A Clear Conscience (19 page)

‘Haw haw haw,' said a voice behind his back. ‘Very funny, very funny indeed. Nearly had us all convinced, eh, old man?'

Joe stood, helpless. A male figure emerged from nowhere, clouted the colonel round the shoulders, and bent down towards him.

‘A joke, sir, innit? Good, innit? Why don't you sit out in the sun, sir? Drinks on the house.'

Colonel Fogey was helped from his chair, led outside, his leader grabbing a towel off the bar as they went, talking all the time, like a burbling drain, not glancing back. Joe stood in a trance, looking at his own shaking fist, still seeing the lethal stump of glass. He had just about recognised Ryan, the cheerful man who had taken his statement all those weeks ago, fucking copper, nice enough, not that nice. His brain, shocked by the wash of violence, began to reel when he realised what he might have done. He registered the sudden sunlight streaming through the door, the presence of the other man, the sound of the colonel outside, giggling like the child Joe had met this morning, and a voice with a clean mint smell, familiar, without being bossy.

‘How do I get the man a drink, guv? And another towel, if you would.' There was a pause in which he found himself responding, thrusting five towels towards Ryan's clean breath, holding a glass beneath the optic which poured whisky in singles, doubles and trebles. Whisky was the colonel's favourite whenever his pension allowed. Joe gave him a treble.

‘That's enough, ta. Great.'

Joe watched this small-statured Boy Scout, of equal height
but probably lighter than himself, whisk the glass away to the great outdoors. There was a distant murmur of traffic, nothing which threatened half as much as the imagined whisper of Mickey Gat's Jag over the cobbles. The world was taking some time to come back into focus. He had the same desire to cry that he had felt in the early morning, when he expected to hear the discreet rustle of Cath leaving the bed. Outside, the colonel had found a companion. There was an earnest sort of chat going on, punctuated by the old man's dreadful guffaws. He seemed to have fully recovered. His presence outside, drying out in the sun, stinking like a brewery, would keep custom at bay for an hour.

Ryan slid onto the stool opposite the bar with long-practised ease. Bailey had said the bill was on the house, also the taxi home. Ryan did not know the purpose of this luxury, but he might as well enjoy it. Joe swivelled his head round and reluctantly looked him in the eyes. He met nothing but a cheeky grin, sympathetic.

‘Pint of bitter, please,' said Ryan, putting a note on the counter. It was clear he was not even going to press his advantage by demanding free drinks. The desire to weep was almost overpowering Joe. Not sobbing as such, simply a surfeit of tears, stored overlong and oozing out of the corner of his eyes as he pulled the pint and sat down again.

‘I'm sorry about that,' he mumbled. He did not know if Ryan would assume he was sorry about the tears or sorry about the fact that he had almost taken the old boy's eye out.

‘I didn't see anything,' said Ryan gravely, neatly covering both possibilities. They sat in silence for a moment. Ryan looked around the neat little snug of a bar, nodding approvingly. Joe Boyce liked that too. He was proud of the Spoon and Fiddle, never liked the implication made, however obscure, that the place was a shade effete, not a proper pub with music and all the trimmings, but a sort of club-like bar for the civilised of Kensington.

‘Nice,' Ryan remarked sincerely. ‘Very nice. Now, what's up with you? You look all in, mate, you really do.'

It was too much for Joe. Ryan's dimly remembered identity
as a copper was all but forgotten. He poured himself a drink, blew his nose on a napkin, slumped.

‘My wife's left me,' he said bleakly.

Ryan leant forward and touched him lightly on the arm.

‘You and me, both,' he said. ‘Don't tell me about it.'

So Joe told him.

A
t five in the afternoon, wearing a pristine white blouse, perfectly fitting skirt and a fair quantity of perfume, Mary Secura had sat in front of the desk of her divisional commander and been severely admonished for discreditable conduct. There was no particular sting in the tail, bar a reference to the fact that her next career move was under review and perhaps two years of domestic violence was long enough for anyone. He was kinder than she thought he would be, inclined to accept that the blame for Mr Rix remaining inside a fortnight longer than he might have done rested with the Crown Prosecution Service, who were easy to blame for everything. Mary was not sure what she had done to effect a relatively easy escape. She supposed it might have been her immaculate record, until the commander's over-warm handshake, almost culminating in an embrace at the end of the interview, indicated it might have been the perfume after all. She went back to the office and phoned Ryan for the celebratory drink he had promised, but he was out. So much for the return of favours. There was nothing for it but to go home. Back to the maisonette shared with Dave who would be on night shift. Great.

She went inside and shut the door behind her. Ryan would be home with the wife. She could have phoned her mother, but she only did that when she had good news. Everyone else had someone. Not her. It was not fair. She was the only person in the world at home with nothing to do. Then she remembered Mary Catherine Boyce at the top of her tower block, hiding, and, with a tinge of guilt, felt better and angry all over again.

H
elen West's concrete floors were spattered with paint round the edges. She supposed designers got the desired effect
of minimalist mess by accident. Magazines were full of illustrations of rooms resembling a wasteland, with a piece of lacy net twisted round a curtain pole, leaves on the floor and little else but an iron chair; scenes which suggested devastation. If she left the flat as it was, most of it thinly coated with the wash of golden white, she might win a prize. The current state would appeal to Bailey, not to her, apart from the carpet samples. They were in one-foot squares, leading from the front door into the living room, scattered further up the hall like stepping-stones over a stream, so that she found herself jumping from one to another. Footsteps were trailing home up the road: she could see varieties of feet passing the basement window, and felt the absurd desire to rush out and drag them in with the question, Look, tell me, which colour do you like best? Whatever she wanted they could deliver and fit by the end of the week. Cath was right. Cash buyers were greeted like lords. Stock without customers, the trader's nightmare. The stuff was so cheap, it could have fallen off the back of a lorry.

Just you wait, Bailey, just you wait.

She had insisted on a taxi, to drop Cath home and to carry the samples. Cath had not resisted. Past the leisure centre (which looked more like a prison or a warehouse), turn left, right and right again. Cath went, clutching her talisman bag. She had looked, suddenly, incredibly vulnerable. The thought of her going into that enormous block, outside of which gangs of children ran screaming, filled Helen with pity and frustration. Closing her own door behind her, spreading out her stepping-stones, she was glad to be alone. It was better than many a version of the same evil.

C
ath thought there were few evils as bad. The lift did not work; she trod up twenty floors, pausing for breath at each landing. There were no open spaces in the block, it felt like climbing up the inside of a tunnel, the air becoming rarer with each fifteen steps. She could hear murmurings behind doors, steps rushing along walkways. She looked out of the glassed-in stairwell at the first, third, fifth floor, and then did not look again as the ground receded, intensifying a sense of remoteness from all which
was real. How had Damien managed here? Nicely, she thought to herself, angry with him.

The top two floors were empty. Down a long corridor on the penultimate floor, there were the sounds of someone working, the whine of a drill and the thump of a hammer. Some of the doors were reinforced, amateur self-protection which could incarcerate as well as deter. Her feet crunched over a small quantity of broken glass as she approached the last flight and a wave of homesickness assailed her. Then she heard the echo of more feet and shuffling on the landing above. A cough, the sound of someone listening. She paused.

For a glorious moment she thought it was Damien, waiting outside his own front door for her to arrive, and it was that illusion which made her fly up the last stone stairs, her feet clattering, before, on the last step, she realised what a row she made, what a dream it was and how she had denied herself the possibility of retreat. She was suddenly afraid, but also, despising her own silliness, careless and aggressive, not bothered about who it might be. She also had the slight sensation, an instinct founded on nothing, that whoever waited there with such patience and lack of subterfuge, could mean no harm.

Mickey Gat was looking out of the window on the landing, her huge presence blocking out the light.

‘That you, Cath?' she enquired pleasantly, turning back to the view. ‘It ain't half a long way down there. Must take you half an hour to get all the way up. Got a cup of tea, love?' The shocking pink of the shell suit hurt Cath's eyes.

She did not speak or smile, merely fiddled with the locks and opened the door. There was still the numbing sense of disappointment that it was not Damien after all, and it was still too soon to wonder what Mickey Gat might want, or even feel a suspicion of her presence at all. Of course Mickey would have known all Damien's hidey-holes; it was natural she should, but less natural she should climb all those stairs.

‘Not very cheerful is it, love?' she remarked as she sat on one of the ill-matched chairs at the table. ‘I suppose you could make
it nice, though. I mean, if you was planning to stay.'

The kettle, a cheap piece of tin, boiled quickly on one of two electric rings. Enough for a single person. Cath's packing from home, to Mary Secura's surprise, had included little else but cleaning equipment: bleach, Jif, cloths, window polish. Plus, as a sensible afterthought, a sliced loaf of the type which would last a week, margarine, tea and powdered milk.

She was at ease with Mickey Gat, always had been. Women were never a threat, however big. She had been used to a big brother, found a kind of gentleness which seemed to grow in proportion to human size. She had always known where she stood with Mickey Gat. Damien Flood's sister, was where. To be treated with respect on that account, but, like all other women, fundamentally unimportant and completely dispensable. Mickey Gat would never debate the point of whether a woman had a mind or clearly defined needs. She knew she had these features herself; for the rest, she was as chauvinistic as her fellow man and even more contemptuous.

‘What can I do for you, Mickey? You didn't climb all the way up here for nothing.'

‘And I didn't tell Joe where you might be, either,' Mickey said, cunningly.

‘You were only guessing. I could have been anywhere. I got friends too, you know.' She thought of Helen West, the nice Secura girl, the Eliots; they gave her strength. A fragile energy, but still a help.

‘I'm your friend,' said Mickey, as if injured by the prospect that she might ever need any other. ‘I was Damien's friend. I loved that bloke, Cath. Just like you.'

Not quite like me, Cath thought. Fierce love it had been. The love for the only person who ever really mattered. No-one had loved Damien as she had done.

‘So what do you want, Mickey?'

‘I went to see your old man this morning, doll. He tells me you've up and left him. Well you must have done, mustn't you, or you wouldn't be here, would you?' Mickey laughed, shaking to a
standstill as Cath's face gave no answering smile.

‘Well, truth is, Cath, he's in a bit of a state. You'd be shocked, Cath, honest you would. I know he's not much of a man, but I mean, could you, do you think, reconsider?'

‘What do you mean, he's not much of a man?' Cath retorted, stung into an immediate defence.

‘I mean, he's only a man, Cath, not a saint. I wasn't criticising him, honest. We all have our ups and downs, don't we? You've got a nice home, Cath, you can't give it up just like that. I don't like seeing him in this state, Cath, really I don't. There's no telling what he might do. And he's a good-looking fella, you know. There won't be a shortage of takers, Cath, and I'd hate to see you left on your own. Damien wouldn't have liked that.'

Damien had not liked the idea of Cath being on her own. I can't always be with you, he'd said. You gotta find someone nice, Cath. I'll always be there for you, but this isn't the way to live, Cath; you need more than me to love. A woman on her own, Cath? C'mon, it just isn't on, is it? She could feel a great sinking of the heart. Damien had always been right. A woman on her own was an eyesore.

‘You mean you want me to go back to a man who knocks me around, because if I don't he won't do his job properly? That's more like it, isn't it?'

Mickey spread her hands and the gesture seemed to fill the room. Her wedding ring winked. Honesty was always her policy when she could not get away with a lie.

‘Well, that's part of it, Cath, to tell the truth. Blokes like Joe are hard to find, you know. I can't run that pub without him. He's the only one understands them kind of customers. And if he's knocked you about, well, I'm sorry, but it's better than him running off with someone else.'

‘I've got a job,' Cath said fiercely. ‘Two jobs, and I'll get more, see if I don't. I got people who need me.'

‘Career woman, now, are we? Joe needs you, Cath. And you need Joe.'

It was true, she knew it was true, but she was not going to
admit it.

‘Tell you what,' Mickey continued. ‘Give it a few days. He needs a lesson, right? You've got to show him who's boss, right? Make him treat you special. Then he's going to meet you, take you somewhere really nice for a night out, and you can talk about it. That's all I'm asking, Cath. Do it for me and Damien, won't you? How about next Monday? Meet him at the Spoon. I'll tell him, give him the evening off.'