The one by the school was the closest, half an hour’s walk away. As he tramped in that direction, the houses shrank around their loudness. Beyond some of the open windows sleepless televisions flared, while other rooms were packed with discoloured silhouettes jigging to pile-driver music. Once a car screeched past him, full of boys who looked too young to be out so late and drawing behind it the smoke of a fat shared cigarette. He was glad not to recognise any of the boys, but shouldn’t the police be dealing with them? If the absence of the law meant the police station was shut for the night he would leave the mobile outside.
The buildings closest to the railway were derelict but not untenanted. He had the impression that the district was as teeming with life in the heat as a corpse. The intermittent light of a single streetlamp apparently too tall to smash plucked at the rooms beyond the broken windows and brought shapes that might be alive lurching forward, dodging back. It kept spilling into the tunnel and retreating from the dark. Whatever lay in there was almost asleep if not worse; he couldn’t judge whether the scrawny form was twitching with the instability of the dimness or with a trace of life. Sharpe didn’t know of any other route to the police station from this side of the track. He ran through the passage, almost colliding with the opposite wall in his eagerness to avoid the denizen. He was within inches of the exit when a whisper, or at least the fragments of one, halted him. “Give it back.”
Had he really heard it? The mobile in his pocket hadn’t rung or stirred. As he faltered at the end of the tunnel he heard footsteps wandering towards him. A woman whom he seemed to recognise was drifting from side to side of the street. He didn’t move until he was certain, by which time she was mere yards away. “I believe this belongs to you,” he said.
Her eyes glimmered dully with the light across the railway as she turned to look, first at him and then at the mobile. “I’ve got one,” she mumbled.
“You wanted this. You’ve asked for it often enough.”
“I’ve never.”
“Then who’s been calling,” Sharpe demanded, “if not you?”
An uneasy glint began to surface in her drugged eyes. “She used to. She told me she was shooting up when she was meant to be at school.”
“If it’s your daughter you’re talking about I rather think that’s your responsibility.” Sharpe was provoked into raising his voice over the approaching screech of wheels. “You can’t expect us to keep children at school without the support of their parents.”
“You’re a teacher, are you? Maybe you’re the kind that made her stay away.” Just as accusingly the woman said “She called me when she od’d. She didn’t know where she was and I couldn’t find her in time.”
Sharpe was about to retort to all this when the woman’s gaze strayed past him. Her eyes widened and her face sank inwards from the mouth as she staggered backwards. She grew aware of the car full of boys, and her expression changed. Sharpe didn’t know whether she tripped on the kerb or deliberately stepped in front of the vehicle. She sprawled in the roadway in time for the front wheels to crush her legs and her head. Her body jerked as the rear wheels caught her, and then she was utterly still.
As the car put on speed Sharpe dashed into the road, then turned away hastily, clapping a hand over his mouth. When he was able to speak without choking he pulled out the mobile and dialled 999. “Woman run over,” he gabbled. “Boys on drugs in a car.” He gave the location and ended the call and fled into the tunnel.
He was suffering more guilt than he understood. He only knew he didn’t want to be linked with the woman’s death. The glow from the mobile tinged the walls green and made them quiver nervously as he ran towards the light at the far end. When he glimpsed movement at the foot of the wall midway through the passage, he was able to imagine it was caused by the shaky glimmer. Then the shape produced thin limbs like an awakening spider and floundered towards him. He didn’t know whether it seized his ankles with fingernails or needles or the tips of bones. It sounded barely able to produce a whisper that rustled like litter. “Yours now,” it said.
The Winner (2005)
Until Jessop drove onto the waterfront he thought most of the wind was racing the moonlit clouds. As the Mini left behind the last of the deserted office buildings he saw ships toppling like city blocks seized by an earthquake. Cars were veering away from the entrance to the ferry terminal. Several minutes of clinging grimly to the wheel as the air kept throwing its weight at the car took him to the gates. A Toyota stuffed with wailing children wherever there was space among the luggage met him at the top of the ramp. “Dublin’s cancelled,” the driver told him in an Ulster accent he had to strain to understand. “Come back in three hours, they’re saying.”
“I never had my supper,” one of her sons complained, and his sister protested “We could have stayed at Uncle’s.” Jessop retorted inwardly that he could have delayed his journey by a day, but he’d driven too far south to turn back now. He could have flown from London that morning and beaten the weather if he hadn’t preferred to be frugal. He sent his windblown thanks after the Toyota and set about looking for a refuge on the dock road. There were pubs in abundance, but no room to park outside them and no sign of any other parking area. He was searching for a hotel where he could linger over a snack, and realising that all the hotels were back beyond the terminal entrance, when he belatedly noticed a pub.
It was at the far end of the street he’d just passed. Enough horns for a brass band accompanied the U-turn he made. He swung into the cramped gap between two terraces of meagre houses that opened directly onto the pavement. Two more uninterrupted lines of dwellings so scrawny that their windows were as narrow as their doors faced each other across two ranks of parked cars, several of which were for sale. Jessop parked outside the Seafarer, under the single unbroken street lamp, and retrieved his briefcase from the back seat before locking the car.
The far end of the street showed him windowless vessels staggering about at anchor. A gust blundered away from the pub, carrying a mutter of voices. The window of the pub was opaque except for posters plastered against the inside: THEME NIGHT’S, SINGA-LONG’S, QUIZ NIGHT’S. He would rather not be involved in any of those, but perhaps he could find himself a secluded corner in which to work. The lamp and the moon fought over producing shadows of his hand as he pushed open the thick shabby door.
The low wide dim room appeared to be entangled in nets. Certainly the upper air was full of them and smoke. Those under the ceiling trapped rather too much of the yellowish light, while those in the corners resembled overgrown cobwebs. Jessop was telling himself that the place was appealingly quaint when the wind used the door to shove him forward and slammed it behind him.
“Sorry,” he called to the barman and the dozen or so drinkers and smokers seated at round tables cast in black iron. Nobody responded except by watching him cross the discoloured wooden floor to the bar. The man behind it, whose small eyes and nose and mouth were crammed into the space left by a large chin, peered at him beneath a beetling stretch of net. “Here’s one,” he announced.
“Reckon you’re right there, cap’n,” growled a man who, despite the competition, would have taken any prize for bulkiness.
“You’d have said it if he hadn’t, Joe,” his barely smaller partner croaked past a hand-rolled cigarette, rattling her bracelets as she patted his arm.