Gordon Williams (14 page)

For the first time he began to feel real fear. If more of them had arrived – suppose they’d found Janice murdered? The villagers might come in force, a lynch party. From what he’d seen of Dando folk they were capable of anything. Mysterious people.

Somebody knocked at the door. He went into the hall.

“Go away,” he said, lacking the energy to shout. He felt weary.

“It’s me,” said a muffled voice.

“Yeah. Who’re you?”

“Bill Knapman.”

“Oh. Just a minute.” He opened the door with the chain still in its catch. He saw that it was Knapman. “Come in.”

He chained and bolted the door again.

“You got through the enemy lines okay then?” he said. “Come into the sitting-room. Maybe they’ve run out of rocks.”

“I told them to clear off. Tom Hedden’s out there, Norman Scutt and Phil Riddaway. Been drinking. Reckon Tom’s fair gone crazy with this business.”

He didn’t say anything about the shotgun. There was no point in telling the American, Tom might get in trouble just for carrying the gun. Bill Knapman was sure they would go away now that he was on the scene.

“The wife sent this down,” he said, bringing the turkey out from under his coat, holding it by the neck. George Magruder laughed.

“Where’s Niles then?” Knapman asked.

“He’s upstairs attending to the call of nature. As a famous maniac he’s a disappointment in the flesh – about the size of that bird and not as healthy looking. Come on up and have a look at him. Boy, am I glad you’re here. Those guys had us worried. They’ve heaved three rocks already.”

He slipped the bolt on the lavatory door. Niles was still on the lavatory seat, his underpants round his ankles, the blanket round his shoulders.

“I’ve got the runs,” he said, looking up at them, more than ever like a pathetic child. “It wasn’t my fault.”

Bill Knapman shook his head. George saw Niles staring, then he realised it was the turkey. It would be easy, for a man like Knapman, to break Niles’ neck. Get it all over with. Like spearing a boil.

“Shout when you’re finished,” he said.

“I’m cold,” said Niles.

“Yeah, well don’t sit there all night.”

He closed the door.

“Not much to look at, is he?” said Knapman, shaking his head. “Why they don’t hang them buggers I’ll never know. What good is he to anybody? Better off dead I reckon.”

They went along to the bedroom. George was glad in more ways
than one that Knapman had arrived. Maybe his presence would cheer Louise up.

“You go on downstairs, I’ll just see to Karen,” he said.

She had her head almost under the blankets but her eyes were wide open.

“It’s all right, honey, they’ve gone away now,” he said. “Why don’t you go to sleep? Well take care of everything. You weren’t scared, were you?”

“I
hate
it here.”

“So do I, honey. We’ll see about going home, first thing. But it’s all right for tonight. Give Daddy a goodnight kiss. Sleep tight, old bean, chin up and all that, eh?”

She managed a little smile.

“Good job I brought something along, like,” said Chris Cawsey, taking a full bottle of rum out of his big outside pocket. He pulled the cork and took a pull. He touched Tom Hedden’s arm with the bottle. Tom Hedden had a pull.

“Bugger Bill Knapman,” he said. They were standing in the shelter of the old shed across the road from the farmhouse. Bert Voizey had pulled Tom in there before he could start anything with Bill Knapman. “It’s my Janice he took, weren’t it? What’s bloody Knapman stickin’ his nose in for?”

“He’s a knowall that Knapman,” said Norman Scutt. “Thinks he can push people about.”

“That Niles is an animal,” said Tom Hedden. “He’s goin’ to pay for my Janice.”

“Too bloody right, Tom. He’s goin’ to pay this time. They won’t let him get away with it again, dirty murderin’ pig!”

They stood together watching the front of the house, the rum bottle passing round. All of them thought of different things, yet they were all there for the same reasons. They were the men nobody took notice of. They were the men who’d never had any luck. All their lives other people had told them what to do, had insulted them, put them in gaol, sneered at them, kept them poor. All the years of resentment were now at flash point. They had the best reason in the world, the one reason that could bring them together, out in the open, face to face with an enemy. Tom Hedden’s chest heaved with anger. Bill Knapman had told him to clear off, as though he was a village kid, a nobody. What had happened to his Janice didn’t matter, oh no, that Niles could come here and murder his daughter and
they
didn’t care, just old Tom Hedden’s girl, not right in the head anyway. Oh no, they didn’t care. It wasn’t their daughters that had been took, only a Hedden brat.

Norman Scutt, the burglar and petty thief, had come there because Niles took him back to a world where he was somebody, the world of prison. Men like Niles were the lowest of the low. He made a thief feel like a judge. Norman Scutt had slept in the same bed with three younger brothers until he was sixteen – when he’d first been sent to a Borstal. Norman Scutt liked to burgle houses. Being in a well-furnished room with a big bed and thick carpets and women’s stuff on a dressing-table gave him erections. He lusted to be in houses like that. He hated the people who lived in them, because he couldn’t understand why they lived in posh bedrooms and he’d slept with three young brothers. He liked to chuck their drawers on the floor, to stub fag ends out on their swanky carpets – best of all, to make a mess on their carpets, right where it would hit them in the face.

Chris Cawsey liked to touch his own body with the knife. It made him giggle and then pant with excitement. He liked to cut into things. Cats as a boy, kittens, hens... then sheep. Now he felt like giggling. To do it in a gang, that was better than dodging about in fields on his own. He’d already had a bit of fun that night, just enough to give him the taste.

Bert Voizey liked to poison rats because it made him the man who poisoned rats. People knew him as the rat man, people didn’t like rats, they were frightened of rats. They looked at him in a funny way because he knew all about rats. It wasn’t often he did things with other people. Other people didn’t like him. Now he was with mates, they liked him.

Phillip Riddaway just liked being with Norman. Norman was his pal. Norman didn’t laugh at him.

“I want that Niles,” said Tom Hedden. “I don’t care what that Knapman says, I’m goin’ to get that Niles.”

“Wait till Bill pushes off, Tom,” said Norman.

“No, bugger him, I’m after that Niles.”

Tom Hedden left the shelter of the old shed and started across the lane, a strong, thickset man, a jerkiness about his walk, half-drunk, his feet stumbling through the snow.

“GIVE ME THAT NILES,” he roared at the curtained windows of the farmhouse. “HE DONE IN MY JANICE.”

Bill Knapman was about to leave when they heard the shouts. He looked through the curtains.

“It’s Tom Hedden, I’d better go out and speak to him,” he said to the Magruders. He could see they were frightened. He felt very confident. These people were outsiders, they didn’t know the Dando folk. In the absence of police – or any other authority – it was up to
somebody like him to take a lead. “Don’t worry about old Tom, he’s just over-wrought, that’s all. I know him, he’ll do what I tell him.”

George Magruder took a look through the curtains.

“Is that a gun of some kind he’s carrying?” he asked.

“No, I don’t think old Tom would have a gun,” Knapman said, smiling at Louise. “They’re a bit crazy at times round here but they aren’t that bad.”

“Do you think you should go out?” said Louise.

“I’m not worried about Tom Hedden,” said Knapman.

George felt secure. Knapman was a local, he knew all these people, he spoke their language.

In the shed across the road the other men had a last swig of rum and then they came out across the lane, to see what was going to happen.

“I’ll shoot the door down if I don’t get that Niles,” Tom Hedden shouted.

Before Bill Knapman went outside he told George to put on the porch light.

“Just to let Tom see who it is,” he said, smiling again at Louise. “Wouldn’t want him thinking I’m Henry Niles or nothing. You’d better stay inside, they know me.”

He opened the door and stepped out in the open-fronted porch.

“Hullo then, Tom,” he called. “What’s all this then, out lookin’ for rabbits on a night like this?”

“I’m lookin’ for Niles.”

“Now now, Tom, us don’t want no trouble here like, do us?”

Bill Knapman walked out into the garden. He was still smiling.

“You’m bein’ a bit stupid ain’t you, Tom? What’s all this chuckin’ bricks through these folks’ windows, eh? You’m ought to have more sense, man.”

Tom Hedden had heard that voice all his life. Big farmers telling him he didn’t ought to drink so much, bank managers telling him
he couldn’t borrow money, landlords telling him he’d had enough to drink, agricultural inspectors telling him he wasn’t farming right, always the same voice saying the same things, come off it, Tom Hedden, stop drinking, Tom Hedden, give up your farm, Tom Hedden, pity about your little girl, Tom Hedden, can’t do nothing for your little girl, Tom Hedden, put her in a home, Tom Hedden, we can’t take her in a home, Tom Hedden, change your ways, Tom Hedden, treat your wife right, Tom Hedden, work harder, Tom Hedden, go into a factory, Tom Hedden, right from the start, the same men with bigger farms, with more money, looking down on him, making jokes at him, always the same thing, having to borrow from those men, having to be polite, to hold his cap in his hand.

He raised the shotgun till its double barrels pointed just above Bill Knapman’s head.

“You tell’m I want that Niles,” he said. “You’m tell’m, Bill Knapman, or I’11 come in an’ get’m.”

“Don’t be so bloody stupid.”

Bill Knapman walked towards Tom Hedden. Snowflakes hit his cheeks.

Tom Hedden thought of all the times he’d heard Bill Knapman talk to him like that. All right for him, he’d started off all right.
He
didn’t have bad land.
He
didn’t have a poor little girl who wasn’t right. Oh no, not Bill Bloody Knapman, he was one of them, friends with the Colonel and the vicar and all that sort. Oh yeah, and friends with that bloody yank. Him that was protecting the murdering devil Niles.

There’s a good chap, Tom Hedden. No more of your foolishness, Tom Hedden.

“Come on, Tom, you bugger, give us that bloody gun and stop all this nonsense!”

“Nonsense! What about my Janice then? It weren’t one of your’n, Bill Knapman! No, it were my Janice. Her never had a chance, from the day her were born. He come here and did it to my Janice. I’m goin’ to kill him!”

Bill Knapman saw the others coming up behind Tom Hedden.

“Hey, you lot, Norman Scutt! You get hold of Tom and get him out of here. There wont be nothin’ said if he goes now.”

“What’s it got to do wi’ you then?” Norman Scutt shouted back. “You’m think you’re the bloody police or somethin’?”

“You’ll know all about the police if you don’t clear out of here,” Bill Knapman replied, angry now. This riff-raff needed to be shouted at. He’d been faced with this kind of thing years ago in the Military Police. He knew how to deal with it. Sharpish.

“I want that gun, Tom, you’re too drunk to know what you’re doing.” He walked forward. “And you lot bugger off, bloody trouble-makers.”

“That madman killed his Janice,” Norman Scutt shouted back. “If he didn’t kill her he knows where her is.”

“Shut up, Scutt!”

He went at Tom Hedden, walking fast, hands out for the gun.

“Leave me alone,” Tom Hedden said, his voice low with bitterness and hate.

Bill Knapman got his hands on the barrel. He tried to pull it out of Hedden’s hands.

Phillip Riddaway had listened to everything. Most of all he’d listened to Norman. He jumped to help Tom Hedden. Bill Knapman had hold of the barrels of the shotgun. He and Tom Hedden
swayed as they pulled in opposite directions. Phillip Riddaway tried to push Bill Knapman in the chest. The other three moved closer.

George Magruder saw them from the front door, dark figures locked in a slow moving dance. Should he go out? Would that make it worse?

Boom!

One of the figures jumped backwards as though jerked by a string. For a few moments it tottered on its heels and then went down, backwards. It threshed about for a few, never-ending moments. Then it lay still, a dark hole in the snow.

The other figures stood still. George Magruder gripped his upper lip between finger and thumb until the pain made him wince.

They’d shot Bill Knapman!

“You dirty bastards,” he shouted, moving out of the doorway into the porch. They looked at him. “You dirty murdering bastards!”

“Here, he’s hardly got no head left at all,” Chris Cawsey exclaimed, bending over Bill Knapman’s body. “You’m done for him proper, Tom.”

Phillip Riddaway couldn’t understand it.

“You didn’t want to kill nobody,” he said, his great face in a frown.

“You guys will pay for this!” George Magruder shouted.

“Shut up and give me that Niles,” Tom Hedden shouted back.

Bert Voizey wanted to run and hide.

“We’m better off out of here, Norman,” he said. “I didn’t reckon on murderin’ nobody.”

“That’s too bad for us is all in it now.”

“I never killed nobody!”

“Tell that to the coppers. It’s the law. It don’t matter who done it, us is all in it together. We all get the same blame, equal.”

“What’ll us do, Norman?” Phil Riddaway asked. He sounded plaintive.

Norman Scutt knew he was the leader. He had the brains. He knew the law. They’d all get done now for manslaughter. At the very least. There was nowhere they could hide, the Yank knew their faces.

“I’m buggered if I’m goin’ to gaol for that devil Niles!” He knew what their only hope was.

They all thought of prison. It was the most terrifying thing they could imagine. They were trapped.

“You’m killed one,” said Norman Scutt. “Another won’t make no difference. Nobody but him and his wife knows it was us. I don’t want to be in gaol till I’m an old man.”