by Freer, Echo;
‘But I look like a boy. Don’t they do it in pink?’
Harley grabbed a handful of her friend’s hair and pushed a rubber band on to it, then did the same at the other side. ‘There - you got bunches now, so you don’t look like a boy.’
‘Ow!’ Cynthia wailed.
Mickey lumbered through and picked up his car keys. ‘Where we off to then, ‘Arl darl?’ He took a step back at the sight of his sister and said, ‘Whoa! When did you join the Guides, Cynth?’
Cynthia folded her arms sulkily and stuck out her tongue.
‘She ain’t joined the Guides, you doughnut; she’s on a mission,’ Harley explained.
‘In disguise,’ Cynthia pouted.
Mickey’s brow furrowed as he tried to comprehend the situation. ‘But, ‘ow can you be in disguise, sis? I still recognised you.’
‘Course you recognised ‘er, you muppet!’ Harley snapped. ‘She’s your bleedin’ sister. But someone what don’t know ‘er will just think she’s a Girl Guide and not give ‘er a second look. See?’
Mickey looked confused. ‘But why?’
‘We’re off back to that King gel’s gaff. If she ain’t lettin’ us in to get at ‘er dad’s gear, we’ll ‘ave to get ‘er to bring it out to us, won’t we?’
Mickey eyed the two girls quizzically. ‘ ‘Ow you gonna do that, then, ‘Arl?’
‘Simple - last night me an’ Cynth put a bin bag through ‘er letterbox with a note strapped to it by a rubber band...’
‘I typed it out on the computer, Mickey,’ Cynthia said, proudly.
‘Aw, well done, sis! I knew you’d get the ‘ang of the computer one day.’
‘D’you mind?’ Harley said, pointedly. ‘I ‘ate to interrupt your little family flattery fest but I was in the middle of running through the brief!’
‘Sorry, ‘Arl darl.’ Mickey leant forwards and planted a kiss on the top of his girlfriend’s head.
‘Gerroff!’ She flicked him away as though she were swatting a fly. ‘So, this note says that they gotta fill the bag with old clothes and today, a member of the local Girl Guides will be calling to pick it up for charity.’
Cynthia grinned at her brother. ‘I even put at the top, “ ‘As anyone in your ‘ousehold died recently? Do you need to get rid of their clothes?” You know, just in case she didn’t think of ‘er dad first off.’
‘Wow - you’re a genius, sis!’
Harley’s eyes narrowed. ‘OK, Cynth - no need to build up your part.’ She turned to Mickey. ‘You gonna stand ‘ere all day or are you gonna bring the car round like I said?’
Ten minutes later they dropped off Cynthia at the end of the road where Gemma King lived.
‘Don’t ‘ang around, Cynth. Just ask ‘em for the bag an’ leg it,’ Harley instructed.
Then she and Mickey waited, out of sight, until Cynthia waddled back to the car with a bulging bin bag.
‘Wow!’ Cynthia giggled excitedly. ‘They’d put it out by the gate for me and everything.’
‘Sling it in the back and let’s get out of here,’ Harley ordered as Mickey revved up the engine.
But as they rounded the corner, he had to brake hard when they came bonnet to bumper with a dustbin lorry. Slowly, Harley turned round to the back seat and stared at her friend.
‘You didn’t ‘appen to take a butcher’s at what was inside the bag before you picked it up, did you, Cynth?’ she asked with a sense of foreboding.
‘Course not, ‘Arl. You said not to ‘ang about,’ Cynthia replied, obviously pleased with how she had acquitted herself on her first foray into the world of crime.
Harley nodded, as though confirming her worst suspicions. ‘Tell you what, Cynth, just ‘ave a peek.’
‘What, now?’
‘Yeah - go on. Open it up and let’s see what delights Miss King ‘as donated to ‘er favourite charity, shall we?’
Cynthia untied the top of the bag and her face crumpled with a mixture of revulsion and disappointment. ‘Eewww!’
At the top of the bag, covered in baked beans and soggy cornfakes, was the carefully rolled up plastic sack they had put through the letterbox the previous day. And it still had the typed note attached to it.
‘Brilliant!’ Harley grunted. ‘You’ve only gone and collected ‘er rubbish, you pilchard!’ She turned back to the front seat and focused her attention on her boyfriend. ‘Well, that only leaves us with one alternative, don’t it? You’re just gonna ‘ave to break in, Mickey.’
‘Aw, ‘Arl,’ he groaned.
‘No choice - end of! If Mohammed ain’t gonna play ball wiv the mountain, then the mountain’s just gonna ‘ave to go an’ play ball wiv Mohammed.’
Mickey and Cynthia said nothing for several seconds. Then Mickey voiced his confusion.
‘What, Dr Akram’s boy? Are they an item then?’
Harley looked at him and grimaced. ‘What you on about?’
‘That King girl and Mohammed Akram - you said they was goin’ to play ball up a mountain.’
Harley shook her head in despair. ‘It’s the Prophet Mohammed.’
‘Yeah but...’
‘Just drive the car, Mickey.’
‘So...’ Cynthia piped up from the back seat.
‘Don’t even go there, Cynth,’ Harley cut in, then she turned to look at her boyfriend and sighed. ‘Jeez! I’ve ‘ad more intelligent conversations wiv my dog, Razor. ‘Ow the bleedin’ ‘ell are you gonna break into anywhere when you got ear to ear concrete?’
Modesty spent the next day making investigations into the dodgy doings she had overheard the previous evening. She phoned the Town Hall and discovered, unsurprisingly, that, at the previous evening’s meeting, full planning permission had been granted for fifty apartments with a swimming pool and fitness complex in the basement, together with three retail units.
She then went on the internet to try to find out as much information as possible about Councillor Peggitt and Archie Bigg. It didn’t take her long to discover that Archie Bigg was managing director of Bigg Builders, a firm that he’d taken over from his father and which specialised in up-market apartment blocks. No prizes for guessing who would get the contract to build the development in the cemetery, then.
Although she and Beattie had discovered that the cemetery was privately owned, they had found it difficult to trace the owner. Now though, galvanised by anger at what she believed was the injustice and corruption that had led to her friend’s death, she searched with renewed vigour. She now found out that it had recently been sold and its new owner was actually an offshore consortium based in Guernsey, whose list of directors included a Mr Barry Bigg and a Ms Patricia Peggitt. This was either a very strange coincidence, or there was something distinctly fishy going on. And, even though her English teacher told her she had a remarkable imagination, she was unable to stretch it to a limit that would allow her to believe the former.
Modesty slept very little that night: her head was buzzing with information, trying to make the pieces of the puzzle fit.
The following morning she went down to the workshop in the yard.
‘Midge, tell me everything you can remember about Mickey Bigg from when you were at school.’
Midge stood up from where he had been stapling bubble wrap round a coffin ready for repatriation.
‘Nothing much to tell really - he was hardly ever there. If he wasn’t bunking off, he was excluded.’
‘Anything - anything at all,’ she prompted.
Midge shrugged and sat down on the edge of the coffin. ‘The only thing that sticks out was that his mum lived in America and he spent the whole summer over there every year.’ He cocked his head on one side, thinking. ‘And his grandparents lived in Jersey, I think, or somewhere in the Channel Islands anyway.’
‘Guerns
ey?’ Modesty asked.
‘Yeah, that’s it, so he spent nearly every Christmas and Easter over there. That’s it really - that and the fact that his dad was a villain and his sister was a dork.’
Modesty nodded, digesting the information. ‘And how much do you know about Peggitt’s in the High Street?’
Midge shook his head. ‘Not a lot but I’ve got a mate who works there. What do you want to know?’
‘I want to know if he’s got a sister or an auntie or any relation called Patricia.’
‘You sure you’re not talking about his wife? She’s called Patsy.’
Modesty was elated: this was exactly the information she needed. ‘Midge, you are a genius.’
‘One of my many qualities,’ he grinned.
Before she left, she nodded to the bubble wrapped coffin. ‘Where’s this one going?’
‘Ghana,’ Midge replied, shaking his head. ‘Talk about a bummer. Came over here to see his daughter and her family - first time in fifteen years, apparently, and keeled over dragging his case up the path. Poor soul.’
Modesty was eager to share her discoveries with Oz, but when she phoned he seemed distracted.
‘Look, it’s not a good time at the moment,’ he explained. ‘Your dad’s due over any minute with Gran’s coffin and then I’ve got to go up to King’s Cross and pick up a friend who’s coming down for the funeral tomorrow.’
Modesty was mortified. ‘Oh God! I’m so sorry. How can I have been so insensitive?’
‘Hey - chill,’ Oz soothed. ‘This cause was important to Gran too - so important that she died fighting for it, so don’t start beating yourself up because you’re on to something. She’d be tickled pink that you haven’t given up.’
Modesty fell silent. She knew everything that Oz was saying was true but she still couldn’t believe that she’d forgotten about Beattie’s viewing that day.
‘Look,’ Oz continued, ‘we’re going to decorate Gran’s coffin this afternoon but why don’t you come round this evening.’
‘Decorate it? How?’
‘Mum’s ordered about a thousand carnations and we’re going to weave them into the bamboo. Hopefully, by the time people come round it’ll be covered.’
‘Sounds beautiful - I’ll be there.’
Later that evening, Modesty arrived at Beattie’s front door, to find it ajar. Pushing it open, she saw that the hallway was illuminated entirely by white candles. Soft music was drifting from the front room and there was a murmur of muted voices from the back of the house.
‘Hello,’ she called softly. ‘Oz?’
Oz appeared from the back room and smiled when he saw her. Modesty’s heart beat a tattoo against her ribcage. It was two days since she’d seen him and, in that time, he seemed to have grown even more gorgeous. His hair tumbled in loose waves round his face and his eyes seemed darker and softer than ever. When he smiled the whole house seemed to go from candlelight to four thousand watts.
‘Hi, come in,’ he said, beckoning her inside and closing the door behind her. ‘The wind keeps blowing out the candles,’ he explained, taking a match from the shelf by the telephone and relighting those that had gone out. ‘Would you like to see Gran first, or would you like to come through and meet Mum?’
‘I think I’d like to pay my respects to Beattie first, if that’s OK?’
Having been brought up around death, the prospect of seeing her friend laid out did not faze her in the slightest and she walked into the front room without hesitation. Like the hall, the room was lit with white candles. A joss-stick was burning in the hearth, filling the room with the aroma of incense. The woven bamboo coffin was, as Oz had told her, entirely covered with red carnations and Beattie looked like an elderly Ophelia, lying peacefully in her flowery resting place.
Modesty turned to Oz. ‘Oh, she looks beautiful. Emlyn’s done a wonderful-’ She was interrupted by a girl entering the room. She seemed inappropriately jolly, with bright eyes and torrents of curly hair falling round her shoulders.
‘Ozzie?’ whispered the girl. She smiled at Modesty and gave her an affected wave of the fingers. ‘Hiya. Sorry to interrupt,’ she said in a heavy northern accent, then walked over to Oz, stood on tiptoe and kissed him lightly on the cheek. ‘Your mum wants some more orange juice brought out and I don’t know where it is. You OK?’
Modesty felt as though a chasm had opened up at the pit of her stomach and her heart and lungs were being sucked into the vortex.
‘I’m fine,’ he said, sounding slightly embarrassed. ‘The juice is in the cupboard.’
‘Aren’t you going to introduce us?’ asked the girl, eyeing Modesty up and down.
Modesty’s head was spinning and her mouth had gone dry. She took a breath to steady herself. ‘I think, out of respect for Beattie, introductions would be better handled in the other room.’ She was aware of an edge to her voice as she said it and she looked away guiltily.
It was Oz’s turn to look guilty. ‘Sure... er... sorry. We’ll leave you alone. Come on, Claire, I’ll show you where the juice is.’
A wave of panic overcame Modesty. It hadn’t been Oz that she’d wanted to make leave, it had been the girl, and now he’d think that she hadn’t wanted him there. And she’d sounded really bitchy too. What was he going to think of her? And who was this Claire anyway? He’d said earlier in the week that he didn’t know anyone else in London, so presumably she was the friend he’d had to go to King’s Cross to pick up that morning. But how close a friend was she that she was prepared to travel down from Yorkshire just for his grandmother’s funeral?
Modesty felt sick. How stupid she’d been, believing Cerys’s assessment of Oz’s feelings. She should’ve known better. Oz had only ever said he wanted friendship; it was just her ridiculous imagination that had built it up into more than it really was. Suddenly, she felt monumentally lonely. All her energy seemed to evaporate. Beattie was gone, Cerys was going out with Midge, and now the reality of the Oz situation had hit her like a sledgehammer between the eyes. A tear trickled silently down her cheek.
‘Oh, Beattie,’ she murmured. ‘What am I going to do? Why am I such an idiot? And why didn’t you introduce me to Oz before that Claire girl had a chance to get a look in?’
At that moment she heard the doorbell ring and Oz’s mother call, ‘I’ll get it.’
An icy finger of fear slithered down her spine when she recognised the gruff voice that replied. ‘Evenin,’ Laura.’
But curiosity overcame fear. She wiped her eyes and moved closer to the door so that she could eavesdrop.
‘Archie?’ Laura Appleby gasped. ‘What do you want?’
‘Now, now, don’t be like that. I’ve come to pay my respects.’
‘Huh! Respect? You don’t know the meaning of the word,’ Laura spat.
‘Listen, Laura, just ‘ear me out, will ya, darlin’? I just wanna do right by you and the boy.’
Modesty heard the panic in Laura’s voice rise. ‘Leave him out of it.’
‘Laura, Laura.’
‘I mean it, Archie - I want you right out of our lives and I don’t care what I have to do to make sure that happens.’
Archie Bigg gave a low chuckle. ‘You ain’t managed it yet, though, ‘ave you, darlin’? Don’t matter where you try an’ go to ground, I always find you. Nice little spot, Scarborough. ‘Specially up round the castle.’
Laura gave a whimper.
‘So why don’t you just stop runnin’ and come back down where your roots is? You got a nice little gaff ‘ere - unless the dotty old bint’s left it to some charity for nature nutters. I’ll make sure you and the lad’s sorted...’
‘Get out!’ Laura’s fury was clearly audible. ‘Get out of my house and out of my life!’
Modesty heard the door shut and someone, whom she presumed to b
e Laura, run upstairs crying. She went back across to the carnation-covered coffin and spoke urgently to her friend.
‘Oh my God, Beattie! This is getting weirder and weirder. I’m sure Laura’s in some major trouble and, just when I need you...’ She gesticulated wildly over the coffin. ‘Look at you!’ She sighed and bit her bottom lip. ‘I don’t know what to do. The cemetery’s going to be built on, there’s corruption in the council and your daughter and grandson are being hounded by a gangster. I can’t do this on my own.’
With that, the door creaked open. ‘Hey, sorry to interrupt, but you haven’t seen Mum, have you?’ It was Oz.
‘Yeah, I think she went upstairs - but listen, Archie Bigg was round here again.’
Oz stared at her as though she’d just spoken in Mandarin Chinese. ‘What?’
‘Oz, I think your mum’s in some sort of trouble. It’s Archie Bigg who’s been trailing you all round the country and he knows you’re living in Scarborough now.’
Oz shook his head, trying to take it in. ‘But how? Why?’
Modesty shrugged.
‘OK, I need to find Mum. I’m going to find out exactly what’s happening.’
‘No, wait.’ Modesty put a hand out to stop him leaving. ‘Why don’t you wait till tomorrow, after the funeral? Your mum’s got enough on her plate at the moment.’
He nodded slowly. ‘Yeah, good idea.’ Then he looked Modesty in the eyes, almost pleadingly. ‘You will be there, won’t you?’
‘Of course, but I’ll go straight to the cemetery from home.’
Claire’s head appeared round the door. ‘Oh, there you are, Ozzie. I’ve been looking for you.’
Modesty ignored her and turned to Oz. ‘Look, I’m going to go now. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ She toyed with the idea of reaching up and giving him a peck on the cheek, as he had done to her after the circus, but the presence of the other girl stopped her. ‘Bye then,’ she said, giving him a circumspect pat on the arm.
‘And don’t forget,’ he called after her, ‘Gran wanted everyone in bright colours - no black.’
‘Wouldn’t dream of it!’ As she walked home she kept muttering to herself in a Yorkshire accent, ‘ “Ozzie” ? Who the hell calls him Ozzie? Ozzie, indeed! Humph!’
