Plender (19 page)

I took a sip of my brandy.

“Well, for instance, recently there was a man who came into my office who was being blackmailed. He was in a fairly prominent position in local government and he didn’t want to go to the police.”

“I thought the police always said that if a blackmailer was turned over to them they wouldn’t press any charges against whoever it was who was being blackmailed?”

“Depends what the person had done, really.”

“Is that true?”

“Well supposing you were being blackmailed because you’d put arsenic in Peter’s cornflakes. You couldn’t really expect the boys in blue to cock a deaf ‘un, could you?”

I looked at Knott out of the corner of my eye. He was reaching for the brandy decanter.

“I suppose not.”

“Quite.”

“And this man you’re talking about . . .”

“Sorry,” I said. “No details.”

“Kate,” Knott said, “I’m sure Brian’s only being polite. He doesn’t really want to answer your questions.”

“That, as you said earlier,” she said, “is for Brian to say.”

“No, really. I don’t mind,” I said, smiling as she gave her husband an ever-so-sweet I-told-you-so smile. “Anyway, this chap, as I said, didn’t want to go to the Law, so he asked me to find out who it was who was bleeding him. Nothing to it. I just followed the man from where he picked up the loot, found out who he was from where he lived and did a little bit of checking up. Then I arranged a meeting, accidentally on purpose like, and let him know what I knew. And that the Law wouldn’t mind knowing either. And so he laid off.”

“The blackmailer blackmailed,” said Knott’s wife.

“Something like that,” I said, looking at Knott. Knott looked the colour of white fish.

“Actually,” she said, “it must be an awful feeling being blackmailed. Just living from week to week and knowing when the money runs out you’re finished. And the blackmailer. He must be really horrible, a real bully at heart.”

“Terrible,” I said.

Knott got up from the table and said, “Why don’t we all go into the lounge?”

KNOTT

It was cool and quiet in the kitchen.

I sat down at the breakfast bar and held my glass with both hands and closed my eyes. No Kate, no Plender, no chat, no questions, no guilt. Just the quietness of the kitchen.

I sat there for a full five minutes, not thinking. Then Kate came into the kitchen.

“What the hell are you doing in here?” she said.

“I felt a bit off,” I said.

“Hardly surprising,” she said. “Anyway, I’m going to make some coffee. You’d better go in there and entertain Brian.”

I threw back my head to laugh but no laughter came.

“What’s the matter?” said Kate.

I shook my head and slid off the stool and went back into the lounge.

Plender was sprawled out on the settee, smoking a cigarette, his glass full of brandy.

“Feeling all right?” he said when he saw me.

“Yes,” I said. “I felt a bit off for a few minutes but it’s passed.”

“Good,” Plender said. “Good. Glad to hear it.”

I sat down opposite him. He was really making a meal of it. Really living out his invitation to the full.

“You know,” he said, indicating the room with the hand that held his glass, “this really is very nice. Very nice indeed. I mean, it looked nice from outside, but it’s even nicer inside. The outside doesn’t do it justice. I mean, you can tell from the outside how nice it’s going to be, but you’d never think it’d be quite as nice as this. Is it you or the wife?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You or the wife. The décor. The way it’s done out?”

“Oh. Both of us, I suppose.”

“Well I must say you’ve done a very nice job, both of you. Mind you, I admire
your
taste particularly.”

“Mine?”

“Yes, yours. The missus. She’s a little cracker. A real darling.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Yes,” he said, “you’ve really done all right for yourself, Peter. And it’s very nice to see it. Mind you, it was always on the cards. You always had that air about you. That you’d make good. Everybody recognised it. Even the lads at school, in the old gang. It stuck out a mile.”

I drained my glass and got up to pour myself another drink.

“I wonder what happened to them all,” Plender said. “Are you ever in touch with any of them, Peter?”

“Who?”

“The old gang. Do you ever hear of any of them?”

“No.”

“I would have thought maybe your mother would have kept you posted.”

I shook my head.

“I wonder what happened to them all,” he said. “I’d really like to know. Here, do you remember old Mouncey?”

I nodded.

“Do you remember that time you and him got my General Book and rubbed my history homework out?”

Kate came in with the coffee.

“What’s all this?” she said, putting the tray down. “Old times?”

Plender laughed. Kate began to pour the coffee, bending over the coffee table, her back to Plender. He was able to look right up her skirt. He knew I’d noticed, but he didn’t stop.

“No, not really,” he said. “I was just asking Peter if he remembered this particular time when he and another lad rubbed my homework out.”

“Did what?”

Kate gave Plender his coffee and sat down next to him on the settee.

“It was really very funny,” said Plender. “I’d been in trouble with the history master for not doing my homework. I wasn’t like Peter, all industrious. Anyway, old Jepson, he was the history master, said that the next time I failed to produce a full and complete piece of homework, I was for the high jump. He’d take me to the Headmaster. Well, I wasn’t in his good books, either, because one or two of the staff had been on to him about the same thing, homework, and he was one of those characters who believed that if you didn’t use the facilities the school provided, adopt the right attitude, all that junk, then you had no right to be there. So of course I didn’t want to get kicked out, so I went home that night and did the biggest and best piece of homework I’d ever done in my life. Something about the repeal of the Corn Laws, I think it was. Anyway, as it happened, it wasn’t a Best Books exercise, it was General Books only, and you could write in pencil in General Books. So when I got to school next morning there was a big crowd waiting for me at the gate because it had got around that I was for the chop if I didn’t do my homework and of course everybody thought that I wouldn’t have. Everybody was amazed that I had done it. Anyway, history was first period after break . . . you tell it, Peter. Tell Kate what you and Mouncey did.”

Kate was looking at me, her face blank of expression. I said, “Well, there’s nothing to tell really.”

“Go on, Peter,” said Kate.

I got up.

“Well, there’s nothing, except, as Brian says, Mouncey and I rubbed his homework out.”

“All six pages of it,” said Plender, laughing. “I couldn’t believe my eyes. Of course, I didn’t check it when I got back in from break. As you didn’t hand in General Book homework, what Old Jepson usually did was to get everybody to open their books at where their homework was written down and then he’d go by each desk and have a look, and when he’d done that he’d select one or two people to read out what they’d written. Which he did in this case. So I opened my book at the place where I’d done it, and there it was, gone. I really couldn’t believe it. You can’t imagine the panic I was in. I scrabbled through the pages in case I’d made a mistake, and of course all that did was to make matters worse as far as Jepson was concerned. He just thought I was trying to break the ice before he got to me. And when he did get to me, all I could say was, ‘Well, it was there before break, sir’; you can imagine what happened. He hit the roof. Yanked me out of my seat by the scruff of my neck and marched me off to the Headmaster’s office. God, what a laugh.”

“And what happened?”

“Well, I didn’t get the chop but it wasn’t far off. I just got stopped breaks and games the rest of the term.”

“Well, I think that was a horrible thing to do.”

“It was a joke,” I said.

“Not funny,” said Kate. Then to Plender. “Didn’t you try and get your own back?”

“No,” said Plender. “After all, as Peter says, it was only a joke.”

I looked at my watch. Plender caught the meaning but he said, “This coffee is really nice, Kate.”

“Would you like some more?”

“Wouldn’t say no,” said Plender. “Never been known to refuse.”

PLENDER

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Knott’s car creep on to the playing field.

“All right,” I said, “at ease.”

The men stood at ease and I waited for Knott to get out of the car and walk over. But he didn’t. He just sat in his car and stared across at us.

“Touching toes right hand left foot twenty times then twenty times the other way,” I said to the men. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

I walked across the field to Knott’s car. He didn’t take his eyes off me. I walked round to the driver’s side and leant over and looked in at him. He just stared up at me. I tapped on the window and he wound it down.

“What’s the matter?” I said. “Too early for you?”

He didn’t answer.

“If you exercised like we do you wouldn’t feel so bad first thing in a morning.”

“I want to talk to you,” he said. His voice was dry and flat.

“Oh, yes?” I said.

Again he didn’t answer.

I looked at him. Then I straightened up and strolled round to the passenger side of the car and got in. Knott hadn’t moved.

“So you want to talk to me,” I said. “Then talk to me.”

“I read the paper today. About the barman.”

“What barman?”

“The one who ran the bar. The one who saw me.”

“What about him?”

“He’s dead.”

“Dead?”

“It says he hanged himself.”

“Hanged himself?”

“Yes.”

I took out a cigarette.

“So he hanged himself. I don’t quite see what you’re getting at.”

“He was the only one who saw me. Except you.”

“Well then I would have thought all in all things seem to have worked out very much for the best.”

“You were the only one that knew he’d seen me,” he said. “Now he’s dead.”

I threw back my head and laughed.

“You killed him, didn’t you?”

“Now, why,” I said, inhaling cigarette smoke, “should I do a thing like that?”

“Because if I’m caught, you’d be frightened I’d tell them about you.”

“And so I’d go and knock somebody over just on the off-chance that they may remember your face and her face out of all the faces that were in Peggy’s Bar between Saturday and now.”

He didn’t say anything.

I laughed again.

“Look,” I said, “I got into this by accident. I certainly wouldn’t do anything to deliberately make things worse for myself.”

“You killed him. I know it.”

Wind sped across the playing fields and rocked the car.

“Well,” I said, “I didn’t. But obviously I’m not going to change your mind.”

He shook his head.

“And so you’re going to go to the police.”

He put his head in his hands and leant forward in his seat.

“God,” he said. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m going to do. All I know is that I just can’t go on. I mean, I’m going out of my mind, I really am. It’s like it must be for a condemned man. Every day it gets worse. Every day I think this is the day when it says in the paper they’ve found her. This is the day the police start walking up the drive.” He lifted his head and looked at me. “I mean, they’re bound to, aren’t they? Sooner or later. They’re bound to find her and trace her to me, whatever you say or do.”

“You obviously think so,” I said. “So what can I say?”

“So what else is there for me to do?”

I shrugged.

“Go to the police, I suppose,” I said.

He broke down.

“That’s just it,” he said. “That’s just it. I can’t. I haven’t the bloody guts.”

“So there you are,” I said. “Back to square one.”

He carried on sobbing with his head in his hands. I took a handkerchief from the pocket of my track suit and offered it to him. He took it and sat up and wiped his face.

“After you’ve taken the pictures,” I said, “you ought to do a few physical jerks with us. Blow the cobwebs away. It’s surprising what a bit of exercise can do.”

He shook his head.

“No,” he said. “I’ll just take the pictures and go.”

“There’s only a couple to do,” I said. “One of us exercising and one of us in a group. It won’t take you long so don’t dash off.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Come on,” I said, opening the door. “Let’s go over.”

Knott didn’t move. I leant into the car.

“You really will feel better after a few physical jerks,” I said. “Get stuck in there with the lads and you’ll feel a new man.”

Knott reached into the back of the car and scrambled his gear together and got out. He was a little unsteady on his legs, as though he’d just got out of the car after a marathon drive. I walked round to his side of the car and picked up his case while he fumbled a camera strap round his neck.

“Right,” I said. “Let’s go and meet the lads. I call them the Team.”

KNOTT

“Well I rather liked him,” said my wife. “In a funny way.”

I didn’t say anything. I cut off a piece of my steak and put it in my mouth and went through the motions of chewing it as though I actually wanted to eat it.

“Although,” she said, “ “like” isn’t really the right word. Something else. In view of what you’ve told me about him. In the light of what he is. It’s not “like” exactly.”

I took a sip of wine and tried to listen to her words one by one, as though they weren’t forming sentences, so that singly they would have no meaning.

“Is it sympathy?” she said. “Am I sorry for him? I don’t know. What is it exactly?”

I knew she was looking at me while she was speaking but I was careful to avoid her eyes. At the same time I had to find something to say in reply to her; I had to behave normally, behave the way I always behaved. I knew she was trying to needle me, so I had to behave the way she expected me to behave, to react as I normally would.