Dispossession (39 page)

I fetched her a flannel and a bowl of water, earning myself
a vague smile for reward. When Lee had drunk his tea or medicine, whichever it
was—both, presumably—and had had his face washed, the worst of the blood rinsed
away, I interrupted another three-way conversation in Cantonese. Trying to be
useful indeed, to drag their minds back to the one thing I was certain of. I
picked the phone up off the floor and said, “Suzie. Ambulance?”

“Oh. Yes, I suppose. Hang on, though. Lee? Jonty wants you
to go to hospital. So does Uncle Han, I guess. Just to be safe. Okay?”

I wouldn’t have given him the choice myself, but he didn’t
really make it anyway; he only shrugged and let us decide for him. I was
already punching buttons on the phone when Suzie said, “It’ll mean the police
too, Jonty.”

My turn to shrug. I was no great fan of the police even in
my last life, working with them every day. Right now they were after my mother
and I wasn’t fond of them at all—
and besides, you’ve
seen a murder done today and not reported it; that makes you an accessory, that
makes you a fool
—but let them come. We’d need to report the burglary
anyway, to claim on the insurance.

The ambulance service was experimenting with some kind of
triage. When I got through to them, I had to explain that a young lad had been
attacked, that he had a head wound and had been pretty much unconscious for a
time, didn’t know how long. That would bring us prime service, a team of
paramedics on the run; it would also, I knew, bring the police without my
having to call them.

Hanging up, looking around to where Lee sat pale and stained
on the sofa with his attendants on either side and the steaming cup in his hand
now, one small battle won, I thought probably he shouldn’t be drinking anything
till the doctors had seen him. Nor sitting up, probably, and certainly not
trying to talk. Not being interrogated.

“Lee,” I said hesitantly, “what happened? Can you tell us?”
Can you remember?
I think I meant, anxiety at
least as high as curiosity or anger.

“There isn’t much,” he said. His voice was thin and reedy,
and I got a scowl from Suzie for asking, even as she stroked his damp hair on
the side he hadn’t been hit. I heard her murmur, “You don’t have to,” but I
think Lee heard the same as I did, the underlying message,
do if you can.

“There was no one in the club,” he said slowly, frowning,
working the story out from his jangled memories. “I was just tidying up a bit,
when I heard this great bang from the landing. So I looked round and I could
see two men doing the fire door with a sledgehammer. They hadn’t bothered to
close the club door or anything, they weren’t worried. They went up to your
flat,” which sounded odd where I’d have said
they
came up here
, till it dawned on me that probably he didn’t know quite
where he was yet, and definitely I wanted that ambulance, and as soon as
possible, “so I locked the club quick and followed them up.”

“Wait a minute.” This was Suzie, trying to get her head
around it. “Two men with a sledgehammer, and you followed them up? On your
own?”

“Just burglars,” he said. “Burglars usually run. Oh, and I
took something with me. I broke one of your cues, Suze.” And then he giggled at
the way that sounded, while she shook her head,
so
what? I don’t give a damn
, and I thought that the heavy end of a snooker
cue could make a lethal club, if only he’d been the type to use it. “But they
didn’t run,” he went on unnecessarily. “They must’ve heard me coming, I made sure
of that, I went up dead loud; and they were ready, they grabbed me as I came
in. Beat me up a bit, I suppose. And they asked me something,” he said,
frowning to remember. “Oh, yes. They asked me where the old woman was. That’s
what they said, the old woman. I thought you’d love that, Suze.”

They hadn’t meant Suzie, obviously; but I saved it up in any
case, I just knew how much my mother would hate it.

“So what did they hit you with, to knock you out?” I asked,
thinking that it couldn’t have been the sledge or he wouldn’t be talking, most
likely wouldn’t be breathing any too well or too much longer.

“Did they hit me, is that what happened? I don’t remember
that.”

Suzie glanced at me, suddenly fretful. I gave her the best
smile I could, and, “Nothing to worry about. No one ever remembers being hit,”
which was an exaggeration, but true enough. Even so, I was glad to hear a siren
in the street below, to see the square shape of one of the new US-style city
ambulances nose to a halt outside.

“I remember sitting here, after,” he said. “I don’t remember
waking up, but sitting here, yes. Looking. All this mess they made. And picking
up the phone, I remember that. Thinking I should call somebody. Did I do that,
is that why you’re all here?”

“No,” Suzie said gently. “You just went back to sleep for a
bit. And no wonder, with that bad head. Be quiet now, here come the people to
take you to hospital.”

o0o

The paramedics were tougher on him than I’d been, tougher on
everyone. No question of Lee’s walking down all those stairs, even with willing
support on either side to hold him up, even though he swore that he could do
it. They brought a stretcher and strapped him down, against accidents of
gravity or his own stubbornness or both. Sooner them than me, I thought,
watching them carry him out.

Mr Han left immediately behind them, heading back to his
surgery, and Suzie after him: “I’ll follow the ambulance,” she said, “stay with
Lee. He’s got no family close, and someone should be there for him. I’ll phone
you later.”

“Sure, fine. I’ll be here.” Couldn’t go out, actually, with
all the doors bust open. “You go, I’ll see to everything.”

o0o

Left alone, I thought I ought to prioritise: check for what
was missing, what was damaged. Phone the insurance company—only I’d have to
find the policy first, find out who we were insured with. Which meant clearing
up all those papers, going through them, getting them sorted...

Instead I walked to the window to watch as they drove away,
the big white ambulance and the little black Mini; and there moving into the
space they left was a police car. Suzie was getting the best of this deal, I
thought. By a long way.

Just a couple of lads in uniform, though, this time at
least. One of them I knew slightly, from his having arrested a few of my
previous clients. That made it easy: a burglary interrupted, a guy knocked on
the head—possibly with his own snooker cue, that’s it on the carpet there, no,
no one’s touched it since we found him—and no more story than that, nothing to
stand out. That might buy us a little peace, though I didn’t think it would
save us in the end. I thought either a computer or some officious little
paper-processor would register our names or the address, and pass the report up
onto DCI Dale’s desk; and then I thought he’d be around again with more
questions. Who did we think had broken in? What did we think they were after?
Why didn’t we call him immediately, why did we tell the uniforms we thought it
was a casual break-in when this was the second time in as many days, when did
we last see my mother...?

But that was for later, and with luck not any time today.
Today I showed the lads around, they asked what was missing, I said a portable
computer but not much else that I could see. Presumably they’d panicked after
Lee came up, I said, grabbed what was instantly accessible and run. The police
gave me a crime number for the insurance and a phone number for a 24-hour
locksmith, said to let them know if I turned up anything else, and went away.

I scooped the living-room papers into a single pile in the
middle of the carpet for later sorting, and went through to the spare bedroom,
where the mess was worse: not just individual papers but whole files had been
strewn around in there. Assuming as I had to that they’d been looking for
something specific—a folder labelled
SUSI
,
perhaps?—I could only hope they’d had no more joy than I had, in finding it.
Okay, they had the computer now; but I still had a copy of the SUSI file, and
thank God for my cautious soul and my ingrained habit of making back-ups. They
had as much information now as I did—if they could crack my password—but at
least I hadn’t lost it.

Making vague gestures towards tidying up, I stacked folders
on every available flat surface; and doing that, I found a box of computer
disks. Flicking through them for curiosity’s sake, I discovered master-disks
for all the software I’d had installed on the computer.
All
the software...

I stood there with those disks in my hand, wondering how
easily I could get hold of another machine, whether I had any friends left who’d
give me access to theirs.

Another discovery, though, gave me another option. Next to
the box of disks, a box of keys, usefully labelled:
Q’s
, it said, written in thick felt pen on the
lid. I took the keys and the disks, checked that I still had the SUSI disk in
my pocket, and went downstairs to the club. If I left the doors open, I’d be
able to see anyone coming, and I might not be there long. It just depended.

Lee had left all the lights on, I found, as I unlocked the
doors and went inside. And of course he’d left the computer on also; the screen
glowed quietly behind the bar, showing that none of the tables was in use. If
it was a dedicated machine, wired up only to calculate table-use and charges,
then I was sunk. But if I could make it exit that program and run another,
maybe I’d be in business.

I slipped behind the bar, resisted the temptation of a quick
slug of whisky to concentrate my mind, and examined the machine. A floppy disk
drive it had, and the manufacturer’s name was familiar; I could be in luck
here.

And was. A tentative touch on a couple of likely keys
produced a menu, including instructions on how to exit the program. I followed
that, and found myself happily at a DOS prompt. I fed in the first Windows
disk, typed
a: setup
and punched the air in
triumph as the disk whirred and the machine got down to work.

And poured myself that whisky after all, due reward for a
smart idea...

o0o

Twenty minutes later, I had Word up and running. I asked it
to load the SUSI file from my floppy; it asked me for the password in exchange.

Not by nature a praying man, I offered up a quick prayer
anyway, and typed in the full, the proper baptismal name of my old schoolmate.
Not Jack at all. If I was right, I’d buried this pun one stage deeper yet.
Musing on Suzie’s brother’s name had given me the key to this one. I thought, I
hoped.

John Hughes
, I typed,
and pressed ‘Enter’; and never mind how confident I was feeling, I still gasped
aloud with relief or surprise or wonder, I still had half a mind to applaud
myself for genius unsung as the screen filled with words.

I stood because there was no seat behind the bar, stood and
read my own words—no doubt of that, I recognised the style—and was amazed.

And frightened, and appalled, and full of doubt and
puzzlement.

o0o

Item:
the screen said,
because I always did like to itemise, to make lists, to have things neat and
orderly and arranged and without Lexis I would have been thrown back on my own
resources,
Marlon Thomas is alive.

I wanted to argue with it, with me; with the world, even, to
say that this was bullshit. But,
I saw him with
his mother, getting on a country bus
, the screen said, and how could I
disbelieve myself? I’d known Marlon well, and his mother also; and in an
unreliable world, twenty-twenty vision was a blessing. My eyes I never
questioned.

But—
alive?
Marlon Thomas
was dead and cremated. I knew, I’d been there. Seen the coffin go...

Seen the coffin, but not seen the corpse. And looking back
now at that scene, that day, it did seem that Marlon’s family perhaps hadn’t
been so heartbroken as they’d wanted the rest of us to believe. His mother’s
constant access to her handkerchief, his sister’s sidelong glances at the
policemen present which at the time I’d thought just teenage bravado... Yes,
sure, you could read that scene another way. You could call it all fake, all
bad acting that no one thought to see through because it was a funeral, for God’s
sake, we were burying a seventeen-year-old boy and you didn’t question, no one
was going to stand there and weigh this against that to find them wanting in
credible grief.

After the funeral, I remembered, the family had dropped from
sight. I’d gone round a couple of weeks later, ostensibly to return some papers
we’d been holding but truthfully just to see how they were coping; and I’d
found their council house boarded up and awaiting its next tenant, none of the
neighbours knowing where they’d gone.

Fair enough, I’d thought at the time. A son dies in custody,
perhaps a total change of environment is the best solution. They’d turn up
sometime, I’d thought, somewhere; people usually did.

Living people, at least. Dead people, not usually; but this
one had.

I followed the bus
, I’d
written,
to Carlisle, but I lost them there. I
didn’t want to get too close, because they’d know the car and they must have
been watching for a tail. Even the other side of the country they can’t have
felt safe, though it was pure fluke that I saw them. I’d been shopping for
herbs for Carol, and I just happened to drive through Middleton.

Item: Marlon’s grandmother lives in a home in Middleton.
A sentimental journey, perhaps? “It’s risky but you’ll want to see your gran,
she’ll want to see you, just to be sure. Worth the chance, once. No one’s going
to see you anyway, you’re dead.”

Only he wasn’t dead enough, apparently. I had seen him,
what, three months after the funeral, and that was too soon to persuade myself
that he was just a look-alike. Seemed like I’d had no doubts at all. If I had,
they’d never made it onto the file. Only the certain sighting was there, and
the obvious conclusions.