East of Innocence (30 page)

‘She had a broken neck,’ I say. ‘She did that falling over?’

‘That was more of a…’ A bird flaps in some branches above us, sound of wings erupting into flight. Baldwin shrugs. ‘Seemed the kindest way.’

The statement is so monstrous it barely registers with me. Instead, I ask, ‘She was holding something up. On the footage. You tried to take it from her.’ I think of Rosie, her arm out, thrusting something towards Baldwin as if warding off evil. ‘What was it?’

Baldwin frowns, thinks back, then his expression clears as he remembers. ‘Ah yes. Mobile phone. She’d recorded it all, like another fucking Rodney King. Unbelievable.’

So Rosie was killed because she had seen too much; what’s more, she had evidence. And, rather than keep it to herself or create some media sensation, she’d decided to take it up with the appropriate authorities, then and there. Perhaps she had believed, in her outrage, that such a flagrant abuse of power would be swiftly and decisively dealt with; that Baldwin’s colleagues would be as outraged as she was at what she had witnessed and would give her every support. As she walked into the police station, she must have believed that she was in a place where justice would prevail.
Little did she know that she had wandered into a place of violence and the law of the jungle.

As Baldwin and his colleagues emerged from the cells, laughing and wiping their knuckles with tissues, Rosie confronted them, told them what she’d seen, told them she wasn’t going to let them get away with it. At first they tried to reason with her, tell her it was none of her business, that this was the way of the world, that they were the good guys. But Rosie was immovable, furiously sure of her moral duty. Baldwin took hold of her and walked her out of the police station and she must have wondered at his strength; he needed to get her away, reason with her, make her see his side of things away from the eyes and ears of the rest of the station. But Rosie wouldn’t listen. Outside in the dark away from the cameras, she tried to get away, to alert a higher authority. Baldwin took her arm, she shook it off, Gary went after her, she said something, he hit her. Instinctively, she hit him back, and by that point it was too late. Things were only going to end one way.

‘Okay, let’s get this done, can we?’ says Banjo. Of the three policemen, he seems the most nervous and I get the feeling that he’s not cut out for this, that events have got out of control and he’s well outside his comfort zone. He keeps looking around but there is nobody on their way; we are in the middle of a remote forest clearing and he has nothing to fear. I, on the other hand, have never felt so alone.

‘It will get done,’ says Baldwin easily. ‘Why don’t you have a sit down? This is Gary’s show now.’

Gary walks closer and I can see his face more clearly than ever; it is misshapen and underneath the bruising the skin is broken and I can see bloody cuts where my fists burst his face open. I cannot remember doing it. The semi-circle of metal wraps around his lower face like the beginnings of some foray into cyborg technology, the pins that hold it in place sprouting from his skin as if they grew there. He looks so angry he could cry and I cannot help myself.

‘Fucking Robocop. Were the nurses nice to you? Did they give you a lolly for being a brave boy?’

Gary is too furious to respond but behind him Baldwin chuckles softly. ‘Eye for an eye, that’s what we’ve decided. That right, Gary?’

‘What’ll I use?’ says Gary.

‘Whatever you want.’

‘These?’ He pulls out his car keys and looks at them doubtfully.

‘DNA, Gary,’ says Baldwin. ‘Use a stick or something.’

‘Why create more trouble for yourselves?’ I say. ‘Just let me go.’

‘Trouble?’ says Baldwin, puzzled. ‘Am I in trouble?’

‘You will be if you kill me.’

‘I’ll probably be investigating,’ says Baldwin. ‘I’ll be honest, I can’t see a problem.’ Even Banjo snorts in laughter at this. Baldwin’s confidence is unshakable; nothing I say will cause him to doubt himself.

Gary has found a stick with a sharp end and he walks back towards me. ‘Can you hold him?’

‘Can do,’ says Baldwin affably. He walks behind me and once more lays an arm around my neck, another across my
forehead. Again, I am surprised at his strength. Gary squats down in front of me and puts a finger into my right eye. Regardless of Baldwin’s powerful hold, I have enough strength of my own to jerk my head away, hands cuffed and sitting down as I am. Gary is using his thumb and first finger as a pincer; he is trying to pluck out my eye, looking at me intently as if he is having trouble undoing a hard-to-reach bolt. But even though I can only move my head fractionally, he cannot get purchase. His fingers keep stabbing into my eye and it is watering, his one damaged eye peering down at me out of his ruined face like an extreme close-up from a horror film. I do not want this man to take my eye out. He is not a worthy adversary; he is nobody.

‘Hold still,’ Gary says. ‘Stop moving.’

‘Use the stick,’ says Baldwin. ‘Fuck sake.’

Gary picks up the stick and pushes it towards my eye but I jerk out of the way.

‘Stop fucking moving,’ Gary says tetchily. Baldwin takes an even tighter hold and Gary takes my chin in his hand. My lips twist stupidly in Gary’s grip but I cannot move. He holds the stick in the other hand and inserts it so that the point of the stick is in the corner of my eye nearest the bridge of my nose. He rests it there and the pressure of it makes my vision blur. It hurts.

‘Smile,’ he says, and pushes it forward as hard as he can.

I push back with my heels and take Baldwin by surprise; he is off balance and I lever myself into a half-standing position and rush him backwards, away from Gary and his stick. Baldwin cannot stop my charge and I twist out of his grip and turn, facing him. He looks
surprised but not unduly worried. I am still at his mercy, hands cuffed behind me.

‘You’re too late,’ I say.

‘You what, son?’

‘Terry made copies. And they’ll be on tomorrow’s front page.’

Copies, copies, copies of copies. Right now there are five versions of Rosie’s last actions, five identical documents of her final movements in the possession of five different newspaper editors. Baldwin, supremely confident as he is, is also, right now, utterly fucked.

Baldwin does not take the news well. He blinks slowly, his huge head and body still as the implications course their way through his massive frame. He pinches his nose with his fingers, rubs his mouth and chin. He sniffs loudly, smiles to himself. I feel the nervous anticipation that a child does seeing a balloon inflated too fully. I tense in readiness.

‘Oh shit,’ says Banjo. ‘Oh, Jesus no.’

‘Guv?’ says Gary. He sounds scared, uncertain.

Baldwin stalks around the clearing like a knocked-out boxer who has just come to in the ring and does not yet comprehend where he is. ‘No,’ he says, almost conversationally. ‘No. No no no.’ He passes me and I think he is going to attack me but he just reels past, lost for the moment in his private torment, his world collapsing around him. Suddenly enraged, he pulls at a low-hanging branch, trying to wrench it off a tree but it will not come off so he crouches down next to the tree, puts his head in his arms and starts
to moan. Gary walks over to him and this tableau, of Baldwin in dismay being consoled in a forest clearing by a man who looks barely human, is so grotesque I question momentarily whether or not it is really happening. Baldwin, suited and crouched and making strange sounds as he is, makes me think of a bear suddenly and unwelcomely turned human; I have wandered into some hellish fairytale. Gary looks over at me resentfully, as if to say, See, look what you’ve done to him. The other side of the clearing, Banjo has his hands rammed down into his pockets and his back is arched and throat tight and he is looking up at the sky and crying silently.

Baldwin stops his moaning and shakes Gary’s hand off his back and picks himself up; now I am in trouble. He walks towards me and without breaking his stride slams his fist into my face; I fall over immediately, the trees rush past my vision as if it is them falling and not me, until my head is stilled as it lands in the leaves. Baldwin stands over me and breathes heavily. I am on my back with my hands cuffed behind me. I could not be more vulnerable. I twist around but Baldwin puts a foot on my chest, presses down. He takes a knife out of his pocket, a lock knife. He opens it; it has a four-inch blade and reflects the dull light.

‘Oh, this knife,’ says Baldwin. He sounds manic. ‘The places it has been, the things it has seen. Remember when I put it in that Tariq’s ear?’ He looks around at Gary, who nods. ‘I made him look in the mirror and got it in, oh, up to here.’ He shows me with his finger, nearly halfway up the blade. ‘Man kept screaming. He couldn’t believe what was happening.’

I wonder how many people have been victims of Baldwin, how many men and women humiliated and mutilated yet too terrified of his influence to ever say anything. Decades of abuse, hundreds of lives. The man is a monster.

‘What are we going to do?’ says Banjo.

‘That we’ll work out later,’ says Baldwin. He steps over my chest so that he has a foot each side, then lowers himself on to his knees, sits down on my torso. He puts a hand under my chin and grips it. With the other, he puts the blade of the knife against my lips.

‘Say “Aah”,’ he says. He works the blade in between my teeth; there is nothing I can do to stop him, however hard I bite. The blade is cold and I can feel its edge against my tongue. He twists it, levering my mouth open, the two sides of the blade scraping against my teeth, top and bottom. He is looking down at me intently, like a surgeon assessing a problem.

‘This tongue will have to come out,’ he says. ‘Then we’ll see.’ He works the blade around and it cuts into the gum at the back of my mouth, below my molars.

‘What are you doing?’ says Banjo desperately.

‘Make sure he doesn’t talk again,’ says Baldwin. His weight on my body is loathsome. I can feel the heat of his balls on my stomach.

‘Do you have to?’ says Banjo, plaintively. He turns to Gary. ‘I can’t look.’

‘Cunt deserves it,’ says Gary, but he looks sick, disgusted by what is about to happen.

Baldwin has got the blade underneath my tongue and is working away at where it meets my mouth, sawing. Blood
floods my mouth. He jabs the point right into the heart of the meat and it hurts, hurts more than I would have believed. Banjo looks away. ‘Oh, Christ,’ he says. I close my eyes, try to think about something, anything but the fact that a man is trying to cut out my tongue. I try to picture my mother but I can hear Baldwin’s heavy breathing; he sounds like a pig at a trough.

Then there is a sharp crack and the pressure from the knife stops and I feel Baldwin’s weight lessen. The knife is lying in my mouth now and I shake my head and push it out with my tongue; it drops to the ground next to my head. Looking up, all I can see are the tops of the trees, the white sky through the gaps in the leaves. I lie still for a moment and I cannot hear anything so I raise myself up and Baldwin is lying at my side, one leg still over my stomach, his head a couple of feet from mine. His face is almost intact, but there is a large chunk of his forehead missing above his right eye and one entire side of the top of his head is gone. Something glistens yellow under the bright-red blood. I scrabble with my feet and arms and manage to work myself out from under him and away, his blank eyes watching me. He is as grotesque dead as he was alive.

Gary and Banjo are both looking at him too, shocked, not moving. It is very quiet in this clearing. Gary makes a move forward, stops. Then they both, as if they have reached some silent telepathic agreement, walk quickly away through the trees until it is just the two of us, myself and Baldwin.

I sit there until the birds resume their chatter in the trees, swallowing my blood, then I stand up and walk back
to Baldwin’s body. Already flies are gathering around the dark pool of blood next to what is left of his head, landing on it, dimpling its viscous surface. I sit down with my back to him and feel through his pockets to find the keys to the handcuffs. It is difficult and takes some time, but eventually I find them. Then, without unlocking them, I head out the same way as Gary and Banjo, not once looking back. I cannot get away fast enough.

31

MY MOTHER’S FUNERAL
is in a small country church, which the Latimers have been attending for years; it is made of dingy stone with a large stained-glass window at one end, and they know the vicar personally. He has weather-reddened cheeks and iron-grey hair and he greets me after the service with a sincere warmth, taking my hand in both of his.

‘She spoke about you,’ he tells me, meeting my bruised eyes unflinchingly, without judgement. ‘You were a huge source of comfort to her. I believe you helped her to find peace.’

I nod at him and take my place in the group around the grave. My mother’s coffin is lacquered black and resting on a piece of green material like you once found in greengrocers, when high streets still had viable greengrocers. The weather is squally, sheets of rain draping the assembled crowd cowering respectfully under black umbrellas. There aren’t many of us; the Latimers, including Penelope who has not spoken to me, and some older people whose lives, they have assured me, my mother touched in some small yet presumably significant fashion.