Crawley, pinned and fuming, was an animal. But what creature was Toby? His life helping students at Carvel had never seemed so far away. He could never go back there, even if the secret held. How had Toby ever managed to hide his Stove truth from his Carvel self? Denial, the brain protecting itself from facts it could not handle. Life was a pigsty.
Crawley, at any rate, was waking up. He seemed to want to shout or snarl or make some kind of verbal gesture. But all that happened was a blood bubble formed across his mouth and popped over the snow.
There was the sound then of onrushing boots. Toby removed his foot from Crawley’s shoulder just in time.
‘Is he dead?’ asked a Town-side Deputy, out of breath. Toby guessed he had been called to the fire, and was following in their wake.
‘No, but Orell is.’
‘Who killed him?’ asked the Deputy. Though the question was redundant before it had been voiced, as the newcomer appreciated the renewed rage in the eyes of the wild man gargling on the floor. Further questions were irrelevant, bar the Deputy asking,
‘How are we going to get him back?’
Toby heard other feet behind them, and guessed at a second Deputy. Bar Eddy, this was almost the whole remaining Town-side force. Toby asked the first Deputy,
‘Who’s watching the children?’
‘We’re not coping, boss. Two less of us won’t make a difference.’
‘No, I don’t suppose it will,’ conceded their Sheriff.
The second Deputy arrived, and gasped,
‘Lor, look at Crawley. Come on, fellow. Let’s get you back on your feet. We’ll have you fighting fit in no time.’
‘No,’ said Toby.
The man stopped and looked at his boss.
‘This man killed Orell. He’s going to the cells.’
Chapter 65 – Chain the Gates
Toby led as the others carried Crawley, the man’s feet dragging behind them. As they arrived at the Sheriff’s Office, almost the whole remaining host of the town were present. They came outside or were outside anyway, and were making the same mental calculations at the sight of the four men. Deducing firstly that Crawley had been finished for the winter, and secondly that it was Toby who had trounced him.
Old Sheriff Thornton was already out of the picture, and now too his Town-side right-hand man. Some sensed a dangerous power-shift. They looked to he who was now in charge, the Mountain-side pretender to the throne. And they saw him contorted also, wincing in pain and his face a half-sneer. Amongst themselves they muttered,
‘The job’s already taking its toll on Toby.’
‘And he’s only been in it a day.’
‘He looks half-mad already.’
‘Poor Toby,’ lamented one townswoman. ‘I fancied him rotten when we were kids.’
Her friend said, ‘I bet you’re glad you missed out on him now.’
‘He couldn’t look past that Janey Thompson.’
‘And where’s she these days? A dried up Old Maid.’
‘Well, what goes around comes around...’
Yet for every bitter word there was a murmur of simple sadness for the mark the role had made on a man who, even in that state, was still the boy they had once known. There he was, twisted as Richard the Third, with Crawley cast as the nephews, consigned to meet their end in the Tower.
‘Ready a cell,’ ordered Bad King Richard.
‘He needs to go to the clinic,’ said one of the carrying Deputies.
‘No,’ answered the Sheriff. ‘He’s too dangerous. We’ll treat him here. Someone call the Doctor.’
This was an open challenge, but Toby carried it for want of anyone with gall enough to face him. A door was held open for the carriers of Crawley’s living remains, while a messenger left for the Doctor.
‘It’s a bad lot,’ grumbled someone. ‘A bad lot.’
The next few hours were one of those strange administrative muddles that occurs when everything changes but no one’s quite sure in what way. Were they to continue as before, or do something different? And if so what?
Toby had had nowhere to be but the Sheriff’s Office, though it didn’t feel right to go inside – the present crisis seemed to require he stay outdoors and be active – never before had hiding behind a desk felt such a dereliction of a man’s duty. And so he had chairs pulled out from the office, and sat out where the sun was burning like a summer’s day. It was even warm enough for him and his fellows to loosen their uniform collars.
There, Toby held court, his meagre staff surrounding him, occupied in menial tasks, or offering moral back-up for their leader in the various encounters he had with visitors who trickled by. Toby sat in the middle of it like a warlord in an African village, imaginary bullet-belts strung around his neck.
He was only getting his breath back though, and trying very hard not to tilt his head at the wrong angle, as to do so could bring a headache that felt half-way towards blacking out again. Yet this inaction felt like delaying his next decision. He didn’t want to think about that.
For the moment there was peace and Toby was in charge. Yet inside himself he was shaking, wondering how long that state could last? The odds of it carrying till the thaw seemed slight.
Chapter 66 – Visitors
During that time the Mayor came by,
‘You ought to see the other guy!’ he laughed, as all turned to see him. He was trailed by a handful of office-dressed Council flunkies, who, with him paused to stand around in the sun-warmed late-morning. In an hour it would be positively scorching, and then two hours after that near-twilight and freezing again.
‘We need to get you to the Doctor,’ urged the matronly Town Clerk, who was one of the visiting party.
But the Mayor approached Toby in a very different fashion, eyeing him intently as he offered,
‘It looks like I owe you some kind of apology. Though I don’t like giving it, and you be sure you’re going to earn it.’
‘I’ll be sure.’
‘You know what I think of fighting among the men.’
‘I had a duty.’
‘You had nothing.’
The Mayor paused then, as if unsure of whether to leave. When he spoke again it was in an altered tone, as though saying things he couldn’t quite leave unsaid. He spoke clearly, though only loud enough for those very close to hear,
‘And I suppose you expect him to face justice?’
‘Sir, he’s murdered two people since yesterday.’
The Mayor twitched, ‘Toby. I know what you want to do. And you’re not the first to think it. I’ve seen it in others, good men who’ve lost their nerve.’
‘Sir...’
‘So let me get this into your head, and let me get it there quickly and with the absolute minimum of fuss. Now, you tell Gaidon nothing or you tell them everything.’
‘Sir..!’
‘No, Toby, that’s it. That’s all there is to say. And before you pack your knapsack and trek off down the hill on some Holy Quest after the Truth, know this: that when their Sheriff and his men come calling here, I will make a point in telling them that this very winter you put a boy into a coma, and clubbed a girl unconscious in the presence of her family. I’ll have the Doctor swear on those things, and he’s under Hypocratic oath to do so.’
‘Sir...’ implored the Town Clerk, who like Margaret was one of those who had known Toby since he was a boy, and so knew when he was close to tears. The Mayor went on,
‘Send Crawley down, and you’re sending the rest of us down. And you, the fighter after justice, will be rotting one jail-cell along. And if you ever get out, then you’ll be a criminal, your name on every register, every job application turned down...’
Toby was silent, waiting for it to finish. It ended with Mayor concluding,
‘Go down that hill, and be sure your sins will follow you.’
Toby answered with undisguised contempt, ‘Save it – it’s a broken record. I’ve heard it all before.’ With Thornton and Crawley out of
the game, the Mayor had lost his cadre. Toby pulled the strings now as strongly as anyone in town, and both men knew it. All the Mayor had left was the ability to hurt him.
Chapter 67 – The Doctor Calls
Later the Doctor came to look at Crawley.
‘Is it true?’ he asked Toby before going in. ‘That he set the house alight while Violet Orell was still inside?’
Toby nodded; as the Doctor shook his head,
‘Then even among your debased number, Crawley found a new level of depravity.’
‘I guess you have to count me in on that.’
Toby led them inside. Outside the cell the watching Deputy, one of those who had dragged Crawley in there, was worried.
‘How’s he been?’ asked his Sheriff.
‘Getting louder, if anything.’
‘I’m not hearing anything,’ said the Doctor. ‘You’re sure he’s still alive in there?’
The guard laughed without joy as just then, roused by the voices outside, a great roaring and thudding began on the inside of the door.
The Doctor jumped back as though Crawley might actually break through the steel panel. He asked,
‘How long’s he been like that?’
‘Since not long after we brought him here. It looks like you made the right call, Sheriff,’ conceded the watcher.
‘So how is he?’ asked the Doctor.
‘It’s hard to see for certain.’
The Doctor had treated prisoners before, and soon regained his composure. He got up to the eye-hole and opened the small hatch. Yet he only saw a dull blur of motion through the cracked and dirtied glass.
The Deputy explained,
‘He broke the lens barging the door, and he’s smashed the ceiling light. We put him food through the hatch, but he just threw it up the walls.’
‘You can’t get in? Even to clean him?’
‘Do you want to try?’
The Doctor shuddered, before he heard himself saying, ‘Then fetch the vet. He has a tranquilliser dart they use on horses, he can fire it through the hatch.’
‘Go on,’ said Toby. ‘I’ll keep a watch on him till you’re back.’ And the Deputy left to do as instructed.
As the guard walked out of earshot, the Doctor asked Toby,
‘And have you thought about asking me to look over you?’
‘My hand’s fine, it’s just a burn.’
‘I’m not talking about your hand. Is that a head wound? I can see you’re squinting every time something bites you inside.’
‘It’s just a headache.’
‘You know,’ the Doctor mused, ‘the eyes and the brain are closely related. Headaches are often caused by bright lights, because we don’t have pain sensors in the optic nerve...’
‘Doc, please. If you put me on pills I’ll just go foggy and not be able to think. And right now I really need to be able to think.’
‘All right, boss. You’re in charge.’
The pair were silent awhile, before the Doctor said,
‘I’ve got patients to get back for, but I’ll be here when Crawley’s sedated. And you, see me by nightfall.’
He halted at the door, concluding,
‘Toby, you know the phrase, “Devil-may-care”?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, right now you bear the look of a man who, if he didn’t get his way would get a bullet and his worries would be over.’
‘I’ll be there, Doc.’
‘Well make sure you are.’
Toby stayed to watch the cell door.
Forgotten in all this were Job and Fitch, still doing what they could for their young sufferers Mountain-side. The same went for Eddy Town-side, unaware that his colleagues had given up the ghost and that a pall of resignation was falling over the town that rendered his efforts futile.
Once word reached him though, Eddy wrapped up the fight he was in and, casual as you like, made his way to the Sheriff’s Office, where Toby was back outside.
‘Sheriff Toby. You made it to the top then?’
‘By hook or by crook.’
‘I always knew you would. You have the leadership gene.’
The pair tried to smile.
‘So,’ continued Eddy. ‘Crawley’s really done for?’
‘Go and see for yourself, if you like.’
Though Eddy didn’t, and he asked no more about it. He alone seemed unshocked at the levels his old Town-side mucker could stoop to. ‘It’s come to this?’ was all he added.
‘I’m sad to say it has. He’s sedated now.’
‘But why is he so wild?’
Toby answered, ‘Because he knows that what he’s done will keep him in there for a while.’
‘But,’ Eddy went into a whisper, ‘it’s not the first time of a winter that someone’s died.’
‘Ed, he should be thankful that it happened in this town. Anywhere else and he’d already be up for a life sentence.’
‘But not here?’ Eddy looked suddenly horrified.
‘No,’ said Toby softly. ‘How could we, without blowing the whole secret?’
‘Are you asking me or telling?’
‘Maybe asking myself.’
‘But you would if you could?’
‘That’s rather academic, isn’t it, Ed? Does it even matter?’
Though to Eddy it seemed to matter a great deal.
Had Toby a clearer mind just then, he might have tried to figure out what his friend was so frightened of. It was already afternoon though, and it had been quite a day. And when Toby turned his head he felt a pain that brought the mental image of Crawley, liberated from his cell, firing one of Buddy Bob’s nail-guns into his crocked temple.
Chapter 68 – Margaret
Toby felt he had to stay in the town centre, on that very spot if possible, guarding his Office. To be away for even a moment could see a conspiracy form behind his back.
There was another place though that he felt he was now needed.
Only he and Margaret were outside the Sheriff’s Office by that point. Since his return from the fighting, she had been bringing him coffee and finding him painkillers from the medicine cabinet. The words suddenly came to him to ask her,
‘If I didn’t need you here you’d be at the Tort house, wouldn’t you? At his bedside? You care for him every bit as much as you did for me when I started.’
She didn’t answer.
‘So what if I released you from your duties?’
‘I wouldn’t hear of it.’
And Toby knew she wouldn’t.
‘But there’s somewhere I have to be, Margaret.’
It was like that party truth-or-dare question, which to Toby had always felt a bit of a party-killer. He whispered, ‘Where would I want to be at the end of the world?’
He got up; she asking,
‘So, do I need to say goodbye to you properly this time?’
‘Maybe.’
She got up and gave him a hug. He asked,
‘Am I still that boy, Margaret?’
‘Always, Toby. The sweetest boy.’
‘Margaret, I need to go.’
‘Then, before you do...’
And Toby knew he wasn’t going anywhere that minute.
Margaret began,
‘That night. The night Lloyd Thornton and the others decided on the car crash. I was in the office, at my desk. They were shouting, and I heard them through the door.’
Toby implored her, ‘Oh Margaret, you don’t have to carry this around any more. I know about the two boys who died. I know they decided to cover it up.’
‘No, Toby. There was only one boy.’
He paused. ‘But there were two in the car. Everyone knows it. The Doctor said so in the letter he wrote to me. Gaidon police saw them when they attended the wreck. Two boys, there were two boys.’
‘There was one boy, Toby. Thomas Richter, the epileptic. He was the only boy who died.’
Toby had to ask the dumb question,
‘Then who was the
other?’
She explained, ‘He’s buried in town, under the name “Matthew Tasco”, though that’s not a name of anyone I knew. And I also saw the fake record that the Doctor filed. And... well, I looked at the transcript of the inquest that was held in the spring when the County Coroner visited.’
‘But they’re kept under lock and key. How..?’
‘I stole the Sheriff’s keys. I’m not proud of it, Toby, and he never found out. But that’s not important. What is important is the address the Sheriff’s Office gave for “Matthew Tasco”. It was my house, Toby. They gave them my address and didn’t tell me, as they hoped no one would check. And no one did, Toby. No one checked, and I don’t know who he is.’
‘How can you not know?’ he asked, not wanting to get tetchy with her. But Margaret didn’t answer. Instead she went on with the story,
‘I overheard the Sheriff’s meeting that evening – not because I was snooping, but because they spoke so loudly.’
‘I know, I know.’
‘The thaw was coming, and they had to decide what to do. They were panicking. “That Richter boy’s body’s been on ice for three weeks,” one of them was saying. “We’ve got to make a decision.” I heard them through the door!’
‘I know.’
‘They were talking across each other, all speaking at once. I only caught the loudest words, and Sheriff Thornton trying to calm them.’
‘You don’t have to say this if it hurts you,’ said Toby, but he wanted her to so badly.
‘And then one of them said, “You animal. Don’t you understand epilepsy? He wasn’t in control of his body. You monster!”’
‘Who was that?’
‘I don’t remember. All of them were there, all the Town-side staff.’
‘Only Town-side?’
‘Only Town-side. Mountain-side knew no more about it than the rest of the town, only that there’d been an accident and not to ask about it.’
Toby gulped. Margaret continued,
‘Then another of them answered: “I was doing my job. I couldn’t know. Useless little runt, he didn’t fight back. If he had he’d have been all right. He didn’t listen!”’