Part 10 (2/2)

'Yeah, yeah.' Jake nodded nervously. He folded his arms tight across his chest, his hands tucked under them. 'Everything's wicked. Ticking over. Had a bit of a business proposal and thought I'd y'know drop drop in. Talk to you about it.' in. Talk to you about it.'

'Yeah I saw you ”dropping in”. I'll be honest I was a bit taken aback you'd think I had the same gate code six months on. Thought that was a bit disrespectful, but ... you know how I am. Never dwell on things. If you feel at home enough to plug my code into my gate, after not seeing me in all this time, I reckoned that means you just feel comfortable around me.' He took a toothpick from his pocket and began studiously picking his teeth, his hand over his mouth, his eyes on Jake. 'So, Jakey, Jakey, Jakey, my extra-legged boy, Jake. What you bin up to, boyo? Just, from time to time you do hear some stupid rumours. Last I heard you were up to a bit of jiggery-pokery with the old no-no stuff. Selling it on to the rich kids hanging around outside the posh schools, like a lonely t.u.r.d in a lake, or so I've heard. Course I never listen to that nonsense, cos I'm sure it ain't true.'

'Nah ...' Jake s.h.i.+fted anxiously. 'Course it ain't.'

'So how you bringing home the corn, these days, then, matey boy? Now that you're not cracking off the money shots for me?'

'Oh, you know. Been doing my thing. Hoeing my row.'

David made a small sound in his throat as if he found this incredibly funny. He had to put a finger to his head and bend slightly at the waist to stop himself laughing like a horse.

'What?'

'Nothing. It's just ...' He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, then gave in to another spasm of giggles. He checked it and sat straight, his face still twitching. 'It's just ”hoeing my row”. The images it conjures up, mate. Hoeing my-' He couldn't get the words out. Again he doubled up with silent contortions.

Jake watched stonily, the huge muscles in his arms twitching slightly. 'Sounds like they're funny. The images.'

'They are,' David said, his voice tight, as if he was on the verge of hysteria. 'Very funny. They're poof images. One poof hoeing the other poof's row. You know, one poof ploughing into another's glory hole. That's what it made me think of.' David wiped his eyes again. Got himself under control. 'My mother is a relatively intelligent woman. I mean, apart from the three times she opened her legs to my father, she isn't altogether thick. Do you know what she used to say to me when I was a nipper? She used to say, ”There are several people you should never trust, son. You should never trust a cop, you should never trust a skinny chef, you should never trust a fat beggar. Never trust an Arab or a bloke whose eyebrows meet in the middle. Never trust a man in black shoes and white socks and never trust a black man in a fez. But do you know who was at the top of her never-trust list? The creme de la creme creme de la creme of untrustworthiness?' of untrustworthiness?'

'No.' Jake said it almost soundlessly.

'The poofs. The f.u.c.king poofters.'

'What're you talking about?'

David gave a slow smile. 'You're a f.u.c.king queer, Jake. A b.u.mboy, a s.h.i.+rt-lifting f.a.ggoty s.h.i.+t-stirrer. Now, I ain't saying that's your fault. What the scientists are saying, these days, and I don't know if you've heard this, but what they're saying is that you can't help it you can't help it. Apparently it's in your biology. You can't be blamed for it it's in your genes.' He held his hands out in amazement, as if to say, 'How weird is that?' 'Yeah, according to the mad professors it's nothing to do with you all being a bunch of perverts, it's all down to some f.u.c.k-up in the chromosome department. So I can't blame you, Jake, for the simple fact of you being a t.u.r.d-tickler what you do with your a.r.s.e is your lookout but I can can blame you, and this is where I start to feel twitchy, like, what I can blame you for ...' he leaned forward '... is not having the f.u.c.king good manners to blame you, and this is where I start to feel twitchy, like, what I can blame you for ...' he leaned forward '... is not having the f.u.c.king good manners to mention mention it to me. Jake the Peg with his extra leg and turns out the leg's not got its lead up for the bit of gash lying on the bed. It's got it up maybe for one of the it to me. Jake the Peg with his extra leg and turns out the leg's not got its lead up for the bit of gash lying on the bed. It's got it up maybe for one of the crew crew members. Or, G.o.d forgive me for saying it, maybe even for members. Or, G.o.d forgive me for saying it, maybe even for me me. And he never mentions it. That That, you see,' he jabbed his fingers in the air, 'that is what I call ignorance.' is what I call ignorance.'

David lowered his hand and put it on the banister. For a moment it looked as if he might swing his legs up and kick Jake in the chin. But he didn't. He simply pulled himself to his feet.

Jake swallowed. He didn't step back. He put his hands into his jeans pockets defiantly. 'I'm not a poof.'

'Liar.' David's face didn't change. 'You are.'

'OK so what if I was was? Don't mean anything, does it? This isn't the Stone Age there's human rights now. You can't get away with calling me a poof.'

David made a tutting noise. He shook his head disapprovingly. 'Playing the poofter discrimination card? It's against the rules, boyo. As bad as playing the race card.' He dropped his head to one side and put on a fake bright voice: 'We are sorry, your poof card has been denied. Please be advised that your poof card account has been closed. This decision was based on your account history of excessive over-limit spending. Please destroy your card immediately as it will no longer be honoured. Now, see that crossbow on the wall? Up there.'

Jake raised his eyes. Sally couldn't see up to the galleried landing, but she knew what was up there. A crossbow mounted in a cabinet with a picture light trained above it. In the back of the cabinet there was a framed photograph of the sun setting over the African bush.

'I shot a f.u.c.king hippo with that. Back in the days when white law-abiding people who worked hard had rights, before someone took them away from us and started handing them out to animals and blacks and poofters and I don't care how how politically incorrect you think I am, politically incorrect you think I am, you you, my son, are not welcome here. Now ' he gave a peremptory jerk of the head, indicating the door ' now, get that tart of a car off my gravel before I get my friend up there off its stand and shoot you in your fancy little pink-boy derriere derriere.'

Jake kept his chin up, staring at the crossbow. There was a long silence. Sally could see his Adam's apple going up and down, as if he wanted to speak. Then he seemed to change his mind. He dropped his chin and without another word, without meeting David's eyes one more time, he turned and left the house. There was the sound of his feet crunching on the gravel, the high-pitched squeak of a remote locking device, and the slam of a car door. Then the sound of the car leaving, going slowly.

Shakily, Sally separated herself from the wall and dialled Millie's number.

26.

The incident stayed with Sally all day. Even when Jake had gone, and she'd spoken to Millie and knew she was safe out in the garden, even when she'd spent three hours struggling with the database and things at Lightpil House had quietened down, with David wandering around, champagne in hand, muttering incessantly about cla.s.s and the immorality of h.o.m.os.e.xuality, she was still uneasy. There wasn't really any doubt in her mind now that Steve had been right, that what lay under the surface of David Goldrab's life was wide and deep. She had the feeling it could all just crack open at a moment's notice.

She gave Millie a long lecture about it in the car on the way back. 'This is serious stuff. Jake is not not good news. These are really unpleasant people you're getting involved with.' good news. These are really unpleasant people you're getting involved with.'

'Well, you're the one working for one of them,' Millie replied sullenly, and, of course, Sally couldn't argue with that. Now Julian wasn't around to shelter them, she and Millie had crossed that line and she was beginning to see how different everything on this side was.

'I'm thinking of a solution. I will come up with something.'

'Will you?' Millie stared out of the window, a bored, disbelieving expression on her face. 'Will you really?'

Sally was exhausted by the time they turned into the driveway at Peppercorn, and the last thing she felt like was seeing people. But there were two camper-vans parked in the garden Isabelle and the teenagers were standing there, waiting for her. She pulled on the handbrake. She'd completely forgotten that today was the day Peter and Nial would pick up the camper-vans they'd been saving for. Two rusting old heaps with mud and manure all the way up to the wheel arches. She had to force a smile on to her face as she got out. But as it turned out no one else was in the party mood either. They might have pretended they were celebrating the vans' arrival, but there was an underlying tension. An unspoken ghost flitting between them. Lorne Wood. Dead at sixteen.

'Their first lesson in mortality,' Isabelle said, when she and Sally were on their own at last. They'd each poured a gla.s.s of the nice wine Steve was always bringing to Peppercorn, and had gone into the living room. 'It's a difficult one. They're taking this badly.'

'Millie didn't want to go to school today. She said it was because the police might be there. Were they?'

'No. But they were at Faulkener's the second day in a row. Sophie got a text from one of the girls. Apparently the place came to a standstill the police think one of the boys did it.'

'One of the boys?' Sally looked at Isabelle's face, the salt-and-pepper strands of hair and the clear blue eyes. 'Seriously?'

'The police stopped the kids using their phones. They kept them shut in the school all day. It sounded like a frenzy some of the parents have been complaining to the head.'

The two women stood at the french windows, gazing out reflectively at the kids and the vans. Sally had painted each of the kids several times. She'd loved doing it it was like capturing their emerging personalities, tethering a tiny piece of their fleeting souls to something, even if it was just oil paint and canvas. Because, she thought now, if there was one thing she knew for sure, things were changing for them fast. Faster than anyone could have predicted.

'Nial says the girls are scared.' Isabelle gave a sad smile. Outside, Nial was bent over, using a Magic Marker to sketch on his van the patterns he was going to paint. 'He half thinks he's going to be the white knight just the way you painted him in those cards. Protect them all. Like that's going to happen with Pete around.'

It sounded about right, Sally thought. Sweet little Nial, secretly her favourite of the boys. Too small, too timid, he was totally overshadowed by Peter. He was good-looking, but in the way that wouldn't show itself properly until he was in his thirties. When handsome boys like Peter would be getting heavy and losing their hair, the boys like Nial would be growing into their looks. Just now he was still too small and feminine for the girls to notice him. Her favourite tarot card depicted him as the Prince of Swords, on the one hand angry and sometimes vengeful, on the other reserved and hugely intelligent. The sort who could lead rebellions with his insightful ideas. She'd chosen to clothe him in a robe of velvet and brocade, blue, to bring out his eyes.

'Do you think they're right?' she said. 'To be scared, I mean. Do you think it was one of the other schoolkids?'

'G.o.d, I don't know. But there is one thing I can tell you.' She nodded at the teenagers. 'There's something they're not saying.'

'What do you mean?'

'I don't know, but I do know my son. And there's something he's not saying. Something he really wants to say but can't. He and Peter are really secretive at the moment.' She used her toe to push the gla.s.s door open a little more. The sound of birds singing came through it, with the bleat of lambs and the distant noise of traffic on the motorway. She was silent for a while. Then she said, 'Peter was in love with Lorne did you know that?'

'Yes. I mean, I suppose everyone was in a way.'

'I think she wasn't interested in him, but he loved her. So did Nial, I imagine. But ...' she said, lowering her voice a little '... I think the thing with Peter was what really finished Millie's friends.h.i.+p with her.'

Sally shot her a look. 'Millie's friends.h.i.+p?'

'You mean you don't know?'

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