"A mate."
"Good a mate as Jimmy?"
"He"s a laugh." She looked at her feet and drew on her cigarette.
I thought to myself how young she looked, suddenly. Not much more more than a girl, but believing she was a woman.
"That"s not an answer" I told her "Jimmy"s a good mate. Marty"s-"
"One of those people you just seem to know from somewhere."
I finished her sentence for her. We both knew where it had been going, anyway.
She nodded, inhaling the smoke from her cigarette, and knocking her head back to look up at the pale stars.
"Do you want tae know something?" she said. "Marty"s scary. I mean, a lot of people are scary but Marty"s twice as scary, aye? You just don"t know where you stand with him. One minute he"s a great laugh and the next minute, you just don"t ken if he"s going tae pan yer face."
I made a grunt like I knew what she was talking about. Everyone knows someone like that. The psycho that just appears in your life one day, and once he"s there it"s d.a.m.n difficult to shake him.
Anna laughed when she talked about Marty"s mood swings, but I knew they scared her. I could see it in her eyes; Marty terrified everyone and no one in her wee group was brave enough to admit it. "He"s no a bad guy, like," she said. "But anyway, that"s what I"m saying is that sometimes he can snap."
"He snapped at Coughing John," I said. "Jimmy saw it and he told you and now you"re scared if he could attack Coughing John like that, what"s to stop him doing the same to his friends."
She looked at me wide eyed, almost amazed by my powers of deduction. "Aye," she said.
"What happened? What did Jimmy tell you, precisely?"
"They went back on the Sat.u.r.day like I said. The wee tramp was there, hacking and coughing away like usual. He started tae shout as they walked past, but I think Marty looked at him and he shut up. That should have been the end of it, but Marty had a wee knife with him."
"What kind of Knife?"
"Wee flick knife."
"Still pretty deadly," I said. "And illegal."
She looked at me like I was stupid. "That"s why he has it. He"s fond of saying that no fascist dictatorship is going tae tell him what he can and can"t do."
I sighed. I"d heard that line before from a lot nastier than little Marty.
"He just went for Coughing John?" I said. "And no one tried to stop him?"
"What were they meant tae do?"
"So now everyone"s just keeping quiet? Why? Are you all that afraid of him?"
"No," she said. A tear welled in one eye. The cigarette dropped from her mouth and landed between her feet on the pavement.
"Then why?"
She wiped her face with the back of her sleeve, dragging some black eyeliner away from her eyes and across her skin. "He"s a mate. You"ve got tae stick up for yer mates."
I stood up.
"What"re you doing?"
"I"m not calling the police," I said. "For that, you"d better be b.l.o.o.d.y thankful."
Marty was the first one to speak when I walked back to the overpa.s.s, Anna walking a few steps behind me looking sheepish and ashamed. I recognized him from her description. He was a small lad, but built like a brick wall; probably he owned his own weights. His hair was streaked blond and blue.
"What did you say to him?" Marty asked Anna, ignoring me.
I stepped in anyway. "She told me about Sat.u.r.day night," I said.
"She wasn"t there."
"No," I said. "But Jimmy was."
Marty turned to the other boy, staring at him with incredulity.
"a.r.s.ehole," he hissed, and Jimmy shrunk away. Marty turned his attention back to me and said, "So what are you going to do about it? Call the police?"
"No," I said. I walked right up to him, drew back my hand, bunched it into a fist, and punched him square in the centre of his face. There was a crack and he drew away from me, his nose gushing blood.
I could feel everyone draw breath. They all stepped back, looking ready to bolt for it if they had to. I knew that it wasn"t fear of me. It was fear at what Marty"s reaction would be to my punching him in the face.
I didn"t care. I"d faced idiots like him in the past; young and old, they were all the same, little messed up a.r.s.eholes who had an unresolved grudge against the whole human race.
The hardness in his eyes masked something that looked like fear.
"Gonnae mess you up," he said. He reached inside the folds of his jacket and took out his wee flick knife. Probably he thought it was going to be as easy as taking down Coughing John, a pathetic, defenceless old man. Maybe I was an old man to someone of Marty"s age, but I wasn"t defenceless, and I knew how to fight. And Marty was nothing more than an amateur with an att.i.tude problem.
I kicked out with my left foot, catching his wrist with force enough to spasm his hand. His fingers opened and the knife fell to the ground, the clatter echoing off the clear plastic walls of the overpa.s.s. He spun away, losing his balance long enough for me to regain my own once more. I grabbed him in a headlock, using my own momentum to propel us against the wall. The crown of his head rammed against the plastic, a resounding shake echoing along the walls of the suspended corridor. I let go and he stumbled backwards. He toppled over, landing on his a.r.s.e in an incredibly undignified manner. Under other circ.u.mstances, I"m sure some of the others would have laughed. As it was they just stood there.
"No one cares," I said to Marty "that you killed a tramp, is that it?"
"Aye," he mumbled. He couldn"t stand up again. You could see the confusion in his face; he was probably hearing bells.
You took a man"s life, you little b.a.s.t.a.r.d"!"
He wasn"t dead when I left him.
"As good as," I said.
"He attacked me!" His tone took me by surprise: he was whining like a five year old complaining that the game wasn"t fair.
I looked at Marty and I saw before me a young boy with blood on his hands, caught somewhere between the games of childhood and the uncomfortable morality of adulthood. Each time they said, "Bang-bang, you"re dead," the joke was less and less funny, as they began to realize that any one of them could die.
Revenge is a child"s weapon; honour is a game that children play. For them the world is black and white. Someone hits you and you hit them back because it"s not fair. And if you hit them back harder, then it"s their own fault. After all, they deserved it.
I looked at Anna. Her eyes were wide, but they were different than they had been five minutes beforehand, when we were sitting on a bench talking about the death of an old man who had lost everything life had given him She was realizing what it meant to leave childhood and childishness behind. It was a lesson I doubted someone like Marty could ever learn.
Marty was on the floor, bleeding from his nose and sulking like he couldn"t understand why the adults were punishing him like this.
I could have turned him in. I suppose I should have turned him in, but he cut such a pathetic figure that I could not bring myself to do it. He was going to suffer enough through his whole self-centred life without my making things any worse for him.
I turned my back on him and walked away. The others didn"t move. No one said a word.
As I walked back out into the night, I felt tears in my eyes. I waited until I was out of sight of the gang, and I wiped my eyes with the back of my sleeve. I took a deep breath and walked back home, feeling a weight in my heart that only became heavier with each step I took.
When I arrived home, the lights were off. I looked in on Ros who was asleep in bed. I let her sleep and went through to the living room. I opened the window and took out a cigarette. Ros doesn"t approve of me smoking indoors, but it barely seemed to matter that night.
I"d finished two cigarettes and was sitting on the sofa when the door opened. I looked up, fully expecting Ros to reprimand me. She opened her mouth, but then her expression changed. She gently took the cigarette from my fingers and stubbed it out on the gla.s.s surface of the coffee table. She climbed onto the sofa beside me and laid her head on my chest. Neither of us said a word.
REGRETS.
(Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k"s Mystery Magazine, December 2005) "How long ago did you say this photo was taken?"
Across the desk, Mrs. Archer thought about the question and then said, "Nineteen-seventy-five, I think." She smiled. "The seventies, at any rate. I can"t really remember."
In I975, Mrs. Archer would have been thirty-two Now she was in her mid-sixties. Her once-dark hair was now grey, with streaks of black peeking through, refusing to let her youth fade entirely. Her eyes were pale, and her skin was stretched tautly over her bones. She was not frail, but it was easy to mistake her for being so.
The man in the picture was in his mid-thirties, his dark hair greased down tightly on his skull. His thin, spiv moustache lurked above a cheeky smile. His eyes twinkled with mischief and his grey suit was perfectly pressed. I could hear his c.o.c.kney, happy-go-lucky accent without ever having met him.
"And Mr Darren was your lover?"
Mrs Archer smiled, her eyes sad. "Fiance," she said. "And then he disappeared"
I nodded. "It"s a long time to wait before deciding to search for him," I said.
Mrs Archer sighed, and closed her eyes like she was remembering something from long ago. "It hurt me at the time," she said. "It hurt so badly I thought I couldn"t go on living." She opened her eyes again and smiled. "Mr. Bryson, you don"t look so young you don"t know about love."
I nodded. "I"ve been in love."
"Are you married?"
I showed her my hand. "No," I said. I waited for a moment before finally deciding to be honest. "But I"m in love."
"How long?"
"I"ve been with her for two years now. Before that we were on and off for about another seven."
"That"s when you know it"s love," she said. "When you keep coming back."
"You and Mr. Darren?"
"Whirlwind," she said. "A whirlwind romance." She closed her eyes again. "So fast, so pa.s.sionate, like we were stuck in a film."
She opened her eyes, locking her gaze on mine. "We"d go dancing, and every time he"d sweep me off my feet."
"When did he propose to you?"
"After a few months," she said.
"And then he disappeared?"
Her eyes grew sad, the blue paling. "Aye," she said. "Gone, just like that. I tried to find him but there was nothing, no sign."
I nodded.
"And then," she said, "it became hopeless. Have you ever just been hit by the realization that nothing you do can make any difference? That"s how it was with me. Maybe I sank into what these doctors are now calling a depression."
I looked again at the photo of Mr Darren. He was handsome, but there was something about him I didn"t like. Maybe it was that mischievous glint in his eyes, that air of recklessness. Part of me wondered how many other women like Mrs Archer had been duped, conned, and dumped by this c.o.c.ky little charmer.
I explained my price scales to Mrs Archer. She dismissed me with a wave of her hand. "You seem an honest man, Mr Bryson," she said. Then, with a thin little smile, she said, "You"re not as sleazy as I thought you"d be. Whatever it costs I will pay. I can afford it." Her smile dropped. "I have to afford it," she said.
"It"s sweet," Jamie said when I told him about Mrs. Archer. "A love story, you know?"
I shook my head.
He laughed. "Christ, why does Ros go out with you? No romance in your soul!"
"I give you a few years," I told him. "Then you"re going to be a cynical b.a.s.t.a.r.d like me."
"Not on your nelly," he said. He looked at the photo of Mr. Darren. "We"ve got an address, right?"
"Sure," I said. I pa.s.sed him the information. He"d logged onto the Internet and I could see he was flexing his fingers in preparation. Sometimes I wonder how I"d survive these days without Jamie"s help. I"m no technological slouch, but Jamie"s immersed in the world of computers. He knows what to do and how to do it, and sometimes that knowledge seems almost instinctual.
Jamie called up the Friends Reunited site. It"s a G.o.dsend for finding information on people. Most users don"t even think about the information that they"re entering. Even those people who don"t want to be found can be tripped up by the site, lulled into thinking it"s safe for them to boast of their achievements online because, what the h.e.l.l, it"s not real and no one will be able to trace them.
He typed in Darren"s name and the street he lived on back in 1975.
Nothing.
Jamie smiled. "Okay, he"s not an idiot, we know that much, he said. He put his hands behind his head and swivelled round in his chair. I had to back out of the way a little. Jamie"s office is little more than a large cupboard. He doesn"t mind; he"s got everything he needs. I"ve always promised him, however that when we start to make better money I"ll move us into a bigger place.