2
In essence Bob was a good lad. He had grown up in his remote vil-
lage and had never left it.
Bob had his sweetheart, Sheila. She too had grown up here. Bob
would tell him regularly that they’d been destined for each other
from their first day at the infants’ school in the village. Their families, amused, had conspired in this myth and so it had turned out.
They were engaged to be married in the summer and Sheila was
busy filling her bottom drawer.
Bob had energy and enthusiasm and could, to his credit, envisage
a world beyond. This was a trait Roy encouraged, generally in their sessions at the pub. Invariably Roy would have to escort Bob back to his parents’ house and knock on the door with a wry smile and eyebrows raised, much to the chagrin of Bob’s father.
Speed and horses were Bob’s passions. He was small, wiry and
athletic, like his father, and had once had aspirations to become a jockey. His father had forbidden it because twenty- five years earlier he himself had been a promising stable boy at a prestigious training stable near Newmarket, but had broken his leg badly in a fall. It had taken years to rebuild his life and he didn’t want Bob to go through the same anguish. But Bob still hankered and went to the races at
Newmarket and Doncaster as often as he could afford it.
He sped around his little world on his Triumph motorcycle, for
which he had spent some years saving and which he kept in pristine
condition. This too was to be a casualty of married life, potentially traded in for an Austin A35 or perhaps an Anglia in a year or so. But in the meantime he accelerated along the straight fenland roads,
sweeping the flat monochrome before him in a rush of air and roar
of motor.
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3
Was that the sound of a distant motorcycle Roy could hear on the still air? No, it was a trick of the disorientating fog, or of his expectation.
He climbed into the cab again, hoping for a hint of greater
warmth, and slammed the door with a tinny clang.
Five years. At times it seemed a lifetime in the stifling fenland
gloom, all damp and turned in on itself.
He observed his calloused hands, toughened by manual labour.
Physically, he was more than up to it, but that wasn’t the point. It just wasn’t supposed to be like this. Roy wasn’t meant to be one of life’s also- rans, doing the hard work that sustained the successful in their positions. Things must change, soon.
He could hear only the sandpaper scrape of his hand across his
jaw as he felt his face. He had had just a matter of minutes at five in the morning to pull on his trousers, his boots and his shirt and tie before finding the thickest sweater he could wear under his jacket
and overcoat. He would have been grateful for a slurp of hot, sweet tea to run through his body. He exhaled experimentally and watched
as the vapour from his breath drifted in a cloud to the windscreen of the vehicle before beginning to dissolve into condensation. For
want of anything better to do, he delved around the interior of the cab, reading the invoices collated neatly on the clipboard, perusing an old copy of the
Daily Sketch
and finding a paper bag half full of pear drops in the glove compartment. There was a grubby grey
army blanket crumpled untidily under the passenger seat. He picked
up the crank handle that lay in the passenger footwell but he told
himself again to wait for Bob and his box of tricks.
4
It was relatively easy to take the rise out of Bob. Make reference to his country bumpkin demeanour and existence, light blue touch
paper and retire, to laugh sardonically at his expense.
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There was, though, a sort of purpose in the ribbing. Bob wanted,
and needed, to see more of life before entering the open prison of
marriage. He listened enthralled as Roy told him of his exploits in immediate post- war central Europe, arraigning Nazis at the end
of a pistol, or of his later journeys around the world with Lord
Stanbrook, arriving back at Raffles Hotel just in time to catch a
Singapore sunrise. Most of this was approximated, at least, but it
seemed somehow to fire something inside Bob that resembled an
imagination.
In truth he despised them all, Bob included, who, though he liked
him, was simply the most palatable of these heavy- footed dullards.
This period of respite had been tolerable if surprising when it had come, but five years: oh dear. Now was the time to return somewhere near the hub of things.
So he bided his time and entertained himself by stoking Bob’s
ambition and wanderlust, and annoying Bob’s father, who had lec-
tured Roy on more than one occasion about his fancy ideas. Roy
had duly ignored him, not exactly grinning in his face. Not exactly.
Tweaking Mr Mannion’s tail was, however, barely sport; and
rather beneath his aspirations. He wanted to return to the world of dinner jackets and hunting tweeds, of whispered conversations over
a cigar and a port, where things were fixed and cogs oiled, of glamorous, haughty women eager to assuage their boredom and
contempt for their husbands through sex.
Under his tutelage, Bob had shown genuine signs of becoming
restive that extended beyond barroom chat. He had argued with his
father, indicating that he rather fancied trying his chances in the Smoke. He had gone to the barber’s in King’s Lynn, where he had
acquired a reasonably spectacular quiff that he tended with pains-
taking care. He had taken to wearing a leather jacket. He dashed
around on his Triumph, the stainless- steel parts of the engine block and chrome exhausts shined to a bright finish.
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5
Finally, there was the distant buzz of a motorcycle.
He strained to hear, then was certain. The noise was becoming
louder.
Soon Bob would have his hands among the oily innards of the
vehicle, a cheerful surgeon jabbering away thirteen to the dozen,
grinning as he worked, his Woodbine between his lips. Eventually
he would remove his oily fingers, wipe them on a rag and proceed
with a flourish to fire her up.
By now the noise was recognizable as Bob’s motorcycle, no
longer an angry little buzz but a guttural grating roar as the throttle was opened. Roy went to the long snout of the truck and opened
the bonnet. He would drive the truck back to the garage and Bob
would follow on behind. It would be a bit early for a pint, but perhaps Mrs Langley, Roy’s landlady, would knock up a fry- up for them.
Like most women, she had a soft spot for cheeky young Bob.
He’d be freezing on that thing. This must be one of the first times this year that Bob had been out on it. When on earth would warmth
return to this country?
The sound of the approaching motorcycle grew louder still. The
shattering of the silence was welcome to him; things began to move.
And then the world stopped again.
Still attending to the bonnet of the vehicle, Roy had a sudden
sense of imminence. He would later put this down to an uncon-
scious reckoning that the sound of the motorcycle was too loud and
close, but he had no time to reason this out.
The motorcycle motor screamed. Somewhere on the other side
of the truck and unseen by Roy, it revved helplessly as traction was lost. There was a loud thud, and Roy felt the lorry shake briefly as an impact occurred on the opposite side. It quickly settled again. He could hear the sound of metal clawing at the tarmac and even as he
was aware of sparks underneath the lorry he watched the motor-
cycle, an angry writhing beast, slither into view from beneath it and skate some yards down the road before stalling.
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The oppressive silence returned. Roy still had his hand on the
bonnet, holding it open. There was no sign of Bob.
It took some presence of mind for Roy to let go of the bonnet. It
crashed down and the echoes rippled into the mist. He stood for a
moment, helpless, before coughing, simply to make noise, to hear
its hollowness, as if to confirm his own existence.
An odd, detached foreboding spread through him which did not
quite amount to dread. Experimentally, he croaked, ‘Bob?’, then
found his voice and shouted more loudly. No response. It took him
a moment more to get his leg muscles to respond and begin the
long journey to the other side of the truck.
Bob had been impaled on the cross- member that jutted out from
the cast- iron chassis of the flatbed lorry. He had seemingly met it square in his midriff and he was suspended from it as if in mid- air, the tips of his toes touching the ground, in a sitting position, his arms extended as if he were still riding.
It must have been a freak occurrence. He wondered how fast
Bob had been travelling: a reckless sixty, seventy, ninety miles an hour? Stupid boy. What flow of blood had ensued had ceased, spattering the ice- covered road with an almost symmetrical circular
pattern. The scar of the motorcycle’s further trajectory could be
seen under the truck.
6
He had no sense of cold now. All he felt was numbness, physical and mental. Total silence had returned. The fog hung heavy and white.
He ordered his brain to work. His first conclusion was an odd
one. This dreadful sequence of events should trigger an automatic
and corresponding reaction. He should, of course, do what he could
for Bob, but was there any point fretting around his mortal remains?
Possibly he should vomit at the terrible sight in front of him. He
should begin grieving for his friend in whatever fashion was suit-
able. Perhaps not keening, but something more fitting than simply
raising a glass at the pub that evening. He should make his way as
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quickly as possible to the authorities, so they could do whatever was appropriate. Well, maybe, in a moment.
But none of these things came to pass. He regarded Bob with
dispassion, and a sigh formed that he was able to suppress. A bit
inconvenient, this. Or possibly not.
Shortly Bob had passed from being a friend to a conundrum in the
abstract, a series of practical challenges that comprised an intriguing package of threat and opportunity. What did he need to do at the
scene to effect decency just in case some passer- by should happen on this, though the chances were admittedly tiny? How would he get to
the nearest police station? What would he say to Bob’s parents?
Or.
It did not take long for the binary choice to form in Roy’s mind.
Stick or twist? As ever, his instant choice was to twist. He under-
stood, both rationally and intuitively, that the next few days and
weeks would require a certain deftness of touch. He needed also to
develop ways to explain it all, so far as they were feasible, against the event that the practicalities mounted and defeated him. He applied
cold logic, telling himself that it was in such circumstances that he performed best. He would act calmly, suppressing all anxiety, and
take one rational step after another. Speed would be critical.
Roy surveyed the scene, walking a few yards in each direction
down the two intersecting roads. It was potentially doable, if risky.
He returned to the vehicle and looked again at what remained of
Bob Mannion. Shocking. Oh dear, oh dear. The next tasks were
going to be unpleasant in the extreme, but there was no shirking
them. He collected the blanket from the cab. No doubt the driver
would miss it and scratch his head, but needs must.
Bob’s torso remained adhered to the chassis. It looked now as if
he was leaning, drunk, against the side of the truck for support. Roy laid the blanket out flat, eased it under Bob’s feet and positioned it with care. He took a good grip of Bob under the arms and, after a
deep breath, pulled him backwards. In life Bob would have been a
featherweight, so the practical elements of this posed fewer issues than the conceptual. Eventually Bob came free with a sucking
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closely. The blanket had just enough play for Roy to use the corner to wipe away the girder end of the chassis on which Bob had been
impaled. He then set about the grisly business of emptying Bob’s
pockets without getting any of that mess over himself. He could not entirely avoid catching sight of Bob’s face: he looked contented,
almost angelic. He would have been pleased that his quiff remained, immobile. At least Roy could reason he seemed at peace and could
not have suffered.
That part of the job, at least, was over. Good Lord, it had begun
to rain. This was the last thing Roy required. The background score to his efforts was no longer that deathly quiet but the patter of rain on ice. Water began to run down his neck. He shivered.
Parallel to the larger of the roads was a large drainage channel,
one of the network of waterways that had been constructed at vari-
ous points since the seventeenth century to take water away from
these lands and make them agriculturally viable. This channel