Blind Needle (6 page)

I held my breath in total darkness and listened.

Deep masculine voices rumbled from the kitchen but I couldn't make sense of what they were saying. The policemen seemed to be doing most of the talking. I huddled with my knees against my chest, trying not to breathe too deeply because I was afraid I would sneeze: the cubby-hole smelled of mildewed magazines and old dust, of cracked glue in the broken spines of World War I illustrated histories. I held onto my knees, telling myself that I wasn't going to sneeze, that I wouldn't sneeze no matter how much dust there was, that the dust wasn't affecting me at all, that in fact I'd never felt less like sneezing in my life.

The desire became almost unendurable. With my head burrowed in my sleeve and my stomach rigid I listened as the voices swelled louder and the boom of heavy footsteps shook the floor. I waited and prayed for the front door to open but it didn't; the voices rumbled on.

I could picture the two hulking policemen standing there in the dark cramped hallway, taking up most of the space. It seemed they had all the time in the world to loiter and chat about nothing while I slowly expired of suffocation under the stairs.

One of them must have spotted my stuff next to the umbrella stand and asked about it, because I heard Diane Locke say, ‘Oh that, they're just some old clothes for the Oxfam shop, when I get round to it.'

He made a terse comment, which I didn't catch, and Diane Locke gave out a gay peal of laughter, as if it was the wittiest thing she had ever heard in her life.

I didn't hear any more, my eardrums were getting ready to explode. I wondered if there were cases of people expiring by being denied the supreme luxury of a sneeze, even a tiny infinitesimal one.

Distantly, muffled as by a thick blanket, I heard the whine of an engine in reverse gear, and gave a convulsive shudder and a kind of slobbering wheeze. I was coughing and wiping my eyes when Diane Locke slid back the bolt and let me out.

She said, ‘Do you want that coffee now? Or could you take something stronger?'

I followed her into the kitchen and stood watching her as she made a fresh pot of coffee. She said matter-of-factly, ‘Have you caught a cold?'

‘No, it was the dust.'

‘Sit down. It's all right, they won't be back.' She put the coffee and two clean mugs on the table. ‘That was a bit of bad luck. Apparently the trusty, rusty Datsun is still rotting at the side of the road. The police came across it this morning and traced the registration to me.'

‘That was all it was?' I said.

‘They were concerned in case something might have happened to me.' She glanced up, smiling, from pouring the coffee. ‘But as they could see for themselves, nothing had.'

‘It might have done,' I said. ‘It almost did. I'm sorry—'

Diane Locke shook her head briskly. ‘I don't want an apology. You did it because you were frightened and angry. You assumed I'd told the police about you, and in your shoes I'd have thought the same and reacted in the same way, probably.'

‘You could have still given me up,' I said. ‘You had me locked in a cupboard. Why didn't you?'

She looked at me with her direct, unflinching gaze. ‘You're not a criminal, Peter. You're not a violent man either.'

‘Is that so? Living here you have wide experience of criminals and violent men have you?'

‘My husband was a violent man. I had nine years' first-hand experience of it, if you want to know.'

My remark had been shown up for the cheap jibe it was. Diane Locke was a remarkable woman; perhaps all women are remarkable. But in one particular instance she was mistaken. I might not be a
criminal but I was capable of violence, and I would prove it when I caught up with Benson, the man responsible, directly or indirectly – it didn't matter to me which – for Susan's death.

Brickton was sparkling in the sunshine as I came down from the council estate on the hill. The estate had prepared me for the worst. It reminded me of television pictures of Belfast: graffiti, gangs of youths, shuttered shops, broken windows, doors boarded up with plywood, rubbish heaped in corners. Being high up, the estate took the full uninterrupted force of the wind from the sea, blasting through the concrete avenues and buffeting the little privet hedges into withered submission.

It was a town which led nowhere, unless you came to gaze at the endless expanse of sand, at the cold grey Irish Sea, at the vacant horizon. Inland there was great beauty, fields and villages and farms, and further still, mountains and lakes. On the way I had passed through Granthelme, a pleasant and affluent small market town, with a broad graceful river flowing through it, as becoming as any in Sussex or the Cotswolds. But all this might have been a million miles away. When you came past the estate on the hill there was a dislocation in more senses than the geographical, a wrench from the normal that couldn't be measured in time or distance.

For these reasons it now struck me as odd that Benson, of all people, should choose to live here. If not exactly rich, he was, as far as I knew, comfortably off. But of course he wouldn't live ‘here' – not in the town itself. Instead I imagined a large house in its own grounds with a curving gravel drive, sloping lawns, several greenhouses, and with views of cornfields perhaps, a pale road winding aimlessly into the distance, a glimpse of the sea in the cleft of hazy blue hills.

Eventually I came to a busy main road, dust and diesel smoke billowing up in gritty blue clouds from tankers and articulated lorries.
The trailers clanked and rattled emptily and it occurred to me that their purpose was not to transport goods but to grind and clank endlessly through the streets in a parody of industrial busyness, maintaining the illusion in their desperate noise and hurry that schedules were tight, deadlines had to be met, time was money, export or die. There would be a depot somewhere with empty trailers going in one door and empty trailers coming out of another. Men in brown coats with spectacles stuck together with adhesive tape scurried about clutching clipboards and waving sheaves of dockets. Drivers clocked on and off. Managers in glass-walled offices looked down frowningly on the frantic bustle and consulted wall-charts, riffled through desk diaries, picked up the phone and asked to be put through to Maintenance Supplies. The charade kept everyone happy. The lorries and tankers trundled through the streets in circles, taking different routes to vary the monotony. Everyone complained of the noise and the dirt and the smoke – but then that was industry for you. Where there's muck there's brass.

This was the final bitter conundrum: there was plenty of muck all right – floating in the air, lying in the gutters – but where was the brass?

The streetlights came on. The display lights in the shops flickered into life, laying bare for scrutiny their paltry contents: cheap shoes, reconditioned washers and fridges, second-hand clothes, a dusty jumble of broken television sets, heaps of yellowing paperbacks and warped LPs, a row of coloured plastic toilet seats. These were the few traders that were still in business; the rest were silent behind rusty iron grillework or battened over with raw timber covered in fly-posters shiny with glue … St Thomas's Jumble Sale, Admission 10p … New Orleans Trad Jazz Night … Be Born Again – Join the Eternal Flame! … AIDS Helpline at Your Service … We Do House Clearances – Best Prices Paid …

I turned a corner into a narrower, gloomier street. There was a row of flyblown shops, most of them empty and ransacked, one with colour photographs from magazines taped to the window which might have been a gent's hairdressers. Halfway down the street, above a window blurred with condensation, a sign said: E GA FOO S ORE.

There was a ‘Room to Let' card in the window, propped amongst the haricot beans, chickpeas, sacks of roots and jars of chutney.

A bell jangled but no one came. The air was dense with the smell of spices and the mingled odours of an Asian bazaar. Motheaten fans of dried leaves hung from the ceiling, masking the single flourescent tube. Vibrant green vegetable shoots, fastened with rubber bands like bunches of daffodils, and dark purple fruits, shiny as bowling balls, lay in splintered boxes, peeped out through shredded tissue paper.

I could supply the missing ‘D' and ‘T' to make ‘FOO S ORE into ‘FOOD STORE' but I couldn't work out the ‘E GA' part of it. A man appeared with heavy, sad, sleepy eyes and a thick white stubble extending into the open neck of a collarless cotton garment.

I nodded to the card in the window. ‘Is it still free, the room? Available to rent?'

He blinked slowly, heavy eyelids coming down and going up again like wrinkled blinds. ‘You would like this room?' His expression didn't alter, though he sounded faintly incredulous.

‘How much?'

He rubbed the white stubble; his fingernails were long and curved and rimmed with dirt. ‘Twenty pounds. One week,' he said abruptly. He pointed above his head. ‘Up there.'

I shook my head. ‘I don't have that much.' He frowned at me, the blinds closed and slowly opened. ‘It's too much money,' I said. ‘I don't have enough.'

‘Fifteen pounds.'

‘I can give you twelve.'

‘Twelve pounds,' he said, and he nodded. ‘In front.'

He motioned me to come forward. ‘Come through please.'

He came out from behind the boxes and sacks and squirmed sideways to get through a half-open door. The passage was crammed with produce which was why the door couldn't be fully opened. We mounted some dark stairs. The Indian was labouring, his chest wheezing: the smell of garlic enveloped me like a pungent gas. He wore loose slippers over thick white socks, flap-flapping ahead of me across the landing and into a room directly above the shop.

He switched on the light and beckoned me inside.

There was an iron bedstead and a bare flock mattress with broad blue stripes, a bolster without a cover, a few grey blankets on a chair. On the marble top of the washstand, as if to justify that this genuinely
was a ‘Room To Let', some thoughtful soul had placed an enamel bowl inside which was a plastic jug of the type that garages give away in exchange for tokens. The wardrobe had a mirror with a bevelled edge set into the door, and my distorted reflection shimmered across its surface as I went to the window and looked down into the darkened street through lace curtains sagging under their burden of grime. I was safe here. No one lurking in the doorway of the abandoned shop opposite. S – wouldn't have a hope in hell of ever finding me in this godforsaken rat-hole.

‘Where are your luggages?' the Indian asked me.

I turned and held up my bundle.

‘What time do you stay?' He stretched his arms wide as though measuring a fish.

‘A week,' I shrugged. ‘Not longer.'

The heavy eyes studied me.

‘I hope to find work.'

‘Here?' A long slow blink. Stupendous incredulity.

I suddenly found the missing letters to complete the name of his shop. BENGAL. I said rashly, ‘I have a friend – here, in the town – he promised me a job. I'll see him tomorrow.'

‘No money back,' he said sullenly.

‘What?'

‘Twelve pounds for one week or less. No refusal.'

‘No refund,' I said. ‘I understand.'

He flapped across to the washstand and looked inside the jug. Then a thumb with a vicious curved nail jerked towards the landing. ‘Toilet next door.' He twirled an invisible tap. ‘Water – if you need.'

He went to the door, flap-flap-flap, and the sight of the light switch must have reminded him. ‘Lights finish twelve o'clock,' he said, pointing at the bulb in its furred shade. He jabbed down at his feet. ‘I turn box off twelve o'clock. Lights finish,' he swiped the air with his vicious claws.

‘That's okay. I won't need it.'

‘Your friend a businessman?'

‘Sort of, yes.' I dropped my bundle on the floor. ‘A man called Benson.'

He stared at me, eyes dark and liquid, suddenly alert. ‘Councillor
Benson is your friend?'

I leant over the bed, testing it with my outstretched hands. I hadn't expected the name to mean anything, it was just something to reassure him. I said, ‘You know him?'

‘I meet him twice. I make complaints. These yobboes break my window and the police do nothing.' He became agitated. ‘I am respectable. But when the police come they laugh and make' – he swayed to and fro, waving his hands – ‘I dunno the word. Riddles. No, no …'

‘Jokes?'

He nodded vigorously. ‘They make jokes. And do this –' He stood in the doorway, shrugging elaborately under the shapeless garment that hung to his knees. ‘I make complaint to Councillor Benson. He is a businessman like me. B-H Haulage Company Limited. Mr Benson understands.'

The bell tinkled below. He seemed reluctant to leave, as if he had found an ally in the enemy camp, a friend of the powerful. He knew the way the world worked. Business looked after its own. Policemen were untrustworthy, they had the prejudice of their kind. But businessmen didn't let prejudice get in the way of making money. I closed the door, hearing him flap softly down the stairs.

I spread the blankets out, took off my boots, and lay down on the bed. The overhead light, dim as it was, was shining in my eyes. I turned it off and stretched out. I wasn't tired, a little foot-weary that was all, but I needed to think. There was a stacatto babble going on in the shop directly below, faint yet distinct. Now that I had a roof over my head, and a short breathing space, I began to consider more carefully what I had to do and how it should be done.

I hadn't known Benson was a councillor, nor that he owned a haulage firm. That knowledge could be useful – point me in certain directions. Yet how could a haulage company, or any kind of company, I wondered, survive and remain profitable in a place like this? It was blighted, a black spot, an industrial no-man's land. The fishing industry had gone. Tourists didn't come here. There were few, if any, natural resources.