"It's all so many years ago," I said, wiping the spray from his mouth off the lapel of my jacket.
"And where did you go? You never told anyone. It was the talk of the college. Where is William Heaney?"
"Well—"
"You never even told that Mandy, did you? Did you?"
That Mandy
. "No."
"You broke her heart. You know that, don't you? She couldn't believe that you would treat her like that. I don't think you can guess how disappointed she was."
"I can guess."
"Well, don't feel too pleased. She got someone else pretty damn quick, that's for sure."
It was very easy to remember why I bloodied his nose that time. "Did Dick Fellowes ever say anything to you?"
"No. Why?"
I didn't give him an answer. I glossed the whole thing: said I'd had to get out of college, that it was driving me mad, that it all got too complicated. I don't know if he accepted my blandishments. He talked a bit about how he scraped through his degree. He made no reference at all to the business in the attic at Friarsfield Lodge. We bought more drinks. Then he went banging on about Mandy again and I started to hear myself getting cross with him a second time.
"Look, Fraser, you know perfectly well why I left. You know what happened to those girls. You of all people."
His face flushed a shade of beet. Flecks of white spittle appeared on his lips. He slammed his beer down on the table. It sloshed dangerously in the glass. "But that was just it! That was the whole thing!"
"What whole thing?"
We were attracting too much attention from other drinkers in the pub. Fraser didn't even seem to notice. "That's what the messages were all about. All those messages I sent to you, which you ignored!"
"What about them? What was in the messages?"
And when Fraser finally told me exactly what was in those notes of his, I almost fell out of my chair.
At the office, Val and I were getting the papers ready for the forthcoming Annual General Meeting of our organization when I received a surprise visit from Tony Morrison—that's Commander Morrison of the Metropolitan Police Force to you, but Tony to me. Truthfully I never know whether to address him as Commander Morrison or as Tony, which he much prefers. It depends on whether he drops by in civvies or in his impressive serge uniform with epaulette silverware of crossed tipstaves in a laurel wreath. I looked up from my desk to see him standing in the doorway in full panoply. A little flutter of guilt stirred my heart, as it always does when a policeman looks at me; even when I've done nothing wrong.
"Any chance of a coffee?" he said.
Val scuttled away to the kitchen at once. Anyone in authority and she practically curtseys. "Tony! What brings you here?"
"Just passing. Can't stay long—my driver is on double-yellow lines."
"Careful—the police round here are keen as mustard. Have a seat."
It's true that Commander Morrison did sometimes "drop by." He'd been an immensely useful servant to our organization. He'd helped set up funds for projects to work with teenage joy-riders and runaways and young single mums, giving up some of his own time as well as official police time. We got along famously well. He was always trying to get me to play golf with him, and apart from that small detail he was genuinely one of the good guys.
"Let's sit in the meeting room, shall we?"
As soon as he said that I knew he hadn't just "dropped by" at all. He had something to say to me that he didn't want Val to hear. I got up to go through to the meeting room when the phone rang. Val picked up, then put her hand over the receiver. "Home Office," she mouthed.
"Do you mind if I take it?" I asked Tony.
"You'd better."
They were inviting me to chair some new committee. Recent figures showed that the number of homeless children in the country was around 130,000. I wanted to say why not sack the entire committee and use the fucking committee's considerable fucking expenses to build a few fucking emergency homes and fucking shelters. Of course, what I really said was: yes, I'd chair the committee.
"How many homeless children?" said Tony when I told him the reason for the call. "Well, I suppose I can believe it."
"But this is the year 2007," I said. "Not 1807."
"No." He took off his peaked cap and blew out his cheeks. I could tell he didn't really want to talk about the figures for the homeless. Tony has a strong widow's peak and very pale complexion. The temptation to invoke vampire references is only just resistible and I wondered if his staff managed not to. But he has a warm smile to offset this physical affiliation to the undead.
Val brought him his coffee. She always remembers just how he likes it: no milk, two sugars, and he always makes a point of saying
sweet as sin, black as death
. He flirts with her. She loves it. I smiled benignly as we went through all that and when she closed the door after her, he got to the point.
"William, your name has come up in an odd place."
"Really?"
This is it,
I thought.
The books. They've tumbled to us. That's what all this snooping has been about.
"Yes. An odd place."
"What odd place?"
"Look, I'm here as a mate, not as a copper, okay?"
"What did I do? I'll cough to it."
He seemed to think that was a good enough joke. "Nothing. But enquiries have come my way. I'd go to the wall for you, William, you know. I would. But I just thought I'd see what you have to say."
"And?"
"This case with the terrorist. Outside Buck Palace."
"Seamus? He wasn't a terrorist. He was a desperate old soldier. His mind was completely fogged."
"A bomb is a bomb. Anyway, that's not the point. The thing is you lied to the investigating officer about something the old soldier handed over to you."
"I did lie. It's true."
"Why? Why did you lie?
I looked him the eye. "Tony, I've no idea why I lied. You must know what happened: I was there on the night because of my association with GoPoint—"
"They're a bloody nuisance those GoPoint people. Someone should close them down—"
"And he gave me this . . . scarf, and, I dunno, I just wanted to somehow protect the old boy from the world. It's stupid. I can't explain it."
He nodded thoughtfully. He had sympathetic, soft brown eyes but his gaze was unnerving. He scraped his cup in the saucer, over and over, as if trying to dislodge a drip of coffee. "Okay." At last he took a sip. His Adam's apple bobbed in his throat. He put his cup down again and sat back in his chair. "But why was that, William? Why did you lie to the detective when he came to your house?"
How was I going to tell him? The truth was not going to come out well however thin I sliced it.
Well
, I could have said,
it's like this: I lied about Seamus because he was one of the few people who can see demons, like I can, and I wanted to know what he'd made of it, so I kept the scarf because it had a book in it, which incidentally you don't know about. See? It's all perfectly clear. Forget it; I'll even play golf with you.
Right.
I'd known Tony for over seven years. Not once during our friendship had I ever alluded to demons or anything like it, and for obvious reasons. Of course, I could have tried it on him. I'm sure he's heard some pretty unlikely stories in his long service as a police officer, but in the scheme of things I had no doubt that somewhere in the shells of his experienced ears it was going to sound just a teensy bit ragged. Even if it happened to be the truth.
"I can't explain, Tony. I know I'm an idiot. Maybe I've got a guilty conscience but whenever a policeman interviews me I have this tendency to resist, to equivocate, to—"
"To lie."
"Dammit, I know you're cross with me. I'm sorry I can't explain it. I was there. Send your guy back and I'll tell him."
"He's not my guy, William. Nothing to do with me. It's just that your name and my name got connected up on a SO13 computer. So they came and asked me to vouch for you."
"And did you?"
"I vouched. But once you've started lying to them, well it doesn't look good, does it?"
"I suppose it doesn't."
"They think there's more to it, you see," Commander Morrison said, getting up to leave, refitting his peaked cap. "There isn't, is there?"
"No," I said. "You can tell them that Seamus was just what he appeared to be." I wanted to add that he could say the same for me, but I didn't want to lie all over again.
I walked him to the lifts. In many ways being caught out for lying felt worse than if the police had uncovered our antiquarian books racket. We shook hands and he said I'd probably hear no more about it. As the lift doors were closing on him he pointed at me and said, "Have you thought any more about a round of golf?"
I went back into my office feeling quite shaken. I had to wipe my brow with a tissue.
"Are you all right?" Val said.
"No," I said. "No."
I was late getting home that night because we had to finish off the papers for the AGM, but when I did get back I found Stinx sitting at the kitchen table nursing a cup of tea. Sarah and Mo were with him and appeared to be in counselling mode.
Stinx looked terrible. He had three days' grey beard stubble and his eyes were bloodshot. There was a bit of blood on his ear. His clothes carried the pungent rot of stale Guinness and tobacco. He didn't have to tell me what had happened, but he did.
"Lucy left me again."
Needless to say he hadn't brought me the finished forgeries.
"You want to get that Lucy," I said, "and give her a hard kick up the arse."
"Dad!" went Sarah. Mo sat back in his chair and blinked at me.
"No, I mean it. She keeps doing this to you, Stinx, and I for one am fed up on your behalf. Really, you've got to show her your toecap."
"But I love her," Stinx wailed. He may have been drinking tea but he was still pissed. "I loves the gal!"
"Don't listen to my dad," Sarah said. "He's not exactly an expert."
Stinx got up off his chair, slightly unsteady, and wobbled towards me. "No, but I loves your dad, too." He put his arms around me and gave me a bear hug. "I know I missed you the other night. Should-a been there. Is Jaz all right?"
"Yeh, he's all right."
"He's all right, is he, that Jaz? All right? Not mad with me?"
"No one's mad with you, Stinx. Sit down."
"Lucy is. He's all right, is he, Jaz?"
"He's fine, Stinx. Siddown. Drink your tea."
"Cos I loves him, too. Both of you. You and Jaz. You know that."
"Look, just siddown, will you?"
"I've nearly finished, you know. The book. Almost done."
Yeh,
I thought.
Yeh yeh.
"We'll talk about it tomorrow, Stinx."
"I have. Almost."
"Tomorrow."
I finally managed to extricate myself from his bear hug to manoeuvre him back into his seat. Tears were streaming down his face and into his beard stubble. He pulled out the filthiest handkerchief from his pocket, put it to his nose and blasted three enormous charges into it. I don't know why but to see him snorting into this dirty old rag gave Sarah and Mo the giggles. Even though I was still seething about Stinx's failure over the forgeries, it somehow transmitted to me. We worked hard not to let him see us sniggering, but see it he did. He looked from one to another of our faces.
"Fuck it," Stinx said. "I'll go home, then, if I'm to be laughed at."
"No you won't," I said. "You're staying here."
He'd taken the hump. I had to fight him down and explain we were not laughing at him, but at his dirty old handkerchief. He relented. I told him he could sleep over and I asked Mo to run him a bath, but while it was filling Stinx fell asleep on the couch in the living room. I took off his shoes and spread a duvet over him, and we left him there, returning ourselves to the kitchen.
Sarah had cooked a chilli sauce. We ate in the kitchen and I told the two of them about Stinx and Lucy, and how he was a great artist but he'd never been recognized.
"He says someone is following him around," Mo said.
"He said that tonight?"
"Yes. I think that's why he came to see you. But it had gone out of his head by the time you arrived.
I left the kids sitting up and I went to bed. It had been a tiring day and I soon drifted off to sleep. But at about two o'clock in the morning someone was by my bed, shaking me awake. It was Stinx.
"What is it, Stinx? What's up?"
"I'm sorry to wake you," he whispered. "I don't feel good."
"Are you sick?"
"No. It's that room downstairs. Where I was sleeping on the sofa. I keep thinking there's someone in the room with me. I've put the light on three times and there's nothing there. Then when I switch the light off again it's like I can see someone watching me."
"I'll come down."
I threw on my dressing gown and together we went downstairs. We went into the kitchen and I set milk on to boil, to make cocoa. It's what I always used to do when the kids were small and they couldn't sleep. I put a side-light on and we kept our voices low so as not to wake Sarah and Mo.
"I'm being a bloody nuisance, mate. I should leave you alone."
"No, you're not. Stick around here for as long as you want."
"I don't know what it is. Maybe I've done too many drugs and drank too much booze over the years. But it was like that moment when you're just dropping off to sleep again, and then it moves. Tell you what, it made my skin crawl. Turned me over, it did."
"Here, drink this."
"How about a splash of rum in it?"
"You don't need it, Stinx, believe me."
I left him grumbling about drinking chocolate milk. I pretended to need the toilet, but really I just wanted to check out the living room for myself. I pushed open the door. The room was in complete darkness. I listened to the silence for a while. Nothing.
Then, just to satisfy myself, I switched on the tall standard lamp. What I saw made me rear back. It doesn't matter how many you've encountered, it always hits you like a thump in the gut. It was a demon. They can be seen in certain light but not in others, and now with the standard lamp on I could see it slumped in the corner of the room, against the book case. It looked desperately unhappy; it was covering its face with its hands, and peering at me from behind its fingers, waiting.