September Song

by Colin Murray

  ‘A word with young Ricky,’ I said. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘Ricky ain’t here.’

  ‘Oh, right. Do you know where he is?’ I said.

  ‘Ricky don’t live here. I told him he couldn’t bring her here. Why would he bring her here? Anyway, I was listening to the wireless. I like Billy Cotton.’ He looked up at the sky and smiled. ‘Wakey, waaakeeeey,’ he said very quietly. He started to hum something that might have been ‘Somebody Stole My Gal’.

  ‘Who was that, Mr Mountjoy? Who did Ricky bring here?’ I said.

  ‘Her, of course. The girl.’ He ran his hand over the delicate silver stubble on his chin. ‘Nothing but trouble, girls.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘So, where is he? Ricky, I mean.’

  ‘The yard, I expect. They went to the yard. I told him he couldn’t bring her here. Not now. It’s too late.’

  ‘How long ago was that?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know. Half an hour?’

  ‘How many of them went to the yard?’ I said.

  He looked at me blankly again. ‘I don’t know. Dave, young Ricky, George. All of them. I’m off.’ And, still muttering, he shut the door on me. I heard him walking back along the hall, his carpet slippers slapping against the wooden floor.

  I stood on the top step and looked back at the maroon Ford. There still wasn’t anyone around, but a few cars were chugging towards it from one direction, and a bus was bustling up behind it.

  I couldn’t be completely sure – he seemed more than a bit confused – but I guessed that the old boy had just confirmed that Ricky had picked up Viv Laurence. Again, I couldn’t be sure, but I hoped he was right about there only being three of them at the yard.

  I shivered. It was a bit chilly on the steps, and I ran down them and back to the car, where Nelson and Clive were sharing another fragrant cigarette. I slid into the rear seat and enjoyed the warm fug for a few seconds before telling Clive where to go.

  The name Temple Mills goes way back to when one of the Henrys (the second, I think) had his steward, who was probably called William, give some land next to the River Lea to the Knights Templar sometime back in the twelfth century, and they, according to Mrs Wilson, put a water mill on it. It’s changed a bit since those days – it even boasted a gunpowder factory at one time that – again according to Mrs Wilson, who knew all about these things – blew up, killing a French Huguenot, which may just be why that lodged in my mind. I don’t suppose the knights would recognize the place now, with the acres of marshalling yards and engine sheds, and, of course, the Mountjoys’ big scrap-metal business.

  I instructed Clive to head off to Leyton High Road and turn left towards Stratford. The Ford backfired colossally and then lurched out into the middle of the road. Fortunately, nothing was coming. Another enormous backfire had Clive declaring that the car had the bottom burps. He and Nelson laughed uproariously, and then we roared off.

  I remembered something Jerry had once sung when in his cups. It was from a pirate show he’d been in at school apparently. He’d played one of the pirates. A coveted role, unlike that of Mabel, he said, which one of the prettier first-formers had been forced to take.

  ‘In silence dread, our cautious way we feel,’ were a couple of the lines I recalled. No doubt others would spring to mind as we not so covertly approached Temple Mills Lane.

  Funnily enough, I was nearly as relaxed as my two companions. For some reason, I wasn’t too bothered about the confrontation to come. Dave Mountjoy didn’t figure in my calculations as a problem. Ricky was a vicious little sod, and he had a razor, but I knew I could take him. George was the unknown quantity. He was certainly a big man, but I had him down as slow.

  I just hoped there weren’t any others there, but there was a fair chance there were. Dave’s brother for a start.

  I also hoped that they hadn’t done anything to Viv Laurence. I assumed that Ricky thought she knew where his stuff was. I also assumed that she didn’t know and he wouldn’t believe her. And I suspected that, as he couldn’t get at Lee, he might take out his spite on her.

  I briefly wondered again why I was involving myself in this, but it was a bit late for such thoughts. In for a penny, in for a pound, and all that. I couldn’t help but think that I’d committed myself the first time I met her.

  We swept around a corner; the rear of the car fishtailed as it tried to catch up with the front, and I bounced around on the big back seat, the sawn-off stuffed down my trousers banging painfully against my hip and thigh. A vague memory of Sunday school and someone or another smiting someone else mightily, hip and thigh, roamed meaninglessly into my mind. I guessed it was the Israelites doing the smiting. So that would make me a Philistine. Which would be appropriate enough.

  As I don’t drive I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed to me that Clive was being just a touch on the reckless side.

  Some decisions turn out to be unwise. Enlisting Nelson and Clive looked like it might turn out to be one of those. I didn’t even know how tough they were. They hadn’t put up much of a fight back at the Frighted Horse. Nelson had talked tough, but he hadn’t followed through. I was actually beginning to believe him when he said he hadn’t murdered the two boys. Listening to the pair of them prattling away in the front, helpless with laughter at silly jokes, it was difficult to see them as cold-eyed killers.

  The only conversation we’d come close to having on the journey to the old man’s house had been about cricket and the West Indies’ chances against Australia. I imagine that there must be a murderer or two who like cricket, but I’ve never come across any. In fact, the only icy killers I’ve ever known – two blokes in Special Ops and, of course, Robert Rieux – would have only been interested in a cricket bat as a potentially lethal blunt instrument.

  Still, Nelson and Clive were all I had. I thought it was possible that they might make so much noise that the Mountjoys and their allies would think I’d brought an entire battalion with me, tanks and all, and flee without waiting to engage us. And there was always the chance, if they waited around and saw us, they would laugh so hard they’d be a pushover.

  We turned into Temple Mills Lane, with what I was beginning to recognize as Clive’s characteristic flourish, and the gun impressed another bruise on my leg as I bounced against the door. I suggested that we pull over, next to a derelict warehouse, a couple of hundred yards from the Mountjoys’ yard.

  I hauled myself out of the car with some relief and looked around.

  There was a little rain in the air, and gusts of wind were rattling the door of the warehouse. Chickweed and dandelions were sprouting up through the cracks in the paving stones that surrounded it.

  Nelson and Clive tumbled out, still laughing boisterously. Nelson picked up a stone and threw it at the warehouse. It crashed against the rusting metal door. Nelson let out a great whoop.

  Another couple of lines from Jerry’s little song popped into my head.

  ‘With catlike tread, upon our prey we steal.’

  SIXTEEN

  There was nothing remotely catlike about our tread as we crunched along the pavement to the yard. Clive spent a long time complaining bitterly about having to walk, and, in fact, for all the stealth we were generating as we advanced on the Mountjoys, we might as well have announced our presence by screaming through the gates in the Zephyr. There would at least have been an element of surprise involved in that.

  Still, I reasoned that they could hardly be expecting us. The old boy was unlikely to have telephoned them to say I was on my way. He’d seemed to be even more out of things than he’d been on Saturday morning. And, anyway, it sounded as if his Sunday afternoon ritual was to listen, uninterrupted, to the Light Programme for quite a while. I looked at my watch. We’d only left him ten minutes ago. I imagined he’d gone straight back to his armchair by the wireless, a cup of stewed tea on the table next to him. With any luck he’d even forgotten that I’d bothered him.

  While there was a Sunday afternoon calm about the
whole area and the marshalling yards were relatively quiet, a few engines chuntered about, and there was the occasional mournful cry of a hooter as a train flew through on the main line.

  Rain was spattering down now, adding to Clive’s discomfort and complaints. As a litany of woe it didn’t really amount to much, and I have to confess that my withers were unwrung. After all, I’d just discovered that I had a leaky right shoe and a damp sock.

  Clive was really starting to get on my wick by the time we reached the gates to the yard. They were wide open, swinging a little in the brief gusts of wind, and I could see the red and white Consul gleaming brightly on the damp, hard-packed dirt road that threaded its way between the mounds of mangled rusting metal that seemed to stretch for miles, like so many treacherously jagged sand dunes. The car was parked, in a haphazard sort of way that suggested it wasn’t expecting company, outside a prefabricated office, blocking access to two of the side roads that wove off to the right of the building.

  There was a light on in the office.

  I told Nelson and Clive to stay where they were for the time being. I ignored the groans from Clive and just told Nelson I’d yell if I needed them, otherwise I’d be out with Ricky in ten minutes. If I wasn’t and they hadn’t heard anything, they were to come with, in a manner of speaking, all guns blazing.

  I walked through the gates, just as my father had done all those years ago. The prefab wouldn’t have been there then, and Papa had gone armed with only a sense of what was right.

  I had Clive and Nelson, an unloaded sawn-off, for what they and it were worth, and a determination not to be knocked about. I’d also received a certain amount of training – admittedly more than ten years before – in how to look out for myself.

  I glanced back at the two West Indians, collars turned up against the drizzle, their shiny mohair suits not looking quite so expensive and well cut as the damp seeped into the fabric. They didn’t look right here. Soho was their natural habitat. Gloomy old Leyton on a dreary Sunday afternoon, with the chilly wind and persistent rain sweeping across Hackney Marshes, was a place for less showy, duller creatures, like me. This was where I belonged – not in Paris, or even up West.

  Before I got too introspective and morose, before le cafard took hold, I tried to bring something perky by Louis Armstrong or Bix Beiderbecke to mind, but nothing much came. Just a few snatches of ‘Muskrat Ramble’. Still, that was enough to get me moving, and I took a few determined steps towards the prefab.

  I hadn’t thought about any plan of action, and I decided I’d better. The first thing to do was to find out how many of them there were and how they were dispersed. A quick recce was in order.

  In this case, that meant covering the twenty yards to the office without being heard and then peering through one of the grubby windows without being seen. Easy-peasy! Unless Nelson or Clive decided to yell out their encouragement or I picked the wrong window to take a butcher’s through.

  I was conscious of every soggy step I took, every dull splat as I lowered a foot, and every breath sounded to me like a faulty steam whistle, but I made it to the Ford Consul without any incident. I ducked down behind it and took a careful look at the low, grey, rectangular building in front of me. A certain awkwardness as I bent my knees to hunker down reminded me of the sawn-off stuffed down my trousers, and I pulled it out. It really was a very ugly, squat thing. I rubbed my thigh.

  A narrow door bang in the middle of the office looked like the only way in, unless there was another one at the back, which I doubted. A window either side of it offered a view in, but I was too low down and too far back to see anything from my hiding place behind the bonnet of the car.

  Happily, the rain had eased off, but I was fairly damp, and the wind, when it blew, had a real edge to it. The gentle yellow light issuing from the two windows and the glass in the door called to me. Inside was probably warm and dry.

  I wasn’t sure if I did it out of foresight or straightforward vindictive vandalism, but I pulled out the small souvenir-of-Paris penknife with a picture of the Arc de Triomphe on the handle and stabbed a hole in the tyre. If it came to a car chase, that should put the Consul at some disadvantage.

  Then, still hunkered down, thighs complaining bitterly, I slipped away from the car and made my way to the side of the building.

  I slowly raised my head level with the small window there.

  I was in luck. Everyone in there had their back to me. Well, there was an exception. Viv Laurence was sitting in a chair, facing me, but the other four people were grouped around her, almost completely obscuring my view of her and hers of me. In any case, it looked like she had other things on her mind than waving her hand in greeting.

  Dave Mountjoy was yelling and stabbing his finger at her, and Ricky Mountjoy was gently stroking her face. But he was doing it with his open razor. I couldn’t see if he’d cut her yet, and I didn’t wait to get a better view.

  I waddled as quickly as I could in my bent position back to the flimsy door, stood up, hefted the sawn-off and kicked the door open. I didn’t hang about posing. I strode straight up to them and smacked Ricky across the side of the face with the barrel of the gun.

  He crashed to the floor. Dave Mountjoy looked shocked and stooped down to his son. George and the other big ape who’d come for me the other morning both took a step towards me, but I pointed the sawn-off at them and they stopped and raised their hands.

  ‘I don’t want anything, except her,’ I said. ‘Let her go and I’m out of here with no more trouble. Try to stop me and you’ll regret it.’

  I waved the gun at them, indicating they should step back from the chair, and the two of them did so.

  ‘You bleeding bastard,’ Dave Mountjoy snarled at me. ‘You’ve really hurt him.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Maybe it’ll stop him taking blades to women.’

  ‘He wasn’t going to cut her,’ he said.

  ‘Didn’t look that way to me,’ I said. ‘Now, shut up.’

  Viv Laurence stood up and moved quickly behind me and off to the door. As she passed, I noticed that her blouse had been torn and there were a couple of nasty marks on her neck and face, but they didn’t look like cuts. When she was safely out of the door, I backed away, still covering George and his mate with the gun.

  ‘Don’t bother following,’ I said. ‘Oh, and by the way, there are some blokes out there who’d like a word with Ricky. Send him out, on his own, when I’ve gone.’

  And I slipped out. It was as easy as that.

  But, of course, it’s never as easy as that.

  Dave Mountjoy came barrelling out of the office as soon as I turned my back. I wheeled around when I heard his long, low, anguished cry of rage, and he crashed into me. My shoulder hit him in the chest, and the sawn-off shotgun caught him in the stomach. The impact was considerable, as he had built up some momentum, and he sent me sprawling on the wet ground. Happily for me, he’d bounced off and smacked into the side of the Ford Consul. The dull bang suggested that the services of a panel beater would be required to hammer out the dent. And a doctor might be needed to tend, a little more gently, to the crack on Dave’s head.

  Unhappily for me, though, I’d lost my grip on the gun, and it had slithered some yards from me. By the time I’d scrambled to my feet, George had it pointed at me, and a very angry, if still slightly groggy, Ricky was stumbling out of the office door, followed by the other heavy.

  ‘Give me that shooter, George,’ Ricky shouted.

  ‘I don’t know about that, Ricky,’ George said hesitantly. The big man was having trouble deciding what was for the best. ‘Have a look at your dad. Make sure he’s all right.’

  ‘Give me the gun.’ Ricky was snarling now. ‘I’m going to shoot his bollocks off.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ George said, shaking his head.

  ‘I think it’s a bloody good idea,’ Ricky said, and he walked up to George and snatched the gun. The other guy stood in the doorway of the office
.

  I looked around. There was no sign of Clive or Nelson. I assumed that they’d done a runner when things turned a bit ugly. But they might have just decided to shelter from the rain. Viv Laurence, though, was standing by the gate.

  Ricky took a couple of steps towards me. He had a thin, tight smile and narrowed eyes. He also had an angry red mark down one side of his face about the shape and size of the barrel of the sawn-off that he was pointing at my midriff.

  ‘I’ve had enough of you. I’m going to shoot your bollocks off,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t think so, Ricky,’ I said. ‘I really don’t think so.’

  Guns are interesting things. There’s something about them – an aura, I suppose you’d call it. It’s as if they magically confer power on those who hold them, and in a way, of course, they do. But, when it comes down to it, they’re only tools. Admittedly, they’re tools that do a very ugly thing, but, like other tools, they’re only as good or useful as the person wielding them. Ricky didn’t impress me as a master craftsman. Perhaps if he’d done his National Service instead of time, and had actually handled a gun before, he’d have been more formidable, but even then I don’t think I’d have been as impressed as he would have liked because I did have an advantage in assessing this particular situation.

  I knew the sawn-off wasn’t loaded.

  The look of surprise on his face when I stepped closer to him was something to behold. The thin, tight smile widened into something resembling a circle as his mouth dropped open and the eyes stared in disbelief. I put my hand on the top of the barrel and forced it down until it was pointing at the ground while he struggled with the triggers, with no apparent understanding of how the thing worked or why it wasn’t responding in the expected manner. Then I twisted it out of his grasp, and he stepped back in some confusion. He looked so pathetic that I couldn’t be bothered to hit him.

  Behind me, Dave Mountjoy groaned. I risked a quick glance at him. His false teeth had fallen out and were lying, like a strange pink and white crustacean, a few feet from him. He looked like an old, old man.