Reginald Hill - Born Guilty

He was distracted from this bit of great detectivery by Mirabelle, who materialized at his side while the last Amen was still trembling on the air. He guessed the little side door was probably nailed up too.

‘Now look who’s there,’ she exclaimed in a tone of surprise that rang as false as a cracked bell. ‘Beryl. We were just talking about you.’

‘Hi, Mirabelle. Hi, Joe. Sorry, can’t stop to talk. I’m on my way to work.’

She was a nurse at the Royal Infirmary and, cap apart, was already kitted out in her uniform.

Mirabelle said, ‘Joseph was just saying he’d run you there, weren’t you, Joseph? All them attacks, you don’t want to be walking round there by yourself.’

There’d been a couple of recent incidents with a flasher in the hospital grounds and the police were advising extra caution till the intruder was caught.

‘Well, that’s very kind of you, Joe …’

‘No trouble at all,’ assured Mirabelle. ‘Now excuse me, I want a word with Rev. Pot.’

She moved off and Joe found Beryl regarding him quizzically. He returned the look with pleasure. She was … he sought for the right word and all he could come up with was sturdy. This was why he had to invent answers for crossword puzzles and make up his own clues to fit them. On the other hand, what was wrong with sturdy when it expressed not just a physical but a spiritual characteristic? Strong, self-reliant, dependable, trustworthy …

‘What are you staring at, Joe?’ she asked.

‘You. You look great,’ he said. Smooth talker he might not be, but he knew better than to offer sturdy as a compliment. Not that sturdiness meant lack of shape. And those wide brown eyes and full red lips …

The full red lips opened to show strong white teeth in a moist pink mouth as she yawned.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Nothing to do with you.’

He looked even more closely at her and saw that as well as sturdy and great she looked tired.

‘You getting any sleep?’ he asked.

‘Surely. Between getting home in the morning, doing the chores, and picking Desmond up from school at three, I usually manage to snatch a couple of minutes,’ she laughed. ‘Are you serious about this lift?’

He led her out to the Cloisters.

‘Going up in the world, aren’t we?’ she mocked. ‘I thought only the nobs got to park here?’

‘I’m Tin Can’s token PI,’ said Joe.

She laughed. He liked making her laugh.

In the car he said, ‘You so tired, why don’t you let your sister pick Desmond up?’

‘Already she gives him his breakfast, drops him off at school. If I’m not there to pick him up, he’s going to start thinking I’m his auntie, Lucy’s his ma.’

‘At least you could duck the odd rehearsal till you’re off nights.’

She let out a gasp of mock horror.

‘You want Rev. Pot to nail me to his penitent stool? No, the singing’s no sweat. In fact, when I hear that music and open my mouth, it’s about the only time I stop feeling tired. Gives you a bigger hit than ganja, don’t you feel that, Joe?’

‘You wouldn’t expect a clean-living boy to know anything about that, would you?’ said Joe.

‘This the same clean-living boy who’s running around with the Mutant from Planet X?’

‘Beryl, let me tell you about Galina …’

‘Joe, it’s OK,’ she said. ‘I’m only joking. It’s none of my business. Just like what’s mine is none of yours, OK? This’ll do.’

Obediently he stopped the car and she was out of the door before he realized they weren’t at the Infirmary’s main gate but at a side entrance which ran between the path labs and research blocks. Beyond these buildings she could either follow the service road to the main block or take a tree-shaded pathway which curved through the grounds to the nursing wards, cutting off several miles of corridor.

He didn’t doubt which way she’d go, and he didn’t doubt which way Mirabelle would go if she heard he’d let Beryl loose unaccompanied.

‘Hold on!’ cried Joe.

From beneath his seat he took a heavy steel spanner about a foot long, with tape bound around the handle to provide a firmer grip. This had been a present from Merv Golightly whose constant companion in his taxi was a monstrous lug wrench called Percy. The mere sight of Merv’s lanky figure twirling Percy like a conductor’s baton was usually enough to subdue most troublemakers. In Joe’s line of business, a similar aid was very necessary, opined Merv, and Little Perce had been the result. Joe, who found violence either coming from him or aimed at him very scary, had never found occasion to use it. But there wasn’t much point offering himself as Beryl’s defender if all his defence consisted of was warding off blows with his head.

Fearful of the woman’s ridicule, however, he took the precaution of slipping Little Perce up his jacket sleeve before pursuing her.

‘Joe, what are you doing here?’ she demanded as he caught up with her.

‘I promised Mirabelle I’d see you safe,’ he panted, thinking maybe he should take up Merv’s invitation to start working out with him at the Hoplite Health Club.

‘Now look, Joe,’ she said, beginning to sound angry, ‘I can look after myself …’

‘You can, maybe,’ he interrupted. ‘What about me? You want I should be more afraid of you than of Mirabelle?’

She shook her head, laughing.

‘Joe, sometimes you’re so down to earth, I can’t see how you can bear to keep on playing this PI game. You must be able to see you’re not cut out for it. Most of the time you make no money, so all you’re doing being so-called self-employed is stopping your entitlement to benefit.’

‘You think I’d be better sitting on my butt, waiting for my giro?’ he said fiercely.

‘Could be. In any case, things are getting better, or so they keep telling us. There’ll be jobs to go for …’

‘You taken a good look at me lately, girl? Jobs will come slow and I’ll be way, way down the queue. Also, what do I want with another job so I can punch a clock for a few more years always wondering when it’ll punch back and tell me I’m surplus to requirements again? Leastways, being my own boss, my so-called friends can tell me I’m useless, but they can’t dump me for it!’

They strode on, each so deep in a confusion of feeling that they could probably have run a whole gauntlet of flashers without noticing. When they reached the buildings, Joe stopped and said, ‘I’ll be on my way now.’

‘You still here, Joe?’ she said with a good affectation of surprise. ‘Well, thanks for the lift.’

‘Yeah, well, that’s OK,’ said Joe, feeling both wretched and indignant. He turned to go but had only taken a few steps when she caught his arm.

‘Hey, don’t I get a farewell kiss?’

He aimed at her cheek. She gave him her lips, briefly but fully.

As she stepped away she said, ‘Friends don’t think you’re useless, Joe. They just worry about you. That’s what friends are for. You fall out, then you kiss and make up.’

‘Don’t think I’m quite made up yet,’ he said, moving towards her again.

She turned away, laughing.

‘Only way to get another kiss here is have a heart attack, Joe,’ she tossed over her shoulder.

Could be that’s what I’m doing, thought Joe, watching her go. The way her body moved beneath the blue and white skirt, sturdy was no longer the word that came to mind.

He wandered back beneath the arching trees, letting his fancy drift at will. No harm in thinking, was there? But he was no sadist, so why was his fancy making Beryl scream as he unbuttoned her uniform?

Suddenly he was out of his imagined embrace and back in the real black autumn night with a chill wind rustling the dead leaves at his feet and somewhere to the left of him where the darkness was deepest the tail end of a long scream fading away into the night.