by Dan Kavanagh
Come on, Duffy, that’s enough of that. And if she did, you know what you’d be? Sodding embarrassed for a start. You wouldn’t know where to put yourself. You’ve never exactly appealed to that type of lady, have you? Not exactly a regular feature of your track record, are they?
So it was a surprise when Mrs Boseley finally laid down her calculator, looked up, and smiled. She did look better when she smiled, there was no denying that. The only fly in the ointment was that she wasn’t smiling at Duffy; she was smiling past his shoulder.
‘All locked up,’ said Gleeson. The phrase gave Duffy a jolt: it took him straight back to his early days in the force, when he found such lines gave him an extra bit of swagger. ‘On yer bike,’ he’d gruff at a clearly bikeless hobo curled round the remnants of a bottle of sweet sherry; ‘Yer locked up,’ he’d shout at some particularly nasty bit of fighting rough, and just pray he didn’t get the reply, ‘You and who else?’
Duffy hoped he didn’t show any reaction to Gleeson; hoped he just carried on staring with dulcet expectation at Mrs Boseley, as if she were about to award him a wage rise. When he heard Gleeson turning the key, however, he thought he had the right of any other normal citizen to swivel in his chair and issue a long, puzzled glance. Gleeson pocketed the key and came and stood behind Duffy’s chair. Duffy didn’t like that. It reminded him of the sort of coppers who enjoyed doing that to people they were questioning; and it reminded him of what occasionally happened when they did.
‘Any complaints, Mrs Boseley?’ he enquired, like any other normal employee who’s been kept late, locked in, and has a big man with mutton-chops standing right behind his chair. She didn’t deign to reply. Don’t give up, he said to himself, keep the dialogue going – that’s what they said whenever there were those street sieges, wasn’t it? ‘We are keeping the dialogue going with the gunmen.’ Duffy decided to keep the dialogue going. It didn’t strike him who was taking which role.
‘I hope there haven’t been, Mrs Boseley. Any complaints, I mean. I’m really enjoying my work here, you know. I meant to pop by and say so only the other day, but I looked in your office, and you were … you were on the phone.’
Mrs Boseley finally seemed to be giving attention to his presence, though not, as far as he could tell, to his words. She looked as if she were going to speak. He waited dutifully. She couldn’t be going to sack him, could she?
‘You’re a man of many talents, Mr Duffy.’
Oh, well he didn’t expect her to say that. If only Gleeson weren’t there he might think she was about to make a pass at him.
‘Yes, M’m?’ Why did he never know what to call her?
‘Principal among which, in my view, is the ability to mow concrete.’
‘ …?’
‘You mow concrete, Mr Duffy.’ It was spoken in the tone of one reminding a recalcitrant child about a multiplication table. Nine sixes, you know you know nine sixes, Mr Duffy.
‘Beg yours?’
‘You mow concrete. Up and down. And all the concrete clippings go into the concrete box on the front of the mower. Wuuuuaaah, Wuuuuuaaah,’ went Mrs Boseley all of a sudden, imitating the noise of a lawn mower. ‘Or maybe – maybe you use an electric: then of course you don’t have a concrete box on the front do you? You just have a rotary thing, don’t you, and all the little bits of concrete go flying out of the side, and you leave them lying on the top and that acts as a fertiliser. Is that what you use?’
Duffy was bewildered. She was cracking up. All that wielding of a watering can in Rayner’s Lane had finally cracked her. He squirmed round in his seat and looked at Gleeson by way of enquiry, but he only seemed to be staring back at Mrs Boseley in a headily admiring fashion, as at some prophet who promised to teach him how he could part the waters, too, and no sweat. When Gleeson became aware of Duffy’s movement he reached down a fat palm and twisted Duffy’s head back to face Mrs Boseley.
‘I think we’re on different wavelengths, Mrs Boseley,’ he stammered.
‘No, I don’t think so, Duffy. You mow concrete. At least I think you do. Let me put it to you directly: do you mow concrete, Mr Duffy?’
‘NO,’ he replied loudly. He’d had enough of this. She looked disappointed. At least, she acted looking disappointed, which wasn’t at all the same thing.
‘Oh dear, I’d quite counted on you mowing concrete. You see, you said you did at your interview.’
Duffy looked blank.
‘I asked you what your qualifications were and you said you did odd jobs for Mr Hendrick. I asked you what. You said you … lifted things. I remember letting that pass, though I did want to ask whether your expertise extended to putting things down again as well, or whether we were being asked to hire someone who went around all the time with stuff stuck in his hands because he hadn’t yet learnt about putting down. And then I asked you if you mowed Mr Hendrick’s lawn.’ Uh-huh, thought Duffy, or rather he thought UH-FUCK-A-DUCK-HUH loud inside his head. ‘And you said you did.’ Duffy remembered the inexplicable sense of unease that he’d had when he’d visited Hendrick and looked out through his kitchen window at the children playing on the slide. Standing up on the top of it. Maybe he’d thought he was feeling uneasy about the kids falling off, but he wasn’t; he must have been feeling uneasy about the future of Duffy.
‘Now Mr Hendrick’s lawn, as you would know if you had ever been anywhere near Mr Hendrick’s house, is not made of the usual grass. Part of it is made of crazy paving and part is made of concrete. I engaged you, Mr Duffy, on the firm understanding that you could mow concrete. I’m very disappointed in you.’
‘I’ll learn,’ Duffy found himself saying, ‘I’m sure I can learn.’ There was a faint, nasal snigger from behind him, a stern glance from Mrs Boseley which went over his shoulder, and then a hard, flat-handed clout across the top of his head from Gleeson. It hurt. It wouldn’t have hurt at all if he’d known it was coming. That, doubtless, was the point.
‘I don’t think you’ll learn quickly enough for me; it’s a very difficult trade to learn. I don’t think you’ll master it quickly enough. If I hire a concrete-mower, Mr Duffy, I expect to get a concrete-mower. I’m afraid I’m going to have to dispense with your services.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Duffy. Oh dear not about being sacked – was he being, anyway? – but about the rest of it.
‘But before you go, just tell us all about yourself.’ Mrs Boseley put on what was quite clearly meant to be a violently insincere smile. She was quite an actress, Duffy had to hand it to her. Maybe it came from years of traipsing up and down the aisle with a ‘Would you like tea or coffee, sir?’ always on your lips, and getting pissed off with the fat men in bursting jackets with snowdrifts of dandruff on their shoulders quipping, ‘I’d rather have you, darling’ as if they were the first man ever to say it; and if at first you gave a polite half-amused smile, you would, after a few years of it and its equivalents, learn a real putdown of a smile, wouldn’t you, a horrible parody of a smile, a fuck-you-Jack smile? Mrs Boseley had learnt one, anyway.
Gleeson hit him across the back of the head again. It hurt just as much as the first time.
‘I’m just an ordinary fella,’ he said.
‘Who are you, Duffy?’
‘I’m me.’ It sounded weedy, lost.
‘What are you, what do you do?’
‘I’m me, I work, I work for you.’ He put more pathos into it this time; it seemed to come quite naturally.
‘You’ve never been to Mr Hendrick’s house, have you?’
‘Yes.’
Gleeson flat-slapped him again.
‘You do something else, don’t you?’
‘No.’
‘How did you meet Hendrick?’ The ‘Mr’ had gone.
‘I worked for him. Odd jobs.’
‘Why were you loitering near the flowers today?’
‘What?’
‘Why were you loitering near the flowers today?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about
.’
‘Why didn’t you take the calculators?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘WHY DIDN’T YOU TAKE THE FUCKING CALCULATORS?’ Mrs Boseley screamed at him. ‘WHY DIDN’T YOU TAKE THE FUCKING CALCULATORS?’ He hated that; he hated women screaming at him. He thought, That’ll make Gleeson hit me again. But it didn’t. It made Gleeson do something else instead. Something that made Duffy wish he’d been cuffed around the head after all. Something that made him feel altogether more uneasy.
It was a little click in his left ear, accompanied by a little pull on the lobe. He turned his head very slightly, and felt something cold against his flesh there. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Gleeson, who had moved round slightly to the side of him. When the second cold touch came, he worked out with no difficulty that Gleeson was gripping the gold stud in his left ear with a pair of pliers.
‘Up,’ said Gleeson, tugging gently with the pliers. Duffy didn’t dispute the instruction. When he was standing, he was moved back a pace or two and his chair kicked away from behind him. Mrs Boseley came round from behind her desk and began to go through his pockets. He thought, briefly, of making a sudden dramatic leap at the woman, but he didn’t fancy the consequences. And in any case, she was welcome to his pockets. Duffy wasn’t smart for nothing. The notebook with the names of regular customers was at home; so was the spare key to the shed. She was welcome to a dirty handkerchief, some change, a small comb, a wallet which contained an out-of-date credit card and which was singularly lacking in little bits of white pasteboard announcing ‘DUFFY SECURITY’, a biro and half a packet of Opal Fruits. She piled all these between them on the desk.
‘Down,’ said Gleeson, kicking the chair back into Duffy’s knees. He sat, a position which even without the local difficulty around his left ear gave Gleeson a considerable advantage. ‘I might have to change hands now and then,’ Gleeson informed him, ‘But we won’t try anything silly, will we?’
‘I won’t if you won’t,’ said Duffy.
‘Right,’ said Mrs Boseley, surveying the pile of Duffy’s possessions as if she’d just tipped out half a dozen used contraceptives and a dead vole. ‘Now let’s start again.’ Duffy looked at her with genuine apprehension. Part of this sprang from not knowing how to play it. He couldn’t give them nothing. He couldn’t give them everything up to his hypothesis. He’d better give them a bit, but not too much. And of course, how much he gave them depended a bit on Gleeson’s activities round his left ear. Duffy was smart, but he was no braver than anyone else.
What he decided was, play it along for a bit, then as soon as Gleeson does anything that hurts, babble out all you’re going to give them and then stick by it. Sticking by it was obviously going to be the tricky thing. What the pain, if it came, would be like, Duffy had no way of estimating. In fact, as he knew, you could pinch someone’s earlobe quite hard and it didn’t hurt; it was one of those semi-dead areas of the human body. So having his stud gripped by Gleeson’s pliers didn’t actually hurt – indeed, even the cold metal had now warmed up against his skin.
Or rather, it didn’t hurt in his body. It hurt a lot in his mind. So it was better than it could have been and a lot worse, both at the same time. If Gleeson had been hurting him in a normal way – punching him in the face, say – and promising that it would get gradually worse until Duffy did or said something, then he’d know where he was, would be able to guess what he could endure. This way, it was the anticipation of pain, not present pain, that made him fearful; and that was a lot worse.
‘Name?’
‘Duffy.’
‘What are you?’
‘I work for you.’
‘Where’d you meet Hendrick?’
‘At his house.’
‘Why were you loitering by the flowers?’
‘I wasn’tooooooOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWW.’
And that was just a little twist, a sudden half-turn on the pliers by Gleeson. It didn’t feel very life-enhancing to Duffy.
‘I never liked this fancy-boy’s ear-ring of yours,’ said Gleeson. ‘But I never thought it would come in handy. That was just a little twist, just a little wiggle really. I wonder what would happen if I pulled a bit.’
Duffy thought, Shit, I hadn’t known it was going to be like that. And knowing isn’t going to make the next round any easier. I think it may be time to crack. He could feel Gleeson taking a fresh grip on the pliers. Yes, it’s probably time to do the decent and crack.
‘Name?’
‘Duffy.’
He felt a little pull on his ear. Just a little pull hurt a great deal now. He closed his eyes as if he were making a last effort to hold himself together.
‘What are you?’
He didn’t answer, inviting another pull on the pliers, but not the sort of vicious, mind-blanking tug he’d get for an obvious lie, or for cheek. He wanted no more than a sort of this-is-a-reminder tug, the sort that would give him a justification for cracking. He got precisely that. He decided to crack.
‘I run a security firm. Well, there’s only me,’ he babbled on. ‘I’m a one-man band, I’m the firm, there’s just me.’ For that he got a sharp twist on the pliers, not quite a you-sodding-copper twist, but almost.
‘Where’d you meet Hendrick?’
‘In a club.’
‘Why were you loitering by the flowers?’
‘I was looking at the air waybills.’
He was pointing down at the desk, avoiding Mrs Boseley’s eye in the way that villains who cracked avoided the copper’s eyes: they told their shame to themselves, that was the theory, and the copper was just overhearing it. That way they still retained a scintilla of self-respect. Duffy’s theory was slightly different: he could lie better with his head down.
‘Right, now let’s amplify things. Where was this club?’
‘It’s called the Alligator. It’s in Fulham. It’s a gay club. I met him there.’
Time for some broken-man-spills-all details. ‘It’s a nice place, very quiet, I was having a drink, he came in, we had a chat, he told me he was having thefts at work, I offered to help, he gave me the job. Then we decided to say I was his odd-job man, but I guess we didn’t prepare our story well enough. I didn’t think you’d interview me properly.’
‘Odd-job man,’ said Gleeson. ‘I bet you were his odd-job man. Poof.’ He switched the pliers to his left hand and belted Duffy again with his right. The blow jarred Duffy’s head against the pliers; he thought he felt a trickle of blood easing its way down the side of his neck.
‘Hey, lay off, will you. I’m answering. Lay off.’ It was an appeal to Mrs Boseley, and it seemed to work.
‘Yes, don’t do that, Gleeson. There wasn’t really any call for that.’ She turned back to Duffy. ‘And what did Hendrick say?’
‘He said he’d been getting thefts. Fairly regular. About once a month. Said he didn’t want to go to the police because they’d upset the shed.’ A sudden thought came to Duffy: maybe Mrs Boseley had persuaded him not to go to the police? At first, anyway. And then maybe, after a while, he decided he’d go half-way.
‘And what have you found out?’
‘Well, it’s got me rather baffled.’ He didn’t want them to think he was a particularly smart security man; and they were into a tricky area. ‘I mean, I looked around a bit, and it seems to be a very efficiently run firm.’
‘Spare us that,’ said Mrs Boseley. Shit, overdoing the praise.
‘Well, I mean I couldn’t see how anyone could fiddle the system.’ That put the blame back on his own slowness of mind, which was probably better by them. ‘So I reckoned it was McKay. I reckoned he’d been using some system I couldn’t work out because I wasn’t around then. And that’s as far as I’d got, except that now I suppose it must be Casey after all.’ Though his head was still pointing at the little pile of his possessions on Mrs Boseley’s blotter, he caught a glance on its way to Gleeson. They’d obviously thought it had been McKay as well; his switch yesterday had clearly th
rown them.
‘I don’t think Casey’s as thick as he looks. Did you know he’d got two O-levels? He told me over dinner. And the lighters went from his part of the shed. I don’t know where the earlier stuff went from. But I reckon it’s Casey. I was going to follow him home from work tonight, only I seem to have got held up.’
‘Why were you loitering by the flowers?’
‘I didn’t know I was. I mean, no more than loitering by anywhere else. I was mooching around, working out the system, you know.’ He very much didn’t like the idea of telling them he thought there might be two fiddles, not one. But he had hopes. He had hopes he’d just about covered the exits. They were definitely worried by the latest theft, he could tell that. It had made them jumpy. He just had to keep them quiet, play them along a bit, and maybe he’d get out of the wood. That’s what he thought.
‘You’re sacked, by the way.’
‘What?’
‘You’re sacked. As of now.’
Duffy, rather to his surprise, said, ‘Employment Protection Act.’ He heard Gleeson give a nasal snigger of disbelief. ‘Week’s notice, I get a week’s notice, I’ve got the right.’
‘I don’t think you’ve got any rights,’ said Mrs Boseley. ‘False pretences,’ she added, as if quoting a subsection of the act.
‘Week’s notice,’ repeated Duffy, as if quoting a different subsection. He didn’t have the slightest idea what was in the act; and he guessed she didn’t either. ‘It’s only fair. Week’s notice. Then I might be able to stick it on Casey. And it wouldn’t surprise the others so much. I think another week here and I could really stick it on Casey.’ This was his best line. Presumably they knew, or at least thought, that McKay had been the thief; they’d had him crashed to stop him drawing attention to Hendrick Freight; and now they were jumpy that it might not have been McKay after all. Crashing two out of a firm of eight would be a bit much, even by their standards. But letting Duffy land Casey might appeal to them. ‘You can sack me first thing tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I’ll be late. Give me a week’s notice in front of everyone.’
