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1. All Shook
Up - a short story
All Shook Up - a short story Vernon rolled the die. Which was something that wouldn't've happened with Elvis. Wouldn't've needed to, because Elvis had everything. He had more than he needed. Elvis spent his time giving things away. He gave cars away. Bought people guns. Elvis ate whatever he liked, whenever he wanted, in whatever quantities he desired. He was married to a beautiful woman, and when she went he had a succession of beautiful girlfriends. Elvis Presley had no need of dice whichever way you looked at it. But Vernon Tucker did. He had the pair of ivory dice that had belonged to Delta's daddy, which she had inherited, and which Vernon himself had inherited when Delta went to paradise looking for Elvis Presley. One die had been attacked at some time in the past, so it was no longer square, and always came up tops. But the other one was sound. He checked out the washroom at the truck-stop. It was empty. A cold feeling about the place, the stench of truckers piss. He went inside the end cubicle and closed the door. Lowered his trousers and sat on the pan. He prodded the top of his thigh, looking for a good vein. Vernon didn't know if Elvis had gone to paradise or no. Even Delta, before she went after him, wasn't sure. She used to laugh and say, 'Shit, Vern, I don't know what they'd do with him up there.' Her laugh was a shriek, even then. The way Vernon looked at it, between himself and Elvis there was no comparison at all, apart from the fact that both of them came from Tupelo, Mississippi and had lived in Memphis, Tennessee. Oh, yeah, and they both sang and played the guitar. And liked guns. And food. And womens. Delta would've married Elvis Presley, no argument. She'd worshipped the ground. Vernon knew that he was her second choice of husband. That she chose him because she knew that she'd never get the chance of the King. And Vernon played up to it just to hang onto that girl. He talked like the man, he slicked his hair back like the man, and he worked on those lazy pelvis movements while he sang Lovin' You or Heartbreak Hotel. When they first met, Delta would say, 'Vern, when you're singing, up on the stage, if I half close my eyes and don't listen to your voice, it's almost like you're him.' It was enough to keep her around, anyways. Vernon didn't get paid for his singing. He got paid for driving the company truck. But sometimes, when he'd been on stage or hogging the mike in a club, he'd have his drinks served up and there'd be nothing to pay. And that was probably the same with Elvis. Vernon couldn't imagine the King buying his own beers. 'I can't believe he married that Pree-cilla,' Delta said once. 'I've thought about it for a week and I still don't know why. He could've had anybody.' Vernon knew who 'anybody' was. You didn't have to be psychedelic to guess that. There was one time when Delta seemed to forget about Elvis Presley. She didn't forget about him entirely, even then, but she sort of phased him into the background. That was the time they ran out of rubbers, and she started percolatin' a little kid. There was no question about names if it'd turned out to be a boy, which is what Delta was hoping for. Vernon hoped it'd be a girl, and if it was he'd wanted to call her Delta Mae after his wife and his mother. Delta said she thought Lisa Marie was a nice name for a girl, sounded more modern, kind of up to date like. But there was no need for any names. Whatever it was trying to come through never made it past the twelfth week. Ended up in a white enamelled bucket instead of the crib Vernon had been building on his day off. The doctor said they should try again, real soon. But Delta didn't think it was such a good idea. It was her body, she said, and she had a mind to do with it as she pleased. She bought an Elvis clock the next time she went out, and Vernon had to hang it for her in the front entrance of the house. On the hour it chimed the first verse of Love Me Tender. Whenever he came home from work it would be waiting for him. Elvis's face and the time of day. After that she bought everything she saw with Elvis on it, or with Gracelands. There were portraits of the guy all over the house. She had too many to hang on the walls. They were stacked up in closets, and around their bed, along one side of the staircase. Delta had forty-nine different Elvis T-shirts. She had three Elvis mirrors, two Elvis wrist watches, and dangly Elvis ear-rings for each day of the week. For his birthday one year, she gave Vernon an Elvis Presley screwdriver set. That was Delta. Her mind was scrambled with Elvis. When Vernon looked back at that last year, he should have seen what she was doing. It was obvious that she was burying herself with Elvis Presley. But then again, what could he have done about it? Vernon wasn't the King of nothing. A person wants to bury herself, well, hell, there ain't gonna be no way anyone can stop her. Not with loving and not with worrying, anyhow. Vernon had lots of love, specially for Delta, but it didn't make no difference at all. And worrying came natural to him, inherited from his mammy, and it never did a jot of good for either of them. He stopped working to take care of her in the Fall, took her out for long walks, try to use up some of the energy of the girl. He cooked and cleaned and wiped up her mess, and he didn't mind doing it too, but when she stopped sleeping he couldn't manage to keep up with her no more. Right after Christmas they admitted her to the state hospital and held her there in a secure ward. Vernon went to visit every day at first. There were womens in that place nobody would believe. One woman climbing up the walls, or trying to, like she was Spiderman or one of those things out of a comic. There was another woman swimming along the floor doing the breast stroke, like she was in the ocean, but she was on plastic tiles. Sometimes the tiles were wet, if they'd just been washed, and sometimes they were dry. It didn't make no difference to that woman. They called her the fish. And there was another one who thought she was a piano. She played herself with her fingers, on her chest, along her thin thighs, and the sound came out of her mouth. Her husband was a composer, so he could only visit her at weekends. He smiled all the time to hide his sorrow. They said he was a Minimalist. Delta was frantic, she trekked around the ward. She asked the time. She didn't recognise Vernon. When he walked with her the length of the ward she'd push him away. 'What's the time?' she'd say, 'Have you seen him?' But she wasn't asking anyone in particular. She was talking to something else that wasn't there. The drugs quietened her down. When they put her on the drugs she'd doze all day and night. What they hoped, the nurses, the doctors, and Vernon himself, was that they could find some balance with the drugs, so Delta wouldn't be restless or out on her feet. The ideal seemed to be somewhere between the two. But they never managed to get it right. If she didn't have the drugs she was crazy, and if they gave her a small amount of drugs she went into a trance. Vernon would look at her from time to time, and he'd wonder how he could have loved her so much. She wasn't there any more, the woman he'd loved. The woman who'd been over the top for the King of Rock'n'Roll. By the spring she was wasting away, pale, hollow eyes, and her limbs like twigs. And before the summer was out she died. Just closed her eyes and went to sleep for ever. After the funeral Vernon got his old job back on the trucks. He cleared all the Elvis Presley souvenirs out of the house, thought that by doing that it would wipe the memory of Delta. But it didn't work. She was still there. It was as if she had penetrated the walls of the house, left traces of herself in the bricks and the fittings, as though the entire structure was porous, clogged with the memory of her. He'd shake his head to get her out, but she was always on his mind. Vernon threw the damaged die away and worked out a system with the good one. He threw a bullet or a deuce and he'd use a gun. Stick it in his mouth and blow the top of his head off. A five or a six and he'd use chemicals, take the same route as Elvis. A trey or a four and he'd throw again. There was a small pull-out table in the cab, which Vernon used to eat his sandwiches. It had a circular indentation for a cup or a mug. Someone who wasn't a trucker had designed it in an office. He took the die that had belonged to Delta and her daddy and cupped it in his palm, flicked his wrist slightly so the thing didn't bounce off the table when he threw it. It didn't wobble or begin to look iffy in any way, came up clean and proud, like nobody could've argued with. The big one, number six. A call to Marty, the youngest driver in the fleet, always boasting that you could buy anything on the road. Guy with a cast in one eye, but who always looked at you directly with the other. Mr Cool. The whole business took two hours. Tincture of H, that's what Marty called it. 'Enough to keep a man happy for a week.' Vernon didn't answer, he was looking for something that would last a while longer than that. The lavatory at the truck-stop was not like Elvis's. Catered for a whole different class of folk. The floor was covered with cracked tiles, and around the bottom of the stained pan a couple of the tiles had crumbled to dust. Delta had a photograph of Presley's bathroom in Gracelands, which had a blood-red shag-pile carpet, a telephone, and ebony fittings. They had found the man dead in there, wearing only the trousers of his gold-coloured pyjamas, and it had taken five men to lift his bloated body out and downstairs to an ambulance. Vernon prodded for a vein in his skinny thigh. He hadn't been eating lately, weighed next to nothing. He filled all three of the syringes, plunged them into a vein on the side of his thigh. Sat there for what seemed a long time. Thought about Delta, tried to think about the time she was happy, when she was smiling. He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. Didn't feel any sensation at all. There was the sound of Scotty Moore's electric guitar and Bill Black's acoustic bass from the instrumental solo of I Don't Care If The Sun Don't Shine. And it was authentic, he could hear the unknown Bongo player. Elvis would cut in any second now, with that raw sound of his, reaching out for eternity.
Crown of Thorns A crown of thorns is the image David sees all the time. He imagines the head, with the crown hovering above it, only moments before it descends. He mouths it, his silent lips forming the vowels of its name. He walks along the paths and the image travels with him, always within reach. He fashions it with empty hands, winding the supple stems together, mindful of the pricking thorns. The crown is his secret, his lover, exclusively his; he has never spoken of it to anyone. He carries it in a secret place, hidden among the other pictures in his mind. Everything else shifts, the inner forms revolve around each other and pass into the past. Bed become breakfast, and breakfast becomes the workshop, the workshop turns slowly around the face of the clock; but the crown of thorns remains. The green morning light seeps through the curtains and adds an illusion of colour to the ward. David's eyes are closed, his mouth open. He is rigid, experiencing the change of light in darkness. The choleric nurse stomps down the centre aisle. "Time to get up, gentlemen," she shouts. "Time to rise." David keeps his eyes closed. He can see it all in a photograph, a moving photograph. The nurse has a moustache. The crown of thorns is an inset to the photograph, bound to the bottom right hand corner. David moves the crown around; first to hover over the head of the nurse, and then to rest on her chest. It will be safest there. No one ever looks at themself. That is one of the things David has learned here, in this place. No one over looks at themself. In the old days, when he first came here, they used to talk to you. They wanted to find the crown, they even knew where it was. But they didn't know what it was. "What's inside your head?" the psychiatrist used to say. "What are you thinking about?" And David described the pictures in detail, only missing out the crown. He learned to put the crown on the psychiatrist's chest, and it was completely safe. No one ever looks at themself. At the table he spoons cereal into his mouth. One of the lights is flickering and David watches it. It is a long dead tube with only a portion of one end fighting for life. Fighting uselessly. It whines, and flickers again, then catches its breath and holds its partial glow in suspension. But not for long. He remembers when the tubes were installed, many years ago, to replace the old hanging ceiling lights. The ward was painted at the same time. He runs the spoon round the rim of the bowl, collecting the last crumbs of cereal, and puts them into his mouth. Then he sits back, pushing the bowl away. Most of them sit round the wall waiting for the bell to ring. Spider tries to climb the wall, and Big Neal marches up and down the ward making the sound of a trumpet. He thinks he's the Salvation Army. The tube finally dies. The bell rings and they form into groups. David takes the crown from the nurse's chest and bears it carefully before him. They leave the ward and move slowly along the corridor, out into the thin morning. It'll be the Engineering Workshop today. It's always Engineering or Electric treatment, and David doesn't have the treatment any more. He's not allowed in the treatment room. He has to treat himself. The metal chairs are stacked in twenties. David knows what to do. He takes a strip of the black emery paper and begins removing the rust. The chairs have to shine. He has made them shine before. David blocks out the picture of the others drinking tea. He sees his father in a long cassock giving bread and wine to the communicants. This is the body and the blood. The rust spills red over his fingers. His mother is saying: We all have burdens, David. It's His way. He was scourged, mocked, given a crown of thorns. But He took up the cross with courage; and we have to do the same. The Engineering Workshop is dirty. There are cobwebs on the ceiling. One end of the shed is piled with rubbish. Occasionally they clear it out; loading wheelbarrows for the tip. There is a coil of barbed wire and several broken chairs. When the nurse goes out they all stop work. David tears his strip of black emery paper into eight useless pieces. Supper is poached egg. The hanging tube has been replaced during the day and shines with a clod white light. The plates are cleared before the visitors come, and everyone is straightened up. Big Neal has a tie put on, and Spider is pulled off the wall and made to comb his hair. He cries when they take him off the wall. The ones who smoke are given a cigarette. Spider and Neal are both married, but they don't know their wives. Big Neal is almost blind anyway. He's the Salvation Army. Their wives sit together and talk to each other. It's the same every night. They talk to each other and to the nurses. Then they go home together on the bus. David goes to the lavatory while the visitors are in the ward. He takes the coil of barbed wire out from the front of his shirt. The barbs have stuck into his chest and small drops of blood have formed a circle. This is the body and the blood. He plaits the wire together, winding the stems around each other, mindful of the pricking thorns. There is a ferment inside him, a chaffing restlessness which impedes his fingers. His hands fly ahead of his thoughts, tearing their wings on the hooked pikes. There is no pain, only a racing, a tumultuous certainty. When it is done he presses it onto his head, pulling it down over the brow, almost to his eyes. The barbs plough bloody furrows in the ground of his flesh, and he feels like Lent. Like the church felt in Lent. He brushes the blood from his eyes and walks from the lavatory. No one stops him in the ward. The nurse is talking to Spiders' wife. David goes to the wall socket and inserts the two hanging ends of the crown of thorns into the square holes. There is a flash of light and Davids' body is transfigured by a rippling motion from head to feet. There is a smell of ash. Spiders' wife screams and the nurses races for the telephone. Spider closes on the wall and Big Neal lifts an invisible trumpet to his lips.
Millennium - a city blues Church bells. Sam Turner's eyes snapped open. This wasn't Sunday morning in Rome. The last Sunday morning he'd spent in Rome had been three years earlier in '97, and then he'd opened his eyes to a blue sky and a soft mattress. There'd been a warm presence beside him in the bed, fair hair spilled on the pillow. A smell of toasted almonds and coconut. This was different. In place of the mattress was the wooden staircase up to his office. His chin was on one of the steps, his shoulder on another, and the rest of him was quilted backwards as far as he could imagine. Something moved close to his right eye, and he saw it was his hand, flecked with crusted blood. He moved it again, voluntarily, until the pain in his shoulder and chest made him stop. The smell of his sweat and dirt from the treads filled his nostrils. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the bells. Great Peter, rich and sonorous, trying to express something unknowable from its lofty chamber in the heights of the York Minster bell tower. A memory surfaced. Sam had been scheduled to talk to a combined meeting of the Rotary and Inner Wheel at the Viking Moat House. His subject, A Day In The Life Of A Private Eye. The original speaker, the one who had cancelled at the last minute, had been booked to speak on the millennium, a topical subject, as the event itself was due in 21 days. Sam was the replacement speaker. He'd been seeing flashes of yellow all that morning, hallucinating grey worms and shrunken skulls. He'd arrived at the venue a couple of hours early and had his first drink in one year, seven months, three weeks, five days, and six hours. During that time he'd listened to a small voice inside his head every day: the voice that told him he didn't want a drink. But that particular day the voice was smaller than usual, and Sam wasn't listening. He looked at the tumbler of scotch on the bar for some time without touching it. One drink wasn't gonna hurt. Might even get him through the lunch. He put the glass to his nose and took a whiff, stuck the tip of his tongue into the spirit, and finally put the glass back down on the bar. Pushed it away. Then he drank it in one and asked the barman for a refill. 'Call it a death wish if you like,' Sam said with a grin. But the barman was too young to be friendly with someone who didn't fit. Sam sipped the second drink. Half way through the third he settled down to watch the people arriving for the lunch. The Chief Constable came in, together with his wife. He was a thin man with a long thin face, and she kept in step with him, remained close whenever he moved. They were reputedly a happy couple. Sam had another sip of his drink. Even among the middle classes faint traces of a monogamic instinct sometimes survives. Sam's bank manager came into the room, looked at Sam and walked out again. He was the kind of guy who'd lend you his umbrella when the sun was shining and want it back the minute it began to rain. He returned surrounded by a group of fat-cat lawyers and solicitors. The kind of people who could, if Sam played his cards right, keep him in business for the rest of his life. He turned and smiled at each of them. Raised his glass in a silent salute. But they were suddenly very busy seeing to their ladies. The chairman arrived, a man old enough to have been a waiter at the Last Supper. His face was a sea of wrinkles. His eyes like tiny black shells. He spoke with a West Country accent, modified by a lifetime in the north. 'My name is Roger Lame. We're so glad you could come. Everyone is excited about it.' Lame? As he was ushered through to the dining room Sam told himself it would be cheap to make a joke about the guy's name. At the top table he was introduced to the chairlady of the Inner Wheel, a woman who might have been pretty enough to hold up a game of darts around the time of the Second World War. The Lord Mayor was there, together with two prospective parliamentary candidates, and the society editors of the Yorkshire Post and Yorkshire Life. The room was seething with them, the top people of the town, sloshing back cocktails, making funny handshakes, and getting it on in the crude and inimitable way that the rich and far-too-comfortable have made their own. Like a group of people who had been individually kicked in the head by their ponies when they were children, and now believe everything they read in the papers. Sam looked away, but the view was the same whichever way you came at it. They were spread out around him like a carpet of mould. When the waiter arrived, Lame asked Sam if he wanted a drink, and if the guy hadn't been so old and frail Sam'd've given him a good old thump on the back. 'Tell you what?' he said. 'Get me a scotch. On second thoughts, make it a double. No, two doubles.' Lame looked back to check it wasn't a joke, and Sam gave him the twinkle he'd stolen from Paul Newman twenty years earlier. Lame turned it all over in what he was pleased to call his mind, and worked it out from that one twinkle that there was no joke involved. To put the guy at ease, Sam added: 'I don't normally drink, just getting ready for the millennium.' The waiter and chairman exchanged glances, and seven minutes later, Sam had two glasses in front of him, each of them containing the amber liquid. He forced himself to eat the chicken and the roast potatoes, suspecting he would see little solid nourishment in the build-up to the great day. He decided to abandon his prepared speech, and after the meal he had the two glasses refilled in front of him. When the chairman had finished his introduction Sam got to his feet. He downed one of the glasses and began to speak. 'Seen a comet in the sky last night. And it reminded me of you.' He grinned at them, and three of them grinned back. Two lies in one breath, but why not butter them up a little? Tell them anything. 'It's been a horrific century hasn't it? The conflicts of our time, too numerous to mention in an hour: I'm not even gonna try. Big wars, little wars; massacres, systematic and random. And that's before we begin to think about the environment. I wanted to mention these things. I know I'm here to talk about private detectives, but this millennium thing is steaming up behind us real fast now, and I wanna get it in perspective. Seems to me we have at least as much to regret as we have to celebrate.' Sam put the remaining glass to his lips and sent the scotch on its way. He held the empty glass at a slight angle and looked sideways at the chairman. No help there, the guy was all buttoned up in an impenetrable little coat of complacency. Sam turned to the waiter who was standing at the back of the room, and drew him forward with his eyes. 'Same again,' he said. 'And keep them coming.' He fixed his eyes on a lady JP who was unfortunately endowed with the kind of mamilla that a seasoned Friesian heifer would give her eye teeth for. He gave the remainder of his speech to her. Something about marriage, Alcoholics Anonymous, and Renaissance man. * He brought his bloody hand back into focus in the gloom of the stairwell. He remembered when he was small and he had to look after his cousin. Lucyboots didn't always remember to have a wee when she needed one, and it was Sam's job to remind her. He learned to pick up on the signs. She would start off fidgeting, moving her legs around, jumping up and down on the spot. From time to time she'd stop and push both hands down between her legs. If he missed that stage, or didn't actually stand over her and make her do it, she'd go into stage two, which was where she'd cross her legs and make sucking sounds with her lips. That was what you might call stage critical. The young Sam wasn't old enough to do the job. Lucyboots wet herself more times than he was able to stop her, and he was always in trouble for it because he should have reminded her in time. One day he'd washed her knickers in the pond and dried them in the sun. But he was still in trouble because the grown-ups could smell what had happened. * Another whiskey hit the spot. There was a bishop at the table to Sam's left, a man who'd seen the light, a ticket-tout outside the gates of heaven. A heap of chicken bones in front of him. The clergyman whispered something to a woman sitting next to him who looked as though her soul had got the better of her. The air was damp with well-bred distress. * When the world was young and everyone in it merely children Sam Turner had been in a crowded meeting rooms somewhere near Nelson's Column with Alfie Bass and Phil Ochs and Vanessa Redgrave. All the chairs were taken, and people were standing at the back of the room. Phil Ochs had thrown a wobbly. Oh, sure, he was against the Vietnam War, but he didn't think communism was the answer. He sang a beautiful and passionate rock'n'roll version of 'Flower Lady' which reminded some of the people in the room that they were human. Ochs didn't hang around to see the effect he'd created. He had a date with destiny, and not a lot of time on his hands. Later Vanessa and Alfie and Sam went to a Chinese restaurant and ate crispy duck and noodles. They drank scented tea, steaming hot. Vanessa and Sam, and Alfie, they thought they were gonna stop the Vietnam war. But they miscalculated. It would take an enormous American body count, and a new generation of economists before the warriors put their guns away. Phil Ochs and Alfie were both dead now. * The bells were still ringing when Sam got up on his elbow. Both of his legs were numb, but he flexed his toes, then his ankles, and slowly the blood began pumping life back into his body. He'd gone to Hull after the Rotary meeting. There'd been no questions after his speech, and he didn't hang around in the bar. It wasn't possible to drink in York, there were too many people to stop him. But he wasn't known in Hull. A three week drunk. The old man in the tank hadn't been able to understand the difference between Donna and Dora. Two women Sam had loved and lost. One to a hit-and-run driver, and the other to cancer. 'Donna, Dora,' the old man'd said. 'Dorna Nobis.' And they'd sung it together. Dor-na, No-bis, pacem, pacem, Do-o-rna Nobis pa-a-acem, Do-o-o-orna-a No-o-bis pacem. . . The bells were not going to stop ringing. Sam got to his knees and discovered the woman's leg a little higher up the stairs. Two legs, connected to a body that was cold and had no pulse. He shivered. He couldn't make out her face in the gloom, but he knew it was no one he'd ever met. It felt like a set-up, as if someone really didn't like Sam Turner. He got to his feet, swayed on the step, then found his balance. Things to sort out here. Time to go to work. He wouldn't have a drink today. Might never drink again. The church bells were pealing out all over York - all over the world - but the sun hadn't come up. It was still dark. Sam Turner and a corpse and the morning of a new millennium. Felt like days of old. Familiar ring to it. An old enemy setting him up? The police? Something unthought of? Or was it just God again?
Weekend At Home - a short story The private detective was sitting in his favourite chair. He had his long legs stretched out, his feet propped on an old leather hassock. He was reading Walter Mosley's Gone Fishin', and he didn't intend to move until he'd finished. It was the Saturday of his weekend off. He'd begun it with a shower and a long lazy breakfast. Coffee with Mary Coughlan's Under the Influence album. He'd unplugged his phone and his consciousness, entered what he called his stunned phase. Outside, York was buzzing along as usual. The city had managed for a couple of thousand years before he was born, another day without him wouldn't hurt. The knock on the door came around one thirty and he ignored it. If it was Geordie or Celia, one of his friends, they'd walk in. But it was someone who needed to knock, and Sam didn't need anyone like that on his day off. Still, there it was. Sam on one side of the door and somebody else on the other side. A thin piece of wood separating them. He let the book slide onto his chest and watched the rays of light coming through the window. Sunbeams floating about in the still room. When the second knock came he put the book on the table, got to his feet and opened the door. There was a woman in the frame. Small woman with a checked coat and a headscarf and a tuft of nondescript hair sticking out the front. Flat black shoes and tights that had started off with a ladder and finally gone into holes. Nice smile on her face, though. Not confident. Not at all a confident face, but the smile masked much of the trepidation she was feeling. Sam had seen her before, several times. She lived in the same street, on the other side of the road, about half way down. He didn't know her name, but he'd seen her with kids. Occasionally with her husband, a large blunt man with a round head and a beer gut. She'd never been inside a Private Eye's house before. She wasn't that kind of material. Maybe had some dealings with the police from time to time, but if she had it had been connected with her husband or her kids. Sam thought she would stand there with her smile for ever if he didn't say something. He creased his face and said, 'Yes? Was it me you wanted?' 'Oh,' she said, coming forward to Sam's table. 'I've caught you then? Good. I'm Mrs Luft. Jessica's gone missing.' She looked over to the window, cocked her head to one side as though she was listening for something. 'Take a seat,' Sam said. 'I've got a few minutes. Jessica. . .?' 'Yes,' said Mrs Luft, sitting on the edge of the chair. 'She's only a scrap of a kid. And her father's useless. Always has been. No gumption. Nothing about him. Doesn't have the brains he was born with.' The smile had slid from her face, she leaned forward on a muscular forearm and her mouth fell open. Sam tried again. 'Is Jessica your daughter? How old is she?' The woman nodded her head. 'Eight. She was eight last month. She was outside with her hamster this morning, 'bout half nine. Then she went out of the yard. She'd got her pocket money, so I didn't think much about it. She goes up the shops, get herself some sweets. She has a plastic purse, pink one, she keeps her money in. Fred, that's her father, he asked where she was about eleven-o-clock. So we asked round about, her friend's house. Half the street's out looking for her now, but she hasn't shown up.' Sam glanced at his watch. Half past one. He said. 'Are the police at the house?' 'They was earlier.' Sam followed Mrs Luft along the street. She was carrying too much weight. It was more of a waddle than a walk. The end of his day off, but Sam didn't mind too much. She couldn't count on her old man, And, look at her. Not an inch over five foot when she was wet through. Saving damsels in distress was his calling after all, even when they were past their prime damsels with varicose veins. * Fred Luft was sitting in a corner of the back room reading the Bible. He barely acknowledged Sam when Mrs Luft introduced them. He was wearing an overall with a stain on the bib and several small rips. He had huge blunt hands and his face and neck were knotted and pock-marked. He wore builders boots without laces, and the chair he was sitting in looked like the sole survivor of a three-piece suite that might've belonged to a dinosaur hunter. The house smelled like a den. Sweat, urine, and a sticky sweet, almost tangible feeling to the air. There was clutter on chairs and tables, but the windows and carpets were clean, and in the kitchen the plastic surfaces and cupboard doors had been wiped, and the cooker was gleaming. Two small children, a boy and a girl of around five or six years were sitting at a table in front of a computer game. Mrs Luft walked through to the yard, and Sam followed. 'She was kneeling here,' the woman said. 'Talking to the hamster. Then the next minute she'd gone.' Her voice went up a whole octave on the last word and she brought her hands up to her mouth as if to stop her heart gushing out. She rushed into the house and disappeared up the stairs. The yard was a concrete square. There was a lean-to shed on one side with the door swinging open. Inside were various builders tools and a canvas tool bag with a new saw poking out of the top. By the back door to the house was a well-made wooden cage for the hamster, and the animal itself was poking its nose through the bars at Sam. It was piebald, and obviously used to human-kind. When Sam reached out his hand it showed no fear, and had a good sniff of his fingers. Sam thought it might be hungry and looked around for something to feed it. On top of the cage was a biscuit tin with a scoop inside and a smell of grain, but nothing else. Back inside the kitchen he found a crust of bread. He took it out to the hamster, and the animal snatched it from his fingers and rushed away with it to the back of the cage. 'Bon appétit!' Sam left by the yard gate, walked along a narrow back lane and up to the Hull road. There were two police cars parked there, and several shoppers standing around in shocked groups. The hardware store was closed, the blinds pulled down. The spotty youth who looked after the pet shop was gazing out of the window, over a couple of rabbits and a mongrel pup. Sam was stopped outside the sweet shop by a young policeman with a photograph of Jessica. 'No, I haven't seen her,' Sam told him. 'I'm a neighbour. Have you got anything to go on?' The young policeman didn't think so. He wasn't sure. He was only a cog in a much bigger wheel. The proprietor of the sweet shop, Robbie, was half Chinese, in his late twenties, with a young family of his own. He'd taken the shop over about two years before, at about the same time Sam moved into the area. 'I'm helping Mrs Luft,' Sam explained. 'Did Jessica come in for some sweets this morning.' 'No, Sam. I've been here since seven. I know her, I would remember if she'd come. She always wants liquorice sticks.' Robbie's speech was faintly accented, his consonants being formed slightly too far back in his mouth. But each word came out with a shadow attached, as if the missing Jessica was a personal nightmare, a symbol of the fragility and vulnerability of his own children. 'Didn't anyone see her?' 'A couple of people saw her with Dave Gunn at the bus stop.' 'Christ.' Dave Gunn was every parents nightmare. He was a man approaching forty, he lived alone, and he was only one wave short of a shipwreck. His suit lapels were always stained with food, and when the neighbourhood children called him names he sometimes became over excited and ran after them. He had a full-time job sweeping up in the chocolate factory, and he'd lived peacefully and quietly by himself since his mother died. But three years ago he'd been accused of sexually molesting one of the neighbourhood boys. Gunn had consistently denied the offence, and at the end of the day the police had dropped the charge because of insufficient evidence. The boy's story was ornamented and embellished at every telling. But when people throw mud, at least some of it tends to stick, and since that time the man had been viewed with suspicion. The local children were warned to stay away from him, and many in the neighbourhood treated him with outright contempt. 'What does that mean?' Sam asked. There was irritation in his voice. Dave Gunn was a scapegoat, and scapegoats tended to muddy the water. 'Did she get on the bus with him?' 'No one actually saw her go with him. But she was standing at the bus stop, talking to him. The police have picked him up.' * The police were organising the search, and Sam joined a party that was covering the area of the University and Heslington stray. The searchers were tight-lipped and anxious, quick and unco-ordinated in their movements. There was a collective anxiety about them, as if each one realised that they might discover the battered and lifeless body of a child. And at the same time each one denied the possibility because it was too much to carry, and when their eyes met they would nod and smile as if this was an ordinary day and they were meeting each other in the course of a constitutional walk. The moors in the distance were like a purple bruise and as the afternoon wore on and turned to evening the sky darkened and came down low over the earth. There were long low rumblings of thunder and occasional flashes of dry lightning illuminated the sky. As the margin of visibility dwindled the police called off the search for the night. They would begin again at first light, and they could use all the help they could get. Most of the searchers went to the George, some to the Deramore Arms. No one wanted to go home and admit defeat. For Sam Turner, who was an alcoholic, the pub would have been a defeat in itself. Standing by the side of the road, he listened to the chatter of a police radio, sounded like the high pitched babble of a children's swimming pool. There was a sergeant and three police officers waiting for a transport to take them back to their base. 'They've let that guy go, Sarge.' 'Dave Gunn?' 'Apparently. The bus driver remembered him getting on the bus. Other passengers. By himself. He clocked in at work on time, and he was still there when he was picked up. He's got about six hundred witnesses.' 'He's a fucking perv all the same.' Sam called in at the Luft's house on his way home. Mrs Luft was sitting in front of the television with the sound muted. Her small son was sleeping in her lap. She gathered her breath from time to time and let it go in a long exhalation. Her face was stained with salt lines and she had grown old and haggard during the course of the day. Fred Luft looked as though he hadn't moved since the morning. He was sitting in the same chair reading the same Bible. Only now he was reading it aloud, in a slow drone, his thick, dry lips pumping the same sound and shape from each individual word. 'Do you have anyone who can sit with you?' Sam asked. 'A relative, or a neighbour?' 'My mother's here,' Mrs Luft said. 'She's having a nap upstairs.' 'You heard they've released Dave Gunn?' When Sam mentioned Gunn's name Fred Luft stopped reading for a couple of beats, then picked it up again. Mrs Luft nodded her head. 'I didn't think Jess would have gone with him.' She looked through the television screen into a boundless spiral. 'We're never going to see her again.' Sam bit his lip. 'There's still hope,' he said, but his words went over her head and shattered soundlessly against the wall. Sam waited until Mrs Luft's mother came downstairs, then he went home to bed. Fred Luft's voice was interminable, a drone but with an unhinged, moonstruck quality to it. * Sam was out of bed at half five the next morning. He had had his breakfast and a shave and was on the street by half six. A council workman on a bike stopped by the side of the road. 'Can you come back with me?' he said. 'There's a sack back there. I think it might be the kiddie.' Suddenly Sam was weary. Something ancient descended on him, and he followed behind the stranger pushing his bike with an absolute certainty that he was being led to the sight of another pitiful enigma. He looked up at the sky, perhaps hoping for a glimpse of God, or something that might assure him of ultimate meaning. But the vault of the morning offered only a light blue curtain, with not a cloud to mar its surface. No hint of a magisterial countenance. The child's body was in a bean sack pushed up against a garden wall less than three hundred meters from her home. The top of the sack was open, and Sam didn't have to touch it to see the blond curls framing the bruised and lifeless face of Jessica Luft, her two eyes open and staring and incapable of sight. Neither Sam Turner nor the council workman spoke a word, each of them were as if mesmerised by the bloody waste the morning had delivered. A bright flame had been extinguished and the world was a darker place because of it. For the moments they stood there together they formed a community of grief which released a silent chill into the air and sent it oozing off into every nook and cranny in the universe. There was a footfall behind them, and Sam turned to see a woman with her hands against her face, a small child clutching at her skirts. Then there was a man, another neighbour, and some moments later a couple of old people. Within minutes half the neighbourhood seemed to be crowding around the child's body. The long and high pitched moan of Mrs Luft's voice came along the street like a javelin. The group of neighbours around the body parted to allow her through. Sam tried to intercept her, but she brushed him aside and took in the sight of her daughter's body. The lines seemed to fade away from her face, but her body was taken with small spasms, slowly growing in intensity until it seemed she might shake apart. Sam took his jacket off and wrapped it around her shoulders, then he held her close, and she turned to him and buried her face in his chest. Fred Luft approached the body with slow steps. His face looked like a lopsided plum. The Bible was still in his hand. He went down on his knees in front of the sack and placed his hands on each side of Jessica's face. His fingers were like sausages. His stomach hung over his belt, and there was a madness in his eyes. He looked around wildly, some kind of growl coming through the folds of his throat, and you could see he'd resigned from the world. He wasn't gonna play anymore. This small child in the bean sack was his life, and someone had stolen her away from him. Three police cars came along the street, and the officers began clearing the people away, sending them back to their homes. Sam led Mrs Luft back to her house as the first length of yellow tape was stretched across the road. He got her settled in a chair, and left her and her mother wringing their hands together while he made a pot of tea in the kitchen. He stepped outside the back door and watched the hamster while he waited for the kettle to boil, and something connected with the animal, a concept, an idea, or maybe just a hunch, tried to form itself in his mind. While he was grasping for it Fred Luft came back to the house, his eyes like burning cinders. 'I'm making some tea,' Sam told him, but the big man ignored him. He walked to the lean-to shed and picked up his canvas tool bag and disappeared out of the back gate. Sam watched the lumbering bulk of him for a moment, and then the kettle boiled. Whatever it was about the hamster dissolved in his thoughts. Sam let it go. See to the living, he thought. The show must go on. The two women wailed. Sam brought them their tea, and the older woman sipped at hers, but after a while she put it down and joined in the wailing again. Sam hung on for as long as he could stand it, but after a time he made an apology and left the house. There's been one other victim in this whole affair, Sam thought, as he made his way along the street to Dave Gunn's house. Gunn was the kind of character who was always going to suffer in the neighbourhood, because of the first accusation against him. Now there had been another, and he would be more isolated than before. While it seemed to be falling to Sam Turner to act out the part of the good Samaritan he might as well make sure that Dave got his share of the action. Gunn was maybe a little simple minded, but he always had a smile for everyone, and he'd brightened up the day for Sam on more than one occasion. The net curtains at the window of Gunn's house could have used a little time in a washing machine. Sam tapped on the front door, and as he did so the door fell open. 'Dave? You there?' Sam shouted as he moved through the doorway and along the darkened hallway. There was no reply. The door at the end of the hallway was closed, and Sam knocked on it at the same time as turning the knob. There was an awful atmosphere of stillness about the room that Sam entered. A silence which chilled the blood in his veins. Jessica's father, Fred Luft was there, standing like a statue at the window, his back to Sam. Sam listened to his own heart beating as he watched Luft's back for several seconds. He couldn't understand what Luft was doing in Dave Gunn's house. The man didn't appear to be breathing, but he was, and he turned towards Sam with his huge unshaven face. Sam saw then that he was holding a joiner's hammer in his hand. He said, 'Jessica?' He didn't look at the detective, but he walked around him and half fell half stumbled along the hallway and out of the front door. It was only then that Sam discovered Dave Gunn stretched out on the wooden floor. He was clad in a grey striped suit, double breasted, a blue denim shirt with button down collars, and green socks. A pair of grey slip-on shoes were sitting on a chair, and Gunn's body was crucified on the floor in front of a cheap bamboo sofa. The hands and feet were pinned to the floor with six inch nails, and a cold chisel had been hammered into his left side, towards the bottom of the rib cage. His mouth had been stuffed with a cover off one of the sofa cushions, and the cushion itself was still soaking up the mass of blood which covered the floor in thick, congealing clots. There was no sign of life. There was silence and stillness and a sickening stench which might have come from the corpse, but which felt like it came from the world. Sam should have known earlier that something else was going to happen, in fact he had known, when he thought about it now. Luft's mind had obviously been getting away from him right from the moment Jessica disappeared. But in his worst drink-induced frenzies Sam could not have imagined anything as grisly or as senseless as the reality that had pieced itself together in the demented mind of Jessica's father. Dave Gunn had oats and bits of fruit around his mouth, and on the table was a bowl half filled with muesli. He must have been sitting there eating it when Fred barged into his room. It was while he was looking at the food particles around the dead mouth that Sam finally realised what it was about the hamster. He left the house and went to the officers who were securing the scene around the bean sack containing the body of the child. You need to get someone round to Dave Gunn's house,' he told them. 'There's been an accident. He's dead.' Sam walked off up the road, and the police officer watched him go. When Sam's words eventually seeped through into the officer's consciousness he shouted after him: 'Hey, what did you say?' But Sam was already turning the corner onto the parade of shops. He walked past the hardware store and in through the door of the pet shop. He slammed the door shut behind him, and the rabbits and the puppy were sent scattering sawdust around their pens. The door had an old fashioned bell on a strip of curved metal and when Sam slammed it behind him the bell danced up and down until the proprietor's sixteen year old son came out of the back with something in his mouth. Since his father had had a breakdown earlier in the year he had been in control of the shop. He was a tall youth with a rash of acne scarring his forehead, and people in the neighbourhood said he owned and operated a ferocious temper. He scowled at Sam. 'Trying to break the door down, mate?' Sam leaned into his face. 'When Jessica went out of her house yesterday morning she was coming here to buy food for her hamster.' The blood drained from the youth's face and he attempted to bluster his way out of it. 'So,' he said. 'She never made it. She was kidnapped before she got here.' Sam made a grab for him, got him by both lapels. 'Don't waste it on me,' he said. 'If I want to see crap acting I'll go to a Van Dam movie.' The detective shoved the youth aside and marched through to the back of the shop. 'Hey, where do you think you're going,' the lad said, but Sam was already inside the store room. He reappeared in the doorway a moment later with an empty bean sack in one hand and a pink plastic purse in the other. |
