Silence. No sign of anyone rising to the bait. Maybe it wasn’t so crazy.
Simon shook back his hair. Isabel had a hand around her glass as if she was expecting someone to knock it to the floor. Eddies of tobacco smoke fuzzed the lights.
And then a slow handclap began.
Pock… pock… pock…
Heads started turning, cautiously.
Stock didn’t lift his head, just went on clapping. His pint glass was down to its final quarter. His whisky glass was empty. The space in front of his table soon grew bigger, people instinctively edging away, until there appeared a meaningful emptiness between Stock’s table and the one Lol was sharing with Simon and Isabel. Although no one was looking at him, Lol, who hated an audience, felt exposed. I can get you a nationwide tour, Prof Levin promised in his head.
Pock… pock… pock…
‘What’s the problem, Gerard?’ Simon said.
Stock stopped clapping. His eyes were like smoked glass.
‘You’re a hypocritical bassard, vicar.’
Simon shrugged.
‘But thas how the Church survives, isn’t it? Never take sides.’
Isabel shouted, ‘That’s ridic—’ Simon put his hand on her shoulder and she gripped her glass tighter, clammed up.
‘Thas right,’ Stock said. ‘Keep the liddle woman out of it.’
Oliver Perry-Jones called from the bar, ‘Why don’t you just clear out, Stock?’ His voice was high and drawly – like a hunting horn, Lol thought. ‘Take your money from the gutter press and your drink-sodden fantasies, go back where you came from. People like you don’t have a place heah.’
Stock stared into his beer for a moment and produced a leisurely burp before turning his head slowly. He was clearly very drunk. He peered in the general direction of Perry-Jones.
‘Jus’ like old Stewart, me, eh? Din’ fit in either, did he, the old gypo-loving arse-bandit?’
‘Take your foul mouth somewhere else,’ Perry-Jones said predictably. ‘There are ladies here.’
Isabel smiled.
‘I bet…’ Stock pointed unsteadily at Perry-Jones. ‘I bet you were so fuckin’ delighted when Stewart got topped. Served the bassard right. And, hey, it also took a couple of dirty liddle gypos out of circulation.’
No reaction. Stock’s rosebud lips fashioned a blurred smile. Lol caught sight of Al Boswell with his wife, at the end of the bar. Expressionless. Non-confrontational is all we are.
‘Din’ like the gypos, did you, you old fascist? Gypos and the Jews. You and old man Lake, eh? Fuckin’ blackshirts. Still got your armbands?’
Lol wondered if Derek the landlord might intervene at this point, but Derek was looking down at the glass he was polishing; he’d know there were enough people here to deal with Stock – and enough people who would want to watch it happening.
Perry-Jones had started to vibrate with fury, but Lake’s tanned face was like a polished wooden mask. His girlfriend, Amanda, had her mobile out. ‘I’m calling the police.’
‘Go ’head, darling,’ Stock said mildly, not looking at her. ‘Lezz have the coppers in. Whole wagonful of the bassards. Swell the audience. Lezz get the fuckin’ press back.’ He shouted out, ‘Any hacks in the house?
Amanda clutched the phone but didn’t put in a number.
‘Where’s the Lake boy gone? Where’re you, you liddle arse-hole? Tell me one thing: what you gonna do if the Smith boys geddout? Appeal’s gotta come up soon. Case’ll be wide open again, the Smith boys geddoff.’
If Stock was expecting a reaction from Lake, he didn’t get it. He searched out Simon again.
‘You think they did it, vicar? Maybe the police were a liddle hasty, there, whaddaya think, man? You’re a liberal sorta guy. You think the Smith boys really did it? You ever wondered who else wanted poor ole shirtlifting Stewart out the picture?’
Lol sat up. A new agenda was forming like invisible ink appearing between the lines of the old one. He heard Lake’s girlfriend saying, ‘Right. I am calling them,’ but felt nobody was really listening to her.
Adam Lake finally spoke. ‘Put it away,’ he told Amanda. ‘Let him finish himself. Plenty of witnesses here. We can talk to my solicitor tomorrow.’ He walked out into the space between Simon and Stock. ‘Spell it out, Stock. What exactly are you saying? You think someone else killed Ash, rather than the convicted men? That it?’
‘There’s a turn-up,’ Isabel murmured.
Lake said coolly, ‘Well?’ He was either hugely arrogant or he really had nothing to hide.
Stock picked up his beer glass and drained it calmly.
‘Come on!’ Lake suddenly roared. ‘Scared to say it, are you? Scared to say it in front of witnesses?’ He put both big hands flat on Stock’s table. ‘Stock, for Christ’s sake, how much do you really think I care about that place? You really think I’d… you think anyone would kill for it? For a broken-down bloody hopkiln? Have you seen my place? Have you seen where I live? You really think I’m now going to offer you some ridiculous sum for that hovel, is that it? Just to get you out of my hair? Are you mad? Are you sick?’
Stock stared at him, froth on his beard, set the glass down hard, about an inch from one of Lake’s hands. He said nothing. He’d got what he wanted: Lake was losing it.
‘Let me tell you… Gerard. Let me tell everybody…’ Lake looked around wildly, and Lol saw emotional immaturity twitching and flickering in his big angular frame like a forty-watt bulb in a street lamp. ‘You picked the wrong man.’ Lake levered in towards Stock. ‘You couldn’t have done it to my father and you won’t do it to me.’ His face inches from Stock’s, exposed to the booze and the sour breath. ‘You can stay in that dump for as long as you like, you and your imaginary ghosts, you stupid, pathetic little turd.’
Like some soiled Buddha, Stock gazed blandly into the bared teeth and the glaring eyes for maybe a couple of seconds before his own eyes seemed to slide up into his head and his body wobbled.
Lol knew what was coming and so did Lake, but too late.
Simon stood with Lol on the forecourt under a night sky like deep blue silk shot with rays of green.
His white shirt was dark and foul with brown vomit. The good shepherd. It was Simon who’d guided Gerard Stock outside. In his life of ducking and diving, bartering and bullshit, Stock had probably come close many times to getting beaten up; Lol reckoned maybe he was now so physically attuned to the proximity of a kicking that his metabolism automatically came up with the most effective defence.
After it happened, Adam Lake could have battered him, drunk or sober, into the stone flags without blinking. But it was clear that all Lake wanted – women and some men shrinking away from both of them with cries of abhorrence and disgust – was to get into the men’s toilets and wash Stock away. On his way, he’d collided blindly with Simon.
Now Simon stank of Stock’s vomit, too, but Stock was clean and dry, leaning casually against the pub wall, the calm in the eye of the storm.
‘You are a piece of work, Gerard,’ Simon said. ‘It just drips off you, doesn’t it?’
‘I’m a survivor, Simon,’ Stock said.
‘You’d better go home. Lake’s going to be out in a minute, in search of a change of clothes. He sees you out here, he – he’s a big boy, Gerard. And not a happy boy.’