One Last War, page 23
‘We think that he has a prostate problem. His wife doesn’t hang washing outside, but one day I saw seven pairs of what looked like nappies on the line. I’m guessing that they are reusable pads of some sort, to absorb his urine and smells if he leaks or has incontinent. He always smells awful.’
The officers looked at each in puzzlement and then back to Tilly. She answered their question when she saw the confusion on their faces. ‘That’s why the noises are every hour and a half, he probably makes them after he’s had to nip to the toilet.’
‘I see,’ stated Bruce. ‘But there isn’t any noise now,’ he declared, looking at the adjoining wall.
‘That’s right, it’s three loud bangs followed by silence,’ insisted Carl, backing up his wife’s explanation.
‘But surely he’d waken up his wife too?’ questioned Yvonne reasonably.
Tilly made a tutting noise, ‘He doesn’t care about her, you’ve seen the way he treats her.’
The officers looked to each other knowingly but chose not to challenge the statement.
‘I’m afraid that we need to hear the noises ourselves, for us to take any action. We can’t wake up a sleeping household if there isn’t any noise,’ declared Yvonne.
‘He’s too crafty for that, you’ve seen all the cameras, it can’t be right that one is pointed right at our door,’ insisted Tilly.
‘We really do need evidence. The cameras are legal, so long as they also point in your neighbour’s own property. Have you tried the council? The environmental health department can help with nuisance noise,’ offered Bruce helpfully.
‘The man is insane,’ stated Carl. ‘He follows me around with a hammer. Then hammers whatever is nearby. His favourite is to clang against the metalwork of the bench he keeps to the side of his driveway.’
The officers looked at him incongruously, ‘Really?’ objected Yvonne.
Carl nodded, ‘It’s unsettling,’
The radio on Bruce’s chest burst into life with a crackle and a coded message was garbled. He sprang to his feet and nodded to Yvonne, ‘We have to go, urgently, but please speak to the council.’ He ran out of the room, followed closely by Yvonne, leaving Carl and Tilly pondering what to do next. Their silence was broken several minutes later by, BANG, BANG, BANG.
Carl leapt up, paced the room, and then went to the window and pulled aside the curtain. He looked out, ‘They’ve gone. He must be watching. Do you know what Jake’s girlfriend calls next door? The local perv, that’s what. He has us under constant surveillance, and there is nothing we can do.’
‘Yes, there is, we’ll get you an emergency appointment with the doctor in the morning, then contact the council.’
As if in agreement, a booming, BANG, BANG, BANG, reverberated around the room, seeming to call out from the ceiling, ricochet around their home and seep back into the adjoining wall like a malevolent force.
‘We can’t even retaliate and keep him awake with our own loud noises. He takes those hearing aids out and sleeps like a baby. Besides, it would awaken poor Millie and she has enough problems going on,’ despaired Tilly.
‘It would also waken up our two,’ agreed Carl as he sat down.
Annabelle walked into the lounge, as if hearing her father and showing her agreement. ‘I can’t get back to sleep, the bangs frighten me.’ She hugged her teddy bear tightly.
Carl put out his hands and patted his knees. He put a smile on his face, though inside he was all het up and wished he could strangle the scrawny neck of his evil, devious neighbour.
Simon gave the street a cursory check for any passers-by, and then content that he was alone, slammed home his front door with all his strength. He grinned as he locked the door, even though Millie was busy in the kitchen, and walked up his path. He hesitated at his gate, looked around once more for any early morning walkers, and swiftly exited and then rammed home the gate with a resounding clang. He walked purposely to the other side of the road and made his way to the local shop for his morning paper and fresh rolls. He lifted out a large rusty nail from his filthy jacket pocket and grinned as he passed Lee’s car, ‘This’ll teach him to back-chat me a few weeks ago,’ he muttered under his breath as the nail made a satisfying gouge along the shiny metal panels of the driver and rear sides of the vehicle. He passed an open drain with slanted covers and casually threw the nail down to the gutter. It bounced once and then plopped through into the collected rainwater, ready to be washed away during the next downpour.
‘But he needs to be seen today, he started coughing this morning, he spat all of his cereal out. It made a right mess on the floor,’ argued the irate mother.
The surgery receptionist looked down at the toddler who was happily smiling back at her from the buggy, parked right under her window. ‘She seems fine enough to me,’ declared the receptionist bravely, from the safety of her swivel chair.
‘And how would you know?’ shouted the mother questionably. ‘You’re not a doctor, are you?’
‘No, but I am a mother, and like I said, there are no appointments left, you’ll have to ring first thing tomorrow morning.’
Carl, having no option but to overhear, made to stand up, to offer his appointment to someone who truly needed it.
Tilly placed a hand on his knees and applied enough pressure to force him back in his chair, ‘Don’t you even think about it sunshine,’ she hissed.
Carl sat back in resignation. How does she do that, he thought, she always seems to know what I’m thinking.
‘Carl,’ called a tall thin man with an equally slender tie, knotted tightly against his throat.
Carl stood up, ‘That’s me,’ he declared.
‘This way please, I’m Doctor MacBride.’
Carl dutifully followed him into the inevitable room with a desk, several chairs, and an examination couch. He was disappointed not to see an anatomical skeleton, but instead there was a height chart next to some scales and an ominous looking body mass index chart. The woman complaining would have tipped that chart he unkindly thought. He was about to close the door, but hadn’t realised that Tilly had followed him in. She squeezed through the door, giving Carl a cheeky wink. He sighed and closed the door and took a seat next to her, and before the desk. It made Carl feel like he was at the headmaster’s office with his mother and about to get another telling off.
‘How can I help?’
‘We were expecting to see Doctor Neal,’ complained Tilly. She was her favourite GP; she took the time to listen.
‘I’m afraid that she is off sick, I’m a locum, filling in for her. How can I help?’ he looked to Carl as he asked the question.
Tilly opted to answer whilst Carl was fumbling for words. ‘Our neighbour is keeping us awake. I get back to sleep easily enough, I’m on anti-depressants, they make me drowsy, but Carl needs something to help him sleep. Our neighbour keeps him awake. He bangs on the walls.’
‘That sounds more of a social problem. Have you chatted to your neighbour to see what he is doing?’
‘Yes, but he pushed Carl about.’
The GP looked at Carl and doubted that anyone would be daft enough to push someone built like him about. ‘Perhaps the police, or the council.’
‘We are about to see the council; the police couldn’t help.’
‘It’s a big step, offering sedation to someone as young as you.’ He flipped through the notes on the screen by nudging the computer mouse. ‘I can’t see any clinical indication.’
‘He has PTSD,’ offered Tilly. ‘He was in the army.’
The GP looked to Carl and saw that he looked unshaven, but otherwise seemed in rude health. ‘Has it been diagnosed? By a psychiatrist or psychologist? I can’t see anything in your notes.’
‘I don’t have PTSD,’ declared Carl, looking at his wife defiantly.
‘I see,’ said the doctor. ‘Do you get flashbacks to events from when you were in the army.’
Carl shook his head, ‘I’m all fine.’
‘No, you aren’t, you’ve been having nightmares,’ insisted Tilly.
‘I’m just reacting to the noises, it’s what I’ve been trained to do.’
The doctor looked at Carl more closely, ‘How have you been reacting?’
‘He’s been trying to shoot back at the enemy, he’s been trying to put on his helmet and other protective gear, he even hurt our son,’ Tilly blurted out.
‘I only pushed him out of the way,’ asserted Carl, hurt that Tilly had brought that up to someone else.
‘YOU HAD HIM BY THE THROAT!’ screamed Tilly.
Carl looked down at the green carpet, it was not the best colour to see if you were ill, he thought.
‘And what about Gavin,’ probed Tilly insistently.
Carl stood up, ‘I’VE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS,’ he shouted, knocking back the chair. It fell backwards with a dull thud. Carl looked to his wife and in one syllable words he stated, ‘There, is, nothing, wrong, with, me.’ He flung open the door and stormed off. As he passed the receptionist, he noticed that she was still having a verbal wrestling match with the worried mother. He wished that he’d offered her his appointment as his had been a waste of time.
Tilly turned to the doctor with an apologetic look upon her face. She shrugged.
‘See the council, I think that is your best answer,’ advised the doctor from behind the safety of his desk.
The couple had driven home in silence. Carl had parked in their usual spot across from their home, and once the car had been locked up, he’d not bothered to walk across to their front door with Tilly. Instead he’d marched off around the back of the house and into the rear garden where he’d hoped for some peace.
Tilly left him to it and, seeing the time, walked down the road towards the school, to pick up their children and walk them home. She hoped that Carl would be in a better mood when they got home.
Carl applied the last layer of wood filler to the bird-table and took a step back. Though he could tell where the damage had been, a final sand down and several layers of paint and varnish would soon mask it, and it would look as good as new.
He walked over to the rear of the shed and sat on his workout bench. He lifted his dumbbells and powered through a few repetitions of his exercise regime. He slowed his breathing to match the flow of the weights and was soon finding his mindfulness. He also soon realised what an idiot he had been. Of course, Tilly was trying to help him. She wasn’t trying to interfere, she was attempting to support him, and he’d thrown it back in her face. He put the weights down and resolved to go inside and make amends.
‘Yes, I understand that,’ said Tilly patiently into her phone, ‘but the police advised us to call you. They said that the council should be able to help us. Specifically, they told us to ring the environmental health office.’
Carl entered the lounge and sat on the sofa. She rolled her eyes as if to say that she was dealing with a blethering idiot.
‘Yes,’ said an exasperated Tilly, ‘please do put me through to one of your officers.’ She looked at Carl and said, ‘It’s worse than trying to get into MI5!’
Carl laughed, it looked like he was forgiven, Tilly had someone else to complain about. He picked up his favourite 2000AD comic from the coffee table and opened it up to his much-loved Judge Dredd strip. His mum still bought him this and even posted it out to wherever he was deployed when he was in the army. Now she handed it to him every week, like a schoolboy getting tuck from a shop, and he relished each page and devoured it eagerly. His one regret was that Gordon showed no interest in reading it, he much preferred his video games.
BANG, BANG, BANG.
Carl stiffened, and the pages of his comic crumpled in his grip. He threw down the magazine, it slid across the surface of the coffee table and fell onto the carpet. He got to his feet, picked it up, looked forlornly at the comic and placed it reluctantly on the table. He wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the futuristic lawman’s latest adventures with that racket going on. His mind was racing, and he wasn’t liking where it was going, where it was being driven to, with an old lunatic in the driving seat. Why can’t he just stop. I don’t have PTSD, he thought, I just need that moron to stop banging on the wall.
Tilly, ear to her phone, hearing on hold music, failed to hear these noises. She was humming away to herself and her feet were dancing out to the tune.
Annabelle walked in and sat by her father. ‘Those bangs frighten me daddy, can’t you make them stop?’
Carl reached out and drew her into a cuddle, ‘I’ve tried sweetheart, I’ve really tried, but he won’t let me talk to him. The police have advised me to stay away from him.’
Gordon walked in, munching down on a cookie, ‘Can’t you dispense your own justice, like Dredd?’ He mimicked firing the lawgiver weapon that the Mega-City One judges carried. As he made firing noises bits of biscuit flew from his mouth and landed on the carpet.
Carl laughed, whilst keeping one eye on his wife. She saw the mess but hadn’t rushed to pick up the crumbs. Perhaps her condition is getting better, he thought. He was also relieved to see that his son was having fun with him again and had given away that he secretly read Carl’s comic. I’ll keep leaving the new edition on the coffee table, he thought.
‘Yes, hello, my name’s Tilly. The police have advised us to contact you about noises coming from our neighbour,’ said Tilly, turning reluctantly from the soiled carpet and giving her attention to her phone call. She described to the environmental health officer about the noises. She sighed, ‘Yes, we have tried talking to him, but he pushes my husband away out of his property and shouts until he goes.’
‘May I have your address and the name and number of your neighbour please?’ enquired the EHO.
Tilly obliged with the information and she heard a rattle of fingers on a keyboard and then a sharp intake of breath. ‘I see. I think it best that I attend your property, with a colleague, and we can try and hear the noises ourselves and then we can see how we can proceed.’
‘That would be good, though our neighbour has CCTV and will know you are visiting.’
‘I’m sure he won’t be watching, are you sure that the camera isn’t pointed at just his own property?’
‘Oh, we are sure alright, he’s several cameras scattered around his roofline, with one pointing right to our front door.’
‘That can’t be right. Have you tried the police?’
‘Yes, they say that it’s perfectly legal, he has them only looking at his property.’
‘Well, that’s okay then, we’ll say tomorrow at four in the afternoon?’
‘Yes, thank you, see you then.’ Tilly hung up.
BANG, BANG, BANG.
Carl stiffened and his heart went racing again, he took his arm from around his daughter and placed them on his thighs and began tapping, trying to expel some energy. He felt a tiny hand on his shoulder.
‘I don’t like the noises either daddy,’ consoled Annabelle. ‘Sometimes I don’t like being in my room.’
‘I wish that he’d have made them when I was on the phone for the woman to hear,’ moaned Tilly. ‘It’s almost like he has us bugged and knew the moment my phone call had ended.’
Carl nodded in agreement. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if he has microphones on the cameras as well, he’s devious and paranoid enough.’
Tilly sat up, ‘That reminds me!’ she exclaimed. She looked at the children, ‘You two make yourself scarce, I need to chat to daddy.’
Carl, wondering if he was going to get a nagging for not being honest with the doctor, nodding encouragingly to the children. ‘Off you go, I’ll be going to work in a minute, so I’ll see you two at teatime.’
The children obediently left the room, leaving their father to face the music. When they had closed the door behind them, Tilly said, ‘You’ll never guess what!’
Carl sat up straight, it sounded like he was off the hook, ‘What?’ he replied hopefully.
‘You’ll never believe it, but the nutter next door is only having an affair with the woman around the corner, in the house next to him.’
‘What the hippo?’
The children burst in, having been listening at the hallway, ‘Who’s the hippo?’
All three looked at Carl. ‘Well, that’s what she reminds me of,’ he explained. ‘She pokes her eyes and nose over the fence and wall, whenever she is in the garden. That’s all I can see. Just those beady eyes watching whatever I am doing. It reminds me of a hippopotamus wallowing in the mud. That and her blown up face reminds me of one. She even walks like one, wading along, her huge bulk plodding the pavement.’
‘The hippo, the hippo,’ sang out the children. They left the room, giggling away, wondering what an affair was.
Carl laughed, ‘You can’t mean that those two are at it. She’s half his age.’
‘That’s what I said to Dotty, but I saw them with my own eyes.’
Carl shuddered at the thought, ‘You can’t mean you actually saw them at it?’ he asked doubtfully.
It was Tilly’s turn to shudder, ‘No, perish the thought. But he makes Millie go shopping on her own and she takes the bus, every few days. That way she’s away from home for a few hours. Then she, the hippo, climbs over the wall and goes into his house and then he and she were at the bedroom window, closing the curtain. Apparently, she’s well-known in the village for entertaining the men whilst Wayne is at work.’
Carl, lost for words, kept his mouth open, it became more agape as his wife explained what she saw. ‘At his age too.’ He shook his head. ‘Poor Millie, what an awful life that man has dealt her.’
As if he agreement there were three bangs, each in quick succession.
Carl tightened his grip until his fingernails dug into his palm. He didn’t know how much more of this he could take.
Annabelle hugged Dolly tight, trying to shut out the noise. A metal ladder had been bouncing outside her window, onto the wall between her room and that of the awful man next door. When it was resting there came the clanging of a metal bar being struck against the railings below.
