The Twisted Heart (28 page)

‘Okay,' said Kit, not wanting Joe to stop.

‘And, lo and behold, now my father had me and Humpty
living together, putting me in a position where I was forced to look after him. But that's another story,' he said, sounding bitter. ‘Anyway, the furniture: it transpired he had a gift for it—
has
,' said Joe, militantly. ‘I mean, we grew up around antiques, right? He'd been tinkering with that kind of work since he was a boy, so a lot of what he needed to know was second nature to him from the off, especially making the legs look right. My father has this saying that if you know what you're looking at, the wrong legs on a piece of furniture comes over just as wrong as badly shaped legs on a woman. So, yes, Humpty studied restoration techniques, went on, you know, got qualified over time, more qualified and then hyper-qualified—but then just hyper, because, while all this was happening, he fell in with this gang of lads he met initially through college and—it was okay at first, or at least, I didn't see how it was playing out. He got work. He became part of their thing, their set-up, and he was in work. But he also started getting back into drugs again, as was inevitable, you might say; Christ knows what, recreationally and all under control, he said, weekends, whatever came his way. But I had this sense after a while that they were actually encouraging him. That's what I couldn't understand, Kit. It even seemed that his boss was supplying him. Why, though? It didn't make sense. How good was his work going to be if he was out of it half the time? Anyway, three or four months ago he started sleeping in the workshop most nights, not apparently eating. I haven't really been able to get through to him for a while now, haven't known who to turn to. I arranged minimally to meet him
on Fridays, for fuck's sake, so I'd have some sense of how he was, and then I—'

Because Joe didn't continue, Kit said, ‘You—?'

‘You wanted me to explain?' he said, angry again. ‘I'm
explaining
, okay? You want me to explain?'

‘Yes. Sorry.'

‘No, I'm sorry. Forgive me.' He took a deep breath. ‘It's not you. I don't suppose you know anything about the antiques trade?'

‘Not really, no.'

‘The thing is,' he put a hand to his forehead, ‘at the bottom end of it, the very lowest of the low, there are these scum who target old people, usually, the vulnerable, knock on their front doors, talk their way in, then con them into parting with their valuables for a fraction of what they're worth. They're known in the trade as “knockers”.' Joe shook his head despairingly. ‘Most antiques is a bit shady. I'd say ninety-nine per cent of it is lightweight fraud at a minimum.'

‘Your father?'

‘Oh, absolutely. Yes, a fine example. But I've been very stupid, really stupid. I didn't ask enough questions. In particular, I didn't realise that Humpty's lot was operating right at the bottom end of this scale. And even then, Kit, it would somehow be different if he was just in their workshop, stuck the far side of the U-Bend, tarting up dubious pieces of furniture.'

‘I don't know where this U-Bend place is.'

‘No, of course you don't. It's on one of the estates. But, Kit, what I've discovered—I didn't—it transpires that in
return for supplying him with God alone knows what, Humpty's boss now has him out there, my brother, working as a knocker, essentially stealing from little old ladies. That's what he's been doing, my own brother. I can hardly express to you how utterly I despise even the thought of it. He says I'm ignorant and don't understand how the world works, but—fuck.'

‘Why would they want Humpty, of all people, to do it?'

‘Oh, because of the way he sounds, right? His accent? I mean, he went to Oxford. He's capable of charm, and absolute bullshit, and he knows exactly what he's talking about. You've only ever met him on a Friday evening. As long as they make sure he's just about holding it together on the job, I can see that he'd be perfect. And I think in the most disenfranchised part of his mind, it probably gives him a buzz to walk into someone's home uninvited and persuade them to hand over their most valuable possessions.' Joe tightened his hands around the rail of the seat in front of him. ‘But it's not just what this is doing to his soul, Kit, if he still has one. He could end up in jail. How do you think he'd survive that? Fucking Jesus Christ. I mean, I thought these people were giving him a second chance. I can't—'

Across another of his despairing pauses, she asked, ‘How did you find out?'

‘Pauly.'

‘Ah, right. And where does Dean Purcell fit in?

Joe flexed his right hand. ‘Let's just say that where a person is inclined to smuggle small antiques, silver and so on, they're well advised to rope in someone who knows how to disassemble cars and put them back together again. In
Italy, there's this guy in Milan—well, it doesn't matter.'

‘You mean it?' she said. ‘You're seriously telling me Humpty's in with, kind of fraudster-type burglarish
smugglers
, kind of deal?'

‘I'm not telling you anything,' said Joe in thin tones, ‘except that, if this gang ever goes down and Humpty's still with them, I don't see how he can fail to go down too. And what I haven't explained to you, the sting in the tail,' he said mirthlessly, ‘is that, not only is the guy who runs this racket, Humpty's boss, a vicious prick, but the girl Humpty's fallen for, whose knickers he tastefully described to you the other day, she's related to this fucker: she's married to one of his cousins.'

A bit of a mess.
A bit of a mess
. They were growling along in the darkness, only four passengers on the bus, one of them up front chatting to the driver; almost a whole bus at their service, in the chill and the dark and the rain.

‘Of course, if this were in a movie, it would all be fine, wouldn't it,' said Joe.

Kit mentally skipped this remark, nerved herself, and pressed a little further. ‘Where does your job offer fit in?'

‘I'm sorry you heard about it from someone else,' he said.

‘Don't worry.'

‘What it is is: Humpty's had this long-standing offer of work from a guy who used to teach him here. I like him a lot. He's one of those people whose help really isn't self- serving. He knows what he's doing, you know? I suspect he has a bit of a past himself. Whatever, he moved to this place in Gloucestershire, an old farm with outbuildings, lots of space. Humpty could live there, everything. It would
be ideal, in that it's work, it's someone who respects Humpty's abilities, who'd know what he was dealing with, and it's right away from here. But that's also why Humpty has dreaded and resisted it, being stuck out in the countryside. I've been trying for ages to persuade him, long before I knew what was really going on. Then, of all things, the day after I first saw you, the very next day, I get this call asking me if I'd like to join a team for a year working on a project at GCHQ. They gave me six weeks to decide. I thought, this is a godsend, something that might finally get us back on a better footing again. I'm not naïve, but what else was there? And he agreed, Kit. He finally gave in, said that if I took GCHQ and was near at hand, he'd do it.'

‘I wonder if he's been getting into fights on purpose, in a way, to provoke a crisis.'

‘I've wondered that too.'

‘So you got this call?'

‘Yes, and I cleaned up the flat—took me three days; it's never looked so spick and span, you may have noticed—got a couple of rental agents in to look at it, no problem. I'm telling you everything now. They said they could get tenants in a week if I wanted: terrific. And through all of this, from the minute the phone call came in, I tried to put you out of my mind. I thought I'd better show up for Beginners the following Thursday, given I'd asked you; but when you didn't come, I thought, that's it, good, it's over. Then the next day I didn't know you wouldn't go back for Intermediate instead, and I thought, fuck it. But I didn't want to stand you up if you went. So
again
I went.
And this time, there you were, except you were late, by which point I was so fed up that I asked you to dance backwards, thinking you'd turn me down and that would finish it. But you didn't, Kit. You agreed. You did it. I had every reason to accept the job and no very good reason not to—until, against all good sense, I found myself thinking that, Christ, maybe I had just discovered one sitting opposite me in a little dive of a café in East Oxford, crying into her cup of tea. I couldn't tell you what was going on because—how could I say any of this to you when we'd scarcely met?'

‘No.'

‘You kept telling me you didn't want to think.'

They got off the bus. The rain had at last more or less stopped, but they still walked quickly, to maintain their warmth.

‘And what is the GCHQ project?' Kit asked. ‘You didn't say.'

‘I don't fully know yet,' replied Joe, speaking, she noticed, in an ordinary way; and at this she realised just how disturbed he had sounded before. ‘And I wouldn't be allowed to say if I did,' he added. ‘It'll last a year, that's all. I can take a sabbatical here if I want, that's in the bag. The whole thing has come up very last minute, but the connections would be to everyone's advantage.'

‘Give me a hint,' she said.

‘No, no, you don't understand, I'm not
allowed
to say—anything. We're talking security vetting; the works. I mean, they employ mathematicians, yes? And my specialisation is in the right general area. That's it.'

‘For code breaking? What, I don't know—encryption?' She watched for a flicker on his face, but he didn't react.

With a sudden diffuse sense of relief, she laughed. ‘That would be so fantastic, Joe, if the reason I didn't know what you did could be the Official Secrets Act rather than because I'm just too dumb to understand it. It would be much more glamorous, anyway.' She leapt over a large puddle.

‘Glamorous, I rather think not,' he said. ‘Oxford to Cheltenham, that's, out of the frying pan, into the, what?—toxic waste incinerator.'

‘Joe,' said Kit, ‘I don't really know the answer to this. May I ask you something silly?' She considered not proceeding, but carried on anyway and said, ‘Why did you think you might like me, in the first place?'

He sounded wistful as he replied, ‘Because you were funny, and sharp, and easily upset, and because the things that pleased you pleased you so much.'

‘You please me,' she said.

Joe buried his hands in his coat pockets.

‘Cheltenham isn't so far,' she said. ‘It isn't the moon.'

‘No, it isn't the moon.'

‘You love Humpty, don't you.'

He gave her a look, and then, as though putting to her something she still hadn't understood, replied, ‘We're brothers.'

‘I had a conversation with him just now,' she said, ‘well, sort of; when that woman took you outside. I think he was telling me that I was okay now or something. He said I could go with you to the state funeral for the prime minister's legs.'

‘He talked?'

‘Yes.'

‘Why on earth didn't you say?'

‘I'm sorry?'

‘You do realise they wouldn't have been half so worried about head trauma if you'd told them he was talking?'

‘I—no. I didn't think—I don't know about these things. He didn't talk, he mumbled. I'm sorry. Joe, I didn't know.'

‘Forget it,' he said wearily.

‘I'm sorry.'

‘It doesn't matter. Forget it. You know, Kit, not everyone would take it as a compliment, being approved of by Humpty.'

‘Did I say I was complimented?'

‘You sounded mildly chuffed.'

‘Well, I suppose I was,' she said.

‘Well, there you are.'

She didn't take in very much after that, until she found herself walking into Joe's kitchen.

It was cold inside. Kit was struck anew by the blood spattered across him, but he didn't seem bothered by it. He did wash his hands, though.

‘What do you want? Food? Shit—' he picked up and ate some of the remains of the Battenberg cake that sat, even now, on the table.

‘A cup of tea would be a mercy,' said Kit.

This must be what it's like in the aftermath of a shock, she thought—cups of tea, and normality not seeming normal. She stared at the smooth, clean work surfaces and shuddered.

‘I wonder why Buddy never mentioned his letters to me,' said Joe, pointing at them.

‘I don't know.'

‘Perhaps because you're a girl, that made him more comfortable about it.'

‘What, giving me stuff on funk holes, trench foot, lice shirts, Bulgarian rapists—' Kit cast around in her mind, ‘malignant malaria, spineless Anglicans and the blast patterns made when the Germans drop their bombs on your ammunition stores?'

‘Perhaps you
were
the right person.'

‘Who knows? But you should read them, definitely.'

‘What's a funk hole?' said Joe.

‘Oh, a shallow dug-out you dived into at short notice when under unexpected fire. The troops got moved around the whole time and would adopt other people's funk holes in vacated positions. You know what? When they didn't have enough soldiers to man the trenches properly, because the casualties were so extreme, do you know what they did? The men would run up and down, crouching, and let off bursts of fire every few minutes, to make it seem as though there were two or three times more of them than there really were.'

Not sitting, but leaning against the counters opposite each other, they picked away at the food left on the table, and nattered. It was almost as though Joe had said nothing to Kit since the hospital. She desperately wanted time; felt she couldn't process what she'd been told, baldly standing there in front of him.