“No, the foreign gentleman in number twelve. The top floor.”
“When did he arrive?”
“About ten days ago.”
“With the parrot?”
“No, he brought that in one day last weekend. In a box. He says it’s only temporary.”
“Is he up there now?”
She checked the board where the keys were hung. “He should be. If you want, I can ring up.”
I said that on second thoughts I’d call back later. Simply going upstairs and knocking on the door would not be a wise course of action.
She didn’t see me double around the side of the house to the back. These old buildings converted into hotels often have fire-escapes and this was no exception. It was the most basic sort, a vertical iron ladder fixed to the brickwork, with access to the large casement windows on each of the three upper floors. With luck, I wouldn’t be visible to anyone inside.
This was a chance I had to take. I climbed about fifty rungs to the top floor. The window was a hinged one and it was open. Easy to open wider. There were extra rungs directly under it. All I needed to do was transfer sideways, put my leg over the sill and let myself in.
First, I listened for sounds of movement from the room. I could hear nothing. I’m not much of an acrobat, but I succeeded in getting my legs through the window and scrambling into the room.
A voice I knew said, “Hello, squire.”
Roger!
For me, that reunion was on a par with H. M. Stanley meeting Dr Livingstone.
Roger was perched on the footboard of a double bed. He recognized me. He lifted his claw—a signal that he wanted to transfer to my arm and so to my shoulder. Elated, I took a step towards him.
There was a sound behind me. I was not conscious of anything else, except a crushing blow to the back of my head.
I don’t know how long I was out. When the world started up again for me, I was lying on the bed with my hands tied behind me. The foreign ‘gentleman’ had his thumb jammed into my eye, forcing it open. He spoke some words I didn’t recognize.
My head ached. My vision was blurred, but clearing. He looked evil. His shoulders were huge.
I said, “I don’t want trouble. I just want my parrot back.”
He said with a strong Spanish inflexion, “You own this parrot?”
I told him who I was.
He spoke again. “This parrot Roger, he is stupid. He tell me nothing. Nothing.”
I said, “He’s just a parrot. What do you expect?”
“You ask what I expect. I expect you have talked to this parrot, yes? He tell you where diamonds are kept.”
I said, “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
He raised his arm and beat me across the face with the back of his hand. My lip split.
He shouted, “Your uncle had many diamonds, yes? Why he send you this parrot when he die?”
I said, “Just who are you?”
He grabbed my hair and forced my head back. “Now you are here, you will talk to Roger. Then he tell you some number, some number of box inside bank.”
Box inside bank: I was beginning to understand. “A safe deposit number?”
“Si.”
“He doesn’t speak numbers.”
“Do it. Speak numbers now.” Still grasping my hair, he hauled me off the pillow and towards the foot of the bed where Roger was still perched, looking uneasy, swaying slightly, just as he had when I’d first seen him at Bird & Board.
Feeling incredibly stupid and helpless, I started chanting numbers to my parrot. “One. Two. Three. Four.”
Roger watched me in a stupefied silence.
“Five. Six. Seven.”
“This no good,” said the man. “Try three, four numbers together.”
I said, “One two three. One two four.” My lip had swollen. I could feel warm blood trickling down my chin.
Roger looked away.
“One two five.”
I continued speaking sets of numbers, trying to think how this would end.
I said, “Roger is nervous. You’ve made him nervous. They don’t speak when they’re nervous.”
This seemed to make some impression. Roger played his part by drawing his wings tight to his body and making a groaning sound deep in his chest. The man produced a flick-knife and cut whatever it was that pinioned my wrists. I sat on the edge of the bed and wiped some blood away from my face. I needed to think. He was far too big to take on.
He said, “Now you try again.”
I said, “I’d like to be clear what this is all about. You want a safe deposit number, and you think the parrot will speak it, right?”
He pondered how much to tell me. Then he said, “George, he had diamonds. Isabella, his woman, she search the villa. No diamonds.”
“You were sent by Isabella?”
“Si. She think maybe there is one deposit box in his bank in Màlaga. No name. Only number, comprende?”
“Yes.”
“Isabella say George he was crafty old gringo. He teach the parrot this number and send it to you.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I hardly knew him at all.”
This didn’t impress my captor. “Stupid old man, he do this to cheat Isabella.”
“You’re Isabella’s friend?”
“Brother.”
I doubted if that was true. I said, “I’ve had Roger for almost a year now. He’s never spoken numbers to me. Basically, all he can say is ‘Hello’.”
Isabella’s “brother” struck me across the face a second time.
Roger screamed and spread his wings. He took a swipe at Roger and just avoided being pecked.
In extreme situations, the brain works faster. I said, “If you’ll listen, I have a suggestion. You see the little silver ring attached to his leg? There’s something written on it. Very small. I don’t know if it’s a number. We can look if you like.”
“The ring! Si!” His face lit up. He reached towards Roger, who dipped forward and tried to peck his hand. There was no chance of Roger letting him examine that ring.
He said, “You hold him.”
I said, “He’s nervous.”
He said, “You want me to kill you and the parrot?”
I spoke some encouraging words to Roger and held my wrist close to him. If ever I needed my parrot’s co-operation it was now. After some understandable hesitation, he put out a claw and transferred to my wrist. Continuing to speak to Roger as calmly as I was able, I fingered the ring with my free hand.
I told the man, “I need more light. I can’t read this.”
He said, “You come to the window.”
I stroked Roger’s back and stood up. The man led me towards the light. He said, “No tricks. You show this number to me. You hold the parrot and show me.”
Roger was amazingly compliant. He let me finger the ring again. In the better light, I gazed earnestly at the completely blank ring and started inventing numbers. “It looks to me like a three, a five, a nine. Is that a nine, would you say?”
The Spaniard moved to the only position convenient for viewing the ring. He didn’t dare come within range of that vicious black beak. He had his back to the open casement window through which I’d climbed.
It was my opportunity. I was poised to give him an almighty push, but Roger forestalled me. He screeched, opened his wings and reared at the man—who rocked back, lost his balance and pitched backwards out of the window. It was a long drop, three floors to a concrete yard. I didn’t look out to see the result.
I don’t believe Roger understood the consequence of his action. My theory is that he thought he was being taken to the open window. In the year I had owned him—as I discovered later—his wing feathers had grown and he was perfectly capable of flying. He wanted to test those wings. For him, it was the best escape route. When the manblocked his exit, he acted.
I’m not proud of my actions after that, but I ought to set them on record. I grabbed my parrot
and pushed him into his travelling-box, which was just inside the door. I carried the box downstairs and drove off without speaking to anyone.
The inquest on the Spanish guest at the Marwood Hotel resulted in an open verdict. Identification was impossible, because he was found to be using a false passport. It was assumed by most people that this was a sad case of suicide.
Within a week, I, too, changed my identity. I moved away from England, sacrificing my TV career for an early retirement to the tropics. For obvious reasons I am not disclosing the name of this island paradise. The climate is a lot better than I’m used to and it suits Roger well. I have a fine stone house, a large swimming pool, servants and a speedboat.
Maybe you are wondering where I got the funds. Roger discovered the seven large uncut diamonds. They were hidden in the hollow wooden perch fixed in the travelling-box he so disliked. He’d pecked through the wood before I got him home from the Marwood Hotel.
So Isabella’s “brother” had them in his possession for a short time, and never knew it. Sorry, Isabella—I’m certain they were meant for me.
They were my legacy from Uncle George. Along with Roger, who is sitting on my shoulder as I write these words.
He’s got life running as he wants it, I think.
PASSION KILLERS
The doorbell chimed.
In the kitchen, Gloria looked at the clock. She had to be out of the house by half-past, or she’d certainly be late for choir practice. The tea was too hot, so she added some extra milk to cool it, took a sip and found it didn’t taste like tea any more.
Her mother was letting a few seconds pass before going to the door. She wouldn’t want it known that she’d been behind the net curtain in the front room for the past ten minutes.
Presently Gloria heard the caller being greeted in a refined accent her mother never used normally. “Is it actually raining outside? I must tell my daughter. She’s about to go to choir practice. She’s a soloist with the Surrey Orpheus, you know. Gloria, my dear,” the message came, still impeccably spoken, like a headmistress in school assembly, “it appears to be raining.”
“I know.”
Tonight the choir were rehearsing the Cathedral Christmas Concert. “Sheep May Safely Graze” was open on the kitchen table.
Nobody seemed to mind that the piece happened to be secular, from the Hunting Cantata; it was so often played in church. Gloria, who would be singing the part of Diana, supported the League Against Cruel Sports really and hoped people wouldn’t say she was abandoning her principles just to get out of the chorus. She got up and tipped the tea down the sink, ran some water over the cup and saucer and reached automatically for the tea-cloth, but the tea-cloth didn’t come to hand. Instead, of all things, she found that she was about to dry the cup on her mother’s thermal knickers. They had been through the washing machine the day before and Mother must have hung them to dry on the towel rail, long-legged things in a hideous shade of pink described in the mail-order catalogue as peach-coloured. Even her mother laughingly called them her passion killers. Gloria clicked her tongue in annoyance and tossed them over the folding clothes-rack where they should have been.
The visitor was Mr Hibbert, the dapper man from number 31. For the last two Fridays he had called on Gloria’s mother, Mrs Palmer, at precisely this time, just as Gloria was leaving for choir. The pretext for the visits wasn’t mentioned, and Gloria hadn’t asked. Her mother was only forty-one and divorced. She was entitled to invite a male friend to the house if she wished. It wasn’t as if she was getting up to anything shameful. No doubt Mr Hibbert had a perfectly proper reason for calling. True, Mother had put on her slinky black dress and sprayed herself with Tabu, but it was just to make herself presentable. It couldn’t mean anything else. Mr Hibbert had a wife and lived just four doors up the street.
At seventeen, Gloria viewed her mother’s social life with detachment. Sometimes she felt the more mature of the two of them.
Gloria worked in a small draper’s shop in the High Street that had somehow survived the competition from department stores and mail order catalogues. It stocked a tasteful range of fabrics, haberdashery and wools. There were foundation garments discreetly folded away in wooden drawers under the glass counter. Nobody under forty ever went in there. Since leaving school Gloria hadn’t kept up with her so-called friends, who had always seemed far too juvenile, obsessed with pop-singers and boyfriends. Even though she was the youngest in the choir by some years, the others talked of her with approval as old-fashioned. The way she plaited her fine, dark hair and pinned it into the shape of a lyre at the back of her head strengthened the perception.
In the hall, she put on her black fitted coat and checked her hair in the mirror. She called out, “I’m off, then. Bye.”
From behind the closed door of the front room, her mother called, “Bye, darling.” It was a pity she chose to add something else, a terrible pity as it turned out, but she did. First she called out, “Gloria.”
“Yes?”
“If you’re not in bed by midnight, you’d better come home.”
The remark was meant to be funny and Mr Hibbert showed that he thought it was—or that he ought to react as if it was—by laughing out loud. Then her mother laughed too.
Gloria was deeply shocked. She gasped and shut her eyes. There was a swishing sound in her ears. The humiliation was unendurable. That her own mother should say such a thing in front of a man—a neighbour—was a betrayal.
And the way they had laughed together meant that Gloria must have been mistaken about them. Mr Hibbert’s visit wasn’t the innocent event she had taken it to be. It couldn’t be. Decent people didn’t laugh at smutty humour. By mocking her, they were affirming their own promiscuity—or at the very least their desire to be promiscuous.
She was disgusted.
To burst into the room and protest would only aggravate the injury. They’d tell her she had no sense of humour. They’d encourage each other to say worse things about her.
She turned towards the mirror again, as if the sight of the outrage on her own features would confirm the injustice of the offence. In the whole of her life she had never given her mother cause to doubt her moral conduct. She’d avoided drugs and smoking and she’d never allowed a boy to take the liberties most other girls yielded blithely.
Keeping her standards high had not been easy. She was as prone to temptation as anyone else. She’d had to be strong-willed—and put up with a fair amount of derision from so-called friends who had been less resolute when temptation beckoned. Having to suffer taunts from her own mother was too much.
Mind, she knew that her mother had a streak of irresponsibility. Ninety-nine per cent of the time Mrs Tina Palmer behaved as a mother should. But Gloria could never depend on her. A certain look came over Mother at these times, as if she’d just tossed back a couple of gins (in fact, she didn’t drink). Dimples would appear at the ends of her mouth, her eyes would twinkle, and then she was liable to do anything. Anything. Once, at a school speech day, seated in a privileged place in the front row because Gloria was getting a good conduct prize, Mrs Palmer had winked at Mr Shrubb, the PE teacher, who was up on the stage with all the staff. Most of the teachers had noticed and next day it was mentioned or hinted at in just about every lesson. Another time, bored in a supermarket queue, Mrs Palmer had started juggling with oranges and had swiftly drawn a large crowd.
Gloria wasn’t among them. Too embarrassed to watch the display, she’d slipped out through an empty checkout. At this moment she wasn’t prepared to accept what had been said as yet another example of Mother being skittish again. She was deeply humiliated and ablaze with anger. Her evening was ruined. She was in no frame of mind now to go to choir practice. How could anyone do justice to Bach feeling as she did? She opened the chest in the hall and dropped her music case into it.
She’d go out anyway. Anywhere. She couldn’t bear to remain under the same roof while her feckless mother entertained her fancy-man in the fr
ont room.
Her hand was on the door in the act of opening it when she noticed Mr Hibbert’s coat hanging on the antique hallstand that was Mother’s pride and joy. It was one of those elegant navy blue coats with black velvet facing on the collar. Gloria had once thought men who wore such coats were the acme of smartness. Now she was willing to believe that they were all playboys. She was tempted to spit on it, or pull off one of the buttons. Then a far more engaging idea crept into her mind, a wicked, horrid, but deliciously appropriate means of revenge.
She would give Mr Hibbert something to take home, an unexpected souvenir—the passion-killers, those unbecoming thermal knickers of her mother’s. At some point Mr Hibbert would become conscious of something unfamiliar in his overcoat pocket and take it out. His immediate reaction on discovering such a revolting garment could only be guessed at, but he would surely think back and work out with distaste who the passion killers belonged to and try to interpret the message they were meant to convey, just as her mother would at first be mystified at mislaying her thermals and then mortified by the only possible conclusion—that her new friend Mr Hibbert was a secret collector of women’s underwear.
Blushing or glowing, she was not sure which, Gloria tiptoed to the kitchen and lifted the thermals off the rack, this time actually grinning at their unspeakable shape and colour. She folded them neatly so as not to make too obvious a lump. Then she went back to the hall and slipped them into the left pocket of Mr Hibbert’s beautiful coat: the left because the right already contained his leather gloves. She pushed them well down. In doing so, her fingertips came into contact with a set of keys. His car keys.
Now an even better idea dawned on Gloria.
How much more suggestive if the knickers were to turn up in Mr Hibbert’s car, say in the glove compartment on the passenger side, where his wife would very likely discover them for herself. The prospect was delicious: Mrs Hibbert reaching in for a sweet, or something with which to dust the window, and pulling out another woman’s drawers. Her wayward husband would really have some explaining to do.
It wouldn’t be difficult. There were no garages in King George Avenue. The cars were parked in the street, and Mr Hibbert’s was the only silver BMW.
Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose Page 13
