Free The Suburbs of Hell by Randolph Stow

know,’ he said. ‘I know him, and I know the weapon. What do you say to that?’
    ‘I say,’ said the Commander hesitantly, ‘as anyone would, I say that if you’re of the same opinion in the morning, you must go to the police immediately.’
    ‘Oh, shit,’ Frank muttered. He dropped his arms from the table and got up. ‘Good night, Commander. Thank you for your advice. Time I wasn’t here.’
    The Commander watched him cross the room unsteadily and go out by a side door. ‘Fella’s potty,’ he remarked to himself. He picked up his glass, saw it was empty, and decided to have a last double whisky; because old dogs, he was discovering, liked their sleep.

     
     
Barabas
.
As for myself, I walk abroad o’ nights,
    And kill sick people groaning under walls:
    Sometimes I go about and poison wells…
Ithamore
.
One time I was an hostler at an inn,
    And in the night time secretly would I steal
    To travellers’ chambers, and there cut their
    throats.
    The Jew of Malta
    I hear the door of the Speedwell bang, and soon afterwards he comes into my line of vision. A slight form, erect, but a little bowed in the shoulders, crossing the road with a measured tread towards the quay’s edge, where he halts, under the pinkish-orange lights, and stands looking out over the water.
    The water is broad, black, glossy. The tide is coming in. The two wide rivers drive, northwards and westwards, deep into the dark land, its rustling unleaved woods, its hibernating fields.
    Again and again one gull comes with a leaflike fall into the light, is for a moment the ghost of a bird, then is caught back into the night.
    He stands beneath the lamps, looking out, beyond their influence, to the clear black sky with frosty stars. Below and beyond him the red and white lights of a pilot launch rock a little on the swell.
    He is always, now, in a ferment of memories. Other climates, other seas. A trick of light will bring back some place half a world away, and changed utterly by years, passed with no record except in his mind.
    The stick on which he leans was given him by his wife when he came back to her finally, to stay forever. The gift said to him that he was old, with nothing before him but a little daily walking for his health. She suggested a dog, and he snapped at her. They found that they had never known each other well.
    Now he carries the stick always; it is a reproach. He would like to explain to her that his irritations were with himself and with time. He remembers, from the long months of her helplessness after the first stroke, moments of impatience, perhaps understood by her, which he would like to cancel out, undo.
    His profile is still that of the youth, more youthful than his years, who married her. A short straight nose, a chin just firm enough, a pink cheek. His profile, in the sights, is very Anglo-Saxon.
    He hears nothing, will hear nothing ever. His arms fly up, his body twists. The stick clatters on to concrete as he disappears.
    From below where he was standing a splash comes back. On the pilot launch, out of my line of sight, a man cries out.

4
THINGS CATCH UP
    Soon it snowed: fat heavy flakes drifting past Linda De Vere’s window as she lay in bed by daylight, past the window of the eyrie in Harry Ufford’s house where Dave Stutton sat listening to loud music, over the high irregular roofs of the old town. On some days the north-easterly howled down the tunnels of the streets, searching out every chink in the close-packed houses. On others the sky was clear, the light was desert-sharp, the flat sea looked like grey silk, and lethal. On a night of rockets and exploding maroons two ships collided a mile offshore, and half a dozen people died within minutes of touching the water. The national newspapers instantly became friendly, and heaped praise on the pilots and lifeboatmen of the notorious town.
    A few days after the death of Commander Pryke the idea was floated that all the males of Old and New Tornwich above the