How to Be Bad (26 page)

“I've got some clearing up to do.”

“I'll help,” I said.

“No, you won't,” he said. “You'll wait here in this room until I've finished. I don't want you peering over my shoulder. I wouldn't want anyone to see what I'm about to do.” He looked at me again. “You're a bloody pillock. What are you?”

“A bloody pillock.”

I went to the bathroom. While I was pissing, I spotted the Kimber handgun, still resting on the linen basket. I opened the lid and hid the weapon under a pile of dirty laundry.

Dad was upstairs with his bag and the sheets. I could hear the sound of chopping and sawing as he dismembered Danny. Then he brought down four bloody bundles and dumped them in the hall. When I'd provided more sheets, he went to work on Mrs. Mather. Every so often, he stopped to swear and curse. Finally, all the body parts were tied up in neat little bags.

“What are you going to do with them?” I said.

“I'm a butcher, aren't I? I've spent my life cutting up bodies and getting rid of the waste. Don't ask stupid questions.”

After checking there was no one about, Dad took the bundles out to his refrigerated van. He went upstairs again, returning with a bloody mattress and a roll of carpet. This also went in the van.

“Okay,” he said. “Get your stuff together. We're leaving.”

“I can't leave yet,” I said. “I've got things to sort out.”

“What things?” For a moment, Dad seemed to be considering clipping me round the ear. “You're not going after Caroline? Tell me you're not.”

“No.”

“You swear?”

“I swear by almighty God that I am not going after her. But I need to clean the house, sort things out with the estate agent, replace the mattress and carpet. If I leave in a hurry, it's going to look too suspicious. Plus, my face needs to heal a bit before mum sees me. Don't you think?”

After a long pause, he nodded. Then he stared at me. “You've been a fool. A real bloody idiot. You know that?” he said. Then my father's bottom lip trembled and he started crying. He reached for me and hugged me to him, squeezing me so hard that I could scarcely breathe.

I started snivelling. I just couldn't help it. I'd always wanted to bond with Dad but never known how to. He didn't understand my love of books, just as his enthusiasm for football left me cold. Now, at last, we were father and son. United at last by horror, darkness, and death.

*   *   *

W
ITHOUT
C
ARO,
Prospect House seemed dark and full of menace. I took a leisurely bath. After dressing, I went to see an emergency dentist in Cromer, a ham-fisted lout who charged me a fortune to place ill-fitting temporary caps over my broken teeth, then had the audacity to say I didn't floss carefully enough.

I went home, ate some lukewarm soup and returned to bed.

In the early hours of Easter morning, the mobile phone beside my bed bleeped to tell me I had a text message, which I sat up in bed to retrieve. The sender was JESU. The message was SW1 HTL. I felt sure that the text was from Caro, who must somehow have got hold of Jesus's phone to send me a hurried cry for help. She seemed to be saying that she had been taken to a hotel in South West 1. This wasn't much help. There were probably hundreds of hotels in that part of London. Anyway, what if I was wrong?

It then struck me that I could use my strategy for finding lost books to solve the problem. Rather than surrendering to panic, I wandered about the house aimlessly, watched a little television, made myself a cup of tea, allowing my unconscious time to throw up an answer.

I went upstairs for a piss. When I came down, I passed the table in the hall and noticed
Things to Do in Suffolk and Norfolk.
I picked it up to see if it said anything about hitting people with spades. The book fell open at an ad for a hotel. The hotel was in Southwold. It was called The Swan. SW1 HTL.

And I knew I'd found her.

Remembering what Caro had taught me, I took the gun into the kitchen and dismantled it. Bad Jesus's torture implements were still heaped on the kitchen table. With great care, I oiled the Kimber and cleaned it. Then I reassembled the gun and loaded it. There were just six shots remaining.

So far, I had failed every test of manhood. I had failed in business, failed to keep my woman, failed to defend myself against attack, and most seriously, failed to live with honor. If I failed again today, I would almost certainly die.

Caro's coat was hanging on the back of a chair. When I picked it up to sniff it and press it against my face, something fell out of one of its pockets. It was the card that Caro had bought from the fortune telling machine on the seafront. I must have misread it the first time, because now it seemed to say:

Someone close to you may murder a neighbour later this week. Social events are highlighted and an old teacher will blow out his brains in your bedroom. You will get your head kicked in by a psychotic gangster, who will then abduct your girlfriend. Never mind.

*   *   *

A
S
I traveled south across the border, the glowering dinginess of Norfolk gave way to lush fields, bright windmills and rows of smart, well-kept cottages bedecked with plants and flowers. It was England as it must have looked fifty years ago.

Like Holeness, Southwold is a seaside town on the East Coast of England, but all similaritities between the two resorts end there. Southwold, with its whitewashed lighthouse and its newly-renovated pier, resembles a middle-class Caucasian child's painting of the seaside in which there are boats, shells, and sand castles but absolutely no suspicious foreigners or poor people. The promenade is free of litter and the only bad smell emanates from the gents lavatories above the beach.

I had read about Southwold but never been here. I knew that George Orwell spent time here, writing against the class system in a nest of genteel comfort. Various lovers of Englishness had praised the town for being unspoiled, meaning that there weren't enough working-class people there to spoil it. I found Southwold charming, its aura of prewar gentility marred only by the view of the Sizewell B nuclear power station further down the coast.

I parked the Audi on the road above the sea and walked slowly into the town. In the market place stood the Swan Hotel, a white mock-Georgian building with a dash of Victoriana. In the center of the square stood an old cast iron pump. There was a butcher's shop with a clock commemorating the Queen's 1977 Jubilee. Today, the shop's blinds were down. It was Easter Sunday.

Most of the other shops were open. There were window displays of miniature lighthouses and toy boats. A bookshop full of browsers. A real-estate agent advertising properties so expensive that the conspicuous absence of paupers ceased to be a mystery. Families straight off the back of cornflake packets and old people from pension ads walked by me, the smiles on their clean pink faces evaporating when they drew close enough to see my smashed-in mouth.

I am one bad motherfucker.

I'd only been walking for about a minute when the shops began to peter out, so I crossed the road and walked back on the other side. Outside the Swan Hotel, I pretended to read the restaurant menu. Next, I slipped down a narrow passage that led to the hotel car park and found the Cayenne Estate. I was thrilled. They hadn't checked out. And they had no idea what was coming.

I walked into the hotel through the back entrance. The women on reception were chatting and didn't pay me any attention. No one in hotels, least of all the staff, can ever tell the difference between a guest and a well-behaved gunman. Unchallenged, I crossed the lobby and turned left into the lounge, where I sank into an old armchair with a view of the lobby and waited.

Two old ladies sitting by the window were discussing British celebrities who had stayed at the hotel. “Michael Palin has stayed here. And that nice Maureen Lipman brings her mother. Do you know Maureen Lipman?”

“No. But I know the woman who presents
The Weakest Link.
”

“Anne Robinson? Has she stayed here?”

“I shouldn't think so. But I know who she is.”

I picked up a copy of the
Mail on Sunday
and leafed through it. Food smells drifted through from the hotel kitchen, reminding me that lunch approached and I hadn't had any breakfast. After forty minutes, I got very bored—although on this occasion, the
Mail on Sunday
wasn't entirely to blame. What was I waiting in the hotel for? It was a fine morning. Caro and Jesus were more likely to be walking by the sea or on the pier. If they saw my car, they would be forewarned. Whereas if I went out to meet them, me and my gun might still come as a surprise.

I left the hotel via the front door and headed down to the water's edge. Even the beach huts were more up-market here, almost good enough to live in, although a stern notice warned that sleeping in the huts was a capital offence. It wasn't warm enough to sunbathe but there were people walking dogs and a family playing ball on the sand.

Despite my recent head injuries, I was thinking clearly. I was thinking,
I used to play ball like that family. Today I am carrying a loaded gun, with intent to commit mayhem.

The Kimber was thrust into my waist band, its metal cold against my hip. There was no sign of the cropped blond head that I knew and worshipped, so I walked to the pier, which may have been renovated but was as windy, pointless, and dull as any pier in Britain. Walking back to the hotel, a hideous thought occurred to me. What if Caro was already dead? What if they'd fucked her so hard that she'd died?

Then they would die too.

I passed a busy little pub and a photographer's shop, its window filled with framed retouched photographs of lopsided brides and gargoyle babies. Then I stopped walking and slipped into the shop doorway, because I had just seen Jesus, Caro, and Cancer Boy walking out of the Swan Hotel. Fortunately, they turned right. Had they turned left, they would certainly have seen me. I reached into my coat pocket, extracted a woollen Kangol hat and put it on, pulling it low so that it covered my eyebrows. Then I followed them.

Caro looked comfortable and relaxed. She was wearing a short blue dress that I had never seen before. No one would have believed she was a hostage, and at that moment, I was finding it hard to believe, too. She walked and chatted, waving her right hand as she made some typically searing point.

Jesus, walking beside her, nodded every now and then as if he was genuinely interested in what she had to say. Cancer Boy dawdled behind, not listening, glancing to left and right as he smoothed his sideburns straight. At one point, he turned and glanced behind him, saw me but immediately looked away, betraying no hint of recognition.

They entered a café, a twee little English teashop where you could buy cream teas with clotted cream, jam, and scones freshly baked on the premises. It was the kind of place where old people met to discuss their operations. As I passed the window, I saw Jesus looking around for an empty table. Cancer Boy tapped an old man on the shoulder. The old man leapt up in alarm, preferring to leave his tea unfinished than risk provoking a marauder.

I passed the café and kept walking until I came to a chip shop with a
CLOSED
sign in its window. Now I was really shaking. I had a weapon but was I really going to use it? Then I realized I didn't have to. Waving the gun around ought to be enough.

What was it they said in action movies?
Spread your hands on the table and keep them there.
Either that or:
Put your hands in the air where I can see them.
Yes, that was better. That would be my first line. The next would be: “Caro, we're leaving.” When we had made it to the door, I would back away, aiming the gun at Jesus and Cancer Boy. Easy.

I walked back to the café, the Kimber already in my hand. When I reached the door, a couple were just leaving. Not noticing the gun, they held the door open for me and smiled. I smiled back.
It's nice to be nice.
I moved past the chattering tables and crossed the room to where Caro was sitting. Caro and Jesus were staring at a menu. Cancer Boy was slumped in his chair, looking bored and petulant as he shunted a salt shaker around the table with his forefinger.

I didn't anticipate any trouble. This wasn't London or Chicago. It was a tea shop in deepest Suffolk. The Kimber was just my insurance. Bad Jesus was rash, but surely not rash enough to start a gunfight in a public place, surrounded by witnesses? So why was I so scared? My legs were so unsteady that I could barely walk. Sweat dripped off my chin onto the tiled floor.

Maybe it was like this for my grandfather, when he fought in World War II. Maybe all those brave old boys once shook as I was shaking now.

I stood in the middle of the café, seriously considering walking out before anyone noticed me. Instead, I raised my weapon and approached Caro's table. It was Cancer Boy who saw me first. Even before he noticed the gun, something about my demeanour made him sit up sharply in his seat. When he saw the weapon, his mouth formed a sickly, desperate smile. The table shook noisily as he began to rise, already reaching for the gun in his belt. His reflexes were much faster than mine, because I was still wondering what to do when he raised his revolver and fired at me.

But in his near-panic, Cancer Boy forgot to aim and the bullet brushed my left arm and penetrated an old lady in a green hat who was sitting at an opposite table. With a sigh of infinite weariness, the old lady slumped forward, her face coming to rest in a plate of toasted tea cakes.

There was a scream to my right. Before Cancer Boy could fire again, I raised the Kimber and shot him. A red carnation magically appeared on the lapel of his jacket. He grunted and spun sideways off his chair, involuntarily pulling the trigger a second time. The bullet ricocheted off the gilt frame of a seventeenth century map of
Suffolke
and hit a waitress in the back. As she fell, she overturned a table and the tray she had been carrying hurtled down, scattering its contents all over the floor.