Knaves Over Queens

  The shift had ended two hours ago and the next set of staff were there, Booksie, Sarah, and Jenny. The girl shuffled around as if trying to be unnoticed, shooting nervous glances at Booksie when his back was turned. It hurt Angela to see that. It seemed like stamping on a flower.

  ‘I’d stay, of course I would, but he might not show up until tomorrow and Benjy hasn’t been fed and I said I’d help Mrs Ellard at Number 11 give her Robin a bath.’

  Benjy was Betty’s cat about whom she worried to a degree that made Angela doubt all portrayals of cats as independent and self-sufficient predators. Robin was the son of an elderly neighbour and had Down Syndrome, which meant that at the age of twenty-nine bathing him seemed to require two other adults. Or perhaps that Robin was just a handful.

  ‘I’ve asked Sarah to tell anyone who comes asking for you to come back tomorrow during my shift.’ Betty looked at her watch. ‘I have to go.’ She gave Angela’s hand one last pat and hurried away. Angela watched her go. Betty wouldn’t be far away. She only lived two streets from the home. Sometimes when she stood by the common room window she swore she could hear Benjy meowing for his dinner.

  ‘You have a visitor, Angela.’ Booksie walked into the common room just as Sarah and Jenny left, pushing two of the residents off to bed in their wheelchairs. It was five to nine and everyone was supposed to be tucked up by quarter past. ‘Officer Reynolds says he had a message that you wanted to report a crime.’ Booksie had a fixed and slanted grin, hooked at the edge by that scar of his which looked very pale at the moment. His eyes burned with a dark fury that made Angela want to look away. She forced herself to be brave and smiled for them both.

  Officer Reynolds stood a head taller than Booksie and just as broad. He had full red cheeks, a neat moustache, and a touch of grey in his black hair. He looked nothing like the policemen on the television and glanced around the common room with a poorly disguised sneer.

  ‘Maybe I should take you both somewhere private?’ Booksie asked.

  ‘Yes,’ the policeman said. ‘That would be better. Thank you, Mr …?’

  ‘Booker. Joseph Booker. At your service, Officer.’ Booksie clicked his heels together. ‘Would I be right in saying you’re new to this beat?’ He started to wheel Angela towards the residents’ rooms.

  ‘Came over from the Met last month. My wife’s got family round here.’ The policeman followed Booksie and Angela along the corridor and into her room.

  ‘Now, Miss Leighton, you had something to report?’ Officer Reynolds stood in front of Angela and although she craned her neck she couldn’t raise her eyes enough to see his face. She became deeply aware that she was drooling and that the neckerchief Betty had left her with was spotted with wet patches. Of all the things her visiting had shown her the thing she liked least was seeing herself from the outside. She tried to tell herself that she looked so vacant because she was gone from her body, but a large part of her worried that what she saw of herself while visiting Betty was what others saw all the time. ‘Miss Leighton?’

  Angela made a moan. Learning to shape words in Betty’s mouth had done nothing for her abilities with her own.

  ‘She can’t talk,’ Booksie said. ‘I think someone’s been playing games. She can’t have called you herself. Did they leave a name, whoever it was that did call?’ His eyes flashed towards Angela and for a second he showed his teeth.

  Angela tried to stop them, she called out ‘no’ but nothing escaped save a louder moan. The policeman glanced at her, disgusted, and consulted his notebook. ‘A Betty Parkins. Do you know her? Does she work here?’

  ‘Ah, Betty!’ Booksie grinned and raised his voice over Angela’s shouts. ‘Lovely old lady. Gets a bit confused.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘Had a funny turn the other day and was taken to hospital yelling nonsense. I’ll have a word. Maybe it was supposed to be someone else who wanted to make a report. The residents have their little rows.’ Booksie shared a smile with Officer Reynolds. ‘She stole my shawl, he took my stick. There’s an old dear who’s always threatening to sue. We’ll sort it all out, don’t worry.’

  Booksie led the policeman away from Angela’s protests. A coffee and a biscuit were mentioned. Officer Reynolds didn’t say goodbye, or even look back. Booksie flicked the lights off as he left.

  A long time passed before Booksie returned to Angela, sitting alone in her dark room. She had searched for her contacts but none of them were sleeping. She had flexed against the chair and heard the support struts groan, but breaking free wouldn’t help her, so she stopped. She sat blind and waited, her worries chasing around her skull. Would Booksie go after Betty? Would he do it straight away?

  When he pushed open the door and flicked the lights back on she flinched and her chair groaned again.

  ‘Well,’ Booksie said. ‘Well, well, well.’ He took the visitors’ chair and positioned it opposite Angela then sat in it. ‘You wanted to report something to the police, did you?’ He showed his teeth. ‘Do you know what? I don’t even care what it was you wanted to say. The main thing here is that nobody in this shithole is ever to call the police about anything. Understand, Veggie?’

  Angela met his dark eyes and wondered how deep the well of fury behind them was.

  ‘Understand?’ And with the question Booksie slapped her, hard, across the face, swinging with his arm extended. A second later he was out of his chair doing a dance of pain, the hand under his other arm. ‘Motherfucker! Motherfucker!’ He stopped dancing and shook the hand in front of him as if trying to rattle the hurt out of it. ‘What the hell?’

  He returned his gaze to Angela. She smiled at him. Puzzled and flexing his hand, Booksie moved in closer. He punched her in the face with his left hand and less enthusiasm behind it than the first blow.

  ‘Ow! Jesus!’ He danced away, shaking that hand. ‘Oh, you bitch!’ Booksie glanced around the room. His eyes fixed on the oxygen cylinder at the foot of the bed. At night an oxygen machine helped Angela to breathe. The cylinder was there in case the machine broke. Booksie picked it up, a steel tube two feet long and thicker than his arm. ‘This’ll do.’ He seemed so far gone in his outrage that he hadn’t even questioned why punching Angela in the nose had hurt his hand and left her unbothered. Something in the redness of his face, and the white scar cutting across it, gave Angela pause. She had never seen hate before. Disdain, distaste, casual cruelty, all of those, but not the raw, unhinged hate burning in Joseph Booker’s eyes.

  He swung the cylinder from his hip, two-handed, arms out. A killing blow. A blow to shatter a skull and splatter the wall beside it with brains. The heavy steel hit Angela’s cheek bone and … rebounded, flying free of Booksie’s grasp. Her head jerked fractionally to the side. It felt like a tap. But it was a tap that rocked her in her chair.

  ‘Is … is everything okay in there?’ Jenny’s scared voice, rising above the clatter of the cylinder as it skittered across the floor and hit the wall.

  ‘Fuck off!’ Booksie didn’t even look round.

  It amazed Angela that the man could give so little thought to the consequences of his actions. What if he had killed her? How would he explain that? She supposed the same madness had held sway when he had smashed a beer glass and jammed the jagged edges into a man’s face in the middle of a crowded pub.

  ‘Oh. You. Fucking. Bitch.’ Booksie pulled a knife from his back pocket and unfolded the blade. He came forward at a rush, stabbing at her chest, neck, and face, knocking her chair over onto its back, snarling like a frenzied animal.

  His rage terrified Angela. She screamed as she fell, screwed her eyes tight, screamed some more. The knife blows felt like pinpricks. Once he stabbed her eye. It made her wince. The attack seemed to last forever. Eventually though, Booksie’s energy failed him and he lay across her, panting. Angela opened her eyes. Booksie’s hands were covered in blood and for a moment she wondered if she were dying. But then she saw the cut on his palm and the darker blood welling from it and realized that he had somehow cut himsel
f, his grip slipping from the hilt to the blade.

  Angela started to laugh. She couldn’t stop herself. She lay there, awkward in her fallen chair, giggling helplessly.

  ‘You fucking monster!’ Booksie reached up and took a pillow from the bed. A moment later it was over her face with all of the man’s weight pushing down on it.

  In the soft darkness Angela’s giggles faded to chuckles and then stopped. She guessed that Booksie was trying to stop her breathing but she felt fine. Her strength might be all but useless in a crippled body but her lungs could suck air through a pillow without difficulty.

  ‘Booksie? What’s going on in there?’ Sarah’s voice at the door. Knocking followed. ‘Booksie?’ Sarah was scared of him too or she would have come in. The door wasn’t locked.

  ‘Just a game. A fucking game. That’s all. You heard her laughing.’ Cursing, Booksie tossed the pillow aside and got up, clutching his wounded hand. ‘This isn’t over, bitch.’

  Moments later he was gone and Sarah was in his place, clucking and fussing. ‘What on earth’s been going on here, Angie? How’d that stupid boy cut himself? And what a mess he’s made!’

  With Jenny’s help Sarah got Angela’s chair upright and then hoisted her into bed. They changed her into her night clothes, changed her pad, set up her oxygen, and found her a clean pillow. Jenny mopped up the blood, all the while casting unreadable glances at Angela. Angela smiled back, wanting to see an echo on Jenny’s face, but the girl looked away.

  Sarah stayed after Jenny left. Her brutal features hadn’t been designed with shame in mind and the expression looked odd on her. She opened her mouth as if to say something, then shook her head and patted Angela’s hand. ‘What a world we live in, Angie. What a world.’

  Sarah left and turned off the lights. Angela lay, mind racing, not sure how she felt. Scared, exhilarated, alive, victorious. None of them covered it but each had a part to play. She lay for a long time thinking through what had happened, trying to understand what went on in a mind like Booksie’s. The thought of Betty, lying in her bed not two streets away, struck Angela in the middle of replaying the hit with the oxygen cylinder. Immediately she focused in on her friend and found the old woman sleeping in her fussy little bedroom. Angela paid the lightest of visits, just enough to listen through Betty’s ears. Nothing but night sounds, the creak of the house, the traffic muffled by glass. Betty winced, murmured and turned in her sleep. Angela felt a stab of pain from somewhere under the old lady’s ribs. She visited a little deeper and took the pain herself so Betty could sleep. It wasn’t a nice ache but she would return to worse and Betty needed her sleep.

  What it was that brought Angela back to her own body she couldn’t say but suddenly she was there staring at the darkness. And then a light swept the wall and it wasn’t darkness. Booksie was there with a torch.

  ‘Awake, are we? Good. I wanted you to be awake for this, freak.’ He came closer, playing the torch beam across her face and dazzling her. ‘You’re one of those joker fucks, aintcha? A very special special needs case. A fucking joker and you think the joke’s on me!’ He lifted a red plastic … thing, a carton with a handle, and a long yellow spout. It looked a bit like what the cooking oil in the kitchens came in, and it smelled very strong. ‘Let’s find out how you burn, shall we? I brought Mr Petrol to help!’

  Booksie seemed calm now, and somehow that made it worse. When he was raging Angela could almost understand his readiness to hurt. But calm, and grinning. That was something alien.

  ‘Before we go too far though … a little test.’ Booksie put the petrol can down. ‘No point making a big mess if you’re just going to laugh it off. I’ll do time for you, but you gotta do your part and die screaming.’ He produced a cigarette lighter and made a flame. He took Angela’s fist and lifted it. She could see the slightest tremor in his fingers, vibrating the flame. A sign that his rage was still there perhaps, burning at the core.

  ‘Now …’ He held the flame under her wrist.

  At first Angela felt nothing, then heat, a hot spot, uncomfortable, seconds passed, the heat moved past uncomfortable. Booksie stared into her eyes the whole time and now she turned her head away. It hurt. She could smell burning and it was her.

  ‘Success!’ He withdrew the flame. ‘Now for the main show!’

  Angela began to scream. She didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to suffer in the flames. Terror flooded her and she shook her traitor limbs, the arms and legs that had never once done what she asked of them.

  Booksie leaned over her, petrol can in hand. ‘Hold still now. You don’t want to miss anything. It’s the last thing you’ll do, Veggie.’

  It was his grin that turned her fear into anger. And it was her anger she threw at him.

  From one heartbeat to the next she moved from her body to Booksie’s and in that instant found herself staring down at herself, proud for once to see her own face, snarling, teeth bared. She dropped the petrol can and started to walk stiff-legged towards the window.

  ‘You … should … never have … touched me.’ She formed the words with his mouth even as he fought and raged at the back of her mind.

  Keeping Booksie from regaining control of his body took every ounce of Angela’s will and she knew she wouldn’t be able to fight him for long. She had never had to contest ownership before. She was a visitor, not an invader.

  Two more steps and she had him standing before the window. ‘Fucker.’ She bent him double and slammed his face into the windowsill. The tiled corner hammered into his mouth, shattering teeth and breaking his jaw with a loud snap. The pain was considerable but Angela had lived with pain all her life. And besides, when she left, it would be Booksie’s to own. She let him fall to his knees, gripped the windowsill in both hands, and smashed his face into it a second time.

  The impact knocked her back into her own body. She could hear feet in the corridor outside, running towards her. The door banged open and Sarah was there, Jenny behind her. After that there was light, shouting, confusion, an ambulance. Simon was there, and Dave. They stopped to look at her before they carried Booksie off on the stretcher, and both of them returned her smile.

  Angela lay in the darkness afterwards, her smile still in place. Maybe, she thought, I’m not a good person. But nobody said I have to be. Just because my body doesn’t work doesn’t make me a saint … Betty wouldn’t have hurt him. Not like that. But I’m not sorry. Not one bit.

  An inquiry followed. The press became involved. Betty saw to that. Angela wasn’t sure where Betty’s extra courage had come from. She didn’t know why the old lady wasn’t scared of bricks through her window any more, or of the ‘worse’. But Betty got the Cambridge Evening News on the case and before long there were almost more policemen, inspectors from the parent company, reporters, and auditors from the Care Quality Commission at Carstons than there were residents.

  It took a good six months for everything to settle down and by that time Angela’s contact list had grown to scores. One of the reporters got sent to cover the civil war in Syria and Angela paid a quiet visit one night. She took a short sleepwalk to the balcony of the Turkish hotel serving as their headquarters and got to look out over the lights of Istanbul and smell the air of another world. One of the policewomen went on holiday to Lanzarote and again Angela paid a quiet visit too.

  Betty announced that she was going on holiday as well. Angela couldn’t remember Betty ever taking a holiday. Who would help bathe Robin at Number 11?

  Betty made a special effort to go around everyone in the common room and to say a proper goodbye, which Angela thought was very nice of her since she was only going on holiday.

  Angela didn’t know what Betty had said to Shirley and Renée but both the old ladies seemed to be dabbing their eyes when Betty left them. She gave Jordi a hug and a kiss then came to Angela.

  ‘I won’t say goodbye to you, dear. Because you can always visit.’ She patted Angela’s hand and gave a wink. ‘Leave it to the weekend though, eh?’


  Angela made a big smile then a ‘yes’. Betty had asked her not to visit after the incident with Booksie. She said she wasn’t angry or anything and that she loved Angela more than anything except maybe Benjy (and even then she winked) but that she needed her privacy. And Angela had agreed even though she missed walking around Carstons in Betty’s body and eating ice cream in the kitchen and finding toffees in her pocket.

  Angela watched Betty leave at a slow shuffle, leaning on her stick, and somehow she found herself wanting to cry too. Betty looked so old these days. More than anything Angela wanted her to have a lovely holiday.

  The wait for that weekend seemed endless but eventually it arrived and Angela visited Betty that night. It took forever to find her, almost the whole night, and Angela grew very worried, but at last she felt her friend and reached for her.

  Angela opened Betty’s eyes and was surprised to find herself in a bed very like the one she had just left. There were lines in her arm just like when Angela had her coma. And monitors bleeping quietly to themselves, jagged green lines tracing across screens.

  ‘This isn’t a holiday.’

  Across the dim room someone turned around in surprise. ‘Did you just …’

  Angela turned Betty’s head for a better look. A young nurse with a torch and a clipboard stepped back in astonishment. ‘W … Wait there, Mrs Parkins!’ She left at a run.

  ‘Wake up, Betty!’ Angela sat up in her bed. Looking down she saw to her surprise that bandages wrapped the whole of Betty from just below her chest to her hips and clear tubes led out from under the dressings. The whole area hurt quite a bit. ‘Betty!’

  Something fluttered at the back of her mind. ‘Betty?’