Nicola Barker - Behindlings

He shrugged, phlegmatically, ‘Somewhere along the line she got well and truly shafted, while you, on the other hand, toddled off to Southend and became…’ he grinned, devilishly (well aware of the irony), ‘an Angel of friggin’ Mercy. ’

‘Who told you?’

She seemed astonished.

‘The local hack. We did a part-exchange with him. He was very forthcoming.’

‘No.’

She was definite. ‘No,’ she repeated, ‘Bo wouldn’t have had anything to gain from telling…’ She paused for a second, her mind obviously racing, ‘Was it the estate agent?’ she asked. ‘He’s the only real weak link here…’

Hooch shook his head (although patently now registering the agent’s involvement in the affair). ‘Let’s just say that I put two and two together. Stuff I’ve been observing since I first arrived in this town… the contents of a letter which I’d all but forgotten about…’

Jo’s eyes tightened. ‘Which letter?’

Hooch smirked at her disquiet. ‘Something I picked up over a year ago, sent care of a certain lunatic West-Country potter…’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘He had one of those free-standing postboxes at the end of his driveway…’ Hooch grinned as he described it, gleefully outlining the shape of it with his hands, ‘irresistibly easy to pilfer.’

Jo was aghast. ‘You stole my letter to Wesley?’

‘No big deal,’ he shrugged, ‘I always put everything back once I’ve…’ He put his hand into his pocket and withdrew a couple of neatly-folded sheets of paper, ‘once I’ve photocopied. ’

Josephine stared down — aghast — as he unfolded them. She saw her letter, her handwriting. Hooch snorted at her expression. ‘Look,’ he sneered, shoving them away again, ‘before you feel the need to go and get all righteous on me, I don’t happen to give a shit about the various permutations of your vulgar little story. I only care about Wesley and his involvement with it.’

‘Well that’s touching.’ She sounded suitably caustic.

Hooch smiled, ‘He’s not a swan, darling. He doesn’t fuck a girl once and then bond for life with her.’

Josephine glanced off, sideways.

‘And even on the understanding that Wes knows or remembers — or gives a damn — about your sordid teenage activities,’ he continued, ‘that wouldn’t be enough. Because you Followed. You fucked up. And your case — no matter what it is, how worthy — will be permanently contaminated by that.’

Hooch placed his hat back onto his head again. Jo stared at it, at the distinctive logo, somewhat blankly, frowning slightly.

‘What does that mean?’ she asked, pointing.

‘He’s a creature of habit, our Wes,’ Hooch talked on, as if he hadn’t heard her. ‘He protects himself with these rituals. They give him a sense of security. They allow him to keep people at a distance, to push people away. I’ve seen it all a thousand times before, believe me.’

As Hooch spoke, Jo rolled her eyes skywards, staring intently into the thin, grey ruler of cloud neatly measuring the two buildings above them.

Hooch wasn’t buying her nonchalance. ‘You probably think it’s your charming personality that’s attracted him,’ he scoffed, ‘or your excruciatingly embarrassing display in the bar yesterday. But it isn’t. It can’t be. There has to be something extra. Or at least he thinks there is, and that’s what’s keeping him interested…’

‘Well there isn’t anything extra,’ she interrupted, defiantly, ‘and even if there were, I’d hardly go out of my way to tell you all about it, would I? Or him, for that matter.’

‘Not good enough,’ Hooch shook his head (delighted to have snapped her out of her complacent posture), ‘because Wesley never interacts with the people Following — and it’s not even because he doesn’t want to, but because he knows that it wouldn’t work; the whole Following system — the institution — would collapse, would lose all its meaning if he did. He knows that. And the Loiters — the Following — the Behindlings, are vital to him. He wouldn’t be viable, he wouldn’t be anything without them.’

Viable

— Jo frowned –

That word again

‘No,’ she eventually spoke out, ‘I’m not swallowing it. Wesley hates the Following. You’re totally deluded if you think otherwise.’

Hooch stared at her, in silence, for a short duration, then he continued on talking, as if what she’d just said had barely registered with him. ‘I’d’ve guessed,’ he mused thoughtfully, ‘on first glance — obviously — that you were working on behalf of local industry. But it doesn’t make sense. You’ve got environmental interests, so they wouldn’t touch you with a…’

Josephine snorted, under her breath, looked up into the air again. This did niggle him.

‘What’s so amusing?’

‘For all you know,’ she told him, ‘that might make me exactly the kind of person they’d want on side.’

‘Bollocks.’

He wasn’t swallowing it. But she expanded this idea, nevertheless, in a blatant attempt to provoke him, ‘For all you know, they might’ve offered me some kind of humanitarian incentive to trail Wesley around. Or maybe… maybe they thought my reputation as a local Mata Hari might work as a cunning smoke-screen to veil over some fantastically audacious plot they’re hatching… or… or perhaps they agreed to make some fundamental environmental concessions if I agreed to help them out with a little bit of harmless surveillance activity, or to fund a worthwhile… a… a pamphlet on The Pill or Cystitis or some other criminally under-publicised feminine health issue…’

Hooch was unimpressed. ‘Who do you think you are?’ he asked dourly. ‘The Joan of Arc of the fucking Uterus?’

She laughed out loud at this. An anxious laugh. He was too close for comfort. He was too close by half.

‘You must be very proud,’ he said, ‘to have made that difficult transition from local ride to local saviour.’

Jo gazed over his shoulder, her face hardening. ‘I’m meant to be meeting Doc,’ she muttered.

‘There’s something clever about you,’ Hooch whispered back, ‘and that’s precisely why I want you out of here.’

Her eyeline shifted.

‘I want you gone,’ he said (in case she remained in any doubt about what he’d meant the first time).

She shook her head, confusedly. ‘I really must be missing something,’ she murmured, ‘are you actually threatening me, Hooch? Or are you threatened by me? D’you think I’ve got too close to Wesley or to the big prize money? D’you think I might try and steal them both away?’

Hooch adjusted his glasses on his long, wide nose. They slid down again, immediately. ‘The Loiter isn’t an issue,’ he announced calmly, ‘the Loiter’s old news. It’s a done deal already.’

‘How?’

He shrugged.

She stared at him; his long face, his dolorous expression, his unbelievable aura of insufferable complacency. ‘I don’t believe you.’

‘You can believe what you like,’ he grimaced, ‘I don’t care what you believe.’

‘Then why haven’t you claimed it, yet?’ she persisted. ‘Why hasn’t there been any fuss?’

‘There are some things,’ he placed his hat back onto his head then calmly reached out his hand and took one of the coffees from her, gently prising the lid open with his thumb, ‘far more important than prizes, Bean. That’s something you don’t yet seem to have grasped about this whole situation. We were Following long before this competition ever began, and we’ll be Following for a long time after. It’s a long-term investment. We’re in this for the long haul.’