Jack Carter's Law (30 page)

“The Coleman estate,” I say to Con.

“Makes my four thousand look silly,” Con says.

Behind me, I hear some metallic sounds and I turn round to see Peter sorting a shotgun out of the cricket bag.

“What do you think you’re playing at?” I say to him.

Peter looks at me as if I’m speaking a foreign language.

“You think we’re going straight in, just like that?”

“We did with Jimmy,” he says.

Con and I look at each other.

“We had no choice, did we?” I say to Peter. “This time we can play it the way we want it. I know you’d like to go in blasting but that’s not the way it’s going to be.”

“What way is it going to be, then?” Peter says.

I take the field glasses from the glove compartment and focus them on Walter’s farmhouse.

“You’ll know when I tell you,” I say to him, and then I say to Con, “There’s a cart track about thirty yards back. Reverse the car and we’ll leave it there.”

Con slips it into reverse and we crawl back down the lane until we come to the track and then Con maneuvers the car into it and switches off the engine. I tell them to stay in the car and I go back to where the track and the lane meet and walk down the lane until I come to the brow of the hill and Walter’s layout is once again in view. I look around me. This part of the hedgerow must belong to a different farmer because the hedges here have all been trimmed right down to the slopes of the ditches. Even the trees have been lopped off, and there is a snow-covered stump nearby so I jump the ditch and scramble up the far bank and dust off the snow and then sit down on the neat remains of the tree.

The gray sky is very still and its dullness accentuates the cleaned-up lines of Walter’s property. There is a light on in an upstairs room and what I take to be the kitchen is also glowing out into the blue-gray day. There is some activity around the stables as Walter’s local minions begin their daily round. Horses are led here and there, and Walter’s BMW is slid out of the barn which has been converted into a garage and a member of staff begins to set about the motor with a handful of dusters. When he’s satisfied with the outside he opens all four doors and takes a dustpan and brush to the inside. Then after that he gets into the driver’s seat and does some very careful maneuvering until the BMW’s in a position to be hooked up with a horse box standing close to the stables. After I’ve watched that fascinating operation I put the field glasses down and have a cigarette and look around me at the local countryside and enjoy it for a while. Then when I’ve finished my cigarette I walk back to the car. Peter is lying back smoking and Con is snoring in the passenger seat, his knees propped up against the dashboard. I bang on the side of the car with the flat of my hand and Con jackknifes forward and almost puts himself out against the windscreen.

I open the car door and say, “Your turn.”

Con fucks and blinds and eases himself out of the car and as I get in I tell him to let me know when Walter shows himself. The car door slams and I sink back in the warm seat and almost immediately I begin to doze off but sleep won’t come because in my mind I keep seeing Lesley in various attitudes of death, dead in a variety of ways. At one point I sit up and turn to face Peter, prepared to ask for the details of what happened, but when I look into his green cat-like eyes I decide against it and turn round and try to sleep again.

I seem to have been asleep for just five seconds when the car door opens and Con is standing there.

“Walter’s come out to play,” he says.

Peter and I get out of the car and all three of us run to the end of the track and down the road.

“Wait till you see him,” Con says as we trot along. “He looks a treat.”

We get to the brow of the hill and I take the glasses from Con and focus them on the farm. Walter is standing watching the stable boys coax his horse into the horse box. Con was right. He looks a proper treat. From the ribbon on his hard hat through the immaculate black jacket and the perfect jodhpurs and the shining black boots. When the horse is finally bolted in, Walter gets in his motor and negotiates the yard and drives slowly down the track that leads from his house to the road. He’s obviously going to the meet without his old lady. Who wouldn’t, with an old lady like Walter’s? I watch his progress until he comes to the junction and then wait to see which way he’s going to go. And then I see he’s going to go left, which is fine, because that means he’s coming in our direction. I turn away and start running back towards the car and Con and Peter follow after me. When I get to the car I slide into the driver’s seat and switch on the ignition and start nosing the motor to the end of the track and Peter and Con get in as the motor moves along. I stop the car at the end of the track and wait to hear Walter’s BMW swishing along the lane. I don’t have to wait long. Con and Peter are already kitted out. Through the hedge I can see the metallic blue of Walter’s motor. Then I put my foot down and Walter is confronted by the sight of our motor, and our three faces looking at him. I give him credit for his thinking because he slews his car across the lane so that the driving side is furthest away from us and he’s out of his motor and off down the road like a rocket. But so are we, shouting and bawling after him like kids playing Tracking. Walter veers to the right of the lane and jumps the ditch and starts staggering across the frozen field to the cover of a small copse about twenty yards from the road. Peter and I jump the ditch after him but Con pauses on the road to try and get one in but Peter and I are in the line of fire and Con curses us and by that time Walter is in the trees. I swear as we get to the wood, but once in the trees I realise that Walter’s not going to be hard to find because I hear him swearing and cursing himself, and a couple of yards in I can see the reason for his anguish. There is a small frozen pond directly in the chosen path of Walter’s flight, hidden from view by banks of ground elder, and now Walter is waist-deep in the middle of that pond, his black coat stark against the grayness of the ice around, the ice he is trying to flail a path through to the other side.

“Walter,” I call out.

Walter doesn’t stop. He is mad with the need to reach the other side.

“You should learn your geography better,” I tell him.

Walter overbalances and goes right under and when he comes up again he is facing our way. Peter is jumping up and down beside me. Walter’s arms continue to flap at the jagged ice around him.

“You chancer,” I tell him. “You fucking chancer. You took a dead fucking liberty.”

But before I can tell him any more Peter is unable to hold back and both barrels of the shotgun he’s holding boom out in the silence of the wood and Walter is lifted back as far to the other side as he’ll ever get, and it doesn’t matter anyway, because he no longer has a face.

Peter reloads and then we both watch Walter’s body bobbing up and down on the rippling water, and the fragments of ice with the robin-redbreast blood spots swirling round him. Then we turn away and walk to the edge of the wood and find Con there, at the edge, waiting for us.

The three of us walk back across the icy field. The sky seems even grayer. Halfway across the field a pheasant flies up in front of us. Peter lets out a yell of delight and levels his shotgun but I put my hand on the barrels and push it down. Peter looks at me, dismayed.

“Leave it out,” I tell him. “What do you want to do, get us done? They might be out of season.”

• • •

I’m lying in bed, on my back, smoking. The dead Christmas Day afternoon fills the windows like lead. Outside, everything is quiet. The only sound I’m aware of is Audrey’s light breathing as she lies sleeping beside me.

Then the phone rings. Audrey sits up, wide awake.

“Jesus Christ,” she says.

“No,” I say, reaching out, “it’s just the telephone.”

I pick up the receiver. An operator says, “Is that -----?”

“Yes,” I say, because only three people have that number.

“I have an overseas call for you. Hold the line, please.”

Audrey lies back in bed. A minute later Gerald’s voice comes crackling down the line from Ibiza.

“Jack? That you? Listen, why the Christ haven’t you been in touch? We’ve been waiting, what’s—”

I cut him off. “Hello?” I say, as if I can’t hear him. “Hello?”

“Christ,” I hear him telling Les, “the fucking line’s all to cock. Jack, listen, can you hear me? It’s Gerald. Jack . . . ”

“Hello?” I say again. “Hello?”

“For fuck’s sake . . . ”

“Whoever it is, I should call back on another line,” I say, and then I put the receiver down and when it’s been down long enough to cut them off I lift it again and leave it off the hook.

“Who was it?” Audrey asks.

“Santa’s little helpers,” I tell her. “They’re going to have a lovely Christmas, now all the work has been done.”

I look at my watch. “Nearly three o’clock,” I say to Audrey. “Almost time for the Queen’s Speech.”

There is no response from Audrey.

“Still,” I say, turning towards her, “there’s always next year.”

About the Author

Born in Manchester, England, Ted Lewis (1940–1982) spent most of his youth in Barton-upon-Humber in the north of England. After graduating from Hull Art School, Lewis moved to London and first worked in advertising before becoming an animation specialist, working on the Beatles’
Yellow Submarine
. A pioneer of the British noir school, Lewis authored nine novels, the second of which was famously adapted in 1971 as the now iconic
Get Carter
, which stars Michael Caine.