Snowstop (24 page)

Fred wound an old sheet around him soaked in a bottle of iodine, and the bleeding seemed to have stopped, so he lay in his underpants like a wounded swaddie in the Falklands, bare legs thrust in front. Though the flesh was chilly there was the danger of getting a hard-on, and then where would he be, with everyone to see it?

He reached for his jacket, covering himself in case it happened. The fight had been more equal than Sally could have known. Lance would have been left headless if he hadn't worn a helmet, and Wayne had a bruise as big as a headlamp from his forehead hitting a beam. They had taken enough damage between them to add up to as much if not more than Daniel had got, so he couldn't feel bad about having put the boot in.

He had only intended getting him down after a couple of thumps to calm him, but the shock from the slate sent him a bit loco, the same with Lance and Wayne when they saw what happened. His laugh brought a glare of rank detestation from Sally, which made him laugh again. If Daniel had been killed he would have asked her to marry him, or take up with him. It must be wonderful, wedded to a woman who not only cursed like a navvy but mixed her spiel with words you hardly knew the meaning of. It would be an education listening to her, and the thought of such a future stopped pain drumming at his leg for a few minutes. Daniel, warped from birth, had still been lucky enough to shaft a nice big lovely woman with a vocabulary like a dictionary, which dirty video he'd better stop running through his brainbox or there would be more than a hard-on under his jacket.

Pity she won't look at me, though not many of her sort would unless I chatted them up all evening and got them more than half seas over with a conveyor belt of short drinks. And where would I meet them, in the first place? The only way Fred the Landlord knew how to dress was to put on a white shirt and navy-blue suit, but even a happy walker like that must have better chances with women.

She had fallen for that schoolteacher all right, though when it started I don't suppose she knew what she was getting into, no more than I did when I gave the lads a bell and asked them out for a spin. On a night like this! Well, I'd been sweating my bollocks off all day, and didn't even have the tranny on to tell me the weather because the woman at the house said it interfered with her work at the word processor. You can't win 'em all, but it would be nice now and again to win one.

Keith told himself he must look sharp, pull his finger out, do something for others' sake as much as for his own, though it was hard to rouse his faculties or the energy. Inert in the brain, he knew he need only stand up for full power to flow back, to scratch his head and look as if in thought, able to settle every problem, for those around him to assume he was their man.

You felt more powerful after killing someone. He hated himself for it, yet could act and be strong, as long as he didn't question. He went between sickness and wanting to live. His mother had died when he was seven, and everyone said that his father had killed her. Disease did not run in the family, but tragedy did. Every fatal illness began with someone thinking they had caught a cold. Maybe it still does. She was dead before anybody could do anything. His father had gone away with a woman, his Aunt Virginia said. His father later married the woman, who brought Keith up. ‘Your mother died from broken love,' his aunt told him. Broken love? Did that mean suicide? He still half wondered what it meant though yes, he certainly knew. ‘She wouldn't have done it but for your father betraying her. He was an absolute rotter. If he had only pretended to love her she might not have died.'

Keith was the age his father was when he'd had that devastating affair, killing his mother as surely as he had battered the life out of Gwen. His father still lived with the woman, because nothing can break a love affair started in such a way. At sixty-five, the old man was retired, and healthy, went to church every Sunday with his upright wife, the eternal lovers of a storybook Hertfordshire village.

His mother receded into dreams, and then was forgotten because he had grown to adore his father, the bitter injustice not striking till much later. He hadn't even disliked Helen, who had looked after him like her own child because she couldn't have any. Maybe that was why his father fell in love with her, never easy in body or mind with children, though when Keith was older he taught him to shoot at his rifle club, took him walking, boating and cycling, horse riding and skiing, visited the zoo and all the museums with him, and when Keith at fourteen wanted to be with his friends, his father left him to himself without the slightest fuss.

He would no doubt convince me with tears in his eyes that what happened thirty years ago hadn't been his fault at all, Keith thought, and wondered how much his father's life would be smashed when his only son was arrested for murder, which alone would be worth surviving any explosion for.

The click of Garry's Zippo interrupted his speculations. ‘We've got to do something with that murderer. We didn't get him down here for nothing.'

Wayne leaned across to share the flame. ‘That's what I keep telling myself. If we're going to be blown up in a few hours he ought to be made to pay for it.'

‘We'll put him on trial.' Garry was glad to turn his mind from the picture of Sally's naked and active body, but he also wanted to torment her, as if she was responsible for the grinding pain in his thigh. ‘We'll find him guilty, and then put him to death. Our helmets are black, so one of 'em will do for the cap. A bit of good old English justice, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I don't want to die without somebody paying for it.'

‘How do we know we're going to die, though, till we're dead?' Lance who had been listening opened his eyes to talk. ‘We might execute him, and then be alive tomorrow to tell the tale. That would put us in a fix. Not that I'm against killing him, mind you, even though he was my teacher.'

‘It's a problem,' Garry said, ‘and I don't like problems. We should kill him for that alone.'

‘It's even worse,' Lance said. ‘It's a
moral
problem. If we put him on trial, and then execute him for being a terrorist and killing us, or killing any of us, we'll be guilty if we're alive tomorrow. But if we don't do him in for killing us, and we get blown to smithereens, and he doesn't, he'll only get twenty years in clink. He'll be free and on the streets again in fifteen, back at school teaching kids.'

‘But what if
he
gets blown up as well as us?' Wayne said.

‘Dead men tell no fucking tales,' Garry said, ‘so we might as well top him. There's some lovely beams in the attic, and I saw a coil of rope in that spare room.'

‘It's still a moral problem,' Lance said. ‘You can't get away from it. That's what moral problems are like. He used to talk to us at school about moral problems. Just think of it! He was shunting fucking guncotton all over the shop, and he talked about moral problems. Not that I understood a word of what he chuntered on about, so we can't try him on that count as well.'

‘It'll only be moral if we hang him.' Garry made another roll-up. ‘Even if none of us die we can make him swing, just for having a load of bombs that he knew would blow people up. He might only get six months in a court of law, not twenty years, but to me it's a hanging matter. I mean to say, I don't have fuck-all to do with his politics. Nobody does here. We're just innocent bystanders, aren't we?'

‘Too fucking true,' Wayne said solemnly.

‘We top him, then,' Garry said. ‘Right?'

‘You can for me. He'll swing a treat.'

‘I expect he ought to be tried first,' Lance said.

‘Oh, we'll try him all right,' Garry said. ‘We aren't fucking heathens. All square and above board. Then we'll hang him. After all, his bomb load's outside, ain't it? We should know. We drove it here.'

‘That means you're the guilty ones.' Sally's words were loud enough to suggest they were indisputable. Daniel shook from the icy cold that was his alone. ‘At least he left it in a place where it wouldn't harm anyone.'

‘Except a few passing motorists,' Garry said.

‘Or bikers,' Wayne jeered.

‘
You
deserve to die, as well.' Garry altered position to ease his leg. Ferocious ants were gnawing at it. ‘You took his part, so how do we know you aren't one of them? You was in it from the beginning, and followed him in your car to make sure he got to where he was going.'

‘I arrived before him,' she said coolly.

‘What difference does that make? You only went ahead to make sure the coast was clear. Terrorists use people like you because nobody would dream of suspecting you. You can't fool me. It's only shits like you who help terrorists to blow ordinary people like us to bits.'

‘I don't suppose they even get paid for it,' Wayne said, ‘apart from expenses. They' do it for kicks. I dream all the time of making a fucking great blaze in the middle of Chesterfield, but I'd never do it. I might hurt somebody, or get put inside if I was caught.'

She couldn't plead for Keith to hold them back, though he would be happy to hear her do so, for he was her sort after all, and would stop them sooner or later. One minute she loved Daniel, to a pitch never felt before, a melting together of temperaments that pushed tears to her eyes. She fought them, also, then became still, with a desperate uncertainty as to where such weakness would take her. A few hours ago she was driving to the airport, no one closer than dull and familiar Stanley.

Wayne pushed her aside to reach Daniel. ‘Your van's full of explosives, eh?'

Words came thick and distorted out of his battered features. ‘It is. I wish it wasn't, but it is.'

‘When is it due to explode?' Keith, needing them to hear it from the Devil's own lips, pulled him by the arm to make him sit up.

The world and everyone connected to it was meaningless, too far away from Daniel, except for Sally's warm hand, and even that was taken from him. Sharp aches ran through his legs and head, and he smiled because his limbs were becoming real again. ‘Eight o'clock is what I heard. I'm not supposed to know.'

‘Stand up,' Keith said.

Daniel knew an order when he heard one, helped up through the climbing frame of pain which would prevent him falling once he was at the top. He feared the three savages who had pulled him from the attic, but Keith was more dangerous, merciless grey eyes close to his face: ‘Where were you supposed to take it?'

‘Coventry.'

The fist showed a large ring with an aquamarine stone, dull in the candlelight. ‘I want an address.'

He had photocopied the town plan in his mind. ‘Fourteen Dants Street.' Even in the dark he would have found it.

‘Then where would it go?'

‘I don't know. Probably London.'

Keith believed him. Whoever it was meant for were safe, but they in the hotel were not. Fourteen dead would surely satisfy them for a while. Hearing the news on the radio the terrorists would be laughing and hitting each other on the back at their bloody brew-up, then arguing for the privilege of the phone call to tell the world who had done it.

‘So when do we put the rope around his neck?' Garry scooted his cigarette stub towards the fire. Fred picked it up from the mat and put it in an ashtray. ‘You must admit he deserves it.'

‘It's half-past one,' Keith said, ‘which gives us a few hours to decide how to get away, but no time to think about killing anybody. He'll be dealt with when we're safe.'

‘We'll get into our kit and leave at five to eight,' Wayne said, ‘just far enough to watch the explosion. Then we can come back and sit in the ruins to keep warm.'

‘I won't make it with this gammy leg,' Garry said. ‘Look how it's swollen up. I'd like to kill him just for skimming that slate. I expect he smeared poisoned pigeon shit along the edge. He would have danced a reel and two jigs if he'd killed me.'

‘We'll rip a door off and carry you on it,' Lance said.

‘Not my weight you won't. I've put back too much ale in my life. But I'll be all right. Nobody gets the better of me, not even a fucking snowstorm.' Nor will they, whatever O Levels he hadn't got. He didn't remember his father because he was knocked arse over backwards by a concrete mixer on the motorway and killed while doing his stuff as a chainman for the surveyors. The emptiness of infancy was normal, but when he was two his mother married again, and he knew the man couldn't be his father because Garry got a kick every time he went close. Henry was his name, and in the beginning he waited till Garry's mother was out of the house, but later he didn't care, and when his mother told him to stop kicking Garry he kicked her as well. In three years the man spent what was left of his father's insurance, and then lit off, leaving his mother with two more kids.

She lived on National Assistance, and slutted after what men she could get while the kids ran around wild and half starved. Some nights they waited on the steps of pub or bingo hall hoping she would come out with lollipops or a bar of chocolate. A fancy man might chuck fifty p to get them out of the way. All men were bastards, so it paid to grow into a bastard yourself and keep them in their place. And all women were bitches who had anything to do with men like that. Only you yourself were left, and all you could do was find a couple of mates you could trust and have as good a time as you could. The rest was bullshit.

He never forgot insult or injury, and twenty years after the toe-capping Henry came to see his mother but she threw him out. A few weeks later Garry saw him in a pub on Saturday night, standing at the bar over a meagre half-pint. Garry clapped him on the back in friendly fashion and talked of the good old times when Henry had been kind to him as a three-year-old, and Henry had the gall to say: ‘I'm glad you remember. I was good to you, wasn't I? But that's how I am. I allus was good to little kiddies.' The man's face was ageing and spiteful, but a few pints even got him talking again about his mother.