Framed

15

A moment before the door opened Von Joel was joking with the late-duty nurse, coaxing her to undo a couple of buttons at the top of her uniform. When he heard Larry Jackson outside talking to the Sister he lay back and closed his eyes. His smile faded away. The nurse looked at him curiously.

Larry came in almost on tiptoe, peering at the still figure on the bed.

“Is it okay?”

The nurse nodded. “But don’t be too long.” She smoothed the bedclothes, leaned close to Von Joel. “Will you want a sleeping tablet tonight?”

“You know what I want,” Von Joel said, his voice barely audible.

The nurse left the room, smiling secretively. Larry lifted the bag, showed off his grapes, and then placed them on the bedside table. He then looked down at the cabinet and stuffed the herbal gear inside. As he did so, Von Joel opened his eyes.

“Stuff you wanted from the herbalist,” Larry said, pulling a chair up to the bedside and sitting down. “The Professor said to use the arnica as directed — there’s liquid, a pot of cream, and some of it in tablet form. He sent you a few herbal teas, too, and other stuff. I got the items he put on the list from a pharmacy. There’s instructions with everything.”

Von Joel smiled his thanks. He seemed very weak. His eyes followed Larry’s every move with a strange unfathomable hooded stare, as if he didn’t quite trust him. It was a bit unnerving, seeing him so vulnerable, so dependent.

“Listen” — Larry glanced at the window — “nick any hospital labels you can get your hands on and stick them on the packets and bottles. If it gets out that I brought in anything, I’ll be for it.” He sat back and folded his arms. “So. How’s things?” Larry gave a gentle smile, unsure of himself. A guilty feeling was lurking behind the smile he tried to make so casual.

Von Joel’s dark eyes kept searching Larry’s face, and when he spoke his voice was husky with emotion.

“Sometimes...” He stopped and frowned. “It’s something in your eyes but sometimes, you are so like my kid brother.”

Larry shifted uncomfortably. Without warning or any obvious reason, Von Joel’s eyes filled with tears.

“I need to talk about something, Larry. It’s not about grassing, nothing to do with that. It’s just — just something I want you to know. About Mickey, my brother.”

Larry felt even more uneasy now. He unfolded his arms, then folded them again when he couldn’t think what to do with his hands.

“That stiff they found in Italy,” Von Joel said, “it was Mickey. And listen — I didn’t kill him.”

There was a pause. Von Joel closed his eyes, breathing carefully, tears coursing down his cheeks. Larry leaned forward, about to say something, but Von Joel spoke again.

“We were sent to foster homes, me and him, but he got a raw deal. I was adopted by a well-to-do couple, they used to travel a lot. I lived in Canada, New York...” He opened his eyes and smiled wanly. “She was a flake, but they treated me okay — well, for a while they did. But Mickey, poor bastard...” He wiped his eyes with the back of his free hand. “The people he was put with, they beat the living daylights out of him. He kept on running away, and nobody tried to find out why or where he was running to. He kept all my postcards — it was as if they were all he had of me, all he possessed of a real family.”

Larry pulled a tissue from the box on the bedside cabinet and handed it across.

“He was always trying to find me, and he got so messed up. In his head, you know? He was on the street, boozing, doing dings. Mickey was a born loser. He died one.” Von Joel’s head jerked around on the pillow. He looked directly at Larry. “I’ve got that stolen money stashed. McKinnes must have told you about it.”

“Come on, now,” Larry warned him, “don’t—”

“Mickey was the only one I could trust with picking it up. I gave him my word he’d be okay...” Von Joel let out a shaky breath, drawing his hand down over his eyes. “All he had to do was get his act together.”

“Listen...” Larry was getting agitated. “You shouldn’t be telling me this.”

“I couldn’t get back into England to collect. I was trapped, hunted by the cops, and by the blokes I’d screwed. So I needed Mickey. The dough was stashed in the trunk of a girlfriend’s car.” With a half smile he added, “In a police pound.”

He started to cough, his chest rattling ominously. Larry helped him sit further up against the pillows.

“All he had to do,” Von Joel went on, “was deposit it in a safety box, then fly to Italy to join me, bringing the key with him, of course. I had to know it was safe, you understand? Then, when the heat was off me, I’d collect it.”

Larry had given up trying to protest. He would save it for later. Meanwhile he sat and listened. He was fascinated.

“I had hired a boat, it was moored off the harbor, and I waited for him. See, I couldn’t be sure Mickey could handle bringing the cash, I didn’t want to get him in trouble. Anyway, I waited most of the night, and then, after hours of just sitting there, I heard him. He was singing, actually singing, and shouting out my name. He was so eager to see me, waving his arms around, standing up in his little rowboat, drunk out of his mind. He’d already dipped into my dough, he’d got a flashy suit on. He kept on yelling, ‘We did it, Eddie, I did it, Eddie...’ ” Von Joel’s eyes pressed shut for a second. “Then he fell.”

“Christ,” Larry breathed.

“I jumped in, of course. The current was a real bitch. I couldn’t see anything, everything was cloudy and murky. I was in the water for hours trying to find him. For a while I could actually hear him, ‘Eddie? Eddie? Eddie...’ ”

Larry had to lean forward to catch the words choked in Von Joel’s throat. “He was calling me, kept on calling me, and it got fainter and fainter, but I couldn’t see him, I couldn’t find him, and I clung on to the stupid bloody boat he’d rowed out in, hanging on, hoping I’d see him, find him...” His voice was no more than a whisper. “I never found him, Larry, I never found him. I kept up the search all night, but he just disappeared... My brother, in that fuckin’ stupid suit, and all the past, our past, kept coming back, like when we were kids crying and holding on to each other because we had no one else. I could see him, Larry, when he was... eight, maybe less. He had this spiky hair, you know, the kind that no matter how many matrons spit and lick it down, still sticks up at the back, and I remember him sayin’ ‘Don’t go, Eddie, stay with me.’ But when I was adopted, they didn’t even let us say good-bye. Mickey was up in a window, shouting out, ‘He’s my brother, don’t take my brother away...’ and I couldn’t wait, never even turned back. I just wanted to get the hell out of that shit hole!”

Larry didn’t know what to say, so he remained silent, watching as Von Joel continued. His voice was flat, unemotional now.

“The Coast Guard found his body two weeks later. I went to identify him. Then it came to me. Why not let Mickey be me? That was when I did the switch — my watch, my wedding ring...” Von Joel shook his head. “The key went in the ocean with Mickey and it stayed there. That’s the crazy part! The dough, it’s still sitting in the bank vault.”

Larry picked at the edge of the bandage on his hand.

“Why are you telling me this?” he said.

“When you smile you remind me of Mickey. No other reason.”

Von Joel rubbed his damaged shoulder while Larry tried to see matters straight, tried to ignore the distortions of flattery and sentimentality.

“I’ve never killed anyone, Larry. I fence cash, I make deals, but I never hurt anybody. On my life. But Mickey...” Von Joel’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I still hear him some nights, calling out for me, and I can’t find him.” He shook himself. “I’m not all bad.” He sighed. “At least I saved you, Larry.”

“I’m glad you did,” Larry said, wondering how much of this he should tell McKinnes.

Next morning, talking to the chief in the busy operations room at St. John’s Row, Larry decided to keep the details of his visit sketchy. He told McKinnes that Von Joel was fairly weak but appeared to be mending. He added that there was no apparent breakdown in the rapport he and the prisoner had established during their time together in the safe house.

“I think he relies on me, in a way,” Larry added.

“Keep up the visits,” McKinnes told him. “It’s good he trusts you.” A telephone on the desk beside them rang.

McKinnes snatched it up. “Yep!” He covered the mouthpiece. “Nothing on the shooter we found,” he told Larry, half listening to the caller. “Ballistics are still working on it. Serial number’s been filed off, of course.” He jerked his head at the door. “Go home. Take a break.” He stiffened suddenly, giving the caller his full attention. “What? Shit! No, no, nobody’s mentioned it. I’ve got no option then, have I? I’ll sort it.”

McKinnes slammed down the phone as DI Shrapnel appeared to tell him the car was ready. McKinnes pulled him aside.

“They need all the safe cells,” he muttered. “They’ve got a bunch of IRA suspects coming in off the boat. We’re going to have to find a place for Myers.” He watched Shrapnel make a sour face. “You think I like it?”

“Do they get priority, then?” Shrapnel demanded as they moved away. “This is a bad time, Jimmy. We need all the men we’ve got...”

Larry watched them go. All at once he was feeling ignored again. Excluded. He had forgotten what an unpleasant sensation that was.

He looked around the room, watching men and women hurrying around in overlapping circuits, waving paper at each other and shouting down telephones, sustaining the drama of a top-level operation against the frenetic background of computers and radio links and fax machines. Larry wanted to be a part of this productive maelstrom. He needed to be a cog, because involvement was essential to his sense of himself. He was not one of nature’s loners.

He stared at a deskful of stacked files and photographs, wondering at the amount of activity one man could set in motion. It occurred to him that maybe there was something to be said for loner status after all. Especially when there was no alternative. At its best, solo operation made for focused efficiency. And properly handled, it meant the incidental glory did not have to be shared.

He had an idea.

The Sheffields’ house was small and neat, with a smell like a freshly opened tin of wax polish. Moyra Sheffield showed Larry into the lounge, explaining that she had been about to have elevenses when he rang the doorbell. While she went to the kitchen Larry put his coat over the back of a sofa and sat down.

He looked around the room, imagining himself in a G-Plan advert where they had used too much colored ink. The floral curtains had the same pattern as the matching two-seater sofas; the carpet was floral, too, though darker and with larger flowers. There was a strenuous sense of pairing and mirroring, as if nothing could be allowed to stand out on its own. The window ledge and sideboard were crowded with vases, posy bowls, and tiny porcelain knickknacks; in the corner was a display cabinet filled with Capo di Monte.

Moyra reappeared carrying a tray. She set it down on the coffee table in front of Larry. The teapot, cups, saucers, and a plate of chocolate biscuits were arranged on a crisp linen cloth.

“There we are then...”

She poured the tea, put a cup in front of Larry, and sat on the sofa beside him. She placed a plastic-covered photograph album on his knees. He waited for an explanation; when none came he opened the album. On the first page was an eight-by-ten color print of a man and woman standing arm in arm, smiling frozenly at the camera. At first the faces didn’t register.

“That’s me and Eddie on our wedding day.”

She had been an attractive girl, Larry noticed. The man beside her was practically unrecognizable. He hadn’t exactly aged since the picture was taken. It was more dramatic than that. Time had worked a transformation. Or something had.

“How long were you together?”

“Five years.”

Larry turned the page, trying to grasp the notion of Von Joel getting into bed with this woman every night for five years. Imagination wouldn’t stretch to it.

Moyra inched closer and pointed to a picture.

“That was Rex, Eddie’s dog. He died years ago, in fact just after he... Poor thing used to wait at the door, wouldn’t go out, or eat. He missed him, you see. Eventually he forgot him, but he didn’t live long after. The vet put him down in the end. Eddie broke his heart. He broke mine too.”

Larry continued turning the pages. The pictures were commonplace, no more than off-center and occasionally off-focus slices of dead times, a mundane record of a relationship that had ceased to exist outside the covers of the album.

Moyra clasped and unclasped her hands. The flick-flick of the thick album pages turning brought back memories, but she wasn’t really looking. It was the picture of Rex that stayed in her mind. Rex sitting outside the gate, his head strained forward as if listening, waiting to hear Eddie’s familiar whistle. The whistle never came, and Rex never gave up. Day after day he sat there. When she had taken out his bowl of food and water, he had refused it, and wouldn’t come back indoors. Then, after a few days, he had started walking up to the end of the road, standing there, waiting. At night she would slip the curtain aside and see him, back at the gates, lying with his head resting on his paws, and her pity turned to anger. It had been Moyra’s decision to have him put down. The vet had suggested he would in time come back into the house, but by then Moyra didn’t want him, couldn’t stand the sight of the dog. She had insisted the vet put him down. She hadn’t wanted another home to be found for him. She wanted him gone, as if all her anger and feeling of betrayal were directed to the mute animal who pined for Eddie.

“Eddie was different.” Moyra sounded wistful. “He said everything around here felt predetermined. He’d say the worst thing was knowing how you’re going to be and what you’ll be doing years before it happens.” She drank her tea with a soft slurp. “I think he got into robbery out of frustration, like he wanted something to happen. I tried to talk to him, but he’d say what’s the alternative? He was a car salesman with Kenrick’s, not bad money, and they liked him, said he would make manager. But he left.”

Quite suddenly Moyra began to cry. Larry wasn’t sure what to do. He decided to sit tight, go on staring at the album and wait for her to gather herself.

“He had his breakfast,” she said, wiping her eyes with a tissue, “kissed me, like every day. I was making the bed when I saw this black rubbish bag, you know the garbage can liners, and it had an elastic band tied around the top. When I opened it, it was full of his clothes, the ones he didn’t want. I never saw him again. No letter, no reason.”

“Did you ever meet his brother? Mickey?”

Moyra frowned, looking puzzled.

“He didn’t have a brother,” she said. “When I met him, all he had in the world was what he stood up in! I don’t even know where he came from. Not from around here. I used to ask him about his past, but he’d just go silent.” She sniffed. “I hated it when he did that.”

“Are you sure he didn’t have a brother?”

“He never had so much as a letter from anyone, Mr. Jackson. I know he’d traveled a lot, mind you. I saw his passport once — Canada, America even...”

Larry began to find the sofa restricting for his legs, the seating angle put leverage on a few of the bruises he had picked up in the crash. He stood, stretched for a moment, and went to the window. He peered out at houses identical to this one.

“Tell me about Italy,” he said, turning to face Moyra. “It’s very important, Mrs. Sheffield. What happened in Italy?”

A muffled bump in the hallway heralded the opening of the living room door. Phil Sheffield came in. He was wearing overalls. “What’s this?” He glared at Larry, then at his wife. “You all right, Moyra?”

“This is Detective Sergeant Jackson,” she said, striving for polite formality. “Phil, my husband...”

Larry nodded, noticing the man was fully on his guard, his big hands clenched into fists at his sides. “Hasn’t she been put through enough?” he demanded. “Ah, I’m just trying to establish a few facts, actually.” Larry came forward to the center of the room, coughing diffidently into a furled hand. “There’s no need for anyone to get upset. Were you with your wife when she identified the body of Eddie Myers, Phil? Okay if I call you Phil?”

“Suit yourself. But your crowd should leave us alone.” Phil turned sharply to his wife. “Moyra, take the tray out. Go on, love.” She did as she was told. Larry believed she looked frightened.

When she had gone he stood staring at Phil Sheffield, hoping his rank would make up for any lack of authority the man found in his appearance. “What happened in Italy?” he said, making it serious but not too stern. “It’s important.” Phil shrugged. He walked a slow oval between the door and the window, coming back to stand near Larry. “She was in such a state, she couldn’t have ID’d her own mother. The body was all bloated and it stunk to high heaven. She was hysterical.”

“So you identified him?”

“I got a photograph...” Phil gestured vaguely with his hands. “They showed us his watch, it looked like him, yeah.”

“And you gave permission for the body to be cremated?”

“I couldn’t. She had to do that.” Phil lowered his head, looking up at Larry from under his eyebrows. “You going to get him for murder, are you?” Larry said nothing. “If it wasn’t Eddie Myers’s own body in Italy, then he must have killed the bloke.” Phil shook his head. “He’s a dirty grass.” He leaned closer to Larry, raising a finger. “I hope you lock him up for life and let the ones inside punish him. Nobody likes a squealer. Nobody.” Larry nodded. It hadn’t occurred to him, until now, that Phil Sheffield might have done time. Moyra watched Jackson leaving, hidden behind the draped curtain in the front bedroom. The room had been redecorated since Eddie had left, the whole house had, but it was as if his presence had suddenly returned, as if Rex was still waiting at the gates, as if... Phil knocked on the door, an irritating light tap she didn’t answer.

“You want a cup of something, love?”

Moyra stared at her reflection in the dressing-table mirror, not answering, not caring, and when he knocked again she pursed her lips.

“Leave me alone, Phil!”

“What?”

Moyra clenched her hands. “I said just leave me alone for a bit.”

She heard him banging down the stairs, then heard his footsteps coming back. This time there was no light tap on the door, and he kicked it open.

“I’ll leave you alone, Moyra, but any more of this carrying on and I’ll go down to the pub, and I’ll bloody stay there...”

“I just need to get myself together. It’s all—”

“All what?” he snapped.

She sat on the edge of the bed, plucking at the bedspread that matched the floral curtains. She just wanted to be left alone. He came and sat just behind her and she stared at him through the mirror, looked at his concerned, confused face, watched as his big hand reached out, to touch her back, a gentle, sweet move that made her cringe, but she managed a smile.

“Sorry, I’m sorry, love...” He inched closer and wrapped his arms around her. Her body was stiff and unresponsive. “I’ll put the kettle on, make you a cup of tea, yeah? You’ll feel better then.”

She nodded, and felt relief as he got up and walked out, closing the door behind him. She flopped back, turning to bury her face in the coverlet, afraid he would hear her, hear the sobs that shook her body. After all these years, the pain was as raw as it had been when Eddie left. She had loved him, loved him so much, and nothing anyone said made it easier. Time didn’t heal her pain and neither could sweet big-hearted Phil. It had been better when she believed he was dead, then at least she knew no one else had him. But Eddie was alive, had been alive all these years. No letter, no explanation why he had left in the first place. Had she really meant so little to him? Had she done something to him, said something that had made him go? All the questions came back as fresh as they had been when he had walked out, and they were still unanswered.

“You don’t know anythin’ about him, Moyra!” That was her father.

“He’s very handsome, love, but, you know, you’re so young, your whole life is ahead of you. Wait. Why don’t you wait? It’s just a few weeks, Moyra, you can’t know what you want in that short time.” That was her mother.

“You don’t know anything about him.” That was her father again. But Moyra hadn’t listened to anyone, even her friends. They’d all been suspicious of the dark handsome boy who just suddenly appeared in their local pub one night. It had not been Eddie who had made the first move, but Moyra. She’d watched him standing, leaning against the bar. It had been Moyra who had gone up to him, after passing him twice to go to the ladies, and he had not given her so much as a second glance. Moyra wasn’t used to that. She was exceptionally pretty, a daddy’s girl. Only daughter of a wealthy builder, she’d even been given a new car for her seventeenth birthday, all tied up with a big blue ribbon... Moyra had virtually always got what she wanted, all the local boys chased her, her mother had said she could have had her pick of any one of them, but Moyra had gone after Eddie.

The tea was a bit stewed and Phil sat smoking, the ashtray piled up with cigarette butts. She walked in and sat down, drawing the cup with the rose pattern closer. She was about to reach for the sweeteners when Phil said softly he’d already put one in. Moyra looked into his concerned face. His eyes seemed a little afraid, almost unable to meet her wide, baby blue, daddy’s baby’s eyes.

“I love you, Moyra, I love you so much...”

“Yes, I know,” she whispered.

“You do love me, don’t you?” Phil asked, flushing.

“You know I do...” and his smile made her want to weep, because it was so unlike Eddie’s. He was so unlike Eddie.

“They’ll lock the bastard up well and good now, he won’t get out for a long time, if ever.” Phil’s mouth turned down, his face, a moment ago flushed with embarrassed love, was now taut with anger. “I’d fuckin’ like to strangle the shit.”

“So would I,” said Moyra, as she sipped the cold tea. But she knew, if he walked in the door, looked at her with that half-mocking wonderful smile, she would, like she had all those years ago, walk out with Eddie, run away with him, to the end of the world if that’s where he wanted to go. But he hadn’t wanted her — no letter, no phone call, nothing. She would never understand why he had hurt her, when all she had ever done was love him.