Peter Robinson - Not Safe After Dark

‘No, Daryl, it won’t do!’ he heard the woman shout. ‘Haven’t I told you before it’s wrong to steal? Haven’t I brought you up to respect other people’s property? Haven’t I?’

Frank couldn’t hear the muffled answer, no matter how much he strained. He dragged himself up from the bed and went to the window.

‘So if Marvin Johnson stuck his finger in a fire, you’d do that as well, would you? Christ, give me a break. How stupid can you get?’

Another inaudible reply.

‘Right. So how do you think they feel, eh? The people whose house you broke into. Come on. What did you do with it?’

Frank couldn’t hear the reply, though he held his breath.

‘Don’t lie to me. What do you think this is? It’s a gold chain, isn’t it? And what about these? Don’t tell me you’ve suddenly started wearing earrings. I found these hidden in your room. You stole them, didn’t you?’

Frank’s heart knocked against his ribs. Joan had a gold chain and earrings, and they were among the items that had been stolen. But what about the ring? The ring?

‘Shut up!’ the woman yelled. ‘I don’t want to hear it. I want you to put together everything you stole and take it back, or so help me I’ll call the police. I don’t care if you are my son. Do you understand me?’

There came another inaudible reply followed by a sharp smack, then the sound of a door slamming. After that Frank heard a sound he didn’t recognize at first. A cat in the garden, maybe? Then he realized it was the woman crying.

About five of the apartments in the building had lights on at the back, and Frank hadn’t been able to tell from which one the argument came. Now, though, he could see the silhouette of the woman with her head bowed and her hands held to her face. He thought he knew who she was. He had seen both her and her son on the street.

Frank sat in the coffee shop across from the apartment building early the next morning and watched people come and go. The building was one of those old places with a heavy wood and glass door, so warped by heat and time that it wouldn’t shut properly. He knew who he was looking for, all right. It was that peroxide blonde, the one who looked like a hooker.

At about eight-thirty, her son, the thief, came out. He had a spotty face, especially around the nose and mouth, and he obviously had a skinhead haircut, or a completely shaved head, under the baseball hat he wore the wrong way around. He also wore a shiny silver jacket with a stylized black eagle on the back under some red writing. Below his baggy trousers, crotch right down to the knees, the laces of his sneakers trailed loose. At the corner, he hooked up with a couple of similarly dressed kids and they shuffled off, shoving each other, spitting and generally glaring down at the sidewalk as they went.

At about ten o’clock Frank had to move to the next coffee shop, a bit more up market, as he kept getting nasty looks from the owner. He ordered a cappuccino and a doughnut and sat by the window, watching.

At about a quarter to eleven, she came out, the boy’s mother. She struggled with a shop cart of laundry through the front door and set off down the street.

Old though he was, Frank could still appreciate a good figure when he saw one. She wore a white tube-top, tight over her heavy breasts, revealing a flat tummy, and even tighter white shorts cut sharp and high over long, tanned thighs. But she wore too much make-up and he could see the dark roots in her hair. Common as muck, Joan would have said, in the Lancashire accent that had never left her, no matter how long she’d been here. A real tart, a piece of white trash. No wonder her kid was a burglar, a ring thief, a robber of memories, defiler of all things decent and wholesome.

Frank watched her totter down the street on her ridiculous high heels and go into the laundromat. It took about half an hour for the wash cycle and about as long again to get things dry. That gave Frank an hour. He paid his bill, crossed the street and entered the apartment building.

He hadn’t really formed a plan, even during the hours he had spent watching the building that morning. He knew from last night that the apartment was on the third floor at the back, right in the centre, which made it easy to find. The corridor smelled of soiled diapers and Pine-Sol. When he stood outside the door, he listened for a while. All he could hear was a baby crying on the next floor up and the bass boom of a stereo deep in the basement.

Frank had never broken the law in his life, and he was intelligent enough to recognize the irony of what he was about to do. But he was going to do it anyway because the absence of the ring was beginning to make his life hell. Nothing else really mattered.

For three days he had waited for the boy to return Joan’s jewellery, as his mother had told him to do. Three days of nail-biting memories: dreaming about the German soldier he had killed again; reliving Joan’s long illness and death; watching again, as if it were yesterday, the woman he had loved and lived with for nearly fifty years waste away in agony in front of his eyes. So thin did she become that one day the ring simply slipped off her finger onto the shiny pink quilt.

And now that he was on the brink of remembering the final horror, her death, the ring had assumed the potency of a talisman. He must have it back to keep his sanity, to keep the last memories at bay.

He had watched people on television open doors with credit cards, so he took out his seniors’ discount card and tried to push it between the door and the lock. It wouldn’t fit. He could get it part of the way in, then something blocked it; he waggled it back and forth, but still nothing happened. He cursed. This didn’t happen on television. What was he going to do now? It looked as if he was destined to fail. He rested his head against the wood and tried to think.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

His heart jumped and he turned as quickly as he could.

‘I said what do you think you’re doing?’

It was her, the slut, standing there with her hands on her hips. It was disgusting, that bare midriff. He could see her belly button. He looked away.

‘No, please.’ He found his voice. ‘Don’t. I won’t harm you.’

She laughed. ‘You harm me!’ she said. ‘That’s a laugh. Now go on, get out of here before I really do call the police. Old man.’

Frank had to admit she certainly didn’t look scared. ‘No, you don’t understand,’ he said. There was nothing for it now but to trust her. ‘The robbery. I overheard. You see, it was my house your son broke into.’

She stared at him for a moment, her expression slowly softening, turning sad. She was quite pretty, really, he thought. She had a nice mouth, though her eyes looked a bit hard.

‘You’d better come in, hadn’t you?’ she said, pushing past him and opening the door. ‘I came back for more quarters. Just as well I did, isn’t it, or who knows what might have happened?’ She had a husky voice, probably from smoking too much.

The room was sparsely furnished, mostly from the Salvation Army or Goodwill, by the looks of it, but it was clean and the only unpleasant smell Frank noticed was stale tobacco. The woman pulled a packet of Rothmans from her bag, sat down on the wing of an armchair and lit up. She blew out a plume of smoke, crossed her legs and looked at Frank. ‘Sit down, it’ll hold your weight,’ she said, nodding towards the threadbare armchair opposite her. He sat. ‘Now what do you want? Is it money?’

‘I just want what’s mine,’ Frank said. ‘Your son stole my wife’s jewellery. It’s very important to me, especially the wedding ring. I’d like it back.’