Hanging Hill - Mo Hayder [53]
Jake watched stonily, the huge muscles in his arms twitching slightly. ‘Sounds like they’re funny. The images.’
‘They are,’ David said, his voice tight, as if he was on the verge of hysteria. ‘Very funny. They’re poof images. One poof hoeing the other poof’s row. You know, one poof ploughing into another’s glory hole. That’s what it made me think of.’ David wiped his eyes again. Got himself under control. ‘My mother is a relatively intelligent woman. I mean, apart from the three times she opened her legs to my father, she isn’t altogether thick. Do you know what she used to say to me when I was a nipper? She used to say, “There are several people you should never trust, son. You should never trust a cop, you should never trust a skinny chef, you should never trust a fat beggar. Never trust an Arab or a bloke whose eyebrows meet in the middle. Never trust a man in black shoes and white socks and never trust a black man in a fez. But do you know who was at the top of her never-trust list? The crème de la crème of untrustworthiness?’
‘No.’ Jake said it almost soundlessly.
‘The poofs. The fucking poofters.’
‘What’re you talking about?’
David gave a slow smile. ‘You’re a fucking queer, Jake. A bumboy, a shirt-lifting faggoty shit-stirrer. Now, I ain’t saying that’s your fault. What the scientists are saying, these days, and I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but what they’re saying is that you can’t help it. Apparently it’s in your biology. You can’t be blamed for it – it’s in your genes.’ He held his hands out in amazement, as if to say, ‘How weird is that?’ ‘Yeah, according to the mad professors it’s nothing to do with you all being a bunch of perverts, it’s all down to some fuck-up in the chromosome department. So I can’t blame you, Jake, for the simple fact of you being a turd-tickler – what you do with your arse is your lookout – but I can blame you, and this is where I start to feel twitchy, like, what I can blame you for …’ he leaned forward ‘… is not having the fucking good manners to mention it to me. Jake the Peg with his extra leg – and turns out the leg’s not got its lead up for the bit of gash lying on the bed. It’s got it up maybe for one of the crew members. Or, God forgive me for saying it, maybe even for me. And he never mentions it. That, you see,’ he jabbed his fingers in the air, ‘that is what I call ignorance.’
David lowered his hand and put it on the banister. For a moment it looked as if he might swing his legs up and kick Jake in the chin. But he didn’t. He simply pulled himself to his feet.
Jake swallowed. He didn’t step back. He put his hands into his jeans pockets defiantly. ‘I’m not a poof.’
‘Liar.’ David’s face didn’t change. ‘You are.’
‘OK – so what if I was? Don’t mean anything, does it? This isn’t the Stone Age – there’s human rights now. You can’t get away with calling me a poof.’
David made a tutting noise. He shook his head disapprovingly. ‘Playing the poofter discrimination card? It’s against the rules, boyo. As bad as playing the race card.’ He dropped his head to one side and put on a fake bright voice: ‘We are sorry, your poof card has been denied. Please be advised that your poof card account has been closed. This decision was based on your account history of excessive over-limit spending. Please destroy your card immediately as it will no longer be honoured. Now, see that crossbow on the wall? Up there.’
Jake raised his eyes. Sally couldn’t see up to the galleried landing, but she knew what was up there. A crossbow mounted in a cabinet with a picture light trained above it. In the back of the cabinet there was a framed photograph of the sun setting over the African bush.
‘I shot a fucking hippo with that. Back in the days when white law-abiding people who worked hard had rights, before