‘Macrae,’ he said.
A woman’s voice said, ‘I meant what I said last night, George. You better have the cheque here by Monday or I’m going to start making problems for you.’
‘It’s a holiday weekend. There’s no way.’
‘Well, Tuesday then. If not you’ll have to bring it round.’
‘I’ll post it.’
‘You do that.’
‘Listen, we’ve got a new man on the desk. He doesn’t know you. He’s logging every call.’
‘So?’
‘Les is getting itchy.’
‘To hell with Les. Anyway, if you paid prompt I wouldn’t be calling. I’ve got much better things to do with my time than sit on the phone trying to get hold of you. Just get your act together, George.’
Chapter Twenty-One
Jack Benson watched the waiter fuss with the trolley and begin to lay out the breakfast on a table by the window. Breakfast in his room, a sleep, a long hot bath, a late lunch with a bottle of something really good. And then he’d be feeling tremendous. The heat and lassitude of early summer in Hong Kong was already being replaced by the vigorousness of northern Europe. Every time he returned he felt full of energy and zip for a while, but then he began to pine for warmth and sun and lotus eating.
‘Aren’t you having a holiday?’ Benson said to the waiter.
‘No, sir. They giving me Tuesday off.’ He was young and dark and by his accent Benson would have said he was Greek-Cypriot. They made the best waiters, he thought. Greek-Cypriots and Italians. The Brits were no bloody good at all. Britain just wasn’t a service nation.
‘I want my jacket and pants valeted. And I’ve got some things for the laundry. Can you take them?’
The waiter finished laying out the breakfast. ‘I send a chambermaid, sir.’
‘Not your department?’
‘No, sir.’
‘OK, thanks.’ He tipped him and after the waiter had closed the door Benson sat down facing the window. It looked out over Piccadilly and Green Park. The morning was clear but cold. There was hardly any traffic in Piccadilly and he could only see one old man in the park feeding the pigeons.
He lifted the covers of the dishes: crisp bacon, creamy scrambled eggs, two country pork sausages. Toast. Seville marmalade. Tea. He had stipulated Darjeeling. Now he poured a cup. It was strong, just how he liked it. He began to eat. There was nothing, he thought, like an English breakfast in a good English hotel.
There was a discreet knock on the door. Benson pulled the dressing gown round his body and called to come in. A middle-aged Pakistani woman stood in the doorway.
‘You have clothes for valeting?’ she said.
He gave her the jacket and pants and the shirts and underwear.
‘I must have them after lunch,’ he said.
‘All right.’
She took them from him and disappeared. Benson went back to his breakfast.
Greek-Cypriot waiters, Pakistani chambermaids, the receptionist had sounded Swiss and the Japs had taken over the car industry. What would be left of the Brits, he wondered, the next time he came back? If he came back. Came back from where? He wasn’t sure yet. But there was no hurry. He had enough money to sit quietly and think it out. Talk to Richard when he came back. No, that wouldn’t be a good idea. Not Richard. Just Maria. He smiled in anticipation.
When he finished his breakfast he opened the bag containing the money and placed the bundles on the bed. In the sunshine entering the windows from the park, they made a pretty sight. He began to count the notes.
Just then the phone rang. He paused as though caught in the act of something disgusting. He was about to throw the counterpane over the money when he thought: Don’t be bloody silly, no one can see down the telephone.
‘Hello?’ he said.
There was no answer at the other end.
‘Hello?’
Irritated, he replaced the receiver and went on counting the money. When he finished he placed the bag under the bed.
*
‘Johnnie! John-eee!’ Mrs Porteous stood at the back door of her house and shouted. She was a small white-haired woman in her seventies, seemingly made entirely of gristle and bone. She turned to Macrae and Silver and said, ‘He’s either gone to the snake place or he’s down there.’ She waved at the jungle that was the long and narrow back garden. ‘If he’s down there he can hear all right, only pretends he can’t. Doesn’t want to hear his mother. You best go down and see.’
They were in one of London’s northern fringe suburbs. The kind of place few people ever go to except the people who live there. The house was built next to a railway line and just then a train went thundering past.
‘You get used to ’em,’ Mrs Porteous said in a shrill voice. ‘When Johnnie was a boy he knew where every one went. Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Manchester. Just had to look at one and he knew.’
Macrae and Silver picked their way along a path bordered by cracked plastic buckets and weed-filled beds. At the end was an old pigeon loft. A muscular, track-suited bottom stuck out from one of the small doors.
‘Mr Porteous?’ Macrae said.
There was a violent movement and then the head and torso were drawn back and a man of about thirty-five, with a weather-beaten face and thinning, sandy hair stood before them.
In his hand he held a sky-blue mouse.
They showed him their warrant cards and Silver said, ‘What’s that?’
‘A mouse. Blue mouse.’ Then, with heavy irony, ‘It’s not illegal is it?’
‘You been dyeing it?’ Macrae said. ‘That’s cruelty to animals.’
John Porteous stroked the mouse and said, quickly, ‘No. No. Never. You must be joking. I’ve got blue . . .’ He turned back into the hutch and picked one up from the straw. ‘Chocolate. Black. These are show mice.’
‘Show mice?’ Silver said.
‘You don’t think they come like that in the wild do you? Oh, no. It takes years. Look,’ he pointe4 to the claws on the black mouse. ‘See those? Natural black. Some in the fancy paint them black ’cause they can’t breed them properly. Always get found out though.’
Silver looked at the three mice with fascination. ‘You mean there’re mice shows like dog shows?’
‘All over the country. I used to breed ferrets until one got into mother’s bed. Then bantams. But the cockerels kept the neighbours awake.’
‘Why not dogs?’ Macrae said.
‘You got to exercise dogs,’ Johnnie Porteous said. ‘And I get enough exercise during the day. I’m a physical education teacher. No, mice are sedentary little things. I don’t have to take them for runs.’
He dropped the mice back in their cages.
‘What do you do with mice that don’t make the grade?’ Silver said, looking at one that had come burrowing out of its straw, it was black and tan with an orange belly.
‘Take them down to the pet shop. They buy them for snake food. Especially the constrictors. But you haven’t come to talk about mice, have you?’
‘Terry Collins,’ Macrae said. ‘He’s one of your pupils.’
‘What’s Terry done now?’
‘Gone missing.’
‘Is the school still standing?’ He smiled at them, showing perfect white false teeth.
‘He’s an athlete, isn’t he?’ Silver said. ‘Anywhere he might have gone to? I mean, a track or a club. Something like that?’
‘Not that I know of. Anyway, he hasn’t done any running for months.’
‘Not since his grandfather died?’ Macrae said.
Porteous looked at him sharply.
‘You know about the old man, then?’
‘We’ve spoken to his mother,’ Silver said. ‘Tell us about the old man. He was an athlete too, according to his daughter.’
Porteous shook his head slowly. ‘That was just his story. Said he’d run for Jamaica. But I checked it out. He never did much. At one time he was a member of the British Railways Sports Club, but that was
years ago. But he was keen all right. Keen for Terry to go in for it. I think he thought it’d keep the boy out of trouble. And it did for a while.’
Silver said, ‘I can understand Terry being upset when his grandfather died, but if he was doing well, I mean at school, winning things, I’d have thought . . .’
‘You must be joking.’ He picked up a chocolate mouse and stroked it. ‘Just look at that.’ He held it on his palm. ‘See? Tail and body about the same length. And those petal-shaped ears and wide skull. Just like a piece of sculpture.’
‘He won a cup,’ Macrae said, impatiently. ‘We’ve seen a picture of it. He’s holding it up. The old man’s with him.’
‘Oh, that. His grandfather bought it. Gave it to me to give to Terry. I was supposed to say it had been given to him by the school for “endeavour”. I suppose that meant training hard.’
‘You mean, he never ran for the school?’
‘We don’t have athletics. We don’t have any competitive sports at all. No money to pay the teachers. Just gym – that’s me.’
‘Did he realise?’
‘What?’
‘That he was being conned.’
‘Why should he? He was as happy as a cricket when I gave it to him. So was the old man. It wasn’t an expensive cup you know, just electroplate.’
‘What about friends, other hobbies?’ Silver said.
‘I dunno.’
‘Anything outside school? What did he do in his spare time?’
‘Set fire to classrooms.’ He caught Macrae’s expression. ‘Sorry. I didn’t really mean that. To tell you the truth I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know much, do you?’ Macrae said.
‘Listen, our union says we don’t do anything except teach. No coaching, no after-hours hobbies. OK? We do what we get paid to do. You don’t like it, you take it up with them.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
Before Huntsman Collins, the amazing fourteen-year-old, became the Second Greatest Athlete in the World, which is to say before his grandfather came to stay on the Douglas Garden Estate, he used to sleep a great deal. Each day he wasn’t at school he would sleep until noon and then lie in a half wakeful trance until two or three in the afternoon when the children’s programmes would start on TV.
His mother, who was usually entertaining new friends, did not care what he did as long as he did it in his bedroom. Sometimes she would start entertaining them in the lounge and then go to the bedroom. These were usually old new friends. They often brought along a bottle of Bacardi or a few joints and Mrs Delilah Collins would have a little party in the lounge.
The new new friends she took straight to the bedroom.
Sometimes, when Terry was going out he would find several new friends waiting on the doorstep. Some of them were not much older than Terry himself and were in the gangs that roamed the Douglas Garden Estate.
These had formed along racial lines. The Greens and the Nazis were white; the Rastas and the Bikos were black.
Terry had tried to join a gang when he was ten but had been rejected by the former because he was too dark and by the latter because he was too light. After that he stayed in bed as long as he could because it was dangerous for a boy without affiliations to walk through the estate.
It was now mid-morning and Terry was in bed in the upstairs bedroom of the mews house in Bayswater. He was fully dressed in his track suit and trainers with a blanket over him. He was in his trancelike state, lying on his side and staring at the wall.
He did not want to get up because that would mean action and action would mean thought and Terry’s mind was blank.
What thoughts he had were of Gail. He thought of sitting with her in the partly demolished building, holding her cold hand, willing her to come back to him. But she had not come back. Like Garner Maitland, she had left him for ever.
Why?
They could have got a flat or a little house. That’s all Gail talked about. A place of their own. She had wanted a sofa where she could sit and watch TV and talk and drink tea.
His grandfather could have come and lived with them. Just the three of them in a little place somewhere nice, the country perhaps.
Now there was no one – except Daley. He was the Greatest Athlete in the World. Maybe if Terry could find him. Maybe if he could talk to him. Why shouldn’t they be friends?
He got out of bed. The morning was sunny and cold, the great city quiet on this Easter Friday. He looked from the bedroom window and saw that the mews was deserted. The man must have fixed the station wagon for it was no longer there. He could not ever remember London being this quiet.
He went downstairs and ate another tin of baked beans and one of pineapple slices. Then he had another stale cigarette. How long could he stay here? How long would it be before the owners came?
He decided to carry the TV set upstairs. It was only a portable so he managed well enough. But the flex wouldn’t reach any of the plugs from the little landing. He put it in the bedroom. He knew that as long as it was daylight no one outside would be able to see the blue-green light of the screen.
There was a church service on one channel, a choir singing on another, a nature programme on the third and a Bugs Bunny cartoon on the fourth. He watched the cartoon. Half his mind watched it but the other half still asked the question: What am I going to do?
And when there was no answer, that half of him became frightened. More frightened even than when the man came to look for him.
That had all been over so quickly he had hardly had time to be afraid.
‘Use your brains, mon,’ his grandfather had always said.
OK, so use them.
*
Maria was in Hampstead. The plan had been that she would kill the remaining hours before meeting Jack by going to a movie where she would not have to think. But it was only when she came into London she remembered that because it was Easter Friday the movies would begin late in the afternoon.
So that plan was up the spout, as Jack used to say, and she had a long time to fill and nothing to fill it with.
London had always meant Hampstead to her. It was still a village, the last remaining village in the megalopolis. She had driven up and parked near the Heath. It was a sunny day and families were out taking a brisk pre-lunch walk with their children and their friends and their dogs.
She envied them.
She walked down to the swimming ponds then up towards Highgate, and back along Spaniard’s Way. It had been a favourite walk of Richard’s and hers. She decided she would have lunch, then see if there was a gallery or exhibition open in the West End.
She cut through to Heath Street and looked for a restaurant. Most were closed. She had more or less decided not to go to Dahlman’s but it seemed the only one open.
It was a small Swiss restaurant where she and Richard had often eaten. Herr Dahlman made a fuss of her and told her how much he had missed them. He was fat and elderly with a plump baby face. She ordered a veal chop, rösti and a green salad. She was about to order a glass of white wine and then changed her mind and ordered half a carafe.
When she finished she went to Gun Place and looked at the house where she and Richard had lived. They had been happy there. She stopped in front of Christchurch, its great steeple glinting in the March sun. This was where they had been married.
She fought the memories unsuccessfully. The most insistent was the holiday. That was when she had realised what Jack really was.
They had taken a house in Brittany in August. It had been Jack’s idea. The way he had described it he had made it sound like Arcadia.
‘We’ll eat oysters and drink Sancerre and play golf and make love. How does that sound?’
It had sounded wonderful except she didn’t play golf. But he would take care of that, he said. He would ask an old friend, Richard Dunlap, who did play golf. And Richard would bring a girlfriend.
She had hoped it might just have been the two of them but when he saw the look in her eyes h
e said, ‘Don’t worry, liebchen, we’ll have lots of time to ourselves.’
Jack was to organise the villa. He left it late and had to accept what was left. It wasn’t much. It lay between St Malo and Cancale near the Pointe du Grouin. It was high on the peninsula and was supposed to have fantastic views of the sea. In fact, they hardly saw the sea for the fog and the rain, and the wind almost flattened them when they stepped out of doors.
The house was too small, the bedrooms alongside each other and the walls thin. But even that might have been acceptable if the weather had not been so bad and the women had been able to get out.
Richard and Jack went to Dinard and played golf most days, despite the weather, and Maria was left with Birgit.
She had never met anyone who irritated her more. Birgit made it quite plain that she had favoured going to Spain. She said Swedes liked the sun. This place was like some remote peninsula on Heligoland and thanks very much but she could do without it. She got up late, well after the men had gone out, cooked herself large breakfasts which she did not clear away, and then set about the task of painting her toenails or washing her hair. Her conversation was limited to clothes and men.
But she was very beautiful, a grey-blonde with a skin like milk and light blue eyes. They had taken the villa for three weeks, but by the end of the first week Jack was bored by golf and fed up with the weather and the house and the general lack of excitement. He wanted to gamble. He wanted night clubs and bars. Birgit wanted water skiing, hot sun and topless beaches. The talk was of moving south. St Tropez was mentioned. So was Nice and Biarritz.
But Richard was firm. They had taken the villa and there would be little chance of finding anything else at this time. Why not make the best of it?
That was the first time Maria really noticed Richard. Jack and Richard had a kidding relationship. Out of this banter Jack emerged as the more amusing and interesting personality and it was only later that Maria realised this had happened because he was always trying to put Richard down.
Richard was tall and slender with a thin face that in repose wore a worried frown. But when he was amused his slow smile would wipe the worry from his face and he would display a highly developed sense of humour. The worry, Maria discovered, was because his father was seriously ill and was, at that time, undergoing tests in London.
Dirty Weekend (Macrae and Silver Book 1) Page 16
