by Claire Peate
“Well I mean are you sorry for the shouty bit early on, or the bit where you kissed me.”
“Oh. Well. Both. Both, I think. I’m really sorry for shouting at you. I didn’t mean to shout at you at all. Not in any way. But there you go – I did and I’m sorry. And as for later on, well, I’m sorry for that too. That was wrong. I mean, I wasn’t invited…”
“All right there, me darlin’s?” Babs’ voice carried over the garden wall along with the smoke from the first fag of the day. “Nice mornin’ for it, Edda, love! Another one of them posh Nationwide Trust gardens is it? Got more o’ that box hedgin’ comin’ ’ave yer?”
“Morning, Babs,” Robert and I said simultaneously said and then looked at each other and laughed. And the tension was broken.
“Come on inside,” I whispered, grabbing him by the arm. “I have some big news.”
“Edda, is your big news that you went out to buy the Sunday papers all by yourself?” Robert perched on his side of the breakfast bar and looked at me askance. I liked his askance look: it was sort of sexy, but also sort of had-a-fight-with-the-pillow. I gripped the edge of the kitchen counter. I would not lean over and kiss him. He really would take a cricket bat to me if I tried to do that. And I would have to go through the whole interview process again for a new lodger and Finley would no doubt have to go into feline therapy now that the great love of his life was moving out…
“It’s real news.” I cleared my head and pulled up my stool beside his. “Just listen to this.”
Ten minutes later Robert closed his mouth.
“Oh,” he said.
I leant in to him. “So is that news, or is that news?”
“Yes. That’s news.” He toyed with the empty coffee mug I’d put out for him two hours earlier. “Do you know it had crossed my mind that it was a bit odd that there were so many of those clipped bushes on sticks all over the place. But I thought that some mad nurseryman had come to Brockley with a job lot going cheap. But, as you say, the signs are all painted in the same sorts of paint and the shops have this sameyness thing about them haven’t they?”
“Eustace said as much to me, when I spoke to him last night. I don’t think he’d really thought about the words he was using: that the bistro was exactly how I wanted it to be. So that suggests he did have a say in the set-up.”
“But you’re not basing your assumptions purely on that, are you?” Suddenly Robert looked doubtful.
“No! There’s what Neil’s told me, too.”
“Neil who could barely stand upright, according to you...”
“Yes, but that’s beside the point.”
“Well, if he could barely stand, isn’t there the smallest possibility that he might have been either not telling the truth or putting something across in not quite the most coherent way? Oh come on, Eds!” He saw the deflated look on my face. “You’re probably right, you know. I’m just playing devil’s advocate.”
“Maybe you’re right, though,” I said sullenly. “Maybe I am making it all up.”
“Or maybe not. Come on, grab your coat and let’s go exploring Brockley. You never know we might find something out if we go looking for it.”
“Oh!” I almost trembled with excitement. “That is so Julian!”
“Meaning?”
“Julian, from the Famous Five! Taking charge! Going on an adventure!”
“Fine, fine.” Robert aka Julian laced his trainers and held open the front door.
“Can Finley be Timmy the dog?” I said.
“Yes. And you’re Dick.”
“Thanks for that.” I grabbed my Farrow and Ball colour chart booklet and dashed out after him. The adventure was afoot!
“Your rats have gone,” Robert whispered to me as we passed the wall that ran next to Fox Estates.
“Well that’s one element of his control,” I whispered back, head down as we passed the vast polished windows of the estate agency. “Eustace’s partner is the Head of Planning at the Council and Guy told me that he arranges for Council graffiti patrols to clear up the art work, if not on the day then the day after it was sprayed up. Apparently, Eustace employs what he calls his street walker to walk every street in the neighbourhood every day to monitor graffiti.”
“OK, that’s weird thing number one: the man employs surveillance across the neighbourhood.”
“And don’t forget that he’s trying to ‘get to’ Da Notorious Baron, to send him to art school. He wants control over the graffiti.”
“Weird thing number two.” He jotted it down on a pad.
We were outside the Petit Marché with its bike and onions, chalkboard and stripy awning.
“Three.” We said in unison and, waving to Mr Iqbal we continued on our quest.
“V-2.” I said. “Owned and managed by Eustace Fox. And,” I whipped out my colour chart, “painted in Citron, with woodwork in Mouse’s Back.”
Robert looked from chart to café and back to the chart again. “It’s Dead Salmon.”
“Bay trees?”
“Two. Check.”
“Chalk board?”
“Chalked A-board. Check.”
Past the station garden (Weird Thing Number Four) we were on the High Road.
“So the florist’s...” Robert paused outside it. “Gloria’s Flowers.”
“Farrow and Ball … Downpipe and Borrowed Light.”
“Bay trees?”
“Two. Check.”
“Chalk board?”
“Check.”
“And what was it before?”
I thought hard. “A tatty convenience store. Do you think we should go inside and ask them something as part of our investigation?”
Robert considered it. “Like ‘did you illegally take over the tatty convenience store and are you owned by Eustace Fox?’ ”
I shot him a look and we continued down the road, noting down the shops, what they used to be and what shade of Farrow and Ball they were now painted in. And each had bay trees at the front: some with ribbons some without. Some with fairy lights, some without.
“There appear to be nine shops in the Eustace Fox Monopoly set.” Robert went down the list. “Convenience store to florist, kebab shop to book shop, off-licence to antique shop, video shop to clothes boutique, pub to bistro, newsagent to café, appliance repair shop to deli, chip shop to stationer, and of course Mini Mart to Petit Marché.”
“So, what do we do now?” I asked. “We’ve listed out what they are and were. They’re all painted in Farrow and Ball and they all have bay trees. What next? That’s no proof of anything is it? Maybe all newly opened shops look like that these days: if we went into Putney High Street we’d see just the same thing and Eustace can’t own Putney High Street can he?”
“We-ell.” Robert put down his pad and surveyed the street. “What about the old businesses that are still here? We could go and ask the owners if they know what’s going on with the shops around them? They must have some idea. And we can be pretty sure that the people inside aren’t connected to Eustace Fox in any way, so we won’t get into trouble asking about him.”
“Will you do the talking?” I said, trying to look as doe-eyed as I could.
“No.”
“Oh, come on! I’m?”
“It’s your research, Edda, you do the talking. I’ll do the running if there’s trouble.”
“OK, so who shall we go and see. Oh, I know, let’s go see Reg at the launderette. I like Reg. He used to give me garibaldi biscuits when I used the launderette. That was before Beth made me get my own washing machine and stop being common.”
“I don’t reckon I’ll be still in business in six months or so.” Amid the folded piles of laundered clothes, Reg lit a cigarette and contemplated us. “Everyone’s got a washing machine these days, haven’t they? Time was a machine was a luxury, not now though. All my customers these days are students and them on the dole.”
“You could go into dry cleaning,” Robert suggested.
Reg snorted.
“If it ain’t wet it ain’t cleaned. I ain’t going into that chemical business: waste of bloody money. Nah – I’ve had letters anyway.”
“Letters?” I leant forward.
“From the Council. Telling me I’ve had complaints about the business. Noise pollution. Water pollution. I ask you – forty years I’ve been here and it’s never bothered anyone, and now – apparently – I’m causing untold misery to everyone within five miles of my shop.”
“So what do the letters say? What do they want you to do?”
“Close down!” He laughed and then added, “It’s not spelled out, of course. They’re just threatening me with the environmental people. And they talk about increasing the Council Tax to take into account this and that. It’ll be the end of me.”
“Do you know who actually complained about your business?” Robert asked.
“The letters didn’t say,” Reg looked thoughtful. “They just said people have complained: people what don’t want to be identified. Anyway, I’m now waiting to hear what the Council have to say about my ‘working practices’, as they call them, and then I’ll know where I stand.”
Robert and I exchanged knowing looks.
“Tell you what, though,” Reg shuffled up and turned off a machine that had finished its cycle. “It’s not all bad. I’ve had an offer on the place. Not a good one, not by any stretch, but given all the complaints I’ve had and this action from the Council, and the fact that no one’s using laundrettes any more – well, I’ve got a mind to take it up. Right timely it was, coming when it did. The wife definitely has it in mind for me to take it up.”
“Who is the offer from?” Robert asked lightly.
“Wouldn’t say. But it was made to me by that fancy estate agent round the corner.”
“FOX ESTATES!?” I said in a voice that made Reg leap out of his cardigan.
“Steady, love! That’s the one; the fancy gaff run by that bloke with the loud trousers and the yawping voice. Anyhow, the bloke said they would handle the sale for me ‘on behalf of an anonymous purchaser’ or something like that. Time was a buyer would come and slap an inch of notes down on the table and you’d shake hands and the deal was done. Things change though don’t they: business is all secretive now.”
“Not always.” I tapped my pad. “Reg, when did the appliance shop next to you close down?”
“Now that’s an odd thing, right there,” Reg sat forward. “Old Tony and I went way back, thirty years we’ve been neighbours on the High Road. And then one morning Tony, and his shop, was gone without so much as a goodbye and by midday there were workmen all over the place turning it into a delicatessen. I ask you – the place is full of things I can’t afford and even if I could afford them I wouldn’t know what to do with them. The wife went in the other day and felt very out of place. Not our sort are they?”
“So why do you think your neighbour left? Was business bad for him?”
Reg considered the question. “I don’t think so. He always had his customers did Tony. Regulars. Tradesmen. So it was odd that he went so sudden, but then look at the street now – we’re the ones that are out of place, what with all these funny new places opening up. I tell you what, though, if you’re asking…” he leant forward, as did we.
“What?” Robert and I said.
“Old Dino, in the kebab shop over the road, well the book shop as was a kebab shop, he didn’t want to go. Got pushed out he did.”
“No way!” I gripped my pencil in excitement.
“I’m telling you! There were letters from the Council telling him he’d had all these complaints about health and safety.”
“Like you had with the noise pollution.”
“Just like me. And letters from goodness knows what other department telling him about 200 per cent rises in his rates on the place. And then this man comes from the Council and advises him that his business is going to be closed down, without so much as an inspection, and then this other bloke comes out of the blue and offers him a sum of money for the place and out he went. He loved that shop did Dino. And he’d only just had it retiled inside, all posh it was But now he’s looking at starting all over again, opening up somewhere in Forest Hill, but it ain’t the same, not when you’re Brockley born and bred.”
“The man who came to tell him the place was closing, what did he look like, do you remember?”
“I didn’t see him.” Reg shrugged. “Drove up in a fancy red car, though.”
“A red sports car? Convertible?”
“That’s the one! You know the bloke?”
“Peter Shaw,” I said.
We had got what we needed.
“So what was all that about?” Robert and I were walking back to the house. “Who is Peter Shaw?”
“Eustace’s partner,” I leant over and whispered to him, “Works at the Council and heads up the Planning Department.”
“OK, so there’s a link to the big man,” Robert said, “but surely he’s only doing his job, isn’t he?”
“Going round to businesses and telling them they’re going to be shut down on health and safety grounds without any inspections whatsoever? That’s not his job: Peter Shaw is office-based and never goes out into the streets. He has teams to do that for him. No – he wasn’t doing his Council duties, he was doing his boyfriend duties.”
“Boyfriend duties! Now there is a marvellous concept, eh?” came a voice behind us.
“Eustace!” My heart stopped beating and Robert and I turned to see the man himself, poised outside the door to the estate agency that we’d just walked past, a bottle of Brasso and a duster in his hands. “Edda, Edda, Edda! And how are you, my dear? I’m sorry I hardly had the time to speak to you at the bistro opening last night, it was quite hectic wasn’t it? But such a good evening don’t you think? But, you know, Guy is very low.”
“He is?”
“He is. Slunk off soon after you left. Have you two had a bit of a run-in, eh? Ah, young love is so full of passion and drama isn’t it? I think he may call you today. And who is your friend here?” He turned to Robert who was looking at me in an odd way.
“Oh. Sorry. Yes. This is Robert. Robert – Eustace Fox.”
The two men shook hands and Eustace made small talk while I tried to look at him and see him for the criminal he was: the man who was forcing out established local businesses, gardening the mess, cleaning up the graffiti. A man, in fact, who was trying to run Brockley as his own private empire. But he looked too round and jolly to be the runner of an evil empire. And his trousers – orange and green tweed today – did nothing to advance any suggestion of evilness. Really he should be walking with a stick, have only one eye, a heavy foreign accent and sport an evil black moustache.
He should be a Bond villain, in fact.
“Claude will no doubt do very well with the bistro,” he was saying to us. “And it was a very good night, last night. But I’d imagine some of us will have sore heads this morning, eh? Your friend Neil, for example.”
“Yes. Yes, I expect so.” I said, itching to get away and at the very least to hide the notepad scribbled with all our findings from the investigations. Investigations into him and his businesses…
“Yes, Neil seemed pretty blotto for most of the time. Was he even talking sense?”
I could see that Eustace was looking at me, hungry for information: he was steering the conversation in a direction that I did not want it to go because I didn’t want to get Neil or myself into trouble.
“No. Not much.” I bit my lip.
Eustace nodded. “Neil seemed quite animated while he was talking to you.”
“That was just the drink, I’m sure.” I glanced around, desperately trying to think of a way to get out of this situation.
“Well, yes, but he clearly had some points to make. What was he getting so het up about?”
He’d come out and said it. I’d have to be careful.
“This and that…” I struggled.
And then I felt an arm ar
ound my waist. “I’m so sorry,” Robert said in a cool and measured, teacherly voice, “but Edda and I really have to get back, don’t we, darling? Nice to meet you Mr Fox.”
“Likewise…” Eustace frowned.
Still with a hand around my waist Robert propelled me down the street.
“Keep walking, Edda,” Robert was saying, “he’ll probably be watching us. Don’t let him see your nerves.”
“How can you tell I’m nervous?”
“You’re shaking.”
“And I feel sick,” I admitted.
“Well, for God’s sake don’t hurl on his beloved Brockley pavements. Then he really will flip out.”
Despite how I felt I laughed and he squeezed me even closer.
I held my head up and tried my best to walk normally. And focus on Robert holding me tightly. He hadn’t let go yet. Which was … promising. And not completely necessary, now that we were out of the view of Fox Estates.
We were home. Home to the paint-peeling gate, the knot garden and my beloved cat, who I could see bobbing up the path to greet us. I bent down to pick him up but he sidestepped me and threw himself at Robert.
“Bloody cat.”
“She’s not picking up.” There was a note of desperation as I put the phone down. For the last quarter of an hour I’d been trying Beth’s new Surrey home number and then her mobile. There was no answer on each. “Maybe she’s in Burpham…”
“Well she’s missing out,” he said. We faced the back garden devastation in silence, sipping our coffees.
“Bethan always knows what to do,” I said, “I wish she’d pick up. Beth always comes up with the best plans.”
“Like the skip?” Robert looked at me.
“No. No that was my idea.”
“There you go then,” he said, “she doesn’t come up with all the best plans. And what about getting me in as a lodger?”
“OK. That was Amanda.”
“See?”
“Yes, but the skip was my idea and look where it led! I ended up fraternising with a South London criminal empire and knee deep in illegal activities.”
