Nicola Barker - Behindlings

The officer threw Hooch a look of such coruscating disparagement that had he been even remotely morally suggestible his cranial cortex would’ve withered and then disintegrated. Instead he simply cleared his throat, scratched his head and climbed back on board.

‘So are you filing a summons, then?’ Doc asked. The officer turned to face him again, shaking his head slightly, ‘That’s a private matter, sir.’

‘So you’re not filing anything?’

The officer raised his eyebrows, smiling warningly.

‘So it’s a family matter, then?’ Doc persisted, fully intent on maintaining the pressure. The police officer stepped back a few inches. ‘It’s a matter of some…’ he considered his words, carefully, ‘some sensitivity, shall we say.’

‘Ah.’ Doc rubbed his hands together, drawing another breath to continue his interrogation, but the officer was having none of it.

‘I’m afraid that’s the best I can do for you, sir.’

He bent down — as a final gesture — to stroke behind Dennis’s ears, but the terrier (in an arbitrary change of heart) curled his head sideways and out of the officer’s way.

The officer chuckled under his breath, smiled up at Jo, gave Doc a smart, half-salute and crossed back over the road again, tapping his hand onto the car bonnet as he circled his way around it to alert the woman officer — still on the radio — to follow him. This she duly did.

‘Find out exactly what it is that they want.’ Doc was handing out curt instructions before the pair had even made it through the front gate.

‘We weren’t even friends,’ Jo murmured (perhaps a little accusingly), ‘she was always really… well, bossy. ’

Doc didn’t react to this. ‘We’ll be down at The Lobster Smack from here-on-in. We’re camping nearby. And remember,’ he warned, ‘they’re probably just as interested in us as we are in them, so be wary.’

‘Interested in us?’ Jo echoed blankly.

‘The Behindlings. They like to know what we’re doing, where we’re staying. Things about the competition. Contacts and stuff. Whatever we know about Wesley, obviously. His activities. Trespass, blackmail, the bribery, especially. Don’t even…’

‘Sorry — the… sorry? ’

But before Jo could question Doc any further he’d slapped his thigh (calling Dennis to heel), and was heading briskly for the van. Hooch started up the engine. Doc picked up Dennis then paused, just for a second, before throwing him on board.

‘If you come into the pub later and there’s a blind man hanging around, don’t breathe a word of anything in front of him. He’s one of…’ Doc pointed towards the jeep. ‘Ex-special branch. Play it by ear…’ Doc swiped his hand through the air, ‘ you know.’ Do I?

Jo nodded, bemusedly, then opened her mouth.

‘Know what I found especially interesting?’ Doc quickly cut in. Jo shut her mouth again.

‘The way he said, “It’s not about a boy.” With a special emphasis. Did you notice? That emphasis? Not about a boy. ’

Doc gave Jo a significant look, tapped the side of his nose, then threw the dog on board and climbed in stiffly after him.

Hooch didn’t drive away immediately. He waited until the officers were standing at Katherine’s door and knocking, until their knock had been answered — by a flustered-seeming Ted — until they’d invited themselves in and the door was shutting.

Then he let rip; accelerating sharply from a standing start, his tyres squealing, his suspension crashing as he came down off the pavement, his exhaust rattling a coarse tattoo onto the tarmac. In a gesture of defiance, Jo supposed.

She stood and stared after the fast-retreating van, frowning at the prodigious volume of its exhaust emissions, and observing — quite dispassionately — how the back doors hadn’t been shut properly. The right one flew open. A rucksack (Doc’s) tumbled out and almost collided with a red Ford Corsa travelling — more sedately — in the opposite direction.

The Corsa sounded its horn, swerving. The van stopped. Its hazards went on. Hooch jumped out and ran around to retrieve Doc’s possessions, looking — as far as Jo could tell in the half-darkness — not even remotely concerned by the chaos he’d unleashed. Two further cars ground to a halt behind him. Then a third. One flashed its lights to speed him up. But he smiled and took his time.

Jo shook her head, appalled –

And these people are my allies?

God have Mercy.

Hooch climbed back on board, with a swagger (how did he manage it?) but this time pulled off quietly (Doc’s calming influence, presumably).

Once the van had gone, Jo turned her attentive brown eyes back towards the neat white bungalow and stared at it for a while, inspecting every external detail, as if thoroughly engrossed by its neatness, its symmetry. After a while, gentle drizzle began falling. Jo continued standing. She continued staring.

Tiny droplets of rain soon formed a diaphanous cloche over her close-shaven head. But only when the water achieved sufficient density (once slightly larger droplets began dribbling down her forehead, the back of her neck) did Jo emerge from her reverie and shake it — twice, most expertly — like a small, damp, brown vole on the edge of a riverbank.

Then she pulled up her hood, as far as it would go, and gazed helplessly up the road. ‘But why won’t it go away?’

This querulous question emerged so quietly from the dreamy darkness where her face had once been, was framed so sadly, so meekly, that had — by sheer chance — a tiny muntjak been passing, it would’ve paused, lifted high its pale, soft muzzle and huffed a benign but inquisitive blast of sweet, straw-scented breath into the cold night air.

It would’ve shown no fear.

Jo’s hood swivelled around (a tiny Horsewoman of the Apocalypse, momentarily steedless), towards Dewi’s green bungalow (the lights were off. He was working late, presumably).

‘I’m so sorry, ’ she murmured woefully, hunching up her shoulders, expelling a small, dry cough, adjusting her luminous plastic braces, wiping her ghostly nose on her harsh, woollen cuff and stepping — with a self-loathing splash — back (always back) into the gutter’s spurtling trough.

Ten minutes later, they were arguing like lovers.

‘It’s a gift, you dolt. Where the fuck are your manners?’ Wesley was sitting at the kitchen table, surrounded by feathers.

‘Oh it’s a gift now, is it? D’you hear that, Bron? D’you hear that?’ Katherine raised her husky voice (and her pale hand, correspondingly; holding it high in the air, palm turned ceiling-wards, like an alabaster juggler) to include an — as yet — invisible caged animal in their conversation. ‘He calls me a cunt, Bron, he leaves a lamb’s tail behind him with no explanation, he steals my mango-stone creature, he messes with my hydrangea. And now this: a magnificent wild water-bird slaughtered for supper.’

‘Cunt?’ Wesley frowned, bemusedly (falling at the first fence — refusing all the others). ‘You’ve lost me there.’

Katherine paused for a moment, caught slightly off balance.

‘Was Dick an ancestor, then?’ Wesley queried, returning dutifully to his plucking (the only trace of implicit innuendo in this question evinced by the slight arching of his left eyebrow).

‘Dick who?’ Katherine scowled.

‘Turpin. I saw that huge pub named after him up on the motorway.’

‘ A road,’ she demurred, ‘and there’s no real connection. Our ancestors were Dutch. The name was… was bastardised.’