Ann Cleeves - Killjoy

‘My mother was at school with him,’ Anna said, ‘but they’ve not seen each other for years. I don’t think he’d confide in her.’ She paused. ‘Wouldn’t your father be able to tell you more?’

‘Oh, him!’ John said. ‘He’ll give nothing away. Not to me.’

‘I never knew my father,’ she said. ‘ It made me different right from the start not having a dad. I hated being different.’

It was a difficult admission for her to make but he seemed not to hear.

‘Who do you think killed Gabby Paston?’ he asked suddenly.

‘How would I know?’ she said. She shivered. She never wanted to think of Gabriella Paston again. The traffic cleared and John drove on, down Anchor Street to Hallowgate Fish Quay and over the cobbles past the new flats at Chandler’s Court. The fog had returned to the river with dusk.

‘I’m hungry,’ John said. He looked at his watch. It was nine o’clock. ‘There’s an hour to wait yet. Do you fancy fish and chips?’

She nodded and he pulled in under a street lamp close to the Seamen’s mission. They crossed the road together and she wondered if he would put his arm around her, give her some sign of affection. She longed to touch him but he seemed wrapped up in thoughts of his own and oblivious to her presence. A queue snaked around the inside of the chip shop and they joined it, standing one behind the other as if they were strangers. Inside the shop it was beautifully warm and the windows were misted with condensation. The talk in the queue was comfortingly domestic: of family rows and minor illnesses. No one mentioned the murders. Anna turned to John hoping to establish some contact with him but at the same time a customer opened the door to leave the shop and John’s attention seemed caught by a movement outside.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I thought I saw someone I recognized in the street. But it couldn’t have been.’

Because he thought he had glimpsed his mother running across the road towards Chandler’s Court, her raincoat blown open, and he knew that was impossible. His mother would be at home in their dull grey sitting room waiting for his father to return and provide a brief vicarious excitement with news of his work.

John would not let Anna eat the fish and chips in the car. It was his mother’s, he said. She would object to the smell and not let him borrow it again. They sat, huddled in their coats against the cold on a bench looking out over the river and still there was no physical contact between them.

He jumped up impatiently before she had finished, making a ball of the chip papers and throwing it into a rubbish bin.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘ We’ll have to go now if we’re going to get any sort of view.’

She followed him, caught up by his mood of expectation and his restlessness. Suddenly it seemed the most exciting thing in the world to be out with him with no idea how the evening would end.

This is it, she thought. This is how Abigail Keene felt when she left her stuffy family and went out into the world looking for adventure.

He drove up the hill away from the river past an old industrial estate. Most of the factories were empty and grass grew in cracks through the concrete. The few units still in production were protected by grilles and covered by spray painted graffiti. John turned into a wide street which Anna recognized immediately.

‘This is the Starling Farm estate,’ she said. She had never been anywhere near the place but she had seen it on the television. There was a small row of shops-a launderette, a bookmaker’s, a general store-which had been pelted with rocks and petrol bombs. Further up the street she saw the boarded-up houses, from which even the roof tiles had been looted. Because she had seen it on television she thought the estate was glamorous. It was like seeing a famous film star walking down the street.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

‘I told you,’ he said. ‘ To the races.’ He reached into the glove compartment and took out a cassette. The car was filled with music and she had no chance to ask what he meant.

The roads were quite empty and almost dark. Some of the street lamps had been shattered in the previous weeks’ disturbances. Anna thought it must have been like this in the blitz. She found it hard to believe that behind the blacked-out boarded-up windows families were living normal lives. The association with war-time Britain made the place seem exotic, different from anything she had ever known. It conjured up the nostalgia of an age-big-band music, Land Girls, stolen love affairs before men went away to fight.

John pulled off the road on to a piece of grass, a school playing field. Once it had been separated from the street by a high wire-mesh fence but the fence had been flattened and lay in a tangled heap to one side. In the headlights she saw white football goals, a climbing frame. There were dozens of other cars parked in an orderly line, facing the road. John found a space, switched off the music and the engine. In each of the cars were passengers staring at the darkness. Somewhere in the distance a clock struck ten.

‘We were just in time,’ John said. His hands were still clenched tight on the steering-wheel. ‘Now you’ll see.’

But still the street was quiet and she sat, waiting for something to happen.

She heard the engines first, revving up somewhere to the right of them, shattering the silence. Then there was the sound of a horn, loud as a starting gun, and the race had started. Two cars sped past them, bumpers almost touching so close to the audience that Anna could feel the vibration, smell the burnt rubber as they braked to turn the corner. John leaned forward, tense with concentration. It was as if he were competing himself.

‘This is the finishing line,’ he said. ‘They’ll do two complete circuits of the estate and end up here.’

‘Isn’t it dangerous?’ she asked.

‘Of course it’s dangerous!’ he said, not taking his eyes from the road. ‘That’s the point.’

‘How can they afford that sort of car,’ she asked, ‘living here?’ They had passed so quickly that she had not been able to identify the make but could tell they were big, powerful, expensive.

‘Don’t be dumb!’ he said. ‘They’re all stolen. It’s hotting. Haven’t you heard of it?’

Where do you think I got this one? he wanted to say. I chose it specially because it looks respectable, but it’s stolen just the same. I’m an expert. When I put it back tonight they won’t even have missed it. But he said nothing. Perhaps some faint instinct of self-preservation remained.

Before she could answer him the cars flashed past again. This time there was a gap between them and he said, almost to himself: ‘That’s Baz in front. I knew he could do it.’ Then, under his breath: ‘Hang on, man.’

‘You know these people?’

For the first time he looked at her cautiously. ‘Some of them,’ he said. ‘I went to school with some of them.’ Then more aggressively: ‘It doesn’t make them different, you know, living in a place like this.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘ Of course not. I didn’t mean that.’ But as she watched the tail-lights disappear into the darkness she thought that they were different. Her conventional upbringing re-asserted itself. ‘They’re breaking the law,’ she said. ‘ They’re criminals.’

‘Abigail Keene and Sam Smollett broke the law,’ he said savagely. ‘We think of them as heroes. It’s all a question of perspective.’

As the race reached its climax she expected the audience to leave their cars, to gather together at the roadside to cheer and shout but they remained where they were, insulated from each other by the vehicles. Still she could sense their tension and excitement. John wound down the window to listen for engine noise.