“I’ll
trust you then.”
Harkness
stood, almost thrust his hands in his pockets, realised how much that would
hurt, shook his hands as though the pain and doubt could be so simply cast off,
sighed and propped himself on the stool again.
“I
should have rehearsed this. My big moment. Something that shouldn’t be so
significant… I mean I didn’t think I was defined by it but maybe I just
didn’t….. It’s just that failing to nail Firth and failing to save Firth mean
that I’ve failed to make something right. It makes no sense of course. I know
there’s no great cosmic plan, just long, tangled chains of interaction. And the
roles we typecast ourselves into.”
“I’ve
underestimated you. But I still have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“When
I was eight years old, I killed; that is, I caused a fire that killed another
child.” He shrugged and sipped his whisky. “That’s the short version.”
“I
don’t quite know what to say.”
“I
know the feeling.”
“And
the long version? I think I need to know now.”
“I
wasn’t a bad kid. Good, stable home. Loving parents. Perhaps a bit too brainy
for my own good. I went through a phase of playing with fire. Started with a
movie: ‘The Battle of Britain’. Shooting down the filthy hun just wasn’t
satisfying unless he burned all the way down. You know. Maybe you don’t. Those
yellow-nosed fighter planes turning to comets, plummeting in flames, scorching
a crescent of black smoke and sparks into the blue sky. It was so transcendent.
Not that I’d have used that word but the sight of it fascinated me.
“So
in my own feeble way, I tried to re-enact it; slathering glue all over model
aeroplanes, sometimes sticking fan-tails of cotton wool to the tail, nicking
matches from dad’s smoking drawer by the back door, then lighting it and
chucking it out of a tree or the bedroom window. Sometimes worked, sometimes
didn’t. I dabbled with mum’s nail-polish remover which really did the trick.
Once got myself a hiding when I threw one into dad’s compost heap one bone-dry
summer day. Before I knew it there was smoke everywhere. Dad and the bloke
next-door had to turn hose-pipes on it. Burned a hole in the fence and stank
for days.
“I
didn’t learn. Just took my vice further afield. One day, I was playing
‘dogfights’ in the fields with Matty from next door. Nice enough kid, as far as
I remember. Always ready to play out if I was at a loose end. Never minded being
the Germans. Anyway, after an hour or two of bickering and getting sweaty in
the fields, we wandered onto a farm and a big shady barn seemed like a nice
cool place to hide from the sun for a while. It was packed with hot, dry bales
of hay. You can guess the rest.
“I
decided it was time for the Messerschmitt to go down in flames. Applied my
trusty lighter. The fire seemed to spill and spread, like it was just waiting
for us. I don’t know if you’ve ever had that feeling, the instant, appalling
recognition of your own awesome stupidity, the mistake that will cost more than
you’ll ever earn to put right. I bolted. Shouted at the other kid to run. Got
well clear and assumed he’d be right behind me.
“But
he was a good boy. He had left the barn; I know this because when I turned from
the safety of the tree-line, I saw him, walking back into all that smoke and
heat and shadow with a bucket. He got out only to find a rusty, leaky bucket,
fill it with a miserable trickle of water, then go back in. Inevitability didn’t
have a say in it. That good little boy chose death without knowing it. Trying
to make things right. Not wanting to get into trouble for hanging around with
me. Maybe not wanting to get me into trouble. It’s all irrelevant now.
“I
should have gone back. Should have dragged him along in the first place. He was
such a scrawny little thing and I was such a lanky lump, it would have been so
easy to pick him up like a rugby ball and run pell-mell. But I didn’t. I can’t
tell you why. Shock may have played a part because the next few hours are still
a blur. Perhaps I thought there was nothing I could do, or just that I couldn’t
risk getting caught. Maybe I didn’t think at all, just let fear have its way
with me.”
“What
happened?” she urged, rapt now, knuckles locked around her glass.
“He
died. That’s the main part. Burning bale fell on him. I doubt it would have
been heavy enough to crush him, but I hope it smothered him. Otherwise he would
have burned. Nobody ever told me much more than that and I never wanted to
know. Still don’t. The farm hands came but there were so few of them and they
didn’t know anybody was inside. They just stopped it spreading with hoses and
buckets and called the fire brigade.”
“I
don’t know how to respond.”
“You
don’t have to. I don’t need you to. That’s not why……I mean, I’m not looking for
a shoulder or a confessor.”
“You
could do worse.” She held his eyes, showing him the same earnest compassion she
must have shown many other broken men who’d been forced to swallow
consequences.
“I
need to get this out. I need somebody to tell me who I am, what I am. I thought
I’d resolved it. But I’m still trapped on this damned hamster-wheel thirty
years later, re-enacting that day.”
“So
tell me.” She topped up both glasses, emptying the bottle into her own. “Did
that lanky boy ever leave the tree-line?”
“Sometimes
I doubt it. I must have been catatonic. I just squatted there, rocking with
panic, knowing what I’d done, mind looping through childish escape plans over
and over. I slapped myself, scratched myself with thorns and stones, made
myself grasp nettles. I couldn’t change it. I couldn’t accept it. I’d be hanged
or sent to gaol. My life was over.
“I
could kill myself. I could run and keep running. Live off the land. Join the
Merchant Navy or the Foreign Legion. I had to be punished but I hadn’t meant it
to happen. Maybe a time machine was the answer. Maybe it was a superhero’s
foundation story and atonement was my inspiration and destiny. Had to wait for
nightfall otherwise I’d be seen by the lynch-mob who prowled the hedgerows,
flexing and looping their noose ready for my just desserts.
“My
mind just kept racing around and around that circuit of delusion. Until they
found me, near dusk. The local bobby and some other coppers I hadn’t seen before.
And my dad. An old geezer had seen us running towards the barn, knew our faces
and where we lived. When the firemen pulled the smaller body out of the
wreckage, word spread, I was missing and connections were made.
“So
I had a short, silent trip in the back of a police van, sharing a bench with
the scariest copper I’ve seen to this day. He smelled like men tend not to now;
tobacco sharp enough to make your eyes water, wool and polyester he’d been
sweating in for weeks, boot polish, that lunchtime’s beer leaking out of his
pores. He just chain-smoked these poisonous fags, occasionally turning to
breathe smoke it into my face and shake his head at me.
“I
still wonder what my parents would have done if they’d had first crack at me.
As it was, some old-school detective put me through the mill in some grim,
Victorian hole of a police station. No tapes. Just him, me and my mum behind
me, deathly silent, biting her tongue, staring hard into the back of my head as
if she needed to take a peek inside. He felt compelled to give me the tour too.
Showed me the special chair where they used to birch people. The haunted cell
that smelled of open sewers where the wife-beater hanged himself last week.
“He
laid it out for me. Chain-smoking. They all seemed to. A new ciggie for every
new line of questioning, lighting it with the old one. I did get cautioned but
I think that was for effect because it did scare the shit out of me. I was so
desperate to confess that I nearly puked on his shoes. But he wouldn’t let me.
Whatever I said had to be according to his script. Did I know I was a killer? I
did. Was I going to answer him honestly and to the utmost of my ability? I was.
Did I know the heartache I’d caused to my own parents and the other boy’s? I
surely did.
“Eventually
he let me spill my guts. I started with the compost heap fire from weeks before
and ended with my cowardly thoughts of escape to sea. I offered to go straight
to gaol and pleaded for clemency; I wasn’t sure what it was, thought it was a
fruit traditionally offered to judges, but I’d heard it on the news and some
people seemed to do well out of it.
“More
for form’s sake than because he wanted to, he baited me. Told me I was a
murderer, that I’d got it in for Matty, thought it’d be funny to burn him
alive. Challenged me to have a good laugh. When I just kept sobbing, he told me
I was a coward too. I just agreed and pleaded to be punished. He lost interest
in the end and I was left in the hanged man’s cell overnight, shivering, hungry
and stinking of soot, fags and urine, listening hard for the feet at the door,
the men with short hair and meaty forearms who’d hood me, bind my hands and
frog-march me straight through for the long drop.
“Next
morning, they took my fingerprints and mug-shot and my parents drove me home.
My dad wouldn’t look at me and my mum just went through the motions, making
meals, telling me to brush my teeth, seeing me to bed on time. I couldn’t
believe my luck; I thought I’d passed beyond such privileges. I heard them
arguing in whispers. A few things got smashed. Next door was so quiet. For a
day or two, I crept around the house, reading old books, staring at the TV,
wondering if it had all been a bad dream somehow, fearing that out there,
somewhere, a noose was being coiled or an axe sharpened.
“And
the rest of my life somehow unfolded that way; the sky rumbled but the storm
never quite broke. It was as if my parents were bereaved by proxy. They didn’t
lose their own child in a clean and innocent manner. Worse, another child died
because of their child who was now indelibly tainted.
“Of
course, I was too young to be charged with anything, but I had years of
appointments with various youth workers and psychologists, who were
disappointed to find that I hadn’t been abused or neglected and wasn’t
educationally sub-normal. And we moved. In a hurry. My dad was a book-keeper
and my mum did shop-work or anything else she could get with part-time hours.
They weren’t rolling in it and it was a strain, but at least they could find
work elsewhere.
“I
never did speak to Matty’s parents but I know my dad did. I expected him to
come back black and blue but some offences are just too big for rough acts and
words. The family car got smashed up one night but that could have been anyone.
My dad paid off the farmer. They over-borrowed on their next mortgage and gave
him the excess for his barn. There was no way of compensating Matty’s parents.”
“And
now you’re a policeman.”
“Surprising?”
“No.
But masochistic. It was an accident. A stupid accident.”
“With
consequences.”
“You
were eight years old.” She shook her head, stood and stared into the garden at
the deepening shadows. “It could have happened to absolutely anyone. And you
didn’t make him go back inside.”
“I
didn’t stop him either.”
“So
you’ve got a martyr complex.”
“Yes.
No.” He drained his whisky and exhaled. “We all moved on. I turned out alright
in the end. A graduate copper no less. But I still carry it around. And with
Firth….well, I just wonder how much of a grip it has on me. Am I in this
miserable job just to make amends?”
“You
should know this. You need to know this. You have nothing in common with Nigel
Firth. Thirty years ago, you caused one accident. His entire life was a car
crash.”
“You’re
generous. With your time. With your compassion.”
“I
can afford it. I’m on holiday.” She placed her glass on the sink and
momentarily allowed her eyes to settle on her laptop and the outsize clock
looming over it. “But it is getting late.”
“I
know. I’m sorry. I should go.”
“You’ve
spent a lot of time here without putting pen to paper. I know that’s not just a
practical issue either.”
She
glided delicately towards him as if she were carrying something fragile and
easily dropped. Rooting herself to the tiled floor before him, she rested a
hand on the work surface and inched it towards his, wanting to touch but not
quite daring to cause or share pain.
“I’m
not a suspect. My mum is potty but she isn’t some raving arsonist. Your case is
all but dead. So tell me. Honestly. Why did you come? What’s your next question?”
“You
know.” His pulse thrummed in his ears and his throat tightened. “I hope you
know. Or I’m a bigger fool than I thought I was.”
“You’re
not such a fool.” She allowed herself to drift into his reach and he felt the
warm eddies of her breath on his lips, allowing her scent to quicken his heart.
“But we’re both stupid. And of course I know.”
She
pressed her hips against his belly, cupped his head in her hands, hesitated as
if he might flinch, then darted a kiss at his mouth with the blind haste of a
playground dare. Something moiled in his guts and a fat woman’s laughter raked
at his conscience. Destruction bred destruction. He didn’t care about the past.
It had no place inside this moment. He needed to feel something other than
pain, shame and rage. He could balk, leave this place and find his way home. He
could say no, but instead chose to embrace the sin and have the courage of his
weakness. Besides, the betrayal was complete the moment he left home to come
here.