The Immaculate (17 page)

Wally looked as though he didn't know what intestines were, but he ambled dutifully over to join his leader. Guy went, too. Ossie and Carl stayed where they were.

“What shall we do with it?” Carl heard Guy say as the three boys stood over the motionless heap of fur.

“Why don't we smash its head open and have a look at its brains,” suggested Wally.

“Yeah, maybe you could borrow some,” Patty said, and he and Guy cackled.

“What's the definition of loneliness?” Guy said, and then answered himself quickly before anyone could spoil his punchline: “Wally's brain cell.”

“Fuck off,” said Wally, and threw a slow, meaty punch at Guy, which the smaller boy dodged easily.

“Hey, I know,” said Patty. “Let's leave it on the doorstep of that silly old cow what owns it. We could put a sign on it saying, ‘You're Next' or something.”

Guy laughed. “Yeah. Or we could hang it on her washing line.”

He and Patty roared with laughter. Wally grinned vacantly along with them.

Carl wandered over, hands in pockets, trying to appear casual, trying not to look at the mangled animal. He'd heard their entire conversation and was horrified at what they were suggesting.

“Hey,” he said in an attempt to deflect their attention, “are we going to play footy or what?”

“Nah,” said Patty. “Footy's boring.” He began to gather up the missiles that lay scattered around the area. “Let's find some more things to bung rocks at.”

“Yeah,” said Guy. “We could go down to the woods. There'll be loads of birds and rabbits and stuff down there.”

“Yeah, good idea,” said Carl eagerly, stooping to pick up rocks himself. “I'm sick of hanging around here. It's boring.”

Ten minutes later the boys were on the move, heading in a meandering fashion towards the woods. To Carl's relief they had left the cat where it had died. With any luck he could go back later and bury it before anyone else found it. Maybe then the blow for Mrs. Akhurst would be softened. She would just think Georgie had run away, could imagine him living a long and happy life somewhere else.

The boys followed a circuitous route, avoiding the school and the main streets of the village. That was the trouble with living here. There was always the danger of meeting someone you knew, and who knew you should be in school.

Their journey took them close to Cleckheaton Road just outside the village, which was where Patty's dad's garage was. It was a run-down place—cracked windows, peeling paint, patched roof, forecourt black and tacky with oil—but it was profitable. Bates's Garage was the only one in Beckford, and in Patty's dad's opinion, appearances were unimportant when you had a monopoly. Patty's dad had inherited the garage from his dad before him, and as far as he was concerned it was simply a money machine. Everyone expected Patty to take over the garage when his father died, but Patty had other ideas.

“I just wanna call in at dad's place,” Patty said, “get some fags.”

This was one of the things for which the other boys envied Patty. Patty's dad didn't care whether or not Patty went to school; neither did he care whether Patty smoked or drank. He occasionally grumbled when Patty got into trouble with the police, but not much, only when it caused him inconvenience. Carl had heard it said that Patty was a “chip off the old block,” though he had never heard the phrase used in a complimentary way.

There were three people at the garage when they arrived. Patty's dad was not one of them. He didn't actually
work
at the garage that often. Usually he was away “doing deals,” though exactly what was meant by that none of the boys, not even Patty, had any idea. Joe Bates was six feet three inches tall and weighed eighteen stone. He smoked cigars, wore a lot of gold jewelry and was forever stuffing five and ten pound notes into people's breast pockets. Once, when the boys had been sitting around on the garage forecourt, swinging a length of chain around and threatening any kids who happened to walk past, Joe Bates had driven up in his Alfa Romeo. He had squeezed his bulk from behind the wheel, strolled up to the boys and growled good-humouredly, “What're you layabouts hanging around here for? Chasing off me customers, are you?” He had then produced a crocodile skin wallet, opened it and thrust a tenner towards his son. “Here,” he said, “buy you and your mates some fish and chips.” It was a gesture that had impressed Carl deeply at the time and which he had never forgotten. He wished his own dad could be like that. In Carl's opinion, Joe Bates had class.

But Joe Bates was nowhere to be seen that day. Patty explained to the boys that he was in Leeds, “doing a bit of business.” Linda Beesley, the girl with the pneumatic tits, was there though, sitting behind the counter in the office. Linda was eighteen and Patty had told the lads that he had slipped it to her loads of times, but no one really believed him. Not that anyone would dare call him a liar to his face.

Linda looked up as the boys passed the big office window, but returned to her Danielle Steele novel without acknowledging their leers and crude remarks. From around the back, the boys could hear the sound of metal striking metal, the intermittent rumble of conversation. They wandered round there, pockets still sagging with the rocks they had used to stone Georgie.

Patty was first round the corner. Seeing what was there, he turned back, motioning the lads to silence, ushering them back behind the cover of the wall.

“What's up?” said Wally, too loudly.

Patty backhanded him across the face. It was not hard but it made Wally flinch, and left a red mark. The other boys stifled their giggles.

“Take a look,” said Patty, moving away from the corner to let the others see.

The gang craned their necks to peer around the corner. Carl was puzzled and unimpressed.

A battered red Ford Capri had been jacked up and from underneath protruded a pair of legs clad in oily blue overalls. These legs, the boys surmised, belonged to David Rookham, who had worked at the garage since leaving school at sixteen. Rookham was Joe Bates' best friend's son, but he was also a good mechanic.

Standing beside the car, leaning forward, hands on knees, was Terry Stone. He had his back to the boys and he too was wearing blue overalls. Terry Stone was the father of Jack Stone, the school weed. Patty couldn't understand why his father employed Terry Stone; half the time he didn't turn up for work, and when he did he was usually half-cut. When he had asked his dad about it, he had been told, “I've got a big heart, Patty. Terry and I go back a long way.”

Guy pulled back from the corner and looked at Patty, face expressing the bewilderment they all felt. “Stone and Rookham,” he said. “So what?”

Patty grinned and pulled a rock from his pocket. “I thought Stone's arse would make a good target.”

The boys sniggered and again tried to stifle it. It was true. The way Stone was standing, his scrawny arse was sticking right up in the air. For fuck's sake, he was virtually offering himself. He was like a guy in a cartoon, bending over to sniff flowers as a bull on the other side of the field paws the ground, snorts steam, and lowers its head ready to charge.

“Yeah,” said Guy. “Baggsy I have first shot.”

“Bollocks,” replied Patty, “I saw him. I'm gonna have first shot.”

“Why don't we all throw at the same time?” suggested Carl. “I mean, once the bricks start coming in, he's not gonna stand in that position until one of us hits the target, is he?”

Patty frowned. It was obvious he had not thought of that. “Yeah,” he said, “okay. But on my word, all right?”

The boys nodded.

“Right then. Come on. And be quiet.”

The gang tiptoed round the corner and lined up, pulling missiles from their pockets. Just like the Magnificent Seven, thought Carl. Except that there were only five of them.

Patty looked along the line, grinning. The boys grinned back. Terry Stone was still bent over, talking to Rookham's legs. Very deliberately, Patty mouthed, “One. Two. Three.” Then he yelled, “Now!” and hurled his rock.

Terry Stone had already begun to straighten up, startled by the cry, when Patty's rock hit him just above the kidneys. Four more missiles followed in quick succession. Two hit the Ford Capri, causing sizeable dents in the bodywork, one—Wally's—flew high and wide, and the other—Ossie's—struck Stone on his right shoulder.

Stone fell forwards against the car as if a truck had hit him, crying out in pain. The car rocked as his hands and body slapped against it, and for one horrible moment Carl thought the jack would give way, causing two tons of metal to crash down on top of David Rookham.

Fortunately, however, the jack held. The boys heard a shrill, strangled curse from beneath the car, and the next instant Rookham catapulted out, face very white beneath its smudges of oil, hair awry, eyes and mouth wide open. “What the hell's going on?” he screamed, voice high-pitched, almost girlish. He looked at Stone, who was rubbing his back and shoulders, face puckered with pain. Then he looked at the boys and repeated, “What's going on?”

Patty, Guy and Wally were laughing. Ossie looked a little pale, a little scared, and Carl thought that maybe he did, too. Patty waved a hand in a gesture of dismissal. Still grinning hugely he said, “Aw, c'mon, Dave, it was a joke, that's all.”

“You call trying to squash me to a pulp a joke?”

Patty rolled his eyes. “It wasn't our fault that old bony fell over the car, was it?”

Terry Stone turned slowly, still rubbing the places where the rocks had hit him, but now Carl saw that his face was puckered not with pain but anger. His expression deepened quickly, became more than anger; it became rage, fury, dementia.

“You . . . ,” he said in a strange, strangled voice. He picked up one of the rocks that had struck him, looked at it disbelievingly. “You . . . you
fucking little shits!
”

Carl stepped back, as did Ossie and Wally. He wouldn't have admitted it, but he was more than a little scared of Terry Stone. It was generally regarded in Beckford that the man had a few screws loose. He drank a lot, and it was rumoured that he beat up his son.

He looked pretty crazed now, right enough. His face was red, his eyes bulged and froth was collecting at the corners of his mouth. The boys began to break rank as he strode towards them, still clutching the rock in his hand. Even Guy, Patty's unofficial second-in-command, backed away. Only Patty himself stood his ground.

“What do you think you were doing?”
Terry screeched. Froth sprayed from his lips as if he had a mouthful of washing up liquid.

He came to a quivering halt, no more than six feet away from Patty. Patty raised himself to his full height, arching his neck, drawing back his shoulders, pushing out his chest. Patty was big for a fifteen-year-old, but he was still an inch or two shorter than Terry Stone. However, he made up for that in bulk. Stone was skinny, haggard-looking. Patty probably weighed fifteen or twenty pounds more than the older man.

“Keep your fucking hair on, Bony,” Patty said. There was no humour in his voice now. His eyes had a flat, predatory sheen, his voice was belligerent, goading. Carl knew he was spoiling for a fight, and usually when Patty wanted a fight he got one.

“You could have split my head open with this! You could have killed David! What the fuck did you throw it for?”
Stone yelled into Patty's face.

Carl realised exactly what it was about Terry Stone that made him uneasy. The man always seemed full of rage, so much so that no amount of screaming and ranting would ever get rid of it. Even when Carl had seen Terry sober, as he was now, even when he'd seen him having a laugh in the pub or chewing the fat with the locals, that rage seemed to cling to him, seemed to swirl beneath the still blue surface of his eyes, biding its time. Carl thought of guys who, one day, for no good reason, took a gun to the local supermarket and killed as many people as possible, coldly and indiscriminately, usually before blowing their own brains out. Whatever it was that made people do that, Carl thought that Terry Stone possessed it. He was a time bomb on a slow-burning fuse, a touchpaper waiting for the flame.

“I didn't throw that one. I threw that one over there,” Patty said in a tone of hostile sarcasm.

Even as the boys were sniggering, Terry said, “Well, you can have this one back,” and he whirled his arm around, bowling the rock underarm at Patty's midriff.

The distance between Patty and Terry, and the suddenness of the movement, meant that Patty had no chance to dodge out of the way. The rock hit him hard in the stomach, doubling him over. Before anyone could react, Terry kicked Patty in the face, then kicked him again and again and again. He became a dervish of flying feet and fists. Carl was chilled to see that on Stone's face was an expression of cold, calm madness, like frozen, contained rage moulded into a mask. Carl wondered whether Patty could have beaten Terry Stone if Stone had not had the element of surprise, if Patty had not been winded. In this mood, he wasn't so sure.

The boys stood round in a rough semicircle, as always happened when there was a fight. This fight, however, was different from usual. Normally it was Patty who was standing up, doing the kicking. Now, though, he was curled into a ball on the dusty ground, not moving, not making a sound. Carl could see blood around his face and head, glimpsed flashes of it, startlingly red through the blurred screen of Terry Stone's boots. Carl wanted Terry to stop, wanted to scream at him to do so. Even Patty would have stopped by now.

But Terry looked as if he would never stop. He would kick Patty until he was dead, until his head was an unrecognisable mess. And the boys would simply stand there and watch it happen, too terrified to intervene, afraid Stone would turn his rage on them. Carl looked desperately at his friends. They were transfixed, as horrified as he was—even Guy. Carl's mouth was so dry that his tongue seemed to have glued itself to the roof of his mouth. His throat felt like gravel.