He recoiled like he’d been spat at. All morning, a rage had smouldered, built from the tinder of grief and loss, fuelled by the shock of finding the device gone and, yes, by the mortification he had suffered in telling his commander. Now it sparked and flared, and he blazed with righteous fire.
He lurched from his seat to the front. “Stop the bus,” he said.
The driver didn’t even take his eyes off the road. “It’s not a request service, Paddy, lad.”
“Oh, good – ’cos this is not a request.”
The driver swivelled his head to look at him. “And who d’you think you are?”
The man took hold of the driver’s seatback and leaned in, allowing his leather jacket to fall open just enough to show the revolver tucked in his belt. “I’m the Angel of Death, son.”
It’s four minutes to three as he heads south-west down Birkenhead Road on the other side of the Mersey. He’d crossed the great wide dock of East Float and crossed it again, tracking over every one of the Four Bridges, lost. Forty-five minutes later, he’d fetched up at the Seacombe Ferry terminal, with just a handrail between him and the muddy waters of the Mersey. He could happily have thrown himself in, had a kindly ferryman not asked him if he was off to the parade, and given him clear directions to Wheatland Lane, where he might stand on the bridge and wave to the Queen. He barrels along, the little car’s engine screaming, past a stretch of blasted landscape. His heart is beating like an Orange Man’s Lambeg. It’s two minutes before the hour. She’ll give her speech on the Liverpool side, then motor through to Wallasey; giving him time to find a spot. He will deliver the message for Father O’Brien. He almost misses the sharp turn westward and wrestles the wheel right. The gun slides in his lap, and he catches it, tucking it firmly in his waistband.
He’s driving full into the afternoon sun, now; it scorches his face, burning through the windscreen, and he yanks the visor down. A sheet of paper flutters on to the dashboard. His foot hard on the pedal, he picks it up, squints at it as he powers towards the bridge.
It’s a note, written on lined paper, in a child’s neat handwriting:
His eyes widen. He hits the brakes. The car skids, turning ninety degrees, sliding sideways along the empty road. He reaches for the door, but his fingers seem too big, too clumsy to work the handle, he can’t seem to get a grip of the lever. He can’t seem to-
The thin, electronic beep of the clock in the bag under his seat sounds a fraction of a second before the flash. Then the windows shatter and the grey bodywork blows apart like a tin can on a bonfire.
TEA FOR TWO by Sally Spedding
THE FUZZ AND me have never exactly been bosom pals, but for the last four months, I’ve been keeping my nose extra clean. Doing all right with my own space, some cash in the bank from knowing one end of a greyhound from the other, until I spotted an unmarked Escort hanging around my bedsit in Ennis Street by Bethnal Green Tube. Then this Suit got out – all six feet of him – and stared up at my fourth-floor window.
“I’ve not an earthly why we’re doing this,” I complained to him some five minutes later. “Waste of a good morning if you ask me.”
“Just need to sort a few things out,” he said, and not a lot since. So I reasoned with myself the sooner we got this over with, the sooner I could go to Walthamstow for the dogs, like I’d planned.
Now it’s just me and this too-tight Suit in “The Box” at the local lockup, staring at a grainy black-and-white photo that’s obviously been enlarged.
“Take me back to the beginning when you were a kid,” he says. “And no short-cuts.”
“Why?”
“Patience, Mr Dwyer. I’m the one asking the questions, remember?”
I swallow bile that’s crept up my throat. I’m trying to keep calm.
“There I am, in the distance, walking away from them others,” I say, pointing at the skinniest kid with the whitest legs. “See? D’you need a magnifying glass?”
“No, Mr Dwyer. Just some answers. Why were you walking away?”
“Fed up of being called Fatso, Big Ears and the rest. I remember thinking I’d better things to do than hang around taking shit like that.”
“Just you?”
“Yes.”
“Think again.”
“I don’t get it,” I say. “You had a tip-off?”
“What about?”
This is a trick…
“Nothing.”
I was brought here hot and sweaty, but not any more. Quite the opposite. I’m looking for my gloves to warm up my fingers, but they’ve gone missing.
“How about the evening of September the tenth 1950?” he goes on, and I can’t help sneaking a look at his shaved neck. His clean, shiny skin.
Like I’ve said, I’ve never trusted the Fuzz. Why should I, given my history? But this one, young enough to be my own son, seems kosher enough. Even the brew he’s brought in for me is drinkable. Although his smile is meant to crack my memory that’s hardened like cement, you try recalling stuff that happened that long ago. It’s no joke, ’specially since there’s been so much water under the bridge – Tower Bridge, to be precise – more my home then than the one I was supposed to go back to every night.
162, Rosehill Street, Rotherhithe, if you must know. With not a bloody rose or a hill in sight.
“It’s important you take me through exactly what happened.” The Suit. Slips a new tape into his recorder. Clicks it on. The sound makes me jump, and he notices. “Are you comfortable? Or would you prefer a softer chair?”
I don’t answer. His tone of voice has changed, making my pulse slow up and a growing shadow fill my mind. “You’re suspecting me of summat, right?” I say. I can’t help myself. It just comes out.
“And what might that be?” He smiles again; this time showing big white teeth. All his own. Lucky not to have had ’em out like I did as a kid, to save on dentists. Come to think of it, there’s something about his expression that rings a bell, but for the life of me, I can’t think why. He pushes the photo even closer towards me until it rests in a beam of sunlight from the one barred window. I need to be careful.
Then I remember that same sun beginning to drop in the late-afternoon sky, making our shadows longer than we were, and that rusty old barge – the May Queen – moored just off the stony beach, glow like the lippy my step-mum wore before her nights out.
“Freddie’s the one on the right, bending down. Am I correct?” says The Suit.
“Yessir. Freddie Miles. Smiley for short. He were a right bastard.”
My inquisitor’s Adam’s apple bobs up and down in his throat. I wonder if I’ve put a foot wrong. My warder in the Scrubs warned me to be deferential with the Fuzz at all times, to the point of actually browning my nose. So here I am, doing like he said.
“What’s he up to in this photo?”
“Picking up the biggest stones. Then we’d make a right huge pile…”
“Why?”
“Ammo, ’course. Even though the war was well over, he’d pretend the Boche were still about to come up river, and he’d be Churchill, seeing them off.”
“Are these other boys doing the same? The Thomas brothers – Geraint and Dafydd – and the Robinson triplets?” The Suit’s chewed forefinger points at the left-hand side of the photograph where the other five lads are busy obeying orders…
If there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s people who eat their own skin. I wonder if he’s been at it since he was a kid…He’s remembered all the names, mind. Even though I’ve only told him the once.