Secret Story (43 page)

He was only doing his best to lose her, Kathy strove to think. She watched him swing away from the disused observatory and march along the ridge towards the inert windmill. The route would take him into Birkenhead—and then she remembered the road that cleft the hill, and the unfenced edge from which she’d had to save him when he was nine years old. “Don’t go that way,” she begged, sprinting to catch up with him. “There’ll be people. Do you want to be seen?”

“I won’t be going that far.”

She wouldn’t have been sure that he had the drop to the road in mind if his gaze hadn’t strayed in that direction and immediately veered aside. She made a grab for his arm, but he was already out of reach. She skidded on a patch of lichen and fell to her knees on the rock. “Stop, Dudley, listen,” she cried, but could think of nothing to add. Then he halted like a runner awaiting the start of a race, because his mobile was ringing.

Kathy scrambled to her feet and overtook him again. “Are you sure you ought to answer that?” she chattered as he snatched out the phone. “You don’t know who may be trying to find you.”

“I don’t care. They’ll be too late.” He continued staring at her as he said “Dudley Smith. Mr Killogram.”

She saw the response bring regret into his eyes. “Hello, Vincent,” he said. “No, I’m not writing now . . . More actors? That’s men, is it? How many? . . . You know who we ought to have got to play Mr Killogram?”

Kathy knew at once but was beyond grasping what difference it would ultimately have made. “Me,” Dudley said, and she was dismayed not to know if she ought to agree. “Don’t worry, I can’t
now,” he told Vincent. “Start without me if I’m not there. I can still trust you, can’t I? Choose whoever you think is most like Mr Killogram.”

He slipped the phone into his pocket and hurried towards the bridge over the road. “There you are, you’ll have something to remember me by,” he said without looking back. “
Meet Mr Killogram
.”

“I don’t want to remember you. I want you with me.” That was too vague, but she could scarcely bear to add “I want you alive.”

“You should have thought of that before,” he said and picked up speed as he passed the windmill.

Kathy peered across the bridge in the hope of seeing somebody out for a walk. She’d warned him away from people, but surely their presence would inhibit him now. Everything was as immobile and useless as the vanes of the windmill. She willed him to be heading for the bridge, even if that meant he was continuing to flee her. He had almost reached it when he swerved towards the unprotected drop to the road. “Don’t,” she nearly screamed, then tried to laugh. “You’re just acting like someone in one of your stories.”

“Why shouldn’t I? I always was.”

Whether by accident or from bravado, he kicked a stone. It rattled across the slab ahead of him and vanished over the brink. After a silence like a lack of breath it hit the road. Though the impact was barely audible, it made Kathy’s head ring like a rusty bell. It failed to daunt her son, who strode after the pebble as if eager to follow it down. “Dudley, listen,” she cried.

He hadn’t waited to do so last time, and he didn’t now. “I’ll tell them it was my fault,” she promised as she dashed past the bridge. “Not just the way I brought you up by myself. I used to take drugs before you were born. That has to have something to do with it. I’ll make them listen. They’ll have to understand, and then . . .”

She didn’t know how to go on, but she must. He’d halted at the edge of the drop and was gazing at her with some kind of invitation in his eyes. Her next words might be the most important act in the whole of her life. “We both need help,” she pleaded.

His expression flickered as if he couldn’t even make the effort to look contemptuous. “I don’t,” he said and stepped over the edge.

Kathy felt the darkness flood her skull. She could hardly see as she lunged to snatch him back. The blackness seemed to delay her sight, so that she scarcely knew whether she was imagining that Dudley hadn’t fallen after all—had saved himself by stepping on a ledge immediately below the brink. The image might have been projected on her dark—the spectacle of her son dodging aside and thrusting out a leg to trip her up. She heard him speak as if he no longer cared what she overheard. “I should have got Patricia first,” he muttered.

There was nothing she could clutch for support except him. Her arm hooked his waist as she toppled over the edge. She saw him gape down at her as he tried to wriggle free and to maintain his footing. He managed neither. Though she was gazing up at him, her tall son, he looked like a child outraged and terrified by the unfairness of the world. She couldn’t bear that, and she made a final bid to protect him, though she was barely able to suck in enough of the air that was rushing past them to speak. “There was a boy and his mother who could fly,” she began.

When all the party had visited the buffet at the Year of the Liver Bird restaurant more than twice, and an Oriental rock band called Hung Like Sammo had finished its first set, Walt stood up at the head of the long table. “Well, was that the greatest Chinese meal you ever had in Liverpool?”

The general murmur could have been taken for at least qualified agreement, although Tony Chan kept his peace on behalf of the Chinese community, and as the restaurant reviewer Denise Curran murmured “This week.”

“There’s that Scouse humour. Nothing like it in the world. Don’t forget it isn’t just all you can eat, it’s all you can drink on me. Has anyone not had enough?”

He was gazing at Patricia, perhaps only because she was seated at the far end. “I’m fine,” she said and really didn’t need Valerie to pat her hand.

“Okay, so long as nobody has an empty glass, why don’t we raise them to the magazine. Here’s to
Mersey Mouth
.”

Patricia felt as if the jumbled responses were blurring her words. “
Mersey Mouth
.”

“We went for three great issues. I’m just sorry there wasn’t more of a public for us, but absolutely nobody should feel they’re to blame. I guess the controversy didn’t help after all, and people saying we couldn’t make up our minds what we were going to publish. And maybe there’s something to the notion that some Brits don’t like enterprise and want to see it fail, but let me tell you it was as fine a magazine as I’ve ever been a part of. So here’s to everybody that was involved, even if they aren’t here tonight. Raise a glass to yourselves.”

When the enthusiastic clinking at the edges and along the middle of the table died down, Walt said “I could name everyone, but I don’t want to monopolise your evening, so let me single out just a couple. Let’s hear it for our more than talented editor Valerie Martingale.”

Patricia met her mother’s eyes and lifted her glass high. “Valerie,” she agreed loudest of anyone, and was sipping her Chardonnay as Walt said “And Patricia, for doing so much more than anyone has a right to be expected to do.”

She could tell that he’d worked on his phrasing, but she sensed that it made her fellow diners almost as uncomfortable as she felt. She spoke before it could revive the nightmares that she didn’t have every night now—wakening to find her head wrapped in tape when it had only strayed under the bedclothes, or feeling water close with infinite slowness over her bound body, or opening her eyes to see Dudley grinning down at her. “I should never have got myself into that situation. I wouldn’t make much of a detective.”

“But you were there as a journalist. I don’t know any reporters that would have put themselves through that.”

“She didn’t have a choice,” Valerie said. “She was there as a victim.”

Patricia laid one hand on her mother’s and gazed along the table. “No, I was there as an idiot.”

“Sounds like you’ve come out of it feisty at any rate,” Walt said. “I’d say anything positive we can salvage from that whole sad business is worth having. Do you all know about Vincent’s new project?”

“Nobody’s mentioned it to me,” David Kwazela said with enough hauteur for his entire African community.

“He’s found a way of dealing with the issues his other film would have brought up.”

Vincent pushed his spectacles closer to his eyes. “I’ll be questioning them, anyway.”

“Tell him about it, Vincent,” Walt said and sat down.

“I’ll be investigating how Dudley Smith is becoming a cultural icon. Somebody’s set up a web site about him, the Scouse Slayer. People think he killed more people than the police are letting on. The new thing at school is kids saying they’ll send each other a killogram. The council’s trying to stop a stall in Church Street selling mugs with his face on them that say Dud the Lad . . .”

“How are you going to investigate all that?” David Kwazela interrupted.

“And other things as well, like how fiction and reality depend on each other. I think maybe it’ll be a new kind of film. I’ll be filming parts of the script we had and intercutting them with reconstructions of the actual events and interviews with the relatives if I can get them. They ought to agree when they hear what my approach is.”

“Don’t you think it could still be controversial?”

“I hope.”

As David Kwazela stuck out his bottom lip and took his gaze elsewhere, Vincent said across three intervening diners “I definitely
need to film you, Patricia. It won’t be complete without the survivor. I thought I could show how that last weekend might have seemed to him and how it really was for you. I’d use an actress if you didn’t want to go through it all again. So long as you can talk about it.”

Patricia sat up straighter, because everyone was either watching her or avoiding it. “I don’t know what I could say that would be any use.”

“Try saying you encouraged Dud.”

Walt stood up again as the speaker advanced. “Monty, we thought you weren’t coming.”

“I’ve been drinking with some of me mates that write pomes. That’s why you reckoned you could say anything you like about Dud, was it?”

“I don’t believe we’ve been doing that.”

“That’s a rhyme. Watch out or you’ll end up a poet.”

“Excuse me,” Valerie said before Monty had quite finished. “May I ask how you think Patricia encouraged your son?”

“You did and all. And you, Vince. I’m surprised at you. You started out like a true Scouser and then you wanted to make a film about one that’s a criminal, like people don’t reckon we all are.”

“I wouldn’t have without Dudley, you know.”

“That’s what I’m saying. You could have tried to get him to write something healthy but you made him worse.”

“I don’t see how anybody here can be said to have done that,” Valerie objected.

“Forgot Shell Garridge already? I thought she was one of your mates.”

“I wouldn’t have said she was responsible for, if you’ll forgive me, what he was.”

“Me neither. Never did. They’re making out now he may have killed her too. Killing anybody’s out of order, but how could
he have done it to someone like her if he’d known what he was doing? If he did it shows he was totally warped in the head.”

Patricia was thinking that her experience did, and trying not to let the memories spring up at her, when Monty said “Still, I don’t reckon anyone’s to blame so much as his mother.”

“You don’t,” Valerie said and kept her eyes on him.

“She killed him, didn’t she? Killed both of them. If you ask me that’s because she couldn’t stand the guilt. Used to take drugs, maybe that’s why. Pity about her, I’m not saying it’s not, but I wish she’d left him so he could have got some help.”

“Unless it was Dudley who killed them,” Patricia felt bound to propose.

Monty let her feel his stare before he said “I’m not that convinced he killed anyone.”

“Are you suggesting she made up what he did to her?” Valerie demanded. “Or are you trying to blame her for that as well?”

“I’m sure he can’t be,” Patricia said. “Anyway, the police are certain about Dudley. They managed to retrieve the dates on his computer.”

This was addressed to Monty, who redoubled his stare. “I don’t need you to tell me. Doesn’t prove that much. He never wrote that crap about Shell Garridge, that’s for sure. That was his mam. She hid it from everyone, even him.”

She was wondering if there was anything truthful to be said that might leave him feeling less robbed of his son when Monty turned on Vincent. “I’m betting you’ll believe whatever makes you the most money. Thank shite I haven’t got to work with you any more.”

Vincent gave the cluttered table his attention, widening his eyes so vigorously that his spectacles slid down his nose. “I’m off back to drink with some real people,” Monty announced. “If any of youse want to join me, come ahead.”

When he’d finished observing the general discomfort he
made his way with studied dignity to the exit and stalked away along the dock. By then Walt had cleared his throat. “I guess we can understand how he feels even if we don’t agree with everything he said. But you carry on doing what you do best, Vincent, and Patricia, I hope you will too.”

“What are you thinking that is?”

“I’ll tell you what I think it could be. I was talking over some ideas with a publisher in London, and the one she liked best was a book by you.”

“What about?” Patricia said and immediately knew.

“All your encounters with Dudley Smith. We agreed nobody living could have more insight into him. You could interview people if you like, but it’s your story. The only thing is she’d want the book as soon as possible, while he’s hot.”

Patricia was quiet long enough to suggest she was considering the proposal. “Thanks, Walt, but it isn’t for me. I don’t want to write, I want to survive.”

“Can’t you do both? Mightn’t one help the other? If it isn’t for you it isn’t for anybody.”

“You wouldn’t have time, would you, Patricia?” Valerie intervened. “You’ll be too busy with your other work. She’s just been made the Merseyside correspondent for
Northern Girl
,” she informed the diners with some pride.

“Isn’t that the magazine you’re working for now?” Vincent enquired.

“That’s
Northwest
. Patricia’s being independent.”

“Sounds that way,” Walt said.