NICOLA BARKER

Behindlings

For dear Charles Edward Johnson, who slammed his way out of that damn velvet factory – smashing the glass door behind him – never, ever to look back again. And for his beautiful, blue-eyed wife, Betty, who, at the grand old age of 84, discovered that the pylons could love one another.

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Ninteen

Twenty

Twenty-one

Twenty-two

Twenty-three

Twenty-four

Twenty-five

Twenty-six

Twenty-seven

Twenty-eight

Twenty-nine

Thirty

Thirty-one

Thirty-two

Thirty-three

Thirty-four

Thirty-five

Thirty-six

Thirty-seven

Thirty-eight

Thirty-nine

Forty

Forty-one

Forty-two

Forty-three

Forty-four

Forty-five

Forty-six

Forty-seven

Forty-eight

Forty-nine

Fifty

By the same author

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

One

Wesley glanced behind him. Two people followed, but at a sensible distance. The first was familiar; an old man whose name he knew to be Murdoch. Murdoch, Wesley remembered, had been robust, once. He’d been grizzled. Huge. Frosty. A magnificent, clambering, prickly pear of a man. He’d been firm and strong and resolute. Planted; a man-tree, if ever there was one.

Recently, however, Murdoch’s body had begun to curve, to arc (they all called him Doc, although he hadn’t even seen the inside of a hospital until his sixty-third year –he was a home birth, people invariably were, back then –when necessity dictated that a small reddish hillock, a mole, on his right shoulder blade, should be surgically removed. He was a scaffolder, by trade).

But the curving was nothing medical. It went deeper. And along with this –initially –almost imperceptible transmutation (Wesley noticed details. It paid him to notice), Doc’s colours had begun to alter: his bodily palette had changed from its habitual clean, crisp white, to a painfully tender pink, to a pale, dry, crusty yellow. Up close he smelt all sweet and sickly, like a wilting honeysuckle tendril.

Now, when Murdoch walked, it was as though he carried something huge and weighty within him, something painful, thudding, wearysome. His heart. It was too full and heavy. Stuffed but tremulous, like a chicken’s liver.

Mmmm. Wesley felt hungry. I could devour him, he thought, smirking. But he knew –must I know everything? He wondered briefly, the smirk dissipating –that the thing Murdoch carried so heavily in his heart was grief. Yes, grief. And possibly, just possibly, a tiny, shrew-footed, virtually inaudible, pitter-patter of rage.

Unwieldy burdens. Wesley understood. He’d carried them himself, and badly. But Murdoch was strong, and he supported them fearlessly, he slung them –like an ancient holdall with rotted handles –firmly and evenly between his two old arms.

Doc was accompanied by a little dog. A sandy-coloured terrier. A plucky cur, a legendary ratter. The dog was called Dennis. Wesley knew Dennis well; the stout push of his legs, the familiar bump of his vertebrae, the inquisitive angle of his ears, his horribly intrusive nose, his fur wiry as poor quality pot scourers.

He remembered, once, staring briefly into Dennis’s eyes and seeing a wild loop of fleas tightening in a crazy insect lassoo around the bridge of his snout. Ah. He was a good dog.

And the other person? The second follower? A woman. Wesley peered. She rang no bells. She wasn’t familiar. She did not compute. Young. She seemed young and gangly, fine but big-boned with a delicate, tufty, parsnip-shaped head. Not unattractive, either. She was plain but wholesome, like a small, newly dug, recently scrubbed tuber. She was dressed like a boy.

Wesley turned, smiling grimly to himself. They were a bane. Yes. A bane. But only so long as they followed him (and this had to be some kind of compensation), only so long as they stalked, surveyed, trailed, pursued, could he truly depend upon his own safety. They were his witnesses. Unwitting? Certainly. Witless? Invariably.

But they were his witnesses. And Wesley knew (better, perhaps, than anybody) that he was a man who desperately needed watching.

Early. It was too damn early. Wesley paused for a moment in front of a bakery and glanced through the window. They’d just opened. He drew close to the glass and touched it. He left a perfect thumbprint. I’m leaving traces, he thought.

He stared down into a tray of speciality doughnuts. They were not the round kind, or the ring. They were not creamy zeppelins, apple-filled or cinnamon-sugar-rolled. No. They were shaped like people. Like gingerbread men.

In Canvey –because that was where he found himself on this teeth-achingly cold, brutally bracing January morning –their wild and resolutely wool-infested island history was intertwined with the stamp of spicy ginger, with sweetness, with men (as late as the eighteenth century this precarious domain’s unhealthy air –the interminable dampness – brought the fever like an unwelcome wedding gift to raw hordes of eager new brides.

Malaria. Concealed in the perilous but stealthy fog which constantly tiptoed around this fractured isle like a ravenously phantas-magorical winter mink, slipping, unobserved, between plump and tender post-nuptial lips, slinking, unapprehended, through the spirited flair of passionate nostrils.

Making itself at home. Rearranging the furniture. Infiltrating. Infecting. Conquering. Killing. In those days one stout and ruddy shepherd could take ten wives and think nothing of it. Some, it was rumoured, took as many as thirty-five).

Wesley knew his stuff. Or enough stuff, at least –he told himself tiredly –to be getting on with.

The doughnuts he took to be a local peculiarity. He gazed at them. He was hungry. Each doughnut had an ugly red scar where its jam had been pumped in the sweetest transfusion. Generally, the wound was located under the right armpit. Sometimes, but rarely, in the chest.

He glanced up. Instinct. A shop assistant watched him. She was tying on her apron but staring at his hand, her dark eyes, her clean mouth, battling instinctively against a wide tide of revulsion. On his right hand Wesley had only a thumb, and a mass of shiny scar tissue which glimmered a bright bluey-violet in the cold.

He removed his hand and tucked it into his pocket. But the assistant didn’t stop her staring. ‘I know you,’ she said, the light of recognition gradually dawning. He could see her lips moving. ‘I know you.’

Wesley stared at her, blankly, then turned and walked on.

The old man reached the bakery seconds later. Murdoch stopped in Wesley’s tracks and peered through the window. He put his thumb where Wesley’s thumb had been. His old eyes fed upon the trays of sweet iced fingers, sticky currant buns, cold bread pudding.

The small dog sat at his heels. Doc looked down at the dog, fondly, and then up into the face of the shop assistant. Her expression was no longer hostile, but pitying. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her brown eyes suddenly unconscionably round and tender. The old man nodded, frowned, paused, blinked, nodded again, then hurried swiftly onwards.

The young woman wore baggy jeans, a pale blue sweatshirt, a quilted grey Parka and a solid pair of flat, brown walking shoes. Her hair was cropped. Like the old man before her, she carefully placed her thumb where Wesley’s thumb had been. The assistant was standing behind her counter now, arranging french sticks into a wicker display basket. She didn’t appear to notice her.

The girl –Josephine –went into the shop.

‘I’ll have a doughnut,’ she said, raising her soft voice over the sound of the door bell jangling, then added, ‘No. Two. I’ll have two. Thank you.’

She took a wallet out of her pocket. She opened it. She glanced over her shoulder. She was plainly in a hurry.

‘You did my smear,’ the assistant smiled, hastily brushing sugar from her fingers, passing over the doughnuts and then punching the appropriate three keys on the till. ‘Remember?’

‘Did I?’ Jo clutched the doughnuts to her chest. For some reason she’d believed herself quite invisible. A wisp. A shade. A wraith.

‘Yes. Southend Hospital. I was dreading it. I actually have –if you don’t mind my saying so –I actually have an unusually tight…’ she lowered her voice to only a whisper, ‘an unusually tight vagina.’

Josephine –having leaned forward a fraction to catch what the assistant was saying –nodded sympathetically as she handed over her money.

‘I understand,’ she whispered back, ‘I understand completely.’ The assistant smiled, relieved.

‘My GP was absolutely bloody useless,’ she continued, taking the money, ‘so I demanded a referral to Southend after I heard you on the radio talking about your campaign for environmental sanitary products…’

‘Ah. Dioxin pollution,’ Jo intervened, automatically, ‘a dangerous by-product of the chlorine-bleaching process…’ As she spoke, she craned her neck slightly to try and peer down the road a way. From where she was standing, Wesley was well out of her range already, but Doc… Doc…

‘Unfortunately, some women are chronically allergic,’ she continued, doggedly, ‘and it can play total havoc with coastal marine… uh… coastal marine…’

Had Doc just turned left or right? Or was it…? Hang on. There was a van, a dirty white van… The van pulled off.

Damn. Now there was a stupid bus shelter in the way. She blinked. Wow. Was that fog? It suddenly seemed foggy. Or was it just her eyes? She usually wore glasses. Short-sighted. But she’d gone and sat on them, stupidly, first thing this morning, in her hurry. Needed sticky tape to… needed… early this morning. She’d been up since two-thirty. A full… she glanced down at her watch, squinting slightly… a full five and a half hours already.

Jo sighed, frustratedly, then slowly turned back around to face the counter again, her expression blank. Three long seconds ticked by. ‘Oh… uh, sorry… coastal marine biology,’ she concluded, then smiled distractedly.

‘That’s it,’ the assistant nodded, ‘Dioxin pollution. I remember now. And you were great.’

‘Well thank you.’

Jo’s money tinkled into the appropriate compartments. Fifty. Ten. Two. She took a small step backwards.

‘And I know this might sound a little bit peculiar,’ the assistant continued, plainly undeterred by Jo’s blatant inattentiveness, ‘but you actually have a real…’ she paused, thoughtfully, ‘a real knack.’

Jo inhaled, but not –she hoped –impatiently, ‘It’s only a system. Everything depends upon identifying the precise angle of the womb…’ she flapped her free hand around in the air (a furiously migrating Italian finch, caught in the cruel swathes of a huntsman’s netting) in order to try and demonstrate, ‘and then the rest is all just basic common sense, really. Your GP should get hold of my pamphlet. It’s available free from the Health Authority. Tell him to send off for it.’

She smiled brightly and turned to leave. Jesus Christ, she was thinking, how absolutely fucking excruciating. To be caught out. Like this. And here of all places.

The assistant, for her part, smiled back at Jo, nodded twice, perfectly amiably, then slammed the till shut. Nothing –at least superficially –out of the ordinary there. But as the coins in their compartments shifted and jangled in a brief yet acrimonious base-metal symphony, Jo could’ve sworn she heard something. Something else. Something beyond. Something extra. Three words. Half-muttered. Virtually inaudible over the surrounding clatter.

Don’t follow him.

Jo froze. Her professional smile malfunctioned. ‘Did you just say something?’

She spoke over her left shoulder, her hackles rising. The assistant’s brown eyes widened, ‘Me? No. Nothing.’

Josephine walked quickly and stiffly to the door, put out her hand, grasped the doorhandle, was about to turn the handle, was just about to turn it, when, Oh God, how stupid. She simply couldn’t help herself. She spun around again.

‘You’ve got me all wrong,’ she wheedled defensively, her head held high but her voice suddenly faltering on the cusp of a stammer, ‘I’m hon… I’m honestly really only out shopping.’

It was barely 8 a.m. A pale and freezing January morning on Canvey Island.

Outside the distant fog horns blew, like huge metal heifers howling and wailing in an eerily undefined bovine agony.

Don’t follow him.

Two

Broad as the whole wide ocean, I, Empty as the darkest sky, False as an unconvincing lie, Invisible as thin air.

Others found me in the sweet hereafter – Look hard, Look harder, You’ll find me there.

‘Behindlings.’

Arthur Young spoke this word quietly in his thin but rather distinctive pebble dash voice, and then abruptly stopped walking.

His companion (who was strolling directly behind him) veered sharply sideways to avoid a collision. But although he executed this sudden manoeuvre with considerable agility, he still managed to clip Arthur’s scrawny shoulder as he crashed on by.

‘What did you just say?’

He hurtled around to face him, slightly exasperated, his arms still flapping with the remaining impetus of their former momentum. Arthur stood silently, his eyes unfocussed, massaging his bony shoulder with a still-bonier hand, frowning. He was apparently deep in thought.

They were pretending to hike through Epping Forest together, but they weren’t fooling anybody. A local woman walking a recalcitrant basset had already turned her head to stare after them, curiously. And a well-muscled young man on a mountain bike had peered at them intently through his steamed-up goggles.

‘That’s the special name he invented for the people who follow him,’ Arthur finally elucidated. ‘He calls them Behindlings.’

After a second almost indecently lengthy pause he added, ‘We’ve actually been walking for almost an hour now…’ he tentatively adjusted his baseball cap, ‘and whether you choose to believe it or not,’ he continued tiredly, his gentle throat chafing and rasping like a tiny, fleshy sandblaster, ‘I’m really quite… I’m honestly quite weary.’

His companion –a portly but vigorous gentleman who was himself sweating copiously inside his inappropriately formal bright white shirt and navy blue blazer –also paused for a moment, pushed back his shoulders, and then slowly drew a deep and luxurious lungful of air.

He looked Arthur up and down. His eyes were as bold, bright and full of fight as a territorial robin’s, but his overall expression – while indisputably combative, perhaps even a touch contemptuous –was not entirely devoid of charity.

That said, his immediate and instinctive physical assessment of the strangely angular yet disturbingly languid creature who stood so quietly and pliantly before him (speckled as a thrush by tiny shafts of morning light pinpricking through the dark embroidery of the thick forest canopy), plainly didn’t inspire him to improve his long-term, critical evaluation one iota.

Arthur. Thin. Gaunt. Frayed at his edges; on his cuffs, at his collar. Wearing good but old clothes: nothing too remarkable, at first glance… Well, nothing, perhaps, apart from an ancient brown leather waistcoat (carefully hidden away under his waterproof jacket) with rotting seams and bald patches, a strange, waxy garment which effortlessly conjured up entire spools of disparate images: visions of a primitive world; the sweet, mulish stink of the traditional farmhand, the implacable fire and sulk of the Leveller, the fierce piety of the knight, the rich, meaty righteousness of Cromwell.

It was a curious thing. Ancient. Aromatic. Romantic. Almost a museum-piece.

Although superficially loose-limbed and listless, Arthur was actually exceedingly precise in both his movements and his manner. He was gentle but absolute. He was unforgiving. His mouth was unforgiving. The deep furrows from his nose to the corners of his lips were unforgiving. His hair –trapped under an old, plain, khaki-coloured baseball cap –was thinning. His skin was tight. They had not walked quickly but he seemed exhausted. Shrivelled.

They inhabited entirely different worlds. His companion was ripe and unctuous; as grand and imposing as a high-class, three-tiered wedding cake. And although –in view of his recent exertions –his icing had a slight tinge of parboiledness about it, he remained, nevertheless, disconcertingly well-configurated.

After a moment he drew a clean cotton handkerchief from his blazer pocket, mopped his brow and then exhaled heartily. For some reason he seemed inexplicably enlivened by Arthur’s frailty. Buoyed-up by it.

‘So you finally stopped drinking?’ he asked.

Arthur twitched, then smiled, uneasily, ‘Yes. I finally stopped.’

‘And your family? Your wife?’

Arthur glanced up into the sky. It was a cold, clear day. It was midwinter. Everything was icy. His lips. His teeth. His fingertips.

‘I never married.’

His companion frowned. This was not the answer he’d anticipated. He’d imagined he knew everything he needed to know about Arthur. He’d investigated. He’d peeked, poked, connived, wheedled. The rest –the polite enquiries, the stilted conversation, the walk, even –was little more than mere etiquette. He continued to inspect Arthur closely –yet now just a fraction more aggressively –with his hard, round eyes.

‘There was something in your background…’ he began slowly, carefully unfastening his blazer, ‘which I never knew before, and it was something which absolutely intrigued me.’

‘Really?’ Arthur was unimpressed but he was nervous, and nerves alone rendered him obliging. As he spoke, he noted –with a sudden feeling of inexplicable dismay –how his companion’s plump thumbnail was split down its centre. Sharply. Cleanly. Cracked open like a germinating seed.

‘I did a little nosing around. It appears you once had a famous relative who wrote a book about walking. Or farming…’

‘Both,’ Arthur sounded off-kilter, ‘a very ancient, very distant relative.’

He tried to make it sound insignificant.

‘Well I found it fascinating. And you have his name?’

‘Yes. But that’s just a coincidence. My parents had no particular interest in either history or travel.’

Arthur cleared his throat nervously, then tried his utmost to change the drift of their conversation by suddenly peering over his shoulder and into the undergrowth, as if to imply that something infinitely more engaging might be silently unfolding, right there, just behind them, partially hidden inside that deep and unwelcoming curtain of winter green. Perhaps a badger might be passing. Or a woodpecker –lesser-spotted –undulating gracefully through the boughs just above them.

It didn’t work.

‘Your father…’ his companion paused, as if temporarily struggling to remember the details, ‘I believe he was a foreman with Fords at Dagenham?’

Arthur nodded, mutely, closely scrutinizing his own middle and index fingers. He wished there was a cigarette snuggled gently between them. He would kiss it.

‘And your mother worked on the cold meats counter in the Co-op… But you did. You had an interest.’ Almost imperceptibly, his companion’s mellifluous voice had grown much flatter, and was now maintaining a casual but curiously intimidating monotone. ‘Which was why you attended agricultural college in the early seventies, before undertaking what, in retrospect, might’ve seemed a slightly ambitious attempt to retrace the exact footsteps of the original Arthur Young, but a whole… now what would it be, exactly…? A whole two hundred years later.’

Arthur said nothing. What might he add? The forest shouldered in darkly around him. A short distance away he thought he could hear horses. His companion noticed something too. He glanced off to his left, sharply.

‘They’re on an adjacent track,’ Arthur murmured, cocking his head for a moment then walking to the edge of the path and sitting down on a wide, clean, newly-cut tree-stump. His companion remained standing, as before.

‘So I retraced,’ Arthur eventually volunteered, and not without some small hint of bile, ‘I re-visited, I re-appraised. I intended to publish a book, but things didn’t quite pan out. I found myself working for a London bank, and then, like you, in the confectionery industry. It wasn’t…’ he had the good grace to shrug apologetically, ‘a particularly sweet experience. I encountered some…’ he stumbled, ‘a portion of bad luck. I became unwell. Unfit. I received a pension. I still receive it. And you…’ he struggled to enlarge his focus, ‘you probably got promoted after I left?’

‘Yes. I had your old job in marketing for a while. Then I moved up a level.’

Arthur nodded. He inspected his hands again. They were looking –he had to admit it –just a little shaky.

‘If you don’t mind my saying so,’ his companion suddenly observed, his voice worryingly moss-lined and springy, ‘you got your breath back awfully quickly, for such an avowedly unfit man.’

‘What?’ Arthur’s sharp chin shot skywards a few seconds after he spoke, in a slightly farcical delayed reaction. His companion chuckled, ‘I’m not here about the pension, silly…’

His fastidious tone made Arthur feel grubby. It was a nasty feeling, but extremely familiar.

‘Apparently,’ the glare of his companion’s hard smile continued unabated, ‘you sometimes like to walk distances of up to two hundred and fifty miles during an average seven day span. Although last week, for some reason, you only clocked eighty-nine.’

Arthur was silent. In the weak morning light his sunken jowls glimmered like the writhing grey flanks of a well-hooked bream. The truth engulfed him.

‘Can you guess what it is that really gives you away?’

Arthur didn’t speak. He didn’t move. He couldn’t. He was a neatly snapped twig. He sat, rigid, hardly breathing, blankly appraising his several scattered parts from some crazily random yet inconceivably distant vantage point. From a cloud. From a swift’s eye.

‘Your shoes. High quality walking boots. Well worn to the extent that any moderately inquisitive person might easily find themselves wondering why it could be that a man claiming long-term disability allowance should be wearing such fine, strong, functional footwear.’ ‘I was given them,’ Arthur whispered.

‘No,’ his companion interjected calmly, ‘you have a private deal with a large shoe manufacturer. I believe the formal term is sponsorship.’

Arthur gazed down at his boots. He could smell his own guilt as patently as the shrill tang of disinfectant bleeding from the pine needles crushed under his soles.

‘Which was actually rather…’ his companion pondered for a moment, ‘rather audacious on your part, come to think of it.’

Arthur considered this. He considered the word. Audacious. He paused. Audacious. Yes. He drew a deep breath. His back straightened. His chin lifted again. He stopped pretending.

‘So,’ he said, his voice hardening, ‘does moving up a level –I believe those were your words –does moving up mean that you’re to be held wholly responsible for that boy drowning recently?’

His companion stiffened; his beam faded. ‘He wasn’t a boy. He was twenty-eight bloody years old. Don’t you read the papers?’

Arthur shrugged. He looked down, modestly, his insides warming. His companion walked to the opposite side of the path, leaned against a Scots Pine and then peered up tentatively into its branches, as if expecting to see a wild little monkey dangling among its boughs.

Arthur strung his fingers together. His confidence burgeoned.

‘I did read the papers,’ he muttered eventually, but without any hint of brashness, ‘I read about the Treasure Hunt. I followed the clues.’

‘No,’ his companion interjected, unable to help himself. ‘No. Not a Treasure Hunt exactly…’

‘Oh God. But how… how imprecise of me,’ Arthur’s mean lips suddenly served up the thinnest of grins, ‘and how stupid. Of course not. You called it a Loiter, didn’t you? A Loiter,’ Arthur unstrung his fingers and then hung them, instead, slack and loose between his bony thighs, ‘because our good friend Wesley invents special words for things, doesn’t he? He thinks words make things special. He wants every action to be particular, to be… to be individual in some way. And you know what?’

No time for a response; Arthur rushed on, regardless, ‘I honestly –I mean I honestly – believe that Wesley is actually self-obsessed and arrogant and vain… and vain…’ Arthur lunged after this word hungrily, and when his mouth finally caught up with it, his tongue literally wriggled with the physical pleasure it accorded him, ‘and vainglorious enough to seriously think that this curiously irritating custom of his –this silly habit, this novel facility –gives him some kind of special premium on originality. Not just that, either, but on… but on morality itself, even… You know? Some kind of God-given… some kind of…’

Arthur’s fingers were now twitching so violently as he struggled, a second time –and failed, quite notably –to find the word he was searching for, that he actually looked as if he was playing scales on an invisible Steinway (right there, in the forest), or practising something impossibly fast and fiddly by Liszt or Stravinsky.

And while he continued to grasp –helplessly –for this infernal word that evaded him so absolutely, his eyes –previously glazed and grey –seemed to moisten and widen (their pupils dilating), his cheeks (previously sallow and sunken) grew ripe as sugared plums in an autumnal pudding (a crumble, a fool, something tart, something hot, something sticky), until he looked like a man who’d swallowed down a large lump of gristle much too quickly –without chewing properly.

But Arthur was still breathing. He was not halted or suffocated or silenced by what was happening. He was still vital. He was still active and still functioning. If anything, he’d been galvanised. He’d been enlivened. He’d been pinched –slapped –spanked –thrashed by an intoxicatingly hard whack of righteous propriety. An exquisitely addictive, high-minded, bare-fisted, low-church-style sanctimony. His rage was not only pious, it was borderline biblical – it was Abraham’s wife Rachel, trapped, temporarily, in a violently impotent maternal frenzy.

Arthur’s companion (still leaning against his tree), observed Arthur’s long, lean fingers racing, the deep colour in his cheeks –his lips –and a tiny quirk of satisfaction began to lift his brow a way. Yet before it was completely risen, before it could settle, unequivocally, Arthur’s fingers abruptly stopped their fluttering. They fell back between his knees again. He suddenly grew still, the colour draining from his face –at speed –as if somehow repenting the too sensual flush of its former flowering.

‘The sad truth of the matter…’ finally his voice re-emerged from the icy depths of his sudden stasis, ‘the sad truth is that Wesley’s been brainwashed by his own publicity. Brainwashed to the point that he actually, honestly believes in all that rubbish he’s been spooning out over the years. All the lies. All the humbug. All the ridiculous chic… chic… chicanery.’

Arthur stumbled, quietly, on his final delivery. But even this stutter couldn’t trip him up. It couldn’t silence him. Not utterly.

‘The bald truth is that he’s watched too much bad TV,’ Arthur spoke almost regretfully, inhaling again, eventually, with some difficulty. ‘Yes. That, and he’s been lucky. He’s landed on his feet a few times when by rights he shouldn’t have. He’s milked his opportunities. And finally, to top it all off, he’s jumped –and so… so wholeheartedly, with such flagrant, such obvious, such embarrassing rapaciousness – onto this whole, madly convoluted, New Age environmental bandwagon. All that ludicrously pat Third Wave jumble. All that Alvin Toffler “Small is Beautiful” crap.’

Arthur sniffed, somewhat haughtily, ‘I mean it’s all been very timely. No point denying it. And he’s certainly taken the opportunity to read up on a little bit of pretentious French philosophy. He’s sharpened his act. He’s honed it. And I’m sure…’ Arthur’s voice was growing louder, his hands were picking up tempo again, were playing again –The Death March now, real-time, then double-time, then just plain madly, ‘I’m certain he thinks he’s a thoroughly modern hero. Like something from Rousseau. Or Nietzsche. Or, better still, an anti-hero. In fact I’m positive he thinks he’s a genius. And there are plenty of fools out there more than happy to go along with his delusions. But not me. I’m not one of them. Because he isn’t a genius, and I’ll keep on saying it. He isn’t a genius. Far from it. He’s puerile. He’s a shithead and a fathead and a peacock. He’s… He’s…’

Arthur stopped again, mid-flow, swallowed hard, twice, as if to keep something down, to push it back, ripped off his baseball cap (as if longing to keep his fingers distracted) and then continued talking, but glancing up now; connecting, engaging, projecting, speaking more carefully, more plainly, ‘A Loiter,’ he rotated his cap in his hand, pulling gently at the lining, as if testing its solidity. ‘It’s a movement –a violation, of sorts –but slow and calm and casual. It’s an invasion, isn’t it? Or an infringement? A trespass. It’s slippery. It’s untrustworthy. It’s stupid and it’s pointless. In actual fact it’s just like… it’s just like Wesley. It expresses him perfectly.’

Arthur shook his head, slowly, as if in wonder, ‘A Loiter.’ He rolled the word around on his tongue, ‘It’s actually quite pathetic, when you really come to think about it. It’s unformed. It’s adolescent… And yet,’ he looked up, keenly, ‘didn’t the company end up adopting the phrase? Didn’t you adopt it, I mean personally?’

Arthur’s companion grimaced, as if taken aback by his pointed ferocity, but then he shrugged, ‘We might’ve used it in the initial publicity, for a price, but –and let me emphasise this fact quite categorically –in this particular context it had nothing whatsoever to do with either mischief or risk. That was our proviso. And obviously there had to be a worthwhile prize at the end of it all, an incentive, a reward…’

‘So you called in Wesley,’ Arthur, in turn –even against his better judgement –seemed drawn into himself again, ‘a man infamous as a prankster, as a joker. An out-and-out wildcard. Someone with enough of a reputation for piss-taking to make your average level-headed businessman run a mile. Which –oh dear God –inevitably, from your corner, must’ve made the whole deal feel so shocking, so seductive, so exquisitely… well, transgressive.’

‘Yes. We called him in,’ his companion quickly interrupted Arthur’s unhelpful little river of adjectives, as if in the vain hope of somehow re-routeing it, ‘and initially –I’ll make no bones about it –to start off with, at least, it did all feel rather…’ he paused, nearly sneering, ‘rather audacious. Yes. So we called him in. And eventually –with a little prompting, obviously –he came.’

Arthur didn’t have to try too hard to picture it. ‘At first…’ he placed his cap onto his knee and scratched at his prickly, wheat-coloured chin, ‘knowing Wesley –I mean his type – he was probably fairly reticent. You presumably had your work cut out in persuading him. But you obviously,’ he smiled tightly, ‘you patently rose to the challenge.’

His companion simply shrugged his aquiescence.

‘And in so doing,’ Arthur continued, barely restraining his anger at the very notion, ‘I can only suppose that you told him…’ he held up his hands and counted off each of the virtues he subsequently listed, one by one, on his bony fingers, ‘how much you admired his boldness, his imagination, his integrity, his amazing knack for acquiring publicity. And of course he has his followers –a large and wonderfully gullible ready-made assembly…’

‘Of course. The Behindlings.’

‘And if I know Wesley…’ again, Arthur was forced to qualify himself, ‘I mean if I did know him, I imagine he would probably have demanded complete control. Absolute autonomy. Because only Wesley can hold the reins.’

‘So we hand them over,’ his companion continued, amiably, ‘we give him his autonomy. We let him work out a route, prepare clues…’

‘And it’s all terribly secretive.’

‘Terribly.’

‘But then two short weeks after you release the third clue…’ ‘Yes.’

Suddenly his companion’s bold voice wavered, just a fraction, ‘Yes. The drowning.’ Silence. ‘Fantastic!’

Arthur clapped his hands. They flew together so rapidly, so violently, that they knocked his cap clean off his knee. But he didn’t seem to have noticed. His eyes were moist. His cheeks were taut. For the first time during their lengthy meeting he seemed deeply and unreservedly happy.

‘If you don’t mind my saying so,’ his companion muttered thickly, ‘that’s a somewhat insensitive choice of word, under the circumstances.’

‘I know,’ Arthur looked momentarily abashed, ‘forgive me.’

‘Forgive you?’ His companion smiled, cheerlessly, ‘Why? You hate him. And it’s a perfectly natural reaction.’

Arthur started, looked slightly surprised, and then, seconds later, almost guileful, ‘Me? Why should I hate him? I’ve never even met Wesley.’

His companion snorted. ‘There’s a history,’ he said, ‘why the hell else would I be standing here today?’

Arthur said nothing. He was unhappy again. Deflated. Some things were unmentionable. Histories, especially. ‘So he hurt somebody I knew once,’ he offered, finally, ‘that’s all. It was only carelessness. And it was a long time ago.’

‘Of course. A very long time. And you probably might prefer to try and forget all about it…’ Arthur’s eyes flared. To forget? How could he? ‘But I’m afraid,’ his companion’s rich voice dropped, effortlessly, to almost a murmur, ‘that’s not quite what I’m anticipating.’

‘Why not?’ Arthur spoke normally, but the question reverberated on the quiet, tree-lined path with an almost unnatural clarity, sending up a blackbird from a low branch behind him. The bird chattered its fury.

‘Why not?’ His companion’s eyes followed the angry bird. ‘Because lately I’ve become the unwilling recipient of a certain amount of…’ he paused, ‘pressure. From colleagues who aren’t at all happy about how things have been panning out –with Wesley –with the Loiter. Perhaps they feel, in retrospect, that Wesley was a rather poor bet. These are people –as I’m sure you can imagine –who don’t at all value adverse publicity.’

Arthur grimaced. He did not need to imagine. He knew these people. Their complacency. Their serenity. Their ease. He loathed them.

‘So I’ve come under a certain amount of pressure…’ as his companion spoke he left the shelter of his tree, drew slightly closer to Arthur, then closer still, ‘and naturally, after a while, it seemed expedient to diffuse this pressure by contacting a man who had a history with the company, a man who might reasonably be said to have had a history with Wesley, a man with a grudge, an unfit man. I resolved to contact this man in order to quietly suggest that he might conveniently decide to renew his interest.’

‘And if he doesn’t?’ Arthur’s voice sounded flimsy. This was not a good question. Even he could sense it.

‘If he doesn’t? Well, then I suppose I might be tempted to make certain discrepancies, certain inconsistencies in his very private life a matter of more public concern.’

Arthur was scowling. But he said nothing.

‘Okay…’ his companion suddenly crouched down before him, his knees groaning and creaking like a brand new, high-polished leather saddle, ‘you don’t need to know everything, but what you do need to know is that Wesley was entrusted with something very valuable. For obvious reasons I cannot tell you what that thing was. And yes, while he did relate certain strategic points on the Loiter to a small group of us, and provided us with some basic outlines of his general intentions, he by no means told us everything.

‘The final clue, as you probably already know, was announced only three weeks ago, after a certain amount of procrastination. At first we’d considered cancelling the whole thing –as a tribute to the dead man, as an apology –but then the father became involved. The old boy. The scaffolder. You’ll have seen him in the papers.’

Arthur nodded. Yes. He’d seen the old man.

‘So press attention at that point was obviously intense. It still is. But we were handling it. Unfortunately, Wesley then decided to raise the stakes. He broke off all communications with the company. He grew uncooperative. Three days ago he travelled to Canvey…’

Arthur clucked, shrewdly, ‘Ah. Candy Island. Daniel Defoe. The first clue.’

His companion shrugged this off boredly. ‘Of course. It’s a very famous linguistic corruption. But that’s not what concerns you. What concerns you is that I have recently developed some misgivings about Wesley’s intentions. His motivations. His reliability. In short, I have stopped trusting him.’

Arthur sniffed, dismissively, then touched the cuff of his coat to the tip of his nose. A small droplet darkened its khaki. ‘If you suspect fraud you could have him arrested.’

‘Oh yes, before some poor, deluded fool went and killed himself, very possibly. But now it’s much too fucked up. It’s too complicated.’

Arthur still seemed befuddled.

‘I need you to help me,’ his companion continued, ‘I need you to… to involve yourself in some way. I’m surrounding him. I’ll need information. You’ll have to be circumspect. My ultimate ambition is to defuse the situation. I need to understand it. I need to distract Wesley. To… to debilitate him.’

He paused for a moment, then continued on again, silkily, ‘Naturally, you’re not the only person I’m involving. There will be others. They will know different things, but they won’t know everything. Overall, my intention, my need, is to distance the company from the drowned man, from the old boy, and, ultimately, from Wesley. To keep things clean.’

Arthur was silent. But his mind was working.

His companion watched him, benignly. ‘Here’s some advice for you,’ he whispered, ‘I know about the history. I also know that you’re screwing countless different sources for money. I know why. I understand. And if you help me I will ensure that nobody finds out. And I mean nobody. I will do things for you,’ he paused, ‘but if you go to the papers, if you act indiscreetly, there’s sufficient ill-feeling between you and Wesley for me to manipulate that and to use it against you. At this particular point we have no way of knowing what it is exactly that Wesley’s planning…’

Arthur’s eyebrows rose. ‘Perhaps he’s not planning anything. Perhaps he’s just… just…’ he struggled, ‘just plain mooching. Have you even considered that possibility?’

His companion nodded, unmoved by Arthur’s cynicism. ‘Of course we have. But it’s unlikely. This is Wesley, after all.’

Out of the blue, he swung himself forward and moved his two lips right up close to Arthur’s ear. ‘The air around you,’ he whispered gently, ‘it smells of death. Hospitals. Disinfectant. Why? Who is responsible? Will you tell? Will you enlighten me?’

Arthur stiffened. He struggled to stop his hands from trembling. It was just a misunderstanding, that was all. Eventually his companion pulled away again and the warmth of his breath –on Arthur’s cheek, his ear –transformed, gradually, into something quite different; a thing no less intimate, but cool now, and lingering.

Arthur sat and watched quietly as he stood up, slowly, pushing his hands onto his knees for leverage. Those strangely vocal knees, Arthur thought, and listened to them protesting. Perhaps he had room to protest himself? But he did not.

Instead, he remained mute, sucking his tongue and staring dumbly ahead of him, down the path, into the distance. He could not bring himself to speak again. It was simply not necessary. His mouth was so thick and full now with the taste of Wesley.

Three

‘What you did back then was unforgivable. It was mean, it was selfish, it was thoughtless, it was just… it was just plain wrong.’

The man who spoke these stem words –his name was Ted, and he was a fresh-faced but avuncular small town estate agent –did so without the slightest hint, the slightest note, the slightest tremble of disapproval in his voice. His absolute lack of ire was not merely striking; it teetered, it lurched, it practically tumbled head first into the realm of remarkable.

Wesley, to whom this speech had been principally directed (but who didn’t appear to have digested a word of it), acknowledged as much –internally –as he swung himself from left to right on an ancient and creaking swivel chair in Ted’s Canvey High Street office. He was inspecting property details. He was considering renting.

‘Which bad thing in particular?’ he asked idly. There were so many bad things.

‘Which thing? The Canvey thing. In the book. The Katherine Turpin thing.’

Wesley stopped swivelling and glanced up. ‘What? In the walks book? All the stuff about perimeters? That was years ago.’

He liked this man. Ted. He liked his wide mouth, his charming effervescence, his loopy sincerity, his almost-silliness. Wesley appraised Ted’s thick lips as they vibrated, like two fat, pink molluscs performing a shifty rhumba.

‘Two years ago. Twenty-seven months, if you want to be precise about it,’ Ted calculated amicably.

‘Two years? Fuck. Is that all?’

Wesley frowned –as if this was a vexatious detail that had not previously occurred to him –while Ted waved to a passerby through the agency’s large, exquisitely high-polished picture window. It was the third time he’d done so in as many minutes.

‘You seem to know everybody around here,’ Wesley observed drily, turning his head to peer outside, ‘it must be very trying.’

‘Trying? Why?’ Ted didn’t understand. ‘I find people their homes. It’s an essential… it’s a quint-essential service.’

‘I get your point,’ Wesley puckered his lips slightly, to try and stop an inadvertent grin from sneaking out and plastering itself –with unapologetic candour –all over his mouth. Then, in a bid to distract Ted’s attention, he suddenly pointed, ‘There’s a woman. Do you see her? Over in the Wimpy. Sitting in the window, directly opposite the Old Man.’

‘The sun’s in my eyes,’ Ted squinted, then moved to the left a fraction. ‘Ah… Yes. The one in the sweatshirt? Short hair? Eating a doughnut? Looks like a boy?’

‘That’s her.’

‘Who is she?’

Wesley shrugged, ‘I don’t know. That’s why I asked.’

He glanced around him, momentarily nonplussed. It was a neat office. Ted was neat. In fact he was immaculately presented. He wore a dark grey suit from Next, a spotless white shirt and a silk tie with an image of Sylvester the Cat spewed repeatedly in full technicolor onto a noxious, salmon pink background. His two shoes shone like heavily glacé’ed morello cherries.

‘So… Ted, was it?’

Ted nodded.

‘So Ted, are you the boss of this agency?’

Ted did a humourful double-take, ‘Do I look like the boss?’

‘I don’t know. How does the boss look?’

‘Different. Older. Shorter. Brown hair. Glasses. Huge moustache.’ Ted was a strawberry blond.

‘I knew a man like you once,’ Wesley observed, rather ominously, casually flipping through the sheets of property details again. ‘He looked like you, had the same cheerful… no, altruistic notions. Always beautifully turned-out. Then one day he became fascinated by pigeons’ feet, and that was the end of him.’ Ted tried to look unfazed by this strangely baroque influx of information. He almost succeeded.

‘He’d travel around,’ Wesley elucidated, ‘catching stray pigeons and giving them pedicures. He made special splints from old lolly sticks. Eventually he even began constructing his own, tiny, perfectly executed false limbs. Somebody made a documentary about his work and tried to sell it to Channel 5, but I don’t think they bought it. He was involved in radical causes. It frightened the shit out of them.’

Wesley glanced up. Ted was rubbing his clean-shaven jaw with his nimble fingers in such a way as to indicate a certain want of credulity. Wesley scowled, irritated. ‘I’m perfectly serious. He simply couldn’t abide the sight of a bird with a limp. He was mad about feet. Birds’ feet. Loathed human feet, though. If you pulled off your socks in front of him he’d break out into a sweat. It was tragic.’ Wesley gave the forefinger and thumb on his good hand a cursory lick to improve his turning power. ‘Pigeons aren’t indigenous to Britain,’ he observed, helpfully, ‘and that was his beef. His argument was that they were kept domestically, originally, but then they strayed or were abandoned. Yet somehow they were canny enough to adapt and survive. That was partly why he felt such a powerful connection with them. He was temporarily fostered himself as a kid…’

Wesley paused for a moment to inspect a particular sheet, frowned, then continued turning the pages, ‘People think factory farming is a modern phenomenon, but pigeons were kept by the Romans in the fourth century BC inside these huge, airless towers. They had their legs broken and their wings clipped to prevent them from moving…’, he cleared his throat. ‘This friend of mine waged a campaign against lime-use. People put it on their windowsills. Extremely common in the 1970s. Very cruel. Melts the bird’s toes…

‘The point I’m making…’ Wesley stopped leafing and paused for a minute, ‘is that he was actually ridiculously sensitive, underneath all that other stuff. Underneath that thick layer of poise and helpfulness and affability…

‘Right,’ he passed Ted a sheet, ‘this is the place.’

Ted took the sheet and glanced at it, his mind still fully occupied by images of lime and feet and feathers. After a few seconds, though, his eyes cleared and widened. He shook his head. He began to snigger, nervously. ‘You can’t be…’ he managed eventually, shaking his head and trying vainly to hand the sheet back again.

Wesley scowled. He would not take it. ‘What’s so funny?’

Ted’s mirth slowly evaporated. He stared intently at Wesley for a moment, struggling to tell if he was sincere. But he couldn’t tell. Wesley’s expression was completely unreadable. He was a human hieroglyphic.

‘This is her house,’ Ted said, finally. ‘She’s renting out the spare bedroom. Shared use of bathroom and kitchen facilities. I’m only handling it as a personal favour.’

‘Whose house?’ Wesley sounded perfectly innocent. Benign. Casual.

‘Whose house?’ he repeated, after a pause.

Ted pointed at the printed details: ‘This is Katherine Turpin’s house. This is the house of the local woman whose life you ruined.’

A short silence followed, punctuated, briefly, by Wesley’s stomach rumbling.

‘Blow me,’ Wesley finally expostulated (almost convincingly), ‘that’s some crazy coincidence. I suppose we’d better go and take a look, then, hadn’t we?’

He stood up. Ted didn’t move a muscle.

‘Take me there,’ Wesley ordered, reaching over to grab Ted’s jacket from the back of his chair, bundling it up into a compact ball, and throwing it at him.

‘You don’t know me…’ Josephine said, squeezing her way between the plastic bench and its table.

‘I don’t know you,’ Doc affirmed, not even looking up at her, but applying all his energy to dissolving the foam on his coffee by stirring at it vigorously with the back end of a knife. The foam wouldn’t dissolve though. Too dense. Too soapy.

He was occupying a window kiosk in the Wimpy. Dennis sat outside, tied to a lamppost, his snout pushed mournfully against the glass, his breath steaming up the window in small, cloudy patches.

‘My name’s Josephine,’ she said, sitting down.

‘Why all this foam?’ Doc muttered, not anticipating an answer.

‘That’s a cappuccino. I believe it’s prepared with frothy milk.’

Doc finally glanced up and inspected Josephine. He frowned slightly. He couldn’t pretend to understand this irritating modern phenomenon of girls who dressed like boys. Did it mean she hated men? Was she sexually deviant? Was she frigid? Was she frightened? Was she predatory? Either way, she made him feel old and alienated and uneasy.

‘Who made you an authority?’ he asked curtly.

Josephine didn’t respond at once. First, she picked up a napkin and neatly turned over each of its four comers –double-checking the sharpness of the fold, in each instance.

‘I’m hardly an authority,’ she murmured, unfolding the napkin again, smoothing it out with the flat of her palm and then shoving it away. Doc ignored her fidgetings. He occupied himself instead by staring out of the window and over the road towards the estate agency.

‘Do you think he’s only after information,’ Josephine queried, leaning forward, pushing both elbows onto the table, cupping her neat chin inside her two immaculately clean hands (her short, white nails thin as ten tight crescent moons; bright as albumen) and glancing over herself, ‘or do you reckon he might actually be planning to stay here awhile?’

Doc took a quick sip of his coffee. It was hot. He cursed under his breath and hastily put the cup down again.

‘I bought your dog a doughnut,’ Josephine said, indicating towards the paper bag she’d been holding, already dark with grease stains, ‘I hope you don’t mind.’

‘He’s diabetic,’ Doc growled, clumsily wiping away his foam moustache with the back of his hand and then staring, bemusedly, at the remaining slick of cocoa-splattered residue, like it was some kind of toxic extra-terrestrial slop.

‘A diabetic? Really?’

Doc –still refusing formal eye contact –gritted his teeth and then muttered gutturally through them, ‘I hardly think it’d be worth my while to lie about such a thing.’

‘No.’

Josephine frowned and leaned back, somewhat unnerved by Doc’s pugnacity. She grabbed hold of the offending bag, removed a doughnut from inside (glancing, guiltily, towards the service counter), then sat and stared at it.

‘It’s shaped like a man,’ she observed, biting off both of its arms in quick succession.

Doc didn’t respond. He was concentrating on the estate agency again. Inside he thought he could see Wesley standing up and throwing something. He roughly pushed his cup aside (the coffee pitched then spilled, still steaming, into its saucer), fastened a couple of buttons on his cardigan, grabbed his oilskin jacket from the bench beside him, and clambered to his feet.

But before he beat his hasty retreat, Doc paused –almost regretfully –shifting his weight heavily from his bad leg to his better leg like a small child anxiously queuing to collect his Good Conduct certificate at school assembly.

‘Look,’ he spoke quickly, his voice –Josephine noticed –fractionally less abrasive than it had been previously, ‘I’ve made it my business to follow Wesley for well over three and a half years now,’ Doc inadvertently clenched then unclenched his left fist as he spoke, testing the joints for any hint of arthritic stiffening, ‘and what I want you to understand…’ his bleary brown eyes were already focussing beyond Josephine, out of the window, over the road, ‘what I need you to understand is that for me this isn’t just a game or a hobby. It’s actually like a kind of…’ he paused, struggling, his eyes briefly flickering towards the ceiling, ‘a kind of pilgrimage.’

Still he wasn’t satisfied, ‘A way of life, if you will…’

He scowled, temporarily incapable of encompassing the complex landscape of his emotions verbally of fully encapsulating The Following and all its myriad implications.

‘I truly, fully appreciate the depth of your commitment,’ Josephine butted in, quickly snatching her opportunity, trying her utmost to sound sufficiently submissive, ‘I mean I know you’re quite the expert…’

‘There are some people,’ Doc rapidly continued, almost as if he hadn’t heard her, ‘who have Followed him even longer than I have, in terms of actual years, but none so intensively. There are many –especially since the big confectionery Loiter –who Follow him mostly at the weekends or perhaps for a day or two when they’re on holiday, and others who simply turn up, at the drop of a hat, whenever the fancy takes them. We call these people,’ Doc allowed himself a wry smile, ‘we call such people Fleas, because their… because their infestation is almost always very temporary.’

Josephine inspected her armless sundry –a rather unwieldy wodge of dough still tucked inside her cheek –all too fully aware of which horribly capricious category Doc had already slotted her into.

‘You see, to me, as yet,’ Doc observed, pushing home his point rather more blatantly than was necessary, ‘you are just another one of those people. Those Fleas. And while I would hate you to take this the wrong way, Josephine…’

(Her name. He’d remembered. He’d snatched it from the ether, quite arbitrarily.)

‘… I’d much prefer it if you’d refrain from questioning me or talking to me, bothering me or pestering me. Because any information I may have gathered is my information. I have worked for it. I have earned it. I use it as I see fit. I don’t…’ he thought hard about the word he needed, ‘disseminate. I do not disseminate it,’ he paused. ‘Well, I do, sometimes, but only when I want to, when I choose to,’ he smiled briskly (old teeth. Yellow teeth. Wonky). ‘I hope that settles things.’

The smile stopped (Doc turned it off in a flash –with a small click in his jaw –like the neat switch on a wall-socket) then he nodded abruptly and strode to the door.

Outside, Dennis dashed joyously forward until his elasticated leash stretched to capacity –like a horizontal bungee –and jerked him –ears flying, claws scrabbling comically –all the way back again.

Inside, Josephine grimaced, swallowed her cheekful of masticated doughnut, then savagely bit off the head from what remained of the torso.

‘You miserable old bugger,’ she muttered, her mouth still full, but a careful hand gently shielding it, for the sake of propriety. As she spoke, dark raspberry jam slowly oozed through one of the now-truncated armholes and trickled down stickily onto the front of her sweatshirt. She didn’t notice. Her wide hazel eyes were already swivelling, expertly, across the road, and fixing, hungrily, on the estate agency. There she saw the door swinging open, a blond man in a suit emerging, and just behind him, Wesley.

Four

The beautiful yet unspeakably wronged Katherine Turpin lived in a bungalow just off the Furtherwick Road; a prime, centrally located Canvey address which conveniently situated the property at an exact halfway point between the town centre and the beachfront. Ted might easily have shared these salient details with Wesley as they covered the short distance together –on foot –between the agency and the address, yet for some reason he refrained from doing so.

In fact he failed to communicate even the most perfunctory of observations during their journey (no mention of the weather –it was foggy but still dry –no reference to the purported length of Wesley’s stay –as yet, indeterminate –no discussion as to the quality of local amenities –uniformly high) preferring, instead, to maintain an unswervingly ruminative silence.

Wesley tried his utmost to breach it, but to no avail. Twice he reiterated a rather tedious enquiry about the opening hours of the local library and its location relative to the property under scrutiny. Twice his question was left hovering in the air like an undernourished kestrel hopelessly scouring the scant grass of a busy central reservation whilst being perilously buffeted by speeding heavy goods vehicles.

This relentless taciturnity was in no way intended to imply either indifference or any want of geniality on Ted’s part. He certainly meant no harm by it. He was simply in a temporary state of absolute moral panic. His mind was unsuccessfully engaged in a pitiful attempt to comprehend the various pernicious ethical permutations of his present situation: the countless obligations and commitments inherent in his role, his duty, as the honourable curator, the careful doorman, the kindly overseer of Katherine Turpin’s home.

But even while his mind strove to consider the endless tortuous ramifications of his present inadvisable course of action, he still managed to maintain an image of external composure by dint of persistently jangling a huge bunch of house keys in his free hand, and feeling –if only briefly –just slightly comforted by their hair-raisingly discordant metallic clatter (the other hand, meanwhile, supported a very snappy, imitation crocodile-skin briefcase, containing, Wesley suspected –and correctly –nothing more than Ted’s driving licence, a free handout about a carpet sale and two back copies of The Southend Gazette).

Perhaps, Ted pondered anxiously, this infamous Wesley truly was a bad man? But who the hell am I to judge? he countered modestly, shooting a sneaky sideways glance at him. Wesley did not have an especially bad face. His profile (already scarred –perhaps permanently –by the ongoing assault on his delicate senses from Ted’s relentless key-shaking) was nevertheless reassuringly unhawkish, his skin unpocked, his eyes unhooded. He seemed at once friendly and unaffected but hearteningly reined-in. He was surely no wild man.

Clever? Possibly. Smart? Never. Physically speaking he bordered on the unkempt. He was rangy and casual in his old, olive green corduroy trousers (so well-scuffed at the knee that the fabric’s corrugated indentations had been smoothed clean away), a terrifyingly plain –in Ted’s eyes –brown, roundnecked lambswool jumper, with a cheap, scruffy, tweed jacket thrown over the top.

Each of his pockets was ridiculously full. They bulged, uniformly, reminding Ted –in essence –of his old school gerbil, a creature so dedicated to storage that the fullness of his pouches often rendered spells inside his compact mouse-house or runs on his exercise wheel an absolute inviability.

Wesley did not even wear walking boots (as Ted might quite reasonably have anticipated of a man in his line of business), but instead sported an exceedingly dirty pair of ancient black Hi-Tecs, the laces of which were knotted, frayed and extended to only two thirds of the available holes.

He was a sorry sight, Ted decided, but he did have a pleasingly round face: gappy teeth, snub nose, keen but bloodshot (and strangely unfocussed) anchovy-paste eyes. He needed a shave. He looked like he’d never troubled to brush his hair in his life. To the front it seemed fine, but at the back it stood up in a sleepy ridge like a misshapen muddy-brown tidal-wave.

A confident woman with a good vocabulary might easily have described his appearance as ‘tousled’, but Ted couldn’t really find it in himself to be quite so articulate or so forgiving. He sniffed. Wesley smelled of old milk, dirty dishcloths and tobacco. The fruity kind.

‘Will she be home by any chance?’ Wesley wondered out loud as they finally turned into the driveway (at this late stage hardly anticipating a reaction).

‘No,’ an active, genial presence suddenly re-ignited inside Ted’s eyes, ‘she works.’

Wesley started, glanced over briefly towards Ted’s newly-inhabited profile, then nodded. He felt almost relieved. He was finding some difficulty in recalling the exact details of what it was that he’d written about Katherine Turpin in the book –although there was one thing of which he was absolutely certain: whatever he’d said, it must’ve been necessary.

He had an unshakable confidence in the multifarious decisions made on his behalf by his former selves. How could a fundamentally decent and honourable man ever really seriously regret his past actions? How pointless would that be? How lily-livered? How inconsistent? How slack?

‘She works,’ Ted reiterated, ‘growing beansprouts on a farm. But only part-time. I have a key.’

‘A beansprout farm?’ Wesley smiled caustically. ‘How unique.’

Ted didn’t respond. But he was deeply perturbed by Wesley’s tone. Beansprouts? He pondered quietly, jangling his keys with a renewed determination. Beansprouts? Unique?

It was a pretty little property. A white bungalow, satisfyingly angular, with a small, friendly picket fence to the front, directly backed by a staunch and rather less welcoming row of well-tended shoulder-high evergreens. The garden was covered in a neat red-brick parquet. The overall effect was private, stately, and quite exquisitely anal.

‘Grand,’ Wesley said, peering around him intently. Ted stood on the doormat, struggling to locate the correct key. Wesley glanced behind them. The Old Man was following.

‘You went to school here in Canvey, Ted?’ Wesley asked.

Ted nodded, ‘Furtherwick Park School. We just walked past it.’

‘And what about her? What about Katherine?’ Ted finally selected a key. ‘Yes. But she was two whole years older.’

‘Two whole years?’ Wesley grinned. ‘Was she beautiful?’

‘Not exactly,’ Ted’s cheeks flushed a sharp bullfinch pink as he turned towards the door and shoved the key into the lock.

Wesley had teeth like a pony. Indomitable teeth. Very gappy. Very square. Very strong.

‘Did you have a crush on her?’

‘Everybody liked her,’ Ted mumbled, ‘if that’s what you’re getting at.’

Wesley chuckled and then half-nodded his concurrence, although this was patently not what he’d intended by it at all.

He looked behind him again. The boy-woman had joined Murdoch on the opposite pavement. They stood a distance apart. Murdoch was holding a pager. He was tapping into it with his large, slightly arthritic middle finger. Wesley scowled. It seemed improbable that Doc should’ve already made the Katherine Turpin connection…

But if he had? Wesley’s jaw stiffened at the thought. This possibility plainly jarred him.

Ted turned the lock, pushed the door, removed the key and entered.

‘By the way,’ he said, laboriously wiping his feet on a second doormat inside, ‘I hope you don’t have a problem with rodents.’

Wesley paused on the threshold and inhaled deeply. ‘Sawdust…’ he murmured, and then, just a fraction more quizzically, ‘brandy…?’

‘She keeps chinchillas,’ Ted explained, ‘in the lean-to behind the kitchen. I should’ve mentioned that back at the office.’

The bungalow’s interior belied the neatness of its exterior. Where outside all had been cleanliness and order, inside, all was mess and mayhem.

‘This woman is a slut,’ Wesley observed, stepping carefully over the doormat and calmly appraising the state of the hallway. ‘Perhaps you should’ve specified that back at the office.’

‘She’s an artist,’ Ted countered primly, slamming the door shut and then shoving a group of carrier bags up closer to the wall so that they could proceed unhindered. The bags clanked and tinkled. Wesley frowned. ‘What kind?’ he asked, bending over to peer inside one of them (it contained seven empty peach schnapps bottles). ‘A piss artist?’

Ted merely growled, but not fiercely. It was the subterranean grumble of an old labrador in the middle of having his toenails clipped: sullen, irritable, mutinous even, but nothing serious. He led Wesley through a half-stripped pine door and into the living room.

‘Jeepers,’ Wesley immediately exclaimed, pushing a thumb down the neck of his jumper and yanking it outwards, ‘it’s tropical in here.’

He rotated his head with a quite startling, hawk-like facility, ‘Does this woman have a different biological classification from the rest of us, Ted? Is she amphibian?’

Ted didn’t bother responding. Instead he busied himself plumping up a couple of pillows on the sofa, minutely adjusting the stained antique embroidered throw on a chair.

‘I’ll certainly be keeping my eyes peeled,’ Wesley continued, affecting an air of intense paranoia, ‘for any suspicious grey scales on the bathroom floor… reinforced glass walls…’ (he performed a dramatic trapped-forever-behind-a-glass-wall mime), ‘those pathetic part-digested insect husks… the give-away imitation jungle-look paper back-drop…’

Ted carefully placed the second pillow back down onto the sofa. ‘Underfloor heating,’ he acquiesced stiffly. ‘Costly to run but extremely effective.’

‘Wow,’ Wesley crouched down and touched one of the shiny black tiles with his fingers. It was warm. He kicked off his trainers and planted his stockinged feet firmly onto the floor.

‘Oh I like it,’ he said, ‘this is wonderful. My toes have been numb since the New Year. I took a quick dip off Camber Sands for a bet. The sea was absolutely fucking freezing.’

‘Your socks are steaming,’ Ted frowned fastidiously.

‘Damp,’ Wesley smiled, moving around a little and enjoying the dark prints his feet elicited. While Ted watched on, he silently heel-toed a design onto the floor. A bad circle. A lop-sided splodge.

‘So if that’s Canvey,’ he indicated towards the shape with a wide gesture of his arm, ‘North… South… East… where would you say we are now, exactly?’

‘Uh…’ Ted walked to the southern-most tip, then marginally to the east of it, ‘about there,’ he said, ‘approximately.’

‘Where?’

Ted crouched down. ‘About…’ he pointed, ‘although the industrial headland actually forms a slightly more exaggerated…’

He looked up. Wesley was no longer paying him any attention. He was peering around the room, absorbedly.

It was a large room; hot, yet airy. There was a bay window to the front swathed in heavy nets, but what remained of the watery Canvey sun still glimmered through in fine, silvery trickles. The room was crammed with stuff in industrial quantities. Every available surface was covered in practical detritus: glue, wire, beads, bags of sand…

Behind a huge, ancient, tiger-skin draped sofa (the big cat with its whole head still intact, eyes, teeth, everything) stood a workbench covered in a large mound of yellow-white, fibrous objects. Wesley moved towards them, ‘What are these?’

Ted clambered to his feet again.

‘Stones.’

Wesley picked one up. It was the approximate size and weight of a large mouse after a steam-rollering accident.

‘From a mango,’ Ted expanded, ‘the furry stone from the middle of a mango.’

‘Mango stones. Ah.’

Wesley stared at the stone closely.

‘She gets them in bulk. I believe she has some kind of deal with a juice manufacturer in Kent…’

Ted was still speaking as the doorbell sounded. He jumped, guiltily, turning automatically towards the hallway.

‘Hang on a minute,’ Wesley moved over to the window and peered out from between the nets. After a couple of seconds he grunted, swatted a dismissive hand through the air and returned to the workbench. ‘Relax,’ he muttered, ‘it’s nothing.’

‘Why? Who is it?’

Wesley picked up another mango stone. ‘Nobody, just some kid who follows me.’

The doorbell rang again, rather more insistently.

This time Ted went to the window and peered out.

‘If he sees you looking he’ll come over,’ Wesley warned him, putting the mango stone up to his nose, inhaling. It smelled of old hay. Of wheat. Of corn dollies.

‘Damn,’ Ted quickly withdrew, ‘I think he did see me…’

Sure enough, after a few seconds, the window was darkened by a small shadow, then a nose –pushed up hard against the glass –with two inquisitive hands pressed either side of it.

‘Gracious,’ Ted murmured, backing off still further, ‘you weren’t kidding.’

‘Just ignore him,’ Wesley counselled boredly, ‘he’ll go away eventually.’

‘Who is he?’ Ted was mesmerised.

‘I already told you. Some kid.’

The right shadow-hand suddenly peeled itself away from the glass, formed itself into a tight fist, and began knocking. ‘How do you know him?’ Ted whispered.

‘I don’t,’ Wesley shrugged, ‘he just follows me around.

’ ‘What’s his name?’

‘Pete. Patty. I can’t remember.’

The knocking continued. It was loud and persistent yet maddeningly unrhythmical. After thirty seconds it grew mildly irritating, by fifty it was unbearable.

‘I think he might be stepping on Katherine’s hydrangea,’ Ted stuttered.

‘Then go out and yell at him.’

‘Should I?’ Ted looked appalled at the thought. ‘Will he become aggressive?’

Wesley chuckled, ‘No. He’ll love it. He’ll lap it up. He’ll interrogate you. He’ll molest you. He’ll bend your ear. That’s all.’

Ted didn’t move. ‘For some reason,’ he said, ‘that banging’s really… it’s making me… I think it’s just the… I think it’s the irregularity or something.’

‘Calm down. He’ll tire soon enough.’

As if on cue, the knocking abated.

‘Thank God,’ Ted shuddered, yanking his tie askew, his professional veneer denting like the tender skin of a ripe nectarine.

‘Come over here for a minute,’ Wesley commanded (the very image of icy unperturbedness), ‘and fill me in properly on these mango things.’

Ted joined Wesley at the workbench. Wesley idly noticed that his forehead was glistening. He was sweating.

‘She makes these strange little creatures out of them…’ Ted said, fishing around inside his jacket pocket for a handkerchief, pulling one out and patting his brow with it.

He glanced around him, ‘Here…’

He moved to a set of shelves behind the TV and picked something up, but before he could bring it back over, a loud discussion commenced next to the window, where the small, intrusive boy had now been joined by a second, much larger figure.

Ted froze. Wesley observed his reaction but said nothing, simply shrugged and then silently pushed his index finger into a soft heap of sand on the workbench. He made gentle, circular patterns with it, watching raptly as the fine granules flattened and dispersed. Ted remained glued to his spot by the bookshelves, anxiously rubbing his right palm onto his opposite elbow, listening apprehensively.

What are you doing? the larger figure demanded.

Who are you? the smaller figure responded.

Who are you? the larger figure countered. And what are you doing in Katherine’s garden?

Katherine? Who’s she? the smaller figure asked.

This is her house. Does she have any idea that you’re here?

I rang the bell, the smaller figure explained, but nobody answered.

Well if nobody answered then she isn’t around, is she! Use your common sense. You’re treading on her hydrangea. You’re damaging it.

So who the fuck is Katherine when she’s at home? the smaller figure enquired as the larger began firmly steering him away.

How old are you? Shouldn’t you be at school or something?

Christmas holidays, thank you very much, the smaller figure explained cordially.

Their voices faded.

‘Welsh,’ Wesley noted, glancing up from the finely-granulated patterns he was forming, ‘is he local?’

Ted nodded. ‘It’s Dewi,’ he spoke softly, ‘he owns the property opposite. He puts down wooden flooring. He did mine, actually. He’s very good at it.’

‘Why are you still whispering, Ted?’

‘Was I?’ Ted spoke louder again.

‘Yes.’

He was just preparing to respond when Wesley noticed the object he was holding. ‘Fuck,’ he butted in, ‘pass it over.’

Ted returned to the workbench and gave Wesley a small, plain, wire-legged, pearl-eyed, mango stone creature. Wesley took it and carefully balanced it onto the flattened palm of his fingerless hand. ‘Holy Moly,’ he murmured.

‘I think it’s a lion,’ Ted explained. ‘See the way she’s brushed up the natural strings and fibres on one end of the stone so that it resembles a mane?’

As he spoke, Ted concentrated –almost too fiercely –on the inconsequential little mango stone creature, yet all he was really seeing was the badly truncated hand below. He hadn’t noticed it before… he…

But how was that possible? How on earth could something so patent, so profound, so grotesque have escaped his attention formerly?

His mind rapidly flipped back to a full hour previously:

The initial meeting…

Shaking Wesley’s hand… (they did shake, didn’t they?)

Making him a cup of coffee…

Wesley, sitting on the swivel chair, efficiently turning over the printed sheets of property details whilst chatting away, amiably…

He was suddenly very warm. Unsettled. Almost queasy. He clenched his hands together and tightened his buttocks, his gentle brown eyes clambering over Katherine’s white walls like a couple of stir-crazy arachnids.

Warm? He was boiling. And it was no mere coincidence. Because the heat was one of Katherine’s trademarks –

The heat

– well, the heat and rodents, more particularly. No. The heat and rodents and peach schnapps. She literally lived on the stuff. Locals joked –and it wasn’t funny –that she took it intravenously.

Antique clothing, too, of course. And beansprouts, obviously. And mahjong (Chinese backgammon, to the uninitiated), and sex, and basic engineering. Yes. But mainly the heat. It was her thing. Always had been.

It was just so… just so Katherine.

Ted swallowed. Tried to clear his throat. Couldn’t. Because it… it agitated him –The heat

– he’d always found it disquieting. In fact he was currently feeling more than a little off-colour –uncomfortable –sticky –out of sorts –

No

– out of place – that was it –like he was trespassing or gatecrashing or sneakily intruding…

Of course she’d given him the key –

Yes

– he was here legitimately –

Yes

– but wasn’t he… wasn’t he facilitating something, just the same? Something improper? Something unscrupulous? Something… something unseemly?

Ted’s mind began clicking. He felt over-wound and jerky. His skin was damp but the air in his lungs seemed horribly scant and thin and dry. His head felt all cotton-woolly. So did his tongue. Sweat trickled into his right eye. It stung. He blinked repeatedly.

Wesley finally broke the protracted silence between them. ‘This is twisted, Ted,’ he murmured, continuing to stare approvingly at the mango-stone creature. ‘Does she actually sell these things?’

‘Yes. Yes she does sell them, occasionally,’ Ted’s voice was flat. His tongue struggled to juggle with the weight of its syllables. He drew a deep breath, ‘and if you don’t mind my asking,’ he paused, frowned, ‘where did your fingers get to, exactly?’ (Where did they get to? Oh Lord)

After he’d spoken, he couldn’t quite believe what he’d said. He sounded drunk to himself.

Wesley’s eyebrows rose a fraction, but his eyes did not shift from the mango-lion. ‘I fed them to an owl,’ he said, matter-of-factly, ‘an eagle owl. Years ago. In an act of penance. I trapped my brother in an abandoned fridge. Christopher. Chris. When we were kids. A prank. He died. He was my right hand.’

They both stared for a moment, in silence, at Wesley’s right hand.

‘And you know what? I like this house,’ Wesley continued calmly, as if these two thoughts were somehow naturally conjoined. ‘Will I be able to move in immediately?’

Ted was still dreamy, ‘Absolutely not,’ he said.

Wesley’s head jerked up so sharply on receipt of Ted’s answer that it was almost as though –Ted thought idly –it was being operated from above by strings. He very nearly glanced at the ceiling to test the validity of this theory, but instead found himself noting –distractedly –how tall Wesley suddenly appeared and how tight his mouth seemed. Tight as… tight as… Tight as two navvies after ten pints. Tight as the lid on the only free jar of peanuts in a well-stocked hotel mini-bar. Tight as a good lie. Tight as a gymnast’s thighs. Still tighter.

One. Two. Three seconds passed by, and then… Fuck. What on earth was he…? Ted blinked and came to as the sharp and piercing gaze of Wesley’s disfavour focussed full upon him; piranha-mouthed, marlin-nosed, pike-eyed… Wesley’s face suddenly seemed as barbed and impenetrable as a razor-wire fence around a missile silo.

Oh bollocks.

Ted allowed himself a single, small, involuntary judder before the inestimably professional estate agent inside him stood to attention, clicked his high-polished heels together, smiled, saluted, and snapped straight back into action.

He rapidly re-assessed the situation. ‘What I mean is that I’d have to run it past Katherine first, before I could actually promise you anything…’ he spoke obsequiously, ‘and you’d be wanting to take a look at the spare room, of course?’

What have I done? he thought. Katherine Turpin will roast me on a spit, cut me into small pieces and devour me… if I’m lucky. Then…

An owl? An eagle owl? Is he crazy?

‘Fine. So run it past her.’

Wesley shrugged –as if he believed no process so mundane as this could hinder the immense rolling stone of his destiny –then slowly began to deflate again, like a cheap plastic paddling pool at a children’s party.

‘And I don’t need to see anything else,’ he added, ‘I’ll just bring the rest of my stuff over later,’ he smiled, ‘about three… three-thirty.’

He held the mango stone creature aloft and inspected it once more, very thoroughly, his cheeks lifted and reddened by a spontaneous glow of good humour. Then his focus shifted.

His expression remained constant –calm, cheerful, insistent – but his eyes now held Ted’s hostage in a penetrating gaze, as his other hand moved down slowly –deliberately –towards his bulging jacket pocket. He rummaged around inside it for a while until he located the particular thing he was searching for and carefully removed it: a clean, white, newly truncated, ten-inch-long lamb’s tail.

Wesley removed the tail with a small flourish, and laid it out gently –almost reverently –onto the workbench. Then calmly, brazenly, he nested that strange mango-stone creature where the tail had formerly been: deep and safe within its own dark stable of itchy tweed.

In a perfect parallel, Ted’s own dear heart gradually descended –down into his shoes, where it continued to beat faithfully, just as before, but closely bound now, and constricted by laces.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.