Child's Play

Chapter 4

By his own not unreasonable standards, Dalziel was right in his suspicions of Wield. Not that the fat superintendent was unwilling to admit that there might be conditions of the heart more painful than angina, but unless they were treatable under the NHS, he wasn’t about to accept them as excuses for absence.

The sergeant had returned to his flat the previous evening uncertain of what he might find. Most probable seemed that Cliff Sharman would have preceded him to collect his belongings and continue on his way. He felt both disappointment and relief to discover the boy’s bag where it had been since the previous Saturday.

He was still unable to work out precisely what the youth was playing at. Why for instance had he kept quiet about his connection with Wield when he was brought into the station? The obvious, if not the only answer, was that the last thing a potential blackmailer wants is to bring things out in the open. Also, the boy’s silence had invited his own, and thus deepened his complicity.

He sat with these and other equally cynical thoughts till close to midnight when he heard a key turn in the lock. He held his breath. The lounge door slowly opened. The single table lamp threw the boy’s face into strange relief.

‘Hello, Mac,’ said Sharman.

Wield did not reply.

‘I left my things.’

‘They’re where you left them.’

‘Yeah. I’ll get 'em and be on my way.’

‘You’ll have a bit of a wait for your bus!’ said Wield savagely.

‘Bus?’

‘Yes. All that crap about hitchhiking and turning up here by chance! With a timetable in your wallet!’

‘You went through my wallet?’ said the youth in apparently genuine surprise. ‘Christ, I should’ve known you would! That’s what you’re trained to do, isn’t it, being a pig.’

‘Don’t knock it, son,’ said Wield. ‘After all, that’s what brought you here in the first place, wasn’t it?’

‘To stay with a pig?’

‘To see what you could squeeze out of me. I’ve had a word with Maurice, lad. I know all about you, believe me.’

‘You two speaking again, are you? Nice to think I’ve brought you together,’ said Sharman with a not-very-convincing sneer. ‘What’d he have to say?’

‘What do you think? A glowing testimonial?’

‘No. But if he told you I came up here just because of you, he’s a bloody liar! I mean, think about it, Mac! I’m going to take off into the sticks to try to put the black on a gay cop just on the basis of what Mo lets slip in bed? I mean, shit, the kind of pigs I know in the Met would have had me picked up at Heathrow with an arseful of junk if they got half a sniff I was a threat to them! No one told me it’d be any different up here in the paddy-fields.’

‘You rang me all the same,’ said Wield, rendered almost defensive by the force of this argument.

‘I felt lost,’ said Sharman. ‘I mean, here I was, not knowing anyone. For all I knew, they still tarred and feathered gays up here. I needed a friendly native and you were the nearest possibility.’

It was almost convincing, except that Wield was acutely aware of his readiness to be convinced and this made him reinforce his scepticism.

‘Very touching,’ he said. ‘So what did bring you up to sunny Yorkshire? A message from Mo, was it?’

‘Listen,’ said Sharman. ‘It wasn’t Mo that mentioned this place first, it was me. That’s what set him on telling about you. It was me who started it, not the other way round, OK?’

‘Oh aye? And what the hell did you have to say about Yorkshire?’ sneered Wield.

The boy hesitated a moment, then took a deep breath and began.

‘Mo had been asking me about my family. I don’t think he was really interested. You know the way you chatter on when you’re …well, you know. Anyway, I told him I lived down in Dulwich with my gran. My mum died a few years back, and Gran brought me up. Dad paid the bills, well, he paid what he could, and he’d come and stay with us as often as he could, but he worked a lot up west, in clubs and hotels, and he had to live in, so he couldn’t get down to Dulwich as often as he’d have liked. Then about three years ago, he went off. Well, he did sometimes. I got a card from him. He always sent me a card if he went off anywhere, so I’d know not to expect him in the next week or so, then he’d send another saying when he was going to be back. Only this time there wasn’t another card, just the first one. And that one came from here. This town. That’s what I told Mo; that’s when he said he used to live here and started telling me about you. Well, he wasn’t really interested in what I was saying, was he? Why should he be? So I shut up and let him tell me these funny stories about him screwing around with a copper.’

Wield ignored the pain in his heart and said coldly, ‘So, you decided to come up here and look for your dad? After three years? Is that it?’

‘Yeah, that’s it!’ said the boy defiantly.

‘This postcard, you’ve still got it?’

‘I did have it,’ said the youth, looking distressed. ‘But I must’ve left it at Mo’s when I came away.’

‘Very careless. But then you are careless, aren’t you? Careless with other people’s possessions as well as your own.’

‘What’s that mean?’

‘Maurice says you robbed him,’ said Wield.

‘He’s a lying cunt! I didn’t take nothing that wasn’t owing me!’

‘Owing you. For what?’

‘We’d been sharing expenses, that sort of thing. When we split up, I was owed.’

‘Bollocks,’ said Wield. ‘Let’s have the truth, lad.’

‘We had a row,’ said Sharman sullenly. ‘I brought someone back to the flat. I thought Mo was away for the night but he came back unexpectedly. He was very nasty and he chucked me out. I went back for my stuff next day when he was at work and, like I say, I just took what was owing me.’

‘And you decided to come up here and look for your dear old dad after three years?’ mocked Wield.

‘That’s right!’ exploded Sharman. ‘That’s what I decided. I’d thought of it before, but I’d never done anything about it. Don’t you ever put things off and keep putting them off?’

Oh yes, thought Wield. I do. I do.

He said, ‘And what did you expect to do when you got here. Just walk around till you bumped into this father of yours?’

‘Why the fuck not?’ cried Sharman. ‘I didn’t think it’d be quite as big as this, and I thought he might sort of stick out.’

‘Stick out?’

‘Yeah, stick out. He’s black, you see. I mean, not like me, but really black, and I thought …’

‘You thought it was all sort of little villages up here where the kids’d follow a black man round the streets, staring at him like he’d dropped out of the moon?’

‘No, don’t be stupid,’ said the youth unconvincingly.

‘And what have you done to find him?’ said Wield, still unpersuaded by any of this.

‘What the fuck could I do? Ask a policeman?’

‘Why not? First thing you did was telephone one.’

The boy suddenly grinned.

‘It’s daft, but I never thought of it that way,’ he said. ‘No, I’ve tried ringing round the Sharmans in the phone book in case there were any relatives. I think he came from up north originally. But no luck. So then I thought I’d advertise.’

‘Advertise?’

‘Yeah. Get my name in the paper. I thought he might see it if he was still up here.’

Wield’s eyes widened in disbelief.

‘You trying to tell me that’s why you got arrested for shoplifting?’ He recalled Seymour’s description of Sharman stuffing goods into his pockets like he was picking brambles.

‘That, and …’

‘And what? Come on, tell me. It’s at least half a second since I heard something incredible.’

This sparked off the boy’s anger once more.

‘Because of you!’ he yelled. ‘Because of what you said the night before. You made it clear you thought I was only out for what I could get, so I thought I’d show you …’

‘Show me what?’ demanded Wield. ‘Show me up, you mean?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Sharman, subsiding. ‘I was all mixed up about you and Dad and everything. I don’t know what … anyway, I didn’t show you up, did I? I had the chance but I kept schtum, didn’t I?’

He stood before Wield, part defiant, part scared.

Wield could not feel his own emotional state was any clearer. How much of this was truth, how much lies? And how much an inseparable mix of the two?

He said, ‘I had every chance to say something too.’

‘Don’t be bloody stupid,’ said the boy in genuine surprise. ‘Why the hell should you have said anything? You had everything to lose, nothing to gain.’

Then after a pause he added slyly, ‘I bet you were shitting yourself, though.’

Wield nodded slowly.

‘That’s one way of putting it, I suppose,’ he said.

The boy relaxed.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘I suppose I’d better get my gear together.’

It was a toe in the water rather than a statement of intent.

‘It’s late,’ said Wield. ‘It’s very late.’

In the early hours, Wield awoke. He lay very still, fearful of disturbing the slim, warm frame beside him in his narrow bed. But it was an unnecessary effort.

Sharman said, ‘You awake, Mac?’

‘Yes.’

‘There’s something I should tell you.’

‘Oh aye?’

‘I did think of trying to make something out of it, you being gay, I mean.’

‘Is that right? Blackmail, you mean?’

‘Well, no. I didn’t think you were the blackmail type.’

‘Scared you, did I?’

‘Too bloody true! No, I thought I might make a few quid from the papers, though. I thought it’d make a good story.’

‘And?’

‘I rang one up. The local one.’

‘The Post? Not their cup of tea, I shouldn’t have thought.’

‘No. They put me on to the other lot, the Sunday Challenger next time.’

‘Next time? You rang twice?’

‘Yes. I’m sorry. It was after we’d had that row. I didn’t know what I was doing. That’s when I ended up nicking stuff from that shop.’

‘So you talked to the Challenger.’

‘Yeah. Some guy called Vollans. He wanted to meet and talk about money and things. But I wouldn’t. And I didn’t mention any names or anything, though he kept on asking.’

Wield smiled secretly at the way in which humble confession was changing to a display of virtue.

‘You’re sure?’ he growled.

‘Yes. Honest, Mac. I wouldn’t … I just rang off. I’m sorry. I wanted you to know.’

‘Well, now I know,’ said Wield. ‘Let’s get some sleep.’

A silence followed but not the silence of repose.

‘Mac.’

‘What?’

‘It must be great being … well, older,’ said Sharman wistfully. ‘I mean, old enough not to be worrying about what’s best to do, and how to do it, all the time.’

‘Oh aye,’ said Wield. ‘You’re probably right. It must be great.’