The Swap (20 page)

'You do realise that they are probably looking for me. When I didn't show up for the meeting with him Jarvin probably put out an APB on me across London.' Did they have APBs in England? Harvey wasn't sure, but for once the issue didn't seem that significant. He was dissatisfied and he feared that Maisie was sharing the emotion. 'I am on the run and you are my accomplice. Bonny and fucking Clyde.'

Maisie took a chip from his plate and licked the salt from it with a certain disdain. 'I am not your accomplice. I am your girlfriend and I am helping you to sort out your life, not to flee justice. Anything you may or may not have done in the past I cannot be held responsible for.'

Harvey did the sigh. From sex on the cliffs to the sigh in three and a half hours: not bad. 'I mean, I am in trouble and all you can seem to focus on is Jeff and his teenage angst. That was twenty-odd years ago, Maisie. I mean, I need help right now.'

'OK.' She smiled, but registered, in a slight lift and drop of the shoulders, the hard work involved in doing so. Harvey was good at body language. On a clear day he could take offence at up to a hundred yards. He bridled at once.

'Fucking hell, Maisie, we're meant to be saving me. Jeff is history, yeah? He's the past, your past. The future is me and you. Jeff, he could be in jail soon – the sooner the better really.'

'He won't be in jail, Harvey. Or if he is I will be with him ...'

They were sitting in the Greedy Mackerel on the high street and Harvey was eating his way methodically through the tastes of his past. On his plate were the remains of a large Cornish pasty, a pile of chips, half a gherkin, some tomato ketchup and an unused wooden forking device. Beside his plate was a large coke with lots of ice. Maisie had refused any sustenance, suggesting, again purely through body language, that she was too emotionally involved in what had recently passed to eat. This did not stop her nicking his chips, Harvey noticed. He would have liked to express with his own body language the fact that when emotional he preferred to eat. It didn't mean that he was insensitive, it was just his way, his form of compassion. This was a difficult concept to communicate non-verbally and he wasn't sure it had got across. He lifted the remains of the pasty to his mouth and forced most of it inside.

'I wish I could just talk to Jeff. Maybe I should ring him. But I'm not sure where he is.' Maisie had produced a mobile phone on the walk from the hotel into town and she had been fiddling with it ever since. 'He said he might come to Cornwall but he didn't say when. He might even be in town right now. Perhaps I should just try our old number . . .' She looked across the blue plastic table with a picture of a large, grinning dolphin on it, for assistance. But Harvey had overused the rhetorical potential of the pasty and was now struggling with the implications. She sighed. 'I don't know what to do, this has completely thrown me. Why didn't he tell me?'

Giving up the contest, Harvey simply swallowed a large chunk of crust whole and then sat with his eyes screwed up tight as it went down. 'That's the fifteenth time you've said that, Maisie, and I wish you'd like rest it, yeah? He didn't tell you because he's a closed-up English guy who keeps the family secrets rammed up his arse. Secrets are the currency, you know? You don't give them away, you store them up for the future.'

'But I've left him, Harvey.' She looked at him with real sadness. 'What possible future could there be for us? What could he have been waiting for?'

Well, Harvey could answer those: 'No future whatsoever', and 'Until after he had killed old Mrs Odd'. Easy. But women, of course, can never see these things and when he tried to explain it she returned to dissatisfied, if she had ever left it.

'No, Harvey. Jeff can't be the killer. You must forget that. It's your fantasy.'

Shocked by how true this actually was, Harvey shook his head vigorously. 'Why can't he be the killer? You've said yourself he could be violent. He's got a brilliant motive: anyone who got beaten like that would want to kill Mrs Odd. He hasn't got an alibi for that morning. He's got standard serial-killer's parents. He's the perfect murderer. Don't protect him, face the facts.' He took up three chips and ate them with relish.

His satisfaction was so complete that Maisie found herself laughing despite her better feelings. 'No, Harvey,' she said, 'he has no more motive than you. You wanted the comic,' she went on as he tried to protest, 'that's the perfect motive, much better than some grudge from the past, you have no alibi, I'm sure you can be very violent when you want to be. In fact, I know you are quite the animal.' The fact that her toe suddenly appeared on his inner thigh when she said this had two effects. One was that Harvey did not feel so like protesting at her outrageous reasoning, and the other was that he almost choked on the chips and had to cough pronouncedly and with accusatory glances in her amused direction for several minutes. The pasty and chips were Harvey's suggestion as a way to kill time in St Ives before Bleeder arrived. They had rung him on Maisie's mobile after getting his mum's number from Directory Enquiries. This had taken rather longer than he had expected: there were a lot of Odds in Cornwall and a fair few in St Ives. When Bleeder had answered the phone it had been in a strange voice that Harvey had assumed was someone else but when Harvey announced himself it turned into Charles Odd, successful financier. Bleeder had been unexpectedly amenable to the meeting and if Harvey had been in imaginative frame of mind he might almost have said he was expecting his call. But Harvey wasn't, so that possible thought, like so many others he might have focused on at this time, drifted away while Harvey thought about lunch instead.

The toe on his thigh had disappeared while he had his coughing fit, but it returned once more and ran up and down his upper leg while Maisie gazed out at a light drizzle on St Ives high street. Harvey had been to this café and others very like it along this road many times in his life. But he had never had an erection in one, not one that he could remember anyway, not a proper grown-up erection. Was she a nymphomanic? That was a question that popped into his mind. Shagging on the cliffs and then only a few hours later giving him a hard-on in a chip shop. Was this a sign of pathological sexual tendencies? Harvey could only hope so. He glanced at his watch and reached for a napkin. Exploring her psychosis would have to wait because it was time to go to the pub.

Bleeder was late. The rain had stopped so they sat out in the long garden that ran down from the main road and gave the pub its character. Inside, the Golden Lion was fugged with the smoke of too many cigarettes and the unhappy sound of a darts team practising. So Harvey and Maisie sat at a damp wooden bench in the garden and Harvey felt his incipient piles give a nervous twitch. He had fetched a pint and a half of lager and they waited in silence. Was it the pleasant, restful silence of two people who are at ease in each other's company? Harvey wondered. He had heard tell of such a thing, but had no actual experience to go on. Perhaps it was a pregnant silence. He glanced uncertainly at Maisie but she was deep in thought and gave him only a vague, not-now sort of smile. Perhaps it was pregnant with all sorts of significances that he was missing. Harvey had always considered himself a sensitive person, but had realised somewhere in his early thirties that he only had one sort of sensitivity: the one that meant he was easy to upset; he did not have that other sort that meant he knew what was going on. Mostly he had seen this as a positive thing. Who wanted to know the insides of other people's minds, for heaven's sake? It was bad enough knowing his own. But it was, he had become certain, a factor in his relative lack of romantic success. Relative, that is, to actual human beings. Compared to Josh he was Warren Beatty, but this fact was bringing him less and less satisfaction. He looked again at Maisie but she was gazing past him down the crazy-paving pathway that led from the road and Harvey heard a footfall behind him. Turning, he found that it was Bleeder Odd.

'Um, all right, mate?' Now that Bleeder was here, Harvey suddenly had the irrational wish that he wasn't. He often did that: spent weeks arranging something and then at the last minute wished it wasn't happening.

'Good afternoon, Harvey. Good afternoon . . .' He smiled vaguely at Harvey but his eyes were on Maisie. 'Mrs Cooper, perhaps?'

'Yes. You must be Mr Odd.' Harvey wanted to laugh but didn't. Was there a Mr Odd in the
Mr Men
? He couldn't remember. He made a mental note to check when he had a moment. There certainly should be. 'Mr Odd liked to hang round school playgrounds waiting for little Miss Dainty . . .' He shook his head hard to break the spell and watched Bleeder climb awkwardly onto the wooden bench beside Maisie.

'Drink, Charles?'

'A drink? Yes, all right. I'll have a peppermint cordial.' Harvey looked at him for a long moment. Was he being made a fool of? Neither Bleeder nor Maisie was smiling. He got up heavily, keeping his eyes on Bleeder's face, and made for the bar and the inevitable comments of the darts team with measured tread.

Bleeder had turned to Maisie and she to him. Because they were sitting side by side, they found that they were now rather close together and they peered uncomfortably into each other's eyes.

'I suppose I am wondering why you have come, Mrs Cooper,' Bleeder said, turning his gaze to a pink cement toadstool that enhanced the herbaceous border running down the garden beside the path. 'I thought perhaps I would see your husband at some point. I did wonder if I would hear from him ...'

'Yes, of course, you knew him, didn't you? You knew Jeff?'

'Oh indeed. We were in the same year at Trehendricks.'

He radiated such easy assurance that Maisie felt she could ask him. She turned for a moment to check that Harvey had gone and then said: 'I am glad actually of a moment alone with you, Mr Odd, or Charles, is that all right?' Bleeder smiled his agreement. 'And I'm Maisie, by the way. I don't want to rush into things but we may not be able to speak alone like this very much, and I have heard a rumour about my husband, about when you were boys together here in St Ives, and I was wondering if I could ask you about it.'

'A rumour? Oh yes.' Bleeder nodded thoughtfully. 'I suspect I can guess what that rumour was, but I'll let you tell me.'

'Well, rumour is an unpleasant word, actually. I don't mean that anyone has been gossiping about you or my husband. It's nothing like that. But I did hear a story from the past. It concerned Jeff and it concerned your mother, Mrs Odd. The story I heard involved her punishing Jeff, beating him, beating you both, if the story is true. A very cruel punishment . . .' She was watching Bleeder's face, but his eyes remained on the toadstool. 'It is just that Jeff never told me this story. I heard it from another source altogether. The story also suggested that he had been very cruel to you, that he was a bully and that in many ways he probably deserved what he got. But he has never spoken of it, you see. And I just wondered if it was true. Somehow it would kind of explain some things about our relationship, our marriage. It would sort of add up to something different than it did before, if you see what I mean ...'

'Yes. It would add up differently.' There was a slight change to Bleeder's voice and again she tried to pull his eyes round to meet her own, but they remained fixed, very still in his very still face. She noticed that the ginger hair was thinning at the back and that he had carefully combed the strands across the gap. She wondered if that was for her.

'Did she punish him, Charles? It would really help me to know. The story said that she grabbed him as he was cycling around shouting abusive comments. I assure you that I wouldn't pass any judgement on her at all, it sounds as if Jeff behaved terribly badly, wickedly really. I just really need to know ...'

Bleeder's head did turn but it did so rather too slowly so that even though she had called them to her, by the time his eyes met hers she was wishing they wouldn't. Finally, he looked straight at her for a moment in absolute silence and she held the eyes for a second and then turned to the toadstool herself.

'Yes, my mother did catch people who rode their bicycles outside our house,' he said slowly. 'But it wasn't the shouting, it was the singing. She didn't like the singing.' And to Maisie's horror a high falsetto voice emerged from the face so close to her cheek that she could feel his breath hot and sour against it.

'"Bleeder Odd he's a runt, he looks like a spastic and his mum's a cunt." That's what they sang, Maisie, outside my house. My mother hated the singing. So she would hide sometimes by the wall with a stick and when they came she would jump and throw it into the spokes of their wheels. She caught one or two that way. She caught Jeff, that's for sure. And she caught Harvey Briscow. Oh yes.' He reacted to her face, which swung much faster than his, to reconnect with his eyes. 'Oh yes, Harvey sang that song too, or some variation on it. They were quite creative. There were lots of different versions.'

'Oh, Charles.' Maisie reached out and instinctively took his hand for a moment. 'I'm so sorry.'

'Bastards.' Harvey gracelessly plonked down a wine glass with a pale liquid in it on the table. He had also bought himself another pint, which he put down with more care.

'Who?' Maisie jumped and gazed up at him with an expression both of annoyance and of doubt. As she did so she felt Bleeder's hand slip from her own.

'Those bloody darts players. They thought it was hilarious that I wanted a peppermint cordial. I had to order a pint as well just to stop them saying it was for me. Do you really drink that stuff, Charles? Or are you just having a laugh?'

'I rather like it.' Bleeder picked up the glass and sipped it delicately. 'I got the taste out in Saudi Arabia where I worked for a time. One learns to live without alcohol and this is a popular substitute.'

'Right, well, OK. But we're not in bloody Arabia now, are we? When at home, beer is the correct drink.' Harvey finished off the remains of his first pint in a single gulp and carefully substituted the full glass for the empty. 'Now, what have you two been chatting about?'

'Nothing that you need to hear.' Maisie glanced at Bleeder, wanting to welcome him into a confidence, but his eyes had left hers and were riveted on Harvey.

'OK, fair enough. But I do need to ask you some things, Charles, OK?' Harvey was very aware of Bleeder's gaze. It seemed to root him to the spot, even moving his head from side to side felt strangely performed in the face of this piercing witness. He took a long pull on his drink and then added: 'So let's chat.'

'All right.' Bleeder spoke with the same, eerie slowness that had unnerved Maisie. 'You can ask me anything you want to know. But I think perhaps it might be better if we spoke alone, H. There are things that you might want to hear alone.'

'What? No, no, that's all right.' Harvey was suddenly panicked. 'Anything you say to me you can say to her, to Maisie, I mean, no problem.' But Maisie was already getting up.

'I think Charles is probably right, Harvey. He does need to speak to you. There are things that you need to hear, things that come out of your past. And I need to think about this. I need some space, actually.' Suddenly she was up and ready to go, needing to be away from these people, needing for a moment to be just herself and to make some kind of sense of all the new information that this day had brought her. 'I'll take myself for a walk, get some air in my lungs. I'll see you later, Harvey, OK?' She stopped for a second and put her hand on his arm. 'It'll be all right, just let it happen, OK? Let it be.'

And with that she strode away down the path. Harvey watched her rear view appreciatively. That's got a wiggle in it, he thought with a hint of proprietorial pride, and then turned his attention back to Bleeder. 'So,' he said and grabbed his glass as a prop, 'we need to talk, yeah? I mean, I think we were going to at Steve's but I kind of had to go and stuff. But you know, I guess it's about the past and your mum and so on, really. If you want to talk, I mean, you know, no problem.' He was drinking fast, this really wasn't his territory. Is this how policemen did it? He felt more like some sort of amateur psychologist. Bleeder was sipping his peppermint cordial with every appearance of pleasure and made no immediate response. But then suddenly he stood up. Harvey, though unnerved, was also thrilled; he was leaving, thank Christ for that.

Bleeder looked down at him for a long moment and then said: 'I think we should walk too, don't you, H? I feel like I need to move, this is hard to talk about over a pub table.' He set off down the path and Harvey watched his arse with less enthusiasm. Bony butt, he thought. It was also Bleeder's round, of course. Harvey shook his head at this display of bad manners, threw his head back, poured the rest of his drink down his throat and got up. For a second his own arse entered his mind and he wondered how it would appear as he followed the path to the gate. He attempted a sexy wiggle, stumbled and almost fell over the pink toadstool. 'Ridiculous bloody thing,' he muttered and then sped up to catch Bleeder as he walked away down St Ives high street.