‘Just tell me you didn’t give him the fare,’ Hooch demanded.
Josephine stopped dead, a couple of feet from them, ‘Why?’
Doc rolled his eyes, despairingly.
‘She gave him the money, Doc,’ Hooch’s harsh voice was leavened with both boredom and resignation.
Jo frowned, pushing her hood back, ‘Is he… is Patty needed by the Police for something?’
The constable –who’d been quietly scrutinising Jo as she approached, but had said nothing –suddenly opened his mouth to speak, but before he’d uttered a syllable, his un-uniformed colleague was clambering out of their jeep, swinging herself up lithely onto the running board, pressing her two elbows into the roof for support, and bellowing, ‘Josephine bloody
Bean.
’
Jo glanced sharply over the road, her own mouth opening slightly (the way a snake’s mouth opens in panic or in the heat). She stared at the woman for several moments. Then something registered.
‘Anna
Wright,
’ she spoke slowly (and rather less enthusiastically.
Bollocks
to Canvey. There was no hiding here.).
The male officer did a double-take. ‘Good God,’ he muttered, ‘Josephine
Bean.
I heard you on the radio the other day, talking about…’
He ground to an abrupt halt, as if suddenly reconsidering the delicate social implications of Jo’s sanitary campaign. Jo appreciated his dilemma, fully. ‘The
environment,
’ she filled in softly –seeing Doc and Hooch exchange curious glances –then adding, ‘Edward
Cole,
right?’
‘Right,’ he grinned. ‘Maths, physics, geography.’
‘We… uh…’ Jo turned towards Doc, uneasily, ‘we were all at school here together –in Canvey…’
‘
God
you look different,’ the female officer shouted (making absolutely no effort to leave the confines of the car), ‘it took me a moment to recognise you without your hair. Remember her
hair,
Eddie?’
She waved to the uniformed officer. ‘Blonde. Gorgeous. Right down to…’ she touched her waist, ‘like
Alice in Wonderland.
’
Jo smiled at this description, but seemed correspondingly pained by it.
‘And you’ve been doing
sterling
work at Southend General, I hear,’ she yelled, ‘all credit to you there.’
‘Yes. Well.
Thank you,
’ Jo shouted back. (Doc cringed at the volume. Jo noticed. Her shoulders lifted with the stress.)
‘We should meet up for a drink later. How about it? My shift finishes in…’ the officer inspected her watch, ‘just under an hour.’
Jo paused, uncomfortably, ‘I would love to, Anna…’
‘
What?
’ The officer put her hand to her ear. Jo glanced towards Doc, then raised her voice, fractionally, ‘
I
said I would
really
love to, Anna, but…’ She floundered.
‘But you should,’ Doc suddenly interrupted –his expression supremely benign, his voice utterly phlegmatic –‘you
should
meet up. That would be very… very
lovely
for you. To…’ he eyed the male officer, slyly, ‘to catch up with your old school
pal,
’ he smiled with an almost mesmerising insincerity, ‘after all this time.’
He continued to smile.
Jo’s eyes widened (Doc seemed about as trustworthy as a ravenous cat in an aviary) –
It goes way beyond that…
Way beyond hunger
Jo blinked
–
I am being slowly ingested
Here, in Canvey
Devoured again
Just like before.
She paused for a second, drew an extremely deep breath, then turned back to face the un-uniformed officer. ‘You’re
right,
’ she shouted, ‘that would be… it would be…’ she grasped for the appropriate word, ‘
fun,
’ she rounded off, lamely.
Fun was not a word generally found to the forefront of her vocabulary –
Fun.
‘Great.’
The un-uniformed officer beat a jovial little percussive solo onto
the jeep’s roof with her fingers, ‘You know Saks, Josie? Just down the road? Directly opposite the Bingo?’
Two cars flashed between them. Jo waited until they’d passed, then nodded, mutely.
Nobody calls me Josie
Nobody ever called me Josie here
Saks? Oh my Sweet Lord
‘Just after eight, then. Okay?’
‘Yes,’ Jo nodded, ‘that’s… that’ll be…’
The jeep’s radio –having previously purred along in a thoroughly unobjectionable monotone –now began crackling at a prodigious volume. The female officer clambered back inside to deal with it.
‘That’ll be fantastic,’ Jo spoke into thin air.
Doc scowled at her. This girl was so… so gawky. So
blundering.
Useless at deceiving. Not a dyed-in-the-wool Behindling. Not a born sleuth by any stretch of the imagination.
‘Before we all get
completely
carried away here,’ the male officer strove –semi-jovially –to regain the assembled company’s attention, ‘your white van still needs moving, sir. And if I could possibly have a quick word…’ he switched his focus to Doc, ‘about…’ he paused for a second, as if considering how best to frame his enquiry.
‘She’s already told you,’ Doc grumbled impatiently, nodding his head towards Jo, ‘the boy’s in Benfleet, at the station, probably heading back here on foot, even as we speak.’
‘It’s not a
boy
I’m looking for,’ the officer butted in (he was thoroughly sick of this boy, and bemused by every mention of him), ‘I’m actually trying to track down Wesley. I’ve been informed that you’re the one person most likely…’
‘He’s over there,’ Hooch interjected (patently infuriated by the widespread perception of Doc’s Following seniority), pointing across the road towards Katherine’s bungalow, ‘in
that
house.’
The officer’s gaze followed the line of Hooch’s index finger. He scowled, ‘But that’s…’ He stopped himself, just in time, his eyes meeting Josephine’s, almost apologetically.
‘The whore’s house,’ Hooch completed his sentence for him.
The officer stiffened.
‘Are you able to confirm this, sir?’ He turned back to Doc who was staring over at Hooch, infuriatedly.
‘Is it a summons?’ Hooch brazenly enquired, apparently oblivious to Doc’s finer feelings, ‘because of all the trouble with those seagulls in Rye?’
This was one intervention too far for the officer, ‘If you really want a ticket, sir…’ he snapped.
Hooch looked to his laurels, swooping down –with a defiant snort –to grab Doc’s half-finished mug of tea, tossing the remainder into the gutter, throwing the cup into the back of the van and slamming the doors shut with a bang.
The officer returned his full attention to the Old Man, ‘I believe your people track Wesley by phone and the internet? We tried to do the same, but the lines are down. There were rumours of a virus on the site. Would you happen to know anything about that?’
‘Should I?’ Doc asked, unhelpfully.
‘The lines are down?’ Jo interjected, ‘and a
virus?
’
This was plainly news to her.
The police officer nodded, ‘Since earlier this afternoon, apparently.’
‘But has that ever happened before, Doc?’ Jo turned to the Old Man.
‘Skegness. About eighteen months back.’
Not Doc, but Hooch again, peeking out from behind the protective shield of his van’s front passenger door, ‘That site’s really losing its
focus.
Needs shaking up a bit if you ask me.’
The officer threw Hooch a look of such coruscating disparagement that had he been even remotely morally suggestible his cranial cortex would’ve withered and then disintegrated. Instead he simply cleared his throat, scratched his head and climbed back on board.
‘So
are
you filing a summons, then?’ Doc asked. The officer turned to face him again, shaking his head slightly, ‘That’s a private matter, sir.’
‘So you’re not filing anything?’
The officer raised his eyebrows, smiling warningly.
‘So it’s a family matter, then?’ Doc persisted, fully intent on maintaining the pressure. The police officer stepped back a few
inches. ‘It’s a matter of some…’ he considered his words, carefully, ‘some
sensitivity,
shall we say.’
‘Ah.’ Doc rubbed his hands together, drawing another breath to continue his interrogation, but the officer was having none of it.
‘I’m afraid that’s the best I can do for you, sir.’
He bent down –as a final gesture –to stroke behind Dennis’s ears, but the terrier (in an arbitrary change of heart) curled his head sideways and out of the officer’s way.
The officer chuckled under his breath, smiled up at Jo, gave Doc a smart, half-salute and crossed back over the road again, tapping his hand onto the car bonnet as he circled his way around it to alert the woman officer –still on the radio –to follow him. This she duly did.
‘Find out exactly what it is that they want.’ Doc was handing out curt instructions before the pair had even made it through the front gate.
‘We weren’t even friends,’ Jo murmured (perhaps a little accusingly), ‘she was always really… well,
bossy.
’
Doc didn’t react to this. ‘We’ll be down at The Lobster Smack from here-on-in. We’re camping nearby. And remember,’ he warned, ‘they’re probably just as interested in us as we are in them, so be wary.’
‘Interested in us?’ Jo echoed blankly.
‘The Behindlings. They like to know what we’re doing, where we’re staying. Things about the competition. Contacts and stuff. Whatever we know about Wesley, obviously. His activities. Trespass, blackmail, the bribery, especially. Don’t even…’
‘Sorry –the…
sorry?
’
But before Jo could question Doc any further he’d slapped his thigh (calling Dennis to heel), and was heading briskly for the van. Hooch started up the engine. Doc picked up Dennis then paused, just for a second, before throwing him on board.
‘If you come into the pub later and there’s a blind man hanging around, don’t breathe a word of anything in front of him. He’s one of…’ Doc pointed towards the jeep. ‘Ex-special branch. Play it by ear…’ Doc swiped his hand through the air, ‘
you
know.’
Do I?
Jo nodded, bemusedly, then opened her mouth.
‘Know what I found especially interesting?’ Doc quickly cut in. Jo shut her mouth again.
‘The way he said, “It’s not about a
boy.”
With a special emphasis. Did you notice? That emphasis? Not about a
boy.
’
Doc gave Jo a significant look, tapped the side of his nose, then threw the dog on board and climbed in stiffly after him.
Hooch didn’t drive away immediately. He waited until the officers were standing at Katherine’s door and knocking, until their knock had been answered –by a flustered-seeming Ted –until they’d invited themselves in and the door was shutting.
Then he let rip; accelerating sharply from a standing start, his tyres squealing, his suspension crashing as he came down off the pavement, his exhaust rattling a coarse tattoo onto the tarmac. In a gesture of defiance, Jo supposed.
She stood and stared after the fast-retreating van, frowning at the prodigious volume of its exhaust emissions, and observing –quite dispassionately –how the back doors hadn’t been shut properly. The right one flew open. A rucksack (Doc’s) tumbled out and almost collided with a red Ford Corsa travelling –more sedately –in the opposite direction.
The Corsa sounded its horn, swerving. The van stopped. Its hazards went on. Hooch jumped out and ran around to retrieve Doc’s possessions, looking –as far as Jo could tell in the half-darkness –not even remotely concerned by the chaos he’d unleashed. Two further cars ground to a halt behind him. Then a third. One flashed its lights to speed him up. But he smiled and took his time.
Jo shook her head, appalled –
And these people are my allies?
God have Mercy.
Hooch climbed back on board, with a swagger (how did he manage it?) but this time pulled off quietly (Doc’s calming influence, presumably).
Once the van had gone, Jo turned her attentive brown eyes back towards the neat white bungalow and stared at it for a while, inspecting every external detail, as if thoroughly engrossed by its neatness, its symmetry. After a while, gentle drizzle began falling. Jo continued standing. She continued staring.
Tiny droplets of rain soon formed a diaphanous cloche over her
close-shaven head. But only when the water achieved sufficient density (once slightly larger droplets began dribbling down her forehead, the back of her neck) did Jo emerge from her reverie and shake it –twice, most expertly –like a small, damp, brown vole on the edge of a riverbank.
Then she pulled up her hood, as far as it would go, and gazed helplessly up the road. ‘But
why
won’t it go away?’
This querulous question emerged so quietly from the dreamy darkness where her face had once been, was framed so sadly, so meekly, that had –by sheer chance –a tiny muntjak been passing, it would’ve paused, lifted high its pale, soft muzzle and huffed a benign but inquisitive blast of sweet, straw-scented breath into the cold night air.
It would’ve shown no fear.
Jo’s hood swivelled around (a tiny Horsewoman of the Apocalypse, momentarily steedless), towards Dewi’s green bungalow (the lights were off. He was working late, presumably).
‘I’m so
sorry,
’ she murmured woefully, hunching up her shoulders, expelling a small, dry cough, adjusting her luminous plastic braces, wiping her ghostly nose on her harsh, woollen cuff and stepping –with a self-loathing
splash –
back (always back) into the gutter’s spurtling trough.
Ten minutes later, they were arguing like lovers.
‘It’s a gift, you
dolt.
Where the fuck are your manners?’ Wesley was sitting at the kitchen table, surrounded by feathers.