High John the Conqueror, page 8
‘Did you say anything to your brother about your mother vanishing?’ I ask Mrs Pertwee. ‘Did he know we were coming back here?’
Acting like she has not heard me, Mrs Pertwee addresses her niece, ‘Alright darling, there’s nothing to worry about now. You’re not in any trouble. You haven’t done anything wrong.’
She beckons to the boys, who join her and their sister in a group hug. With the exception of the girl, who seems miserable enough, no one in this family appears to have consulted the manual on how to behave when bereaved, the boys appearing to enjoy the novelty of the situation. Not wanting them to get too comfortable, I ask the group, ‘Did your father tell you where he was going to look for her?’
The children pay no attention, huddling closer together. Question time is over and Christopherson, who may dine out on this unprecedented calamity for the rest of his career, starts to chatter excitedly in my ear, ‘This tops it all, eh, boss? Complete madness.’
‘So it seems.’
‘Didn’t you say their mum was stage drunk and incapable of speech when you left her? And now she’s meant to have dematerialised too? It’s got to be a trick of some kind, right? But what are they trying to pull here? It doesn’t make any sense, all of them vanishing. I mean, what for…’
‘Cuckooing?’
Christopherson looks down at Eileen. ‘Sorry?’
‘Cuckooing?’ she repeats. ‘Kind of lost its lustre now, hasn’t it, Sergeant? You think they are now holding three, maybe four, members of my family? Perhaps we should enquire after the dogs. They’ll be the next to go.’
Christopherson reddens. ‘There’s no need for that. We’re all on the same side here.’
‘Oh, that is good to know. Where is that nice music coming from?’
Philip Glass is performing in my coat pocket again, and I pull out my mobile and answer it. ‘Hi, Tamla, where are you?’
‘I swear to God, Terry, you’re not going to believe this…’
‘Try me.’
‘Okay. Our friend, Lockheart, we’ve just seen him run past us waving a fucking hammer, or some kind of small axe, towards Station Row. We’re in active pursuit. I’ve already requested backup.’
‘On our way.’
‘Boss?’ Christopherson is looking at me hopefully.
‘What’s going on, Inspector?’ Mrs Pertwee asks, ‘Is everything okay?’
‘I think I can safely say it isn’t,’ I say. ‘We’ve found your brother-in-law. Now we just need to catch him.’
‘Just him?’
‘Yes, he’s on his own.’
‘What about me, then? I thought the plan was that you were going to take me away and throw away the key.’
‘Oh come on, Mrs Pertwee. We’re just trying out different possibilities for size. There was never any danger of that happening.’
‘So I am safe for now, then?’
‘Unless you’re planning on running onto Station Row with a weapon, yes.’
‘Station Row? Didn’t you mention the Purple Hearse earlier?’ says Christopherson to Mrs Pertwee, ‘Iggy worked there or something?’
‘Yes, he went there sometimes… not working, exactly.’
‘That’s what I thought. It’s not where I’d expect posh people to hide kidnapped kids, but it gives us somewhere to start, doesn’t it? I’ll bet you anything that’s where your brother is headed.’
Christopherson nods at me and heads towards the door, back on the front foot again.
‘Someone will be here later,’ I say to Mrs Pertwee, not wanting to leave, as I fear our bond along with everything else will have disappeared by the time I come back.
‘I hope so,’ she replies, watching Christopherson hurry along the path to the car, ‘and I hope it is you.’
‘It’ll more likely be community support officers and social services…’ I reply in what I realise is not exactly the language of high passion. She holds a finger to my lips and turning round quietly asks the children to wait for her in the sitting room. Then she steps up and straightens my lapels, the sort of thing a wife might do for her husband, and a challenge to move away, which I ignore.
‘Who are you the rest of the time, when you aren’t being this?’
‘I am this. There isn’t anything else.’
‘That’s what I thought you’d say. But I don’t believe you.’
Eileen adds something further that I like and waits for me to act on it, which I do. Attraction is a zero-sum game and always stupid. If you are looking to develop or apply finishing touches to it, it is already too late.
‘Goodbye, Inspector. Don’t be a stranger.’
Outside I try not to think of fucking Eileen, her legs pointing like plinths towards blackening skies. The urgency with which I want this, then deny it, only to find I cannot imagine it without it happening, a portent that Cupid is playing with his quiver and arrow again and that I have already fallen in love — salutary compensation for still having no idea where her nephew is, what happened to her sister, why her mother was taken, or whether her brother-in-law will be careful with that axe or not.
‘She’s as mad as they come,’ Christopherson says, revving the engine. ‘Hurry up and get in, boss. We’ve a madman to clobber.’
CHAPTER FOUR
SIAMESE TWINS
He is running. He has lived in this place all his life; it has been an easy life to waste and a hard one to like. His city is not a he or a she but an it. Great things do not happen here; there are no striking views, inspiring sights, or experiences you will remember forever, and if there are, he has never been able to see past the weeds to savour them. Untroubled by reflexive animality, at one with his operative level, he is the king of whatever will happen next, observing the swift disappearance of time without ever having known what it was to gaze through the rafters, stare at the night sky, and marvel at the stars, or watch the approval in the face of a stranger presented with an accomplishment no one can take away from him, because everything he has has been taken away. Dream too hard and you’ll never wake up, he tells his children; he was always too clever to fall for the traps set by sleep. Better to run and keep going, his failing legs supporting his body like a whisper of a better life smothered under the tumult of reality. He already cannot tell whether it is blood or sweat seeping over his eyes. The force driving him is nimble and selfish, and the beauty is that there is no time to work out what it wants. All he knows is he cannot stop running.
And why would he? There are parts of the city that coaches shuttle tourists through, past floated meadows and through streets with flower boxes that fade before the car parks, betting shops, off-licences and substance misuse services, that constitute the place he knows and joylessly dominates. He has no use for charming edifices and whatever softness sticks to their walls. His place is the chalky sediment that resists nourishment, and his people the bodies that insulate him from the night terrors of Hanging Hill. For however worthless the whirring buzz of small satisfactions are — a pint sunk, a curry finished, a grudge settled — they are all proof that he is still here, and that there is someone his life is happening to. Yet if he is not quick, this precious consciousness that he has sought to make so little of will disappear into the Wiltshire ether, and he will be gone forever.
He is moving with reckless haste. There are few witnesses to observe his charge from Hanging Hill, and those there are recoil in terror as Alvin Lockheart spins his mallet blindly (in truth it is a feeble thing used to nail up calendars), windmilling into lampposts, letterboxes and traffic lights, discoordinately staggering to his feet, a scarecrow that bleeds, blaspheming loudly against divine neglect. He mistakes their fear for mockery — he usually does — who can resist being entertained by a public unravelling on this scale? It was always there, whenever he enters a room, a ridicule spiced with the seasoning of a dead and corrupted love, all for a plain-speaking local hero they’re too young to remember him ever being. Besides, his course was set once the irresistible curl of his upper lip issued a fruitless challenge to the world, a cheaply acquired misanthropy he cannot disinherit or walk back. Blame whisky, the enabler of the arsehole within; he cannot remember a day when he has not sought its consultation; dignifying invective as wisdom, confusing spite for insight, turning man into cunt.
A van veers so close to him that he thinks he is dead, but the crash he believes has killed him is just the persistence of his magmatic hangover; this one must be faced like death — stoically and completely on his own. Appreciation of his condition at face value is the deepest thing he can do; his heart is erupting and his wife and son have gone. What did he do with all the time he could have used to say he loved them? For as long as he can remember there were things he thought that were incommunicable, meanings that would not cross realms, ideas there were no sounds for. If he could not say something, it was bollocks — the words that were already there stopped the new ones from coming into being; reality patrolled its borders. The salt water mixes with whatever it is that is already in his eyes. Hard as it is to accept love without having to show it, it is harder existing in its absence; he wants to yell and roar, with all the might left in his lungs, to repeat a word he has heard others use but pride forbids him to utter.
‘Fuck,’ he croaks. That was not the one he was looking for. It will take something larger than life for him to be able to apologise, to relieve the contradictions encountered within his conflicted past, to occupy the side of things he cannot see, and at this late stage, grow as a human being. He has entered the Blacklight district now, a ghoulish succession of pubs, guest houses, tattoo parlours and brothels, surrounding the approaches to the station. Spitting at his reflection in a window display of antique stamps and lead soldiers, trusting only in the effectiveness of ritual gestures, Lockheart slows down into a menacing canter, suddenly conscious that a running man may look like a frightened one. It has stopped raining and the grass on the bank beneath the advertising hoardings is beginning to stand to attention. The ocean has fallen into the drop. He barges into the doors of the Purple Hearse, prying through them as he would the outstretched arms of his worst enemy, and, losing the hammer, wheezes as the succulent aroma of the pub touches the back of his throat. Sweetly artificial, a space that has changed hands without the proper checks, squalor disguised under air fresheners and magic trees, contamination upon contamination, how on Earth has this place become his local? There was always something sick about the Hearse, as obvious to a regular as a stranger happening on it for the first time, guilty secrets that no one had gone to too much trouble to hide, yielding clues and no confession. He takes his time, relishing their fear, and the silence that can only be broken once. Saying nothing is redemptive; when everything is too much, especially doing anything at all, words rob him of his power. To be God, he must have his own rules and force others to follow them. He revels in moments like this, when they are all finally at his mercy, and his gifts, physical strength and courage, are no longer societal embarrassments.
Marching forward, Lockheart pulls the stool away from a woman at the bar, grabs the landlady by the hair, drags her into in the centre of the pub and, yanking her head back, forces her to look around the room, before lowering her to the floor.
‘You know! I know you know!’ he shouts, circling round the gap he has swiftly created. ‘What have you done to them?’
‘Christ, Alvin,’ the man behind the bar laughs. ‘I never realised blossom turned into fruit.’
Lockheart picks up the fallen stool and throws it at the mirror behind the counter; shards of glass rain over the barman.
‘Do you never have enough of yourself?’ the barman gasps. ‘You could have had my sight.’
Lockheart grinds his teeth.
‘Where is she?’
‘Damned idiot, you’ll bring the police on us all!’ shouts the landlady. ‘Get out of here! Just get out!’
‘Where?’
‘You know I can’t tell you that, Alvin. No one can now,’ says the barman.
The defeated never lose just once, but are condemned to relive their defeat into perpetuity; Lockheart grins and stares round the room at the cowering array of faces. They all have the look of having done something they will regret for the rest of their lives. Failure will always have numbers on its side. Slowly, he leans over the bar and into the barman so his victim has no choice but to acknowledge the eyes that bore hatefully into his own. Squeezing the man’s cheeks, Lockheart pulls their faces together. ‘Are these peepers going to be the last thing you see, Nick?’
‘We don’t choose who goes, Alvin. We can’t fly, but at least we can swim. Be realistic.’
‘As may be. But none of your riddles, Nick. You like your words too much. Tell me where to look. Or give me something to help.’
Lockheart lets go and the barman nods to one of the tracksuited youths milling by a side entrance that leads into an alley. The youngster leans out for something just outside the door, and brings back two small plastic bags.
‘Acid Horse,’ the barman says to Lockheart. ‘It’ll show you the way to go. We can’t.’
Lockheart grabs the bags and holds them close to his eyes, as if to see them gleam, before pocketing them with a mobile phone the landlady reluctantly hands to him.
‘Not for us to grow old in a fug of unspeakable profundity, Alvin,’ says the barman. ‘This is the only way you’ll see them now.’
Back out on the street, Lockheart starts to run again. Life is long, but unless you are busy living happily ever after, never long enough.
*
‘We’ve surrounded the place,’ says Tamla, pointing to a badly parked Ford Orion, a hastily assembled blue and white hazard tape barricade, and two worried looking PCs. Beyond them, Orridge stands astride a mini-roundabout, unnecessarily directing traffic with one hand, while stopping pedestrians from crossing the road with the other; his propensity to play the lollipop-lady unlikely to shore up the public’s respect for law and order.
‘So where is he?’ I ask.
‘Beats me. If Lockheart’s left, he must have used the drains.’
‘You think he’s still in there, then?’
‘Has to be. The florist says she saw him run in like his life depended on it.’
‘Maybe it did.’ I check my watch, my dad’s old Omega Seamaster, covered in dents and scratches and entirely unsuitable to this kind of work. ‘How long ago was this?’
‘At least ten minutes.’
‘And no one has left through a window yet? I thought sound and fury were his style.’
‘Maybe he’s just popped in for a quiet lunchtime drink…’ Tamla says, trying to control the nervousness we are all feeling.
‘We come to that point in the job where we can actually get hurt, again,’ she says to me out of the side of her mouth. ‘I deal with it by pretending we are in control.’
‘Pretending I’m not scared usually works for me,’ I reply.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Christopherson says to an elderly man hobbling along on crutches, wearing a battered fez and aviator sunglasses, ‘I’m afraid you can’t go in there yet.’
‘What would I want to go in there for? You’re blocking the pavement. That place is for perverts. Let me through, please. I’ve a heart condition. I was only going in to use the toilets anyway.’
The senior citizen has a point. The Purple Hearse and its environs resemble a medieval canton emerging from a long siege. Plague, famine and the attritional grind of war have marked most of those who have survived with physical or, no less noticeable to the naked eye, mental ailments that set them apart from the ordinary flow of displaced persons clagged up in transit. Extending to no more than a single winding road connecting the railway line to the city centre, and a parallel jumble of disjointed residential streets tailing off either side, Station Row is a thoroughfare commuters hurry through as quickly as possible, their escape route hemmed in by takeaways that offer plastic chairs and tables in the hope of passing as restaurants, and public houses in which it is easy to offend locals offering souvenirs no one wants. Economic cleansing has reinforced the invisible coastline of this island of the void, and it is by the stoical standard of its inhabitants, used to celebrating birthdays on benches and other parts of the pavement, that the Purple Hearse is judged beyond the bounds of redemption.
Tamla pulls off her gloves and rubs her eyes. ‘Saying that, I still think it would be best to proceed lightly. Perhaps just the two of you first?’
Christopherson looks sceptical. ‘Didn’t you say he was wielding a hammer? That sounds a bit dangerous.’
‘It’s the life we chose,’ I say.
‘Still. A hammer? I don’t know. Maybe we should wait for proper back up, like?’
‘Don’t worry. If he kicks off, I’ll steam in with the cavalry,’ Tamla says. ‘But get too many of us in there to start with, and it’ll be carnage. Dissuasion is the best form of prevention. I’ll be covering the back with this’ — she lifts the point of a Taser out of her handbag — ‘should he have any ideas of leaving that way.’
‘And we need to show this shower who’s in charge,’ I add. ‘And that we don’t fear them.’
‘Right,’ he says, not reassured. ‘If you say so, boss.’
I take his arm. ‘Come on, I could use a pint. Tamla?’
‘Terry?’
‘Get some constables who can access the upstairs that way. We can handle the ground floor, but I don’t like the idea of having to clear the second floor on our own.’
‘Roger that. They can force the skylight.’
At first glance, the Hearse is a tease. Since the mouldering front of the pub collapsed into the main road, a superficial facelift suggests that it may actually be a cut above the competition. Tinted rather than bordered-up bay windows and frilly mauve curtains intentionally evoke an undertakers or genteel funeral home, yet on closer inspection the Gothic schtick gives way to the unventilated seediness of an eighteenth-century Paraguayan bordello.
I know the interior is even less wholesome. Inside, the restoration takes on the aspect of a yard sale for the damned: pairs of wingback armchairs appropriate to a private dwelling habituated by a couple who bond over a passion for serial killing, low faux-leather sofas too deep for drinkers to reach tables, and a column of wonky stools lining the bar the only survivors of Stallones — a mock American diner that closed some years ago — invite revulsion. In the far corner, a spiral staircase leads up to a narrow corridor decorated in sandy mustard checks, the wire carpeting ready to cut the knees of anyone leaving the bedrooms in too great a hurry. These dismal chambers offer intimate massage, hand-relief, two way mirrors to observe a former Member of Parliament sip cream out of a saucer, and occasionally, a disturbed night’s sleep for anyone naive enough to take the B&B sign at face value.
