The Swap (8 page)

Steve's spare bedroom had an alien cleanliness that Harvey found restful. There were white built-in wardrobes with gold knobs. There was a matching dressing table with fancy ornamentation around the legs, which Harvey characterised, after a moment's thought, as Barbie-style. The walls were of pale peach and enlivened with pastel artworks involving mice in Victorian clothing. One of the old crowd, Jessica, who had married Bob from Bristol who was in property and couldn't hold his drink, had trained as a nurse. She was kind and gentle and tenderly put her hands on his face, on his belly, and on his side where he'd been kicked. Harvey got a partial erection despite himself and hoped it didn't show. Then she left him alone for a while and he lay on his back looking at the pale pink ceiling. It occurred to him that perhaps this was how people coped in wartime: so many troubling things happened to them in such a short space of time that their brains began to blend one into the next. The mind sort of stopped bothering to process them and just let things happen. That was how he felt: as if he had passed some watershed beyond which nothing really mattered, a place of Zen peace. The last thing Nurse Jessica asked him as she left was 'Are you all right?' and he murmured some non-committal acknowledgement. But in truth he wasn't at all sure if he was all right or not. The feeling of being in a bubble and floating had remained after he got his breath back. He had a sense of potential pain. At some point his eye, his belly and his side were really really going to hurt. But for now he was becalmed, drifting in a pink and peach sea, and he floated into a deep and untroubled sleep.

It was Steve that woke him after about two hours. 'All right, H?' He was standing by the bed looking worried and Harvey wondered for a moment what the cause of his concern was. Perhaps it was something to do with that God-awful drilling that his dad had been doing under the bed, which seemed to have cut him open from the side. Then the dream lifted and he raised himself up and yelped. Shit. Three quite distinct reasons for extreme concern flew simultaneously into his brain, driving out the dream entirely.

'Shit. Steve, where the fuck is Bleeder?'

'Eh?'

'Shit. I mean, where the fuck is Maisie?'

'She's gone. She left after the fight. Jeff went too. I think they were breaking up.' Steve sat on the edge of the bed. 'I hope this doesn't mean you won't come down again, H. I hope this hasn't spoiled our parties for you. We look forward to them, really do . . .'

'What? Look, Steve, when did she go? Where did she go? I should have . . . done something.'

'What, like get yourself even more kicked?' Steve chuckled vaguely. 'Don't worry, Maisie can look after herself. They'll have gone home to thrash it out. How are you feeling?'

'Me? Oh peachy.' Harvey took a line through the wallpaper. 'Really pinky peachy, Steve. How are you, mate?'

'Oh, I'm all right. But you are a stupid cunt.'

'Eh?'

'Trying to get off with Jeff Cooper's bird? You must be completely bloody bonkers. Ten out of ten for guts, mate, but minus five for sense. He was going to kill you if we hadn't pulled him off.'

'Yeah, I know.' Harvey ferreted for his cigarettes and seeing that his jacket was on the white and gold chair by the bed, reached over and yelped again. 'I must get the name of your decorator,' he muttered, moving much more slowly. 'So, what's happening now downstairs? Any other dramas?'

'Well, yes and no really. That's why I came up.'

'What?' Harvey looked at him with some desperation, surely there couldn't possibly be anything else.

'Well, it's just . . . well, I thought you must have heard, from what you said when I came in . . .'

'What?'

Steve lowered his voice. 'Bleeder's here.'

'He's what?'

'Bleeder Odd, you know, Charles Odd as he insists he's called. He's downstairs.'

'But his mum just got murdered.' Having fumbled in his jacket pocket, Harvey had managed to light an extremely squashed cigarette, which now stuck to his dry bottom lip as he opened his mouth to gape at Steve.

'I know. Fuck knows why he's come.'

'Did you invite him?' Harvey grabbed a decorative potpourri from the dressing table to use as an ashtray.

'Yeah, we bumped into him yesterday lunchtime, on the piss-up. I was a bit smashed even then and I'm afraid I was a bit rude to him.'

'Why, what did you say?'

'I said I was sorry he couldn't be allowed to join us last night because he was too odd, but if he'd like to come round today we would be more than happy to receive him. Something like that.'

'Sweet.' Harvey buried his head in his hands and very nearly burned himself. His lungs hurt as he dragged on his cigarette and he grimaced but did not remove it from his mouth.

'It's just, I thought because you knew him better than the rest of us, you might like to come downstairs. It's a bit awkward having him here, to be honest. I don't know what to talk to him about.'

'What do you mean I knew him better? I've never known him any better than . . . oh, hi, Blee . . . Charles.' Bleeder had entered the room and was striding towards the bed.

'Oh, all right, mate?' Steve leapt to his feet and made for the door at speed, passing Bleeder on the way. He attempted a half-hearted slap on the back, missed and moved off. 'Leave you to it for a bit, H. Come down when you are feeling better, yeah?'

'No, hang on, wait a sec, I am feeling better . . .' But he was gone and the door was closed. Bleeder came and stood directly over Harvey and looked down at him.

Harvey looked up and attempted a smile. 'You all right?' he asked weakly.

'Mmm. Yes, I am actually.'

'Right. Good.' Shit. 'So, I er . . . heard about your mum.'

'Yes?'

'Harsh.'

'Yes.'

Harvey hadn't intended to say 'harsh'. He had been meaning to say something else but the image of Mrs Odd's throat had returned again to his mind. He didn't want to discuss this. There hadn't been a lot of time for cogitation since the previous evening, but Harvey knew that the murderer must have got into the house without breaking and entering. There had certainly been no sign of damage when he arrived. The most obvious suspect for the killer therefore was now standing a little too close to the edge of the bed. Harvey inched away under the covers.

'I mean, bad one,' he added. 'You must be in shock and stuff. I'm surprised you came to the party really.'

'I needed to get out of the house.'

'Oh right, yeah.' Harvey could understand that. It was that sort of house.

'Do the police know anything?' It was a perfectly natural question and there was no reason why he should blush and shift about furtively when he asked it. But he did.

'They are seeking a killer.' Bleeder had a sort of faraway voice today with an arch note in it, and Harvey recognised it from their past. Even though he was wearing a suit and tie and his hair looked like it cost more to cut than Harvey had spent on his last holiday, the old Bleeder seemed once more present. 'They are compiling their evidence.'

Was 'compiling' the right word? Harvey wasn't sure. 'You sound odd,' he said, and then rushed on, 'Or rather, not odd so much as troubled. You must be troubled. You've a lot to be troubled about really, I suppose. I sometimes wish someone would murder my parents, but of course in truth I'd be very . . . troubled.'

'Yes. It has come as a shock.' For a moment the new Bleeder, the Charles as Harvey now thought of him, returned. 'It has been quite a shock.' And he sat down on the edge of the bed exactly as Steve had done. Harvey felt very differently about this new arrival in what was, when all was said and done, his personal space. He shifted a little further across the mattress.

'I hear you had a fight.'

'Um, yeah. Bit of one. Not really a fight as such, just a bit of a wrestling match, sort of thing. With Jeff Cooper.'

'You were kissing his wife.'

'Well, not kissing as such. Rather sort of . . .'

'Wrestling?' The new Charles was back and smiling. 'You're obviously a bit of a wrestling fan.'

'No, not really, I just . . . it's been a funny few days.'

'Mmm. Yes it has.' Bleeder frowned for a moment. 'I wish to God I hadn't come down here. It's years since I was here and I don't know why I came back.'

'No . . . God knows why any of us do. I guess one has to come back occasionally, but yeah, I can see how you might have preferred not to be here when this happened.' Harvey looked at him closely, but Bleeder just nodded.

'Mmm? Yes. Yes, that's true. I wish I'd stayed in London. There isn't much point in going back . . .' Bleeder seemed to see something in the gold-rimmed mirror on the dressing table that worried him, for he shook his head and turned to face Harvey again.

'My mother was not an easy woman,' he said suddenly.

Well, of course, that wasn't what the rumours had always said about her, but Harvey didn't mention this. Instead, he simply shook his head and leaned across for the makeshift ashtray. His side spasmed again and he groaned. Bleeder seemed not to hear. 'In many ways we were distant from each other. She had problems, her mind was not right. It took me some time to realise that. And to get away from her, to really leave St Ives. Do you know, I think it took me years really.'

'And now you're back,' Harvey added helpfully.

'Yes. Yes, I'm back. But she's gone.' He paused for a long time. 'I want to know now,' he said suddenly. 'I think now I want to know everything.'

Harvey had managed to light another cigarette from the collapsing butt of the first. This one was equally flat and with bits of tobacco falling out of the end. He felt panic rising in him.

'You want to know?' he said. 'Want to know what? And anyway, why ask me? What am I to do with anything? I don't know anything.' He was glad Bleeder was not a policeman at this point, because even to his own ear he sounded guilty as hell.

'You were there,' said Bleeder simply. 'So you must know.'

'I was not. I don't know what you mean . . . how do you know I was there? Where were you? That's what I'd like to know: where were you?' Harvey could hear his own voice rising to a pitch of terror unlike anything he'd heard before. He had thought he knew himself, knew his voice, yet here in extremis was a stranger suddenly shouting from inside his head.

At that point the door opened and Nurse Jessica returned. 'Feeling any better, are we?' she carolled sweetly. 'Steve said you were awake. He's rung your parents, H. He thought you could do with a lift home. Your dad is coming for you.'

'Oh right, right, yeah.' Harvey called his voice back to itself, as though calling a ferret from a rabbit hole. Even as he said it, even as he forced the panic down by an act of will, he was able to feel a faint regret that his father was coming. Why couldn't he have been out? He could handle his mother.

Bleeder had stood up and was gazing unseeing out of the window.

'Let's er . . . you know. We can talk again, Charles.' Harvey hauled himself up and allowed Jessica to help him, even though he could manage really. She smelled of soap and had such gentle hands . . . Bleeder did not reply. 'I guess I'll just . . . you know, downstairs. Better say my goodbyes and you know . . .' Harvey, once upright, moved quickly towards the door and then caught sight of himself in the oval mirror. 'Jesus, look at that.' He studied the beginnings of a black eye. 'I look like a real bruiser.' Trying to control the pride that was replacing the panic, he moved to the door. 'So er, see you then, Charles, yeah?'

'Yes. Yes, see you, H . . . Harvey. We must have another talk. I'm sure we will . . . talk.'

'Er, yeah.' Harvey grabbed the doorhandle and ran.

'A fight?' Mrs Briscow looked at Harvey with her deepest disapproval. 'You go to a party and you get into a fight?'

The alcohol and the bruises from earlier in the afternoon were beginning to take their toll. All Harvey really wanted was to go back to sleep. 'Look, actually it was just a bit of horseplay and I don't think it needs any more discussion.' The eye was coming up nicely and Harvey was examining it in the hallway mirror. He had attempted to tell his father than he had fallen down the stairs but unfortunately Steve had already explained over the phone.

'Lying and fighting, I don't know which is worse.'

Harvey pulled a face and watched himself pull it. Was that really how he looked when he did that? He did it again a couple of times. Jesus, he looked fifty when he did that.

'You should surely be too old for putting us through this, Harvey.' His mother's voice dragged him unhappily away from the mirror.

'Oh yes, sorry, Mum. I get punched in the face and kicked in the kidneys but you are the ones that really suffer, aren't you? I mean, Jesus, how inconsiderate of me.'

'Kicked in the kidneys! I thought you said it was just some horseplay. I should take you down to the doctor's, you might be bleeding inside.'

'I'm not bleeding inside. I may be crying inside but don't trouble yourselves about that, I wouldn't.'

'Don't be soft, lad.' His father was now reading the paper. 'If you get into a fight you must accept the consequences, no good blubbing about it afterwards.'

'Thanks, Dad. What a loss you were to the caring professions.'

'Your father was an ambulance driver in the army,' his mother reminded him.

'Yes I know, Mum, we've met before, if you remember. The point is that I am alive and I suggest we break out the champagne rather than behaving as if I am nine years old and have misbehaved myself. Now, I am going up to my room and I am going to stay there for a long time. I have had a shock and what I need is rest. I do not want to be disturbed. If there are any drills needing to be found, or little chores to be performed outside my door I would ask you both very kindly to delay them until I get out of this lazar house first thing tomorrow. OK?'

'First thing, is it?' Mr Briscow's eyes shone. 'I'll see you first thing then, son.'

'Oh shit.' Harvey shook his head and felt the exhaustion more strongly than before.

'And no more rubbish under your bed, please.' His mother had returned to the kitchen and was humming happily having delivered this directive. Harvey was halfway up the stairs before it reached his brain. He walked carefully down again.