Brothers in Blood (3 page)

‘The worst. Come on there is only one fucking candidate.’

‘Ooh, oh I don’t know,’ I said, playing with him.

‘Ha ha. Now give me her name.’

‘Oh,
her
name. It’s a woman is it?’

‘Don’t be a prick.’

‘You couldn’t possibly be referring to Miss Irene Black, could you?’

Laurence’s eyes lit up with triumph. ‘The very same. Old Mother Black, she of the floral dresses and curly wig.’

It was true, Old Mother Black, as she was generally known by all the students, wore her hair in the scrunchiest perm I’d ever seen, so tight that the hair did not move, not even on the windiest day. Not only that but its unnatural colour contrasted with the pale, ancient wrinkled features beneath it. If it wasn’t a wig, it looked like one. Granny Black was a dinosaur. She should have given up teaching years ago. She was fussy, incompetent and had no understanding or tolerance of young people. As a relic of a bygone age it was appropriate that she taught history. Laurence and I had a particular dislike for the old bag. We didn’t think she was up to the job. She was easily flustered, ill-prepared and unable to move from her notes. Laurence had a particular talent for bowling her a question from left field just for the pleasure of unsettling her, which he did frequently. She’d flush and dither and shuffle her papers. ‘Not now, Barker,’ she would announce distractedly. ‘We’ll come to that later.’ More shuffling of papers.

Laurence took a sip of his beer before continuing. ‘Wouldn’t you like to upset the old cow? I mean
really
upset her. Wouldn’t it give you great pleasure to see Old Mother Black reduced to a nervous wreck?’

I laughed out loud. ‘I’d pay for the privilege,’ I said, an image forming in my head of Old Mother Black, wig askew, on her hands and knees, blubbing for all she was worth.

‘I’ll arrange it for free.’

‘Go on then.’

‘Right. Tell me, Russ, what is Old Mother Black’s pwide and joy?

‘Her knitting bag.’

Laurence raised his eyes in mock frustration. ‘And…’

‘Ah, you mean Caesar.’

‘Hail Caesar. Indeed.’

Caesar was an ageing, arthritic West Highland Terrier that old spinster Black brought to college every day. It would sleep in the back of her Mini for most of the time, but she took it for walks around the grounds at lunchtimes and in her free periods. On some occasions she even brought the smelly mutt into the classroom where it would curl up by her desk and fall asleep. She treated the creature like the child she never had, talking to it in cutesy woo-woo language like stupid women do when leaning over prams. The girls quite liked Caesar, while the boys in the class would have taken great delight in booting the dog in the bollocks.

‘What about Caesar?’ I asked.

‘We kidnap the beast. Snatch it from its hearth and home.’

I laughed. I didn’t know whether Laurence was serious or not but the idea tickled me greatly.

‘Can you imagine the histrionics, the floods of tears? The old bag would be reduced to a quivering wreck.’ Laurence now adopted the fluttery, whining voice that closely approximated the tones of Old Mother Black. ‘Oh my Ceasar-weasar has gone. He’s been taken from his mummy. I can’t go on. I just can’t go on.’ With a little shriek, he threw his head down on the table in a comic display of mock sobbing.

One or two of the aged boozers whiling away their afternoon with a glass of mild gave us a puzzled glance before turning back to their geriatric reveries.

I giggled and joined in the improvised drama of Old Mother Black’s kidnapped pooch. I pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed it to my eyes. ‘He was my whole life,’ I sniffled. ‘I loved him like a first born, my little Ceasary – weasary.’

More looks from the pensioners as we collapsed in laughter. Silly, giddy young lads, their disapproving glances seemed to say; they’ve no idea how to behave in a pub.

‘See how much fun the idea is,’ said Laurence suddenly becoming serious. ‘But how much better when we actually do it.’

‘You’re not joking, are you?’

‘Of course not. There’s no real cleverness or thrill in just thinking these things up unless… unless you do them. Put them into practice. That’s where the real enjoyment comes.’

‘Kidnap Old Mother Black’s dog?’

Laurence nodded. ‘Precisely. However, if you’re frightened, a little chicken maybe … then I’ll have to do it on my own.’

‘I’m not chicken.’

‘Well, then, mon brave, are you up for it?’ His eyes sparkled brightly with humour and excitement.

I couldn’t resist such a look. ‘I’m in.’

‘Good man,’ he said with a grin and laughed out loud. ‘Then the game’s on.’

THREE

JOURNAL OF RUSSELL BLAKE 1968-1970

Laurence had done his detective homework in preparation for our adventure. By slipping into the college secretary’s office when she had popped out to the loo, he had rifled through the staff files and located Old Mother Black’s address. So on Saturday morning we caught a bus out to Woodcroft, a tweeville suburb of town where she lived … in a thirties bungalow called The Haven. When we saw the name on the gatepost, Laurence put his fingers down his throat and produced a gagging sound.

‘Well at least it’s not DunRoamin,’ I said.

‘DunTeachin would be better.’

There were frilly net curtains at the windows, a neat, boring lawn and a shiny brass letter box. It was just as we had imagined.

We stood across the road from The Haven, partially shielded from view by the bus shelter. Old Mother Black’s light blue Mini was parked in the drive at the side of the bungalow, but there was no sign of the old biddy herself. Suddenly I began to feel very stupid. What on earth was I doing here wasting my time on this fruitless exploit? How could we grab the bloody dog without being seen? And what would we do if we got it? It all was rather silly.

‘So now we are here, what on earth do we do?’ I said, unable to keep the note of irritation from my voice.

Laurence shrugged. ‘Haven’t got that far. It’s not going to be easy, is it? We have to get the dog away from Old Mother Black without her knowing.’

‘Well, that’s going to be impossible. She has the thing with her where ever she goes. Probably takes the beast to bed with her.’

‘That’s an avenue of thought down which I have no wish to travel… Ah, talk of the devil…’ whispered Laurence, pulling his woolly cap down as far as he could and pointing.

Old Mother Black had emerged from the side door of the bungalow with her precious Caesar on a lead. She unlocked her car and let the creature clamber into the back seat. She said something to the dog. We could not hear the words, but we recognised the simpering tone. Then she got in the car herself and after some moments while she adjusted her seat belt, checked her mirror and turned around to mouth some further soppy comments to the dog, she reversed out of the driveway slowly and set off down the road.

‘That’s our kidnapping plans up the spout,’ I observed pithily.

‘Oh, Brother Russell, you do give up rather too easily. I never said this was going to be a piece of cake. But everything comes to he who waits. It’s Saturday morning. No doubt she’s gone shopping. There are all those doggy biscuits to buy and cans of Woofy meaty chunks.’

‘Or she could have gone off for the day.’

Laurence shook his head. ‘She’d have taken stuff for the dog if she was going to be away that long. Water and its bowl and probably a tin of dog food. Nah, she’ll be back in an hour. You mark my words.’

‘I’d like to mark a part of your anatomy instead. This is a crazy plan.’

‘Of course it’s a fucking crazy plan! Is there any other type you’d like to be involved with? Something safe and predictable perhaps? Nicking Mars bars from Woolworth’s?’

‘Well at least I’d have some Mars bars to show for my efforts.’

Laurence grinned and I couldn’t resist him when he grinned. ‘So you don’t want to be in my gang now then, is that it?’ he said with mock dismay. ‘I’m not keeping you here under duress, y’know. You can bog off anytime you like. But you wait until Monday morning when the news of Old Mother Black’s tragedy is the talk of the college – oh, how you’ll wish you’d been part of it then.’

‘I am still part of it – for the moment.’

‘Right, well I suggest that we’re safe to go now and we can come back in say an hour when I predict Old Mother Black will have returned from her shopping trip.’

‘What then?’

‘We play it by ear. We wait and watch.’

‘And I thought you said this was going to be exciting.’

‘Come on, misery guts, I’ll buy you a cup of tea if we can find a café somewhere round here.’

We did find a café about a mile away in a dilapidated row of shops which had once been the hub of the little suburb of Woodcroft. Now the green grocers and shoe shop had closed down and the other premises had clearly seen better days. Obviously the inhabitants were catching buses into town to get cheaper goods in the one stop supermarket there.

Laurence did buy me a cup of tea in the quaint little tea shop which was inhabited solely by visitors from the old lady planet. The place was full of them, as though the café owner had bought a job lot. The whiff of moth balls nearly knocked us out as we entered. Even the waitress was wheelchair fodder and she seemed shocked to have customers of our tender years on the premises. She treated us with suspicion as though we’d escaped from some penal institution. No doubt to her any male under twenty five was a thug.

Eventually, we were served our tea and Laurence lit a cigarette. On witnessing this exhibition of youthful decadence there was a lot of tut-tutting from the throng of geriatric ladies, not unlike the clucking of hens at feeding time. ‘Perhaps I should have lit a moth ball instead,’ grinned my companion before blowing a glorious mouthful of smoke into the air with dramatic aplomb.

As he did so, my attention was caught by a figure passing the window. It was Old Mother Black. ‘Bloody hell!’ I exclaimed rather louder than I intended, confirming again to the aged jury that young people were the work of the devil. In a hurried whisper I relayed the news to Laurence.

‘Let’s scarper,’ he said, stubbing out his cigarette in the saucer.

Within seconds were out on the street again. ‘Which way was she going?’

I pointed down the street and lo and behold there she was, emerging from the newsagents and heading towards us like a galleon in full sail. Luckily she was too wrapped up in her own thoughts to take any note of her surroundings. We did an about face and began strolling at a steady pace away from her.

‘I don’t think she recognised us.’

‘Nah,’ agreed Laurence as he cast a glance over his shoulder. ‘Hey, slow down, boy. Our luck is in. She’s going into the café.’

And so she was, but even better, she had tied up Caesar to the rail outside.

We didn’t need to discuss matters. We knew exactly what we had to do. And we proceeded to do it. Casually we strolled back towards the café where we knelt down apparently making a fuss of the dog while Laurence untied its lead and then, just as casually, we walked off trailing little Caesar behind us. The dog offered no resistance. He was probably glad to get away from his simpering mistress.

‘Pity we can’t stay around to see Old Mother Black’s face when she comes out,’ I said.

‘That is a pleasure we shall have to forgo. Come on.’ Snatching the dog up and carrying it under his arm, Laurence set off at a trot. I followed.

‘Now we’ve got the stinking mutt, what do we do with him?’ I asked, some five minutes later as we continued to jog along a series of side roads, the thrill and excitement of snatching the creature having already dissipated.

‘The whole purpose of this exercise was to upset Old Mother Black, to bring the black cloud of doom to hover over – no not to hover over, to envelop her head. Agreed?’

‘Agreed.’

‘We’re not in the business of sending ransom notes and trying to extract some financial reward for our efforts.’

‘Certainly not. That involves the police and investigations which may well lead to discovery.’

‘Yup. It’s our job just to make little Caesar dog disappear.’

‘And how do we do that?’

Laurence grinned his chilling grin. ‘We bury it, of course.’

And we did bury the dog. We did it that night in strange ceremony which involved drinking several cans of beer and digging a deep hole in some woodland near where Laurence lived. He’d taken the dog home and locked it in the garden shed until nightfall when we met up again.

Armed with a large stone each, we took turns in beating the dog’s brains out. He whelped and wriggled after the first two blows but then he soon lay still as we turned his head into the consistency of raspberry jam. At first I had been nervous, well frightened really, about actually doing the deed. It had been a fun exercise up to now but actually killing the dog was perhaps taking things a bit too far. Or so I thought; but I would never have admitted these feelings to Laurence. I just followed his lead. Buoyed up by the beer, I suppressed my reluctance and joined in the ritual killing with some relish. Strangely, I found it a rather satisfying experience.

We dumped the creature into the hole we’d dug and then filled it in. ‘I come not to praise Caesar, but to bury him,’ intoned Laurence, stamping down the earth with his foot. After scattering a pile of dead leaves over the grave, Laurence uttered some words of gobbledy gook, poured a splash of beer over the dog’s resting place and then with silly satisfied grins on our faces and arms around each other’s shoulders we wandered back to the road and our own individual beds.

FOUR

JOURNAL OF RUSSELL BLAKE 1968-1970

I didn’t see Laurence on the Sunday. We thought it best not to meet. We needed time to come down from our exhilarating experience; time to savour it a little. As usual, I had Sunday lunch with my parents while they bickered and then read the papers, virtually oblivious of my presence. They could never raise their game to a full blown argument, which I would have admired and enjoyed; it was all just gentle sniping and muttered undertones. I longed to lean over the table and tell them what I’d been doing the day before, giving them a graphic account and taking great delight in seeing their shocked and outraged faces. But I didn’t. Instead I sat quietly by while they snapped and moaned. Apart from that elegant bit of socialising I stayed in my room reading and doing some essay work, but after a while I allowed my mind to wander back to the events of the previous day, particularly the killing of the dog. I remember feeling a tingle of excitement as I recalled the image of the creature’s shiny red skull and its dead sightless eyes staring up at me. It’s odd that I felt no guilt or regret about our actions. In fact quite the reverse. The whole thing had made me feel alive and vibrant, interacting with the world for once in a vital fashion, instead of just being a spectator. And I had Laurence to thank for that.