Ethiopian. Ha ha. Buying new things. I wonder if she wants him. Oh, God, she can't, she's old. Why? Because he's mine, that's why. I watch them going out for drinks. Dad pretends he doesn't notice.'
Next, a torn sheet, crumpled, straightened out again, kept against her better judgement: 'Watched them in the woods. Disgusting, yuck. He sucks her big tits, puts his thing in her, grunting like pigs. Why, why, why? I would have. I'm going to find William.
Must stop crying. Can't stop crying. How can you do this to me? I hate her, hate her. Only thing I ever really wanted.'
October 4: Dad buying things for her, only she never lets him buy anything for me.
Gold stuff, lots of it. Suppose she thinks she looks bloody wonderful. Dad trying to buy her back. Silly wanker. Antony talks to me, nice, to me, but pathetic, head somewhere else. That gold stuff is mine by right. What about me, Daddy? What about me, then? I am beginning..
`November 10: Where will they go in the cold? Not Bluebell Wood. In his car? Yuck.
A whole winter in a car? That won't do. Ha ha. I wonder about telling Dad, but what difference would it make? I got William to rap on the car window and scare them.'
`March 15: She's gone funny. He's gone off her; I knew he would. Now he'll come back to me. I want to, I want to, but he's making excuses not to come any more for my lessons. Why not? What have I done? How can he leave me? Surely he knows I don't mind about bitch face as long as he comes back.'
Then a flat statement on May 10: 'Followed him again. He was with someone else, kissing. Watched them a long time. He doesn't come here any more and doesn't even say hello to me.'
A gap of weeks and then more animation: 'Mummy phones him all the time, but he won't come back. She's done it, hasn't she? Driven him away. She doesn't know I can listen to her on the phone, doesn't even care if I do. Jangling gold and making phone calls. I can't say how much I hate her stinking face. She took him, she took him. Serves her right. Hate him, hate him, hate him.'
`June 5: She gets him to meet her! I'm going, too. With my k… '
Bailey paused in his reading, opened the next drawer. More paper, roughly torn sheets with crossings-out, sketched maps, a tube map of London, and a picture of a local craft shop, one of William's favourites, Bailey seemed to remember. There were lists, terse reminders on paper: 'Get washing liquid, v. useful. Hide bike, ask Dad for new one, don't tell.' Interspersed with the lists were strange descriptions, like brief catharses, literary attempts to distil an experience, full of slang in a deliberate and rebellious departure from the favoured style of the essays.
A passage dated the day of Sumner's committal: 'You'd like this, Mr Antony fucking Sumner. Ain't this kind of neat? You were in the wood again with the old sow who wants to shag you like a bitch in heat – she never let me have a dog, so I don't know how I know.
Says she'll run off with you, doesn't give a fuck for her daughter, husband, etc. Tell me news. Ha ha. Ants in her pants, ripping off clothes. You hit her with the stick and leave her there with her bum in the air and your stick on the ground. Gives me the idea. So I tiptoe up with my knife and then I tiptoe away again. Get my gold later, also clothes. I want to… Go on, then, rot. Daddy's the same today. In I come in the evening, go downstairs. 'All this time studying, darling child?' he says. 'Of course,' I say.'
Bailey put down the page and found his hands were trembling. Sifted through the rest finding none of equal length or savagery, some of a similar degree of crudeness: 'At least I now know How to Fuck. William taught me. See what you missed, A.S.? Ha ha.' A few expressions of regret about something: 'Shouldn't ask Will to help, have to do something about Will.' Nothing else but reminders, dates, and scribbles, staccato scrawls like spittle on a page, a mind seized by itself, each day a new plan.
On the desk itself, a notice to the occupant: 'Holidays, Dad. See to W. Buy: (1)…'
The remainder of the white sheet a panic-stricken blank until the tiny scribble at the bottom:
'People watching me now.'
Oh, you are wrong, my dear. People have been entirely consistent in their failure to watch you. You might have known, thought Bailey, they would not change. We should all have watched you sooner, and where the hell are you now? He visualized her approach to the sobbing form of her mother, knife in hand, seeing in one wide- angled glance the evidence left to incriminate another, using the same neatness to litter the ground by one of the fires designed to discredit the hapless idiot who had assisted, perhaps, in the burial.
What had one interfering policeman found here? No true confessions, but enough to release one Antony Sumner, that teacher of impossible stupidity, who had nevertheless taught her a powerful use of the written word. Not evidence enough to convict the darling child. And here she would sit in her room, keeping secret her books and her contempt, aware that someone must feed her.
He froze at sounds from outside: car door, footsteps on gravel. With systematic speed, he began to search the remaining drawers in the desk, refusing to acknowledge the distraction.
He registered an explosion of argument inside the front door of the house. Raised voices: Amanda Scott, John Blundell, and the patient, apologetic drone of Constable Bowles. At that same moment Bailey's hand closed around the semi-chill of metal. In his fist was the gleam of a gold necklace, heavy, elegant, dull-coloured. He might have known. Of course William Featherstone would never have craved this. And William Featherstone was never watched either.
If you're so bloody worried, you go. Why should I be woken up? Let the little bastard get on with it.'
`He's not little. That's the problem. And he's not a bastard.' `Yes he is. You've only to look at him. He's not my flesh and blood, is he, Bernadette?'
Oh, so that's your excuse for never watching him, is it? Can't stand the thought he might be your responsibility after all this time? Well you can't get away with that, however hard you try and God knows you've tried often enough. Fucking's the only thing we ever got right, and he's the result. Now go and find him, fuck you.'
He recoiled from the explicit crudeness. Bernadette swore, cursed, and abused frequently, but rarely so personally. Harold was half awake, shaken from fully dressed sleep, dragged into his kitchen and his life disbelievingly, bereft of anything but slight shock and the merest semblance of cunning.
In the summerhouse, is he? And that copper's woman went out there three hours ago?
You've taken your time, haven't you, sweetheart? No worry like real worry. She'll have gone home hours ago, interfering bitch. What'd she be doing with a great dolt like William?'
`God alone knows, but she never came back. We'll both go, if you're too frightened.' For once he was not defensive, but did not move.
`Course I'm bloody frightened. Bloody summerhouse. Lights and ghosts, full of them.
I've seen 'em. So've you. It's you who's frightened.'
She was pulling on a coat, stubbing out her cigarette, simultaneous movements of fury.
It's two in the morning. Leave it out, Bernie, for Christ's sake.'
`Two in the morning, he says, as if it can wait. We've a violent son at large and a missing copper's wife. Does it never occur to you, Harold, that two in the morning means that by now someone, somewhere, might come looking for her if she hasn't gone home? Like now, for instance?' Bernadette's eyes were levelled over his head towards the kitchen doors leading to the bar.
Slowly Harold turned, imagining the presence of a silent blue-uniformed cavalry.
Through ill-focused eyes, he could see nothing but emptiness, a sound suggesting the approach of car engines. With one automatic movement, he stuffed lighter and cigarettes into his top pocket, grabbed her by the arm, pushed and pulled her through the back kitchen door.
Down the slope with stumbling, cursing steps, around the tree with ease, ceasing to hold Bernadette, who plodded behind.
The night was completely still, apart from the slightest breeze, a self-satisfied stillness auguring heat and lassitude under a late harvest moon, the garden awash with half-light, to which the eye could adjust easily. The summerhouse loomed ahead. Harold paused, listening for sound, hearing a muffled banging as he approached the door: boom, boom, weak inflictions of wood on wood almost below his feet, the sound of ineffectual effort, pausing as he paused, unconscious of him while he was acutely aware, all trace of whisky gone now except for the bile in his throat. Inside the door, voices, thank God, some normality. And at the opposite window, a fleeting, pale image of a face he had seen before, glimpsed quickly and gone, ignored for the moment.
Inside, the shed was half lit by the moon. Harold could see the trapdoor weighted with one full paraffin can,
