The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 9 Part 4

I really didn't want to talk about it, but I didn't want to offend Young Clem, especially not after Mam told me he'd called round nearly every day to ask after me when I was ill.

"That's right," I said. "Hong Kong flu."

"Aye, it can be right nasty that. My Auntie Mary had it, just about sent her doolally, thought she were the Queen Mother for a bit, we have a grand laugh with her about that now she's right again. Owt like that happen to you, Tommy?"

"Just some bad dreams," I said.

"But you're all right now?"

"Yes, thank you."

"Grand!" he said, stubbing out his cigarette on Rocky's knee. "Everyone has bad dreams. Thing is not to let them bother you when you wake up. See you around, Tommy."

"Yes, Clem, see you around."

Father Stamp's disappearance was old news now. It seemed one of the papers had dug up some stuff about him having trouble with his nerves when he was a curate down south, and his bishop moving him north for his health. So most folk reckoned he'd had what they called a nervous breakdown and he'd turn up some day. But he never did.

After a while St Cyprian's got a replacement. He was nowhere near as High as Father Stamp, he wanted everyone to call him Jimmy, and he had all kinds of newfangled ideas. Dad and him didn't get on, and pretty soon there was a big falling out that ended with us leaving Rose Cottage and going to live with Granny Longbottom in Murton till Dad got taken on at Rowntree's chocolate factory and we found a place right on the edge of York.

So Mam got her wish and I was brought up breathing good fresh air, and eating a lot of chocolate, and enjoying the sight and smell of trees and gra.s.s with never a gravestone in sight. In fact, after leaving St Cyprian's, Mam seemed to lose all interest in religion, and as I grew up I don't think I saw the inside of a church again, unless you count a visit to the Minster on a school trip. I'd only been inside a few minutes when I started to feel the whole place crowding in on me and I were glad to get out into the air. After that I didn't bother.

That was forty-odd years ago. I still live with my mam. Lot of folk think that's weird. Let them think. All I know is I never felt the need to get close to anyone else. I never went courting. I did try being naughty with a girl from time to time, and it were all right, I suppose, but I could never get really interested and I don't think they liked it that much, so in the end I stopped bothering.

Maybe I should have moved out. I know Dad thought I should. I brought it up one night after he'd gone out to the pub. Mam was sitting in front of the TV, busily knitting away as she always did. That click-click-clicking of the needles is such a familiar accompaniment that it sounds strange if ever I watch a programme without it! She smiled up at me when I broached the subject of moving out and said, "This is your home, son. You'll always be welcome here."

Next year, Dad got diagnosed with cancer. After that I think he was glad I was still around to help take some of the strain off Mam. She was the best nurse he could have asked for and she kept him at home far longer than many women would have done. But three years later he was dead, and since then the thought of leaving has never crossed my mind.

As for Father Stamp and St Cyprian's, they never got mentioned at home, not even while Dad were still living. Was that good or bad? There's a lot of folk say everything should be brought out in the open. Well, each to his own. I know what worked for me. That's not to say I never wondered how different my life might have been if the events of that October night hadn't occurred. We're all what our childhood makes us, the kid is father to the man, isn't that what they say?

Though I doubt if many people looking at a picture of me back then could see much connection between little Tommy Cresswell at eight and this fifty-year-old, a bit shabby, a bit broken down, unmarried, living at home with his widowed mam.

There is, though, maybe one traceable link between that kid in the graveyard and this middle-aged man.

I'm a postman.

How much that can be tracked back to David Oscar Winstanley and Rocky, the broken-nosed angel, I don't know. I certainly don't aspire to anything like his memorial, either in form or in words. In fact I've lowered my sights considerably from the fantasies of my boyhood. He looked after his mam, and bothered n.o.body would do me. I suppose I could rate as a loyal servant to the Post Office, if loyalty means doing your job efficiently. But if it entails devoting yourself wholeheartedly to your employer, then I don't qualify. I never had any ambition to rise up the career ladder. Delivering the mail's been enough for me.

Then the other day, my first on a new round, I knocked on a door to deliver a parcel, and when the door opened I found myself looking at Old Clem.

Except of course it was Young Clem forty-odd years on.

"b.u.g.g.e.r me," he said when I introduced myself. "Tommy Cresswell! Come on in and have a beer."

"More than my job's worth, Clem," I said. "But I'll have a cup of tea."

Sitting in his kitchen, he filled me in on his life. He'd worked most of his life for the Bradford Parks and Gardens Service (though they call it something fancier nowadays), he'd been a widower for five years, and he'd recently retired because of his health. No need for details here. Most of his sentences were punctuated with a racking cough which didn't stop him from getting through three or four f.a.gs as we talked.

"Me daughter and her two kiddies live here in York," he said. "She wanted me to move in with them but I knew that 'ud never do. But I wanted to be a bit handier so I got myself this place. How about you, Tommy? You married?"

"Who'd have me?" I said, making a joke out of it. Then I told him about Dad dying and me living with Mam. And all the time he was sort of studying me through a cloud of smoke in a way that made me feel uneasy. So in the end I looked at my watch and said I ought to be getting on before folk started wondering what had happened to their mail.

But as I started to rise from my chair, he reached over the table and grasped my wrist and said, "Afore you go, Tommy ..." here he broke off to cough "... or mebbe I mean, afore I go, there's something we need to talk ..."

I should just have left. I knew what he was going to tell me, and it had been a long time since Rocky was a barrier against the truth. But I stopped and listened and let him give form and flesh to what for so long I'd been desperate to pretend was nowt but an echo of one of my Hong Kong flu nightmares.

That night as usual I cleared up after supper and washed the dishes. Mam says it's no job for a man but she's been having a lot of trouble with her knees lately. There's been some talk of a replacement but she says she can't be bothered with that. So I do all I can to make life easy for her. Most nights after we've eaten, we sit together in front of the telly and I'll maybe watch a football match while she gets on with her knitting. Like I say, doesn't matter how noisy the crowd is at the game, if that click-click-clicking of her needles stops, I look round to see what she's doing.

Tonight when I came in from the kitchen with a mug of coffee for me and cup of tea for her, she was knitting as usual but I didn't switch the set on.

I said, "Met an old friend today, Mam. Remember Young Clem? Him and his dad used to dig the graves at St Cyprian's? Well, he's living in York now. So he can be close to his daughter and grandkids."

"Young Clem?" she said. "So he has grandchildren? That's nice. Grandchildren are nice."

"Aye," I said. "Sorry I never gave you any, Mam."

"Maybe you didn't, but I never lost you, Tommy, and that's just as important," she said, her needles clicking away. "So what was the crack with Young Clem then?"

She looked at me brightly. Sometimes these days she could be a bit vague about things; others, like now, she was as bright as a b.u.t.ton.

I sipped my coffee slowly while my mind tried to come to terms with what Young Clem had told me.

My problem had nothing to do with his powers of expression for he'd spoken in blunt Yorks.h.i.+re terms.

He'd said, "I'd taken this la.s.s into graveyard, for a bang, tha knows, and we'd just done when I saw this figure moving between the headstones. I nigh on s.h.i.+t meself till I made out it were your mam. She didn't spot me, but something about the look of her weren't right, so I told my la.s.s to shove off down the pub and I'd catch up with her there. Well, she weren't best pleased but I didn't wait to argue, I went after your mam, and I caught up with her by the church door. She jumped a mile when I spoke to her, then she asked if I'd seen you. Seems she'd been watching the telly and all of a sudden something made her get up and go upstairs. When she found you weren't in bed, she went out into the yard and saw the back gate into the graveyard standing open and she went through it to look for you.

"I could tell what a state she were in she'd nowt on her feet but a pair of fluffy slippers and she were still carrying her knitting with her so I tried to calm her down, saying that likely you were just larking about with some of your mates. But she'd spotted that the church door were ajar, and nowt would satisfy her but that we went inside to take a look.

"Well, we didn't get past the porch. There was a noise like someone sobbing and a bit of a light and it were coming up from the crypt. That was when I recalled what Dad had said to you when you asked where we put the naughty people. I'd told him he shouldn't joke about such things with you as you were only a lad, but I never thought you'd take it serious enough to do owt like this.

"I told your mam I'd go first as the steps were bad, and that's what I did, but she were right behind me and she saw clearly enough what I saw down below.

"That mucky b.a.s.t.a.r.d Stamp were all over you. He'd just about got you b.o.l.l.o.c.k naked. I knew straight off what were going on. I'd been there myself, except I was a couple of years older and a lot tougher and more streetwise than you. When he started his tricks on me, I belted him in the belly and I told him I were going to report him, and I would have done, only I weren't sure anyone would believe me. They'd already marked my card as a bit of a wild boy at school plus I'd been done for shoplifting by the cops. So I said nowt, but when they started talking about giving Dad the boot because of his back, I stood in front of Stamp and I let him know that the day Dad got his papers was the day he'd find himself in the papers. I'd been keeping an eye on him when I saw him getting interested in you, and I thought he'd got the message. But there's no changing them b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!

"Now I were on him in a flash. He must have thought G.o.d had hit him with a thunderbolt, and that were no more than he deserved. The pair of you went tumbling down the steps. His torch went flying but it were one of them rubber ones and it didn't break. He was lying on his back, not moving. You were just about out of it. Your mam gathered you up and it was only then I reckon that it fully hit her what the b.a.s.t.a.r.d had been at. She put you into my arms and told me to take you up the steps.

"I said, 'What about you missus?' but she didn't answer, so I set off back up to the porch with you in my arms. Do you not remember any of this, Tommy? Nay, I see you do."

And he was right. I was remembering it now when Mam brought me back to our living room by saying impatiently. "Come on, Tommy. Cat got your tongue? I asked what you and Young Clem found to talk about?"

"Oh, nothing much," I said. "I told him about Dad, and he told me that Old Clem had pa.s.sed on too, about ten years back, heart, it was. And we chatted about the old days at Cyprian's, that's all."

"Well, I'm sorry to hear about Old Clem, though he was a bit of a devil," said Mam. "Remember that time he had you looking everywhere for his rubber spade? I gave him a piece of my mind for that!"

A pity you hadn't been around to give him a piece of your mind when he told me about the crypt, I thought. Maybe life could have been very different for me. Maybe I'd be sitting by my own fireside now with my own family around me. I thought of Young Clem, moving house so he could be handier for his grandchildren. He was clearly made of stronger stuff than me. He dealt with the crises in life by looking them straight in the face and getting on with the life not the crisis. He certainly gave no indication he blamed Old Clem and his daft lie for what happened to me in the crypt. It was just another Yorks.h.i.+re joke, like sending a kid to look for a rubber spade!

Any road, the way it turned out, it wasn't strictly speaking a lie any more. Old Clem had told me that the crypt was where they put the naughty people. And the crypt of St Cyprian's was where Young Clem had buried Father Stamp's body.

It must have taken him a couple of hours or more to dig a grave in that hard-packed earth. I wonder how long the poor la.s.s he'd sent off to the pub waited for him? Maybe she'd forgiven him, maybe she was even the one who'd become his wife. I should have asked.

But the question that bothered me was, just how naughty had Father Stamp really been? That he had problems was clear. That he'd been foolish enough to grope Young Clem I didn't doubt.

But it wasn't his fault that I'd flung myself almost naked into his arms. And it had been me who'd been desperate to cling on to him, at least to start with. For all I know his intention was simply to carry me out of the crypt and take me home. However it had looked to Young Clem and my mam, there'd been no time for him to actually do anything.

No, it wasn't a memory of childhood s.e.xual abuse that had dictated the pattern of my life. It was quite another memory, one that I'd only been able to bear because I could pretend to myself that it might after all just be the product of a sick child's fevered imagination.

My half hour listening to Young Clem had removed that fragile barrier for ever.

I don't know how long Mam and me have before us living like this. Granny Longbottom lasted into her nineties so there could be a good few years yet.

There it is then. Night after night, month after month, year after year, I'm going to be sitting here in this room, still able to hear the click-click-clicking of her knitting no matter how loud the telly.

And every time I glance across at her to share a smile, I'm going to see her as I saw her from Clem's arms in the fitful light of the torch rolling around the crypt floor, I'm going to see her kneeling astride the rec.u.mbent body of Father Stamp with those same click-click-clicking needles raised high, one in either hand, before she drives them down with all the strength of a mother's love, a mother's hate, into his despairing, uncomprehending and vainly pleading eyes.

A BULLET FOR BAUSER.

Jay Stringer.

"IS THAT-?"

"Yes."

"For real?"

"Yes."

"Fuuuuuck."

"Uh huh."

Bauser looked at the cold steel in his hand. Funny, he thought it would be heavier. He'd always thought holding a gun would be like holding a cannon, a real sign that you had some f.u.c.king strength in you.

He'd held an air pistol once, at his best mate Dex's house after school. He'd shot Dex in the b.a.l.l.s and he'd walked with a limp for six months. Thing was, that air pistol was pretty much the same weight as this gun. It was a disappointment to say the least.

His little brother Marcus was staring at the gun as if it was the greatest thing he'd ever seen. Bauser had never heard Marcus swear before. He cuffed him round the ear proudly.

"Listen to you, swearing like Granny."

"I'm a man now, just like you."

Bauser laughed. Marcus was only a week past twelve years old. Which put him two weeks past the eighth anniversary of their daddy walking out. Stood there in second-hand pyjamas, a faded Power Ranger on the belly, and swearing with pride.

"Is that right? When you going to start working for a living, then?"

Marcus smiled and pulled a face. When he was younger, that had been the face he pulled if he didn't like the food he was given. Now it just made do for any time he wanted to be funny.

"Working's for looooosers." Marcus stretched it out in a high whine. "I aye never seen granny working, and she's always got money for magazines and s.h.i.+t."

"s.h.i.+t? You're really getting the hang of these words. You been watching my DVDs?"

Marcus rolled his eyes.

"Nah. I get the words from school, man. I only watch your DVDs if I want to see b.o.o.bies." He paused while his big brother gave him a high five. "But one thing? What's a c.l.i.t?"

Bauser blushed and looked at the floor. Then at the wall. Then at everything else in the room other than his brother.

"I, uh, I dunno."

"n.o.body ever seems to know." Marcus shook his head. Then his eyes fell to the gun again and his face lit up once more. "Why you got a gun, Eric?"

Bauser tucked the gun into the waistline of his jeans at the small of his back. He usually wore them a size up, but he needed the waistband to be tight today so he'd worn an old pair. He flinched when his brother used his first name.

"Cuz today's a big day for me." He checked himself out in the mirror to make sure the gun was concealed. "I'm getting promoted."

He stopped in the kitchen to kiss his mum on the cheek before going out.

She was stirring a pot while trying to stop something under the grill from turning to charcoal. From the living room Bauser's granny was shouting in a running commentary in her Caribbean lilt. Bauser and his mum shared a laugh at the old woman's rantings.

"Where you off to?"

"Doing overtime at work. They say they're gonna teach me to drive the forklift."

His mum smiled at him with a sad tilt to her mouth. She didn't call him a liar. She didn't need to.

"You'll stay for breakfast first though?"

"Nah, can't. I'll be late if I don't get off now. I'll get a pot noodle or something, don't worry about it."

"I saw Dex at the supermarket last night, he was asking about you. You don't spend any time with him any more?"

"Nah, he's with a bad lot. Gotta keep my head in the work, you know?"

Dex was working at the warehouse that Bauser was pretending to work at. He was on the straight and boring, and Bauser had new friends now.

"Mwah." His mum kissed him on the forehead and waited until he returned the sentiment on her cheek, then turned back to her cooking.

"Don't work too hard, Eric," she said.