  She was like that all over, seemed about twelve years old wearing a white longline tunic buttoned down the front with flared cuffs, and a pair of blue lycra leggings.   On her head she wore a blue and white cap.  Round her throat was a leather collar studded with different coloured glass jewels.

                She struggled half heartedly, without a hope of breaking Norman’s grip, and she said, “I din’t mean it.  Honestly.  I jus’ forgot to pay for it.”

                “Liar,” Norman said.  “Fucking little liar.”

                She twisted her thin body to get a look at his face.  “You’re not a cop,” she said.

                “The Brain of Britain,” he said.

                She twisted around some more, but made no impression on Norman’s grip.  “Lemme go,” she said, then, striking a hopeless note that was followed by a tear dripping down her cheek.  “What’s it to you?” she said, brushing the tear from her face.  “You’re not a cop.  It didn’t hurt you.”

                “I’m a citizen,” he told her.  “I got a duty.”

                She looked away from him and shook her head.  “This is not real,” she said.  Then she turned back to him and said, “Would you please let go of my arm?”

                Norman shook his head.  “I’m making a citizen’s arrest,” he said.  “Taking you down the cop shop.”

                “Jesus,” she said.  “What do you want?  Have I gotta pay you?”

                Norman smiled.  “You take your time,” he said.  “But you get there in the end.”

                “I haven’t got any money,” she said.  “I’m broke.”

                “What’s your name?”

                “Janet.”

                “Janet,” Norman echoed.  “How old are you?”

                “Nineteen,” said Janet.  “Don’t say I only look fifteen.  I’m nineteen.”

                “You look twelve,” he said.  “But if you say you’re nineteen I believe you.  After all, I got no reason to think you’d tell me a lie.  In the first place, all I know about you so far is you’re a thief, and you did tell me a little porkie when you said you meant to pay for the lipstick, but that don’t mean every time you open your mouth another lie’s gonna come rolling out.  And in the second place, just because I happen to know you once stolled one thing, that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna be able to trust you, so every time you make a move I think you’re gonna steal something else.  I’m not that kinda guy, who gives a dog a bad name, and then for ever after that I’m looking for a way to prove I was right in the first place.  That’s not how I work.

                “Now, in a minute I’m gonna let go of your arm, and I hope you won’t run off down the street and try to get away from me.  Because, and now I’m talking in the third place, which you should listen to, because it could save you having a smack in the eye.  If you do, run off down the street, that is, then I, and my name’s Norman, will take a deep breath and come running after you, and before you’ve got a dozen or more steps I’ll have caught you and smacked you and you’ll have been down on the pavement and I’ll have picked you up, and I’ll have you by the arm again and we’ll all be right back in the first position.

                “Now you could scream at that point and kick up a fuss, and a cop or somebody might come along to make enquiries and when that happens I’ll be taking this lipstick out of my pocket and putting in a claim for a medal from the authorities.

                “Do you understand me?”

                Janet nodded.

                Norman let go of her arm and they walked along the street next to each other.

                After a while Janet asked, “What do you want me to do?”

                Norman said, “I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

                They walked for a while longer.  “The thing is,” he told her.  “When I do make my mind up and tell you, some of the things I’ll want you’ll already have thought of.  You might like them, or you might not like them.  Either way, it won’t hurt much.  You’ll just do it.  But some of the things won’t be like that at all.  You won’t have thought of ‘em.  You prolly won’t even have heard of ‘em.”

                He left it it that.  Hanging in the air.  They walked some more.  Janet thought a couple of times of making a break for it, but she decided not to be stupid.  “OK,” she said, eventually.  “OK, Norman.”

 

*

 

Janet had a three room flat in Tang Hall.  On the first floor, you walked into a sitting room with an open fireplace and the smell of damp mingled with the smell of cat, after that was a tiny kitchen with a table and a gas cooker, and finally there was a dark and windowless bedroom with a huge unmade bed.  This last room had had a window until eighteen months previously, but that window had been broken and the landlord had decided the best way to deal with the repair was to board it up.

                On the second floor was a bathroom which was shared between Janet and the girls in the remaining flats who occupied the rest of the  building, though the girls and some of their more regular boyfriends had stopped referring to it as a bathroom and called it, instead, the penicillin factory.  There was an antique shower fitted over the bath.

                “You’re all working girls, right?” said Norman.

                “Sometimes,” she said.  “When it’s the only way to feed the cats.”

                Norman followed Janet back down to the sitting room.  There were three cats in there, each occupying a chair. 

                “This is Tabitha, Venus, and Orchid,” she said.  The cats looked at Norman but remained seated.  Norman looked back.  Orchid, the last cat Janet had introduced, got to her feet and sidled over to Norman.  She was black.  She rubbed herself up against his leg.  He pushed her away but she came back again.  He looked briefly at the poster of some pop star or male pin-up over the fireplace, knowing he should know who it was, but not being able to get it for a moment.  Then it came to him in a flash.  “John Lennon,” he said. 

                Janet smiled.  “Yeah,” she said.  “Imagine.”

                Norman looked at her, somehow thinking she had begun to say something, then broken off.  But she’d finished.  “Imagine what?” he asked.

                “John Lennon,” she said.  “He’s dead.  He was killed.”

                “I know that,” Norman said.  “Some guy blew him away.  One minute he was there, the  next minute he was coughing up blood.  Few minutes later he couldn’t even do that.  What’s to imagine?”  Orchid moved over to Norman’s leg again and nuzzled against it.  Norman picked the cat up by the scruff of its neck and dropped it onto a chair.

                Janet began crying.  She flopped down into a chair and let large tears roll down her cheeks.

                “What’s wrong now?” Norman asked.

                “I’m pissed off,” she said, between the tears.  “You get so angry, and I haven’t done anything.  For a minute there, I thought we were getting on OK.  Talking about John Lennon.  Really communicating.  Then you start getting mad.  I haven’t done anything.  I was trying to be nice to you.”

                Norman took her by her hands and pulled her to her feet.  He put his arms around her and held her tight.  “It’s OK,” he said, using his quiet voice.  “You just thought I was mad, but it’s only the way I sound.  I had a pretty bad day, all told.  And I get tired.”  He held her at arms length and looked at her.  She tried to smile through her tears.

                “I bet you’re not used to women, either?” she said.

                Norman shook his head.  “No,” he said.  “I’m not used to any of that.”  He let go of her arms and took the lipstick from his pocket.  Handed it over to her.

                “You look a bit like him,” she said.  Glancing from Norman to the poster and back again.  “Round the eyes.”

                Norman let a smirk spread itself over his face.  “You reckon?” he said as modestly as he could.

                “He knew he was gonna die,” Janet continued.  “He talked about it the day before, even knew the name of the guy who was gonna shoot him.  Must have had predestination, whatever it’s called, you know, before the fact?  I have that sometimes, lots of women do, before their period.  It just comes over me, something’ll happen, anything really.  Like I’m gonna get a letter, or someone’ll drop a twenty pound note, and I’ll find it.  And next thing the postman comes round and there’s the letter.

                “He was called John Winston Ono Lennon, because of Yoko, his wife, he took her name, and he baked bread and looked after his son.”

                “No shit,” said Norman.  “I thought he was the Beatles.”

                “That was before,” Janet said.  “Something happened.  But he was a lovely man.”

                “This period of yours,” Norman said.  “You got it now?”

                “No,” said Janet.  “I don’t have periods.  Ain’t had one for years.”  She didn’t say anything for a while after that, seemed to drift off into her own thoughts.  “Are you hungry?” she asked eventually.  “Do you want me to make you something to eat?”

                “Later,” he told her.  “First I want to fuck you.”

 

 

. . . . . . . . . . chapter 15

Geordie came out of Woolworths through another door, avoiding the one Norman Brown used.  That was because Norman Brown was still standing outside of the door he had used, being heavy with the girl he had followed out.  Norman had the girl by the arm.  A tight grip, and she was struggling, trying to get away from him.  Norman’s face was set and grim, and there was no way he was going to release her.  The girl didn’t call out, but she was clearly not at all pleased with the way Norman was handling her.  Geordie looked across the street and saw Gus take a step or two forward.  The voice through his earpiece said, “What the?. . .”, and Geordie moved along the pavement away from Norman Brown and the girl, wondering if he should go back and try to hear what was going on between them.

                “Stay there,” Gus said through the earpiece.  “Don’t get involved.”  Gus reading Geordie’s mind, as usual.

                Geordie had no real thoughts of interfering in the dispute between Norman Brown and the girl.  His most urgent impulse, as always when faced with a violent situation, was to run.  Get as much distance between Geordie and the violence as possible.  When he thought about the past, Geordie could not remember anything except violence.  He thought about the past often, because it was there like a solid weight, dragging him back.  The future seemed like a dream with no substance.  The present an unreality.  The present was like a weekend break, the kind in the advertisements.  Like all those companies wanted to give away.  But the past was violence for as far back as he could go inside his head.  From his mother and her boyfriends.  From the neighbours and the local police during his early childhood.  From the Social Services, and after his mother disappeared, from the staff at the orphanage.  After he got away from that place, the violence was the the violence of the streets.

                Geordie didn’t think of the violence as compartmentalized, from his mother, from the police, from the street.  It was not like that at all inside his head.  It was simply a solid block.  He could not comprehend it.  It stretched from here to the horizon.  It went on for ever, like leg irons.

                The only break in the continuing saga was when Sam picked him up that night and took him home.  And later, when Sam introduced him to Celia.  After that, with Sam and Celia, the violence ceased to be a solid block.  It differentiated itself into patches.  After Sam and Celia entered the equation there were only periods of violence.  And between the periods of violence there were periods of peace, periods of music, periods of solitude, periods of laughter.  Even periods of gentleness.

                Celia said that was called life.

                Geordie didn’t know what it was he had had before.  He just knew he didn’t want no more violence.

                Sam said you couldn’t have life without violence.

                Geordie usually wanted Sam to be right.  Sam was usually right.  But this was one of the things that Geordie hoped he was wrong about.

                Although Geordie’s most urgent impulse was to put distance between himself and the violence, there was a secondary impulse which directly contradicted the first one.  It came pushing itself up from the region of his solar plexus, and was capable of turning him into a screaming rage, a kind of fireball of energy.  Geordie would find himself off his feet, hurtling towards and into the fray, a scratching, punching, tearing, biting whirlpool of distilled aggression.

                When he was in prison for a while, before Sam came along, between the orphanage and the street, he very soon got himself known for kicking off.  For a time in that place he would punch the first person he saw.  Punch them in the throat.  Punch them between the eyes. Whoever was passing, screw or con, a visitor or social worker.  He punched a priest one time.  Then the Governor would say, “Put him down on chokey for a while.”

                When he was back on the main cell block he was still known as the little psychopath who might lay into you with his boots and his fists and his knees and his elbows.  He’d go at you with anything that moved.  You’d be head butted or given two straight fingers – one in each eye.  He was a walking barrel of dynamite and you’d never know when he was gonna go off.  It worked as well.  Geordie would pick on a big guy, walk right up to him and say, “You think you can just look at me, and get away with it?” 

                “Me?  No way, pal. I’m not looking for trouble.” Faced with a fracas between them and Geordie, even the biggest and toughest cons would inexplicably take up a new religion, known to everyone behind bars as Devout Cowardice.

                But Geordie was broken by the system.  First off he acted tough, let them see they were not gonna break him, that he’d keep his integrity, never bend the knee.  But he discovered that you don’t waste time in prison, you spend it.  You throw your table against the wall and drag your bed up against the door and barricade yourself in.  You refuse your food. You realise sooner or later that prison hurts. 

                Inside you it hurts.  Right down deep inside of you, it hurts.  When Geordie left the door of his cell to go down to the canteen, no one saw him.  All they saw was a con with a smile on his face, walking along swinging his arms.  Hi Sid.  Hi Chass. That was the Geordie they saw, the outside, but inside of him was a hole, a big hollow empty hole, that’s all, a big big hurt.  Eating him away, shrinking him smaller and smaller, inch by inch, depriving him more and more of what was left of his personality and feelings, every shred of his individuality.  By the time he got out, there was nothing left.

                Except for now.  Except for what Sam and Celia had helped him regain.  Somehow.  He didn’t know how.  Maybe he’d never know how.

                “Where are you?” The voice in his ear crackled.

                “Uh?”

                “I can’t see you?” Gus said.  “It’s time to change over.”

                Geordie looked around.  He’d walked away from Norman and the girl and Woolworths and was almost back at the office.  “Dunno,” he said.  “I wasn’t thinking.  Where are you?”

                “Jesus,” said Gus.  “Jesus Christ.”

                Geordie waited.  But Gus didn’t say anything else.

                “Check,” said Geordie.

                Gus’s voice came back into Geordie’s ear, but he wasn’t talking to Geordie.  Not really.  Geordie could tell.  This was one of the times Gus was talking to himself.  “Stroll on,” he said.  “Jesus Christ.  If you want a job doing, do it your self.” 

                Maybe he was talking into his dictaphone?  Gus had a dictaphone that he used like a diary and a note book.  He never wrote anything down these days, except his final report for a client, and Celia usually typed that up.  Geordie thought he might get himself a dictaphone one of these days.  Much easier than writing everything down.  Specially when you couldn’t find a pen.

                Geordie took the headphones off and went upstairs to the office. 

                Deserted.  A note from Sam saying he’d gone to the seaside.  No sign of Barney anywhere.  Probably be paddling by now.

 

 

. . . . . . . . . . chapter 16

The following morning Sam set off for Leicester at seven thirty.  Go look for Snow White.  See if she wanted to be found.  

                The news was full of the double murder.  A couple had been found in Haxby, on the outskirts of York, she bound and gagged and suffocated and he shot through the back of the head.  There had been a clumsy attempt to make it look as though the man had shot himself.  But he would have had to be a contortionist.  A large quantity of firearms were missing from the man’s place of work, a local gun club.  Sam knew the gun club.  He’d never been inside, but remembered the site.  Police were following several leads, but no one had been detained.

                Sam smiled at that.  In his experience the York police couldn’t investigate a head on collision between two skate boards and come up with a result.  Sounded heavy though, the murders, like the work of somebody really dedicated.

                But for the rest of the trip along the M1 his thoughts were occupied by Jennie Cosgrave.  The previous day had turned out quite interesting in the end, though it had been punctured constantly by small misunderstandings.  Each of them had felt forced occasionally into defensive positions, and though they’d worked their way through every one of them, that didn’t stop them coming up against another one at the next corner.

                He thinking: Hell, let’s just relax and have fun. Her thinking: I need to know who you are, where you’re coming from before I can relax.  Tying themselves up in knots.  At the end of the day he couldn’t help feeling she’d enjoyed it more than him.  She seemed to thrive on conflict, taking everything on board, all the time asking for more, then going into long analyses of his contribution, acknowledging her own failings.  Finally saying something that led to another misunderstanding and beginning the whole process over again.  She was intelligent, clever, bright, talking all the time, and incapable of being dull.  But Sam just wanted to smell her, get up real close and have a good sniff.

                Should have told her so, he said to himself.  Then we could have had a long conversation about that, and finally she might have let him do it.

                “I really enjoyed it,” she said when he left her at her door.  “Just what I needed.  I feel as if I’ve laid a ghost.”

                Sam couldn’t help himself.  “Cheers,” he said.

                Next time they were going to talk about women, feminism, all that.  God knows when they would get around to the sniffing.  First he’d have to prove he wasn’t a misogynist.

                There had been a time when that question never arose.  But now it was always there, with every woman you met.  Like a hurdle you had to get over.  Sam had argued it and won, and he’d argued it and lost.  Sometimes he didn’t know if he was a misogynist or not.  It was so complicated, the processes and denials you went through if you were a misogynist, that you might be the last one to hear about it.  The only thing Sam was sure of was that he didn’t want to be a misogynist.  But more than one woman had told him that was because he couldn’t face up to the fact that he was one.

                Christ, when they started getting into that he wondered why he hadn’t become a monk.  And it wasn’t any easier for all the younger guys at the men’s group, emasculating themselves.  If anything it was more difficult for them.  They couldn’t remember the time before the question came up, the good old days when a man could depend on a modicum of certainty.

                But he shook his head.  He didn’t want to go back.  Painful as it all was, it was for the best.  Who knows, there might come a time when a generation of women are not discriminated against?  Anything’s possible.

 

*

 

In the Leicester library he turned up the record of Selina White’s birth.  She was born on the 24th June 1964.  He made a note of the names of her mother and father, together with their address.  They were no longer listed in the Electoral Roll. 

                Sam took Barney with him when he called at the address on the birth certificate.  “I’m looking for Mr and Mrs White,” he told the woman who answered his knock.

                She only opened the door a crack.  Sam could see both of her eyes, her nose, but only part of her mouth.  The woman looked down at Barney and seemed reassured, opened the door another inch.  “He’s dead, I think,” she said.  “The wife, I don’t know.  She was in hospital.  Something like that.  With her nerves.”  She closed the door back to its original position.  “You a relative?”

                “I’m trying to find their daughter,” he told her.  “Selina.”

                “Don’t think she’s called that,” the woman told him.  “There was a daughter, but that’s not her name.  Try next door but one,” she said.  “They used to know them.  More than me, anyhow.”  The woman looked down at Barney again and made a clicking sound with her tongue.  Barney looked up at her but she was gone, the door closed tight.

                Sam knocked on the door of next door but one and a man of around sixty opened it.  “We don’t want any,” he said.  He had a soft little pot belly and his head came level with Sam’s shoulders.

                “Don’t blame you,” Sam told him.  “I’m trying to trace Mrs White.”

                “You’d better talk to the Missus,” he said.  He disappeared back into the house, leaving the door open.  A moment later his wife appeared, a small wiry woman about the same age as her husband. 

                “You looking for Joan White?” she asked.

                “D’you know where I can find her?”

                “She’s in the mental home,” the woman said.  “Couldn’t cope when George died.”

                “I really want to contact her daughter,” Sam said.  “Is she called Selina?”

                “Selina?  I don’t know anything about her.  Louise, the youngest one, she’s still around.”  The woman scratched her chin.  “Selina,” she said, “I’d forgotten about her.  Right pretty little thing.  Went to London they said.  She was only a kid.”

                “Louise, then” Sam said.  “Do you know where she lives?”

                The woman shook her head.  “See her sometimes in the town,” she said.  “She’s got a couple of bairns.  But she doesn’t remember me.”

                “You don’t know any way I could contact her?” Sam said.  “A married name?  Anything would help.”

                The woman shook her head.  “I’d recognise him as well,” she said.  “Tall bloke with ginger hair.  But I don’t know what he’s called.”

                The woman’s husband appeared behind her.  “It’s starting,” he said, then disappeared again.  A moment later Sam heard the signature tune of Neighbours.

                “I’ve got to go,” she said.

                “The hospital,” Sam said.  “The home?  What’s it called?”

                The woman became agitated.  The signature tune of the soap was coming to an end.  “Bentley Cross,” she said, and began closing the door.

                Sam took out one of his cards and waved it towards her.  “In case you remember anything else,” he said.  “I’d appreciate it.”  He pushed the card through the remaining crack in the door, felt the old woman grab it.  Then he got his fingers out just before the door closed on them.

                “Jesus, Barney,” he said to the dog, looking at his fingers.  “We’re gonna need danger money on this job.”

 

*

 

The Bentley Cross Nursing Home was in a leafy northern suburb of the town.  “Sorry,” Sam told Barney, “you’ll have to wait in the car.”  The dog looked neither surprised nor happy.

                Sam walked along the pebbled drive to the house, a large Georgian mansion with a huge oak door set in a mock gothic porch.  The door was ajar and he pushed it open and went inside to a reception area with two teenage girls at a desk.  They both had well trained reception smiles, sparkling eyes and identical make-up.  “Good afternoon.  Can I help you?” said the one on the left.  The other one sparkled supportively.  If the first one couldn’t help, she was ready to jump into the breach.

                “I’m here to see Mrs White,” Sam said.  “Mrs Joan White.”

                “Are you a relative?” asked the girl.

                Sam shook his head.  “A friend.”

                The receptionist pushed a ledger towards him.  “Sign the book,” she said.  “I’ll take you down to see her.”

                Down, Sam thought.  They keep her in a cellar?  He signed the book and followed the receptionist along a corridor to a room with four beds, all empty.  A small frail looking woman sitting next to one of the beds.  She wore a dressing gown, and when Sam and the receptionist entered the room she looked away from them, as if the sound of their entry was coming from behind her.

                “You’ve got a visitor, Mrs White,” the receptionist said.  She turned to Sam.  “Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked. 

                Sam said “No,” and the girl left him with the old lady.  He pulled a chair over from one of the other beds and sat next to Mrs White.  She looked straight ahead, occasionally making some nervous movement with her hand.  Her head shook rhythmically from side to side.  Her face was a mask.

                “I’ve been talking to a neighbour of yours,” Sam said. 

                No response.  It was as if he wasn’t there.

                “I’m trying to contact Selina,” he tried.

                Nothing.  The rhythmical shaking of the head continued without a break.

                “Or Louise?”

                The old lady’s head turned towards him.  She said, “Don’t eat the bread.  There’s maggots in it.”

                There was someone at home but she wasn’t answering the door.  Whoever it was in there was sitting in the dark, the curtains closed tight against the world.  She was playing Solitaire with what remained of a full deck, maybe a dozen cards out of the original pack.

                Sam sat with her for another ten minutes.  There was no further exchange.  Once she looked at the door and pointed at it, becoming agitated for a moment or two.  But whatever she saw there must have evaporated because the next moment she had gone back to her immobile stare.  Without moving her lips she grouped a few notes together in the back of her throat.  She left it and then a minute later returned to the same group of notes, like the beginning of a song.  It was barely recognisable,  Sam knew what it was, only he couldn’t think of the title or how it continued.  He stood and smoothed her hair lightly.  “Jesus,” he said quietly.  Then loud enough for her to hear he said, “My Bonnie lies over the ocean.”

                Back at Reception only one of the girls remained, the one who hadn’t spoken when Sam arrived.  “She’s in a bad way,” Sam said.

                The smile never left the girls face.  “Mrs White?” she said.  “Sometimes you can reach her.  Not very often.”

                “Look,” Sam said.  “I need to contact her daughter, but I don’t have an address.”

                “We’re not allowed to give personal details,” she said.

                How about if you ring her and ask if it’s all right?”

                She shook her head.  “Sorry.”

                “I’ve come a long way,” said Sam.  “It’s quite important.”

                The girl sighed, looked at the door, and then came back to him.  “I’m sorry,” she said.  “I’m not allowed to.”

                Sam pulled a twenty pound note out of his top pocket and put it on the desk.

                The girl’s eyes fixed on it for a moment.  The smile was still there when she looked back at Sam.  She shook her head.  “I could get into trouble,” she said.  But she said it with a hint of uncertainty.

                “No one’s gonna know,” he said, taking another twenty from the same pocket and placing it on the desk alongside the first one.

                The girl quickly looked around and picked up the notes.  “I get off in about fifteen minutes,” she said.

                “There’s a maroon Volvo in the car park,” Sam told her.  “I’ll be there.”

 

*

 

Louise White was a tall woman, twenty eight years old, and a dog lover.  Barney recognised her immediately, did that little walk on his hind legs Geordie had taught him, and got himself and Sam into the house almost before Sam had explained why they were there.

                But she shook her head when Sam asked the question.  “Selina,” she said.  “No, I haven’t seen her for years.  Last time I heard she was moving to York.”  When she spoke the name of the town she looked away from Sam.  “Terrible murder there yesterday,” she said.  “A couple.  It was on the news.  Made me think of Selina.”

                She had long fair hair tied up in a bun, reminded Sam of a school teacher.  And she had a long narrow face which was not unattractive, though it gave the impression of a fish, a dolphin perhaps?  She sat opposite Sam on a huge sofa, Barney at her feet.  She stroked the dog’s head from time to time.  When she stopped Barney would nudge her leg with his nose until she started again.  Then she would say, “Oh, you want some more, do you?  You’re beautiful, you know that?  You’re a beautiful dog.”

                Sam sat in a matching armchair, up to his ankles in the pile of the carpet.  The rest of the room was furnished sparsely, though there seemed to be a preponderance of mirrors and clocks.  There was a traditional wooden alpine cuckoo clock over the fireplace, and on the opposite wall a pendulum clock in a long case.  On a bookcase by the side of Sam’s chair was a ceramic mantle clock, and by the door on a small table was another with a picture of a Harley Davidson on it, and a legend underneath which read: John’s Dream Machine.

                “When would that be?” Sam asked.  “How long ago.”

                “Six, seven years.  She rang to say she was getting married and moving to York.  She said she’d send us the address, but she never did.”

                “So you don’t know how to contact her?”

                Louise White shook her head.  “But I never did,” she said.  “When she was in London she never wrote.  I haven’t seen her since I was fifteen.”  She pushed herself out of the sofa and took a box of photographs from a cupboard.  She riffled through them and handed one to Sam.  “That’s what she looked like then.”  She went back to Barney.  “Oh, you’re a fussy little chap,” she said.  Then to Sam, “When did you know her?”

                “I don’t,” he said.  “I’m trying to find her for someone else.  Man called Norman Brown.”  He waved the photograph at her.  “Do you mind if I hang onto this?”

                “Take it,” she said. “I’d like it back, though, when you’ve finished with it.” Louise shook her head.  “She’s only my sister,” she said ironically.  “I don’t know anything about her.”

                “What about her husband?” Sam asked.  “You don’t know what he’s called?”

                “Oh, yes I do,” said Louise.  “I asked her when she rang.  He’s called Crumble.”  She laughed and the fishy look disappeared.  “Not a name you’d be likely to forget,” she said.  “Mr Crumble.  So she’s Mrs Selina Crumble.  Can you trace her with that?”

                “Probably,” said Sam.  “At least it’s somewhere to start.  “You don’t know what he does, Mr Crumble?”

                “He’s a solicitor,” she said.  “I remember we sometimes used to fantasize about it.  You know, Crumble, Crumble and Crumble.”  She laughed again.  “Is that enough?”

                “Yeah,” said Sam.  “It should be easy now.”

                She saw him to the door, said goodbye to Barney ten times.  To Sam she said,  “When you find her, remind her she’s got a family.”

 

 

. . . . . . . . . . chapter 17

Sam arrived home just after six in the evening.  Traffic was held up on the ring road by Police blocks on the exit roads.  He sat with the photograph of Snow White when she was fifteen.  A blurred black and white image of a scrap of a girl standing next to a garden shed with a broken window.  She had her mouth open and was obviously shouting something at whoever it was taking the photograph.  Telling them to stop, maybe.

                She was at that age when it’s not possible to see the child, because she’s gone, and yet still not possible to see the woman, because she hasn’t arrived yet.  Invisible.  File the thought away and tell Geordie and Celia about it later.  Especially Geordie.  He was obsessed about invisibility at the moment.  Had talked of nothing else since Celia had brought the subject up. Sam found himself thinking about Bronte again, his own daughter, and what she would have been like at the age of the girl in the photograph, had she lived a few more years.  She would have been like Donna, he thought.  A scrap of nothing bursting with energy.  A handful and a half, as Donna’s family had always said about her.

                And what would Donna have been like now?

                But no, hell.  He stopped himself.  He’d been down that road so many times before.  It led nowhere.  It led to a steep cliff with a drop into nothingness.

                Sam walked over to the ‘phone and punched the numbers.  After a moment he said, “How’re you doing?”

                “Oh, Sam, is it you?” said the voice of Jennie Cosgrave.

                “Yeah,” he said.  “Did you eat yet?”

                “No,” she said.  “I was going to have a sandwich.”  She was silent for a moment, then said, “I missed you today.  Where’ve you been?”

                “I was in Leicester,” he said.  “Detecting.”

                “Did you find whatever it was you were looking for?”

                “Tell you later,” he said.  “I’ll come ’round.  There’s a Mexican type place I was gonna try.  Loud music and hot taco.  Keep your mind off things.”

                “Sounds terrible,” she said.

                Earlier in the year, the sixteenth of March, the anniversary of Donna’s death day, she had come back so strong Sam had bought a bottle of whiskey and drunk it during the course of a slack afternoon.  The same evening with Donna’s ghost still at his shoulder he’d gone out and bought another one and spent the night with it.  Geordie, living in the flat above, but still using Sam’s flat as much as his own, did not understand what was happening.  He thought it was party time at first and had a few slugs himself.

                Only when Sam started screaming, hallucinating a kind of white hell in the early hours of the morning, did Geordie realise what was happening.  He called Celia and Gus, and the two of them sat on Sam through the next couple of days to see him through.

                Since then he’d been straight.  He occasionally took out the empty bottle and had a swig of air.  If he was going to slip again, he’d go away to do it.  Get lost for the duration.

 

*

 

She wore a white T-shirt outside a pair of blue jeans which were turned up at the bottom, white canvas shoes, and a small shoulder bag.  She was standing at the window and watched him arrive and she had left the house and closed the door behind her before he got to the gate.

                “Done a lot of travelling today,” he told her.  “If I’d known I was gonna end up here I’d have travelled faster.”

                She laughed.  “Thank you kindly, Sir, she said.”

                “We can walk,” Sam told her.  “El Mexicana’s just down the road.”

                A group of people were talking on a street corner.  One woman said she was afraid to go out.  “But you are out,” her neighbour said. 

                “The murder,” Sam said.  “It’s getting to people.” 

                “It’s such a strange feeling,” she said.  “To know it happened close by.  What?  Three miles away?  I can’t stop thinking about that poor woman suffocating.”

                “Unique,” said Sam.

                “What do you mean?”

                “Murder,” he said.  “It’s always unique.  It’s gone on for all time.  Somebody’s murdered every day, but when we talk about it, even after all this time, it’s like a unique event.  As though it’s never happened before.”

                “You think we should be used to it?”

                “No,” he said.  “I wonder about the mechanism.  What keeps us so clean, so naive?  So that we’re never prepared, always so surprised.”

                “It’s too terrible to contemplate,” she said.  “Things we can’t face, we distance them, put them to the back of our mind.  We refuse to face them.  Then when someone’s murdered, especially if it’s someone we know or it happens nearby, we have to face it.  And we’re surprised because we’ve never thought about it before.  It’s forced on us.”

                “Is that the professional talking?”

                She smiled.  “Yes.  It’s my job.”

                “Through here,” he said, turning left into a short driveway, the entrance to the El Mexicana restaurant.  They walked into a huge room with a circular bar, tables lining the walls, the air hot with spice.  An adolescent boy dressed in jeans and a white apron took them to a table behind the bar and said something inaudible because of the amplified music.  Two locals with American accents were harmonizing a Neil Young song on a small stage.  Behind them was a floodlit graphic stolen from the set of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.  Despite the level of amplification there was a constant buzz of conversation from the sixty or seventy tables in the room.

                “Would you like a drink?” the young waiter asked.

                Sam raised his eyes at Jennie.

                “A glass of white wine?” she said.

                “And lemonade for me,” he told the waiter. 

                When the boy left to get their drinks Jennie said, “Lemonade?”

                “I’m an alcoholic,” he told her.  “But I’m being good.”

                She had the same surprised look on her face that everyone had when you told them.  Look that said, What? How?  Look that had so many questions behind it you almost wanted to cry off and have a drink.  She would either say something about it now or come back to it later.  He just hoped she wouldn’t say something about it now and come back to it later, and then keep coming back to it for ever more.  Some people never wanted to talk about anything else.

                “You’re looking at me,” she said, “and giving nothing away.  You’re completely inscrutable.  I don’t know where you want me to go from here.”

                He shrugged, held the eye contact.  “I’ve stopped smoking,” he said.  “Absolutely.  Don’t think I’ll have another.”

                She shook her head and leaned towards him over the table.  “You probably think you’re leaving me free,” she said.  “But in reality it’s intimidating.”

                “If I start drinking I don’t stop,” he said.  “I’m an addict.  When I’m dry I make an effort with people.  At least with people I like.  When I drink, the only effort I make is with my elbow.”

                Jennie smiled.  “My mother was an alcoholic,” she said.  “Not like you.  She would never admit it.  And in a way she could control it.  She drank every day for as long as I can remember.  Even the day she died.”

                “I used to be like that,” Sam said.  “But I can’t control it when I’m drinking.  I drink until nothing works.  I drink myself unconscious.  I lose control of everything.  Become like blubber.”

                The boy waiter returned with their drinks, gave the white wine to Sam and the lemonade to Jennie.  Sam pushed the wine over to her.  “You wanna swop?” he asked.

                “Yes.”  She took the wine and passed the lemonade to him.  “I think I’ll handle it better than you.”

                In the short silence that followed they both overheard a conversation at the next table.  The people there were talking about a local couple, a gun dealer and his wife, who had been murdered the previous day.

 

 

. . . . . . . . . . chapter 18

That evening Norman left Janet’s flat and returned to the Station Hotel.  It was a good deal and he was pleased with himself.  A bit like fucking a boy, being with her.  Reminded him of being back in prison again.  But she’d serve a purpose.  Living with her would be safer than living in a hotel.  And when the time came it would be easy enough to get rid of her.  She didn’t have any friends, so no one would miss her.  Maybe the security people in Woolworths; they might miss her.  These firms, clinics, whatever they’re called, that do the silicone breast implants; they might miss her.  But nobody real would miss her.  Nobody in the real world.

                Norman watched television in his room until late.  Then he got to thinking about Squishsquash.  He put his gun in his shoulder holster and went out into the night. He followed the city wall until he came to the house on Lord Mayors Walk.  The house was in darkness, no lights at any of the windows.  Norman looked at it from the grassy knoll on the other side of the street.  She would be in there.  She would be in bed.  Naked, prolly, in this heat.  Squishsquash.  Unsuspecting.  Not knowing what was watching her window.

                There were two ways of doing this.  He could knock on the front door, wait till she comes down to open it and then just push his way in.  Surprise, surprise.  Or he could get round to the back of the house, do a break in, quietly, then find her still sleeping in her bed.  Whisper in her ear:  “Squishsquash, wakey, wakey.”  Watch her face as it slowly dawns on her what she’s gonna get.

                No choice, really, when you think about it.  Go round the back and do the break in.

                But before Norman got to his feet to cross over the road, they came round the corner.  Squishsquash and her boyfriend.  Holding hands.  She wore a white T-shirt with blue jeans, white shoes, and with her free hand she was swinging a shoulder bag.  She was laughing.  And the guy, he was familiar.  As they drew closer Norman realised how familiar the guy was.  It was Mister Detective.  Sam Turner, the guy Norman had hired to find Snow White.

                That wasn’t right.  Not right at all.  It was true that Norman had seen Squishsquash come out of Mister Detective’s building, but he had not imagined that they had any connection.  The way they were clinging onto each other here, pawing each other and making the eyes, they were definitely an item.  He watched as Squishsquash opened her bag and took out a key to the door.  Then she went inside and Mister Detective followed her, closing the door behind him.

                Norman shifted on the grass and realised that the night dampness had seeped through his trousers.  For a moment he thought of going over there and sorting the two of them out, but what he did was get to his feet and follow the wall back round to his hotel.  He needed to think this one through.  Maybe watch them some more.  She turned him on, this woman, this Squishsquash.  He wanted her.  He wanted her all to himself.

 

*

 

The next day Norman moved out of the Station Hotel and drove with his four suitcases full of guns to Janet’s flat in Tang Hall.  He paid cash for the room in the Station Hotel, and left a large tip for the porter who helped him with the suitcases.  He used an old Bedford van for the trip, one of those with sliding doors, got you way up above the road, so you looked down on the silly fuckers in cars.  But the cars could always go faster than the van.  The ideal vehicle, Norman thought, would be some kind of supercharged van.  Something heavy but with a lot of power under the bonnet, and power that sounded like power as well, not one of these silent things like a Rolls or a Bentley, like you couldn’t hear them coming.  No, Norman would rather have something that roared.  Everybody on the street would look ’round, say, Shit, here comes Norm with his engine.  Better get out the fucking way, man.  Like, move over.

                Oh, yeah, and one of those crash bars on the front, big heavy set, bull bars, so you could ram your way through a shop window if you felt like you were getting short on the readies.  Maybe have the same on the back as well.  Save you turning ’round sometimes.

                One day Norman would have a vehicle like that.  And it would be painted bright gold.  Just simple bright gold all over, none of your red stars on it, zaps of blue lightning, shit like that.  No clutter, man.  Jus’ simple and tasty. 

                Maybe mount a gun on it?

                Norman drove through Tang Hall and parked outside Janet’s flat.  He humped two of the suitcases to the door of the flat and dropped them on the bare boards of the passage.  As he walked back out to the van to collect the other two suitcases he heard a peal of female laughter erupt inside the flat.  Sounded like a hen party going on in there.

                Norman brought the rest of his luggage and kicked at the door with the toe of his shoe to get Janet’s attention.  She came to the door and helped him in with the luggage, then turned and introduced him to two women sitting next to the open fire place.  “This is Margaret and Trudie,” she said.  “Friends of mine, from upstairs.”  And to the women, “This is Norman,” she said.  “My boyfriend.”

                Margaret, the tall one with the cigarette got to her feet and came over to Norman, extending her hand, and Trudie, who was smaller and dumpier, and with bleached hair and dark roots, followed suit.  Trudie had Janet’s cat, orchid, in her arms.  “Heard so much about you,” said Margaret, and Trudie giggled shrilly and looked down at Normans crotch.  “Oh, excuse Trudie,” Margaret continued.  “She’s a bit tiddly.”  She turned to Janet.  “We’ll be off, then, love,” she said.  “Leave you to it.”  She walked towards the door, but then remembered something and came back.  “Better take the newspaper,” she said, picking it up from the arm of the chair.  “Read about the murder.”

                Trudie let go with another shrill giggle, and followed her friend out of the door.  She put orchid carefully down on the carpet.  “Ooh, I don’t know how you can read about murder, Margaret,” she said.  “Gives me the willies just to th