by Jeff Gulvin
‘How’s it going?’
‘Not bad, Selly.’ The Mixer glanced to his left and right and then briefly at the windows of the flats that sat above the array of shops on the circle. He passed a roll of Western Union slips bound in a rubber band through the open window. Jimmy took them from him and leafed through them. ‘Not one of ours,’ he said, casting his eye over the first one. ‘Nor this one or that one. This is.’ He stared at the address. The address was wrong but he recognised the right post code. They often did that, false names, false address but the right post code. Difficult to think on your feet and come up with a suitable false one. They thought they’d get away with it. But they didn’t. The slip was for three thousand pounds, the addressee in Kingston, Jamaica. There were four others for just under five thousand pounds a piece.
He passed the ones he did not want back to The Mixer and slipped the others up the sleeve of his sweatshirt. ‘Top man, Mixer. I’ll bring them back on Monday.’
‘You won’t photocopy them will you?’ The Mixer always asked the same question.
Jimmy grinned at him. ‘Course I won’t.’ He tapped the Indian man on the wrist. ‘I’ll bring them back and square up.’
Back on the North Circular he transferred the slips from his sleeve to the glove compartment of the Astra. He would look at them later and contact the Jamaican DLO on Monday. He yawned as the lights turned red in front of him at the Hanger Lane Junction. A car pulled up to his right and slipped into the space ahead of him. Black BMW with five-spoke alloy wheels. A black man was tapping to Soul music on the steering wheel. Jimmy stared at the back of his head, shaved high up the neck with mini dreadlocks dangling from the growth on top. Pretty Boy. He’d know that hairstyle anywhere. The BMW was a G Reg M3. Jimmy glanced at the battered interior of his own police Astra. The car on the inside lane moved forward as the lights switched from red to green and Jimmy dived for the gap. The BMW was still stationary and Jimmy came alongside. Pretty Boy was staring ahead of him, his long slim fingers rapping out a beat on the wheel.
Jimmy eyeballed him from the left. ‘Come on you mother look at me.’ Then the line of cars lurched forward and the BMW was ahead.
Jimmy was stuck in the inside lane when he wanted the outside one and the A40 for home. But Pretty Boy was going straight on, then suddenly Pretty Boy stuck his head over his shoulder and pulled directly across the traffic, his wheels spinning in the rain, and cut east onto Western Avenue. Jimmy looked once at the line of cars heading out west towards home and then he hauled the wheel over and drove after Pretty Boy.
They headed down Western Avenue, the BMW just cruising and Jimmy able to watch from three cars back. He unclipped the phone from his belt and called home.
The BMW left the dual carriageway at Horn Lane and then headed down into Acton. This was way off the patch, Jimmy had no addresses for this part of London.
‘So where you going you bastard?’ he said aloud. Acton on a Friday night. Friday night was mixing it up with the Irish in Biddy Mulligans and then the National on Kilburn High Road. But it was early yet. Who did he know in Acton?
Pretty Boy took a right at Acton main line station and headed west once more, running parallel to the railway lines. He passed the Haberdashers school and took a right turn across the railway lines. Jimmy followed him, no cars between them, but it was dark and all Pretty Boy would see was the yellow of headlights in his mirrors. The BMW followed Noel Road round and then pulled off into a road on the right. Jimmy noted the street name. Ahead of him brake lights shone red in his eyes and the BMW pulled over. Jimmy rolled slowly past and noticed something pasted on the inside of the rear near-side window. Pretty Boy was out, pulling on his jacket and shaking his locks in the rain. Jimmy pulled into a space and adjusted the door mirror. He could see Pretty Boy approach a house on the right and ring the bell. He could not see who opened it, but Pretty Boy disappeared inside.
Jimmy stepped into the rain and walked back along the pavement, nothing but his sweatshirt to protect him. Within a few seconds he was soaked. He noted the address though and lights shone from a curtained window on the ground floor. He paused and looked at the BMW, then he made his way into the road and stared at the poster affixed inside the rear window. It was a For Sale notice. Pretty Boy had his mobile phone number advertised for all the world to see.
Jimmy shook his head, memorised the number and walked back to his car, where he wrote it down. He took his phone from his belt once more and rang his wife. He told her he would be home in half an hour.
Vanner woke to the sound of Anne in the kitchen downstairs. Beside him, Ellie was still sleeping. He propped himself up on his elbow and gently eased gold-blonde hair from her cheek. Kissing her lightly, he slipped out of bed and reached for his clothes.
Sunlight filtered through the kitchen window, Vanner was tucking his shirt into his jeans when Anne looked round. She was holding a bread knife, thick slices from a fresh white bloomer on the bread board before her.
‘Morning.’ She smiled at him. ‘Sleep well, Aden?’
Vanner placed his palm against the tea pot and took a mug from the cupboard. ‘Can never get used to the quiet.’
‘It’s good for you,’ Anne said. ‘Restful. You should come up here more often.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I should.’
He went out into the garden where the remnants of winter thickened the atmosphere. Again he could smell the sea and he closed his eyes for a moment and took great lungfuls of air. Childhood. This was a place of childhood. Norfolk, the sea and his father’s cottage.
Anne came out behind him and handed him a piece of buttered toast and his tea. He thanked her and sat down on the dew-damp seat of the bench. Anne perched on the arm. Vanner looked about him, the neatly trimmed lawn and well manicured flower beds.
‘You keep it so nice, Anne. Such a big garden too.’
‘He’s got one of those sit-on type mowers now, your father. I made him buy it. No good for his back all that bending.’
Vanner nodded. ‘He always loved his garden.’
‘Be the death of him if he doesn’t let up. Too much physical exertion.’
‘Doctor say that?’ Vanner looked up at her. ‘He was always very physical.’
‘It’s why he’s so thin.’ She grinned down at him. ‘You’re not much better yourself.’
Vanner sipped tea. ‘What will you do if he dies, Anne?’
She looked into space then. ‘I’ll survive, Aden. I knew I’d outlive him when I married him.’ She looked down at him again. ‘More to the point—what will you do?’
Vanner stopped chewing and swallowed, the crust of toast harsh suddenly as if it was stale in his throat.
‘Talk to him, Aden. Say all the things he wants you to say.’ She rested the flat of her hand on his shoulder. ‘Don’t let him go without talking.’
Vanner sat forward and set his tea down on the lawn. A robin landed on the top of his father’s garden fork where it was buried to the prong head in the damp earth of the flower bed. He watched it preening its feathers, head darting in tight jerky movements. It flew off and he was left staring at the empty fork.
‘It was only a mild heart attack,’ he said.
Behind him he heard her sigh and he looked up.
‘He’s seventy-three, Aden. There are things he wants to say.’
‘He talks to you about it?’
‘Of course he does.’ She made a face then. ‘He never used to. But he’s older now. His time is precious and he spends a lot of it thinking.’
Vanner looked back at the fork. He took a cigarette from his pocket and cupped his hand around his lighter.
‘He misses you.’
‘He doesn’t judge me does he.’
‘Of course he doesn’t. He’s a lot like you, Aden. Kept his own counsel for most of his life. His view of the world and yours are not altogether different you know.’
Vanner thought about that then, sitting back with one hand tucked under his armpit, dra
wing on his cigarette and letting the smoke drift from his nostrils. A similar view of the world and yet his father a priest and he a soldier first then policeman.
‘He has faith in something, Anne. I don’t.’
‘Don’t you?’
He looked up at her. ‘Only in what I do.’
‘There you are then. It’s the same for both of you. His God is rough and ready. You forget he’s spent as much time around soldiers as you have.’
Vanner nodded.
‘I suppose he just wants to see you at peace,’ she said.
Vanner stood up, drew on his cigarette and pinched out the end between his forefinger and thumb. Peace. What exactly was peace?
‘Ellie’s a good girl, Aden.’
‘She’s young.’
Anne nodded. ‘Maybe. Old head on her though.’
‘Some maybe. She’s not seen much of the world yet, Anne.’
‘She’s a nurse, Aden. She’ll have seen a bit. She cares for you. I can see it in the way she looks at you.’
‘You think so?’ He looked at her. His ex-wife had cared about him, but that was a long time ago, and that care had turned to fear.
‘She knows nothing about my past, Anne.’
‘So what? It’s the past. Does she ever ask you about it?’
He shook his head.
‘There you are then. Maybe she thinks that it’s your past and not hers.’ She took his hand between both of hers and squeezed. ‘Give yourself a future, Aden.’
He smiled then. ‘With Ellie?’
‘Why not?’
They walked back into the kitchen and Vanner climbed the stairs. The door to their bedroom stood open. He poked his head around it and glanced at the empty bed. Steam rose from the open bathroom door. He heard voices from his father’s room.
Ellie was sitting on the window sill in a white towelling dressing gown. Her shins glowed red from the shower and she rubbed at her hair with a towel.
‘Hello early bird,’ she said.
Vanner grinned at her and looked round at his father. ‘How you doing?’
His father winked at Ellie. ‘I’m doing just fine, Son. Pretty girl in my bedroom.’
‘You’re a priest, remember?’
‘No longer practising am I.’
Ellie laughed then, slipped off the window sill and left them. She closed the door and Vanner walked over to where she had been sitting. He could smell her.
‘She’s a good girl, Aden.’
He looked back at his father. ‘You think so?’
‘I do, yes. She doesn’t drink. She doesn’t smoke. She doesn’t eat foreign food. What more could you want?’
‘I miss curries, Dad.’
His father laughed then and his eyes shone for a moment before settling once more in thought. ‘You know you could do a lot worse. She’s young and pretty and she’s got a strong head on those shoulders. How long’ve you been seeing her now?’
Vanner pursed his lips. ‘Three months or so.’
‘Stick with it. She’s good for you.’
Sunday night and Jessica Turner drove back to London with the breath of her lover clinging to her flesh. She glanced at the clock on the dashboard, nearly ten thirty now: she should’ve left much earlier. But the fire had been bright and the rug inviting and the touch of his flesh still warm. But now it was late and there was work in the morning and she did not know when she would see him again.
A car tore past her in the outside lane and for a moment she was reminded of Friday night. It seemed long ago now, that man in his car and the dummy in the road. They had driven out to the place where she thought it had been on Saturday morning but it was gone. But someone in the back of her car. Now she shivered and glanced a little fitfully in the rear-view mirror as if she half-expected to see someone watching her. She had wanted to go to the police, but that would’ve made things public and with Alec on his way back from Ireland she could not afford it. Alec. Guilt tinged her thoughts for a moment and she frowned. She reached to her bag on the passenger seat for a cigarette and pressed in the lighter on the dashboard. She lit it and rolled the window down far enough to feel the rush of night air through the crack.
Alec would be home tomorrow, back from his rugby tour with the lads. What was she worried about? The things he must’ve got up to. All those young Catholic girls. He would have had a wail of a time—he never called home when he was away on tour. Off the field then into the bar and whatever else they got up to. He had women. She knew he had women. Condoms in his jacket. She never mentioned it. They had their lives, they both knew it. Guilt was for other people. But would she leave him? Would her lover leave his wife? Did she even want him to? Lover, that was the word and that was what it was. Lovers—two people coming together once in a blue moon to make love, all night, all weekend in every room of someone else’s house and then different cars and different routes back to different houses in two different places. That was the charge, the thrill, the total eroticism of it all. She liked him being her lover.
Again the chill of Friday night. There had been someone. She knew there had. Mud on the carpet in the back, mud from somebody’s shoes. She shivered again and brushed the thoughts from her mind as she had brushed the mud from the floor.
And since then, bathing together, showering together, lying naked in front of a fire with candles dripping white and yellow wax and red wine in full-bellied glasses and cigarette smoke afterwards.
A joker, she told herself. Some jerk probably getting off in the only way his sad little mind would allow. Whoever he was he was long gone now, scuttling away like a suddenly discovered spider. Pushing her cigarette through the crack in the window she wound it up, and turned the heater full on. London lights beckoned. A few more miles and she would be home.
London. The woman drove slowly, feeding the wheel through long-nailed hands as she turned off Uxbridge Road and pulled over beside the church. Tall and imposing, its squared-off spire thrusting above the trees against the stars that lifted high above the city. No hint of rain, dry streets, dry grass and soft silent shoes. She switched off the engine and sat for a moment in darkness. The houses here were tall, expensive semis, three-storey affairs with dormer-windows in the attics. A little wind ruffled the uppermost branches of the trees on her left and in the mirror she glimpsed the angular lines of her face. Silent street, Sunday night late, with the pubs shut and people huddling against radiators with thoughts of bed and chocolate drinks and the fear of Monday morning. Beside her on the seat the cigar box looked small as she eased off the lid and lifted the gun still wrapped in clingfilm. It was small and black but heavy as she unwrapped the covering and slipped it back in the box. A holdall in a wardrobe, unzipped and inspected, then re-zipped and replaced.
The gun fitted snugly in the pocket of her short black jacket, unzipped now over the pink angora sweater. One glance ahead, one glance behind and she climbed out of the car and closed it without locking. Keys in her pocket then the walk to the corner and the upstairs lights of the houses opposite. At the end of the road she turned left and walked very deliberately past the side of the church to the next corner. The house loomed large and quiet on her left.
The front door was by the right-hand fence: beyond it the front door of the next house and once on the path she was unseen from the road. She studied the door and then the crazy paved area where once a front garden had been planted. The door was set back in a porch fronted by an oval arch. No light from inside.
She made her way along the front of the house, beyond the big bay window and into the shadows by the back gate. There she turned and waited.
Jessica yawned as she waited for the lights to change on Uxbridge Road and turned right towards Ealing. Almost home now and not yet midnight. She had made good time, though the Sunday-night traffic had been heavy on the M3 with people returning to the capital from weekend sojourns in the country. Her eyes were suddenly weighty, the movement of the car, the red and white lights of oncoming and passing cars. Only
a mile or so now, enough time for her to collect her thoughts and prepare for tomorrow morning. There was nothing she needed to do, nothing until she got to the office. She could afford half an hour in the bath. Bath and bed, she told herself. One night alone before Alec returned tomorrow.
He would be full of it as he always was, like some overgrown schoolboy, injured no doubt in some way from his over-aged exertions on an Irish rugby pitch or an Irish bar in some Godforsaken hamlet deep in the back of beyond. He always came home with some kind of knock or other, then he would rub liniment on and stink out the whole house and tell her in graphic detail how he floored this winger, or was floored himself by the opposing fullback. None of it meant anything to her. Once and once only had she watched and that was only for half an hour before the mud and the mayhem bored her into submission. Let him have his games. She had hers after all.
In the shadow of the gate the woman waited, one hand in her pocket, fingers closed over the cold metal of the semi-automatic pistol. She lifted her head, pushing the hair from her eyes and looked above streetlights to stars. This was not how she had planned it, but experience taught her that things rarely go to plan. Too many people, but she knew what she was doing, had done it before and her exit route was planned. In and out. Short and sharp and effective. She would be gone before anyone knew what had happened.
Jessica drove past the familiar lights at the entrance to Ealing Common tube station and a few streets further on she turned left and pulled over into the space outside her house. She killed the engine, sighed heavily and opened the driver’s door.
In the shadows the woman took out the pistol and worked a round into the breech.
Jessica collected her travel bag from the boot and slammed the lid shut. The air was frosted now and her breath came in steaming clouds. She moved quickly onto the pavement, into the gate and walked up the path, head down, fumbling in her bag for her keys. She had forgotten to leave the porch light on. Why did she always do that?
In the shadow of the gate the woman crouched, lips slightly parted, breath stilled into nothing.
