Somebody was breathing close by, hoarse and ragged. I woke up in a sweating panic, thinking it was S – closing in, only to find it was me. A streetlight’s slanting beam made a moon map of the ceiling. Had I cried out? My throat felt as if I had.
I rolled off the bed, tangled in the blanket, stricken with fear that I had slept too long. My hair was damp and sticky. Perhaps the dye had run and I was the same chestnut shade as Mr Patundi. Now the local yobs would jeer and spit at me in the street, telling me to bugger off back to Bongo-Bongo Land.
The same endless, circular dream as before. Dr Morduch and the narrow needle bearing down, the shrill sliding pain, piercing to the marrow. Then the dream shifted, as dreams do, to Susan standing with Dr Morduch in the corridor, his lean figure stooping over her, his large bony hands sharply outlined in the pockets of his white coat. Dr Morduch was speaking gravely to her about my ‘condition’. I could see every line of his long austere face, the pouchy eyes, the waxy pallor; and yet Susan’s face remained stubbornly blank, like a blurred splodge of white on a faultily developed photograph. I tried my hardest to remember her face, and always at that point the blankness swirled in, dense as moorland mist, obscuring my vision.
Somewhere in that mist S – was lurking (as always) up to his usual gleeful tricks and stratagems. I knew he was there in my dream, lurking, waiting, because I could hear his hoarse breathing and his stifled giggles.
Just as he had giggled when he told me how he had committed the Perfect Murder.
I pulled on my overcoat and buttoned it to the neck, slipped the spectacle frames into my pocket. With my hat on Mr Patundi would never know of the miraculous youthful transformation that had taken place since we drank tea together.
The solid block of money was still oddly comforting despite its worthlessness. Dare I risk spending it? All of a sudden it seemed ridiculous that I couldn’t or shouldn’t. I got the sudden, uncontrollable urge for fish and chips. Vinegar soaking into newsprint. The sharp tang of salt on my tongue. Batter crunching between my teeth …
I went down the stairs, the fish sizzling in my ears. Mr Patundi showed me the time on his fat Rolex, studded with buttons. It was 7.45. I went out through the shop and walked quickly past the tattoo parlour with my collar turned up. It was in darkness. The fat boy Wayne’s night off: sticking the needle into a junkie’s arse in a public lavatory somewhere.
It was bright and cold under the sodium-yellow glare of the streetlights now that the mist had cleared, and I walked briskly down the hill to the Town Hall.
The entrance was lit up. Inside, behind the swing doors, small groups mingled amongst marble busts on stone pedestals. A man with white hair, cut short and square so that it stuck up like porcupine quills, passed importantly from group to group, wearing his mayor’s chain of office over his dark business suit, a large medallion dangling down onto his sloping beer-belly like a golden dinner plate propped on a shelf.
Before crossing the street I altered my appearance, squashed the hat in my pocket, smoothed back my hair and straightened my collar. I felt awkward in the empty spectacle frames but kept them on all the same.
A small mob shuffled outside between the stone columns. Placards were being waved – mainly by women in woven skirts and flat shoes, not wearing make-up. There were a few young men, pale, lank-haired, eyes glittering with zealotry. Some of the women had babies strapped to them. One of these scrutinised me closely as I came up the steps.
‘He’s not a councillor,’ she said dismissively, turning her woolly cap away.
‘Come and join us,’ another woman sang. ‘Join S.O.C. and protect our future.’ She waved a placard in my face: Save Our Children.
‘Are you a journalist?’ A young man thrust his neck out, Adam’s apple bobbing, unsure whether to be deferential or belligerent.
Someone started to sing ‘We shall overcome’ and a few strained voices took it up. I was jostled to one side as the crowd pushed forward into the entrance hall. Chaddie, the doorkeeper, halted the invasion, stemming it with two thin raised palms as if holding back a dam-burst. ‘You’re blocking the doorway. Please move aside. Fire regulations stipulate we must allow free access at all times. Thank you. Thank-yewww-very-much.’
His gaze swept over me without recognition. The mob fell back and became a polite English crowd, muttering and indignant, protesting by the rules. The revolution wasn’t about to start in Brickton; or anywhere else, probably.
The confusion helped, got me inside the entrance hall without Chaddie or anyone else noticing. A few stragglers were drifting off to committee rooms. At the bottom of a wide curved staircase with lions, coats of arms and fleur-de-lis incorporated in the wrought ironwork, varnished wooden signposts shaped to resemble pointing fingers indicated the way. Committee room E14 was down a corridor to the left. Gloomy portraits in gilt frames of elderly men in magenta robes gazing stoically into the middle distance were arranged on flock wallpaper. A motto in gold-leaf proclaimed, ‘Industry without Art is Brutality.’
Here you might believe that you were back in the days when things were made and sold in the town, when fishing fleets set sail and people walked in the streets without the glazed vacuous look of shell-shock victims. When the Job Centre was known as the Labour Exchange and there were actually jobs on offer.
The committee room doors began to close as the hour struck.
Inside E14 the Rec. & Ents. Sub-Com, was already assembled at a long baize-covered table set with blotters, sharpened pencils and jugs of dead water with listless bubbles. They were mostly middle-aged and elderly men, one of the only two women present clutching a shorthand pad to her chest. At this end of the room, separated from the main table by a respectable width of polished parquet floor, were two rows of hard upright chairs, with two people sitting some distance apart in the front row. Edging in, I sat behind one of them, a man with a bald head balancing a pad on his shiny knee, threads trailing from his trouser bottoms.
Somebody rapped a gavel and a voice intoned lugubriously, ‘I bring this meeting of the Recreation and Entertainments Sub-Committee to order. Do we take the minutes as read?’
‘Aye, Mr Chairman.’
‘Objections?’
No one stirred.
‘Let the record show no objections.’
Somebody coughed. There was a shuffling of papers.
‘Has everyone received a copy of the agenda, Mr Deputy Town Clerk?’
‘Yes, Mr Chairman.’
‘And the Press?’
Two rows of heads turned to look down the long baize-covered table, and I hunched forward as if scribbling.
‘Yes, Mr Chairman.’
‘Thank you, Mr Deputy Town Clerk. I refer you to item one of the agenda: “Funding and development of Brickton Harbour and adjacent facilities as a marine leisure environment, to include maritime museum, visitors’ centre and yacht moorage.” You will note that appendix 1:1, herewith attached, contains a cost breakdown compiled by the borough treasurer’s department, as requested by this subcommittee. I hope you’ve all had sufficient time to peruse and digest the figures – yes, Councillor Holroyd?’
‘I never can read these damn things. How much do we have to fork out, the borough that is? Which figure is it?’
‘Bottom right-hand corner,’ said a new voice. ‘Underlined in red.’
The chairman said, ‘Thank you, Councillor Benson. As you will note, gentlemen, this amount is but a fraction of the total cost. The EC contribution, I think I’m right in saying, is twenty-two million as against …’
It was curious. I think I knew what I was supposed to feel but nothing happened. Benson looked too much as I had pictured he would: secure, prosperous, overweight, complacent. He was leaning forward, hands clasped, elbows on the table. He wore a dark-blue pin-stripe suit, expensively cut, and a silk tie with a fat Windsor knot. In profile he was heavily handsome, with an elegant bow wave of silver-grey hair that curved back over his ears and grew thick on his neck. When you looked closer you saw that his face was flaccid and open-pored, the kind of face formed by over-indulgence, and which expects, as of immutable divine right, to be indulged.
I watched him, only half-listening as such phrases as ‘fiscal benefits’ and ‘resource management structure’ and ‘EC grant-aid’ eddied to and fro. The man who couldn’t read figures looked bored to distraction. The man in front of me, behind whom I was sheltering – bald head fringed in grey hair, leather patches on the elbows of his crumpled corduroy jacket – seemed to be furiously writing it all down, even the coughs and grunts. To his left, slumped down with his chin on his chest, arms folded, sat a sharp-featured dark-haired young man in a grimy creased raincoat, staring with brooding, unimpressed eyes at the proceedings. I wondered if it was an occupational necessity for all reporters on local papers to dress so shabbily. Were they underpaid or had they all seen the same movie?
The chairman was saying, ‘Come, come, let’s not quibble over details. We want to present a united front to the gentlemen of the Press. Ha-ha.’ He forced a laugh and clamped a curly briar pipe between large yellow teeth.
‘I couldn’t agree more, but this is far from being a mere detail.’ An elderly man with a hearing-aid was staring at Benson with sharp, watery eyes. ‘I simply would like Neville to tell me if—’
‘Who?’ the chairman interrupted brusquely.
The elderly man tried again. ‘Can Councillor Benson give me a categorical assurance on this point? A simple yes or no will do.’
‘The point being … ?’ the chairman said.
‘Does he expect his company to receive the bulk of the development grant or not?’ the elderly man with the hearing-aid said, his thin voice rising almost to a squeak. ‘Isn’t there a conflict of interest here, in that—’
It seemed he was always being interrupted. This time by Benson, raising a fleshy hand with a diamond ring trapped in the folds of his little finger. ‘I can assure you, Donald – Councillor Potter – that every procedure has been followed scrupulously to the letter. There is absolutely no question of a conflict of interest.’
‘No?’ Councillor Potter said, blinking his watery eyes. ‘How do you explain that, when your company has already taken an option on the proposed site?’
‘Gentlemen, gentlemen …’
Benson glanced down the table to where we were sitting. No doubt all he saw were three shabby and rather bored journalists, because his gaze didn’t linger. He said shortly, ‘Let’s discuss it afterwards, Donald. This isn’t for the public record.’
‘What?’ Councillor Potter cupped his ear. ‘Why not?’
‘Not at this moment in time. It wouldn’t be – ethical.’
‘What wouldn’t?’
‘Listen – Donald,’ Benson said grimly and heavily. ‘Will you take my word? I don’t want to repeat myself. There is no problem, believe me.’
Councillor Potter said stolidly, ‘I’d like it in writing. I’d like to see if for myself, if you don’t mind. Oh, and another thing—’
‘Come now, do we really have to go on with this?’ The chairman rattled the agenda, puffing smoke vigorously.
‘Are you ruling on this?’ Councillor Potter challenged him. ‘Because if so I want it minuted. You’re such a bloody stickler for procedure …’
The chairman waved his pipe irritably. ‘Oh, get on with it then. Make your point.’
Benson breathed audibly through his nose and swivelled his wrist to check the time.
‘I don’t have a point to make,’ Councillor Potter said. ‘I have a question. I can ask questions, can’t I?’ He was nearer seventy than sixty but his tenacity was that of a young bull-terrier. They had him cast as a deaf old fool, except he refused to play the part.
‘Yes, yes.’ The chairman sighed, leaning back wearily.
‘Ask it,’ Benson said between his teeth, ‘and let’s get on.’ He took a cigarette from a gold case, flicked a gold lighter, inhaled hungrily.
‘What’s this five thousand pounds?’
‘What—? Where?’ asked Councillor Holroyd, the man all at sea with figures.
Benson said calmly and very reasonably, ‘We’re about to receive a grant-aid package of twenty-two million sterling, Donald, and you’re bleating on about five thousand pounds. For God’s sake, where’s your sense of proportion?’
‘Five thousand pounds is still a large proportion to me. I started work on the boats at thirty-five shillings a week—’
‘We know,’ Benson muttered tiredly, ‘and beer was tuppence a gallon.’
Someone said, ‘No call for sarcasm, Neville. Councillor Potter has a point.’
‘I wish he’d bloody get to it then,’ Benson said, flicking ash. ‘Do we want the new marine development or don’t we? This town is crying out for enterprise and initiative, and when it’s there, in front of you, on a plate, all you can do is prattle on about petty cash. Fine. All right. Let’s tear up the plans, refuse the grant, sink back into the mire. Let’s see how you like that.’ His face was turning a mottled red.
‘Now, now.’ The chairman frowned a warning at him, nodding towards the gentlemen of the Press.
‘You haven’t answered my question,’ the old man said, the bull-terrier with the trouser leg between his teeth. ‘Does it or does it not say “Consultancy Fee”? Payable to whom?’
‘He’s right,’ said Councillor Holroyd brightly. ‘It does, yes. I’ve found it. Look—’
Benson was doing his best to stay calm, but it violated his nature. He wasn’t used to having his actions balked or brought into question, least of all by doddering old fools.
The reporter in front of me was leaning forward, rapt, pad on his knee, ballpoint poised. From the corner of his eye Benson saw this and his jaw tightened. The doddering old fool and his bloody ferreting: you could almost see his mind working, seeking the best strategy for damage limitation.
He said formally, ‘Mr Chairman, I move that we adjourn this meeting and reconvene at another time. I’d like to ask for a ruling.’
‘It will have to be put to the vote,’ the chairman said, and looked towards the deputy town clerk, who nodded, the globed lights flashing on his steel spectacles.
Councillor Holroyd inquired vaguely of no one in particular, ‘Who was it paid to, this money? Where does it say?’
I pressed my elbow against my side to assure myself it was still there, safe and solid in my inside pocket. I had to smile. The money Benson was in trouble over hadn’t even reached the person he was paying off. He said angrily, ‘Are we taking a vote or aren’t we?’
‘I don’t see why,’ one of the others said. ‘Can’t we resolve this here and now? Surely, Neville—’
‘This ought to be discussed in closed session, not in front of the Press.’ Benson brutally stubbed out his cigarette in the glass ashtray. ‘I’d like a ruling, Mr Chairman. Now.’
He was angry all right, but not simply about the money; there was something else. There were other secrets Benson was anxious to keep hidden – whoever had taken the money had taken the notebooks and micro-cassette tapes too. Evidence that would implicate him in – what? I still wasn’t sure. Some sleazy scheme or other. I began to sense his vulnerability. And I hadn’t even started on his wife and daughter yet.
‘MONEY!’ screamed the pale young man in the front row, lurching suddenly to his feet. ‘That’s all you fuckers understand!’
There was a moment of total, shocked silence. Nobody moved.
‘Money!’ he screamed again, flecks of white spittle on his lips. I thought he must be drunk or drugged, but then his voice became low and flat, without a tremor, as he went on: ‘Keep in profit and to hell with the next generation. Closing down the Station, that’s what you should be debating. Not bloody council funds and whether somebody’s embezzled a few thousand measly quid from the tea money.’
The chairman hammered for silence. ‘This is not a public meeting. Be quiet or I’ll have the committee chamber cleared!’
‘Here’s something to print in your paper.’ The young man jabbed his finger at the reporter, who far from brightening at the prospect of a juicy headline was looking lost and bewildered. ‘Leukemia rates in this area among children are ten times the national average. But these people don’t give a shit. The Station lines their pockets and they’re happy to sit tight and do nothing and let our environment be polluted and see our children die. But you won’t print that in your rag of a paper, will you? Will you?’
Benson was on his feet, looking murderous. Then I saw that his attention wasn’t on the young man at all. It was on me. Other people were standing. The chairman was banging his gavel. I saw a cloudy expression in Benson’s eyes, as if he was trying to remember where he might have seen me before. Or perhaps I was too close a fit to the description Mrs Crompton and his daughter had given of the man who wandered into B-H Haulage seeking work. I must have been mad to think spectacle frames and cheap hair dye would be an effective disguise.
He came striding towards me, pushing some of his colleagues aside. He stopped in front of the row of chairs and squinted hard at me. ‘You. Who are you?’ he asked suspiciously. ‘You’re not a reporter.’
I stood up.
‘Not been looking for a job round here, by any chance, have we?’
I shook my head.
‘And being light-fingered into the bargain,’ he added very softly, almost mouthing it, so that no one else heard.
I shook my head again.
It was at that moment the pale young man tried to grab at him and Benson thrust him away with the flat of his hand. Somebody said loudly, ‘This is disgraceful, completely out of order …’
I moved between the rows of chairs towards the door. Benson said over his shoulder, ‘Somebody call the police. And stop these two getting out.’ Then to me, growling it deep in his throat, ‘Just who the bloodyhell are you?’ He came forward, reaching out, his ring flashing, and I swayed back to evade him.
The pale young man was involved in a struggle with the deputy town clerk. He was panting and squirming. ‘It’s you who should be locked up – you’re criminals, the lot of you, profiting from misery. But you won’t print that, will you?’ he shouted at the balding, timid reporter. ‘You print what they tell you to print!’
A chair was knocked over and somebody went staggering. I was near the door and Benson was manoeuvring round to block my escape. He was overweight, and probably out of condition, but in a tussle I didn’t fancy my chances. If he got to me and handed me over to the police they would find the money and that would be the end.
‘Gentlemen, gentlemen—’ the chairman was crying forlornly.
Benson made a swift grab and I dodged. I felt the edge of the chair strike the backs of my knees and went over backwards in a heap. Benson sprang forward. His florid colour had broken up into mottled patches of tiny fractured blood-vessels. He reached out, baring his teeth, gave a gasp of triumph. There was some sort of commotion outside, and at once the double doors burst open and the protesters spilled in like a mob of unruly children at a posh tea party. There were chants of ‘Save our children.’ One of the women grabbed hold of Councillor Potter by his shiny lapels and shook him. A young man with dreadlocks was backing Councillor Holroyd against the wall.
I felt myself being hoisted up. Through the bodies I glimpsed Benson’s glossy sweep of hair between a woolly bobble-hat and a woman’s clenched fist. ‘Come on—’ the pale young man in the grimy raincoat was pulling me by the arm.
‘I’m not a protester,’ I said, as if it made any difference. ‘I’m not one of you.’
He laughed, a little hysterically. His eyes were bloodshot in the inner corners. There was a strain of manic fervour about him, held insecurely in check. Had his campaigning zeal brought this about, I wondered, or did you have to have that knife-edge personality to begin with to become a protester?
There was a crowd of people in the corridor, councillors from other sub-committees, the white-haired mayor, and fretful council officials. One of them tried to bar our way. ‘Just a minute. What’s going on in there? Who are you?’
The young man pushed through, head down. ‘Make way. Press.’
They didn’t seem convinced by this but hesitated just long enough for us to barge through. The marble-floored hallway was empty. We went down the steps into the street, spits of rain in the night air. Headlights came at us, and we dodged out of the way as a police Panda car stopped at the kerb. Three policemen got out and ran inside the building.
The young man yanked me roughly by the arm and we jogged along a darkened side street over pavements slick-wet and shining. I knew we were heading away from the centre of town, but I had no real idea of our direction. We turned a corner and it became darker still. The pavement gave out and I felt bare earth and cinders under my feet; then we were running alongside a high wire-mesh fence, our feet thudding dully, exhalations of breath wheezing from out mouths. I suddenly wondered why I was still running, and stopped.
‘Bit of luck – them coming in – like that.’ His words came out in hoarse bursts. I was panting but he sounded done in.
I caught my breath. ‘You don’t seem too bothered about your friends.’
He wheezed a laugh, which ended in a choking cough. ‘Why should I be? I don’t know them.’
‘But I thought—? Aren’t you one of them?’ I said.
‘You must be kidding.’ He cleared his throat and spat. He was a shapeless, crumpled blur in the darkness. There was sufficient light from somewhere to make his eyes gleam. ‘You don’t know what’s going on around here, do you?’
When I kept silent he said slyly, ‘Neville Benson doesn’t like you much, does he? What’ve you done – screwed his daughter?’
‘I’m old enough to be her father,’ I said fatuously.
‘So what?’
‘Do you know his daughter?’
‘Not in the Biblical sense. I wouldn’t mind doing though.’
This kind of talk was distasteful to me. It sounded more like male revenge on the female of the species than honest sexual desire.
The young man said suddenly, ‘We ought to team up, you and me. I’ve got nothing against Benson personally, apart from the fact that he’s a cheat, a liar, and a greasy capitalist shit. But it wouldn’t bother me in the slightest to see him get what he deserves.’
‘I never said I had anything against Benson.’
‘Then he’s got something against you.’
‘You’re guessing.’
‘It’s a pretty good guess, otherwise you wouldn’t get so worked up about it.’ He took my arm and I pulled free, irritated, not liking to be handled. ‘Through here,’ he said.
There was a gap, I now saw, where the fence had been partly torn down. So we hadn’t been running arbitrarily in the darkness after all. The young man knew where he was heading. He was leading me somewhere. I said, ‘What is it? What’s there?’
‘The harbour.’
‘I don’t want to see the harbour.’
‘You won’t see it anyway in the dark.’
‘There’s no point then.’
‘Come on, I want to show you something …’
I could feel flecks of rain cold on my face as we turned into the wind. Underfoot the harsh cinders became sludge, sucking at my boots like tiny glutinous mouths. If he was going to kill and rob me there was no better time or place. Dimly I saw the sheer rusted sides of old abandoned ships wedged fast in the mud, their funnels leaning over in weary attitudes. Any minute now, I thought, my shoulders tensing, getting ready for the blow. I was nearly up to my ankles in mud. If I’d tried to run I couldn’t. I said, ‘That’s enough. I’m going back.’
‘Not now,’ he hissed. He was bending, searching for something – probably to hit me with. I wouldn’t see him strike, just a blinding flash of light, and then the pit, the abyss, nothing. I would be at peace at last. It occurred to me that that was what I really wanted.
‘Hold this.’ I felt a ribbed metal casing and a button. ‘Point it down there. Shield the light.’ I held out my overcoat like the flap of a tent and switched on the torchbeam. It illuminated a circle of grey mud with black viscous bubbles rising to the surface. As they exploded like soft farts they released the sweet stench of decay. He was probing deep down with a broken spar, its raw end coated with clinging mud, like a witch stirring a cauldron. He struck something, and heaved. The spar had pierced a sack. As the mud drained away the sack was revealed in the beam as the torso of a man, his back criss-crossed with puffy white lacerations: a bloated meaningless scrawl that might have been an attempt at a design the artist grew tired of and gave up, or the work of a sadist.
The body sank back and gurgled as the bubbling surface closed over it, popping like liquid glugging from a bottle.
The young man threw the spar away. I switched off the torch.
My forehead was cold and wet with the night air and the drizzle and my own sweat. ‘Who is it?’
‘Benson’s partner. Ex-partner. Benson was screwing his wife and he found out about it.’
‘So Benson had him killed – for that?’
‘That amongst other things.’
‘And his body dumped here?’
The young man laughed wheezily. He said, ‘There was a cock-up. He should have ended up in the Irish Sea but the outflow pipe from the baths got fouled up. The tide brought him back.’
In Benson’s business diary there had been several references to ‘baths schedule.’ I’d assumed they had something or other to do with his function on the council sub-committee. Now it appeared that Benson was diving into even murkier depths, which included the murder of troublesome and unnecessary people, and the local swimming baths a convenient disposal point. And it occurred to me, too, that this was how he had driven Susan to the desperate extremity of taking her own life; after his ‘fling’ with her he had taken a fancy to the wife of his partner, moved swiftly on his philandering way, and dumped Susan just as he had dumped this body in the black harbour mud. Now that I had seen him in the mottled, sleekly gross flesh, with his wavy grey hair and diamond ring and overbearing arrogance, it was all too easy to fit the man to his crimes, to understand how he barged through life, as he might shoulder his way to the head of a queue, selecting, consuming, discarding at will, on a whim.
In the darkness the young man’s hoarse voice said, ‘That’s what he does to people who get in his way. So I’d be careful if I were you.’
Most people would have instinctively shied away from him. At any moment, you felt, he might slip, slide and plunge into wild desperate mayhem. But he seemed to be the only person who knew certain things about this place and was willing to divulge them, and so I followed as he led the way round the harbour, skirting the basin of mud until we came to a wharf that had come to resemble a graveyard. On one of the jutting stone jetties a solitary lamp illuminated a wasteland of broken ships embedded in the mud at topsy-turvy angles, entire hulls, stripped of their superstructures, littered about like empty rusting coffins.
In answer to my question he told me his name was Trafford. I halted and said, ‘No more bodies. I don’t have the stomach for it,’ and he laughed – or rather made a thin, rasping sound as if emptying his lungs of air.
We traipsed on past hulks and fragments of ships and arrived at the shadowy bulk of something about the size of a trawler with an iron ladder clamped to its side. Trafford climbed up with raincoat flapping and dropped down out of sight. I went after him, swung myself over, and saw him duck through a slanting doorway. Holding onto the walls to stop myself sliding across the deck, I followed him inside.
He had made his home in this tilting world, I saw, as he lit the stub of a candle in a jam-jar.
There were open tins of food with spoons stuck in them, split packets of biscuits, a carton of milk torn to make a pouring funnel, a general litter heaped in a corner of margarine tubs, flattened soft drink cans, plastic bottles, greasy wrappers, decaying fruit cores. In the crevice formed by the steep angle of wall and floor he had wedged blankets and clothing to make a bed. Possibly this had been the crew’s quarters or messroom, though it was hard to be sure because everything not of the iron fabric of the ship had been unscrewed, torn out, scavenged.
From here he must have seen everything that went on in the harbour, which explained how he had known about the body. And a good deal more besides.
Trafford propped himself in the corner, legs drawn up, and munched biscuits from the packet. I then noticed, under the long straggling hair, patches of greyish white; tufts of hair and flakes of skin lay thickly on his collar. There was a raw, dank atmosphere in the cabin, but even so his forehead was streaming with sweat. In the enclosed space I could smell the putrefaction that hovered around him like a deathly cloud.
‘Have you figured it out yet?’
‘What?’
‘You must have done. Isn’t that why you went to the council meeting?’ He broke the biscuits in two and crammed them into his mouth.
‘You tell me,’ I said.
‘They’ve made a deal with the Station – all their hot water for nothing. It’s piped straight in, free of charge. The town’s a dump, haven’t you noticed?’
Brickton was a dump all right, but perhaps that wasn’t what he meant.
‘I know,’ Trafford said, ‘because I used to work there.’ He coughed, spitting out biscuit fragments, and wiped away something bloody on the back of his hand.
‘You worked … where?’
‘At the Station. Structural maintenance, F Section. How do you think I got a dose of 742 millisieverts and a white corpuscle count an HIV Positive wouldn’t swap? Your msv is probably sky-high by now, it’s inevitable. Have you seen the kids round here? Most of them look as if they’ve got a fever, grey shiny skin, hot eyes, losing their hair. It’s something to do with the bone marrow not producing enough white blood cells.’ He crunched some more biscuits and poured milk into his mouth, swallowing the lumpy mess.
‘Why would they deliberately contaminate their own children?’ I crouched down on the sloping floor, though not too near him: he was corroding before my eyes. ‘I can’t believe that. The councillors live here, they can’t possibly know what’s happening. If they knew, they wouldn’t allow it to happen.’
‘They’ll know when they start dying,’ Trafford said.
‘They’ve got families too!’ I protested.
‘Each man kills the thing he loves.’
I had no answer to that.
‘They know all right,’ Trafford went on, ‘only they won’t admit it, even to themselves. People are like that. Listen, I worked at the Station, I knew the risks, I saw the signs, but you close your mind to such things. We all do it. Even now I pretend I’m not dying.’
‘The water in the public baths – it comes directly from the Station?’ I wanted to be sure I understood.
‘Sure! They’ve got a pool brimming with it, hot and rich.’ He laughed weakly. ‘They don’t use it much though, not often, it’s too lethal. Too many warm bodies floating out to sea.’
‘This is mad,’ I said. I didn’t think so, but it seemed the only response that made sense. Better than anyone I knew the monstrous deceptions human beings were capable of; I was the arch practitioner.
‘Yes it is,’ Trafford agreed. ‘Completely, ‘seeming, just for the moment, very calm and rational. ‘Until you look at the balance sheet. Someone’s making a packet out of it – probably your mate Benson. He dumps the sludge into the harbour, so very likely he’s wangled the hot water deal as well.’
‘Just to make money?’
‘What do you mean, “just”? What other reason is there?’
‘Do you know somebody called Russell Rhodes?’
The bloodshot eyes roamed vaguely to and fro, went up to the ceiling, or bulkhead, since this was a boat. I thought he was pondering this, struggling to remember, but then he said flatly, ‘Yes, I know good old Russell. He’s my ex-boss.’
‘What is he?’
‘PL manager at the Station.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Processing Line Manager.’
‘Is he involved?’
He wearily closed his eyes, as if the effort of keeping them open was too much. ‘They’re all involved, the pack of them. Russell, Benson, the council by turning a blind eye, the local press for not asking questions, Benson’s ex-partner’s wife …’
‘The wife of the man who was killed?’
He nodded, still with his eyes shut, and went on listlessly, ‘She’s a grade-A bitch, ribbon and bar. It was her and Benson who got rid of hubby. The deal was too big for him, too scary – or maybe he even had a twinge of conscience about it. The pair of them drove him to a nervous breakdown, poor sod, but it wasn’t enough, so they had him dumped in this dump.’
I felt a sudden shudder, as if someone had walked over my grave. The idea of a wife plotting with another man to murder her husband shot a chill right through me.
‘What about Benson’s wife? She must have been in on all this.’
‘He hasn’t got a wife.’
I was stunned. ‘I thought he was married.’
‘Not any more. She’s been dead five years. Cancer. He’s shacked up with the grade-A bitch of the first water. Has been for over a year. They’re a good match.’
Trafford opened his eyes blearily, slumped in the corner. His energy seemed to come in bursts, and just as quickly to dissipate. I said, ‘Tell me something, this is what I don’t understand: how do they hope to make a profit? The council saves money but no one individual stands to gain. It’s being done for the benefit of the community.’
‘You tell me something. Where does the money go?’ When I looked puzzled he went on, ‘The money they save – where does it go?’
‘It doesn’t go anywhere.’
‘Doesn’t it? It has to be spent.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘On what?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I do,’ Trafford said. He jabbed his scaly finger at the slanting doorway, as if pointing to a picture in a lopsided frame. I frowned at him, shaking my head. ‘The marina,’ Trafford said, as if to a mental defective. ‘That’s what they’re planning to build out there.’
‘But it’s a radioactive sewer …’
‘Don’t tell the EEC that, they’re forking out twenty-two million quid to help build it. Your mate Benson has his sticky fingers in that too. You’ve seen the sign, haven’t you? “Benson Developments (Holdings) Plc?” You’ve got to admire him. He’s the shining entrepreneurial spirit of the age. The man’s a fucking financial genius. Probably get a knighthood for it. They ought to make him chancellor.’
The Brickton Marina and Yacht Club. Sleek white yachts with cutting prows and three-tier cabin cruisers like hunks of wedding cake bobbing at anchor above a hotbed of radioactive sludge … I could see a floating population of the new leisured overclass – fast-food franchisers, mail-order tycoons, DIY magnates, video distributors, real estate speculators, satellite TV executives, scrap metal merchants and investment analysts – the whole sordid rag-bag – lying at ease on their expensive craft and, like Trafford, decaying from the inside, weeping patches showing through their artificial tans, hanks of hair missing from their coiffures, manicured fingernails flaking like bits of tissue paper from their gold-spangled hands.
Benson’s ‘shining spirit,’ I began to realise, represented the egalitarian ideal: his kind were not in the least class conscious, were prepared to exploit the rich as well as the poor, maintained no loyalties to breeding or tradition, had no misplaced sense of deference to their ‘betters’. They would steal off anyone and everyone without a twinge of conscience, feel not the slightest tug of guilt provided the deal could show a healthy profit margin after tax avoidance.
Trafford was guzzling milk. It occurred to me that he might be increasing his becquerel count even as he did so. But then that applied to us all – even the brown rice and organic vegetable brigade.
‘I don’t know what your grouse is,’ he said, wiping his mouth, ‘but it’s too late to do anything. The bastards have taken over. We’re pissing into the wind.’ He held up his hand, clawlike, the ligatures showing though like the transparent anatomical models medical students use. ‘They’ll kill us all in the end. Consume their own young.’
‘Better let ‘em get on with it,’ I said.
‘That’s the spirit.’
‘But not before I deal with Benson,’ I said.
‘Won’t do any good.’
‘It’ll do me some good.’
‘They’ll still win.’
I shrugged. ‘Is there anything I can do for you?
‘Stay out of that little fat swine’s way – him with the brown grin and the dagger on his arm. They breed very nasty these days. It’s the climate. Don’t end up bare-arsed in the mud with a purple number tattooed on your foreskin. In fact,’ Trafford said, ‘if you get half a chance, finish the bugger off before he does for you.’
‘He won’t kill me,’ I said uncertainly. I went on, making my voice confident, ‘I’ve got something his boss needs. It could land them all in – hot water.’
Trafford laughed his empty, gasping laugh. He farted softly at the same time, an equal and opposite reaction. ‘I had a beautiful idea,’ he said, ‘but it didn’t come off. I was going to do a Chernobyl on them, make a volcano and boil the sea. That would have upset their plans for half-a-million years. Underwrite my own what you might call long-term investment in the future. I started tampering with the fuel rods and gave myself, stupid bugger, a dose instead. They drummed me out. That’s when I went to the council meeting. I knew it wouldn’t do any good, and it didn’t. That’s the trouble with the layman: he’s taken in by a man with a moustache and pipe and smart suit sitting behind a clean desk with two telephones. Clever bastards, you know. Squeaky-clean PR. They could prove you’re a single-parent Mongolian lesbian and you’d believe them.’ He scraped some white mucus from the corner of his mouth and said without rancour:
‘They always win, it’s written in the rules, because if nothing goes wrong they’re proved right, and if something does go wrong there’ll be nobody around to point the finger, just a glowing core and a blank space on the map.’
I said, ‘Perhaps that’s the best thing’ – smiling at him – ‘that could happen to Brickton.’
‘My sentiments entirely,’ said Trafford, coughing blood.