by Linda Coles
“You get yourselves warmed up and I’ll get the juice ready,” she said, and pottered off to the kitchen out back. She flicked the button on the kettle, poured cordial into three mugs and searched the biscuit barrel for six chocolate biscuits.
Then she made a phone call.
Chapter Eighteen
“It’s got to be time for a break, hasn’t it? I’m starved,” moaned Ruth. “My stomach thinks my throat has been cut it’s so long since it was last fed.”
Amanda smiled across at Ruth. “You can when we’ve finished this wall. I’m almost out of paint in the tray anyway. Hold on until then?”
Ruth rolled her bottom lip over her top like a child, knowing it worked most times on Amanda. She’d get what she wanted almost immediately. Today though, Amanda wanted to get the walls finished at the very least. She had pale blue paint in her blonde fringe, which was sticking out from under her cap, and paint covered the top of that too.
“That won’t work on me today, sweetheart. I’m on a mission to get this finished. I’m over it already – aren’t you?”
“I’ll be fine when I’ve been fed and watered – ready to go with gusto, I’m sure. I just need sustenance to carry on.” Ruth wiped the back of her hand across her forehead to mimic fainting.
“You sound like a frail old woman, Mrs. McGregor-Lacey. If you stopped moaning and finished the wall, you’d get your sustenance quicker.”
Ruth smiled broadly. “It sounds great, doesn’t it? ‘Mrs. McGregor-Lacey.’” She enunciated each word, feeling each of them on her tongue, and beamed at Amanda. “What a fab day that was, wasn’t it?”
Amanda watched Ruth savour the memory, paintbrush in hand, nowhere near the wall she was supposed to be doing the edges of. Ruth was someplace else.
“Okay, you win. Down tools,” Amanda said reluctantly, though without any malice. “I’ll put the kettle on. Or do you want coffee?”
Smiling, knowing she’d won, Ruth placed a sticky brush on the upturned paint tin lid and went to Amanda, arms open.
“Coffee, please, and a kiss. Then I’ll have some of that banana cake you bought if there’s any left.”
The two women embraced, savouring for a moment the closeness of being a newly married couple.
“Feels good, doesn’t it?” Ruth said softly.
“It certainly does.” Amanda smiled back at her. “Okay, I’ll get the coffee while you clean your hands. How on earth do you manage to get so much paint off the bristles and onto places you’re not directing them? Is the wall not a big enough canvas for you?” She looked Ruth up and down. “I bet you were terrible at potato-stamp painting in preschool,” she added as she headed downstairs.
Ruth smiled to herself and went to gaze out of the front bedroom window. The pale sky blue of the nearly finished walls almost matched the winter sky outside. The sun had only managed to climb a little way up and was hanging low over the rooftops. Wet washing blew on clotheslines in back gardens like bunting at a fete. An elderly couple sauntered up the road together and unclipped a front gate; Ruth heard it clank and rattle as it closed again. Probably visiting their grandchildren, thought Ruth. Would she and Amanda ever have children? she wondered, not for the first time.
Ruth was a career woman, running her own successful digital business, and her biological clock was rapidly approaching its use-by date. Amanda had already passed that point, though a pregnancy at her age wasn’t impossible, just riskier – if they decided to go that way, that was. If not, there were plenty of other ways to have a family.
Ruth could hear the coffee machine chugging in the kitchen as she headed out the back door to the outside tap. Bits of blue sluiced onto the concrete as she rinsed her hands, though her fingernails looked like they’d need a scrubbing brush. She sensed Amanda nearby.
“Perhaps rubber gloves for you, eh? That’s going to take some removing later,” she said, watching over Ruth’s bent body.
“Good job I’ve not got a hot date tonight, then,” Ruth quipped. “Which reminds me, I’m thinking Wong’s for takeaway later, then we can order and pick it up when it suits rather than go out to eat. Cooking is too much bother when the place is in uproar with decorating. Does that work for you?”
“I’m never one to turn down sweet-and-sour pork balls; you know that,” Amanda said.
“And since we need to keep on painting, why don’t we go have brunch tomorrow before we get started?” Ruth said. She cocked her head back and painted in the imaginary sky with her hands. “Crispy bacon, lightly scrambled eggs, thick toast and a couple of mugs of coffee. Mmm, bliss – my idea of heaven. What do you say?”
Looking bemused again, Amanda conceded. “Talking of bacon, Jack and I called in at a layby food van for a bacon sandwich and a cuppa a couple of days ago. And the oddest thing happened.”
“Oh? What was that?” Ruth asked as she turned the tap off and dried her hands on her shirt-tail.
“It was tipping down, but the van was as busy as ever, and the men in front of us went back to their BMW with their order, sat for a moment or two as we watched, then threw their bacon sandwiches and drinks straight out of the window and drove off. They weren’t speeding off in a mad hurry, but it was odd. Who throws bacon sandwiches away? And they were damn good too, if ours were anything to go by.”
The two women went back indoors and sat down to coffee and banana cake.
“Well, not me, that’s for sure,” Ruth said, licking frosting from her fingers. “Did you do them for littering?” She took another big bite of cake. Crumbs dropped down the front of her paint-splattered shirt.
“No, I had better things to do with my time. Anyway, I was busy with my own sandwich. We both thought it was strange, though.”
With a mouth full of the remaining cake, Ruth stood and grabbed her coffee, scattering crumbs on the floor.
“It is. But now, Sherlock, it’s time to get the next and final wall done, so bring your coffee and let’s get to it.”
“Yes, master – or should I say ‘Yes, Doctor Watson’?” Amanda kidded, and followed Ruth back upstairs for the final leg of decorating their bedroom. But despite their joking, the question still nagged at her. Why would someone, two people actually, throw perfectly good bacon sandwiches out the window – ever?
Chapter Nineteen
Jack was hard at work when Amanda put her face around his computer screen.
“Morning, sunshine,” she greeted him brightly. Jack noticed a twinkle in her blue eyes.
“Morning, Lacey, or should I say McGregor-Lacey now?”
“Either is fine, but Lacey will do. You’ve called me that for so many years now. What are you up to?”
Jack peered closely at a list on his screen.
“I had a bit of a thought – a hunch, really.” His forefinger scrolled down the screen like a pointer as he read, the words coming slowly as he searched.
“Oh? What about?”
“About the chaps who threw away their sandwiches at that food van the other day.” He continued to scroll.
“I’ve not got that out of my mind either, funnily enough. Seems silly, eh?”
Jack looked away from his screen. He wore bright-pink reading glasses perched on the end of his nose.
Amanda smiled. “But not as silly as you wearing my spare reading glasses. Where are yours?”
“First, I’d have thought this early on in your newly wedded bliss you’d be thinking about other things at weekends than sandwiches flying from windows. Second, someone has swiped mine from my drawer and I can’t see a damn thing close up without a pair.”
Amanda ignored him. “So, back to my previous question: what are you up to?”
Jack sat back in his chair and slipped the glasses up on top of his head, Kardashian style. “Remember those ice cream vans that were selling cocaine to students outside the library on campus? I got to wondering if that food van was selling something a bit more lucrative than tea and sandwiches. Easy enough to hide a baggy inside a baggy, eh?”
>
“Well, it’s not a new thing, is it? The drug wars back in the eighties in Glasgow were about ice cream vans and drug turf disputes, so I guess it’s plausible. Could be anything, though, not just cocaine.”
“My point exactly. Anything small enough to slip inside a sandwich bag along with a sandwich as disguise. And something not too obvious to insert, from the vendor’s point of view, though they’d have to be extremely careful. Take us, for instance: two coppers. They wouldn’t have known us from Jack.”
Amanda smiled and rolled her eyes at his unintended pun.
“Yeah, yeah, very funny,” he mock-growled at her. “You’ll be reminding me of the Schitt family next.” He started to recite what he could remember, using his fingers to get all of the names right. “Jack Schitt was married to Noe Schitt. They had several kids: Holie Schitt, Giva Schitt, Fulla Schitt, Bull Schitt, and the twins Deep Schitt and Dip Schitt…”
Amanda waved her arms in the air in defeat.
“Okay, stop!” she called before he went on any further. “And Noe went on to re-marry Ted Sherlock after a divorce and kept her double-barrelled surname, making her Noe Schitt-Sherlock. Yes, I and everyone else in here have heard that story, Jack.”
“I know, but it cracks me up every time I hear it, so humour me sometimes, eh?”
“Funny, that’s the second time I’ve heard Sherlock in the last forty-eight hours. Must be something in the water.”
“Let’s hope it’s not Schitt.” He grinned at her.
“Riiiiiiight.” Amanda cleared her throat, refocusing. “So, again, what are you searching for?”
“I’m looking at recent and old cases, because if they had turf wars in Glasgow back then, they may well have turf wars down here too. These vans are mobile, remember? So, they might not be locals.”
“Good thinking. So, what’s the plan, then?”
“I don’t really have one yet. We don’t know if there’s even been a crime committed.”
Amanda looked at her watch. It was still early but what the hell. “Then do you fancy a drive out? I suggest we grab an early coffee from that layby van again and see what we can see for an hour. If nothing happens, we’ll keep an eye out from a distance, get a couple of the others to pop in for sandwiches on occasion, that type of thing. It’s only a hunch there’s even anything going on at this point.”
Jack stood and closed down his computer. They grabbed their coats, scarves, and bags, and headed out to the car park.
“I’ll drive,” Jack said, getting his keys out. He really hated being the passenger and much preferred to be in control. Driving also gave him the right to choose the music if they played any. And since he’d discovered music streaming without the need for CDs, the music world was his oyster. In reality, that meant he listened to even more of the old stuff, not the modern noise whose words he couldn’t hear.
The car blipped open. He climbed into the driver’s seat and Amanda got in beside him. They set out into a bright but cold winter’s day. The sun’s glare hit him straight in the eyes and he pulled his visor down.
“Shit, that’s bright,” he moaned, and pulled what he thought were his sunglasses down off his head. Amanda threw her head back and laughed as her pink reading glasses settled back on his nose.
“Very bloody funny. Very funny indeed. You were waiting for that, weren’t you?” Jack growled and yanked the glasses off his face.
“Of course I was! I just wondered when you’d finally notice,” she said, and carried on giggling until Jack finally saw the funny side of it too.
“I’ll get you back for this, Amanda. You mark my words.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Amanda roared, and the two of them howled together as they set off towards the layby.
Chapter Twenty
By the time they had pulled up at the food van, there was quite a queue, made more bearable by the tepid winter sunshine. The pale yellow ball in the sky gave off a feeble heat, like half a bar on an old electric heater at a grandmother’s shins. No need for sunscreen today; there’d be more danger in a hot cup of tea. Jack approached the van and joined the back of the queue. Amanda stayed in the passenger seat surveying those parked up in the layby. Cars of all types were parked up – a few small vans, a motorcycle; nothing out of the ordinary. Trucks were not an option; the parking was too limited.
Amanda watched Jack watching the queue. A tall blonde woman, her head covered in 80s-style frizz to her shoulders, stood directly in front of him, making it difficult for him to see round. Amanda doubted she was the motorcycle rider; she’d never get her comb through her hair ever again. And she wasn’t wearing leathers either, although the person in front of her was. This one was shorter in stature, with short dark hair and the typical V-shaped body of someone who spent time developing their upper chest; probably a male, Amanda thought. Then it was suit in front of suit in front of suit, all varying heights and widths, all playing with their phones. A total of seven people patiently waited their turn, and considering it wasn’t really breakfast time or morning coffee time but somewhere in between, that struck Amanda as quite a lot. Maybe the food van was that good and these people were regulars. Yes, her bacon sandwich had been nice, but queue-worthy?
A suit up front took his bag and Styrofoam cup back to his car and got in. Amanda adjusted herself to see what he was doing, but he was too far away. But he didn’t just drive off; he sat long enough to perhaps eat what was in the bag. Another suit made his way back to his Mercedes, slipped inside, and then immediately hit the road and sped off, at unnecessary speed Amanda thought. That left two more suits, the biker and Blondie as well as Jack. Another suit joined in behind Jack, a woman this time, in a dark trouser suit. She began texting while she waited. The two remaining suits were served quickly. Both clutched white bags and soon left the layby.
Finally, Jack was served and trotted back to the car with their order. He climbed into the car, and he and Amanda watched the layby activity as they slowly chewed on fresh bacon sandwiches and sipped their tea, in no particular rush.
“There was nothing to see waiting in the queue, and I didn’t hear anything untoward either. The most I got was ‘red sauce or brown.’ And I couldn’t see big notes being handed over either, so if they are selling something illegally, they’re not taking payment at transaction time, and dealers don’t do that. It’s not good business sense – drugs on the never-never.” He took another bite and red sauce dropped down his tie.
“Oh, sod it!” he exclaimed, and Amanda passed her napkin across, not wanting to wipe the sauce herself and smear it. Naturally, he managed to smear it himself and Amanda chuckled to herself, careful not to let him hear.
“Well, maybe payment is cashless now,” she said. “Everything else we buy is going that way. Maybe the crims are going the same way – technology. You’ve heard of monthly subscription services for things like Netflix and what have you? Maybe these vans are doing the same thing, or maybe they have an app?”
“Eh?”
“Well, think about it. Why not? Open an account, pay some money in, then transfer it as or before you purchase.” Jack looked sceptical and Amanda carried on, “I’m not saying that’s what they’re doing. I don’t even know if that’s possible – and again, we don’t actually know if anything is going on. The queue could be because they sell great sandwiches and tea, which is no crime.
“I can think of plenty of places that I’ve bought bacon sandwiches from that should have been a crime they were so bad. I mean, who in their right mind cooks bacon so it’s still pink? It’s got to be well cooked, crispy even. Just don’t give me pale pink, not ever.”
Amanda nodded in agreement as she scrunched her bag up and wiped her mouth on a tissue from her bag. She gathered their rubbish and opened her door to get out. As she threw the waste paper into the bin, she noticed a couple of what looked like miniature empty sachets of salt sticking out from under a cup.
She pondered for a moment. “Now that’s odd,” she mumbled quietly to
herself. “Who puts salt on bacon sandwiches?” She checked her surroundings, then, using her discarded tissue, she carefully pulled them out by their corners. She folded the tissue over them and slipped them into her pocket. Then, she gently pushed other debris so one side and saw a couple more. In fact, as she focused, she could see the edges of yet more little packets, identical to the ones in her pocket. She took another tissue from her bag, had another quick look round to see that no one was watching, plucked the rest of the packets out, then headed back to where Jack was waiting.
“You got something?” he enquired when she was safely in. He’d seen her lean into the bin and figured she wasn’t still hungry.
“Let’s see, shall we?”
Chapter Twenty-One
Luke and Clinton had glumly gone their separate ways for the weekend. It had been a depleting day for them both. Nobody said getting a business off the ground was going to be easy, and Luke hadn’t expected it to be a walk in the park either – more a walk through the Yorkshire Dales, he’d figured – but he had expected it to be less emotionally challenging. The constant rejection was tough to handle, and he felt the need to flake out a while and stop pretending that everything was going to be all right.
His granddad would have warned him that each finance rejection was fate telling him to leave well enough alone, that the banks had his best interests at heart when they said no, even if it didn’t seem that way at the time.
‘They have rules in place for your own protection,” he’d have said. “Don’t force it.” Luke smiled as he imagined his grandfather giving him a stern talking-to, an arthritic forefinger pointing directly at Luke’s chest, his cloudy eyes crinkled with distress. He’d loved his wise old granddad. The old man had been gone a few years now and there was no one left in Luke’s life to fill his place.
