The
principle.
And then… And then finally –ah yes,
finally;
the sheer, raw
pain
of this spuriously conclusive word made him almost catch his breath –just when it seemed like all the fuss and the misery might actually be in danger of diminishing a little –two whole years of trouble, two whole crazy
years –
the icing on the cake, the culmination of everything: that stupid fucking
pointless
competition. The treasure hunt.
The
Loiter.
And clue three? Daniel’s
Candy.
The woman serving in the chippie had explained the connection to the man in the queue standing two customers ahead of him. Daniel Defoe, she said
(Robinson Crusoe,
ironically, had been his favourite book as a boy) once called Canvey by that curious name in a book about Great Britain. A travel journal or something.
Candy
Island. And Dewi knew –he
knew –
right there and right then, that these five sweet letters spelled an infinity of trouble; for him, for Katherine. Pretty much the same stuff as before, only more of it this time. Much more. Because of the treasure, obviously. And because of that poor man dying so tragically. The publicity.
Oh
Lord.
Today was just the beginning. It wouldn’t end here. Dewi kicked one hefty, steel-toe-capped boot against the other. Where the leather stretched thinly over the worn crest of the toe, a sleek shimmer of metal was visible, peeking through. When it struck the second boot it clanged sonorously, like an old, dented gong, upended in a cellar. He did it again. He did it a third time.
Wesley.
Wesley.
Dewi shook himself. He was still dusty. He inspected his forearms. Dusty. His palms. Dusty. Surely it
couldn’t
be simply a coincidence? He’d seen his photo on the book cover. And he’d seen the same picture, by sheer chance, on the late night news. Last year. Springtime. A stupid scandal over paternity. And then, when that poor man drowned on Guy Fawkes Night, in Anglesey, in the midst of all that terrible
tragedy:
Wesley’s foul and unrepentant grin, plastered everywhere, staring out at him from magazine racks, from the tabloid papers, from the broadsheets (even the
broadsheets
couldn’t seem to get enough of him).
And the pay-off?
‘
Colin Sumner won. That’s the important thing. Colin Sumner’s a winner.
’
No thought of an apology. No remorse. No pity.
What kind of a thing was that to say?
Colin Sumner won? He’s a winner?
A man
dead.
What kind of a stupid, smart-arse, senseless, thoughtless, pointless…?
Good
God.
Twelve twenty-five, already? A delay at work. Had to be. Or a conversation? But who would Katherine speak to? And why? Katherine didn’t speak much. Not in general. The locals found her difficult –different,
inexplicable –
even though she was one of them.
A local. She
was
local, wasn’t she? Born in Canvey. But never fitted. Always too large, too brave, too bold for her surroundings. Always too bright, too fierce for a place like this. Too grand for this fucked-up, washed out, anaemic little town.
She was different. That was all. With her fine, low voice… her too-light eyes… her small hands… tiny hands. Fingers like pieces of stripped willow.
She frightened people. She frightened him, too, sometimes (he made no bold claims to be braver than the rest of them). Yet he loved every inch of her. Every hair, every dimple. The good parts, the bad parts. She was strong meat. She had
vision.
Ever since she was a girl she’d had it. Her father a headmaster. Her mother a minister. Tricky combination. Methodists, to the core, imbued with that ancient, powerful, crazy-Dutch puritanism. Devout people. Hard-edged. But not her. Not Katherine.
Twelve
thirty?
So perhaps she’d returned early, without him seeing. Perhaps she’d secreted her sweet self and her bright red bike clean away while he was still in his kitchen. Home early.
Perhaps she’d received prior word about Wesley? Advance warning.
But who would warn her? Nobody
trusted
her. Only him. Only Dewi. And she despised him for it. She didn’t
want
to be trusted. Didn’t need it. Had no use for it. She laughed at his loyalty. She teased him for it. She found it hilarious.
But that was just Katherine. That was her way.
Twelve thirty-three
?
So who might she speak to, realistically? The newsagent? The butcher? The girl in the bakery? No. Never. Even shopkeepers kept their distance, exchanging only nods and grunts, refusing to allow any transaction –no matter how plain or small or innocent –to be incriminated by syllables. She terrified them. Men especially. And wives, obviously. And mothers. And children. Little children, even.
She preferred it that way.
Twelve thirty-five.
Oh God. Oh
God
should he go over there a second time? Could he chance it? Could he?
Dewi turned on his heels and marched towards the door. But no. What if… He froze. Three seconds passed. He doubled back on himself. He paused. He put his hands to his head. He gazed over at the telephone, helplessly.
Perhaps he should ring her. Would he ring? Could he? His right hand twitched. No.
No. He returned –shoulders slumping –to the window, to the reassuring white and shade of his hand-built shutters. He camouflaged himself again (the minutes still tip-toeing past him like a troop of well-marshalled fieldmice in feather slippers), the tension in his huge torso gradually subsiding into a slow-burning, acid-churning, belly-numbing resignation.
A big bull. A soft
heifer.
Dewi exhaled two great gusts of air –once,
twice –
through his dust encrusted nostrils, then dutifully, diligently, tenderly,
fearfully,
he continued his patient vigil for dear, sweet Katherine.
They all grabbed what they could. Jo got there first –so did marginally better than the rest of them –claiming
Utah Blaine, Catlow
and
The Man from Broken Hills.
Doc snaffled an early hardback edition of
Hondo,
which she suspected was one of L’Amour’s earliest. But
Utah Blaine
was his most successful, wasn’t it? His most famous novel?
Oh come on…
Who am I kidding?
She didn’t have the first idea about cowboy fiction.
Even so, she quickly squirrelled off her booty to a small table in the children’s section where she sat down on a tiny chair –somewhat conspicuously, her elbows pressing pale dimples into the lean flesh of her thighs –and carefully removed a bunch of crumpled sweet wrappers from her coat pocket (six in total), slowly sorted through them and finally located…
Okay. Clue 3
She partially re-read it. She struggled to assimilate it –
Uh…
–
Look for love
–
Fine. She’d got that already: love –L’Amour…
–
Where liquid is solid
–
Hmmn…
Somewhere cold? Somewhere icy?
–
Where 62 fell
,
–
46 still…
There were too many numbers – what the hell did they all
mean – page references, maybe? She pushed the clue aside for a moment, pondered.
So… look for love somewhere
icy.
Or look for L’Amour somewhere cold. Somewhere chilly. Hang on… hang
on.
Utah –
Salt Lake City.
Not ice… not ice, but
salt.
Had to be.
Jo grabbed a hold of
Utah Blaine
and turned to the back cover where she inspected the synopsis, keenly.
(Nah.
This was just too easy. This was just… this was
silly.)
Okay. Set in a town called Red Creek where some poor bastard called Joe Neal had been lynched by a nasty bunch of land-grabbers… then… Utah Blaine, a stranger, rolls into town objecting to the misuse of vigilante law… Bad guys, locals mainly, are led by some greedy, low-down, cowboy killer called Clell –
Clell?
– Clell Miller…
Blah, blah, blah
– Nothing particularly riveting. All standard, hard-knuckled Western fare, basically.
Jo frowned, turning the book over. Inside flap?
Nope. Paperback. So where would L’Amour’s biographical details be? First page? Preface?
She inspected the first page. Another brief plot summary… No biographical details to speak of… Only –
Uh…
– second page in, next to the copyright, some vague reference to how L’Amour first published under the pseudonym Jim Mayo –
Jim Mayo?
Jo casually perused the front preface again.
Hmmn.
Some pretty average writing interspersed by the occasional striking description of – say – an angry cowboy with a face ‘red as a piece of raw beef–
Yik
– making threats against Blaine…
Blah, blah…
– more stuff about Joe Neal’s ranch; the
46 Range…
The…?
Oh Fuck
She glanced up, guiltily. Did anyone…? Did…?
Bollocks. Hooch
– Hooch was staring at her.
Had he…?
Jo closed the book and rapidly turned to the next one. She picked it up, inspected it, thumbed through it, began reading, randomly, smiling to herself, goofily, as if she got some real
thrill
out of all this cowboy twaddle.
Glanced up again –
Bugger
– Hooch was coming over. He was clutching his own paperback which he’d already flipped through, twice, in a desultory manner. Jo rested her right elbow on the front cover of
Utah Blaine.
She began talking, even as he approached her.
‘I notice L’Amour initially published under the pseudonym Jim Mayo,’ she said (as if keen to exchange everything, like a real team player).
Hooch wasn’t taken in. He scowled as he pulled out a chair at the tiny table but then thought twice about sitting down on it.
‘Mayo? You think that means something too?’
Jo shrugged, ‘Who’s to say?’
‘Well I’m not getting anywhere with this.’
Hooch showed Jo his own paperback:
Showdown at Yellow Butte.
Jo half-smiled, ‘
Yellow Butte?
That’s some
purdy
title you got yourself there, Hooch.’
Used his name
Hooch was neither disarmed nor amused. ‘I think you probably pronounce it
boot.
It’s a geographical location.’
‘Nah…’ Jo took the book from him and flipped through it, casually, ‘… it’d be like the butt of a gun, surely?’
‘That doesn’t have an e.’
‘Are you certain?’
He was certain. ‘In actual fact,’ he continued (she grinned, internally), ‘the word probably has its earliest application in the form of a large Roman cask, or butt –as in water butt –then subsequently in the guise of the mound or hill behind a target –another common usage –which, presumably, leads on to the notion of a person
being
the butt –of a joke, or whatever. In other words, they are the thing
behind
the target. The mound.
The hillock. Or in that particular instance, the object
behind
the joke…’
‘… The fool, the pillock…’
Jo smiled, winningly. Hooch frowned, snatching the book back again, ‘In terms of etymology, pillock’d probably have its origin in
pillory.
But that’s an entirely spontaneous guess. Don’t quote me on it.’
She pursed her lips. This man was hard work.
‘So, did you find anything of further interest in your…’
Hooch craned his neck to try and inspect the scope of Jo’s L’Amour bounty.
Jo removed her elbow from
Utah Blaine,
turned it onto its back, and read out brief sections from the synopsis in suitably disengaged tones… ‘Man called Joe Neal is lynched by land-grabbers in a town called Red Creek… uh…’
She quickly moved on to the other two books and did the same again.
‘What we need,’ she continued –on finishing –and slightly more emphatically, ‘is some kind of biographical insight into L’Amour’s life. But does such a thing even exist, I wonder?’
‘You reckon?’
Hooch’s enthusiasm was already waning.
‘Doc, I noticed,’ Jo continued, ‘has a copy of L’Amour’s first book,
Hondo,
and it’s in hardback, which means it’ll probably have more biographical stuff on the back jacket flap. Then there’s always the internet, obviously…’
‘I guess so.’ Hooch shrugged, boredly, turning to stare at Doc –who was perched on a stool, in the corner –then at Wesley, who was, that very moment, throwing down a pen, pushing a slip of paper over the counter-top towards the librarian, bending down to stroke the dog, then turning, waving, leaving.
Jo watched too. She watched the librarian. The librarian seemed rather agitated. She was reading whatever it was that Wesley had written onto the slip. She seemed surprised. Involved. Taken aback. Jo wished she might take a peek at the message herself. The librarian’s hands were shaking slightly as she quickly shoved it under the counter. It was plainly something fairly electrifying.
What could it be?
‘See how much that dog dotes on him?’ Hooch murmured, not focussing on the librarian but on Wesley –always on Wesley.
‘Pardon?’ Jo turned back to face him again.
‘Straight behind him –see? –out of the library. Always does it. Worships him. Terriers have no loyalty. I hate that. I loathe dogs, actually…’ Hooch paused, then slowly pronounced the word
canine,
under his breath, his lips pulled back from his teeth like an anxious chimpanzee. It was exceptionally unappealing.