Rupert Thomson - Dreams of Leaving

While his eyes were scouring the top of the building for further developments, a white Mercedes drew up on the street below. A West Indian climbed out. Coloured chap. Bit shady by all accounts. Could this be the owner?

The West Indian looked right and left as he locked the car door. A routine scan. Then he turned and walked towards The Bunker, lifting his shoulders a couple times, dropping his chin, the moves a boxer makes as he approaches the ring. He opened the double-doors and disappeared inside. Lights came on in a second-floor window. The owner, then.

Peach stirred the thick puddle his ice-cream had become. Part of him wanted to believe, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that Moses Highness had drowned in the river, that nobody had ever escaped from the village, that the hundred per cent record was still intact. But now he had proof of his suspicions — the proof that he had, in a way, been dreading. The young man in the leather jacket was no carbon-copy of George Highness — they shared certain basic characteristics: above-average height, similar hair-colour — and yet Peach knew he had seen Moses. It shook him. To know, after twenty-four years, that the baby had survived, escaped, grown up. In the outside world. Anathema to Peach. Anathema and nightmare. He stirred and stirred at his ice-cream. The man in the carpet-slippers asked him if he had finished. ‘No,’ he said.

He had seen what he had come to see and yet he couldn’t leave. Some part of him still needed convincing. He had made inroads. He felt he understood the territory now. He might almost have been on home ground. And he had time to spare. So he waited.

After about fifteen minutes the double-doors swung open again. The West Indian appeared. He wore a dark suit (black? navy? maroon? from this distance it was difficult to tell) and a white tie. He lit a cigarette with a gold lighter and leaned against the wall. He smoked. His head moved, following cars, but he didn’t seem to be waiting for anybody, just passing the time of day. He flicked his cigarette into the road. A shower of sparks.

The black curtain still open on the fourth floor. The light still on.

Dusk came down. Lights in the café now.

Peach suddenly realised how visible he was. A fat man in a lit window. His watching had become conspicuous. He should leave. Move closer. Adopt a more strategic position.

As he paid the bill he noticed the weight of the case in his hand. An inconvenience. Removing his diary and his binoculars, he asked the owner of the café if he would mind looking after the case, just for half an hour or so. The owner said he closed at nine. ‘Fine,’ Peach said.

Outside the café he paused just to one side of the window and hung his binoculars round his neck. When the West Indian was looking the other way, he walked off down the road. He crossed about two hundred yards below the nightclub and began to work his way back. Facing the nightclub, on the same side of the road, stood a fish and chip shop. Wood-veneer tables, red plastic chairs with spindly black legs, white neon lighting that showed every crease and vein in your face. No cover there. But just this side of the fish and chip shop window, Peach found a garage doorway. A low brick wall reaching out across the pavement hid him from the waist down. Shadow did the rest.

He now stood less than forty feet from the West Indian. Even without his binoculars, he could see the built-up heels of the man’s boots. He could also see the side-door of the nightclub — Moses’s front door, in effect. It was ideal.

He checked his watch. Exactly 7.30.

He took his diary out and turned to the page where he had jotted down the times of trains. Trains left Victoria for Haywards Heath at twenty-three minutes past the hour. He had to connect with the local train which would take him to within eight miles of New Egypt. The last local train left Haywards Heath at 10.35. If he caught the 9.23 from Victoria, he would get into Haywards Heath at 10.16. The 9.23, then, was the last train he could catch. A taxi to Victoria would take half an hour, perhaps less. That left him with just under an hour and a half. It ought to be enough. It would have to be.

Twenty minutes passed.

Then the black door opened and Moses appeared. He had changed into a dark suit. Light slid off his wet hair. As he started towards his car, the West Indian called out. Moses paused, turned, walked over. The two men seemed to know each other well. They compared jackets and ties, pushed each other around. They both tilted their heads back when they laughed. They lit cigarettes, and smoke poured from their fingers like slow water. The damaged neon sign above their heads — FLOR AN’s — lit them both in the sharpest detail.

Peach raised his binoculars and focused on Moses. Neither the eyes (hooded, grey) nor the nose (long, slightly crooked) seemed familiar. The mouth, though. The smile that kept forming there. A smile he had seen too often in the past. It belonged to George Highness. The son had inherited his father’s smile.

Now the two men were separating. But when Moses had almost reached his car, he turned, ran back, embraced, smothered, all but crushed the West Indian. Peach lowered his binoculars. Curious behaviour.

Moses returned to his car. He got in, slammed the door. He turned the ignition and the Rover fired first time, engine shuddering. He roared away in a cloud of blue exhaust. Two blasts on the horn. The West Indian shook his head. He straightened his clothes, retouched his hair. Then he settled back against the wall and lit another cigarette. He seemed to be smiling to himself.

And there Peach should have left it, he realised afterwards. That smile had clinched it. No question as to the young man’s identity now. And yet he couldn’t tear himself away. He still had an hour or so and he wanted to exploit this opportunity to the full. After all, he wouldn’t have another. He left the shadows and crossed the side-street. He walked up to the West Indian.

‘Nice evening,’ he said.

The West Indian flicked his cigarette into the gutter. He dusted his jacket with a casual right hand. When he said, ‘Yeah,’ he was looking not at Peach but at his own lapel.

Peach slid his hands into his pockets, leaned back on his heels. ‘I thought you might be able to help me.’

The West Indian looked along his cheekbones at Peach. ‘Don’t know about that.’

Peach studied the tight black curls on the man’s head, sparkling and dense, he looked into the slightly yellow whites of his eyes, he noted the hint of red in the pigmentation of his skin, he saw his lips, ridged like shells, peel back to reveal gums that were pink and grey. Perhaps he stared just a fraction too long, or just a fraction too closely.

‘What’re you looking at?’ The gap between the West Indian’s two front teeth looked dangerous. Like the barrel of a gun.

‘I’m looking for a friend of mine,’ Peach began. ‘His name is Moses. Do you know him?’

‘Who are you?’

‘Me?’ jocular now, ‘I’m an old friend of the family.’

The West Indian’s top lip rolled back over his teeth. He glanced down at his hand. It curled, uncurled, against his thigh.

‘You know what I smell?’ he said.

‘No.’

‘Pig.’ The West Indian smiled into Peach’s eyes. ‘I smell pig.’

Peach didn’t understand. Not right away.

‘And that’s not a smell I particularly like, you know?’

Peach could feel the evidence, his badge, cold and heavy in his shirt pocket. Still he insisted: ‘I’m a friend of the family, that’s all.’

‘Yeah,’ said the West Indian, pointing at the binoculars, ‘and those are for birdwatching.’

‘Moses lives here,’ Peach said, ‘doesn’t he?’