Peter Robinson - Not Safe After Dark

‘Yes. He goes to Broad Hill.’

I nodded. Though I had never heard of Oliver Bradley, I knew the school; it was just across the valley from us. ‘Go on.’

‘I asked him where he was going, and he said he was being sent to Acksham. It was perfect.’

‘But how did you get him to change places with you?’

‘He didn’t want to. Not at first.’

‘How did you persuade him?’

Johnny looked down at the road and scraped at some gravel with the scuffed tip of his shoe. ‘It cost me a complete set of “Great Cricketers” cigarette cards. Ones my dad gave me before he went away.’

I smiled. It would have to be something like that.

‘And I made him promise not to tell anyone, just to go home and say there wasn’t room for him, and he’d have to try again in a few days. I just needed enough time to find Dad… you know.’

‘I know.’

We arrived at the station, where Johnny sat on the bench and Phyllis and I chatted in the late afternoon sunlight, our shadows lengthening across the tracks. In addition to the birds singing in the trees and hedgerows, I could hear grasshoppers chirruping, a sound you rarely heard in the city. I had often thought how much I would like to live in the country and, perhaps when I retired from teaching a few years in the future, I would be able to do so.

We didn’t have long to wait for our train. I thanked Phyllis for all her help, told her I wished her husband well, and she waved to us as the old banger chugged out of the station.

It was past blackout when I finally walked into our street holding Johnny’s hand. He was tired after his adventure and had spent most of the train journey with his head on my shoulder. Once or twice, from the depths of a dream, he had called his father’s name.

I could sense that something was wrong as soon as I turned the corner. It was nothing specific, just a sudden chill at the back of my neck. Because of the blackout, I couldn’t see anything clearly, but I got a strong impression of a knot of shifting shadows, just a little bit darker than the night itself, milling around outside Colin Gor-mond’s house.

I quickened my step, and as I got nearer I heard a whisper pass through the crowd when they saw Johnny. Then the shadows began to disperse, slinking and sidling away, disappearing like smoke into the air. From somewhere, Mary Critchley lurched forward with a cry and took young Johnny in her arms. I let him go. I could hear her thanking me between sobs, but I couldn’t stop walking.

The first thing I noticed when I approached Colin’s house was that the window was broken and half the blackout curtain had been ripped away. Next I saw that the door was slightly ajar. I was worried that Colin might be hurt, but out of courtesy I knocked and called out his name.

Nothing.

I pushed the door open and walked inside. It was pitch dark. I didn’t have a torch with me, and I knew that Colin’s light didn’t work, but I remembered the matches and the candle on the table. I lit it and held it up before me as I walked forward.

I didn’t have far to look. If I hadn’t had the candle, I might have bumped right into him. First I saw his face, about level with mine. His froth-specked lips had turned blue, and a trickle of dried blood ran from his left nostril. The blackout cloth was knotted around his neck in a makeshift noose, attached to a hook screwed into the lintel over the kitchen door. As I stood back and examined the scene further, I saw that his down-turned toes were about three inches from the floor, and there was no sign of an upset chair or stool.

Harmless Colin Gormond, friend to the local children. Dead.

I felt the anger well up in me, along with the guilt. It was my fault. I shouldn’t have gone dashing off to Acksham like that in search of Johnny, or I should at least have taken Colin with me. I knew the danger he was in; I had talked to Jack Blackwell before I left. How could I have been so stupid, so careless as to leave Colin to his fate with only a warning he didn’t understand?

Maybe Colin had managed to hang himself somehow, without standing on a stool, though I doubted it. But whether or not Jack Blackwell or the rest had actually laid a finger on him, they were all guilty of driving him to it in my book. Besides, if Jack or anyone else from the street had strung Colin up, there would be evidence – fibres, fingerprints, footprints, whatever – and even DS bloody Longbottom wouldn’t be able to ignore that.

I stumbled outside and made my way towards the telephone box on the corner. Not a soul stirred now, but as I went I heard one door – Jack Blackwell’s door – close softly this time, as if he thought that too much noise might wake the dead, and the dead might have a tale or two to tell.

Another shitty gig.In more ways than one. I can smell the colostomy bags the minute we walk in the front doors. I shudder, as I always do when we enter a place like this. One day, and it might not be long, I know I won’t be coming out.

The Recreation Director is waiting to greet us, crisp blue suit and Morningside accent. Why do RDs all have Scottish accents, even in Vancouver? A gold name tag just above the swell of her left breast tells me her name is Emily. Actually, if you look closely, our Emily’s not that bad at all, despite the ill-fitting glasses and lifeless hair.

‘You’ll be the musicians, then?’ Nervously eyeing her wristwatch.

Why does it sound like an insult?

‘We’ll be the musicians,’ I admit. Then I introduce the band: Memory Lane. There are five of us, three of us expat Brits. Kit Stark, a washed-up hippie, is our drummer. Kit took one too many hits of acid on the Isle of Wight ferry nearly thirty years ago. When they’d fished him out of the Solent and done artificial respiration, he spent the next twenty years in and out of the nut house hallucinating plankton before washing up on the shores of Nova Scotia. Then there’s Benny Leiberman, our morose, alcoholic bass player from Des Moines. Taffy Lloyd plays trumpet and trombone, and when he’s not doing that, he’s our vocalist. He looks like Harry Secombe but sounds more like one of the Spice Girls. The Hunchback of Notre Band, Geoff Carroll, plays piano, guitar and vibes and does most of our arrangements. He’s so short-sighted that he has developed a permanent hunch from leaning over the keyboard to read the music.

Last but not least, there’s me, Dex Hill (well, my real name is William Hill, but wouldn’t you change that for something a bit more jazzy-sounding?), apple of my music teacher’s eye, future clarinet soloist for the London Symphony Orchestra (failed), the next John Coltrane (failed) and husband to the beautiful, sexy and cruel Andrea (also failed).

Get the picture?

‘I suppose you’d like to tune up, then?’ suggests Emily.

Tune up? You don’t tune up a clarinet or a saxophone. Or a trumpet for that matter. Perhaps Benny wants to mess around with his bass strings, though the way he’s shaking he looks more as if he needs a drink.

I nod.

‘Follow me. I’ll show you the dressing room.’

We follow Emily’s gently swaying hips down the corridor. If we exude a general aroma of booze and smoke, especially with those filthy French cigarettes Benny smokes, she affects not to notice. What does she go home to, my Emily, I wonder? How does she get the aura of death and disease out of her system when she leaves here? Sex? Drugs? Maybe I’ll ask her.

Once we’re settled in the broom closet they call a dressing room, Emily-less, Benny takes out a fifth of Jim Beam and inhales. He doesn’t offer it around. He never does. Some people might think that’s rude, but we’re used to him and his strange lonely ways by now. Kit and I share a spliff. Just another little smell lost among the faeces and sour sweat. Taffy, as is his wont, puffs on a Rothman’s and does a few vocal exercises. Geoff studies the music as if it’s the first time he’s ever set eyes on it. He always does. In a way, I feel sorry for Geoff because wherever we go the poor sod always gets stuck with an out-of-tune piano. Still, he takes it in his stride. Very phlegmatic is Geoff. Lots of sangfroid. You have to have with a hunchback like his.