A frantic shuffling snapped his eyes open. What the hell was that? As he strained to see, a number of low muzzy shapes scrabbled away across the grass on the far side of the solitary lamp which had to be on a timer as it died there and then. The shapes reached the edge of the knoll and were immediately lost to sight in the rough. Then there was only silence.
Moe had counted two or three, or was it four before they vanished? “Oh come on!” he exclaimed out loud. “Just who invited you lot?” That cheeky badger was bringing company now.
CHAPTER TEN
The picturesque port of Lamplight tumbled waywardly down the hills to its small harbour, like a drunk making for a pub, haphazard in progress but sure of aim.
It had been a fishing port since the crusades, famous as the home of the world famous hymn Lord Shine A Light, and for its fierce resistance in modern times to the encroaching European laws that threatened the destruction of its fishing fleet and centuries old way of life. The one certain way of getting abused – or worse – in Lamplight was to enter one of its pubs and hold forth on the excellence of the new fishing policy. But on the outwardly calm surface, the place carried on as it had always done, turning fishing and tourism to making as much profit as possible.
Moe tried to recall the last visit he had made to Lamplight but gave up. He knew that it had to be well before his mother had died. And that had been more than five years ago.
The old town dozed in a mild November autumnal haze as he drove in. The road from Baytown had been pleasantly free from traffic and he had reached the edge of the port almost before he was ready. Where to park became his first priority.
Flicking a mental coin, he took the turning to High Town, the newer section of Lamplight. It had grown substantially during the past decade, invading what had once been field and farmland in a constant struggle to meet the demands of housing for increasing numbers of incomers.
Moe didn’t mind walking back into the Old Town, the real Lamplight as he saw it. When Maurice and Hilda Moe wanted a day out, they used to go no further than Lamplight. They adored its higgledy-piggledy streets and the flights of narrow steep steps that all seemed to meet down at the harbourside. He had gone with them occasionally, and they had nearly always walked the legs off him in their excitement at being back in their favourite spot. And every trip he had made with them had revealed a part of the port he hadn’t known before.
So it had delighted him when only a few hours previously Marie had confided how much she loved Lamplight and wanted to live there more than anywhere. And how she would when she could afford it. Her words were in his mind when, amazingly refreshed after only a few hours sleep, Moe had set out on a pilgrimage of his own. But not quite for himself alone.
Driving back out of Badger’s Bay, he had seen Benny Fitts hunched over a set of books, brow knitted in concentration, with Patsy Bottoms who was handing him a mug of something steaming hot in a split-second passing cameo. Thirty yards on, Randy Hands, clad in frayed denim shorts and torn T-shirt in sturdy defiance of the time of year, flagged him down.
“Have you seen Mr Fitts? What do you reckon – poison or pills? It can only be a matter of time.”
Moe fought to keep a straight face. Randy was merciless. “Really, Randy, you are something else!”
“I know, but I’ll settle for really randy.” He leaned in Moe’s open window. “Fancy company? I’m nearly finished.” Randy reached down and adjusted an ample crotch. Utterly incorrigible. But Moe found himself grinning anyway as he shook his head and accelerated away towards the waiting coast road and Lamplight.
Moe felt the years slip away as he walked towards St Barnabas-on-the-Hill. For it was at St Barnabas that his parents had been married and the church had remained the main reason for their love affair with Lamplight. For him, as for them, happy memories were worth returning to.
The old church overlooked Old Town like a sentinel of the sea, a haven for all those whose faith had been tried, perhaps on the great waters themselves. A few minutes later, Moe stood inside and faced the altar, imagining Maurice and Hilda Moe taking their vows together all those years before. And he thought of them struggling up to the church in later years, each occasion an act of faith in itself.
There was a sense of profound peace and tranquillity that seemed to fill every corner of an interior embellished with fine carved pews and numerous stained glass windows, some depicting scenes from a seaman’s hazardous life watched over by guardian angels under Christ Himself. The words of the beautiful old hymn came back to Moe and he found himself singing the first verse quietly to himself.
Lord shine a light, O shine a light,
And let it shine on me.
Lord shine a light, a wondrous light,
Through all eternity.
And as he sang the words, he realised with a jolt that the images of his parents at the altar had been replaced by those of himself and Marie. His confusion immediately gave way to an elation that took comfort from the knowledge that Maurice and Hilda Moe wouldn’t have minded one bit. He was still mouthing the words of the hymn as he took the picture of Marie and himself out of the church and away down towards the sea.
The harbourside area of Lamplight still clung gamely to its old appeal. The shops were doing their best to look attractive, with bright bunting doing its off-season best to bring some colour to the scene. But Moe couldn’t help noticing the ‘To Let’ notices in empty windows, the vacant premises like unsightly gaps in a row of smiling teeth. The small concern, that gave character and life to a community, always seemed to go first.
One shop that wasn’t empty – far from it – drew Moe like a virginal youth towards a strip joint, full of trepidation but driven by a need to know more. The door of FONE ZONE swung back under Moe’s hand to admit its umpteenth nervous customer that day.
The girl behind the counter radiated kindness and consideration, instinctively grasping that Moe was inept in most things electronic. He couldn’t even master his video recorder and preferred to forget how many times he had set it to record, only to witness it reproduce the wrong programme entirely on playback. He had fared marginally better with his CD player and could actually play a disc without embarrassment. In his case, the child was very definitely the father of the man. But the charming assistant had taken him by his metaphorical hand and patiently led him through the intricacies of his newly purchased SPEND AS YOU SEND mobile phone until he believed he could handle it well enough to actually make and receive calls. The rest could wait.
“You’ll soon get the hang of it.” She had smiled brightly for his benefit as she slipped the boxed box of tricks and its receipt into a shiny red carrier bag resplendent with the FONE ZONE motif. “Most people are a bit worried at first but soon realise they are SO simple to use.” She handed him the carrier bag and returned his credit card. “Good luck.”
Moe wanted to believe every word she said and felt pathetically grateful, both to her and for the chance to leave the shop and the brain-sapping jargon. It might as well have been Mandarin for all he knew.
A group of seagulls, most of which reminded him of a certain Chief Superintendent at East End Central, gave him a beady-eyed, supervisory sort of stare that mocked his hamfisted attempts to master a mobile phone that beeped, trilled, and flashed, in an infuriatingly obscure manner with every jab of his frustrated finger. The gulls shrieked their derision as he fumbled to failure. He seized the instruction manual and waved it angrily in their direction.
“Why don’t you foxtrot oscar?!” he growled, shaking the phone aloft in added emphasis. They at least got his message and with a languid flap of their wings, rose as one and took to the salt spiced sky above the harbour, squawking raucous raspberries as they went.
Moe watched them go. Good riddance! His gaze dropped and wandered down the line of moored craft bobbing on the greasy, green water, their rubber-tyred sides squealing and yowling with each surge of the tide. Nets hung out to dry laced their decks like jumbo-sized curtains. Men in
caps and stained old jerseys and thigh-waders came and went, stopping to exchange a word, or a joke judging by the snort of ribald laughter. To Moe, it was like a busy city street, but with boats instead of cars, and klaxons instead of horns. But the birds were just as cheeky.
The bench on which he sat provided a panoramic view of the inner harbour and the shops, pubs and cafes that lined the landward side opposite. He was relishing the prospect of maybe giving Chief Inspector Hickox a call at work, assuming that he could find out how, when he spotted the manager of Badger’s Bay Holiday Park weaving his unexpected way in and out of dawdling, sight-seeing pedestrians on the shop side of the road.
Benny Fitts had his eyes fixed firmly on a small cafe called The Hungry Prawn and wasn’t paying attention to anything else, and that included the side of the road where Moe sat watching. Benny went into the cafe just as another familiar figure startled Moe by emerging from a cabin cruiser some way along from his bench and lurching over the road towards the cafe, scowling, with two finger emphasis, at any motorist who tooted impatiently.
The shaven-headed hulk from the dustbucket Capri was consistent, Moe had to give him that much. And that applied to the boat he’d just left which was almost as scruffy and ramshackle as his car. And like Benny Fitts, he was too busy homing in on The Hungry Prawn to have seen Moe. Once there, he shouldered his ill-mannered way past protesting passers-by and went in.
All this caused Moe temporarily to forget his new purchase. Curiosity may have disposed of a cat or two but it was the lifeblood of any copper. Turning up his collar and holding his phone close to his face in ‘let’s pretend’ mode, he took a roundabout route so that he could wander past the window of the cafe in company with a large group of boisterous scousers and use them as cover to look in undetected.
With his phone on the window side, Moe sidled by, snatching a peep as he went. Time enough to see Benny and the hulk at a table, talking heatedly. Moe wasn’t quite sure why he was doing what he was doing since it wasn’t his patch and he had enough on his plate as it was, but Benny intrigued him. And he was smugly satisfied that his putting two and two together had turned up four. But what four amounted to, Moe had no idea. But what the heck! It felt good to keep in practice.
Moe made his way back to his observation point and contented himself by fiddling with his phone again. To his delight, things started going right almost at once. The diversion had done something to help, but what he wasn’t sure! In no time at all, Hickox’s voice came on, loud and clear.
“Operations – Chief Inspector Hickox.” A-ha! This was more like it.
“Hello sir. It’s Arthur Moe – calling in from Baytown.”
“The very man! Ready to return to work yet?”
A seagull, swooping low like a Lancaster bomber, landed a near miss on the ground between Moe’s shoes, splattering the polished uppers.
“Foxtrot oscar, you bastard!”
There was a sharp intake of breath in Moe’s ear.
“Now look, Arthur. I know you’ve been under a lot of strain but …”
“Sorry sir, I wasn’t talking to you. I was addressing a low-flying seagull doing the dirty.”
“Where on earth are you?”
“Bet you can’t guess.” But before Hickox could even begin trying, Moe told him, adding embellishments of his own about the fresh air and glorious scenery to rub it in. Hickox blew a raspberry of his own.
“You’ve only got a seagull dropping on you. I’ve got a Chief Superintendent dumping on me!”
“I need to stay on a bit … use what’s left of my annual leave quota. Can you approve it for me?” Hickox groaned two hundred miles away.
“Do you realise how short of sergeants I am? I’m having to supply aid bloody well every day for demonstrations and marches and damned pop stars opening stores up west. Have you no pity?” But Moe didn’t get the chance to answer before Hickox followed up - just as Moe knew he would.
“OK Arthur, c’mon … let’s have it.”
“I’m thinking seriously about the future … where my life is heading.” There was an accommodating silence at the other end. Moe pressed on.
“Can we keep this short? Daytime use costs the earth on this thing.”
“I won’t risk wasting more time by asking what thing? Hang on.”
The chief inspector’s handset banged down. Moe was hanging on, counting the passing seconds, when he saw Benny Fitts emerge from the cafe and accelerate back the way he had come. No sooner had he gone than his unsavoury table companion appeared and crossed the road to his boat.
Moe had deftly adjusted the phone over his right ear and was watching the seafaring sociopath drop below deck when Hickox came back at him.
“Are you there, Arthur? I suppose I can make do without you for a while longer if I must. You’ve got a week’s annual leave owing, not counting the four days you had booked for Christmas. I’ll show the week following on from your compassionate allocation which, I will remind you, runs out shortly.”
“You’re a gent, sir. I’ll remember you in my will.”
“Talking of being remembered, you’ll be pleased to know that the chief superintendent has been thinking about you.”
“And I think of him … every time I see one of those bloody gulls, I think of him.” At that, Hickox wheezed down the line in merriment. “Are you taking the piss, Arthur?”
“Who, sir? Me, sir? No sir. I’m an ironist. I have that on the best authority … from Mr Cholmondely himself.”
“Sounds vile, whatever it means. Oh – before I go, that wouldn’t be a mobile phone you’re using, would it?”
“Only when I get up and move around.”
“This has to be an event! Are you going to give me the number?” Moe made loud static noises and tapped the plastic casing with his fingers. “Sorry … can’t … properly. I think … battery … fading. Bye.”
Hickox shouted “I SAID …” Moe pressed the off button. It worked.
Lampwick Terrace graced the brow of Old Town like a bejewelled tiara, its precious stones a semi-circle of delightful small Georgian town houses that clung to the hill in pretty profusion. Moe could see just why Marie was so besotted. He wandered along the far kerb overlooking a precipitous drop towards the distant harbour. The vista was breathtaking, probably unequalled anywhere in Lamplight. Occasionally, he tried to guess Marie’s own choice of future home. It was fun but futile in the final analysis. How on earth would she be able to afford it on what she earned? But, if they pooled their resources…? Moe found that new game enchanting.
An elderly man was sweeping up outside one quaint cottage style property. This, surely, would be Marie’s choice; it was certainly his. With a thrill of excitement, Moe saw the For Sale sign appear behind the man as he bent down to brush a pile of leaves into a plastic bag. To Moe, it was more than just an agent’s sign, it was a portent!
“Morning.” The old man courteously raised a tattered trilby. Moe, who wore no hat, bobbed his head in return, before nodding towards the property.
“Charming. I often wonder how people come to sell someone else’s idea of paradise.”
The other man chuckled. “All sorts of reasons usually. Family, work, financial, health. In our case, it’s the first and the last. Simple as that … if you see what I mean?”
“I suppose so. But it still must be hard”. Moe admired the man’s home. Marie would have been inside in a flash, house agent or no house agent. The old man looked him up and down.
“Are you in the market then?” The tone was neutral, matter of fact, but Moe suspected a quiet urgency behind the prompt response. As for himself, he was amazed that he didn’t reject the enquiry out of hand.
“It’s certainly very attractive. But as you say, various things need to be considered – buying as well as selling.”
“True enough.” The man went back to his sweeping. End of story, Moe thought and wandered on, examining but not enamoured of, the remaining homes in the terrace. The cottage stay
ed in his mind and on his return the old man was still there vigorously sweeping. Moe knew that the rest of the property would be equally well cared for. And there was another aspect of Lampwick Terrace that was immensely appealing: no yellow lines.
Moe had taken his winnings on Gone to Glory and tipped the girl behind the counter a wink and a ten pound note. She had radiated gratitude in return whilst Caesar Legge lurked in the background, scowling and wincing in perfect time with every ten pound note that was counted out for Moe’s benefit. Serve him right for being such a miserable so and so, Moe thought, bidding the unhappy bookie a gratuitously cheerful goodbye.
Shortly after, Moe had cast aside thoughts of money at his parent’s grave. His flowers their flowers – had all gone. Cursing the guilty would have come easily but as usual he held back out of respect, his inner feelings far ranging and far from charitable. At least he could put some of his winnings to good use by replacing what had been taken.
“Garn, I see.” A grimacing Carter had crept up on him unnoticed. “Can’t say oim zurprised. Young ’ooligans prob’ly. Taking the piss and anythin’ else they can get their ’ands on.” He leaned unnecessarily close to Moe, squinting speculatively at him as if seeking a reaction.
“It were just the same in my dad’s day. Tormented, he was. I didn’t dare think what he’d ’ave done if he’d got his ’ands on any of ’em.”
Moe had some idea. It was tempting to cut Carter dead but he didn’t want to run the risk of the grave being desecrated by the likes of him. He was capable of that and worse. With perfect timing, Carter continued.
“Don’t stand no nonsense meself. Anyone messing around here regrets it if I get hold of ’em.” Carter cracked his dirty knuckles ominously.
November Uniform or the Wagers of Sin Page 9
