The Swap (21 page)

They walked for a while back the way Harvey and Maisie had come that morning. Bleeder set a faster pace than Maisie and also he didn't hold his hand, so Harvey enjoyed it less and wished they could stop. However, he could see that discussing murder in the high street with numerous Cornish people – a type renowned for their inquisitiveness – milling about, was not really such a wise idea, so he followed meekly as Bleeder led them back towards the headland. Perhaps they could go in the hotel bar or something, find a quiet corner, get it over with. In truth, he'd have been happy to stay in the pub garden, have another beer, watch Bleeder go and order peppermint cordial in front of a room full of drunken comedians, that would have been fine. But he followed Bleeder's narrow arse and watched it make its slightly mincing journey through the busy streets and out onto the quieter, open road that led to the headland. There Bleeder paused and waited for Harvey to join him, then side by side they walked down through the gorse towards the waiting whale rocks.

'So the time has come for us to speak, H. I guess I always knew it would.' Bleeder had slowed now and Harvey, relieved, came to a full stop.

'Er, yeah, OK. It's good to talk.' Harvey put on an attempt at a cockney accent when he said this last sentence, remembering Bob Hoskins. He glanced ahead at the rocks and felt a warm glow of memory. He'd shagged up there.

'To speak about the past, both distant and recent. To talk it all through . . .' Bleeder's voice was fading in the breeze. 'To finally let it all out. It is something I have been doing in different ways for many years. I have had psychoanalysis, H. I have been through that process, and I have trusted it to bring me here, to this point where I can stand with someone I once knew, in a place where we grew up, and feel not anger, nor bitterness, but hope. Dare I say it, I can almost feel pity.' He looked at Harvey with an expression that did seem pitying and Harvey reached for his cigarettes. He hardly knew what to say. Psychoanalysis? Jesus, he knew Bleeder was mad. There followed a similar performance around lighting the cigarette although it didn't last as long as it had earlier because the wind had dropped and Harvey had got slightly better at it. Once he had taken a long drag to chase any hint of fresh country air from his lungs, he said: 'Er, yeah, OK, Charles, we can talk but I wouldn't get too many hopes up, yeah? I mean, I don't do that much of this, you know?' He gave a sort of laugh at the end in the hope that Bleeder would smile and they could maybe just have a bit of a joke instead, but Bleeder did not. He nodded in a way that Harvey found rather patronising and then turned to gaze into the distance.

'I suppose I should say that for a long time I hated you the most, H. More than Jeff Cooper or Carl Butcher or Rob Calderwood or any of those other sports boys, "the jocks", as the Americans would call them. They were cruel to me, of course, but your cruelty was greater.'

'Um. OK.' Harvey stepped back and prickled himself on a gorse bush. 'Fuck, ow. OK.' Did Rob pick on Bleeder too? He couldn't really remember but he assumed Bleeder must know. He really had managed to unite the school, quite an achievement. Harvey began to grin and then turned it into what he hoped was a sensitive grimace.

'You probably want to know what I mean,' Bleeder went on without turning back, thus wasting Harvey's expression, 'because, of course, you didn't pick on me the way those others did.'

That was right. Harvey nodded vigorously, he didn't bully Bleeder, whoever told Jarvin that he did was wrong, he was one of the good guys, on the side of righteousness and justice. He pictured Spider-Man for a moment, how he looked after Aunt May died and Mary-Jane left him. So unjustly dealt with. He took a long sad pull on his cigarette. He knew that feeling.

'And what I mean is that I looked to you for help. You were one of the people I really thought might stop what was happening. You could have done. You had the status in our year to stop it. You could have made friends with me. I just needed one friend, H, and then I might have been OK. If you had done that I might have survived what happened, might even have had a youth I could remember without a professional there to help me. For so long I hoped that you would be my salvation. That's what my analyst said: you were my fantasy, the one I dreamed would save me. And then I heard the singing outside my house. I heard Rob Calder-wood's voice and next to it I heard yours. Do you remember that day, H? Do you? Do you know what it felt like to have been through that with Jeff only a few weeks before? And to be back there, locked in that house with my mother, hearing those voices again, singing that same song, hearing Mother going out to hide by the wall to try to grab another of them and then to realise that one of the voices was yours? Can you imagine that, H? Is it in your range of possibilities? I think that was the greatest betrayal of them all. I think it was the moment when I realised it wasn't ever going to be all right. Do you remember, Harvey, the day my mother caught you?'

'Eh?' Harvey's mind had begun to wander slightly at the point when Bleeder said he had status in the school. He did really. He'd been popular and influential. Where had that status gone? Why didn't he have any status now? If the boy is the father of the man, where was his position and influence in his current life? Bossing Josh around, that was about it, and Josh bought Pokemon cards. He wanted to do the sigh, but realised that it might really be Bleeder's perogative. As for the rest, that was bollocks and Bleeder should know it, especially if he'd had therapy. Nobody could save anyone else. Harvey had known that as long as he could remember. But this last remark caught him by surprise and he choked a little on smoke.

'When she caught me?' he said, spluttering.

'The day you were singing outside my house, not the first time probably, but the first that I realised it was you, recognised your voice alongside the others. And she came out and grabbed you, don't you remember that?'

Harvey thought for a long moment, then slowly nodded.

'Er, yeah, kind of. She sort of told me off and stuff and you said I was your mate and that I didn't do it before, so let me off. So she did, sort of thing.' Harvey shrugged. He did remember, of course, bloody scary it had been, but what did Bleeder want, a letter of thanks? Mad woman grabbed him and shouted at him. He should have had her arrested. He took a last drag and flicked the butt, with insolent skill, into a rabbit hole.

'Yes, I saved you. You see? You would have been beaten, like Jeff, but I stopped that. And then I was beaten instead.' He had turned to look at Harvey now and reacted to his expression. 'Oh yes, I got my licks for being friends with someone who would sing like that. My analyst made a lot of it. I wanted so much to be saved but instead I saved you. You see?'

'Er, yeah, yeah. Nice one. Clever. I mean cheers, thanks for that, saving me and so on. I didn't know you got whacked.'

'Oh yes. I got "whacked" when I saved you, but I couldn't save Jeff. Or at least I didn't. I let him be beaten, with the plastic tube. I let him see just what could happen. And I think he saw what life might be like. I mean, after that he pretty much left me alone. But I saved you and took the beating on my own. And I stole the strip of plastic, to bring to you. Do you remember, H? That day we did the swap? The length of plastic that I brought to school. I wanted you to see it. It still had my blood on it, you know? I was waiting for you and you didn't even notice the blood, you wanted it to play at snapping off the nettleheads with. So you swapped it with me, for a comic, a
Superman One
. The
Superman One
that I kept for so long. That was in the box at my house. You do remember, H, I know you do because you were the one who reminded me.'

Bleeder's voice had been rising and he had begun twisting his head from side to side as if shaking away the memory, as if keeping it at bay as a horse does with a swarm of flies. But now he was slowing and speaking with more precision. 'And I had forgotten that. Blanked it out. Forgotten that day so deeply that even in analysis I didn't speak it. Even when I thought I was cured it was out there in history, in this place, this cruel and vicious place.' He turned right around, spreading out his arms to encompass the great sweep of Porthminster Point, with St Ives bay away behind it and the sea on either side. Two passing hikers gave him a funny look and stepped round his arms. 'Afternoon,' one said and Harvey, who had been watching their approach over Bleeder's shoulder, nodded politely. Bleeder paused until they had passed away down the path and disappeared where it snaked around the rocks. 'I had forgotten.' He spoke more quietly and with a limpness in his shoulders, as if the spell holding him together had been broken. 'I had forgotten until you spoke to me in the car at the reunion, asked me if I still had that comic. And it all came flooding back. I remembered that I didn't even tell you what you'd done. That was what I think was buried deepest. That I let you have the strip of plastic as if I was giving away a toy. I remember looking at your fingers as you took it to see if the blood made them red. It's funny how vividly I can remember what was so recently buried away. And I did it for a comic. Is there a more ridiculous story than that? I gave away everything for a comic . . .' He had turned and was looking away, back towards the hotel, the roofs of which could still be seen above the rise of the land. But as he spoke again he swung back, as if unable to be still. 'And that's why I killed her, I suppose. Because that memory was just one too many, and too suddenly recalled. I still needed to make some kind of reparation, you see. To put right what had been done so wrong. So that morning, on the Sunday, when I woke up I knew what I had to do. It was as if my dreams had told me, and they can, my therapist explained that to me. My dreams had brought it to a point, the necessary point where I could finally end it and stop it all. It was easy really. Killing is really very easy.'

'Er, what?' Aware of the gorse bush, Harvey didn't step backwards again. But he wanted to. Bleeder's eyes were riveted on his own. This would have been so much better in the pub garden, he felt. He glanced round, looking for the hikers, but they were long gone into the rocks. Were they having it off? he wondered vaguely, and the picture of the two mid-seventies male hikers pressed up against the whale rock was so startling that it snapped his attention back to Bleeder.

'I killed her, Harvey.'

'Um, right you are.' Harvey could feel that he was so far out of his depth now that he might as well have been swimming across the bay. What on earth did he say now? 'So you, er, you did the deed, yeah?'

'Yes, I did the deed.' Bleeder's voice was calm and clear now. 'I don't know why I haven't been arrested for it. In some ways it would be easier if I was.' (Harvey nodded vigorously.) 'But apparently the police have found other evidence of someone breaking in. I don't know what that is about . . .' He tailed off and shut his eyes for a moment. 'I had thought it would be the solution, that everything would be different afterwards, and for those first few days it was, I think. But you know, I'm not sure it works like that for long. I'm not sure it isn't still all there really. It may even be that in the end this will only be one moment, another stage in all the stages I have been through . . .'

'Yeah, right, well, hey, maybe you should like tell the police, you know?' Despite the gorse, Harvey had moved away a little and could feel it clawing at the back of his trousers. 'I mean, it wouldn't be fair if anyone else gets kind of implicated and stuff, yeah? And also maybe that is what you need to do, maybe if you confess, it will be a release and you will experience closure.' Even as he spoke Harvey was rather proud of his words. Even under pressure like this he could bullshit with the best of them. And he'd always known it was Bleeder: that was the thing. If he ever got off this headland and out from the laserbeam of Bleeder's attention he would tell the world, or Maisie at least – and bloody Jarvin – that he'd known it all along: Bleeder, obvious.

'In many ways I suppose I have fulfilled my destiny,' Bleeder continued. 'My analyst was rather a Freudian, rather a traditionalist, I suppose for him I am something of a success story.' And Harvey was horrified to hear a sort of cackle at the end of Bleeder's words. As he finished speaking them, Bleeder moved off down the path. 'Come on, Harvey. I want to show you something.' And he set off towards the rocks.

Harvey was rooted momentarily to the spot, uncaring of the sharp points in his lower buttocks. His mind worked fast. He was on a headland with a self-confessed murderer, he had been accused of being that murderer's worst enemy in childhood, the murderer was leading him towards the cliff edge. He stood for a long moment, uncertain, then shrugged his shoulders and followed Bleeder down the path to the whale rocks. Mad or not, it was still Bleeder, he could take him out no problem.

What Bleeder wanted to show him, Harvey had already seen. The disc of rock where you could stand and look down to the angry entrapment of the waves below looked no better with Bleeder on it. He put his back to the blue whale where he'd so recently stood with Maisie and indulged in a happy memory. This time he lit his cigarette with no trouble at all, he was getting used to outdoor smoking, something he was very good at in his youth. After he had lit it and put the pack away he remembered his manners and offered one to his new confidant but got no coherent response as Bleeder stood peering over the edge. Harvey had never stood on a clifftop with a murderer before but was pleased to find that he quickly adapted to the experience.

'Um.' He cleared his throat and then broached a subject that was close to his heart. 'About that comic, the
Superman One
, Charles, did you, I mean, was it found at the scene sort of thing?'

'The comic?' Responding this time, Bleeder stood up straight and turned back from the edge. 'Yes, oh yes, it was in the box in the cellar. That's why she died. I started going through my things and there it was, clean as a whistle, just as I left it all those years ago. But you must know that already, H. I sent it to you at your shop.'

'You sent it to me?' Harvey was astounded. Bleeder sent him the comic; after all these years of dreaming exactly that, it had come true. Was this perhaps the time in his life when everything he had ever hoped for just happened? Why hadn't he hoped for Britney Spears? He put that thought away where it belonged and gazed at Bleeder who nodded.

'Of course, where did you think it came from? It just seemed right to return it to you. It was yours, after all. And now you run a comic shop. You had nothing to run away from, you see, in your past there was nothing to hide from so you stayed where you were: reading comics and doing swaps and listening to pop music, all that. That's what I meant about feeling pity. I have come so far from here but you have stayed right where you were, right here in St Ives.'

This was so catastrophically unfair that for the first time since they met at the pub, Harvey became genuinely animated.

'You fucking what? I moved to London, mate. I live a life as far away from this as it's possible to bloody get. I mean, OK your mother was straight out of the Bates Motel, but that doesn't mean nobody else had problems, I had problems.'

'Like what?' Bleeder was doing that piercing thing with his eyes again and Harvey withered beneath it.

'I don't know, stuff, problems, my parents didn't understand me kind of stuff, you know. I mean, OK, I wasn't getting the lash every twenty minutes but that doesn't mean everything was easy. You should meet my dad, he's fucking weird.'

'Yes, yes, I'm sure.' Bleeder nodded and spoke without sarcasm but Harvey was aware that the words weren't really adding up.

He sighed a sort of medium strength and said: 'OK, look, I mean, thanks for the comic, yeah? I didn't expect it and I have to say it kind of freaked me. I thought someone was setting me up for murder, sort of thing. But I should say that actually it is worth a bit of money, you know, not loads, but, well, quite a load really. So I don't know if maybe you should have it back, or we could share it or something . . . Whatever you think, yeah? Charles?'

But Bleeder was moving away from the edge, past where Harvey stood and back along the path. Harvey, with another expert flick of his cigarette over the parapet, followed. Did Bleeder not realise what he'd just said? It was as if he hadn't heard. And Harvey had just made the most generous offer of his life. All he'd dreamed of, the coffee shop with the superhero pictures, the wealthy married life with Maisie, all of it, he'd just offered to give it up, to give it back to Bleeder. And why? Shit, why? Oh, because Bleeder saved him and Bleeder needed a friend back then, but didn't get one, so he would be a friend now. All this was moving through his mind and melding together to form a large black blob of hurt feelings. This was as moral as he got. This was all he could do, there really wasn't any more. He almost ran after Bleeder who was now pacing the path with swift foot. It had begun to drizzle again and his hair was shining in the gathering light of the afternoon.

'I mean it, Charles. You can have it back.' But Bleeder didn't respond in words, he simply stepped off the path and stalked away between two gorse bushes across the high back of the headland. 'Charles?' Really quite plaintive this time, and then he turned.

'I think I need some time on my own, H. I've said more than I'd planned and I need to take stock. Let's, let's talk again . . .' He was moving away, the second person that afternoon to need time apart from him to think, and the hurt feelings grew and solidified.

'Well, that's charming,' said Harvey. 'Thanks a bundle.'

'I'm . . . what do you mean?' Bleeder paused, astonished.

'The comic. I offer it you back and you don't even respond. It's worth money, Charles, for Christ's sake. I could have sold it if I'd wanted to, you know. I could be well off now. But I didn't, I kept it for you, and all you do when I offer it to you, for nothing, is ignore me.' There were reasons why this wasn't a terribly good speech and Harvey could kind of see them, but really everyone seemed to be just saying what they were thinking today, so it just boiled out. And if it wasn't really true as such, it did at least reflect honestly how he was feeling. Sort of. Bleeder gazed at him with a kind of far-away amazement on his face and then closed his eyes for a long moment.

'I think you should keep the comic, Harvey. I think that is probably what you should do, all right? I think perhaps the comic is what this is about for you and I'm glad we could discuss it. But now I must go for a while.' And he turned again to the narrow space between the bushes that formed a little pathway across the headland and he followed it until it turned and bore him out of sight.

Harvey stood for a while where he was. I am experiencing conflicting emotions, he told himself. But it wasn't really true. Jesus Christ, it's mine! And he set off, suddenly pumped up with emotion, until he broke into a run and gambolled like a flat-footed lamb along the path, back towards the hotel. The murder was solved, he was rich and he'd got Maisie, and everything was going to be just totally, totally perfect.