The Gift (11 page)

In less than a minute it swung in; Monkey stood there again, jerking his head impatiently; four or five men jostled out behind him, hard to distinguish in the irregular light; the only clear thing was the turmoil of Wolf's violent images pulsing out across the dark. Davy shut them out by trying to study the other men.

One of them raised a cheery arm and accepted a slap on the back. Then he was strolling clear of the group, and Davy could see that it was Dad. Two of the others moved off in the opposite direction, but Mr. Black Hat and Wolf and Monkey stayed where they were. Mr. Black Hat nodded down the road where Dad had gone and said something which made Monkey laugh.

Davy, half relaxing now that Dad was out of sight, caught the picture that came at that moment from Wolf's mind: a long, drab corridor with a shiny floor, and a man in a sort of uniform walking along it with a leaden step and the despair of years on his shoulders. Davy had seen that sort of corridor, that sort of uniform, that sort of walk before, on the telly program that night when Wolf had watched their house. The man was in prison, and he was Dad.

“It's up to you,” said Penny. “If you think you've got to, then you've got to. I'm staying out of it.”

7

PENNY

Tuesday night was Mum's bridge class—the first real chance.

“Dad, I want to talk to you.”

“Not now, old boy. I'm a bit fagged.”

“It's serious, Dad.”

“What's up? Trouble at school? Some of those young roughs …”

“It's about a man—I don't know his name—who wears a blue suit, blue everything in fact, and a black hat.”

“I think I know the guy you mean,” said Dad casually. “What about him?”

“There's another bloke—a little man with a pale face—and a big, strong, rather stupid bloke. I call them Monkey and Wolf.”

“That's right. I've seen them a couple of times in the pub, with Trevor.”

“Monkey's got a job at the new shopping center site, and Wolf had one.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did you send them up there?”

“What the hell are you getting at?”

“They're friends of yours, aren't they, Dad?”

“What are you on about, lad? I'm not a snob—you know that. If I see a bloke at a pub who I've interviewed a week before, naturally I ask him how he's getting on. And if we both happen to use the same pub, of course we have a bit of a chat now and then. I'm damned if I'm going to go changing pubs because I've given one or two of the regulars their jobs.”

He sounded quite angry about it, but otherwise not at all put out.

“You said you'd gone off The Painted Lady,” said Davy.

Dad laughed.

“I'm not a snob,” he said. “I didn't say Mum wasn't.”

“Monkey only got that job,” said Davy, “because Wolf broke the ankle of the man who drove the digger before. And Monkey didn't really know how to drive that particular digger. I was in Mr. Venn's office, and he was pretty angry about not getting a driver who knew the machine.”

“Oh, for God's sake …” began Dad, then changed tack. “Why the hell do you call him Wolf? Dick's pretty dumb, but he wouldn't hurt a fly except by being clumsy.”

This was it. Davy knew now that he wouldn't get anywhere by relying only on what he'd seen with his ordinary sight. It was true Dad had known the men in the Jaguar
before
Wolf and Monkey had got their jobs, but he'd probably have an answer to that. No wonder Penny had refused to help tackle him.

Davy thought of Granny. Perhaps she would never speak to him again, if he broke his promise. She would think of him as another Dad. That would be the sort of grief …

“Do you know anything about the gift, Dad?” he said. “The family gift?”

He needn't have added the last three words. Dad's face had already lost its flush and become gray-white, like something dead. And his hand had flashed to his chest and gripped there, over his heart. Davy waited, his own heart slamming, until a little color had seeped back into those ghastly cheeks.

“The reason I call him Wolf,” he said carefully, “is that there's something—two things—wrong with his mind. The first thing is that he thinks in horrible violent pictures all the time, shootings and smashings and burnings. The other thing is that I can see his pictures all the time, which I can't with anyone else. I don't know—perhaps there's some kind of pressure in his brain, a sort of bottleneck, which makes him send out such strong pictures. Anyway, I call him Wolf because of what's in his mind and the way he walks. He's like that. A wolf—a mad one.”

“He wouldn't hurt a fly,” said Dad, but the thinness of his laugh showed that he'd only half recovered from his shock. “You should see him with Trevor—it's pathetic. He just sits there like a big sloppy puppy watching everything Trevor does as though it's one of the seven wonders of the world.”

“That's the man I call Mr. Black Hat,” said Davy. “Yes, I've seen Wolf looking at him—he worships him. I suppose he's like one of those savage Alsatians that's only safe with its master. Wolf's been in prison, Dad. He knows what it's like.”

Dad pulled himself together, as if he'd realized that he was on the edge of admitting more than he wanted to.

“Look here,” he said in a kindly, fatherly, false voice, “this is all a lot of nonsense, Dave, and you're too old for it. I don't know who told you that silly old story, but they shouldn't have. There's no harm in a kid pretending he can see into other people's minds—I did it myself—but you ought to have grown out of that by now. It's bloody stupid playing detectives and snooping on your own Dad and making up stories about him, and I bet you a lot of other fathers would resent it like hell, that kind of story, shady deals. I don't resent that, Dave. But I'm not so struck on your persuading yourself it's all true. Have you been talking to Penny about this?”

Davy took a breath, slowly.

“A month ago, or a bit more,” he said, “you were sitting in that chair having a daydream about a yacht. Penny was sunbathing on the deck, and Ian was fishing in the bows. A black steward brought you champagne. Then you started thinking about Mr. Black Hat opening his wallet in a pub and giving Monkey cash to buy drinks with. Wait a sec. About a fortnight ago you were coming upstairs late at night and you were thinking about Granny shelling peas outside the larder door in the sun, when you were a kid. I'm sorry. I don't try and look in your mind, but sometimes it happens by accident.”

He waited. He knew he had very little more ammunition. Dad's face had changed again, but it wasn't shock this time. It was as though, for the moment, he'd taken off the mask he had worn for years and was now that other man he might have been, weak, uncertain, longing to be loved.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. What about Penny?”

“She knows something's up. She understands about people, much better than I do.”

“Yeah,” said Dad. “I've heard it's like that. It makes you think you understand people, but you get them wrong.”

“I don't get Wolf wrong,” said Davy.

Dad's mask slipped back on. It wasn't as though a millimeter of the chubby flesh had shifted, but now he was wearing it again.

“I wish you'd told me about this before,” he said. “There might be a lot of money in it—on the stage and telly, you know.”

Sometimes people say things so typical of themselves that for a moment you think they must be mocking you. It was like that now. Davy hesitated, then jerked the conversation back to where it mattered.

“I haven't got Wolf wrong,” he said again. “I know how slippery the gift is. Of course I know. You don't think I've had it so long that … Look, of course it lets you down, of course it makes you think bad things about people, of course it doesn't tell you all the truth, anything like. But Wolf's different. His mind's so simple and I can see it all the time. He got a job on the site. He watched this house one night. He broke a man's ankle so that Monkey could get a job driving the big digger. He's part of some business with you and Monkey and Mr. Black Hat. I know all that, and I'm pretty certain it's against the law and they're going to ditch you at the end.”

Dad's laugh was as confident as an ad for toothpaste.

“Don't you worry, boy,” he said. “I can look after myself.”

“Then I'm right?”

“You leave it to me. Things are going pretty well now. I've never had any luck in the past, but that's changing.”

“We like living here, Dad, just as we are. Penny and Mum especially. We don't need anything else.”

“Ach, it's good enough for a year or so, but I don't call it
living
—not compared with the things we could do if … Well, it's been great talking to you, Davy lad. Don't you worry. I've got it all under control. We'll sit tight for a bit and then push off and find an island somewhere and sunbathe and water-ski and eat great big steaks like a map of Europe.”

There was no point in getting angry.

“Last Wednesday,” said Davy slowly, “I was outside The Painted Lady—I didn't go there on purpose—I was just restless and biked around and fetched up there. Monkey came out first and checked that the street was clear, and then you all came out together, about six of you. Monkey and Mr. Black Hat and Wolf stayed by the door and watched you walking away, and Mr. Black Hat said something which made Monkey laugh. But Wolf made a picture of you. I saw it clearly—you, in prison uniform, walking along a prison corridor. He's been there, Dad. He knows what it's like—I could see from the picture.”

“That doesn't mean anything!”

“I don't know. If you add it to all the other things … Dad, I expect you're so used to people liking you that you don't notice when they're only pretending to.”

“Rubbish!”

“How much do you know about them, Dad? I mean, if they do ditch you, have you got any sort of hold on them, like being able to tell the police where to find them? Because if you haven't, it'd
pay
them—they wouldn't have to give you your share.”

“I wish you'd trust me a bit more. They're dimwits, I tell you. They haven't got a scrap of brain between them, not counting Trevor.”

Davy felt he'd made progress of a sort. Dad was at least not bothering now to deny that he had some connection with Mr. Black Hat. He had slipped from pooh-poohing the idea to admitting it. But in some ways the progress was worse than useless: Dad was determined to go through with whatever the plot was, and now Davy was in the know. Davy was trapped into keeping the secret. Even if the plot was dangerous, illegal, wicked, there was no question of Davy betraying his own father. He would have to wait, watch the thing happen and fail, watch the family fall apart, watch life become crippled again.

“Can't you back out?” he cried. “Please!”

“It's too late. I tell you it's too late!”

Dad's voice was angry and dismissive, but his eyes were anxious, and his pose as he leaned forward in his chair was almost an appeal for help. But then it altered. His glance flicked over Davy's shoulder to the living-room door, and with a tiny effort he became jaunty, jolly, competent old Dad.

“I've been listening at the kitchen hatch,” whispered Penny. “I didn't want to, but I had to. You've got to go to the police, Dad.”

Dad shook his head.

“I've been thinking,” said Davy. “I might be able to give Mr. Venn a hint that something's up, and he could sack Monkey, and …”

“Shut up,” said Penny. “It's got to be Dad or he'll be in just as much trouble as the others. It's the only hope.”

“Can't be done,” said Dad.

Penny walked over and looked down at him. She spoke in a flat voice like someone reciting a poem she's been made to learn and doesn't much care for.

“Listen,” she said. “If you don't go to the police and tell them everything, I'm not going to forgive you. I mean it. Not ever. Whether you get away with whatever you're planning or not. As soon as I'm old enough, I'll go right away and forget you. I'll sponge you out of my mind, and you'll never see me again.”

Yes, thought Davy, that's Penny's way—and Dad would know what it meant because he'd tried to do the same with Granny but he'd never been tough enough to forget. Penny was. And Penny was Dad's girl—she always had been. If she could make him see she meant it …

“You don't understand,” whispered Dad.

“Then tell us,” she said. “Just listening, I got this much: You've set something up with these men, and you think it's going to make you a lot of money, but if it goes wrong, you'll be in prison for several years.”

“A hundred and ninety thousand pounds,” said Dad, almost as though the figures were a magical formula to give him new strength. “I get a sixth, and even if it goes wrong, there's no reason why anyone would connect me with it. We can go on as we were—this house, your school, my job, but I'll have thirty-five thousand quid sitting in a bank in Switzerland.”

It was typical of him to round the figure up, not down.

“What are you doing for your share?” asked Penny.

“I've done it. I've finished. They couldn't have begun without me. I got them jobs on that site next door to the bank. I stuck out for equal shares when all Trevor was offering was a moldy couple of thou. But the beauty of it is I won't be anywhere near when they knock the bank over. I'll be sitting cozy in my trailer listening to the police sirens.”

Penny laughed her disbelief.

“Davy's right,” she said. “They're just using you. You don't really think they'll let you keep all that if you aren't taking any of the risk?”

“But he is,” said Davy. “There's plenty to connect him. He got those men their jobs, and even Mr. Venn noticed there was something funny about that. And anyway I'm sure they're planning to, er, turn him in.”