Reginald Hill - Born Guilty

As he spoke, he swept the papers on his desk together and closed the file.

And Joe, though he couldn’t be absolutely sure upside down, wondered why, if it wasn’t Woodbine’s department, the super happened to have what looked very much like a photo of the dead boy’s face in front of him?

There was a tap at the door and Chivers’s head appeared.

‘Miss Butcher to see you, sir,’ he said.

Butcher was only five-two and built like a Third World waif, but she came in like the Queen’s Champion at a trial by combat.

‘You OK, Joe?’ she asked. ‘Superintendent, I’d like a word alone with my client.’

‘By all means,’ said Woodbine. ‘We’re finished here anyway. Thanks again for your help, Joe. By the way, I’m having a little do Sunday lunchtime to celebrate my promotion, say thanks to everyone who’s helped and encouraged me. It wouldn’t be complete without you. Do try to make it, midday, very informal, bubbles and a bit of a buffet is what my good lady’s got in mind. Do try to come.’

He put his arm across Joe’s shoulders and urged him gently to the door.

‘Yeah, well, thanks a lot, Superintendent …’

‘Make it Willie on Sunday, eh?’ breathed Woodbine in his ear. ‘Keep the formality for in front of the troops!’

‘Yeah sure,’ said Joe. ‘Willie on Sunday it is. Goodbye now.’

As they walked down the ornate Victorian staircase, he said, ‘Hey, thanks for coming.’

‘Don’t know why I bother; Woodbine’s obviously got you all dusted down and gift wrapped. So fill me in. Just what happened to put you into bed with that smarmy fascist?’

‘He’s OK, really,’ said Joe. He described the evening’s events which Butcher listened to with much shaking of her head.

‘Sixsmith,’ she said, ‘you’ve got such a talent for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, I bet you were born in a different hospital from the one they took your mother to.’

This was a touch too subtle for Joe so he let it go.

Outside, he found his car parked in front of the station with Little Perce on the passenger seat. Butcher headed for hers which was parked in a space marked Chief Constable.

‘Hey, I’m sorry you got dragged out like this,’ he called after her.

‘That’s OK. It was worth it. Sight of me made him ladle on the old pals act so much, you got an invite to his party. Now you’ll be able to take a real close-up look at Mrs Georgie, won’t you?’

‘Hey, no,’ said Joe in alarm. ‘I’m going to no party …’

‘You don’t, I’ll go and I’ll say you sent me,’ she retorted. Then she began to laugh.

‘What?’ said Joe.

‘Willie on Sunday it is !’ she gurgled. ‘Sixsmith, one way or another, you may yet be the death of me!’

Saturday night came and Joe found he was greeted at the Uke with much less hostility from Gallie’s parents than he’d expected.

As he helped the girl carry a round of drinks from the bar, she whispered in his ear, ‘By the way, I told Mum you were gay. You know how they worry.’

‘You what ?’ said Joe, but she just laughed and then they were back at the table. So much for innocence. Now he’d have to find a way of disabusing the Hackers. Not because he felt demeaned or anything. Nothing wrong with being gay. If you were, that is. But if you weren’t, and the Hackers found out he wasn’t, they might start thinking he’d told their daughter he was to lull her into a false sense of security before he pounced. Or was he being paranoid?

Whatever, here and now wasn’t the time, not till they’d got to know him a bit better. But he was dismayed to find himself checking his speech and gestures for anything camp!

A native Lutonian, George Hacker was easy to get on with once he discovered in Joe a shared interest in the ups and downs of the town’s football club. Galina, his wife, eyed Joe much more warily at first. She was a broader, less angular version of her daughter and still retained the strong Manchester accent of her youth. She hit Joe with a volley of probing questions which he answered with an openness as natural as her curiosity till Gallie said, ‘What’s up, Mum? Think Joe’s an illegal immigrant or something.’

‘Don’t be daft!’ said her mother flushing. ‘I just like to know about folk. I’m sure Mr Sixsmith is just as interested in knowing about us.’

‘Course I am,’ said Joe, seizing this heaven-sent opportunity. ‘You from the Ukraine yourself then, Mrs Hacker?’

‘Not me,’ she laughed. ‘Manchester born and bred. My dad settled there after the war, isn’t that right, Father?’

Taras Kovalko took enough time to give the impression this was a question needing serious consideration before he nodded his head. It was a fine head with a strong-featured, deep-lined face beneath a crown of unruly white hair. His daughter had inherited his shrewd watchful eyes, but while her gaze had the unselfish wariness of a mother concerned for her daughter, the old man’s had more of the suspicious cornered animal in it …

Steady, boy, thought Joe, uneasy at this sudden flight of imagination. You’ll be writing poetry next.

‘Must’ve been hard, settling down in a new country like that, Mr Kovalko,’ he said.

‘You say so? How did you find it?’

The overlay of Lancashire on his native accent gave a rather comic effect, but it would have taken a braver as well as a ruder man than Joe to show amusement.

‘I was born here in Luton,’ explained Joe. He’d already told the daughter this and the old man had been listening keenly. So was his reply an attempt at diversion?

He said, ‘You ever go back home? To the Ukraine, I mean? Vinnitsa, isn’t it?’

The mention of the city brought the eyes into direct contact with his for a moment, then they dropped to the half empty spirit glass before him.

‘No,’ he said. ‘There is nothing for me there. No family, no friends. My life is here now. Has been here for nearly fifty years. I am an Englishman now. Like you.’

He tossed back the rest of his drink and put the glass on the table with an emphatic bang.

‘English he might be but he still likes the old firewater, isn’t that right, Taras?’ laughed George Hacker. He picked up the glass and headed for the bar.

Joe said, ‘You still come here though, to the Uke.’

Kovalko shrugged.

‘Old parents need a place to go so they are not always under their children’s feet. This is as good as any other place.’

‘Must bring back memories, all the same,’ said Joe. ‘Just hearing the old language for instance.’

Kovalko said, ‘Look around, Mr Sixsmith. How many here speak the old language, do you think?’

‘How many’s it take to have a conversation?’ said Joe. ‘In any case, aren’t there more people coming now from the old country, especially since it got its independence back?’

‘Independence? From what? They lose one yoke, they will rush to put on another,’ said Kovalko cynically. ‘Pray to God they can do it without finding an excuse to fight each other.’

‘I didn’t know there was any chance of that in the Ukraine,’ said Joe.

‘We are talking about human beings. Violence is always a possibility. All that the good society can do is minimize opportunity, either to perform it or provoke it. But absolute control is impossible. There must be streets and pubs even in Luton that you will not visit alone after dark, Mr Sixsmith.’

‘Because I’m black, you mean?’ said Joe. ‘Yeah, well, maybe …’

I’m being diverted again, he thought.

He said, ‘I don’t say I wouldn’t run for cover if the Nazis ever took over here. But doesn’t history show that in the end they always get beaten because there’s more inside most people that wants to live in peace with other people than wants to fight them? Shoot, you must know this better than anybody. Must have been times when the Nazis took over your country and started shipping off the Jews to the extermination camps and folk like yourself to the forced labour camps that you felt this was it, the end, nowhere else for the human race to go. But we won, and you’re here, and you’ve got your family, so the best is always possible as well as the worst. Nothing for you to feel guilty about.’