A Fairly Dangerous Thing

by Reginald Hill

  ‘No,’ he said, smiling reminiscently, ‘it wasn’t too bad at the time.’

  She smiled widely at him in relief.

  ‘I’m sorry about the photos, understand me. But you’re a real one when you get going, aren’t you?’

  Joe laughed out loud, faintly flattered.

  ‘Am I? You helped a bit, I’d say.’

  He looked at her seriously for a moment.

  ‘Look, Cyn, you’re not here because you’ve been told, are you? This isn’t another set-up?’

  He glanced over his shoulder as though expecting to see Chubb lurking close with his camera.

  ‘No!’ said Cynthia indignantly. ‘It’s bloody not.’

  Joe was inclined to believe her. It would have needed more than good organization to be waiting for him in a pub he had had no intention of visiting till a couple of minutes earlier. He made up his mind.

  ‘Right then,’ he said. ‘I’ll buy you a drink if you’re not doing anything.’

  She looked at him speculatively for a moment.

  ‘Where?’ she asked.

  ‘It’ll have to be close. I’m on foot.’

  ‘That’s not a very good idea,’ she said holding up a set of car-keys. ‘Be my guest.’

  ‘All right. In that case, what about having a bite to eat as well and driving out to the Golden Calf just off the Bakewell Road? Do you know it?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Show me.’

  The reason I am doing this, Joe told himself as he squeezed down beside Cynthia in the tiny Fiat she had led him to, is that this woman might let me have some useful information about Carter and Jim. I’ve got to clutch at any straw.

  But he was very conscious of the pressure of her thigh against his and clutching at straws seemed a most inapposite metaphor.

  The Golden Calf was an old country pub which served excellent steaks in the bar. Eventually it would become the victim of its own success and start having pretensions to restaurant status. But the couple of times Joe had been there,the happy balance between local pub-goers and visiting eaters had still been preserved.

  With a shock he recalled that it had been Maggie who had first introduced him to the place.

  So what? he asked himself. We never really got anywhere. It’s hardly desecrating a holy memory or anything like that.

  But he still felt a pang compounded of guilt and nostalgia as the Fiat bumped over the uneven surface of the pub carpark.

  It had been a silent ride. Memories of their last encounter still hung between them and their conversation had been inconsequential, almost stilted. Joe was beginning to wonder if this had been such a good idea after all as he helped Cynthia out of the car. The physical contact involved reassured him a little, but as they walked over to the pub, the sight of half a dozen sports-cars scattered around the park and sounds of music coming from the building gave him new cause for worry.

  His worst fears were realized when they entered the bar. Since his last visit several months earlier the lighting had been diluted by several hundred watts, the tables had sprouted romantic old bottles encrusted with candle-wax, a wall had been knocked down, and in the extra space so gained a shallow platform had risen up which bore a small electric organ and a funny little man who was playing it. In front of the platform on a tiny rectangle of polished floorboards (specially laid over the old stone floor) three or four couples were dancing.

  ‘Have you booked, sir?’ asked a rather plain young woman whom he remembered as the landlord’s daughter.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid not. I’d be grateful if you could squeeze us in.’

  His irony was ignored which was a pity. In the past she’d always been good for a laugh.

  ‘This is nice, Joe,’ said Cynthia when they were seated. She looked around with what seemed to be genuine pleasure and smiled warmly as the plain girl returned with a menu and lit the candle in the bottle.

  The music stopped. One of the dancers clapped twice. The little man ignored him.

  ‘I say, you, chappie,’ called a willowy young man with a gaucho moustache. ‘Play us … thing… you know.’

  ‘What on earth is thing, darling?’ asked a young girl at the next table, with the kind of upper-class projection which assumes the hearer is two streets away.

  ‘You know. Thing. If you don’t know what thing is, my lovely, who on earth does?’ replied the gaucho, whose clothes seemed to match his whiskers.

  His bon mot evoked appreciative laughter from several areas of the room. Most of the clientele, Joe decided, must have arrived together in the awful gaggle of sports-cars he had noticed outside.

  ‘Would you like something to drink, sir?’ asked the plain girl.

  ‘What about my whisky, dear?’ called the gaucho. ‘Little bit of service, eh?’

  Confused, the plain girl looked round.

  ‘I don’t think you ordered anything, Jule,’ said another rather epicene young man.

  ‘Didn’t I? Well, I thought about it hard enough. You there, Semprini, why aren’t you playing thing?’

  ‘Two scotches. One with water, one with ginger,’ said Joe.

  ‘You remembered!’ said Cynthia satirically.

  ‘It’s one of the few things I do remember,’ said Joe. ‘What would you like to eat?’

  She glanced at the menu and pulled a face.

  ‘Christ, what do they do? Boil everything in virgin’s water!’

  Joe grinned back at her.

  ‘Things have gone up a bit since last time I was here.’

  ‘Not to worry, love,’ she said. ‘We’ll go dutch.’

  ‘That’s how we started last time,’ he said. ‘No, I asked you here. I’ll pay. The plain, unadorned steaks used to be very good. I can’t speak for the stuff with fancy names as that’s a recent apparition.’

  ‘Cess likes a nice bit of steak,’ she said inconsequentially. The name fell between them like a garter at a church fete. The wad of fivers in Joe’s breast-pocket suddenly pressed hard against his heart. They had been much in his mind since leaving Cess and Lord Jim and he had made a firm resolve not to spend. The issue wasn’t merely moral, though the thought was very strong in his mind that whatever help he might find himself giving to Carter must never be paid for. In the eyes of the law, a blackmail victim might receive some sympathy; a paid accomplice never. But in addition to this excellent reason for either returning the money or at least preserving it untouched was his suspicion that the notes might be stolen and perhaps traceable. Another link in the chain of criminality by which Cess was hoping to bind him fast. Perhaps they were even forged. Less likely; Cess would hardly want him to run such a large risk of coming to the notice of the police.

  ‘Was the other night Cess’s idea?’ he asked casually after they had ordered.

  ‘It wasn’t mine!’ she replied defensively.

  ‘No. Of course not. I didn’t mean that. I just wondered if Cess was the sole originator of the plan.’

  She looked at him suspiciously.

  ‘Why shouldn’t he be?’

  ‘No reason. I just thought it a bit odd that he should use you, that’s all. He seemed, well, fond of you in his own way.’

  ‘Cess doesn’t own me!’ she snapped.

  ‘The way the other night worked out, it might appear he did,’ he said quietly.

  She put down her knife and fork and for a moment he thought she was going to do something violent like marching out of the restaurant after thrusting a medium rare entrecote up his nose.

  Instead she picked up her napkin and covered the lower part of her face, gesturing to the door with her eyes.

  ‘Pig,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ began Joe.

  ‘Not you. Bogey. Cop. Policeman. Just come in.’

  Joe shrugged, not even bothering to glance round.

  ‘So what? We’re entitled to be here.’

  He felt less casual than he tried to appear and considered heading for the loo and flushing the fivers out of his life f
or ever.

  ‘Cess might not like us to be seen.’

  If that was all that was worrying her, he felt relieved.

  ‘He didn’t seem to mind the other night.’

  ‘No,’ said Cynthia thoughtfully. ‘He didn’t,’ and returned to her steak.

  Joe glanced round now, expecting to see a village bobby checking that everything was in order. What he saw instead hit him like an expertly delivered combination punch, a right to the heart and a left to the head.

  The head blow was the man. It was Sergeant Prince looking incredibly dapper in a light grey suit and pale pink shirt with matching tie. His prematurely white hair gave him an air of considerable distinction. He might have been an oldstyle Hollywood actor, certain of admiring recognition and instant service.

  The heart-blow was the woman he was escorting to their table.

  It was Maggie.

  Joe kept on staring as she took her seat, her back to him, at the other side of the room. Prince moved round the table and, as he sat down, noticed Joe. He smiled and waved, saying something to Maggie who glanced round briefly, her face expressionless.

  Bitch! thought Joe. Coming here of all places. And with him!

  Unfair, he added, trying to be reasonable. Sentimental memories didn’t stop me coming here. And she could hardly know that I’m not exactly en rapport with the fuzz at the moment.

  But Prince might have a feeling for these things. This thought was worrying. This was the second time. First the golf-club, now this. And Maggie had seen him with Cynthia. That didn’t count. Did it? Not unless she mentioned it to Prince. But she wouldn’t do that. Why should she? Not when it meant revealing she’d been stood up.

  And God knows what the watcher in the blue Cortina had seen.

  He glanced round again. Maggie and the sergeant were in close conversation.

  ‘Know them, do you?’ asked Cynthia.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Her as well?’

  ‘Slightly.’

  Cynthia pushed her plate away from her, unfinished.

  ‘I’d better watch my figure,’ she said. As though she meant it literally, she unbuttoned the rather loose woollen cardigan she was wearing, took it off and draped it over her chair. Underneath she was wearing a matching jumper, entirely lacking in its fellow’s looseness. Her breasts swelled magnificently against the material and the stitching at the apex of the V-neck looked to be in considerable hazard.

  Even Maisie Uppadine would be hard pushed to compete with these mature orbs, thought Joe, and the thought brought to mind his poem (his now; Mickey Carter’s inaugural lines were totally assimilated in the artistic whole, he felt; like Eliot’s technique in The Waste Land.)

  He found he was staring fixedly at Cynthia’s bosom. She didn’t seem to mind. But it had attracted other attention as well. The gaucho was leaning over the table, smiling winningly.

  ‘Forgive the intrusion,’ he said, ‘but would the lady care to dance?’

  The organist had resumed his electronic whining some time earlier.

  ‘I don’t think so. Not in between courses,’ said Joe.

  ‘I asked the lady,’ said the gaucho, leaning closer to Cynthia.

  ‘Piss off, sonny,’ said Cynthia without heat.

  ‘Come on, Julian, old son,’ said the epicene young man who seemed to be wearing a skirt. He pushed the gaucho back towards his own table.

  ‘Sorry, darlings,’ he said with a flashing smile at Joe. ‘He’s overcompensating for his impotence.’

  The gaucho turned, not to protest, but explain.

  ‘It’s Petula,’ he said with drunken assurance, nodding at Cynthia. ‘Used to do things with an Alsatian in that smelly club in Fulham. Don’t recognize the face but the bristols are unmistakable.’

  Joe half-rose.

  ‘Leave it, love,’ said Cynthia. ‘I’ll have the chocolate pud.’

  ‘Nonsense, Jule,’ said Epicene good-naturedly. ‘Probably a colonial bishop’s daughter here for the hols. Don’t spoil things, there’s a nice old eunuch.’

  Joe concentrated his attention on unravelling the small, tight ball of anger and resentment which was being wound up in his belly. He might have succeeded if the gaucho had not shaken off his friend and returned.

  ‘Bishop’s daughter,’ he said solemnly. ‘Bless you.’

  He picked up Joe’s drink, dipped his fingers in it and began flicking droplets of scotch down Cynthia’s cleavage, intoning, ‘In nomine Patrii, Filii et …’

  He got no further. Joe caught him in the stomach with a round-arm left and gasped in agony as his hand almost broke off at the wrist. The gaucho doubled up most satisfactorily and was violently sick over the table, causing Cynthia to leap back out of the line of fire.

  Joe was surprised to see she did not look in the least grateful for his intervention.

  ‘Christ Almighty,’ she said, gathering together her things. ‘Let’s go.’

  She attempted to push Joe towards the door but their way was blocked by a white-haired figure, no longer looking merely distinguished, but now very professional and businesslike.

  ‘Hold it, Mr Askern,’ he said. ‘What’s the trouble?’

  ‘No trouble, Sergeant, we’re just going,’ said Cynthia.

  ‘Are you all right, Jule?’ cried a large square girl, one of the group of people who had gathered round.

  ‘Oh, oh, oh,’ groaned the gaucho.

  ‘Sergeant? Are you a policeman? How ducky,’ said Epicene. ‘This nasty fellow has done poor Jule an injury.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Prince.

  ‘Jule was having a bit of fun. No, no, no,’ said Epicene brushing aside Joe’s attempted protest, ‘just fun. Rather objectionable perhaps, but fun nonetheless, and certainly no cause for this kind of brutality.’

  His voice became quite shrill as he finished. Joe rubbed his wrist and looked at him longingly.

  ‘You hit him, Mr Askern?’ said Prince.

  ‘Yes,’ said Joe. ‘But …’

  ‘But me no buts,’ said Epicene. ‘Aren’t you going to arrest him?’

  ‘Will your friend wish to bring charges, do you think?’ asked Prince in an official voice.

  Epicene looked questioningly at the square girl. She shook her head.

  ‘Daddy wouldn’t like it. Just tell this yobbo to bugger off with his tart before Jule returns to us.’

  The gaucho fixed Joe with a gaze of pure hatred, ‘Oh, oh, oh,’ he said, still holding his stomach.

  ‘You are—?’ said Prince to the square girl.

  ‘I’m his sister, God help me.’

  ‘Name, please,’ said the sergeant patiently.

  ‘Trevigore. Helen Trevigore and this is my brother Julian.’

  ‘Trevigore?’ said Prince. ‘Any relation to Lord Trevigore?’

  ‘Our father; which art in bed and will remain there undisturbed, I hope.’

  There was a round of high-bred laughter. Prince turned to Joe and took him a couple of paces aside.

  ‘I think it’ll all smooth itself over if you push off now, Mr Askern. Word of advice, don’t be so keen to swing your fists next time, eh?’

  ‘You haven’t asked for my version, Sergeant,’ said Joe, keeping his voice low with difficulty.

  ‘You did hit him? Yes. I saw it. Look it’s not worth it, sir. Just push off, eh?’

  ‘Because his name’s bloody Trevigore, is that it?’ snarled Joe.

  ‘No,’ said Prince patiently.

  ‘Balls,’ said Joe. ‘Dirty great …’

  ‘Come on, Joe,’ said Cynthia, taking his arm. He glanced across at Maggie who lifted her chin fractionally, returned his gaze for a second, and looked away. The organist, who had stopped playing for a couple of minutes, started again. Joe looked round the semi-circle of unfriendly faces. Some of them weren’t even unfriendly, just impersonally curious, as though he were in a glass cage.

  He bent over the gaucho who was still in some discomfort.

  ‘Fancy a dance
, Jule, old son?’ he said. ‘They’re playing thing.’

  At the door he met the plain girl. He peeled a fiver off the wad given to him by Cess and put it into her hand.

  ‘Harpics all round,’ he said.

  It wasn’t a very good exit line and he sat in silence in the car on the return journey, composing better ones. He didn’t feel like talking and Cynthia accepted his mood. Her only comment on the incident was when she said musingly with no trace of accusation in her voice, ‘Nights out with Cess often end in a punch-up, but I’d have bet against it tonight.’

  She dropped him in the town-centre, neither offering nor receiving an invitation for the evening to be continued elsewhere.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, again without irony.

  ‘Thank you for the ride,’ said Joe. ‘You’ll be seeing Cess? Give him a message. Tell him it’ll be a real pleasure to help. A real pleasure.’

  As he strode away down the darkling streets to home, he really believed it.

  CHAPTER IX

  On the next trip to Averingerett it poured down. They went in a twelve-seater minibus belonging to the LEA and even then only seven children turned up. Mickey Carter sat next to Maisie and kept her giggling most of the way with a series of suggestive line drawings on the steamed-up windowpanes.

  He had a talent for it, Joe observed gloomily through the driving-mirror. Perhaps sufficient to lure him away from the erratic trail of his father’s footsteps. He’d talk to Godspur, the art man. And Mrs Carter.

  The trip had not proved too difficult to organize. Cess had been adamant that he must use a school visit as his cover and the story he had settled on was that a small group of children had not had time fully to pursue their chosen lines of research on the previous visit and were now pressing him to take them again.

  Solly had been doubtful at first. It was one of his proud boasts that his school always had more of its various allowances left over at the end of the financial year than any other school in the district. What won him over was the realization that a small group (‘a dozen at most’, Joe had invented hurriedly) could be conveyed in the LEA minibus with Joe driving, thus keeping down expense. But, more importantly, use of the minibus opened up whole networks of unclassified roads which a large coach could not negotiate.