The Swap (14 page)

'The comic lust?' Jarvin tried not to laugh and stirred his carbonara with a fork. 'Well maybe, but it's a bit hard to imagine, isn't it? "I was so overcome with passion for
Superman
that I lost all sense of proportion, m'lord." It might work as a plea, but I can't really see it myself. I tend to think there may be more to this bullying matter. That seems to be the only relationship between them, other than the comic, and even that is mixed up in that early stuff. Yes, if Harvey Briscow bullied Charles Odd, and Mrs Odd found out . . . I wonder if there is anything there. Well . . .' He returned to his pasta with resolution. 'We'll get after Mr Briscow again and perhaps we'll find out.' He closed his eyes and began, stoically, to eat.

What to do, what to do? Harvey had put the comic away and taken it out again three times before Saturday had really started. It was weird how few hiding places a room held when you really looked at it. Maybe Edgar Allan Poe just couldn't think of anywhere else to stick it. God knows, it wasn't as if they were tidy, it was just that there was almost nowhere that Josh might not go at some point. For a time he toyed with the idea of murdering Josh. Hiding Josh certainly seemed a lot easier than hiding a
Superman One.
Saturday was their one busy day in the shop when the customers actually came in enough numbers to require two members of staff. But even as he haggled over a
Darkman
series, and watched Josh try to press obscure manga on unenthusiastic collectors, he was thinking about the drawer and how easy it would be simply to go back there with a lighter and solve the problem in one short burst, which, for all his hopes of a new sense of purpose, he had so far not dared to do. And as soon as the frankly meagre morning rush had begun to ebb, he went to the office, took it out again and then stood, irresolute, like Hamlet – in
Classic Comics
form.

'Harv, can I go and get some bananas?' Josh wandered into the back room now, causing Harvey to double up and twist around in a sort of contortion of concealment.

'I told you I wanted peace.' Standing up he pushed the
Superman One
into the back of his trousers. 'What that means, Josh, is that you leave me alone. You don't come barging in asking me about bananas. What the fuck do you want bananas for?'

'I could make banana custard.' Josh was unmoved by Harvey's annoyance. Josh was always either deeply offended or unmoved. Harvey had long wished for an assistant with something in between. 'We've got a tin of custard powder in the cupboard, I found it yesterday when I was tidying up, and I was thinking I could make banana custard, bit of a change from the norm. Something different.' He eyed Harvey keenly through his spectacles, which shone with an eager light. Harvey shut his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath.

'Yes, Josh,' he said, 'banana custard would be lovely. If you think you can make the gas ring work and if you think you can find a saucepan that isn't contaminated and if there are two bowls from which we could eat it, then I believe you should spend our busiest day of the week making banana custard.'

'Nice one.' Josh headed for the petty-cash drawer and then stopped and looked hard at Harvey. 'You're not going to assault me again, are you?'

'No, why?'

'I need some money to buy the bananas. No tackling, yeah?'

'No, no. No tackling.' Harvey watched patiently as Josh extracted two pound coins from the metal tin and wrote it carefully on the reckoner they kept inside.

'Right' he beamed, 'banana custards are go.'

When he'd gone, Harvey took the
Superman One
out of his trousers, put it on his desk and then sat in his chair and looked at it once more. Suddenly and unexpectedly he wanted to cry. He could feel a great sob forming at the bottom of his windpipe and beginning to rise like a bubble in the bath. He recognised this feeling. It was the feeling of being punished for something he hadn't done. When did he last have this sensation, that seemed to go into his system, as if the tears were mixing with his blood, making him go floppy and frantic? It was at school, the day he was accused of stealing from the charity fund. Somebody nicked the money raised from the charity bed-push and he was suspected. He could remember now that mingled feeling of impotence, righteousness and desperation. He almost got expelled for that and he was entirely innocent. Who had done it had never been fully explained but he had his suspicions: that bloody rugby lot had laughed their socks off. Carl Butcher and his friends, Jeff bloody Cooper among them. Harvey felt back there now, back waiting outside the head's office on that awful green sofa, knowing that his mum and dad were on the way, and knowing, with a terrible certainty in one so young, that they would side with the headmaster and would indeed argue for whatever sentence was passed to be increased. It was a feeling of isolation and of being involved in something far too big and serious for anyone so small. How old was he then? Eleven? Maybe twelve . . . He was a grown man now, of course, but still that same feeling welled up from wherever it was kept, tidily tucked away for when it was needed. He put his head in his hands and felt the tears begin to well against his palms.

He sat and shook, rocking himself back and forth and muttering against an unyielding adversity.

'Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,' he said slowly and in a sort of terrible whisper. 'What the fuck am I going to do?'

'Hello?' Josh had left the office door open and someone was leaning over the counter and looking through the open gap.

'Oh, hello, Chief Inspector.' Harvey jumped up and moved to the door. 'All right?'

'Are you all right, Mr Briscow?' Jarvin and Allen both looked at him with concern. Harvey wiped his nose on the long-sleeve Sepultura shirt he was wearing.

'Er, yeah, yeah. Touch of the flu.' He stood in the doorway and felt his eyes beginning to brim over with tears. He also felt the
Superman One
on the desk behind him burning a hole in the back of his trousers.

'We wondered if we might have another few words with you. But if this is a bad time . . .' Jarvin's sympathy made Harvey close his eyes for a moment to block out the desire to tell him everything. This caused the tears to well up and begin to trickle gently down both cheeks. He opened them again and shook his head.

'No, no problem,' he sniffed. 'Let me just clear up a bit. We're in a mess. Ah, is that Josh?' He looked over Jarvin's shoulder and then as both men turned he stepped swiftly backwards and slammed the door. 'Right,' he muttered, 'get it together, Briscow.' He rushed to the desk, grabbed the comic, thrust it into the drawer, slammed it shut and locked it.

'Mr Briscow?' Jarvin's voice from the shop was surprisingly clear.

'Yeehes?' Harvey sang his reply as he finished locking up, trying desperately not to jingle the keys; then, grabbing the dirty towel from the bathroom, which was draped over the back of the sofa, he rubbed it all over his face. At a run he got back to the door and opened it. 'There we are.' He beamed at them, his face a mess of mingled tears, snot and grey matter from the towel. 'Thought it was Josh coming back but it wasn't. Come in, come in.'

'Well, only if you're sure . . .' Jarvin stepped forward slowly, 'and if you wanted to clean up . . .'

'All done.' Harvey beamed the more. 'All done, just then, I cleaned up. No problem. Come in, come in.' Once more he lifted the flap of the counter so that they could walk through into the back and once more he felt as if he was inviting something rather large and unlikely into his space, like bringing a walrus into a Ford Cortina. But this time he felt more in control.

'You forgot to ask me the other day, didn't you?' He was still smiling, with glistening eyes, when they were all sat back in their places, him at the desk but facing away from it into the room, Jarvin on the sofa, Allen in the frankly unsafe wooden chair behind the door.

'Forgot to ask you?'

'My whereabouts. You've been asking everyone their whereabouts on the day of the murder, Sunday morning, I mean, about 11a.m.,' Harvey prompted, 'but you forgot to ask me.'

'Did we? Perhaps we did. Would you like us to ask you?' Jarvin was smiling too.

'If you want you can. Or I'll tell you anyway.' Harvey suddenly had a desire to tell them, or rather for them to have asked. 'I was out for a walk,' he said and Jarvin managed not to look at Allen. 'I have tried to reconstruct that morning for you.' ('Thank you,' said Jarvin politely.) 'And I have come up with the following.' Harvey paused importantly and then sniffed, aware that the tears, so ruthlessly blocked, were now trying to make their way down his nose. 'I arose at approximately eight thirty, which is earlier than usual but my dad woke me up. I got out of bed and had a shower. I then went downstairs and ate breakfast. I then went out for a walk at about nine thirty. I then walked into town and looked at the shops and then I went onto the beach and walked along the shore. I then went back home and got there about twelve fifteen. We had lunch at one.' He smiled at both of them expectantly. Jarvin nodded and made two observations. The first, to himself, was that the study of comicbooks did absolutely nothing for your narrative style. The second was aloud: 'And what did you do after that, Mr Briscow?'

'After that?' Harvey stared at him. 'She died at 11a.m. What does it matter what I did after that?'

'I just wondered.' Jarvin watched Harvey carefully. 'I wondered what you did in the afternoon.'

'God, Jesus, I don't know.' Surprise and terror combined in Harvey with irritation. What business of Jarvin's was it where he was in the afternoon? He had just told him the absolute and unalloyed truth, for Christ's sake. He really would have liked a little bit of credit for that.

'I was at home,' he said uncertainly, 'I think. Or did I go out? I'll need to work it out. But I think I was at home for a bit and perhaps I took my dad's car out for a bit. I don't know.'

'You were at home with your mother and father?'

'Yes. No. I can't remember. They were probably about but I'm not aware whether I was with them. I may have stayed in my room.'

'For how long?'

'I'm not sure. Most of the afternoon, I guess.'

'That would be a long time to just stay in a room on your own. You would probably have wanted to spend time with your family . . .' Jarvin tried to help.

'You haven't met them.' Harvey muttered. 'But no, perhaps I did, I just can't really . . .'

'And then you went out in your father's car?'

'Maybe. I can't really . . . was that Sunday? Or another day? You see, it's all rather vague . . .'

'Perhaps we could ask your parents? If you give me their number I might give them a call, just to clarify . . .'

It isn't easy to make an internal volcanic eruption appear in the form of a scratching of the head and a grimace of uncertainty, but Harvey attempted it. The fact that he turned from bright pink to very white in around twenty seconds was the only obvious signifier of the turmoil within.

'No, I'd rather you didn't do that,' he said slowly. 'They are easily upset. I could check with them, but really I just need time to think. I'm sure it will come back to me.' Where the fuck could he have been that afternoon? All he could see was blood-soaked washing-up gloves and bottles of bleach. He also heard a renewed echo of his mother's words about washing his clothes and trainers. She would definitely remember.

Never had he had a stronger desire to encourage people to leave. He needed this conversation to be over and he needed to ring his mum. Jesus, what could he say to her? Remember those things under my bed? Well, they didn't exist, OK? It never happened, got that? Gangster movies were always about families. That was probably why the gangsters always got caught. Never let your family get involved in your affairs, that was the simple rule of life. Harvey had done his best to apply it for many years, yet here he was at his moment of crisis having to ring his mum. Once he got rid of the police, of course.

'It is just that we would need to corroborate what you say about the morning also.' Jarvin was continuing with the conversation just as if all this wasn't going on inside Harvey's head. 'We are checking on everybody who is involved in any way. But we can come back to that. I also wanted to ask you about Mrs Odd. I am trying to get a picture of her and while there are people who know her in Cornwall, of course, I was wondering what Charles's friends remember of her.'

'Friends? I wasn't his friend really . . .'

'I was thinking of the swap?'

'Yeah, well that was a one-off. I hardly knew him, to be honest. And I certainly hardly knew his mother. As I told you last time I didn't even know her name. I did tell you that . . .' He petered out and looked at Jarvin with something close to pleading in his eyes. Why didn't he go?

'So you were never in the house?'

This took Harvey by surprise. 'What house? The Odds' house? No, of course I wasn't, or actually I was, but ages ago. Of course, a long time ago, not recently. Years and years ago.'

'You visited as a friend?'

'Yes. No, not a friend, as an acquaintance, once. Only the once.'

'Why was that, Mr Briscow?'

'Why was what?' Harvey wanted to ring his mother. He could tell her they were stolen goods or something. He had been arrested once before for shoplifting when he was fifteen. It was still mentioned regularly by his father whenever the subject of criminality of any kind came up. All it needed was some gruesome murder or armed heist to come on the news and Harvey's crime would be aired once more: a point of comparison, a reminder that evil wasn't only on the television. It was another reason why he so rarely went home. Perhaps now he could say they were stolen goods. They would certainly believe it. But would his mother cover for him? His dad wouldn't. Indeed, he wasn't sure his dad wouldn't report him immediately. He sighed and shook his head and then looked back to Jarvin who was waiting politely. 'Pardon?'

'I was wondering why you went to Mrs Odd's house just the one time, all those years ago.'

'Oh God, I don't know. Does it matter? It was just a visit.' Why had he gone? It was a good question. It wasn't as if he had any desire to know Bleeder then or now.

'You don't think it might be significant?' Jarvin's eyes had gone gentle and they seemed to slip off his own rather than fully meeting them.

'No, of course not, it was years ago.'

'So you had no real impression of Mrs Odd?'

'Impression? Well, she was mad, wasn't she?'

'Mad?'

'Well, not mad. Just a bit . . . odd. You know she was Mrs Odd and Mrs odd. Capital letter and lower case . . . That's what people seemed to think of her anyway. I never knew her, of course.'

'No. But that is how you thought of her . . . as odd?'

'Yes. She had a reputation, you know.'

'A reputation?'

'Yes. She was a bit . . . well, odd. She let men sleep with her, or so they said. I wouldn't know, of course, too young. But she didn't wash very much. She shouted at people in the street . . . ranted.' Harvey tried to put into words what Mrs Odd had been. She was just a part of local life really, to the point that he'd never really analysed what she represented. In a small town there were always people like that, weren't there? Strange, local legends really. 'I suppose she would have been a witch,' he said after a pause, 'in another time, I mean. Sort of crazy and very there, you know, always around, wandering about, wearing weird clothes, muttering. I can imagine her cursing wells or whatever in like medieval times, yeah? But in the 1980s she was just a bit . . . well, odd. A bit eerie. You didn't want to get too close to her in case she sort of infected you.' That didn't sound very good. 'I mean, now I'd be sympathic, right? But then you just wanted to keep clear of her really. And you kind of laughed at her.' And you would have done too, Mr High and Mighty Policeman.

'Yes.' Jarvin nodded thoughtfully and Harvey felt the eyes change so that when he met them it was he who looked away. 'A very difficult sort of person to have for a mother.'

'Yeah, yeah, I guess.' Harvey had always thought of his own mother as the most difficult sort to have, but he had to admit that maybe Bleeder's had the edge. 'I suppose now Blee . . . Charles would have gone into care or something. But then, he just sort of had to cope, kind of thing.'

'And of course what friends he did have would be very important to him. I doubt he would have invited many to his house.' The look continued and Harvey smiled vaguely into the middle distance. 'So if you do remember anything about your visit to the house, it might be useful, Mr Briscow . . . Perhaps you could ring me if anything does come to mind . . .' He turned slightly to Allen who silently fished in his pocket and wrote a number on a card. The two men rose and moved to the door. Never had Harvey been happier to say goodbye.

'Oh, and perhaps you could just let me have your parents' telephone number so I can tick them off my list.'

'What? No!'

'You'd rather I didn't call them?'

'No, I said so. They'll be upset. I'll call them . . .'

'Why would they be upset, Mr Briscow?'

'Because they're not at ease with the police.' Harvey got creative. 'They are easily frightened, especially my father. You must let me ring them and explain. They're old, they are easily scared . . .' Where was all this coming from? Anything less like his parents and the unbridled joy they would feel at being involved in a murder inquiry was hard to imagine. He had a vision of his new parents, old and broken, cowering in their home, starting at sudden noises. If only life was really like that. 'I will ring them and check about what happened. Honestly.' If you will just fuck off I'll do it now.

'All right and perhaps you'd ask them to ring me on that same number.' The piece of white card with the number had been placed in Harvey's hand and he was holding it up in front of him as if it was attached to the string of a kite.

'Ring you. Well, I don't know. All right.' He could think of no reason to deny Jarvin this. As he had with Josh earlier, he now toyed with the idea of killing Jarvin and his assistant. It would certainly make things easier for a few minutes. But he looked at Allen and put the idea away: he was bloody enormous. The two men made their way out of the shop calling their valedictions. Harvey waved a vague hand, with a white card in it, and then ran back into the office and grabbed the phone.