4 Bones Sleeping (Small Town Trilogy) Page 4

  ‘Out the way you.’

  A familiar voice shook me out of my reverie. Talk of the devil and Don bustled through, pushing me out and away from the body. ‘Crime scene you know, what’s happened lads.’

  The town’s ace detective, also the town’s only detective. Don stared at his two uniformed colleagues, then took his eyes up the length of the girl’s legs. I imagined him enjoying the experience. All the time I strained to keep my eyes on his coarse features. I watched as his thick lips formed a perfect circle, the olive skin drained like a litmus paper in reverse. He turned and threw up in one smoothly violent motion. I didn’t show him any sympathy and turn away. Never gave him some discreet distance, instead I crowded him and just stared as he retched and retched.

  I wanted to look into the eyes of a compromised policeman.

  Saying nothing, I turned and beckoned Stuart.

  He stared at Don and said, ‘What’s up with the fat man then?’

  I brought my finger up to my lips and we walked briskly away from the scene. My mind was buzzing, all these questions.

  ‘That was the girl in the Chinese restaurant.’

  Stuart’s said, ‘I know. What a night that was. Carol was drunk; Don was staring at a fifteen year old schoolgirl. And you looked pissed off with the pair of them.’

  I couldn’t argue with that. I’d taken Carol out on her birthday, just an employer, employee arrangement of course. That’s all it ever was with me anyway and everyone in town knew that. Her husband joined us, like many policemen, the thought of a free meal too good to miss. Too lacking in sensitivity to leave us alone and let his wife use me as her father confessor.

  ‘It was one of the few occasions I was pleased to see you.’

  Stuart laughed, ‘It was an awful night.’

  God knows what had been festering between them. Carol smoked too much and drank too quickly. Her drawn features relaxing apparently in direct correlation to the amount of rum she’d consumed. Even in the middle of an argument, Don couldn’t take his eyes of her legs. But he would gaze at any woman’s legs that way.

  And true to form, his focus soon strayed. Don stared at other women in the restaurant. Carol tried to keep his concentration, but like a distracted seven year old, he kept staring the other women and one girl in particular.

  I said, ‘Don was watching the girl like a hawk.’

  Stuart stopped me, ‘He was obsessed with her. Took her out in the police car a few times.’

  ‘He’s such a sleaze-ball.’ On reflection, I should have asked Stuart how he knew that Don had been a chauffeur to the girl. But I couldn’t take my mind from the policeman’s mood in the restaurant.

  It made no difference to Don, even with Carol sat alongside, he scrutinised the adjacent girl with no feelings of guilt or inhibition. Lust was a cheap commodity for Don as he dreamed about other moist possibilities. That’s when I first saw the girl, I watched Don as he watched the young woman in the restaurant. In his defence, she looked at least twenty. A stunning beauty, but Don’s eye had been ensnared not so much by her exquisite features, as by the movement of her heavy breasts against the clinging wool of her dress. I could see his mind working, Don wanted to lean in close and smell where she’d applied her perfume. She crossed her legs and kicked her free leg back and forth, staring at him all the time.

  Stuart said, ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Forty three I think. Too old for a schoolgirl that’s for sure. Carol was fuming; she asked him who the girl was. Don never answered her. Then she said the girl was a bit young even by Don’s standards. He told her to get on with her food.’

  I had invited them out and yet it seemed that I was intruding. Fortunately, that’s when Stuart and Patrick came in. He joined the girl and Carol invited Stuart to sit with us. That made me smile for the first time that evening. Don and Stuart hated each other and Carol was well aware of that fact.

  In the meantime, when the girl spotted Patrick, she jumped up and kissed his cheek in a very middle class, typically public school way. Patrick rolled her a cigarette and they sat. Heads together like two close friends in playschool. The young girl twisted her long hair constantly, platting it, combing it back between her fingers. Her movements, quick and bird like, she blinked constantly, her expressions seemingly changed with every blink. Attractive, but highly strung, like a two year old, well-bred racehorse impatient for the reins to be loosened.

  Don ignored Stuart, he just had eyes for the girl opposite anyway. Don stared on as the soft light fell on her hair and shoulders and breasts. Carol had gone quiet, staring at the couple sat opposite. She stared openly their way, first at Patrick and then at the girl. Carol’s gaze suddenly went down into her lap. Where they remained as though she was considering something important.

  Mind made up, she brought her eyes back up and stared over Don’s shoulder as if he were not there. She turned a touch in her chair, bringing her legs out into the open and into play as it were. The restaurant was busy, a burst of laughter and a predictable uproar from a table of young men, most of them staring at Carol’s legs. Jealousy brought Don back, annoyed because Carol gave them a show every time she moved. I saw Stuart smiling as the anger bubbled away inside Don.

  He even shook his chopstick at her and scowled down the table and said, ‘Keep your knees together.’

  Carol blinked, ‘I bet you never say that to any of the other girls you meet.’

  Patrick and the young woman stood and she led the way imperiously, head up, shoulders back. Patrick nodded our way and stopped close to Don.

  ‘You better ease up on the driving lessons, what would the inspector say?’

  Don mouthed fuck off and his eyes followed the pair of them. Don’s gaze settled on the girl’s swaying hips and arse. Craning his neck to peer around Patrick and get a clearer view.

  And now that same young woman was lying broken and dead. I blew a steaming mist of warm air out from my clenched teeth. I think my observation of people and relationships better than most. I would have put money on Don being close to this girl somehow. Stuart had confirmed my worst fears, despite Don being nearly thirty years older than her, that look between them in the restaurant was worth more than a thousand words.

  Teddy - 1980

  Strangulation – kicking, wrestling against oblivion. Shitting your pants as you go. Trying to drag air in through a blocked windpipe. Unable to see whose doing the strangling.

  He breathed in – deeply.

  A maniac on the loose.

  Not yet!

  Past lives, his thick, short sighted brother. What about his past life?

  Was he even dead?

  His bloody stupid daughter was dead. She was past tense now.

  He rushed the few hundred yards back home, animated and frightened. Dejection pulsing through him like a thorn being dragged backwards through his femoral artery. Up the spiralling staircase two at a time and into the bathroom, two steps across the floor and close to the mirror and stared. What did he see? Why did he look like his father? How did that happen? His breathing didn’t want to slow down, he tried to breathe deeply but his chest ached after his short run back. Burned like a chest infection, he tried to remember the last time he’d run.

  His eyes flicked all over the mirror, you’re scared.

  He heard a dog bark, answered by another on the other side of the village, but no police siren, no ambulance, nothing apart from his rasping breathing. It was the worst day of his life and he’d had a few of those over the years. It wasn’t as though someone he knew had gone forever. Gone in a flurry of intense activity, a rain of efficient punches. That was always easy for him to visualise, not like someone falling, it wasn’t like that. He clutched his chest; the acute sensation of his heart plunging through his diaphragm wouldn’t leave him alone.

  His chest rasped in and out like an asthmatic accordion, he breathed with a fervent intensity. He tried to smile at the mirror, no pleasure or warmth in it, he tried for neutrality, if she knocked on the d
oor, he had to appear calm – but he’d convinced himself he would sound angry or agitated or both.

  Worse than that he might cry.

  He rubbed his eyes, sleep … he needed sleep more than anything. Apart from her that is. Shirley had been his religion for years and years, but now sleeplessness had become his new belief. He walked through to the bedroom, despite the exhaustion, he felt too warm and he knew sleep wouldn’t come tonight. His brain wouldn’t slow, he tried to focus – something momentous had just happened and he couldn’t focus on it, his mind darted everywhere. No not everywhere, always towards her. His daughter had become his magnetic north and his thoughts always pointed her way now.

  Why did she do it? What did she expect him to do?

  He thought of the prison cell, things were easy then. Nothing to worry about, get blown by the queen now and again. Treated with reverence, even the governor was scared of him. In the unglamorous confines of the cell, his emotions were always in check. It was never the worst of times, despite the deprivation. He enjoyed the simple boundaries to the brutality. Stress and deceit were never in his mind – only revenge.

  Now?

  The images started to come back. He shut his eyes, he wanted the Old Testament world of barbarity and retribution back in his life. The fantasies of rapists and pederasts. The bloody perverts and sex offenders. His mouth dried and he felt humiliated because of his erection. Fuck knows why? They were few and far between these days.

  He threw his clothes off and slid into bed. He pushed his erection between the cheeks of his sleeping wife’s arse.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Someone must pay for his stupid daughter.

  But despite everything she’d done, he wanted her back.

  ‘What’s up with you? Jesus fucking Christ, our daughter’s just… what are you thinking of?’

  He blinked and turned away from her.

  5

  Teddy -1945

  Teddy rubbed his eyes; he needed sleep, why couldn’t he feel drowsy at night? After all, he couldn’t stay awake in the daytime. Then he always felt like a dog in the midday summer heat, all he wanted was a lethargic crawl into some cool shade and the chance to dream. He needed sleep now more than anything – apart from her that is.

  He walked through the gate, ignored the prison officers comment.

  ‘See you in a few weeks Teddy.’

  He felt better standing, whenever he lay down the constant burning began, acid? Perhaps he had an ulcer? Whatever it was, in the morning his stomach still burned sour like an acid drop wedged up his anus. His brain wouldn’t slow, he tried to focus. The heavy gate slammed behind him. The car across the other side of Braybrook Street, his brother grinning myopically his way, elbow sticking out of the car window. A blonde sat in the back seat – movement in his trousers, he wanted her so much. He couldn’t stand the disappointment, perhaps it was just some old tart his brother had found for him. Perhaps it wasn’t her.

  He climbed in the back, slid alongside.

  All the time looking ahead. He couldn’t stand the disappointment.

  He felt a warm hand on his thigh, ‘Teddy, I’ve missed you so much. Look at me.’

  She took his hand, placed it on her thigh, directly on the stocking top. Teddy slid the dress up and stared down and over her legs. He slowly brought his eyes up to the woman’s face.

  Shirley!

  Teddy spotted Eyeless watching in the mirror just as he come in her mouth.

  ‘Keep your fucking eyes on the road.’

  Shirley jumped and nearly bit his cock off.

  Minutes later, she said it, ‘Move up north of the river, all the money’s there. No more putting the squeeze on fish and chip shops. No more running spotty faced tarts up Coldharbour Lane. Big money.’

  He was an east end boy, making a crust south of the river.

  No more.

  Up west for me, Soho, me and the blonde.

  Then she said it.

  ‘Fix the fight.’

  The fight!

  Get all his mates to bet on the fight.

  Clean up and then everyone will know that Teddy’s the man.

  ‘Come and look at the club. It’s really smart – that’s what we need.

  Something smart. He’s in my back pocket, he does anything I want.’

  She wouldn’t shut up, on and on.

  ‘I’ve organised everything for your party – even got a few girls…’

  ******

  He noticed that journalist straightaway. They’d met before, but Teddy couldn’t remember where. There he was, sat in the club, staring at him, all the time. The sneaky glances. Until he let their eyes finally met. That look between two men. The implicit understanding that goes with it.

  Those little poofs in prison – the same look.

  Most men avert eye contact from strangers. Poofs look straight into his eyes when others wouldn’t dare.

  He knows – or thinks he does.

  He knows fuck all.

  Jack - 1945

  I called it a coming out party at the time. The estimable Teddy Lewis had invited the usual suspects, a few policemen, a couple of reporters, local councillors. I say Teddy had sent out the invitations, nothing formal of course, I assumed a phone call here and a whispered word there. My editor gave me the time and place, who contacted him I never knew until much later.

  Teddy’s club full of his cronies, with their scarred faces and broken noses, all this contrasted nicely with their dark, expensive suits. Cheap cologne enveloped the group and the music struggled to break through the denseness of the cigarette smoke. The choice of song made me smile, Cole Porter’s I’ve still got My Health. I sat back and watched, jumping once when a champagne cork popped off behind me. The women gaudy and blonde most of them, as they twittered away. Not the joyous chirping you’d expect from a dozen or so women drinking and eating for nothing. A collective, cold eyed edge as they stared at the financial options spread around the room. The men must have felt like in an untidy bundle of used notes being viewed by a group of voracious and opportunist women.

  A click of Teddy’s fingers and the drinks materialised as if by magic. I looked around at the other tables, all of us on the take. I stood up and wandered over to the bar. Ordered another drink and slipped a ten shilling note out from my pocket. The girl’s eyes went towards the big framed man stood alongside me, he nodded his head.

  The man lifted his glass my way and said, ‘Cheers.’ He was a thick set man with thick lips and thicker glasses. ‘It’s diabolical what they done to Teddy, he’s a peaceful man – everyone knows that.’

  I stared at the man, he turned out to be Teddy’s older brother. I called him a body guard, but Teddy would have bridled at the suggestion that he needed such protection. I listened as the accolades flowed from short sighted man’s mouth. Like a bad actor that had at least learned his lines well. He spoke with earnestness and in the manner of a cockney who carefully tried to enunciate every word.

  I interrupted his uneasy monologue, ‘How many police here?’

  I’d talked to this man before, months ago, naturally defensive like all of them. Given the chance to brag about how powerful they’d become, caution quickly replaced by effusive carelessness as the chance to impress took over. He looked around the densely packed club, ‘Ten, eleven… eleven, cost a fucking fortune. But it keeps them off our backs.’

  The police turned up a bit like me I supposed, looking for a free drink and scraps of gossip. A chance to turn a minor villain in, a more than better chance off an approach from one of the women. Teddy had crossed the line last year, putting a blade across his wife’s cheek in front of two dozen people. A high profile attack in a Lyons tea room on a Monday afternoon.

  Overstepped the mark just like they all do eventually. Believing their own publicity, the legend, their own invincibility. It cost him the best part of a year in the Scrubs and now he sat like a morose Kaiser looking to fill a void in his life.

  My large fri
end hit the nail on the head, ‘When you lot tell the punters that they should be afraid – then they are afraid. It works well… cuts down on the beatings.’

  A surprisingly perceptive thug.

  Oh well – pleased to be of service.

  I scanned the room again, the men talked in whispers, uneasy with Teddy ’s silence and I drank on the house, along with policeman and local councillors and high flying legal eagles. The established Fleet Street tenet called make the most of it, meant that I necked Teddy’s gin. I glanced across and he sat, dark skinned and sleek, hair brushed neatly to one side. Moustache clipped and the ubiquitous trilby on the table in front of him. Large coat and trilby… everyone tried to look like Humphrey Bogart back then. We had run a series of articles about Lewis just before he was put away. That’s when the photograph with Shirley had been snapped. My battered notebook bent and buckled as I scratched away. Every word of Lewis’s noted, every glib quote, all the thinly veiled threats.

  I supposed that the newspapers were no different back then, more interested in the legend than good copy. Truth shoved way back as we all took drinks and the free theatre tickets and the girls. Right and wrong … not a chance, it was never in the frame. I wanted to enhance these people’s image not shoot them down. Teddy Lewis used us to make his position more secure and a sanitised revue of his benevolent activities appeared in the paper periodically. I gulped his gin, knowing the next would one would be along smartly.

  ‘You having another?’

  I stared at the man’s thick glasses, hypnotised by how myopic he must be. My unconscious thoughts made a sudden and unwelcome appearance as I said, ‘Blind as a bat.’

  He squinted, then stood up and came close to my chair. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Some people in your line of business.’ I had an ability to think on my feet, which was lucky, even if I was sounding more and more like Wyn. ‘Short-sighted, never see the bigger picture.’