The Gun
By Terrence Oblong
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She didn’t like to admit it but having a gun in the bedroom excited her in a sexual way. She was all a tingle at the thought of it.
It was the power of it, the forbidden nature of it. A gun. In Southend of all places, a jaded, fading tourist town, a sea nobody wanted to see, a pier nobody wanted to go near. A gun brought excitement where there had previously only been the smell of yesterday’s fish and chips.
“I don’t want it in the house,” is what she said, “I’m having nothing to do with guns.”
“Relax,” he said, “It’s just for tonight. I’m selling it to a fella tomorrow.”
“Where d’yer even get a thing like that?”
“House clearance. Dirt cheap. Guy who owned it – well he didn’t have a licence and needed to get rid of it as he was going away.”
Going away only meant one thing in Adam’s world. In Jenny’s world too. Gap years hadn’t been invented, neither had university, not for the like of them at least. Even work meant something you walked down the road to do, who’d move town just to for a job? Going away always began with a trip in a van, with the word ‘police’ on the side, just in case any of the neighbours were in any doubt.
“You could get in trouble. That’s serious clink if you’re found with one of those. Just for having it in the house.”
“Just ‘til the morning luv. Bloke I know is desperate for it – I’ll make fifty quid profit.”
“Fifty quid?”
It was a lot of money. You put in a full week’s work for fifty quid, and then bloody Wilson walked off with fifteen quid of it. Not Wilson now, that Callaghan bloke, but they’re all the same.
“I’ll take you for a meal out. And get you some new clothes, that top you were looking at in Debenhams.”
“I don’t want anything to do with it. That’s just trouble, that’s all it is.”
Is what she said.
But when she saw Adam take the newspaper with him to the toilet, knowing that he’d be there for at least the whole of the sports section, and maybe some of the news as well, she crept to her knicker drawer, where she’d seen him stash the gun, and took it out. It was heavy in her hand, cold and metallic. She pointed it at her reflection in the mirror, but quickly lowered the gun at the image, the sense of ill-omen outweighing the thrill.
That night, in bed, she initiated proceedings in a way she rarely did, climbing on top so that should could take charge, set the pace, and it was a fast pace.
“Something in your coco luv?” Adam said afterwards, but she just smiled and said “Well if you’re gonna be banged up for the next ten years for that bloody gun I’d better get it while I can.”
xxx
Adam Riley was a tosser. A bad sort. She found out he’d been seeing Monica on the sly the whole time he’d been with her. Jenny never got her meal out, or her Debenhams top, two days later she’d slammed the door on him and walked out to start a new life.
As for the gun, the next day he’d put the gun into his lunchbox and left the house with it before she’d left for work. She never saw the gun again, he hardly saw Adam again either.
And that was it.
End of story.
Until 28 years later.
In suburbia.
Jenny has been happily married to Simon for nigh on twenty-five years.
Their youngest, Sonia, has been allowed to have her 18th birthday party in the house. Simon and Jenny left early for a rare night away, staying with old friends. By the time they got back the next day the house was sort of tidy, as good as could be expected, and the children, plus numerous strays, were still sleeping.
Four days later they were robbed while they slept. Just the valuables were taken; the TV, the computer, Simon’s laptop. They heard nothing.
“Sounds like they knew what they were after, an in and out job,” the policeman said. “You had any strangers in the house recently?”
She told him about the party, about the friends of friends who had turned up.
She agreed with the policeman that it was probably one of them, or one of their friends.
“There isn’t much we can do,” he said, “we’ll take finger prints, but if it was someone at the party then we’ll never manage to get a conviction.”
They took Jenny and her family’s prints as well, ‘just to rule them out’. They black-inked her hands and she pressed her messed up fingers and thumbs onto the white paper, like she’d played as a kid, painted fingers onto blotting paper, ‘Now we’ve got ‘yer dabs we’ll ‘ave yer bang to rights’, her friends would say, because those were the sorts of games they played.
A few days later the policeman showed up at her door, the same man.
“Have you got them?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I’m afraid this is about another matter. I’m going to have to ask you to come with me to the station. To give a statement.”
“The station? Am I under arrest?”
“No, no, not if I can help it, but it’ll be easier if you come now, get it all sorted out.”
“What is it then?” she asked, as she took her coat from the hook.
The policeman explained en route to the station. “Your finger prints have turned up on a murder weapon.”
Jenny froze.
“But. But.” Her mind raced in a million different ways. “But, you said you were taking my prints to rule them out. Not to run a check on me.”
“They were prints we picked up in the house, when we ran them through the database they matched with prints we’d never managed to identify, found on a gun that was used in a murder. It was only afterwards we checked them against your prints, an oversight.”
She should phone Simon. He knew lawyers. She should say nothing without legal advice.
But she didn’t want Simon to know. Adam Riley was her history, her personal history. Besides, the policeman seemed a nice man, it would all be fine. She could trust him.
The coffee at the police station was awful. The worst kind of instant, that cheap powdered stuff that was only ever bought by people who didn’t drink coffee themselves. She pitied the criminals who had to live off the stuff.
Jenny asked the first question, as soon at they’d sat down, he’d barely turned the tape on, and they were tapes, an old-fashioned triple-deck, C60s, C90s, like she’d used to listen to her first Ramones cassette.
“Who?” was all she said.
“The murder victim? Can I just check Mrs Prentice, you’re happy to give a statement without a solicitor present?”
“I’d rather just get it over with. I don’t want to wait, I want to find out, well everything.”
“Josh Cooper,” the policeman said.
She looked at him blankly. She’d half expected to hear it was Adam, or at least one of his crowd. “Never heard of him,” she said.
“He was shot in July 1978. The gun was found a few days later in a ditch by the side of a river, it looked like a clumsy attempt to dispose of it.”
“And my …”
“Your fingerprints were found on the gun,” the policeman said gently. Any idea how?”
She nodded. “I’ve only ever handled one gun. An old boyfriend bought it home, I just wanted to hold it. You know, to see what it was like. I never knew it would be used for …”
“And the boyfriend’s name?”
She clammed up. Adam Riley was a shit, a bastard, but, well, she wasn’t a grass.
“Was it perhaps,” the policeman pretended to consult his notes, “an Adam Riley.”
She nodded.
“Was that a yes Mrs Prentice?” he gestured to the whirring tapes, incapable of capturing a nod.
“Yes,” she heard the noise leave her mouth, though she didn’t remember intending to say it.
There were more questions, she told him all about her relationship ending, her not seeing him again, her having no idea where Adam was now.
‘I should have phoned Simon’, she thought, ‘I shouldn’t be telling him all this. Not without legal advice.’
Suddenly the policeman switched off the tapes. “Thank you very much for your time, Mrs Prentice,” he said.
She stared at him. Not comprehending.
“You can go. Thank you for your time.”
“You’re not arresting me?”
“No. The close is closed. Long closed. Adam Riley was convicted of the murder in 1982. He’s already served his sentence.”
“So …” There was too much to take in. Adam was a murderer. Adam, who she’d planned to marry, who she’d had that scare with, when they thought she was pregnant. If she hadn’t found out about Monica when she did.
She shuddered. “You said I could go?”
Of course. You’re story rings totally true. We know Adam had the gun, the guy he bought it off told us everything. And if you’d known what he was going to do, you’d hardly have handled it. He’d clearly worn gloves, none of his prints anywhere.”
She staggered to the door. The policeman holder her shoulder.
“You’ve helped solve a thirty year mystery. We never could work out whose prints they were. Luckily we got the conviction anyway.”
They drove to her home in silence. “Don’t worry, the case is long closed. You won’t hear from us again, not unless we catch your burglars.”
She laughed. Laughed and cried with relief. She managed to remain relatively composed as she opened the door and said goodbye, but as soon as the door was closed she locked herself in her room and cried like she’d never cried before in her entire life.
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Comments
The close [case] is closed.
The close [case] is closed. thought she might shoot someone.
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Loved This Terrence :)
Hi hope your ok. I first want to say how much I liked this, how you turned, what can be to most a boring, complex topic, into a interesting, none stop flowing, engaging story.you really deserved the cherries well done.
I do not like to add none positive thoughts etc, but I just wanted to say, for me personally, I would of loved it, if the story had stopped at the police asking jenny to go back to the station with them, teasing us&then the rest another time.But apart from the suspense it would create, its also health reasons for me, i have to keep coming back to the laptop/comp to read stories over&over, But it does not deflect how interesting, well written&how much i enjoyed this. well done.
Take Care
Keep Smiling
Keep Writing xxx
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