Behindlings. Nicola Barker
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He was surely no wild man.
Clever? Possibly. Smart? Never. Physically speaking he bordered on the unkempt. He was rangy and casual in his old, olive green corduroy trousers (so well-scuffed at the knee that the fabric’s corrugated indentations had been smoothed clean away), a terrifyingly plain –in Ted’s eyes –brown, roundnecked lambswool jumper, with a cheap, scruffy, tweed jacket thrown over the top.
Each of his pockets was ridiculously full. They bulged, uniformly, reminding Ted –in essence –of his old school gerbil, a creature so dedicated to storage that the fullness of his pouches often rendered spells inside his compact mouse-house or runs on his exercise wheel an absolute inviability.
Wesley did not even wear walking boots (as Ted might quite reasonably have anticipated of a man in his line of business), but instead sported an exceedingly dirty pair of ancient black Hi-Tecs, the laces of which were knotted, frayed and extended to only two thirds of the available holes.
He was a sorry sight, Ted decided, but he did have a pleasingly round face: gappy teeth, snub nose, keen but bloodshot (and strangely unfocussed) anchovy-paste eyes. He needed a shave. He looked like he’d never troubled to brush his hair in his life. To the front it seemed fine, but at the back it stood up in a sleepy ridge like a misshapen muddy-brown tidal-wave.
A confident woman with a good vocabulary might easily have described his appearance as ‘tousled’, but Ted couldn’t really find it in himself to be quite so articulate or so forgiving. He sniffed. Wesley smelled of old milk, dirty dishcloths and tobacco. The fruity kind.
‘Will she be home by any chance?’ Wesley wondered out loud as they finally turned into the driveway (at this late stage hardly anticipating a reaction).
‘No,’ an active, genial presence suddenly re-ignited inside Ted’s eyes, ‘she works.’
Wesley started, glanced over briefly towards Ted’s newly-inhabited profile, then nodded. He felt almost relieved. He was finding some difficulty in recalling the exact details of what it was that he’d written about Katherine Turpin in the book –although there was one thing of which he was absolutely certain: whatever he’d said, it must’ve been necessary.
He had an unshakable confidence in the multifarious decisions made on his behalf by his former selves. How could a fundamentally decent and honourable man ever really seriously regret his past actions? How pointless would that be? How lily-livered? How inconsistent? How slack?
‘She works,’ Ted reiterated, ‘growing beansprouts on a farm. But only part-time. I have a key.’
‘A beansprout farm?’ Wesley smiled caustically. ‘How unique.’
Ted didn’t respond. But he was deeply perturbed by Wesley’s tone. Beansprouts? He pondered quietly, jangling his keys with a renewed determination. Beansprouts? Unique?
It was a pretty little property. A white bungalow, satisfyingly angular, with a small, friendly picket fence to the front, directly backed by a staunch and rather less welcoming row of well-tended shoulder-high evergreens. The garden was covered in a neat red-brick parquet. The overall effect was private, stately, and quite exquisitely anal.
‘Grand,’ Wesley said, peering around him intently. Ted stood on the doormat, struggling to locate the correct key. Wesley glanced behind them. The Old Man was following.
‘You went to school here in Canvey, Ted?’ Wesley asked.
Ted nodded, ‘Furtherwick Park School. We just walked past it.’
‘And what about her? What about Katherine?’ Ted finally selected a key. ‘Yes. But she was two whole years older.’
‘Two whole years?’ Wesley grinned. ‘Was she beautiful?’
‘Not exactly,’ Ted’s cheeks flushed a sharp bullfinch pink as he turned towards the door and shoved the key into the lock.
Wesley had teeth like a pony. Indomitable teeth. Very gappy. Very square. Very strong.
‘Did you have a crush on her?’
‘Everybody liked her,’ Ted mumbled, ‘if that’s what you’re getting at.’
Wesley chuckled and then half-nodded his concurrence, although this was patently not what he’d intended by it at all.
He looked behind him again. The boy-woman had joined Murdoch on the opposite pavement. They stood a distance apart. Murdoch was holding a pager. He was tapping into it with his large, slightly arthritic middle finger. Wesley scowled. It seemed improbable that Doc should’ve already made the Katherine Turpin connection…
But if he had? Wesley’s jaw stiffened at the thought. This possibility plainly jarred him.
Ted turned the lock, pushed the door, removed the key and entered.
‘By the way,’ he said, laboriously wiping his feet on a second doormat inside, ‘I hope you don’t have a problem with rodents.’
Wesley paused on the threshold and inhaled deeply. ‘Sawdust…’ he murmured, and then, just a fraction more quizzically, ‘brandy…?’
‘She keeps chinchillas,’ Ted explained, ‘in the lean-to behind the kitchen. I should’ve mentioned that back at the office.’
The bungalow’s interior belied the neatness of its exterior. Where outside all had been cleanliness and order, inside, all was mess and mayhem.
‘This woman is a slut,’ Wesley observed, stepping carefully over the doormat and calmly appraising the state of the hallway. ‘Perhaps you should’ve specified that back at the office.’
‘She’s an artist,’ Ted countered primly, slamming the door shut and then shoving a group of carrier bags up closer to the wall so that they could proceed unhindered. The bags clanked and tinkled. Wesley frowned. ‘What kind?’ he asked, bending over to peer inside one of them (it contained seven empty peach schnapps bottles). ‘A piss artist?’
Ted merely growled, but not fiercely. It was the subterranean grumble of an old labrador in the middle of having his toenails clipped: sullen, irritable, mutinous even, but nothing serious. He led Wesley through a half-stripped pine door and into the living room.
‘Jeepers,’ Wesley immediately exclaimed, pushing a thumb down the neck of his jumper and yanking it outwards, ‘it’s tropical in here.’
He rotated his head with a quite startling, hawk-like facility, ‘Does this woman have a different biological classification from the rest of us, Ted? Is she amphibian?’
Ted didn’t bother responding. Instead he busied himself plumping up a couple of pillows on the sofa, minutely adjusting the stained antique embroidered throw on a chair.
‘I’ll certainly be keeping my eyes peeled,’ Wesley continued, affecting an air of intense paranoia, ‘for any suspicious grey scales on the bathroom floor… reinforced glass walls…’ (he performed a dramatic trapped-forever-behind-a-glass-wall mime), ‘those pathetic part-digested insect husks… the give-away imitation jungle-look paper back-drop…’
Ted carefully placed the second pillow back down onto the sofa. ‘Underfloor heating,’ he acquiesced stiffly. ‘Costly to run but extremely effective.’
‘Wow,’ Wesley crouched down and touched one of the shiny black tiles with his fingers. It was warm. He kicked off his trainers and planted his stockinged feet firmly onto the floor.
‘Oh I like it,’ he said, ‘this is wonderful. My toes have been numb since the New Year. I took a quick dip off Camber Sands for a bet. The sea was absolutely fucking freezing.’
‘Your socks are steaming,’ Ted frowned fastidiously.
‘Damp,’ Wesley smiled, moving around a little and enjoying the dark prints his feet elicited. While Ted watched on, he silently heel-toed a design onto the floor. A bad circle. A lop-sided splodge.
‘So