In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(119)
“You'll have copies of my office diary on Monday morning” was Upman's even reply.
“Names and phone numbers appended, I hope?” “Whatever you'd like.” Upman nodded at the house, at the door through which the long-suffering Joyce had disappeared. “In case you hadn't noticed, I already have attractive and intelligent women in my life, Inspector. Believe me, I wouldn't have gone all the way to London to arrange for another. But if your thoughts are heading in that direction, you might want to consider who didn't have access to such a woman. And I think we both know who that poor sod is.”
Teddy Webster ignored his dad's bark of an order. Since it came from the direction of the kitchen, where his parents were still finishing up their lunch, he knew he had a good quarter of an hour before the order came a second time. And since his mum had made apple crumble as their sweet for once—a rare occurrence considering that her usual offering was a packet of fig newtons opened without ceremony and tossed into the centre of the table while she was clearing the plates away—that quarter of an hour might stretch to thirty minutes, in which case Teddy would have plenty of time to watch the rest of The Incredible Hulk before his father shouted “Turn off that damn telly and get yourself out of the house right now! I mean it, Teddy. I want you out in the fresh air. Now. Now! Before I make you sorry I've had to repeat myself.”
Saturdays were always like that: a boring, daft repetition of every other boring, daft Saturday since they'd moved to the Peaks. What always happened on Saturdays was this: Dad clumped round the house at half past seven, bellowing about how fine it was to be out of the city at last and weren't they all just bloody delighted to have fresh air to breathe and open spaces to explore and their country's history and culture and tradition jumping out at them from every stupid pile of rocks in every dumb field. Only these weren't fields, were they? These were moors and weren't they all lucky and blessed and … oh, just bloody special to live in a place where they could set off north just beyond their own house and walk for six billion miles without ever seeing a single soul? This wasn't a bit like Liverpool, was it, kids? This was heaven. This was Utopia. This was—A place that sucked, Teddy thought. And sometimes he said it, which set his father off and made his mother cry and sent his sister into one of her fits where she started whingeing about how was she ever going to go to drama school and become a real actress if she had to live in the middle of nowhere like some sort of leper?
Which really set Dad off at full gallop. And took the heat off Teddy, who always used the opportunity to slink to the television and tune in to Fox Kids, which, at the moment, was featuring that always-wicked moment when pencil dick Dr. David Banner got his knickers twisted just enough by some ignorant yobbo that he went into one of those very cool fits where his eyes went backwards into his head and his arms and legs popped out of his clothes while his chest swelled up and his buttons flew off and he was beating the shit out of everyone in sight.
Teddy sighed with pure happiness as the Hulk made hash of his most recent tormentors. It was exactly what Teddy wished that he could do to those pea-brain twits who met him at the school gates every morning and shadowed him—taunting, poking, tripping, and shoving—from the moment he set foot inside the school yard. He'd beat them to puke and guts and shit if he were the Hulk. He'd take them one at a time or all at once. It wouldn't matter because he'd be more than seven feet tall and twenty-five stone of pure muscle and they wouldn't even know where he'd come from or why. And when they were sprawled out in their puke and their pee, he'd pick one of them up by his hair and he'd say, “You leave Teddy Webster be, you hear me? Or I'll be back.” And he'd thump that arsehole back to the ground and step on his face as he walked away. And then—“God damn it, Ted. I want you out of here.”
Teddy scrambled to his feet. So deeply into his fantasy had he sunk that he hadn't noticed his dad come into the sitting room. “It was nearly the end,” he said hastily. “I wanted to see how it—”
His father held up a pair of scissors. He grabbed the flex from the back of the telly. “I didn't bring my family to the country to have them spend their free time with their noses glued to the television. You have fifteen seconds to get out of this house, or the flex gets cut. Permanently.”
“Dad! I just wanted—”
“You need a hearing test, Ted?”
He shot towards the door. But there he paused. “What about Carrie? Why doesn't she—”
“Your sister's doing her school prep. Would you like to do yours? Or will you be going outside to play?”
Teddy knew that Carrie was no more doing her school prep than he was preparing to perform brain surgery. But he also knew when he was defeated. He said, “Play, Dad,” and he trudged outside, giving himself full marks for not sneaking on his sister. She was in her room mooning over Flicks and writing loony love letters to some loonier actor. It was a bloody stupid way to spend her time, but Teddy understood. She had to do something to keep the bats from her brain.
Telly did that for him. Watching telly felt good. Besides, what else was there to do?
He knew better than to ask Dad that question though. When he'd asked it at first—shortly after they'd moved here from Liverpool—the answer had been having a chore assigned to him. So Teddy no longer asked for suggestions when it came to free time. He took himself outside and shut the door, but not before he allowed himself the satisfaction of casting a baleful look over his shoulder as his father retreated into the kitchen.