Keith Ridgway - Hawthorn & Child

One of them is called Child. Would you believe it? I think of Byron. Whilome in Albion’s isle there dwelt a youth. The other is almost called Harold, but not quite. Hardiman or something. They are terribly polite. And not ragged, not drab. I expected, I don’t know why, something out of The Sweeney. But of course they’re all smartly suited these days. Good shoes, shiny little phones, neat leather notebooks. Spooks . No … that’s spooks, obviously. I can’t think of any police dramas.

— And why did he want to see you?

— A book. He wanted to pitch a story at me.

He hesitates, the Child man. The other one looks at him.

— A story?

— A story, yes.

I wonder what the name leads him into. Bad jokes, of course. Wordplay. But do people make a metaphor of him? Or of themselves in front of him? Not that he would notice, in all likelihood, being inured.

— This was the first time you’d seen him? In a while?

— In about a year maybe. And not much before that. I used to … well I knew him when he was at Southern. Then there was drink, I heard, I believe. Though people are terrible talkers. As far as I know he’s been doing freelance bits and pieces, and some ghost writing. That sort of thing.

— You were never particularly close then?

— No, no. Not at all. He’s just been somebody, you know, in the business.

A telephone rings. It’s the one who isn’t Child. He shakes his head, retrieves it. Pokes a button.

— Sorry.

— So he had a story to tell you?

— To pitch to me. Yes. Yes he did. A silly fantasy thing.

— You weren’t interested?

— Not my sort of bag at all I’m afraid.

— Can you say what it was about?

— A wolf. A band of wolves. And their adventures and conflicts with …

The policemen exchange a glance.

— … with various other groups. Foxes. Dogs. Ravens. What is it?

— Nothing. Please go on.

The one that isn’t Child is writing furiously in his notebook.

— Well that was it really. Battles and so forth.

— He told you this?

— Yes. The outline of it.

— Did he show you a … er …

— Manuscript?

— Yes, was there a manuscript?

I travel as much as I can. I can afford it. I like hotel rooms. I like airports. I like train stations and large towns. I like cities. My French is good, my German passable. I travel alone. I enjoy art galleries. Museums, sometimes. I read for pleasure, for a change. I grow a beard, or I cut my hair very short. I hire prostitutes. Male or female doesn’t matter. I like them to be thin.

— No. No manuscript. He described, merely. So … I can’t remember the details.

— Had he actually written anything, did he say?

Oh they are very much at sea, these policemen. They both look at me. They look terribly trusting. I’m sure they aren’t — not really. But they can look it. I wonder how skilled they are at managing their looks. Their expressions and their tone. I have spent a lot of time wondering what policemen will be like.

— I’m sorry. I haven’t made myself clear. It was not his idea. It was not his story. He was presenting it to me on behalf of another. An author.

— Who?

Once, in Bucharest, I assaulted a boy. He was skinny and pale and he arrived with a black eye and I found him uncooperative and sullen and I hit him first and he laughed. I hit him again, a number of times. I kicked him. I threw a bathroom glass at him, and my toothbrush disappeared under the bed. I beat him with a bedside lamp. I hit him on the fucking head until he blacked out and then I cut his skin with broken glass and for a while I thought he was dead.

— I can’t remember the name. Asian, I think. But no, I can’t recall it.

— Ashid?

— Yes. Yes that was it. Ashid.

— You’re sure.

— Positive. It was on the tip of my tongue.

— What did he tell you about Ashid?

— Nothing.

— Nothing at all?

— Nothing at all.

— There is a written version though. It’s been written?

I roll that round my mouth for a moment.

— I believe so. Yes. Certainly, yes. There is a manuscript. And if I had been interested he would have brought it to me, I presume.

— He didn’t have it with him?

— I don’t think so. He would have shown it to me I’m sure, if he had. Wouldn’t he? He would have got me to read the first couple of pages or something.

Child does a little shrug, a sigh. He is quite handsome. He considers me for a moment.

— The wolves, he says.

— Yes. The wolves.

— Did they have names?

— Oh. Goodness. Yes. There was one name. Certainly one name. The whole thing was a sort of memoir of this one wolf. Estragon? Escargot?

I laugh.

— Estator?

This is the other chap. He has something wrong with his face. Or perhaps it’s just a bad shave. Sleep scars. Something or other. He looks somehow off kilter.

— Why, yes. I think so. Say it again?

— Estator.

— That’s the one. How on earth did you know?

He ignores me and goes back to writing in his little book.

— It would be very helpful to us, says Child, if you could remember any more of the story. Names. And if there is anything else Trainer told you about the author. That would be particularly … well, it would be very helpful.

— I have to admit being immensely curious. You don’t suspect foul play, do you?

They shrug, both of them, at precisely the same time, with exactly the same movement. It’s quite comic. Child rubs an eye.

— No. Not as such. He didn’t mention anything about expecting someone, or about having an appointment or anything, did he? Last night I mean, after he left you?

— No. Nothing like that.

— Have you ever been to his home? asks the non-Child.

— No.

— Did he mention that he’d been talking about this story to anyone else? Child again.

— No.

— Did he mention the name Gull?

The boy in Bucharest spat out a tooth and let them clean him up and dress him and walk him out, all the time with his eyes on me, blank and empty, nothing in them, like painted-on eyes. I wish I had killed him. I am sure he is dead by now anyway. A life like that doesn’t last. But still. It could have been me that ended it. But it was blown about instead by others — stepped on and kicked and thrown across rooms by dumb, ignorant others. Not by me. But I was afraid, in the hotel, that I would be caught.

— No.

— Price?

— Of what?

— No, I mean, the name … Price.

— No.

— Mishazzo?

— Me …?

— Mishazzo?

— No, certainly not.

They finish up with the taking of phone numbers, the spelling of my address, with the exchange of cards. They tell me this and that. That they will be in touch again, that I am to call them at any time if anything comes back to me. That I am to report to them anything out of the ordinary. Especially any contact from anyone asking about Trainer, or about the manuscript. The story , Child calls it. I am to do my best to recall anything I might have forgotten. I am to try ever so hard.

I cannot recall the boy’s name. Or how much I paid for everything to be looked after. Or how much longer I stayed in Bucharest. Or whether it was before or after I killed the girl in Stockholm, or whether the girl in Stockholm had been as easy to kill as the girl in Glasgow whose throat I cut one Christmas Day and who seemed to me, in her confusion at the point of death, so useless, such an anti-climax.

Estator was still as the ground. The air was thick with the smell of man. Of his covered joints and his smoke. The slant of the earth mistook itself for a hill, but Estator was still as stone. He considered the brothers of the east and his sisters in the inner circle, and he counted to himself the generations leading to this point like the bough of a great tree. He spoke to the man.