by Milly Adams
Sylvia needed air, and, outside, standing near the lavender, she looked up at the sky and repeated her promise to God. Bring him back safe, she thought, knowing He would hear her thoughts. She continued in a whisper: ‘Dear Lord, there are so many whose lives depend on his safety, so many who love him, whereas it is only Steve who loves me, and he will learn to love someone more worthy.’
She smelt the lavender, heard the bees. Yes, Steve deserved better. Someone who hadn’t broken promises, or reneged on obligations as she had done with the convent, with Harriet. Or inflicted hurt as she had done to lovely Joe when she had pointed him out to the police over the butty fire. The cut had been a lesson to her, because on the cut there were no thank-yous, just obligations repaid, which really amounted to a deal done, a line drawn. It was a lesson she had only just understood.
She returned inside and they tried to telephone Solly again. Again the phone rang and rang. They would wait and try again.
Joe leaned even harder against Mr Dobbo as his father approached, and his beard made him look like a pirate.
Joe stared up at him. ‘I want to be ’ome,’ he said.
He felt Mr Dobbo’s leg stiffen, and his hand tap his back in warning. He closed his mouth but it was too late, Leon said, ‘’Ome with y’ma, eh?’
Joe shook his head. ‘I don’t want for to be dead, for she ’tis dead. I want to be with me aunties and uncles.’
Leon took another pace and loomed over him, and now Joe couldn’t see the fish tank, cos his da’s great body were blocking it. He waited and yes, it really were his da, for he was pulling off his great thick leather belt from the trouser loops. It were the belt he always used. Winding the end without the buckle round his hand, he lashed it through the air. The buckle glinted. ‘Yer get a forked tongue if yer lie, boy. How often do I says that to yer?’
Joe didn’t think he could pee again, but he did, right there, on the carpet, and his da was looking at it. His shoulders lifted and his arm came up. ‘Where do yer ma be?’
‘Up with the stars,’ Joe said, ‘Cos yer hit ’er so bad, and then me. She be up with the stars.’
His da looked at Mr Dobbo. ‘Sid thought the lad said not to hurt his ma. Did yer ’ear it too?’
Mr Dobbo sighed, then muttered, ‘I ’eard nothing. The boy’s never spoken of ’er, all the time I’ve been there. ’Is home is the House, seems to me.’
Leon stepped up so close that the leather belt dragged on the floor. When he stopped he lifted it and it whipped into Joe’s face. Joe wanted to cry out, but clenched his mouth shut. He did what Uncle Henry had said, and counted to three, to settle himself, but he were too wobbly. He tried again and it were better, a bit. Joe looked up: Leon was so close to Mr Dobbo’s face that they were nearly touching. ‘I don’t believe yer,’ Leon said, his voice soft, in the voice that Joe was afraid of. He wanted to warn Mr Dobbo, because he had said he hadn’t heard, but he must have done, so somewhere there was goodness in him.
Leon said, ‘Strange that, cos as well as Sid, t’other bloke ’eard ’im too, so yer see my problem, Dobbo. I paid yer for a job, and now I feels yer’s lying to me.’ His voice was still soft, and Joe wanted to cringe. Mr Dobbo just stood quiet, his shoulders back, and still his hand patted Joe calm.
Joe didn’t understand why Mr Dobbo was helping him, cos Mr Dobbo had taken him, but then … and then … Well, he had stopped Sid from hitting him when he’d been a bit more sick. Were he sorry for causing grief, like Sylvia had been?
But that wasn’t right. Sylvia had really really thought he’d fired the butty and was a menace, so she hadn’t done it for pay and she hadn’t sent poor Dog to grab him. He saw Sylvia’s face, her red hair, heard the softening of her voice as time had gone. He thought about the letters she had written him and the drawings. While Polly and Verity’s letters had made him laugh about all the boaters, Sylvia’s writing had been of the voles, the otters, and the kingfisher, things that meant the world to him. She had even tried to draw a few, especially the kingfisher. He’d wanted to draw her a special one and teach her how to do it easier than the effort hers took. How he wished he had now because perhaps he were going to die, and you couldn’t show people ’ow to draw when you were up with the stars. Or he didn’t think you could.
The blow that Leon landed right in Mr Dobbo’s middle jerked Joe back into the room, away from Sylvia’s red hair. The big man doubled over and knocked into Joe, which pushed Joe on to the rug. Mr Dobbo fell to his knees, gasping something horrid, his face pressed into the rug too. But that would only be the start, Joe knew, as he crawled away and down came the belt, and the buckle caught Mr Dobbo’s head. There would be blood on the carpet but you couldn’t see it because it were so dim.
He heard Mr Dobbo say, ‘Yer a bastard, yer are, Mr Harkness. I thought yer wanted yer boy out of love, but yer don’t. You’ll destroy all the goodness in the lad, and there’s a lot.’
Mr Harkness? Who be he? Joe thought, as he crawled to the desk, grovelling beneath the kneehole and out the other side. He pulled himself up in the light of the fish tank behind him, and still the fish just swam. Would his da put Mr Dobbo in it? But how could he fit? The water would gush out and the carpet would get wetter than his pee had made it. His head was filled with stupidity as he watched his da. He was kicking Mr Dobbo with his great steel-capped boots. Joe looked down and the light caught the gun on the shelf.
Saul had a gun, an airgun which he took out sometimes looking for rabbits, he did, and he probably had a bigger gun out at the war. Joe reached for the pistol. An air pistol wouldn’t hurt his da much, but this would stop him. He’d heard Mr Dobbo’s words and knew, like Sylvia, he were sorry, and that were good enough. It was what Saul and Granfer said. It was what his ma used to say about his da. ‘Yer da’s sorry, and he be right, I did something to make him bad, but I will learn.’
She were wrong, for he could see even then it was his da that was bad, to the core, and so could Saul and Granfer and the rest of the cut. But he remembered Mr Dobbo’s eyes, when Rover brought back the ball, they was the same as they were now, looking at Joe as he hid behind the desk. They were full of pleading, and it were the pleading of sorrow.
As he picked up the gun there was a banging on the door, ‘Boss, boss, yer needed. Yer copper friend is in the front, been sent to check, ’e says, cos the boy’s been taken, and all the coppers are ’aving to go through ’oops, again and again. Needs a bit of a sweetener, I reckon, but we’ve all played dumb.’
Joe shoved the gun in his waistband at the back, where the boaters carried their windlasses. It were hid beneath his coat, but he were still shivering. As Dougie came in, Joe silently slipped through the kneehole to the front of the desk, and sank to the floor again.
Dougie looked from Mr Dobbo to Joe, to his da, shocked. Leon was threading his belt back through the loops. He kicked at Mr Dobbo. ‘Get these two into the old storeroom. Leave ’em there overnight, or as long as it takes for the little tyke to tell me where his ma be. Let me know when he do, or I don’t want to ’ear a word about it.’
He went to a picture of London Bridge that hung on the wall, pulled it open like a window, and fiddled with a round thing. Joe heard click click click click. His da pulled the door open, and took out cash, pushed the door closed, slammed the picture back and strode from the room. Dougie looked from Dobbo to Joe, then hauled Dobbo to his feet. Dobbo looked at Joe and winked. Joe scrambled to his feet, winking back. Dougie said, ‘What yer doin’ with yer eye, boy?’
‘It hurts. Da banged into it with his belt.’
Dougie slung Dobbo’s arm over his shoulders, and hauled him out of the room, shoving Joe before them. All Joe could feel was the gun. He couldn’t believe that Dougie couldn’t see it, but soon his da would know it were gone. ‘Get a bloody move on,’ Dougie growled. ‘Straight down the corridor, turn left at the end, if yer know yer left from yer right.’
Stung, Joe said, ‘Course I does, I’m from t’cut.’
‘Well,
big bloody deal.’ But his voice wasn’t right for the words. It was kinder, almost embarrassed.
Joe turned left, hearing Dougie’s heavy breathing behind, and the stumbling footsteps of Mr Dobbo. They stopped at a door, and Dougie fiddled with a bunch of keys on a ring on his belt, grumbling, ‘Why the ’ell you had to get yerself into this mess, Dobbo, I don’t know. Now we’ll all ’ave to put up with his bellyaching. Get the boy to tell ’im what he wants to know, for Gawd’s sake, and yer own and the lad’s.’
He opened the door and pushed Joe inside, but it weren’t a hard push. He then helped Dobbo down on to the concrete floor, slamming the door shut behind him. In the darkness Joe heard Dobbo moving, and finally heard him say, ‘Sorry lad, I didn’t know it’d be like this.’
Joe sat, holding his knees. ‘I know yer sorry, just as I is sorry fer me da ’urting yer. ‘E’ll do it to me ma, yer see, so I thanks yer for holding silent. It were my mistake to say it, so we’s square, I reckon.’
Dobbo laughed softly, then fell silent. Joe said, ‘Mr Dobbo, what about Rover. Be ’e dead? I felt him beside me on the back seat, but where be ’e now?’
Dobbo was silent, but after a while he moved. ‘Say again, lad.’ His voice was weaker. Joe repeated himself.
‘Oh, don’t yer fret. Rover is with a mate who was outside the club. ’Spect yer didn’t see ’im in the shadows. I had half a thought this would happen, but I should’ve done a runner then, or had him take you as well, and faced yer da by meself. My mistake is a mite bigger than yours, but I’ll do what I can when he talks to yer again. But yer might have to tell him the truth, yer know. He has ways, he has.’
The silence fell again.
Leon finished with the cops and hurried back into the office, rubbing his hands. The youngster, a constable, had looked pale and his frown deep as he said, ‘If you’ve got him, you ain’t ’urt him, Mr Harkness, or sent him to Scotland with that Manny?’
‘Course not,’ Leon said, pressing another ten quid into his hand. ‘Ain’t got a clue where he be. Come and look around if yer don’t believe me.’
The copper had shaken his head, knowing better than to disbelieve someone like Harkness. He had turned on his heel and left.
Leon straightened the rug that Dobbo had rucked up when he were on the floor. He only used the wall safe when the men were in the room. They knew nothing of t’real one. He called Dougie into the office. ‘Any news?’
‘I been waiting for the copper to go, boss. Vlad’s called from Buckby. No one says anything, but there’s so much coming and going to the cottage, and them girls from Horizon and Marigold is at the old grandpa’s cottage that I reckon something’s up. They went to that Bet’s place as well, their trainer, who has a phone, Vlad says. Vlad thinks there’s so many boaters around and about he reckons yer wife is definitely there with her grandpa.’
Leon roared, ‘Well, what be Vlad doing? Tell him to get in there with his blokes, and see. If she is, grab ’er. If she ain’t find out from the old man where she be. We shouldn’t be hanging back waiting for an invitation.’
Dougie said, standing firm and thrusting out his chest, ‘You thought the boy would tell you, that’s what we’re waiting for. We don’t want to cause a ruckus for nothing.’
‘Well, he bloody didn’t, so it’s time to have a go at the old boy. I never bothered, cos I thought her were dead, but if that’s what Sid and the bony lad who went along said they heard Joe say, we got to follow. If she be there, well and good, we’ll grab ’er, then my boy’ll soon be biddable.’
‘Vlad asked about casualties.’
Leon looked at Dougie as though he was mad. ‘What does I care about such? Get him in there, I be ’aving enough now.’
He stormed past Dougie and rushed down the corridor. He beat on the door, shouting through it, ‘I’ve men in Buckby, so you got anything to say afore we ’it yer granfer’s?’
There was silence. Then the boy yelled, ‘No, and damn yer, she ain’t there, I tole yer, she’s up wi’ the stars.’
For a moment Leon faltered. Were she really dead? Well, let Vlad find out, it were no skin off his nose, one way or the other. It’d give the old boy a fright, which wouldn’t be a bad thing. He kicked the door and returned to the office, but once there he hesitated. He’d best show his face in the club for a while and get set up for the night, or he’d be fretting on his own. He’d feed the fish first, though, and see ’em fight for it. That always gave him some cheer.
Solly closed the books at last, and sat back in his chair, exhausted. He was alone. Rachel was at work in a nearby solicitor’s office, and Jacob in his office in the City of London. He wrote all that he had discovered on a scrap of paper. It wasn’t much, but it was enough.
He telephoned Jacob on his direct line, a line that a few of his customers had, but only a few.
‘Yes,’ Jacob said.
‘It’s me, son. I have found Tony Burrowes. He did work for Manny sometimes, when he were over-loaded, but only for one person; well, two.’ Solly was becoming confused.
Jacob said quietly, ‘Take your time, gather your thoughts, I’m not rushed.’
But he was, Solly knew. He was busy but Solly didn’t rightly know doing what. Something about buying and selling and sorting things for people.
Solly breathed deeply. He said again, ‘Burrowes worked for Manny, ’e did. And the figures he double-checked for Manny were for someone called Norton, in a club in the West End or near called the Blind Weasel. Then Norton was crossed out in the book. Then a while later this Burrowes audited Manny’s figures for the same club, but the name on the book was Lionel Harkness. I reckon this Burrowes took over from Manny as the main man, so if we can get to ’im we’ll know about not just Manny, but who this Lionel Harkness really is, cos I reckon those girls is right, that Leon Arness would change his name to summat similar. So compare the two.’
There was silence at the end of the line, then Jacob said, ‘You’ve done well, Dad. If – no, when – the girls telephone again, tell them––’
Once more, Solly interrupted, because he’d been reading his scrappy note again. ‘’Ang on, son, this is important. Next to some of the names and clubs there’s this P and an amount. Right at the back of the diary is a list. P means police. I reckon this Norton, and then Harkness, was paying off the coppers, or a couple anyway.’
Jacob’s voice had tightened. ‘Reckon you’re right. Tell the girls this news too but make sure they don’t inform any police. It’ll just be a couple of bad apples, but if they get to think they’re rumbled … Have you the Howard House phone number? Let me have it and I’ll tell them as well. I reckon there’s a damned good chance Joe is with Harkness. Where else would he be? I need to find out for certain, though.’
Solly shook his head, ‘But ’ow, son?’
Jacob said, ‘You leave that to me, eh. I’ll have it sorted in a couple of hours. Make sure the girls keep close to Maudie, in case Harkness has already sent out a team. He won’t go himself. He’s building an army.’
Solly said, ‘A what? ’Ow do you know that?’
‘One hears things, Dad.’
Solly put the telephone down, wondering how one heard such things. He was feeling more and more tired. Almost immediately, the telephone rang. It was Verity, saying they’d tried just now, but he was engaged. He explained some of what Jacob had told him, and about the police. ‘Jacob says to make sure Maudie is protected, and he’ll handle this end, and he’s going to telephone Howard House to tell ’em to keep shtum with the coppers, cos who do you trust and who not? Probably just a couple of bad Met apples, but yer never know, he said. Yer got that?’
Verity said, ‘We can’t thank you enough, really. God bless you all.’
Solly smiled, but tiredness had progressed to exhaustion. Even as she was saying that he feared in his heart that Harkness must have done something to Manny. He returned to his chair by the window and watched the lilac, as he needed hope. But for what? In his heart he knew Manny mus
t be gone. For going on, he almost heard Manny say. It was what he always said.
All six girls rushed back to Granfer and they didn’t have to bang on the door, because this time Steerer Mercy opened it. ‘Get yerselves in,’ he ordered.
As Sylvia led them down the corridor she told Granfer and Timmo all that was happening, then they sat with Maudie, Lettie and Pup, while the men demarcated their troops. Verity smiled at them all. ‘Well, looks like Leon’s men have a surprise waiting for them, girls,’ she said.
Lettie handed each of them either a pan or a rolling pin. Polly laughed and laughed, and as Maudie looked on, shocked, she explained how her mum had whacked Leon when he attacked her dad at their house, hitting him again and again with her frying pan. Heedless of her bravery, she was only mollified when her dad replaced the rivets and made it serviceable again.
Granfer returned to the kitchen. ‘Timmo’s on lookout at a bedroom window with his club, but they won’t all get this far, not through the boaters, they won’t, but we’ll split yer all up and spread yer over the rooms for the ones that might. Just get crackin’ if they gets in. ’Tis only after we catch the buggers that we call the police, and the newspaper. We need ’em to witness it, to be sure the beggars gets put away. They might well talk about who set ’em on, too.
Chapter 27
Can Jacob find out all he needs to know?
Sylvia took one of the back bedrooms and peered out from the edge of the curtain. The window was ajar so that any signals received by Timmo from the lookouts could be transferred to the boaters waiting in the shed. Timmo walked round the rooms from time to time, checking on everyone, his red-spotted kerchief at his neck. Finally, as he brought in a mug of tea for her, brewed by Lettie, he stood for a moment beside her.
Sylvia had until then been transferring her weight from foot to foot, unable to be still, but with Timmo so near, she calmed. In doing so she remembered that the sisters at the orphanage were always still, seeming to glide when they walked in an atmosphere of such containment and quiet that all in their path grew so too. Would she ever achieve that devotion, that state of being, when all she wanted to be was here, out in the world, with all these people, and Steve?
