The tape in the stereo came to an end and Calvin swore and then realized he had his Walkman next to the bed. All he needed now was another tape from his bag and a light and hey! What was that Robert Plant thing? “Stairway to Heaven.”
Pretty soon, eyes closed, singing along at the top of his voice to Twisted Sister, himself and Dee Snider duetting, except that Calvin kept forgetting the words, getting them wrong, especially in the verses, getting it right for the chorus. Eyes shut tight. Take another hit, that’s it, hold it there and suck it down. Arms spread wide. Sing, you crazy bastard, sing! Calvin didn’t hear the first tentative taps at the window, only when Divine’s fist banged against the frame did Calvin sit up with a jolt and see the man’s cock-eyed face grinning in.
Whatever condition he was in, Calvin knew enough to understand this wasn’t the window cleaner, come knocking for payment.
Panicked, he jerked the headphones clear and threw them across the room, pinched out the joint with his fingers and pushed it from sight. Perhaps no one would notice, figure he was resting there enjoying Bensons King Size? Another of them rattling at the back door now, that fool with a plaster the size of a fist stuck to his face, still grinning like he’d woke up and suddenly it was Christmas.
Calvin wafted the air on his way down the room. Quicker to respond, he could have bolted up the stairs and out into the street, made off on foot, but what the hell, what did he have to run for anyhow? Englishman’s home was his castle, right?
The underside of a boot struck the door, low by the jamb, and it shook.
“Hey!” Calvin yelled. “Hey!”
He unlocked and they came in, forcing him back out of the way, not exactly pushing him, never using their hands, the one with the plaster making straight for the bed, easing the last inch and a half of his joint out into the light.
“Home grown?”
“Old Holborn,” Calvin said. “Cheaper to roll your own.”
“Sure. And I’m Mike Tyson.”
Shit! thought Calvin. You’re not even the right color.
The other one was flashing his card. “Detective Constable Naylor. This is Detective Constable Divine.”
Divine grinned some more. He was having a good time. The inside of the kid’s room smelled like some of the parties he used to go to when he was nineteen, twenty. Wherever he was getting his stuff, it was bloody good.
Naylor had spotted the sports bag on the floor and was making a beeline for it.
“Man,” Calvin said, “you got a warrant to come busting in here?”
“We didn’t bust in,” Divine said. “You let us in.”
“That or stand there and watch the door kicked in.”
“You didn’t invite us on to the property?” said Naylor.
“Damn right!”
“That’s okay, because we’ve got a warrant.”
“Like fuck you do!” said Calvin and wished he hadn’t because the bigger of the two looked as if he might be about to belt him one.
Kevin Naylor took the warrant from his pocket and held it in front of Calvin’s face.
“What you expect to find anyway?” Calvin asked. Naylor and Divine were exchanging glances over the bag, lying on the floor between them.
“That’s my stuff,” Calvin said. He could hear the whine sneaking into his voice and hated it but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. “That’s my personal stuff.”
“Show us,” Divine said.
“Huh?”
“All you have to do,” said Naylor, “unzip the top, pick it up, and turn it out on the bed.”
Calvin didn’t see where he had a lot of choice.
He held the bag over the bed and they all watched the contents tumble out. Old rolled-up copies of Kerrang!, maybe ten spare sets of batteries for his Walkman, EverReady Gold Seal LR6, must have been twenty to thirty cassettes, most of them pristine, Cellophane-wrapped, stickers still in place, HMV, Virgin, Our Price.
“Kid’s a collector,” Divine said.
“Yes,” said Naylor, “bet he’s got the receipts too.” Two of the T-shirts that now lay on the bed were also in their original wrapping, several others that he’d pulled and worn for a few hours and then rejected. A red-backed exercise book in which Calvin had copied the lyrics of his favorite songs, one day, he’d figured he’d start to write his own. All he wanted was the inspiration. A little more time.
“Shake it,” Divine said.
“Hmm?” Calvin looked back at him blankly.
“The bag. Shake it some more.”
This time it came rolling out of the corner where Calvin had desperately been trying to hold on to it with his thumb. Naylor lifted up the plastic bag, the kind Debbie used to buy in Tesco to keep his sandwiches fresh. He sniffed at the contents and passed it across to Divine, whose attention had been drawn to the bundle of tapes.
“Whatever,” he asked, perplexed, holding up a copy of John Denver’s Greatest Hits, “are you doing with this?”
“That shit,” said Calvin. “I don’t play that shit. I just sell it again.”
“Right,” said Divine, now holding the bag of marijuana, “to buy shit like this.”
“Hey,” said Kevin Naylor, moving towards the door, looking upwards. “Does anybody else smell burning?”
Ridgemount had smelt it too, even before he’d eased himself off the saddle and wheeled his bike over the pavement, trailer behind it full with potatoes, onions, ten pounds of bruised Bramleys that he was going to simmer down into apple sauce. Honest to God, Ridgemount thought, I knew it. I just knew it. One thing I asked that boy to do, one thing and he can’t even do that. He was sliding the key into the front door lock when Patel came up behind him and spoke his name.
“I don’t want to buy anything from you,” Ridgemount said, “I don’t want anything on credit and right now I can’t stop to discuss the Bible, because my nose tells me there’s a small emergency going on in my house. Now if you’ll excuse me.”
But Patel showed him his warrant card instead.
“I’m sorry,” Ridgemount said, “I have to deal with this first.”
He pushed the door open and left it wide. A man he didn’t recognize was standing half-way up the stairs, Calvin two steps from the bottom with another man right behind him, a hand on Calvin’s arm. Ridgemount stepped across the hall and into the kitchen; the windows were thick with steam and clouds of it had collected over the ceiling and were beginning slowly to descend the walls. He took a tea towel from its hook and bunched it in his hand, turned out the gas and lifted the pan from the stove. What had been a pound and a half of split peas was now a blackened mass crusted across the pan. Between the stove and the sink, the bottom of the saucepan fell out but the peas clung on, welded to the sides.
“Mr. Ridgemount,” said Resnick, who had walked over from his car and followed Patel into the house, “Detective Inspector Resnick. I’d appreciate it if you’d come with these officers to the police station. There are some questions we’d like to ask you.”
“Dad?” said Calvin from the hallway.
“These questions,” Ridgemount said. “What are they about?”
“Oh,” Resnick said, “I think you know.”
Ridgemount looked past Resnick to where Calvin was standing, Divine and Naylor at either side of him, Naylor still holding his arm.
“Let my son go,” Ridgemount said.
Resnick looked questioningly towards Naylor. “Possession of an illegal substance, sir. Namely, marijuana. Possession of stolen goods.”