Threats and Menaces

by Alan Scholefield

  ‘I’m quite aware of that, darling. Anyway I wouldn’t marry him, not even if I was divorced.’

  ‘It’s what I’ve always thought about communes,’ Zoe said. ‘Just sex, sex, sex.’

  ‘Where? Where? Where?’ said Leo.

  ‘You’re being amusing again,’ Zoe said, darkly.

  Sophia said, ‘Don’t be censorious, dear, it doesn’t suit you. Anyway he’s from Birmingham. All adenoids and flat vowels. But he’s sort of sweet in a way.’

  ‘Are you having an affair with this Harold person?’

  ‘That’s my business.’

  ‘Mother! You’ve become a hippy. You’re thirty years out of date but that’s what you’ve become.’

  ‘He’s got a bus. He calls it — ’

  ‘Earth Mother,’ Leo said. ‘We saw it.’

  ‘He also calls it “her” and “she” and sometimes “Sylvia”.’

  Zoe said, ‘I can’t stand people who call their vehicles names.’ ‘No,’ said Sophia Bertram. ‘I can’t either. Such a pity.’

  *

  ‘Hello, Dory,’ Mr Pargeter said. ‘What have you seen today?’ Dory might have said nothing because she did not wish to be disturbed just then, only that wasn’t her way. She didn’t like to disappoint people.

  ‘A heron.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Flying.’

  ‘Going to the Serpentine, I should think.’

  ‘And a golden oriole.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the square.’

  He smiled his disbelief. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really.’

  She’d seen lots of other things too but she didn’t feel like telling Mr Pargeter. She’d seen Trevor twice walk to Rosemount and twice walk back. And each time he had stood in the square as though deciding whether or not to go back again.

  She’d also seen a naked lady on the twelfth floor of Rosemount. But naked ladies didn’t much interest Dory.

  What she had not seen was any movement in the house on the square, or at any rate not for a long time. The curtains remained closed, the house still.

  Mr Pargeter scanned the square and the trees. ‘No sign of Mr and Mrs Kestrel?’

  Dory hadn’t seen them all morning. She thought of telling him about the naked lady, but he probably wouldn’t believe her.

  ‘Where’s the hose?’

  ‘Ralph put it in the shed.’

  ‘Do you know where he’s hidden the key?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Damn the man.’

  ‘He says you interfere with the garden.’

  ‘I’ll report him to the managing agents. He doesn’t do his job properly. My interfering as he calls it saves the garden from drying up.’

  He went off muttering to himself.

  When he’d gone she took the key from its hiding place in the earth round a bay tree, opened the shed and put down her rug in the shade. She did not like to be too mean to Mr Pargeter but he had not believed her about the golden oriole and had to be taught a lesson.

  She had brought up a writing book and pen and went on with her story.

  Macrae stood in the doorway of his sitting-room staring at his children.

  Bobby and Margaret were watching daytime TV. Macrae disapproved of daytime TV but not in any definite way. He simply had a vague feeling that days should be for different things. If a psychiatrist had asked him to define that, to postulate what days were in fact for, he would have been at a loss. Catching criminals? Drinking? Committing adultery? These might have been some of his answers. Oh, and reading. He would truthfully have been able to say that.

  It would have been nice to think that Bobby and Margaret were the products of love. But they weren’t. They were the results of lust and fornication. It was amazing what a few whiskies and a randy couple could achieve. What he’d really wanted — what they’d both wanted on each occasion — was sex pure and simple. Now they had two kids.

  He already had Susan by Linda, his first wife, and had never wanted more. She had been a love child. But not Bobby and Margaret. He wasn’t even sure that Mandy had wanted kids. They had simply come along. Once she was pregnant they had both accepted the fact; neither had talked about abortion.

  He supposed he’d loved them when they were babies. You always loved your own baby. But then… the years had passed and he and Mandy had split up and she had married Joe Parrish, taxi driver, and Bobby and Margaret had grown into pre-teenagers and they had gradually drifted apart. Now he saw them every second weekend.

  And here they were, two small human beings who belonged to him and for whom he had to take responsibility. And all because their mother was a slag and was having it off with someone called Roger.

  The kids were watching cartoons and he thought they couldn’t come to much harm. In a moment of bleak nostalgia he remembered his own childhood in the Central Highlands of Scotland: asphyxiated with boredom in a Free Presbyterian community which kept Sundays for the kirk and little else. All pleasure was forbidden. It had put him off religion for life.

  Bobby and Margaret had it easy.

  ‘I’m going to make a few calls upstairs,’ he said. ‘You both all right?’

  They nodded without taking their eyes from the screen.

  He went upstairs and phoned Joe Parrish.

  ‘What happened, Joe?’

  ‘I had enough. That’s what happened.’

  As he spoke he visualized Joe. Medium sized, balding, grey faced, nondescript. But good hearted.

  ‘I never thought you’d throw her out.’

  ‘I never did neither. But she’s got no responsibility, George. She’ll have it off with anyone. And that’s not right. I mean I’m bringing up her kids, paying for them — except what you’re paying, of course. And don’t get me wrong. I ain’t complaining about that. I love Bobby and Margaret. But she’s… what can I say?… I mean you know the score.’

  He supposed he did. And if the truth were told he wasn’t much better than Mandy, if at all. Still, it was different for men.

  ‘What are you going to do, Joe?’

  ‘Do?’

  ‘Are you going to leave things as they are or make up or what?’ ‘I don’t feel like making up. Listen, they were doing it right here. The moment my back was turned. In my own bed. In the morning. Before the bleedin’ sheets even had time to cool … It’s not right, George.’

  ‘I suppose there couldn’t be a mistake. I mean you thought she and I were doing it at one time.’

  ‘There’s no mistake. I came back. Caught them at it.’ He paused and said, ‘This whole thing’s given me the hump, I mean, it’s very wearing on the nerves. When I began to suspect, I couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t eat properly. And that gave me wind. Never had it before. It’s very embarrassing in the cab.’

  ‘Do you know where she is?’

  ‘With this bloke Roger, of course.’

  ‘Aye, I realize that. But where does he live?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask her?’

  ‘I doubt she’d tell me. Scared I’d dump the kids on her like she dumped them on me.’

  ‘How are they? I don’t like to think of them being moved from pillar to post like this. I’d take them but you know the hours I work.’

  ‘They seem all right.’

  ‘Poor little bleeders.’

  ‘What does this Roger do?’

  ‘He’s a cabbie too. That’s the funny part of it.’

  ‘Well, you could find out where he lives. Other cabbies will know.’

  ‘I could try.’

  *

  Diamonds in the sky…

  She had hardly moved all that long Sunday.

  The bleeding had stopped and the blood had dried and stuck the soft insides of her thighs together. She could still feel the pain but that was slowly easing.

  While the visitor was doing it to her and just after he left she had thought she was going to die.

  From her bed she could see the kitchen windows. The curtains
were closed. The diamonds of the security bars made dark patterns on the thick white material.

  She wanted to open the curtains to see if the sun was shining. She wanted to look up at the blue sky to see if her diamond was still there.

  But she wasn't sure she could stand up yet.

  Let alone walk.

  The glistening, glittering, diamond was all she had.

  As a child she had played with a mirror; reflecting the sun. The light had chased about the room. Then she had thought of it as a fairy.

  It was all so long ago. Part of her childhood in the sunshine.

  That was how she remembered her childhood. Sunny.

  Suddenly it had been over and the sun had gone and everything was grey.

  Money. She had had to find money. But where?

  Towards evening Sadeq came down to the kitchen.

  She was lying on her side, legs drawn up.

  Get up, he said.

  But she couldn’t. Not yet.

  She heard him come closer.

  Get up.

  The bed was almost as low as the floor. She managed to reach her knees, crouching like an animal.

  He kicked her.

  Oh God, please let him not kick me in the kidneys. It had happened before. She had passed blood.

  He kicked her again. This time she took it on her arms.

  She got to her feet, swaying, holding the worktop.

  He hit her with his fist.

  When he got like this she knew he was uncontrollable. It was a kind of insanity.

  She could see it in his eyes now. Vacant. Mad.

  This time… this time she knew he was going to kill her…

  Chapter Eight

  ‘Macrae? Which Macrae?’

  ‘What’s that?’ Macrae said.

  ‘Conchra? Inverinate? Beauly?’

  Macrae and Silver were in Miss Moira MacKenzie’s big drawingroom on the twelfth floor of Rosemount.

  ‘Well…?’ she said.

  ‘I think there must be some mistake,’ Macrae said.

  She ignored him. ‘And this young man?’ She pointed to Silver. ‘Is he also a Macrae? Is he your son?’

  ‘My name’s Silver,’ Leo said.

  In spite of the heat, Miss MacKenzie was dressed in a tartan skirt, a twin-set in autumn colours, thick cotton stockings, brown golfing brogues and a double strand of pearls. She stood six feet tall, had iron-grey hair, was as bony as an old horse, and, Leo thought, must be in her seventies.

  ‘Silver isn’t a Scottish name at all,’ said Miss MacKenzie.

  ‘No,’ Leo said.

  ‘What’s all this got to do with the Macraes then?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Macrae said.

  ‘But you said your name was Macrae! Which family? There’s Angus in Wester Ross and Sir Lachie in Argyll and the tenth Earl on the old Clunes lands near Beauly.’

  ‘I think there must be some misapprehension.’ Macrae found he was sweating.

  ‘Misapprehension?’ She pronounced the word with deep distaste. ‘There’s no misapprehension on my side.’

  He placed her accent. It was the genteel tea-and-scones accent of Edinburgh and made him feel almost feudal.

  She had discovered them on the landing outside her flat where they had been ringing and knocking on her neighbour’s door.

  ‘Who are you?’ she had said.

  Macrae had told her his name. That seemed to have erased everything else he said and she had herded them into her flat like a Highland sheep-dog.

  The furniture was heavy and old-fashioned, of the kind still found in country house hotels. There was a mahogany sideboard the size of a station platform, there were frames of pressed thistles brown with age, and there were several engravings of gloomy castles in Victorian weather conditions.

  Miss MacKenzie suddenly shouted. ‘Sgur Urain!’

  Macrae stepped backwards.

  ‘Why, man, that’s your war cry. Did you not even know that?’

  ‘No,’ said Macrae.

  ‘And I don’t suppose you know that your name is really McRath — that’s the Gaelic form — or that your motto is Fortitudine — with fortitude?’

  ‘No,’ said Macrae.

  ‘Well… well… I’m just glad my father isn’t alive to hear this. A Macrae who doesn’t know his genealogy. He was an Appeal Court judge, you know, and he wouldn’t have stood for it.’

  ‘What happened to him?’ Leo said.

  ‘I’m seventy-eight,’ Miss MacKenzie replied. ‘What do you think happened to him?’

  ‘We’re really on the same side, then,’ Macrae said.

  ‘Which side is that? You’re not going to tell me the Macraes rose in the’45 because I know they didn’t. They were no damned help at all.’

  ‘On the side of the law,’ Macrae said. ‘I’m Detective Superintendent Macrae and this is Sergeant Silver.’

  ‘Detectives!’ she said, her eyes suddenly lighting up. ‘Why didn’t you say so? Sit you down then, and I’ll make a cup of tea. Proper tea. Not this filth you get in the south.’

  They drank tea which was of a hard, bright, terracotta colour while Miss MacKenzie said, ‘are you going to arrest him?’

  ‘Who?’ Macrae said.

  ‘The black man. You were knocking on his door. Calls himself a bishop! If he’s a bishop I’m Flora McDonald.’

  ‘Tell us about him,’ Macrae said.

  ‘Don’t you know? You’re a detective.’

  ‘We can’t know everything.’

  ‘Yes, I dare say, well… ’ She lowered her voice. ‘If you want my opinion — and it’s only an opinion, mind, I wouldn’t swear to it in a court of law — if you want my opinion it’s drugs and women.’

  ‘That’s a very serious allegation, ma’am,’ Silver said.

  ‘I realize that. And it’s why I wouldn’t swear to it. My father always said: Keep out of the courts. And he was in them for more than forty years — so he should have known. But I’ve got eyes, haven’t I? You’ve heard of white slavery?’

  ‘Yes, we have,’ Macrae said.

  ‘Well, then.’

  ‘Well, then?’

  ‘Young women come up to his flat. I’ve seen them on the landing. Young white women.’

  ‘They do?’

  ‘Of course. That’s the pattern isn’t it? First of all they drug them — ’

  ‘They?’

  ‘Well, he must be working with others. Stands to reason. They call it a “ring”.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And the ring has contacts in other places. Like the Far East.’ ‘How do they get the girls to the Far East?’ Macrae asked.

  ‘Or out of this building?’ Silver said.

  ‘That’s for you to find out. But laundry baskets, I should think. Packing cases, perhaps.’

  ‘But you’ve never seen the laundry baskets or the packing cases?’

  ‘I’ve got better things to do than stand outside his flat all day. Anyway I don’t like to hear him. He’s always mumbling in there to himself.’

  ‘Mumbling?’

  ‘I suppose he calls it praying. I’ve heard him use Christ’s name.

  Douglas says he’s got a black Christ above his bed. That’s blasphemous, I should think.’

  ‘Who’s Douglas?’

  ‘The porter.’

  ‘Oh, yes. He let us in.’

  ‘Are you going to do your duty?’

  ‘Arrest the bishop? Well, I don’t know about that. We came to see him about a burglary. He reported the loss of certain valuables.’ ‘Valuables! What valuables could a person like that have?’ ‘Well, he lives in Rosemount,’ Silver said. ‘That can’t be cheap.’ Miss MacKenzie shot him a venomous glance then she reached into her capacious skirt pocket and pulled out a bunch of keys that were joined to her belt like those of a prison warder’s.

  ‘They wouldn’t be robbed if they took care.’ She shook the keys at them. ‘I lock everything. Everything. Always have. My father was a careful man. He taught
me to be careful too. No, no, I’m not afraid of burglars.’

  ‘You want to go to the park?’ Max said, as though it was some remote oasis in the Black Gobi. ‘What d’you want to go to the park for?’

  ‘It’s hot,’ Dory said.

  ‘There’s air conditioning at the Hard Rock, darling. And doublethick chocolate malteds.’

  It was late afternoon and they were on Adrienne Marvell’s big balcony.

  ‘You’re not sick, are you?’ Max said.

  ‘Do I have to be feeling sick?’ Dory said.

  ‘You’re not, are you?’ her mother said, drawing slightly away from her. ‘I mean why the park?’

  ‘You think we’re going to get mugged there?’ Max said. ‘Look at this.’ He pulled out a knife, touched a button on the handle, and with a slight snick the long blade sprang out. ‘French. I bought it at a market.’

  Dory watched it with wide eyes. Adrienne said, ‘That’s illegal, Max.’

  ‘So is being mugged. You ever heard of self-protection? I mean if you’d been carrying Mace it would have made a difference.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  Dory opened her mouth.

  ‘Did you hear me, Dory?’

  Dory knew that when her mother spoke like that — ‘took that tone’, as her father said — that she, Dory, must keep quiet.

  She did.

  Snick. The blade disappeared into the handle of the knife and Max put it into his pocket.

  ‘Listen, I’m not dressed for the country,’ he said, smiling at Dory. ‘Wouldn’t you like a nice double-thick and then maybe a movie?’

  She did not answer his smile. Instead her eyes suddenly brimmed with tears. It was well known by her mother and her father that Dory, if frustrated, could go from laughter to tears in one second flat.

  ‘OK. OK. Anywhere you like.’ He turned to his ex-wife. ‘I saw Trevor on the way up.’

  She wasn’t interested. She was lying back on the lounger, manuscript in hand, waiting with some impatience for them to leave.

  ‘He says the police are re-opening their inquiries. I love those phrases, don’t you? “A man is helping the police… Uttering threats and menaces… Proceeding with investigations… Committing grievous bodily harm.” They all sound as though they’re from some old black and white movie with the Wolseleys racing out of Scotland Yard and all their bells clanging.’