Rebuilding Coventry by Sue Townsend Read Free Book Online

watched him contemptuously. He thought, ‘Give me five
minutes alone with him in the cells and I’d make a man of him. A good kicking
is what he needs.’ Detective Inspector Sly was an inveterate advocate of a good
kicking. He’d seen it work wonders. Men had left the police station with their
backs invisibly bruised but their heads held high.
    Mary
came into the room with two mugs of thin, milky tea. She averted her eyes from
her father. Sly gave her one of his ‘strong man with heart of gold’ glances;
this consisted of slightly inclining his head, while pursing his lips and twinkling
his eyes. ‘I can see that you’ll be a great comfort to your father in the days
ahead, Mary,’ said Sly, using his ‘I know how to talk to teenagers’ voice.
    Derek
burst into a loud crying fit again and Mary quickly left the room. She was
repelled and disgusted by the snot and tears running down her father’s face.
She felt sorry for him, but sorrier for herself. Her life was ruined; she could
never leave the house again. She would lose all her friends and now, with her
mother gone, she would have to do all the ironing and housework. She looked at
herself in the hall mirror. She thought: ‘I’ve aged ten years, I look at least
twenty-six.’ She sucked on her gold necklace and sat back on the stairs,
waiting to be called for her interrogation.
    John
was now upstairs, watching as Gerald Fox’s body, after being photographed,
prodded, fingerprinted and measured, was being finally loaded into the back of
an ambulance. The enormity of his mother’s crime struck John properly for the
first time. Gerald Fox no longer existed. He was a husk, a nothing, a nuisance.
John wondered about his own death. He thought he would prefer to die in his
sleep, at the age of eighty-five or before he became incontinent, whichever
came first. John looked at his mother’s clothes hanging in her wardrobe. They
were sensible and dull. Her shoes were worse. He opened the top drawer of her
bedside cabinet and saw a packet of ‘Handie-Andies’ and five pairs of white
cotton knickers. Then he found a locked diary hidden inside a hot water bottle
cover. John put the diary inside his shirt. He didn’t want Inspector Sly
reading whatever his mother had written. The gilt lock felt cold against his
chest. He quietly searched the room for the key but found nothing. He would
wait until this awful night was over and his father and Mary were asleep, and
then he would break into the diary and read his mother’s thoughts. As he closed
the door he whimpered under his breath, ‘Oh Mum, Mum.’
    Inspector
Sly had found the video tape of Vile Bodies. He was holding it out to
Derek, who was denying ever having seen it before. Mary was shaking her head.
Inspector Sly said, ‘It must be the lad’s, then.’ John came into the room and
put Inspector Sly straight. No, he’d never seen it before; he wasn’t into that
sort of thing. Pornography was boring and demeaned women. Sly thought, ‘Sanctimonious
little git.’ He said, ‘Well if it doesn’t belong to anybody here, it must
belong to Mrs Dakin.’
    John
and Mary glanced at each other and decided to say nothing in defence of their
mother. After all, she wasn’t here, but they were.
    Derek
blustered: ‘My wife wouldn’t allow that filth in the house, she wouldn’t watch The
Benny Hill Show without a cushion over her face. She’s a lady.’
    ‘Yes, a lady killer, Mr Dakin,’ said Sly, pleased with the pun. ‘Let me tell you
something, old cock. None of us knows each other. We live cheek by jowl for
years. We congratulate ourselves on knowing our spouses, inside and out. And
then one day it’s brought to our attention that we don’t know one iota about
what they’re really like; happens all the time. My own wife, who’s failed five
driving tests out of nervousness, did a parachute jump for charity last week.’

 
     
     
     
     
    7
Nelson and Trafalgar
     
    Centre Point. I’ve heard
of this building.