Talking to Strange Men (34 page)

‘It doesn't matter. We'll get him back. I'll go and see them, I'll go now. I'll tell them there's been a mistake. I'll tell them he's mine.'

John was appalled. He felt guilty, he felt he had betrayed Gavin by his thoughtlessness. ‘Gavin, I don't know their name or where they live. They paid cash.'

‘You don't know their name?'

‘Look, I'm sorry, Gavin, but you know I can't refuse to sell customers something that's on sale.'

Until then the shop had been empty but now the swing doors opened and there was a sudden influx of customers. A woman picked up one of the wire baskets and came up to John with an inquiry. What it was he never found out, for Gavin, his face working and his eyes wild, turned and delivered at the table on which the mynah's cage had stood a powerful kick. It was a long table that also held terrariums and gardens in bowls and troughs. The kick dislodged a pyramid of glass vessels which juddered and crashed to the floor, sweeping the grass cloth with it, causing a cascade of stone urns and copper pots, flying earth and broken leaf. The noise it made was loud and reverberating and the woman who had come up to John gave a shriek. The other customers stopped where they were and stared at Gavin.

The attention he got seemed to fuel him. He drew back
his arm and made a backhanded sweep along a shelf of bowls and vases. Some of these were of plastic but most were pottery. They shattered and the pieces flew. Gavin went mad then. He began grabbing at everything in sight and hurling it to the floor, plants in pots, vases, jars, wire baskets, tools. An elaborate barbecue device of metal and wood and glass he wrenched into its component parts and cast them to right and left, overturning a stone nymph and breaking a window. One of the women started to scream.

‘Can't you stop him?' a man shouted. ‘Can't someone stop him?'

Gavin was trampling on the broken bits of glass and pottery like a wounded elephant. His arms flailed among the bamboo mirrors. Upraised hands tugged at two hanging bowls from which ivy trailed. His voice had been silenced while his body made mayhem but now he began shouting and a stream of obscenities poured from him like the soil from the broken bowl. Les had got behind him and one of the men customers looked as if prepared to help. Paralysed for a while by the horror of it, John now came from behind the counter and began moving towards Gavin. Seeing him advance, Gavin leapt for the drum that bristled with a variety of garden tools like umbrellas in a stand. He grabbed a long-handled fork, its head small but with four sharp stainless steel prongs, and holding it like a javelin, made a lunge at John.

It was all ridiculous, grotesque. It was also frightening. John had sidestepped behind a stand hung with bulbs in packets but the lot came crashing down as Gavin rushed it. And this time his efforts succeeded. He let out a triumphant yell like some primitive warrior, jabbed at John with the fork, catching him a glancing blow on the shoulder. The pain was intense, savage. Gavin would have followed up his stroke with further stabbings, would perhaps have gone on till John was severely wounded or even dead, but as he aimed a second lunge Les and the customer grabbed him from behind, trying to pin his arms behind his back. Gavin fought them tigerishly, snarling and squealing and grunting, throwing back his head, twisting his neck and trying to bite Les's hand. Holding on to his shoulder from which blood
was welling through his clothes, through the thick canvas coat, John was aware that Sharon was phoning the police.

It took the three of them, one of the women holding the door open, to get Gavin into the office. The blood was now actually flowing from John's wound. They shoved Gavin into the desk chair and Les was all for tying him up, trapping and immobilizing him inside one of the fruit cage nets. But John wouldn't have that.

Gavin was still holding on to his pike but he let John take it away from him. His hands were as limp as dying leaves. He hung down his head and sobbed.

MUNGO WOULD BE
home on Friday or Saturday, Charles couldn't remember which. But that was a week ahead. Of course he could do absolutely nothing about Peter Moran until Mungo came back. He could simply do nothing and await further instructions. Charles could see that this really wasn't on. For one thing, this was obviously the test Mungo had said he would set him, this was the test of his loyalty, to follow and observe the behaviour of Peter Moran. Secondly, if he could ever be in doubt of the value of this exercise, the command to abandon it from Rosie Whittaker or Michael Stern or whoever confirmed its importance.

He did nothing on Saturday or Sunday. On Sunday anyway he couldn't do anything as neither of his parents went into town. Most of the day he practised card tricks. One of the things he practised was doing a waterfall, holding half the cards in each hand and letting them trickle from his palms in such a way that they interwove, one from the left, one from the right, feathering into a single pack of fifty-two. He hoped to be good enough at this to give a casual, apparently unrehearsed, demonstration to Sarah and his parents after tea, but he wasn't satisfied with his performance. If you are a perfectionist you are a perfectionist and there isn't much you can do about it.

It was said that Mungo was afraid of growing any taller, that he hoped desperately he had stopped growing. Charles was still only just over five feet. He knew he would get taller eventually, for his parents were of average height, but he would have liked some of that growth now. Looking at himself in the mirror, he considered dispassionately that if these things went on appearance alone what a marvellous child actor he would make. The male Shirley Temple of the eighties. His angel face gazed back at him and he recognized
in it that other-worldly expression, as if the eyes were fixed on some distant beatific vision, which painters of the past gave to their cherubs and their infant saints. It was in the eyes of course, but in the delicate mouth too and faintly pearly translucent skin. Even his hair had achieved some unwanted growth in the past week, shaping itself into little curly tendrils. Bloody hell, thought Charles. Oh, shit . . .

Did Mungo know the kind of man Peter Moran was? Was this part of the test, the terrible part you either survived, thus proving your allegiance, or else perished in the attempt? Charles thought of what he had read somewhere about novice druids, in order to attain promotion, having to lie all night composing epic poetry in tanks full of icy water. Such an ordeal might almost be preferable to what lay before him. Picking up the cards again, splitting the pack into two, he felt a grudging admiration for Mungo, for his nerve, his ruthlessness. In the past he had often felt London Central was simply not tough enough. Mungo, and apparently Angus before him, had been stern about no actual lawbreaking, no theft, forgery, violence against the person; so much so that Charles had certain changes in mind when he succeeded Mungo as he meant to do. There would be no place in his organization for all this squeamishness.

In view of that he ought to be glad Mungo was coming out of the scruples closet. If only he hadn't been the object of this departure. Fear ran down his spine in as precise a trickle as the falling cards. It was hot again but his hands had felt cold all day. At any rate, he had perfected the trick, he would never do it wrong now, it was there, mastered, controlled, for ever. He went downstairs to show it off – well, to pick his moment when he could do it in full view of all of them as casually as anyone else might pick up and open a book.

‘Good God,' said his father. ‘Amazing. Do that again.'

Charles smiled the closed-lips smile they had all learned from Guy Parker, it seemed very long ago. He thought again and inescapably of how different his father's reaction would be, of his anger and fear, if he knew his son contemplated establishing a rapport with a paederast.

But he had decided to postpone a second confrontation.
Going into town with his mother rather late in the morning, sitting beside her in the Escort, Charles had no plans to make the trip out to Nunhouse that day. Another one of those cold shivers erected the hairs on the back of his neck when he thought of Peter Moran phoning the empty Cameron house. Today, though, he would put all that out of his head, no point in worrying about it at this stage. He was on his way to the building firm of Albright–Craven whose tender, he had at last discovered, had secured the contract for the conversion of Pentecost Villas. How exactly he was going to penetrate the place and make his inquiries he hadn't yet decided. Smallness of stature and juvenile looks were again a grave disadvantage.

As it turned out he never did get inside the building that day, for quite by chance he encountered Peter Moran again. By then it was late lunchtime. Somebody had parked on Charles's mother's ratepayer's parking space in Hillbury Place and they had to put the Escort a long way off in the underground car park in Alexandra Bridge Street. Then Gloria wanted to buy Charles a track suit she saw in Debenham's window, which Charles didn't want and wouldn't have worn. Nor would he let her buy him lunch at Debenham's roof-garden restaurant. He was afraid Albright–Craven might close for lunch. It would take him half an hour on foot to get there anyway.

It was gone one by the time he reached Feverton Square that lay just outside the old city walls. He had seen the CitWest clock indicating twelve fifty-seven and twenty-five degrees and a moment or two later as he passed through the Fevergate he heard the cathedral clock strike one. It was always a fraction fast. Because it was a hot sunny day the square was full of people sitting on benches or lying about on the grass or eating sandwich lunches. The strange thing was that though Peter Moran wasn't far from his thoughts, couldn't be in the nature of things, but so to speak lurking just behind the threshold of his consciousness, he didn't see him sitting there on the top of a low pillar at the foot of the Albright–Craven steps. He was about as observant as you could get was Charles, but still he didn't see him until he was himself no more than a yard or two away. Peter Moran
was sitting there with his back to the pavement, looking up the steps to the big ornate silver and black swing doors. He was wearing a very old white tee-shirt with short sleeves that showed pale hairy arms. His head was bent back a bit so that his rather long, greasy, fair hair touched the neck of this tee-shirt.

As is so often the case with fear (though bearing this in mind never seems much use for next time, as Charles reflected) it went away immediately in the actual presence of what caused it. He could probably have got up those steps, or nearly all the way up them, before Peter Moran saw him but he dared not miss this opportunity. And there were people about everywhere. He was quite safe.

‘Hallo,' he said.

Peter Moran turned round. Charles had anticipated a delighted wonder would be registered but in fact he didn't look altogether pleased to see him.

‘Oh, hallo. Hi.' A glance up the steps and then the pale pebble eyes returned to Charles's face, the expression growing friendlier. ‘What brings you here then?'

‘This and that,' said Charles. His courage had almost resumed its total proportions, which were considerable. ‘Sorry if I was out when you phoned.'

‘I did phone, since you ask. I didn't get any reply.'

He was only a man, a fellow human being, of average IQ, no doubt. Not all that bright. Charles was in the habit of assessing people quite coldly like this. He was also not a very large man, slight of build, a bit unhealthy looking, no more than – what? Five feet nine or ten? That voracious look that seemed suddenly to distort his features, maybe that was only because he was hungry. For food, that is, thought Charles.

‘You said something about having a coffee.'

The glance went back up the steps. ‘Not now. I couldn't now.'

It was said repressively as if not he but Charles had made the initial overtures, as if he were having second thoughts. And Charles was going to move off, either go into the building or return later, was going to think again about observing and tailing this man, perhaps observing and tailing were all he needed to do, when Peter Moran whispered – or
it would be nearer to say hissed – getting to his feet and starting up the steps:

‘This time Wednesday. Fevergate Café. Where they have the tables outside.'

Charles didn't say yes or no. A party of people strolling along the pavement, several of them his own age, engulfed him. Some would call it a piece of luck, for it removed the possibility of his being recognized by the woman Peter Moran had gone up to meet, the woman who had answered the door to him at the cottage in Nunhouse. They were coming down the steps together, not looking at one another, not holding hands or anything, but undeniably together. Charles drifted on with his new companions, foreign visitors they were, tourists with maps in their hands. Peter Moran's coolness was explained. You could understand he wouldn't want other people – sister? Housekeeper? Surely not a wife? – to know what he was up to. At the thought of what he might be up to Charles felt another cold tremor.

He didn't have to go to the Fevergate Café on Wednesday. He hadn't committed himself. Even if he had committed himself he wouldn't have to go.

ALMOST THE FIRST
thing they did at the hospital was to give John an anti-tetanus injection. After his wound had been cleaned and stitched up he thought they might let him go home but they said they would like him to stay in for a couple of days. He had lost a lot of blood.

The hospital was on top of one of the high suburb-clad hills and from where he lay he could look across the valley. On the other side of Hartlands Gardens he could see Fonthill Court where Mark Simms lived. The sun shone on the big picture windows, turning them all to golden mirrors. Next day he phoned Colin to tell him where he was and Colin
came in to see him, promising to go back to Geneva Road and see the greenhouse got watered. But Colin was his only visitor. He wished he could rid himself of the absurd hope that Jennifer would come. Useless to tell himself that Jennifer didn't know, that there was no reason to suppose Colin would have told her, that even if she did know she wouldn't come. When visiting time came and the wives and girlfriends and mothers arrived, bursting in like a herd of hungry animals admitted at last to where the corn was, he found he was holding his breath, eyeing them, searching for her. Then he lay back on his pillows with an inner sigh of resignation.