Born Guilty

In the car he said, ‘You so tired, why don’t you let your sister pick Desmond up?’

‘Already she gives him his breakfast, drops him off at school. If I’m not there to pick him up, he’s going to start thinking I’m his auntie, Lucy’s his ma.’

‘At least you could duck the odd rehearsal till you’re off nights.’

She let out a gasp of mock horror.

‘You want Rev. Pot to nail me to his penitent stool? No, the singing’s no sweat. In fact, when I hear that music and open my mouth, it’s about the only time I stop feeling tired. Gives you a bigger hit than ganja, don’t you feel that, Joe?’

‘You wouldn’t expect a clean-living boy to know anything about that, would you?’ said Joe.

‘This the same clean-living boy who’s running around with the Mutant from Planet X?’

‘Beryl, let me tell you about Galina …’

‘Joe, it’s OK,’ she said. ‘I’m only joking. It’s none of my business. Just like what’s mine is none of yours, OK? This’ll do.’

Obediently he stopped the car and she was out of the door before he realized they weren’t at the Infirmary’s main gate but at a side entrance which ran between the path labs and research blocks. Beyond these buildings she could either follow the service road to the main block or take a tree-shaded pathway which curved through the grounds to the nursing wards, cutting off several miles of corridor.

He didn’t doubt which way she’d go, and he didn’t doubt which way Mirabelle would go if she heard he’d let Beryl loose unaccompanied.

‘Hold on!’ cried Joe.

From beneath his seat he took a heavy steel spanner about a foot long, with tape bound around the handle to provide a firmer grip. This had been a present from Merv Golightly whose constant companion in his taxi was a monstrous lug wrench called Percy. The mere sight of Merv’s lanky figure twirling Percy like a conductor’s baton was usually enough to subdue most troublemakers. In Joe’s line of business, a similar aid was very necessary, opined Merv, and Little Perce had been the result. Joe, who found violence either coming from him or aimed at him very scary, had never found occasion to use it. But there wasn’t much point offering himself as Beryl’s defender if all his defence consisted of was warding off blows with his head.

Fearful of the woman’s ridicule, however, he took the precaution of slipping Little Perce up his jacket sleeve before pursuing her.

‘Joe, what are you doing here?’ she demanded as he caught up with her.

‘I promised Mirabelle I’d see you safe,’ he panted, thinking maybe he should take up Merv’s invitation to start working out with him at the Hoplite Health Club.

‘Now look, Joe,’ she said, beginning to sound angry, ‘I can look after myself …’

‘You can, maybe,’ he interrupted. ‘What about me? You want I should be more afraid of you than of Mirabelle?’

She shook her head, laughing.

‘Joe, sometimes you’re so down to earth, I can’t see how you can bear to keep on playing this PI game. You must be able to see you’re not cut out for it. Most of the time you make no money, so all you’re doing being so-called self-employed is stopping your entitlement to benefit.’

‘You think I’d be better sitting on my butt, waiting for my giro?’ he said fiercely.

‘Could be. In any case, things are getting better, or so they keep telling us. There’ll be jobs to go for …’

‘You taken a good look at me lately, girl? Jobs will come slow and I’ll be way, way down the queue. Also, what do I want with another job so I can punch a clock for a few more years always wondering when it’ll punch back and tell me I’m surplus to requirements again? Leastways, being my own boss, my so-called friends can tell me I’m useless, but they can’t dump me for it!’

They strode on, each so deep in a confusion of feeling that they could probably have run a whole gauntlet of flashers without noticing. When they reached the buildings, Joe stopped and said, ‘I’ll be on my way now.’

‘You still here, Joe?’ she said with a good affectation of surprise. ‘Well, thanks for the lift.’

‘Yeah, well, that’s OK,’ said Joe, feeling both wretched and indignant. He turned to go but had only taken a few steps when she caught his arm.

‘Hey, don’t I get a farewell kiss?’

He aimed at her cheek. She gave him her lips, briefly but fully.

As she stepped away she said, ‘Friends don’t think you’re useless, Joe. They just worry about you. That’s what friends are for. You fall out, then you kiss and make up.’

‘Don’t think I’m quite made up yet,’ he said, moving towards her again.

She turned away, laughing.

‘Only way to get another kiss here is have a heart attack, Joe,’ she tossed over her shoulder.

Could be that’s what I’m doing, thought Joe, watching her go. The way her body moved beneath the blue and white skirt, sturdy was no longer the word that came to mind.

He wandered back beneath the arching trees, letting his fancy drift at will. No harm in thinking, was there? But he was no sadist, so why was his fancy making Beryl scream as he unbuttoned her uniform?

Suddenly he was out of his imagined embrace and back in the real black autumn night with a chill wind rustling the dead leaves at his feet and somewhere to the left of him where the darkness was deepest the tail end of a long scream fading away into the night.

‘Oh shoot!’ said Joe.

Then he was off running, he had no idea where. He just hoped that the sound of his approach might scare any attacker off. Ahead loomed a clump of trees, blacker lines against the blackness. He swerved to skirt them, then one of the black lines moved and hit him so hard in the stomach he collapsed on the grass retching.

A moment later he was dragged to his feet by his collar and a torch beam shone in his face.

‘Gotcha!’ said a voice. ‘Hey, don’t I know you?’

There was something familiar about the voice … an accent … and in the light spilling back from his own face to his captor’s he made out just enough to trigger his memory.

‘You’re Forton’s mate,’ he croaked. ‘Sandy … last night … St Monkey’s … Joe Sixsmith …’

‘That’s right. Deano warned me about you but he didn’t say you were into this!’

‘Into what?’ gasped Joe. ‘I’ve just been up to the hospital … one of the nurses …’

He made the mistake of gesturing with his arm in the direction of the hospital. There was a dull thud as Little Perce shot out of his sleeve and hit the ground.

‘And what’s this? A prescription?’ demanded the constable, scooping it up. ‘Sixsmith, you’re nicked!’

7 (#ulink_7cd65325-d303-5961-9d5a-55362b14bc16)

In The Lost Traveller’s Guide, a page and a half of Luton’s ten-page entry is deservedly set aside for the Central Police Station. Designed by the same hand that conjured up St Monkey’s, it is as much a monument to secular law as the church is to divine. No citizen can pass by that imposing façade without feeling the safer for it. No criminal can pass beneath that blue-lamped portico without feeling the sorrier for it.

Lutonians are proud of their police station, but it must be admitted it wouldn’t have survived the bulldozing sixties if some foresighted councillor hadn’t got it registered as a listed building. From time to time plans are still put forward to build a glass and concrete blockhouse on a few acres of green belt and turn the old building into a heritage centre or DIY supermarket or something. But the City Fathers, aware that cold, draughty and damp conditions produce a certain desirable cast of mind in crooks and cops alike, wisely refuse to be moved.

Joe Sixsmith, as a good citizen, approved their wisdom. Seated in a barred-windowed, cracked-panelled, flaking-painted, musty-smelling interview room which not even the presence of a piece of hi-tech recording equipment could drag out of the Middle Ages, he felt ready to confess to anything.

What PC Sandy Mackay wanted him to confess to was being the Infirmary flasher. Joe was the young man’s first significant collar and he was reluctant to let him go without a result. In this he was actively encouraged by Detective Sergeant Chivers who, though less deeply persuaded of Joe’s guilt in this particular instance, had a somewhat démodé belief that all things evened themselves out before the Great Chief Constable in the sky, and low lifes like Joe got away with so much that sending them down for anything was a kind of wild justice.