Dangerous Things Page 3
He brought the food carefully, a grilled bacon and tomato sandwich, garnished with lettuce and mayonnaise, with a beaker full of black coffee set on a tray with legs, and he put it down carefully, managing not to shake and spill anything, and stepped back, grateful for his own steadiness, grateful that he’d learned to make the sandwiches exactly as the man liked, grateful to be out of his reach in case he managed to find fault anyway.
But whatever he did it was to be a bad day. He’d suspected it as soon as he’d arrived just after lunch and been shouted at for wearing jeans and a torn T-shirt and flipflops. How dared he, the man had shrieked, how dared he walk into his room looking like that? He ought to be whipped, whipped like a dog, and the boy had shaken, not sure if it was a game they were playing or real anger as the man had pulled the clothes off him and started to go through his usual ritual; and he still couldn’t be sure. Because it had ended as it always did; and now the man lay there on the crimson satin sheets, swearing at him over and over again, and still he stood there, half turned away in a useless attempt to hide some part of his nakedness behind the jut of his hip, such as it was, and tried not to let his face show how he was feeling.
The swearing went on, as the man ate the sandwich and drank the coffee, managing not to miss a bite though the words never stopped; and then suddenly he shouted, ‘Get the fuck out of here!’ and gratefully the boy dived at the chair and scooped up his jeans and flipflops and T-shirt, and made for the door, knowing better than to attempt to dress in the room, and prayed no one would come by as he stood outside on the communal landing of the house, pulling them on with shaking hands.
But he was free at last, and went down the stairs and out into the evening streets, trying to burn away the shakiness in his muscles by moving fast, and at last it eased and he felt better. His throat still hurt, but then it always did, for a long time afterwards. That was because he’d complained once about it, and said he’d rather not do it. Now he always had to.
Oh, God, he thought as he waited for the tube train. Oh, God, tomorrow. How will it be tomorrow? It could be worse, and if it is, what shall I do? How can I manage, with A levels too? How can I cope?
There was no one at home when he got there, but then there never was. Would it have helped if there had been? He doubted it.
The body lay crumpled, twisted, collapsed in on itself, like a stuffed toy that’s been left in the washing machine too long. The face was livid, the colour the thick muddy sort that is always disturbing to look at, and the groove round the neck was almost purple. The contrast with the torso beneath was sharp; the skin there was yellowish, beneath a dusting of gingery chest hair, and the lacy pink silk knickers with the frilled legs that covered the crotch had the sheen of a cream fondant. An altogether repellent sight, made even more disgusting by the orderliness of the room around it. Carefully made shelves of aluminium bracketing with the books on them arranged in size order, rather than alphabetically, matched the neatest of desks, built of veneered chipboard and with papers piled on it in perfect alignment. There were lead pencils on the tray, all carefully sharpened, and a complete set of coloured pencils arranged in graduating shades in rainbow order, placed with such precision they seemed to have been painted on to the surface. Above the bed there was a hessian-covered board which had been squared off with strips of red and green tape to make a chequer board and within each square there were lists and memos all written in the same cramped upright handwriting, but in the whole range of colours the pencils offered. Each piece of paper was set with perfect exactness next to its mates and had a ruled border decorated with coloured stripes. The bed beneath was as smooth as a shop-window display with just one painful incongruity: a battered Bendy toy, Ferdinand the Bull, leaning drunkenly against the slope of the pillow, its wide eyes staring out impishly at the body on the floor.
The young police constable who was standing looking down at the body on its arrangement of mirrors and pillows felt a little sick. This was the first body he’d seen since he’d come out of training and on to the job, and it was going to take him a long time to get used to being a copper if this was the sort of thing you had to look at right after you’d had your breakfast. Especially if you had to come out with someone like Sergeant Croxley who was pointing out the details to him with what the constable was sure was unnecessary relish.
‘They always does that, see? The sort of knot that’s supposed to slip, only sometimes they don’t. Like this time. Poor bugger. The mirrors is a nice touch — see? He’s got ’em set so you can see what’s happening at every angle. Really something, that is — Oh, come on, take a look, for Gawd’s sake! You’re not goin’ to be much good to the job if you can’t even look at a corpse without your head twisted half off your neck trying to avoid it. The sooner you got used to this sort of thing the better. It’s amazing what some fellas’ll do to get it good and up, ‘nt it?’
And he slid into an account of other cases like this he’d seen in his seven years in the Force, lavish with detail, and the constable first got paler and then began to sweat. But he managed to keep his face passive and even to speak.
‘What’s in it for ’em, then, Sarge?’ he said, and though he sounded husky he was proud of his ability to say anything at all.
‘What’s in it for ’em? Christ, but you are green, aren’t you? Never heard what happens to a hanged man? Gets the biggest bloody hard-on you ever saw. Well, some of ’em do. Not that I remember the days when they hung villains, of course, but I remember working with coppers what did and they told me. These blokes not only get a big hard-on, they blow off an’ all — come like bloody magic, according to what I’ve been told. Not that I’ve ever tried it, you understand, but you can’t help wondering.’ He looked down at the body again and shook his head. ‘Nor will I, not when I’ve seen this sort of thing so often, the way I have. It goes wrong, you see, so you end up deader than you might have expected. All because of sex.’ He shook his head again and laughed. ‘Or excitement, of course, though this one looks a bit young to have had a heart attack, eh? It’s hard to say what happened when they’re not around to be questioned, that’s the thing of it. And I’m not about to try any experiments to see how it works, neither. Nor will you if you’ve any sense.’ And he looked sternly at the police constable as though he’d suggested he was about to do just that. ‘Not that you can help but be interested. I remember one case’ — he looked consideringly at the young policeman — ‘well, let’s just say the fella hadn’t been missed for a week, so by the time we got to him it wasn’t pretty anyway, and a certain part of his anatomy — I’ll go no further — a certain part had burst.’
The young policeman gave up the struggle. He blanched again and made for the door, leaving the sergeant highly amused behind him. But not for long. He still had the boy’s mother to talk to — when she got home, which, according to the cleaner who’d found him when she’d come to do her usual day’s work, would be in about an hour.
‘Other side of London she is. That’s why I have my own key, you see. So I just comes and goes as I need to, been doin’ it for four years, ever since this poor little soul was a child.’
‘How old is he?’ the sergeant had asked, shepherding her out of the room, finding her matter-of-factness more upsetting than his constable’s clear horror. ‘Do you know?’
‘Sixteen,’ the cleaner had told him as she went back down the stairs. ‘Had his birthday in the first week of the holidays. Going back to school to do his A levels, his mum told me. A levels — he’ll not be needing them now, will he?’ And the sergeant had watched her go and gone back to the room to upset his constable, needing to do that because of the way he was feeling himself. He’d never get used to this sort of thing, not ever, and it was bad enough when it was a grown man. A boy of sixteen was something else.
He sighed deeply and sealed the room with tape to keep it waiting for the CID team, not that they’d have much to do; it was an obvious case of misadventure as far as the sergeant was concerned.
He’d be the one to do the worst part of the job, talking to the boy’s mum.
Shit, he thought, and sat down at the kitchen table and pulled out his notebook and made a few headings, ready for the questions he’d have to ask when the mother got here. Name, Address, Next of Kin, School…
Three
The staff common room stank. There was no other word that would fit the unpleasant blend of elderly coffee and old shoes, pine disinfectant and cigarette smoke, and above all male sweat, and Hattie, sitting uneasily on the edge of a battered armchair, thought gloomily, I’ll need clean clothes every day, or I’ll smell as bad myself.
Outside the door she could hear the loud voices of boys on the move and thought, At least they’re not as shrill as girls would be; and then felt guilty at her disloyalty. She’d have to be careful not to let herself get as misogynistic as the people who worked here, and she looked round the room unhappily.
It was untidy in a way that looked deliberate, as though its occupants regarded being neat as bourgeois and shaming; the newspapers piled in one corner, old Timeses and Telegraphs, looked as though they’d been arranged in such a way that their mastheads could be clearly seen, and Hattie wondered what would happen if she brought in a few copies of the Guardian and set them there too. Uproar, she suspected. This lot were traditional Tories to a man, that was obvious. The armchairs that were scattered about over the threadbare carpet — had it once been red? It might have been. Now it was just muddy and nondescript — could have been throw-outs from a gentleman’s club, so deep and soft and shabby were they, and the wall shelves where books were piled had the dusty look that only comes after months or even years of undisturbed rest. There were a couple of long low coffee tables made of cheap plastic-veneered board which had been burned all round the edges with cigarettes, a scattering of chipped glass ash trays and, on the walls, which were painted a dispiriting beige, curling old notices, cartoons clipped from newspapers and photographs of boys sitting in frozen clumps looking for all the world like waxwork dummies. The two long windows which gazed out on to the school’s central quadrangle were uncurtained, and in the corners of the room were old bags, abandoned tennis shoes and sweaters and, for all Hattie knew, she thought wildly, a couple of dead bodies. It all looked too depressing for words and she contemplated the possibility of getting to her feet and walking out and just going home.
But she couldn’t do that. She’d have to face Judith if she got home too soon, and sitting here waiting for God knew what might be to come had to be better than that. The harassed secretary in Hilary Roscoe’s office had sent her here to wait ‘till someone comes who knows what you’re supposed to be doing and where you’re supposed to be. No one’s told me, I’m afraid, for Headmaster really has been too busy to think of the details you know,’ so wait she would. And she thought a little wryly of her status as a detail, and sighed softly. Well, see today out, at any rate. She would think again about it all tomorrow.
The sound of shouting boys rose several decibels and she looked up as the man who had come in kicked the door closed behind him and cut out some of the din he’d admitted.
‘Oh!’ he said, startled, and stared at her blankly as she got to her feet. ‘What? Can I help you? Did you want the Head’s office? It’s just along the corridor and —’
‘No,’ she said. ‘The Head’s secretary sent me here to wait. She said someone would know where I was supposed to be.’
‘Miss Wheale said that? Oh. Then I suppose …’ He stood undecided for a moment and then came further into the room and set a bulging briefcase down on one of the coffee tables. ‘Well, I suppose she was right. I mean — um —’ He unbuttoned the raincoat he was wearing and took it across the room to hang on a hook beside the bookcases. ‘May I ask what — ah — who — ah — well, I mean —’
‘I’m Hattie Clements.’ She held out one hand. ‘I’m starting this term as school nurse, and teaching some health subjects. Mainly because of the girls in the sixth.’
His face cleared at once. ‘Oh, yes, yes, of course! We’ve got them this year, haven’t we? Of course, of course. Well, who’d have thought old Roscoe’d have the wit to appoint a female to the staff? How splendid! I mean, I think so.’ And he pushed out one hand. ‘I’m Edward Wilton, English Department, third form master. I must say, I’m delighted we’ve got a few girls. Do the old place a world of good.’ He shook hands for a long time, and Hattie had to pull away from him fairly firmly before he’d let go. ‘Though I must warn you not all the others feel the same. So don’t mind what some of ’em might say. Old Bevan, you know, he’s not mad keen on the idea and —’
The door opened again and Hattie looked around. Three men came in together, all talking at once, or rather two talked as one listened with an amused expression on his face, and she looked at them hopefully. Two of them appeared to be a good deal older than Edward Wilton (who was, she thought, somewhere in his middle thirties), in fact well older: sixty or so, she hazarded; and the other — the listener — was a tall man with a good deal of grey hair which far from making him seem old was rather attractive. About forty, she thought, and liked the look of him.
The two older men stopped short as they caught sight of Hattie and the fatter of them, who was wearing a large-brimmed dark hat, stood and glared at her from beneath the shadow of its brim as the words which had been pouring out of him stopped as sharply as if someone had pulled out a plug.
‘Good God!’ he said loudly and then looked over his shoulder at his companions. ‘Steenman, Collop?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ one of them said and pushed past Hattie to go further into the room, pulling off his overcoat. He marched over to the hook beside the bookcases, peered at Wilton’s coat already on it and then unhooked it and dropped it on the floor before hanging up his own in its place. ‘I may be Roscoe’s second deputy on paper, but don’t ask me. You should know better than that.’ His voice was thick with irony.
‘Good God Almighty,’ said the fat man again and pulled off his hat and threw it across the room so that it skimmed the coffee tables and landed neatly on top of the pile of newspapers. It was clearly something he’d done a great many times. ‘I thought he’d have come to his senses by now. The craziest thing I ever —’
‘Martin, this is Miss Clements,’ Edward Wilton said to the last of the three, who was still standing just inside the door, and then went scurrying across the room to pick up his coat and hang it on an adjoining hook. ‘She’s our new, er — our new —’
‘Mrs Clements,’ Hattie said loudly and held out her hand towards the man Wilton had addressed as Martin. She was burning with fury; the rudeness of that horrible old man had left her almost speechless. Once she’d have bitten his head off for it, would have made sure he knew she wasn’t the sort of woman to stand there and let stupid clods like him treat her so, but all she could do now was try to control the shake of anger that filled her and made her neck tremulous. Her hand shook a little too, she noticed, and hoped the man Martin would not.
He seemed not to, and took her hand and shook it, looking at her closely but not offensively.
‘Mrs Clements? You’re here to teach the girls in the sixth?’ he said, and the fat man, who was now ensconced in the most battered and clearly comfortable of all the armchairs, produced a loud noise, half exclamation, half derisive snarling cough. Martin Collop lifted an eyebrow in his direction and said loudly, ‘Bevan, do you have to be so disagreeable this morning? First day of term’s bad enough without you giving us your all-too-familiar impression of Orson Welles on a bad day.’ He looked at Hattie then and made a small grimace. ‘You must tolerate Dr Bevan, I’m afraid. Every staffroom has to have its resident grizzly and he’s ours, God help us. And God help the boys he teaches. How they ever get any geography into their heads I can’t imagine. So, you’re to teach the girls?’
‘Not only that,’ she said as crisply as she could. ‘I am to be school nurse. I’m somewhat surprised you haven’t had one here before.’
‘Welfare, that’s what it’s all about.’ Edward Wilton had come back to stand beside her, almost scurrying in his eagerness. ‘I wondered about that, you know, when the Head told us last term about taking girls. Who’ll look after ’em? I wondered. Who’ll understand the things that upset ’em? Girls being girls, you know, and not the —’
‘Not the same as boys,’ Martin said gravely. ‘Absolutely, Wilton. Your grasp of essentials deepens with your experience of the world. You must have had a most interesting vacation to have come on so well since July. Girls are indeed different. So, yes, it’s an excellent idea to have a woman around the place for them. Pity they aren’t a few more —’
Again the odd noise came from Bevan who then lifted his chin and bawled, ‘Where’s the bloody coffee, then? Wilton, go and see where the bloody coffee is. Go on, don’t stand there goggling at me like a half-dead codfish.’