Snowstop (18 page)

‘Chop him up for firewood, except we've got plenty.' Wayne took a bottle of whisky from the bar and poured three glasses. ‘You only won the hotel playing at Monopoly. Here, drink this, and calm down.'

Fred knocked the glass away, and went after it at a swing from Garry's fist. ‘Waste not, want not, you daft prick. What a way to behave.' He turned to Wayne. ‘Cheers, then, mate. Now we can get stuck in.'

‘I even put a tenner in the till,' Wayne said, ‘so he needn't have refused to drink with us. We was only being polite, but he must have been dragged up. Do you think he's hurt?'

‘He deserves to be,' Garry said, ‘the unsociable bastard.'

Fred rubbed his pained elbow, and would say no more. He dragged a chair to the bar and sat down, nothing to be done at the threat of such force from the scum of the planetary system, who must in any case know that justice was always done. Or was it? But he would get every brass farthing back, and maybe even a bit to spare.

Four years ago, after Doris had come into a legacy from an aunt, he decided not to manage a pub any more, nor she to be the drudge of a publican's wife. His life savings nearly equalled her windfall, and the rest of the money for The White Cavalier was raised by a bank loan. But last year Doris had had enough of the even worse toil of keeping a hotel, and departed with the cook to run a fish and chip bar in Brighton. She wrote now and again, to make sure of getting her share of the money, because Fred had talked of finding another place.

Since taking The White Cavalier (which Doris in her more bitter moments had referred to as The White Elephant) they had been hoping to get the establishment into
Michelin
or
The Good Hotel Guide,
but some detail was always not quite right when the inspector called, or maybe they had just been unlucky. To be favoured by one or two such prestigious lists would put Fred's asking price up no end, though now he wondered how long it would take to fix the damage these savages had wrought.

‘Look at the miserable sod.' Garry poured half a tumbler. ‘Dead from the neck up. Deader than that stuffed bloody peacock on the wall. Just because somebody wants a good time. He can't stand that.'

‘Lance's still having it away upstairs,' Wayne said. ‘She took a shine to him because he writes them leery pop songs. He's letting the side down, the bloody traitor.'

‘Good luck to him,' Garry said. ‘We'd do the same.'

Wayne aimed a splash of whisky at the peacock. ‘You have a drink as well, my old bird. Imagine walking into a disco with that on your arm.'

Garry kicked a beer tin across the lounge. ‘We ought to slip it in his bed. It'd frighten the life out of him, all them feathers. Her, as well. She'd think it was her husband back from the hat shop. We'll pull the sheets off and throw it in. Come on, let's get it down.'

Fred walked towards them, fingers twiddling at his waistcoat. ‘Don't touch that. I draw the line there. It's part of the hotel.' He didn't want the ship to go down without a fight: the deck raked with grapeshot, all rigging splintered, a glowing cannonball sizzling into the magazine, and when Garry reached for the peacock's tail he broke an empty whisky bottle against his skull, blood trickling through sparse hair.

Garry, not realizing how wounded he was, or that he was wounded at all, turned from the resplendent bird and went with murderous hands towards Fred who, gasping at what he had set going, stepped back in the direction of the fireplace. He had only imagined the action, but now that it was done, and in so little time, he changed tack and skittered between tables to the door that was blocked by Wayne as if keeping goal.

‘Let's kill the bastard,' Garry said.

She put off the light and packed the bedclothes gently around him, lulling his body in an Aga patch of heat, taking no chances on letting the cold alert him. He would sleep while she found someone to tell.

She slipped her pants on, tights wrinkled but they would have to stay, one nipple caught but the bra soon adjusted, everything in silence, hardly moving, then the shirt and skirt put on while he slept. She had to stop her teeth clicking from fear or cold, going with shoes in hand towards the door. Thumps and screams from below might not disturb him but a mouse-creak out of the worm-eaten boards would bring him in a mad leap across her path. ‘I can't sleep, I'm going for a walk,' she would say, if hands gripped her wrists, or fingers pressed at her throat.

He sat up, stark and clear in the darkness, as if filings of phosphorus glistened around him. Perhaps he saw her only in his crazy mind, imagined her still providing the heat, for he lay on his side as if to face her for more of the comfort she had given – and began to snore.

The latch took time to lift, no one to hear as she drew the door slowly towards her, sufficiently to slide her body out and be gone. Who would believe her? Would
she
give credit to someone who with manic eye buttonholed her in a hotel lounge and said that a huge amount of terrorist's explosives parked in the yard was due to go off in ten hours' time? She would think them a fugitive from the local funny farm and run a mile.

While standing outside to mull on it, and rooted by another cacophony of animal rage from downstairs, the door snapped open, and Daniel caught her by the arm.

‘Where are you going, without me?'

TWENTY-ONE

Enid took her hands from his wet and languid penis. Strange how it was such a bulltup one minute, and small like a cat's the next. ‘It sounds like those bikers are killing poor old Fred. I hope so. He asks for it sometimes.'

He thought it nothing less than miraculous that she had given her pale and exquisite body over to his adoration. ‘We can't let them, then. You stay here, while I go down.' From thinking he would be able to pass the night in unaccustomed bliss, the noise from below would not let even the most dedicated morphetic sleep.

‘Not likely,' she said. ‘I want to see.'

A screech could have been man or gale, the pitch-note ending in a thump at the gables, suggesting a body landing after being hurled. ‘Get dressed quickly, then. The central heating system seems to have packed in.'

He kissed her when she pressed against him to ask: ‘Do I still have that job?'

And more, whatever Beryl might say, and she would surely have plenty. Every time he went away she teased him how he would one day come back with a wife. Some hope of that, he had to reassure her pleading grey-green eyes, so deep the attachment between them that she would turn murderous if it happened. Well, the worst always did occur, after you stopped thinking about it, the time never of your own choosing. ‘Yes, you still have the job.'

When they walked hand-in-hand along the corridor, Keith and. his girl friend came level. ‘I suppose you're on the same expedition?' Aaron said. ‘We have to do something.'

Sally, never so glad in her life to hear voices halfway sane, broke Daniel's grip: he slid back into his lair – or that was how she would tell it a few weeks later, which was impossible, since the women she knew were friendly with Stanley, as indeed were their male acquaintances, not the sort to condone her minor though disastrous affair. She followed them downstairs, as another jack-in-the-box scream came up to meet them.

Keith launched himself on a two at a time descent, a flight through the bar which caught his hip on the hard wood, turning him from the joy of action to rage as, after righting himself, he felt the pain and, in order to diminish it, was in the space of a few seconds manifested before Garry whose neck he held in a grip no one could break. ‘You'll be dead if you don't drop that poker.'

‘Don't move' – Aaron placed himself between them and Wayne – ‘or you'll have me to reckon with' – fists raised and pushing him further and further away from the action with blows of his stomach. The threatening but disembodied voice got through, Wayne forced so far back he fell momentarily into an armchair.

Only one button was left to Fred's waistcoat, but strongly enough sewn by Doris's loving hand to prevent his shirted belly coming through. A sleeve of his jacket had been scorched by the poker, and hair lay over his forehead like weeds unwatered. He got up from hands and knees, eyes bloodshot with outrage and mortal fear. ‘The lot of you must have been dead from the toe-nails up not to hear what was going on.'

Keith was just audible to Garry. The cold exuberance, after a time which had spent him to the marrow, so cleared his mind that he would indeed have murdered if the weapon hadn't fallen. He looked around, till it was plain that the horrible smell of burning flesh had been no more than the stink of peacock feathers. When the neck was near to breaking, he let go. ‘Make trouble from now on, and you'll be the loser.'

Wayne stood up, fists moving apart as if to bracket into oblivion any foolish head that got between. ‘I'll have him.'

With a madman's breath at his ear, Garry knew they had met someone who was dangerous, a man serious about killing and not out for fun alone: the instinct to get into a senseless fight had to be crushed. He took Wayne by the elbow, tapped the end of the settle with his boot. ‘We'll get this back to where it belongs' – telling himself to keep his dignity, never let anyone think you were hurt, either in mind or body. They should only have dropped into a place like this on a summer's evening, the bikes primed outside for a quick getaway.

Aaron put chairs and tables upright – those which would stand – Fred gazing moodily at his lounge coming back into some way shipshape. ‘Bring us plenty of coffee,' Keith said to him. ‘We'll all need it. Make it double strength. I'll pay.'

‘Leave it to me,' Enid said. ‘I'll brew it as black as the ace of spades. Another day's wages won't do me any harm.' The wrecked room, the approving noise of the blizzard, and the phenomenon of men clumsily putting the place in order, made her employment seem more interesting.

‘Do it, then, while I clean myself up.' Fred was glad she had altered her notion of leaving. ‘Then I can make an inventory of the damage.'

‘It'll give him something to do,' Wayne jeered. ‘I'd like a fag, though. Mine have all gone.'

Keith threw his packet.

‘Still got my Zippo at least.' He ignited it, and smiled. ‘Thanks, mate.'

Eileen walked across and retrieved the cigarettes so that Keith could offer her one. What a terrible thing they had done, to make such a mess of the place. They probably came from nice homes. Bikers often did, though you could tell from the faces of these, and the way they were dressed, how much they loved causing trouble.

‘How did you manage to get here?' Keith wanted to know.

‘We had to leave our bikes in a lay-by, about half a mile away,' Garry said. ‘But we found this van, and set it going. I'll never know how we got it here.'

‘It belongs to an old schoolteacher of mine,' Wayne said. ‘He must have made his way on foot. He's sleeping it off upstairs. Funny van, though. It's full of weird stuff. None of us could figure it out.'

‘Explosives,' Sally spoke up. ‘I'll have a cigarette too, if. I may.'

Keith gave her one. ‘What do you mean?'

‘He told me, upstairs, after I – slept with him. All fused-up and primed to go off at eight in the morning. It's supposed to be in London by then.' She felt a pinch of guilt at betraying his secret, but it would mean little if they assumed her to be mad or a liar.

‘You deserve top marks for trying to entertain us through the long evening,' Aaron said.

‘I'm only telling you what he told me.' She was arguing with a face that belonged to someone else, rubbing hard across her mouth as if to bring back her own features. ‘And I was convinced.'

‘Were you?' Keith smiled.

‘I wasn't for a while. Then he gave the details in such a way that I couldn't not be. He tried to stop me coming down to tell you. Luckily, you showed up in the corridor, and he had to let me go. He said there was enough explosives in the van to demolish a block of flats, maybe enough material for a whole campaign.'

Aaron, by the tail of the peacock, looked through the window. The wind's subtle knife found cracks and, rubbing mist from the glass, he cupped hands around his eyes to see heavy flakes of falling snow.

‘It's in the back courtyard,' Garry said. ‘I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't buried by now.'

‘You mean' – Keith walked to her table as if in a dream and someone was handing him a prize he had always hoped for, yet which would turn to dust before he could use it – ‘we either sit here waiting to be blasted, or we go out into the blizzard and freeze to death?'

She smiled at his speed of thought, but had told them, so would say no more. They could take it or leave it.

‘I hope she's having us on.' Enid stubbed out her cigarette, as if that would be to blame for whatever might in any case happen. ‘We get that sort now and again, real fucking jokers. A man came in once saying he was Jesus Christ. The world was going to end in half an hour, he said, a big smile right across his clock. It didn't, though, but we had a good laugh over it. He paid his bill next morning, and even left Fred a big tip. Old Fred didn't know whether to throw it back in his face or run away wagging his tail.'

‘I've never been blown up before,' Eileen said. ‘I wonder what it will be like? As long as I come back together again, I don't suppose I'll mind.'

‘My bits wouldn't know how to find each other,' Wayne said with a smile.

‘So what do we do?' Garry said to Keith.

‘We'd better see if there's anything in it. Would you and your mate like to do a little job? It shouldn't take long.' He turned to Sally. ‘What's the room number?'

They seemed to believe her, so she agreed to talk again.

‘Do it with as little rough stuff as possible,' Keith told them. ‘And that's an order.'