Knock Down

16

I knelt on the ground in the familiar bloody agony and thought that a dislocated shoulder was among the ultimates.

What was more, there were footsteps coming up the drive towards me.

Scrunch scrunch scrunch.

Inexorable.

All the things have to be faced. I supported my left elbow in my right hand and waited, because in any case I could barely move, let alone run away.

A figure materialised from the darkness. Advanced to within six feet. Stopped.

A voice said, ‘Have you been run over?’

I nearly smiled. ‘I thought I told you to stay in the car.’

‘You sound funny,’ Sophie said.

‘Hilarious.’

She took two paces forwards, stretching out her hands.

‘Don’t touch me,’ I said hastily.

‘What’s the matter?’

I told her.

‘Oh God,’ she said.

‘And you can put it back.’

‘What?’

‘Put my shoulder back.’

‘But...’ She sounded bewildered. ‘I can’t.’

‘Not here. In the house.’

She had no idea how to help me up. Not like jump jockeys’ wives, I thought briefly, for whom smashed up husbands were all in the day’s work. I made it to my feet with the loss of no more than a pint of sweat.Various adjectives occurred to me. Like excruciating.

One foot gingerly in front of the other took us to the door that Vic’s friend had left open, the door to the hallway and the office. Light spilled out of it. I wondered if there was a telephone anywhere except in the office.

We went very slowly indoors with me hunched like Notre Dame.

‘Jonah!’ Sophie said.

‘What?’

‘I didn’t realise... you look... you look...’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I need you to put it back.’

‘We must get a doctor.’

‘No... the police. Vic Vincent’s been shot.’

‘Shot.’ She followed my gaze to Vic’s office and went along there to take a look. She returned several shades paler, which made two of us.

‘It’s... awful.’

‘See if you can find another telephone.’

She switched on several lights. There was another telephone on a table flanked by a sofa and a potted palm.

‘Call the police,’ I said.

She dialled three nines. Told them a man had been killed. They would come at once, they said. She put the receiver down and turned towards me purposefully.

‘I’m going to dial again for an ambulance.’

‘No. You do it. It has to be done now. At once.’

‘Jonah... don’t be stupid. How can I? You need professional help. A doctor.’

‘I need a doctor like yesterday’s news. Look... doctors don’t put shoulders back. By the time they arrive all the muscles have gone into spasms, so they can’t. They send you to hospital in bloody jerking ambulances. The hospitals sit you around for hours in casualty departments. Then they send you for X-rays. Then they trundle you to an operating theatre and by then they have to give you a general anaesthetic. It takes about four hours at the best of times. Sunday evenings are not the best of times. If you won’t do it... I... I...’ I stopped. The prospect of those long hours ahead was enough to scare the saints.

‘I can’t,’ she said.

‘I’ll tell you how...’

She was appalled. ‘You must have a doctor.’

I muttered under my breath.

‘What did you say?’ she demanded.

‘I said... God give me a woman of strength.’

She said in a low voice, ‘That’s unfair.’

I went slowly past her through the hall into the open-plan dining-room and sat gingerly on one of the hard straight-backed chairs. What I felt was beyond a joke.

I shut my eyes and thought about Vic’s friend. Thought about the glimpse of him I’d had in the split second before he blasted off and took my comfort with him. There had been a seepage of light from the house’s open door. Enough to show me the shape of a head.

There had been little time for certainty. Only for impression. The impression remained in my mind indelibly.

Sophie said, ‘Jonah...’

I opened my eyes. She was standing in front of me, huge eyed and trembling.

I’d wanted to know what could break up her colossal composure. Now I knew. One man shot to death and another demanding an unimaginable service.

‘What do I do?’ she said.

I swallowed. ‘It will take ten minutes.’

She was shocked. Apprehension made her eyes even bigger.

‘If you mean it...’ I said.

‘I do.’

‘First instruction... smile.’

‘But...’

‘Six deep breaths and a big smile.’

‘Oh Jonah.’ She sounded despairing.

‘Look,’ I said. ‘I don’t want you messing about with my precious body unless you go back to being your normal confident relaxed efficient hard-hearted self.’

She stared. ‘I thought you were past talking. You’re a fraud.’

‘That’s better.’

She took me literally. Six deep breaths and a smile. Not a big smile, but something.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Put your left hand under my elbow and hold my wrist with your right.’

I shifted an inch or two back on the seat until the base of my spine was firmly against the chair back. She very tentatively stepped close in front of me and put her hands where I’d said. For all her efforts I could see she still did not believe she could help.

‘Look... Do it slowly. You can’t wrench it back. When you get my arm in the right position, the top of the bone will slide back into the socket... Do you understand?’

‘I think so.’

‘Right... there are three stages. First, straighten my arm out, slightly to the side. Then keep my wrist out and pull my elbow across my chest... it will look awkward... but it works. If you pull hard enough the top of the bone will come in line with the socket and start to slide into it. When it does that, fold my wrist up and over towards my right shoulder... and my arm will go back where it ought to be.’

She was in no way reassured.

‘Sophie...’

‘Yes?’

I hesitated. ‘If you do it, you’ll save me hours of pain.’

‘Yes.’

‘But...’ I stopped.

‘You’re trying to say,’ she said, ‘that I’m going to hurt you even worse, and I mustn’t let it stop me.’

‘Attagirl.’

‘All right,’

She began. Straightened my arm out, slowly and care fully. I could feel her surprise at the physical effort it demanded of her: an arm was a good deal heavier than most people realised and she had the whole weight of it in her hands.

It took five minutes.

‘Is that right?’ she said.

‘Mm.’

‘Now do I pull your elbow across?’

‘Mm.’

Always the worst part. When she’d gone only a short way I could feel her trembling. Her fingers under my elbow shook with irresolution.

I said, ‘If you... drop my elbow... now... elbow’ll scream.’

‘Oh...’ She sounded shattered but her grip tightened blessedly. We proceeded, with no sound but heavy breathing on both sides. There was always a point at which progress seemed to end and yet the arm was still out. Always a point of despair.

We reached it.

‘It’s no good,’ she said. ‘It isn’t working.’

‘Go on.’

‘I can’t do it.’

‘Another... half inch.’

‘Oh, no...’ But she screwed herself up and went on trying.

The jolt and the audible scrunch when the bone started to go over the edge of the socket astounded her.

‘Now...’ I said. ‘Wrist up and over... not too fast.’

Two more horrible crunches, the sweetest sounds on earth. Hell went back into its box. I stood up. Smiled like the sun coming out.

‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘Thank you very much.’

She was bewildered. ‘Do you mean... the pain goes away... just like that.’

‘Just like that.’

She looked at the transformation she’d wrought in me.Her eyes filled with tears. I put my right arm round her and held her close.

‘Why don’t you get the bloody thing fixed?’ she said.

‘You won’t catch me having any more orthopaedic operations if I don’t absolutely have to.’

She sniffed the tears away. ‘You’re a coward.’

‘All the way.’

I walked with her to Vic’s-office. We stood in the doorway, looking in. He lay by the window, face down, the back of his purple shirt a glistening crimson obscenity.

Whatever he had done to me, I had done worse to him. Because of the pressure I’d put on him, he was dead. I supposed I would never outlive a grinding sense of responsibility and regret.

‘I half saw who killed him,’ I said.

‘Half?’

‘Enough.’

The indelible impression made sense. The pattern had become plain.

We turned away.

There was a sound of a car drawing up outside, doors slamming, two or three pairs of heavy feet.

‘The police,’ Sophie said in relief.

I nodded. ‘Keep it simple, though. If they start on Vic’s and my disagreements we’ll be here all night.’

‘You’re immoral.’

‘No... lazy.’

‘I’ve noticed.’

The police were their usual abrasive selves, saving their store of sympathy for worthier causes like old ladies and lost kids. They looked into the office, telephoned for reinforcements and invited us in a fairly hectoring manner to explain what we were doing there. I stifled an irritated impulse to point out that if we’d chosen we could have gone quietly away and left someone else to find Vic dead. Virtue’s own reward was seldom worth it.

Both then and later, when the higher ranks arrived, we gave minimum information and kept quiet in between. In essence I said, ‘There were no lights on in the front of the house when I arrived. I know the house slightly. I walked round to the side to see if Vic was in his office. I had a tentative arrangement to see him for five or six minutes at six o’clock. I was driving Miss Randolph home to Esher and called in at Vic’s on the way, parking outside on the road and walking up the drive. I saw him in his office. I saw him fall against the window, and then collapse. I hurried round to the front to try to get into the house to help him. A light-coloured Ford Cortina was starting up. It shot away in a hurry but I caught a glimpse of the driver. I recognised the driver.’

They listened to my identification impassively, neither pleased nor sceptical. Did I see a gun, they asked. There was no gun in Vic’s office.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Nothing but the driver’s head.’

They grunted and turned to Sophie.

‘Jonah left me in his car,’ she said. ‘Then this other car came crashing out of the drive at a reckless speed. I decided to see if everything was all right. I walked up here and found Jonah in front of the house. The house door was open, so we went inside. We found Mr Vincent lying in his office. We telephoned immediately to you.’

We sat for nearly three hours in Vic’s beautiful dining-room while the end of his life was dissected by the prosaic professionals for whom murder was all in the day’s work. They switched on every light and brought more of their own, and the glare further dehumanised their host.

Maybe it was necessary for them to think of him as a thing, not a person. I still couldn’t.

I was finally allowed to take Sophie home. I parked outside and we went up to her flat, subdued and depressed. She made coffee, which we drank in the kitchen.

‘Hungry?’ she said. ‘There’s some cheese, I think.’

We ate chunks of cheese in our fingers, absent-mindedly.

‘What are you going to do?’ she said.

‘Wait for them to catch him, I suppose.’

‘He won’t run... he doesn’t know you saw him.’

‘No.’

She said anxiously, ‘He doesn’t... does he?’

‘If he’d seen me he’d have come back and shot us both.’

‘You think the nicest thoughts.’

The evening had left smudgy circles round her eyes. She looked more than tired: over-stretched, over-strained. I yawned and said I ought to be going home, and she couldn’t disguise her flooding relief.

I smiled. ‘You’ll be all right alone?’

‘Oh yes.’ Absolute certainty in her voice. Solitude offered her refuge, healing, and rest. I didn’t. I had brought her a car crash, a man with a pitchfork, a bone-setting and a murder. I’d offered an alcoholic brother, a half-burnt home and a snap engagement. None of it designed for the well-being of someone who needed the order and peace of an ivory control tower.

She came with me down to the car.

‘You’ll come again?’ she said.

‘When you’re ready.’

‘A dose of Dereham every week...’

‘Would be enough to frighten any woman?’

‘Well, no.’ She smiled. ‘It might be bad for the nerves, but at least I’d know I was alive.’

I laughed and gave her an undemanding brotherly kiss. ‘It would suit me fine.’

‘Really?’

‘And truly.’

‘I don’t ask for that,’ she said.

‘Then you damn well should.’

She grinned. I slid into the driving seat. Her eyes looked calmer in her exhausted face.

‘Sleep well,’ I said. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’

It seemed a long way home. My shoulder ached: a faint echo, but persistent. I thought with longing of a stiff brandy and stifled a sigh at the less reviving prospect of coke.

When I got back the house was dark.

No lights, no Crispin.

Hell, I thought. He had no car any more; no transport but his feet. The one place his feet could be trusted to take him was straight to the source of gin.

I parked outside the kitchen as usual, opened the unlocked back door, went in, switched on the lights, and shouted through the house.

‘Crispin?’ No answer. ‘Crispin.’

Total silence.

Swearing under my breath I went along to the office, intending to telephone the pub to ask what state he was in. If he were too far gone, I’d drive up and fetch him. I had picked up the receiver and begun to dial when I heard the door behind me squeak on its hinges.

So he hadn’t gone after all. I turned with the beginnings of a congratulatory smile.

It wasn’t Crispin who had come in. I looked at the heavy pistol with its elongated silencer, and like Vic the urgent words which shaped in my mind were no and my God and wait.