Ted burst into the office just in time to witness an effervescent Leo (his moustache as wayward as an ill-constructed corn dolly) going online – the familiar whistle, the clang, the
boink…
‘When I finally track him down,’ he said, pointing at Ted with one accusing hand, hurriedly typing in an address with the other, ‘I am going to swing for him first, then you, straight after.’
‘Is Eileen alright?’ Ted asked – his eyes travelling, ineluctably, towards the cloakroom door (the paintwork around the hinges still detectably shabby), the new mirror beyond it – however – in pristine good order (if fractionally larger). He swallowed hard but maintained a veneer of calm, removing his coat, his scarf, and neatly hanging them on the pegs provided.
He was certain Eileen must be okay. Fundamentally. Wesley was – he frowned, thoughtfully – like a funfair ride; if you agreed to climb on board (if you paid for your ticket and passed all the restrictions regarding age and size), then you were pretty much
dutybound
to feel a little weak and wobbly by the time you clambered off again at the other side. That was the whole…
But what if…?
No.
I
need
to believe… (Ted’s thoughts tripped over each other like the pages of an open book blowing in the breeze; like a daydreaming schoolgirl stumbling on a chink in a city pavement.)
I need to believe in someone –
So let it be him
‘Extremely distressed,’ Leo snarled, ‘her face – her neck – all scratched up. Her nails broken. Tearful. And refuses to breathe a word about it to anybody, has offered
no
convincing…’
The phone began to ring. Ted walked over to answer it, keeping his eyes fixed – all the while – on Leo and the computer.
‘Hello?’
‘I need you,’ Wesley said. ‘Bring me some rope. Heavy rope. At least twenty foot of it, and a box of eggs, and the librarian. Meet me by the flyover.’
He hung up.
Ted slowly replaced the receiver, feeling the strangely unruly burden of this new responsibility – and yet the corresponding
lightness
of suddenly not giving a shit about anything else or anybody.
I am his
sop,
he thought.
There
Leo was still frowning at the computer, twitching the mouse around, grumbling. He was patently accessing the Wesley site.
I should say something, Ted thought, but he didn’t. He merely watched on, instead, as the screen went dark, lit up, and the now familiar graphics for the Behindlings Home Page slowly downloaded.
‘Where is she?’
‘At home. Getting ready for work.’
‘Is there anything I can do for her?’
Leo was frowning at the screen and twiddling his moustache.
‘What possible good could
you
do anybody?’
‘I thought I might…’
‘Think again. It’s currently a police matter.’
Ted’s eyes widened, ‘She called in the police?’
‘Nope. I did. I bumped into Bo earlier, on my way over here. He said he’d seen her conferring with that Wesley character – yesterday – in the library. He said Wesley had a
reputation
for dalliances with library staff.’
‘That’s just a silly rumour,’ Ted asserted, ‘and Bo of all people should know better.’
Leo glanced up, combatively, and that exact-same moment – as if in retaliation – the computer commenced a quite abominable
squealing. He winced. Turned. The screen went black. It went red. It went absolutely haywire.
‘What the
fuck’s
going on here?’
He fought with it for a minute, then swore, yanked the mouse from its socket and threw it into the air. He swiped it – like a shuttlecock – with the palm of his hand. Made a hit (brought down the details of a Shop To Let display in the forefront of the window with it).
‘That’ll be the virus,’ Ted calmly observed.
‘What?’ Leo turned. ‘You
knew
there was a virus and you didn’t think to warn me about it?’
Ted did not flinch. He stood his ground.
‘Everybody knew about the virus, Leo,’ he said –
Used the name
Must use the name
– then he tipped his head to one side, his face a mask of determined impunity. ‘I’m
needed
somewhere,’ he announced, looking on coolly – was there even a glimmer of
mockery
in that stare? – as Leo bent down to grapple with the plug, then banged his head on the drawer, then swore.
Ted walked to the door, took his jacket and scarf down from the peg, pulled them back on again. ‘What a terrible…’ he paused, turned, caught sight of the short-haired girl – Josephine Bean – rapidly disappearing down a skinny alleyway, the stately arrival of a police car, flashed back to that hollow moment the night before when he’d stood in the same spot and had witnessed Eileen scurrying past in her curious purdah (Arthur crouched down low in Leo’s chair)… and yet… and yet best of all – and most vividly - he saw that pond –
Pond
– in his mind’s eye; that
floating
pond; that exquisite unlikelihood of weed and water and fish and air…
‘What an unbelievable
fuck up,
eh?’ he sighed distractedly, feeling an impious flutter in his belly –
No
–
– a capricious
tingle
(more-like), rapidly succeeded by a voluptuous
spasm –
Oh God –
Oh Jesus Christ!
I finally belong somewhere
– as he nipped smartly, neatly, through the door.
‘I need you to come with me,’ Hooch informed her; appearing almost from nowhere, grabbing her arm as she stood by the counter, and then steering her – at full speed – out of the Wimpy and onto the High Street.
‘I
can’t,
’ Jo almost yelped, dashing down her money (he was pinching her, she was struggling to hold two steaming cartons of coffee), ‘I’m waiting…’
‘Doc,’ Hooch said, ‘I know
exactly
who you’re waiting for.’
They arrived on the pavement in perfect tandem with a police car which was pulling up, with sinuous efficiency, outside the agency (Jo thought she could see the agent inside, newly arrived; he hadn’t been there five minutes before – she’d checked – and another man, a short man with a mad, ginger moustache, sitting at his desk with a face as bright as a matador’s flag).
‘Double
shit.
’ Hooch swore, espying the police and yanking her a hard, sharp left into a thin nook between two shops. This unsalubrious alley smelled of piss and sulphur. It contained several rubbish bins and quantities of litter.
‘The fucking police are everywhere in this town.’
He let go of her arm and ripped off his hat (in such a way – with such gusto, such aplomb – that she wouldn’t have been surprised if a trained white dove had been left sitting there, its pink feet poignantly skedaddling on his waxy pate). He struggled to catch his breath.
‘I’ve had enough of you,’ he finally said.
Jo smiled. She thought he must be kidding.
‘And before you…’ he held up his hand, ‘before you do all of this
blah blah blah…
’ (he waved the hand around, dismissively), ‘I know exactly who you are and why you’re here.’
Josephine’s fingers tightened around her paper coffee cartons, but she didn’t utter a word, she just waited, benignly, for some kind of explanation.
‘The Turpin girl…’ Hooch continued (fully intent upon providing her with one), ‘rumour has it that you slept with her father. You were still a schoolgirl. He was the local headmaster…’ Hooch sounded unbelievably bored by the facts he was disclosing, ‘but you weren’t terribly discreet, were you? Or careful, for that matter. You got yourself pregnant. Katherine helped you to get rid of it – presumably to try and salvage what remained of her dad’s career. Your family became involved. Your three hulking brothers… and whatever they did…’ he ruminated on this fact for a moment, ‘well, it must’ve been pretty, bloody persuasive, because everything suddenly got all
twisted;
what with the graffiti; your comparable hair colours – Katherine’s bad reputation…’
He shrugged, phlegmatically, ‘Somewhere along the line she got well and truly shafted, while you, on the other hand, toddled off to Southend and became…’ he grinned, devilishly (well aware of the irony), ‘an
Angel
of friggin’
Mercy.
’
‘Who told you?’
She seemed astonished.
‘The local hack. We did a part-exchange with him. He was very forthcoming.’
‘No.’
She was definite. ‘No,’ she repeated, ‘Bo wouldn’t have had anything to
gain
from telling…’ She paused for a second, her mind obviously racing, ‘Was it the estate agent?’ she asked. ‘He’s the only real weak link here…’
Hooch shook his head (although patently now registering the agent’s involvement in the affair). ‘Let’s just say that I put two and two together. Stuff I’ve been observing since I first arrived in this town… the contents of a letter which I’d all but forgotten about…’
Jo’s eyes tightened. ‘Which letter?’
Hooch smirked at her disquiet. ‘Something I picked up over a year ago, sent care of a certain lunatic West-Country potter…’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘He had one of those free-standing postboxes at the end of his driveway…’ Hooch grinned as he described it, gleefully outlining the shape of it with his hands, ‘irresistibly easy to pilfer.’
Jo was aghast. ‘You
stole
my letter to Wesley?’
‘No big deal,’ he shrugged, ‘I always put everything back once I’ve…’ He put his hand into his pocket and withdrew a couple of neatly-folded sheets of paper, ‘once I’ve
photocopied.
’
Josephine stared down – aghast – as he unfolded them. She saw her letter, her handwriting. Hooch snorted at her expression. ‘Look,’ he sneered, shoving them away again, ‘before you feel the need to go and get all righteous on me, I don’t happen to give a
shit
about the various permutations of your vulgar little story. I only care about Wesley and his involvement with it.’
‘Well that’s touching.’ She sounded suitably caustic.
Hooch smiled, ‘He’s not a
swan,
darling. He doesn’t fuck a girl once and then bond for
life
with her.’
Josephine glanced off, sideways.
‘And even on the understanding that Wes knows or remembers – or gives a
damn –
about your sordid teenage activities,’ he continued, ‘that wouldn’t be enough. Because you Followed. You fucked up. And your case – no matter what it is, how worthy – will be permanently contaminated by that.’
Hooch placed his hat back onto his head again. Jo stared at it, at the distinctive logo, somewhat blankly, frowning slightly.
‘What does that mean?’ she asked, pointing.
‘He’s a creature of habit, our Wes,’ Hooch talked on, as if he hadn’t heard her. ‘He protects himself with these rituals. They give him a sense of security. They allow him to keep people at a distance, to push people away. I’ve seen it all a thousand times before, believe me.’
As Hooch spoke, Jo rolled her eyes skywards, staring intently into the thin, grey ruler of cloud neatly measuring the two buildings above them.
Hooch wasn’t buying her nonchalance. ‘You probably think it’s your charming
personality
that’s attracted him,’ he scoffed, ‘or your excruciatingly embarrassing display in the bar yesterday. But it isn’t. It can’t be. There has to be something extra. Or at least he
thinks
there is, and that’s what’s keeping him interested…’
‘Well there
isn’t
anything extra,’ she interrupted, defiantly, ‘and even if there were, I’d hardly go out of my way to tell you all about it, would I? Or him, for that matter.’
‘Not good enough,’ Hooch shook his head (delighted to have snapped her out of her complacent posture), ‘because Wesley
never
interacts with the people Following – and it’s not even because he doesn’t want to, but because he knows that it wouldn’t work; the whole Following system – the institution – would collapse, would lose all its meaning if he did. He
knows
that. And the Loiters – the Following – the Behindlings, are vital to him. He wouldn’t be viable, he wouldn’t be anything without them.’
Viable
– Jo frowned –
That word again
‘No,’ she eventually spoke out, ‘I’m not swallowing it. Wesley hates the Following. You’re totally deluded if you think otherwise.’
Hooch stared at her, in silence, for a short duration, then he continued on talking, as if what she’d just said had barely registered with him. ‘I’d’ve guessed,’ he mused thoughtfully, ‘on first glance – obviously – that you were working on behalf of local industry. But it doesn’t make sense. You’ve got environmental interests, so they wouldn’t touch you with a…’
Josephine snorted, under her breath, looked up into the air again. This did niggle him.
‘What’s so amusing?’
‘For all you know,’ she told him, ‘that might make me
exactly
the kind of person they’d want on side.’
‘Bollocks.’
He wasn’t swallowing it. But she expanded this idea, nevertheless, in a blatant attempt to provoke him, ‘For all you know, they might’ve offered me some kind of humanitarian
incentive
to trail Wesley around. Or maybe… maybe they thought my reputation as a local Mata Hari might work as a cunning smoke-screen to veil over some fantastically audacious
plot
they’re hatching… or… or perhaps they agreed to make some fundamental environmental
concessions
if I agreed to help them out with a little bit of harmless surveillance activity, or to fund a worthwhile… a… a
pamphlet
on The Pill or Cystitis or some other criminally under-publicised feminine health issue…’
Hooch was unimpressed. ‘Who do you think you are?’ he asked dourly. ‘The Joan of Arc of the fucking Uterus?’