Free Perfect Gallows by Peter Dickinson Page A

contemptuous, amused.
    Mr Trinder had said it wasn’t a good idea for beginners to strain the machinery by trying too often, but Andrew was certainly going back soon. That was why he needed Mum’s teapot. He had just bent to try a fresh place when a voice spoke above his head.
    â€œUllo-ullo, and what have we here?”
    The bobby who’d been guarding the street side was looking down at him from the top of the mound. He stood up, not bothered at all, and let Adrian take over.
    â€œThis is my home, sir. I mean, it was.”
    â€œThat so? Tell us your name, sonny.”
    â€œAndrew Wragge. I’ve got my Identity Card.”
    â€œTold us you were staying away.”
    â€œI’ve just come back.”
    â€œReported yourself at the station?”
    â€œNo … I thought … well, I wanted … something to remember her by.”
    He’d judged it spot on, the stumblings, the catch in the voice, the courage.
    â€œPoor lad. You won’t find much. They’ve started to put a few bits and bobs in the coal-shed.. You’re not supposed, but I’ll nip back over and watch the street a couple of minutes, give you a chance. Then mind you clear off down to the station and report yourself alive.”
    â€œAll right. Thanks. Thanks very much.”
    There was a little heap of near-rubbish on the coal-shed floor, the Mickey Mouse clock with its glass smashed but still ticking, the twelve-armed brass dancer from India, one brass bowl from the scales, two black enamel saucepans, a flat iron, the lace table-cloth for Sundays, the tea-pot. Something had hit the teapot making a dent across the top and wedging the lid tight, but he used the dancer’s top-knot to lever it open. Far more notes than when he’d been in on Saturday. A couple of ration-books too. He counted the money—£19. 10s. 0d. Where …? Of course, Mr Trinder. She wasn’t a whore, but she wasn’t above a bit of a present, either. The ration-books were new. They had no names or addresses on the front and none of the coupons was gone. You could be sent to prison for that. Mr Trinder knew about prison. He’d talked about Toby being “Out”.
    Andrew put two of the notes in his wallet and the rest in his shirt pocket, right in under his coat and pullover, then stood weighing the ration-books in his hand and thinking. Suppose one of them had been a blank identity card … Andrew, dead in the bombing after all, disappears. Adrian begins his existence. He has a ration-book and identity card, but he has never been registered for call-up. He is invisible to the war-monster. The machine-gun waiting at the ditch will clatter its bullets through blank space …
    Too late. He’d already told the bobby he was alive. And in any case it wasn’t worth it. The most important thing was to stay clean. Just the same way you kept your body fit with exercises every morning so that you’d be up to the physical demands of any part you might one day play, so you kept yourself fit in other ways. A career was like Dad’s ship, sliding through the ocean but liable to gather as it went encrustations, trailing growths, slowing it down, clogging it almost to a standstill. You wanted as little of that as you could manage, no alliances, no obligations. Perhaps Mr Trinder could have found a blank identity card for Adrian, but in finding it he would have suckered himself on to the hull, trailing unseen lengths of his other interests behind. There must be none of that. Andrew wasn’t even going to give him back the ration-books, because then there’d have been a slight connection. He wasn’t going to hand them in at the police station either. There’d be questions.
    On his way up the back alley he lifted the lid of Mrs Arlott’s dustbin and stuffed them well in under the mess, then used a stick to rake a pile of potato peelings on top. Passing down Fawley Street he stopped and showed