Not Safe After Dark

I intercepted Jack between the Deakins’ and the Kellys’ houses, and it was clear from his gruff, ‘What do you want?’ that he didn’t want to talk to me.

But I was adamant.

‘Morning, Jack,’ I greeted him. ‘Lovely day for a walk, isn’t it?’

‘What’s it to you?’

‘Just being polite. What are you up to, Jack? What’s going on?’

‘None of your business.’

‘Up to your old tricks? Spreading poison?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He made to walk away, but I grabbed his arm. He glared at me but didn’t do anything. Just as well. At my age, and with my lungs, I’d hardly last ten seconds in a fight. ‘Jack,’ I said, ‘don’t you think you’d all be best off using your time to look for the poor lad?’

‘Look for him! That’s a laugh. You know as well as I do where that young lad is.’

‘Where? Where is he, Jack?’

‘You know.’

‘No, I don’t. Tell me.’

‘He’s dead and buried, that’s what.’

‘Where, Jack?’

‘I don’t know the exact spot. If he’s not in the canal, then he’s buried somewhere not far away.’

‘Maybe he is. But you don’t know that. Not for certain. And even if you believe that, you don’t know who put him there.’

Jack wrenched his arm out of my weakening grip and sneered. ‘I’ve got a damn sight better idea than you have, Frank Bascombe. With all your book learning!’ Then he turned and marched off.

Somehow I got the feeling that I had just made things worse.

After my brief fracas with Jack Blackwell, I was at a loose end. I knew the police would still be looking for Joh

‘Morning, Ezekiel,’ I said. ‘I understand young Joh

‘So they say,’ muttered Ezekiel.

‘See him, did you?’

‘I weren’t here.’

‘So you didn’t see him?’

‘Police have already been asking questions.’

‘And what did you tell them?’

He pointed to the other side of the canal, the back of the housing estate. ‘I were over there,’ he said. ‘Sometimes people chuck out summat of value, even these days.’

‘But you did see Joh

He paused, then said, ‘Aye.’

‘On this side of the canal?’

Woodruff nodded.

‘What time was this?’

‘I don’t have a watch, but it weren’t long after that daft bloke had gone by.’

‘Do you mean Colin Gormond?’

‘Aye, that’s the one.’

So Joh

‘Doing? Nowt special. He were just walking.’

‘Walking? Where?’

Woodruff pointed. ‘That way. Towards the city centre.’

‘Alone?’

‘Aye.’

‘And nobody approached him?’

‘Nope. Not while I were watching.’

I didn’t think there was anything further to be got from Ezekiel Woodruff, so I bade him good morning. I can’t say the suspicion didn’t enter my head that he might have had something to do with Joh

A fighter droned overhead. I watched it dip and spin through the blue air and wished I could be up there. I’d always regretted not being a pilot in the war. A barge full of soldiers drifted by, and I moved aside on the towpath to let the horse that was pulling it pass by. For my troubles I got a full blast of sweaty horseflesh and a pile of steaming manure at my feet. That had even Ezekiel Woodruff beat.

Aimlessly I followed the direction Ezekiel had told me Joh

The canal ran by the back of the train station, where I crossed the narrow bridge and walked through the crowds of evacuees out front to City Square. Mary Critchley’s anguish reverberated in my mind, too: ‘Mr Bashcombe! Mr Bashcombe!’ I heard her call.

Then, all of a sudden, as I looked at the black facade of the post office and the statue of the Black Prince in the centre of City Square, it hit me. I thought I knew what had happened to Joh

It was late morning. The station smelt of damp soot and warm oil. Crowds of children thronged around trying to find out where they were supposed to go. They wore name tags and carried little cardboard boxes. Adults with clipboards, for the most part temporarily unemployed schoolteachers and local volunteers, directed them to the right queue, and their names were ticked off as they boarded the carriages.

Despite being neither an evacuated child nor a supervisor, I managed to buy a ticket and ended up sharing a compartment with a rather severe-looking woman in a brown uniform I didn’t recognize, and a male civilian with a brush moustache and a lot of Brylcreem on his hair. They seemed to be in charge of several young children, also in the compartment, who couldn’t sit still. I could hardly blame them. They were going to the alien countryside, to live with strangers, far away from their parents, for only God knew how long, and the idea scared them half to death.

The buttoned cushions were warm and the air in the carriage still and close, despite the open window. When we finally set off, the motion stirred up a breeze, which helped a little. On the wall opposite me was a poster of the Scarborough seafront, and I spent most of the journey remembering the carefree childhood holidays I had enjoyed there with my parents in the early years of the century: another world, another time. The rest of the trip I glanced out of the window, beyond the scum-scabbed canal, and saw the urban industrial landscape drift by: back gardens, where some people had put in Anderson shelters half-covered with earth to grow vegetables on; the dark mass of the town hall clock tower behind the city centre buildings; a factory yard, where several men were loading heavy crates onto a lorry, flushed and sweating in the heat.

Then we were in the countryside, where the smells of grass, hay and manure displaced the reek of the city. I saw small, squat farms, drystone walls, sheep and cattle grazing. Soon train tracks and canal diverged. We went through a long noisy tu