He took the municipal bus as far as he could towards Flintwicks because it was spitting with rain, then walked the rest of the way. He still found Threndle House imposing. Its dinted gargoyle leered from its gritstone perch, weathered by time and hunched by design. Shaded, ear to ear.
Arthur’s shoes made shredding noises in the asphalt chippings as he went to put his hand on the nearest wall and feel the chill of its architecture. To the side of the property was a gorgeous old Jaguar XJS. Although he couldn’t drive, Arthur cupped his hands on the windows and peered longingly at the dashboard, the wooden-topped gearstick, the gliding binnacle. A couple of minutes later he was at the back of the house letting himself in via the tradesman’s entrance. Every window was turbid. Shadow was everywhere.
The Swarsbys kept their coats and things in the scullery leading from the trade door. Arthur removed a scarf from a hook and wrapped it about his face. The Swarsby children must be absent or he wouldn’t have been summoned here like this. He followed the sound of an empty sequence being picked out on a piano, all the way to the living room where he found Clive Swarsby waiting for him.
Through the glass beyond Swarsby, the garden was gossamer with mist. The politician was garbed in a lemon-coloured shirt and grey slacks, looking far more comfortable than the last time Arthur had seen him. Arthur seated himself in the nearest chair and tightened the scarf over his face.
“You can take that off for a start,” said Swarsby.
“I’ll keep it on, ta.”
“It’s cashmere.”
And wool was wool. Arthur’s smile became a chuckle as Swarsby shut the fallboard over the piano, causing its wires to chime. The guy had that skull blubber that overweight bald or balding men get, a head-roll of flesh rearing up from the neck that tempts you to reach out and pinch it.
He’d done just that in June, pointing the cricket bat at Swarsby to make him stay put. Out had come Arthur’s hand, surprisingly steady, given what it was up to, pincering the soft back of Clive’s head between finger and thumb. He dropped the bent photographs of the man’s daughter on his desk.
“These are what you want me to pay for?” Swarsby eventually said, leaning back in his chair, in the process knocking the calico blinds that were strung along the window.
“Or we send ’em to papers.”
Swarsby let out a derisive burst of air. Pfffft. So Arthur struck the desk with the bat, leaving a huge dent in its bevelled edge.
Swarsby cowered. “But I don’t have anything!”
Arthur clouted the desk again, accidentally striking the lightbulb. Glass tinkered everywhere, raining over the three men.
Sound travels brilliantly in wooden-floored rooms. A kinetic energy sluiced through Arthur, and he had to take a moment to steady himself. This was surreal as it got. Swarsby’s aftershave was pungent, and the study walls seemed as porridge-coloured as Arthur’s life felt half the time. Dig deep for the miners. Arthur had Asa take hold of Swarsby’s chair while he went to town on the filing cabinets. Useless manila folders were ransacked, discarded documents floating about the room like feathers loosened from a pillowcase until the Swarsby bank statements surfaced, which, lo and behold, proved there were no savings. The family were living at Threndle House rent-free.
Still, there had to be cash, credit cards or assets. Something. Arthur was about to say so when Asa pulled him into the corridor.
“Fucking what?” said Arthur.
“It in’t working.”
“No way we’re leaving empty-handed.”
“We’ve been too long already, what if someone comes?”
Arthur wasn’t sure. He had a mind to set the whole of Threndle House ablaze. He batted Asa’s arm away and re-entered the study, Asa trying to grab him.
“Arthur!”
Swarsby tentatively rose from his chair. “Arthur?” he said, “Arthur… this house isn’t mine. You do know that?”
“But you’ve all this!” cried Arthur, whacking the desk for a third time. “He’s having us on, it’s his favourite thing. You must have summat, where’s the jewellery, the fucking cash? I’ll take that bloody jag off your hands, shall I?”
Swarsby was practically hyperventilating as he waved the photos at Arthur.
“Think,” he managed to say. “Why would I have these if not for the same reasons as you?”
Arthur lowered the bat. He was drawn to, fascinated by, Clive Swarsby’s breached iris, where a mysterious concourse had been created by the oil spill of his pupil. It was like a poker player’s tell, only in-built, permanent: the bluffer’s mark. And Asa must have seen it too. He swatted the pictures from Swarsby’s hand, produced his NUM badge from his pocket and set it on the knackered desk. “All them families,” Asa said. “All them jobs.”
“Oh, what bloody jobs?”
Asa grabbed what remained of Swarsby’s hair and used it to slam his face against the desk. Then he lifted him by the pyjama collar and cuffed him around the back of the head like he was some back-chatting kid.
Arthur had to break it up. Swarsby was bleating by then, stammering, confessing tearfully that a friend had taken advantage of his daughter. There was more dirt to come, he said. This Guiseley was worth a packet and likely to pay.
Arthur couldn’t breathe properly through the tights. He put his forehead against the politician’s and said “Like what? What you fuckin’ got?”
“I’m not sure! But why not chance me finding out? I need someone to come in with me as it is,” Swarsby said. “Keep me distant. No one will suspect you. I don’t even know who you are… We can split the money.”
“Fuck off,” said Asa.
Arthur flapped him quiet. “How much we talking?”
“Put it this way,” Swarsby said. “It’ll be a lot more than the three thousand you came here for today.”
A cessation then, one of those loaded moments where something you knew all about is revealed to someone else. Realising his lowballing had just been outed and certain Asa would take the news thick, Arthur reached for the cricket bat. The red and white Grey Nicholls sticker was vertical against his eye.
“Three thousand?” said Asa quietly. “An’ wi’ the bat now, Art, n’ all?”
“Listen, wait, hang on a tick!”
Asa snatched the keyboard from the desk, yanked it free of the computer, wire and all, and swung it broad as a plank at Arthur, who ducked. The keyboard caught Clive Swarsby in the temple, letters and numbers flying everywhere. Swarsby fell to the ground, pyjamas rucked at the shins and his stomach jiggling openly. Arthur stared at the scattered alphabet, the keys one to nine. At his feet was the number one, and above that fabled digit was an exclamation mark.
Oddly, that seemed to quieten things. Asa was shaking. He prodded Arthur in the shoulder, once, then stormed out of the room.
“Scanny!”
He didn’t stop. Fucking Moonface. You tried to do a guy a favour. Arthur went to help Swarsby up. The daft bugger was about to have a heart attack so Arthur passed him a tissue and let him dab himself.
“Let’s make call,” he said, patting Swarsby’s back. “This Guiseley. Get it over wi’.”
“We can’t. I need proof. Evidence. You need to give me until the election. I need more time.”
Summer had crawled on since then. Picket after protest, relentless. Police on your doorstep, stationed on the outskirts of the borough and all over Yorkshire. A bunch of clowns are supposed to be funny; this lot were far from it. Stop and search every day. The whinny and whine of their animals, the chug and fume of their engines, their sirens busy and your powdery breath visible now that August had puttered away.