The butcher got right to the point. ‘Eve Mellor’s very ill and refusing treatment,’ he told me. ‘They say it could be cancer, but they’re waiting for results.’ He stood back a pace, clearly waiting for my reaction.
‘And?’ I asked, trying to appear composed and unimpressed.
He shrugged. ‘I doubt they’ll be opening up again in the near future.’
I thought about that. ‘Makes no difference to me, Trevor. My girl’s moving out anyway, because she’s got her own place in Knotty Ash.’
‘Angela Dyson?’ he asked. ‘The one with all the equipment?’
‘Yes.’
A wicked gleam appeared in the butcher’s eyes. ‘Rather you than me, mate, when it comes to getting whipped. Anyway, I phoned and spoke to Kate about what was going on.’
‘Oh yes?’ By this time, he looked almost gleeful, and I felt angry.
‘And they’re all staying to help with the nursing of Eve.’
This news rocked me slightly, though I’m sure I didn’t let it show. ‘I thought you’d stopped going anyway,’ I said. ‘So what’s it to you?’
‘I’m just cutting down,’ was his reply. ‘We’re saving up to go on holiday next year. I thought we might try the Costa Brava.’ He paused, staring hard at me. ‘Your wife’s looking better,’ he said, ‘like a flower that’s just found the sunlight – that’s the way my Em puts it. Mrs Carson seems to be feeling and looking a lot better since you buggered off. I wonder why?’
‘No idea. Excuse me, but I have to get this mail back for sorting.’ I turned my back on him and carried on with the job. No way was I going to let this overweight freak disturb me.
‘Rumour has it that she works Saturday nights in the chip shop and your children stay over with the Bramwell twins while Andrew Martindale takes your missus home. He’s a jeweller and a widower.’
I won’t forget the gleam of triumph in his bloodshot eyes when I turned to look at him. ‘Listen, Porky,’ I said quietly. ‘I’ve nothing left to lose, but you have. It’ll be the Costa Lot, not the Costa Brava, if I talk to Em.’
‘You wouldn’t do that,’ he blustered.
‘Wouldn’t I?’ I stared at him until he walked away.
Goodness, I seem to be making a list. Belle Horrocks, Trevor Burns, my own wife, somebody called Martindale – who’ll be next? There was supposed to be no personal involvement beyond ridding the streets of whores. I locked the box, shouldered my burden and returned to the van. He was still standing there on the opposite side of the street as I drove away.
I did Shirley Evans – have I already told you? I used her and garrotted her. She was stronger than she looked. There was a nice, dark and narrow alley behind businesses closed for the night, and I thought I’d have some fun first. Well, I miss Angela. So I had her on the pavement and she asked for money while pulling her drawers up. She smelled like that cheap perfume called Californian Poppy – it was all women could get during the war years. It was that or Midnight in Paris, and picture houses stank of either or both in a constantly failing effort to cover the smell of urine and sweat.
She clawed at my hair and clothes while I separated her from her breath. I went through her purse and found fifteen quid, just pennies short of my weekly wage. This one was a particularly ugly corpse; she died with her eyes slightly open, peering at me through slits. I remember shivering, because I imagined for a moment that she had been entered by one of Lucifer’s minions, a junior devil created to jump into a corpse, collect its soul and take it below to the white-hot furnace of inner hell.
I’ve booked the weekend off, so I might just take this money up to Laura – she can use it for food and other bits. If she ever found out that I’d taken the money from a whore, she’d probably frogmarch me all the way to Confession. A jeweller? Perhaps he can give her a solid gold crucifix. Saturday night? I think Joseph has a rest day this weekend – good.
I must get back to Maude; she needs me, because Joseph’s on lates. He’ll be home about half ten. I’m supposed to be teaching her backgammon, but if we get nowhere, we’ve a jigsaw half done. I made her that tray for the bed; it has interchangeable tops for different activities, one for eating, one for jigsaws and one for other games, and she was so thrilled that she cried. We keep the trays we’re not using under the bed. Her son’s a good lad, but he’s not as handy as I am.
Thinking about Maude and backgammon and Joseph and his shifts is my way of blocking out the thought of Laura’s being with another man, a rich man from the sound of things. When I saw her outside the school, there was a change in her, a level of improvement I had never expected. Did she need to be rid of me in order to begin a new life?
Maude’s been on her own for a couple of hours, which she doesn’t mind as long as she doesn’t need to leave her bed. Because I pay no rent, I have to fulfil my obligation to her and her son and get home soon. She’s a lovely old soul, quite giddy and giggly for a woman in her eighties. Joseph says she still has a full set of chairs round her table, which is his way of insisting that she’s not senile. I love her. With Joseph’s permission, I’ve started to call her Mum. My real mother was a tyrant, and I never loved her. Joseph sometimes addresses me as Little Brother or Our Kid. It’s nice. I have a new family, and I’ve escaped from Greasy Chair Hell.
Matt and Lucy are growing up without their dad. Yes, I miss them a lot, but if I start visiting them, it will hurt me even more when I leave. Better to have major surgery all in one go rather than picking and poking at a sore spot time after time. Better for them, too, I hope.
She is punishing me. Laura is leaving my children in a flat above a shop that has a strong chance of consumption by fire due to the business on the ground floor. In order to be with her fancy man, she is exposing Matt and Lucy to danger, and I am angry about that.
If Laura were to disappear, I’d get my kids back and my house, too. Mum Maude could have the front downstairs room, and Joseph could share the double bedroom with me – the two single beds from his house would do. That way, I could help with Mum, and Joseph could help with Matt and Lucy. The children might even play Ludo and snap with Mum – I’m sure they’d love that. How do I eliminate Laura? Am I capable of that?
So Angela is staying with Fat Mamma and the rest. This was a blow, I have to admit. I found the wool shop, but now I’ve no idea when she will move there. My hunting ground is infested by cops, because three women are now dead. I must concentrate on Mum Maude and doing my share of housework and cooking. If busy, I can manage for a while without . . . without all that.
Sisters Helen Veronica and Mary Veronica continued their vigilance at Lime Street Station. Predictably, Nellie’s dog was renamed Nellie’s Son instead of Nelson, though he appeared not to care, since he also answered to Tatty Arse. A disgraceful-looking article, he worked in pursuit of drugs as hard as any detective, and it was his signal that finally led to the capture of Boss’s (Albert Shuttleworth’s) last remaining known cohorts when they alighted from the Manchester train and left the platform. The dog signalled, so he had located drugs. The men, who were carrying cocaine, were arrested and questioned; Liverpool police now knew that Boss was definitely in South London. Nellie and Mary, as auxiliary officers, were the only civilians who’d been told about the arrests and details of their confessions.
The force clung hopefully to the knowledge that Shuttleworth might well return to Liverpool before others could take over all his territory. Boss could soon employ a new set of slaves, and the self-made drugs baron loved his mother, who was not in good health. Yes, he would be home. Lime Street became a tense place; even drunks and tramps began to avoid the train station and the nearby London bus terminus.
All trains and coaches were being watched. The stations were frequently saturated with plain clothes officers, though some had been moved to patrol the dock area after the killing of yet another working girl. Dave Earnshaw spent hours in the public part of the station, sometimes wandering onto a platform when a London train touched the buff
ers, but police vigilance had not paid off thus far.
Just before midnight one Friday, the last London train rolled in. It had been delayed due to storm debris on the line, and passengers were tired, fretful, and anxious to be home. Friends and relatives prepared to greet people who had travelled upcountry, and they closed in on the gate when the train stopped.
Dave was the only man in uniform, as his new partner had been summoned home, since his wife was in labour. The rest were detectives who mingled with the crowd as casually as possible and they, too, were tired due to overstaying their shift while waiting for the arrival of this very late train.
As usual, there appeared to be no tall, broad man alighting. Of course, he might return by car, thus costing the ratepayers of Liverpool a small fortune in police wages, but second guessing a criminal as clever as Shuttleworth was never going to be easy.
Smelly Nellie felt the dog tensing by her side. He stepped forward, hackles and tail rising, the latter waving as if greeting a friend. This meant drugs. The hair along Nelson’s spine flattened itself as he approached a wheelchair. He turned and glared at Nellie, who nodded towards Dave. PC David Earnshaw walked towards the bearded, disabled person whose chair was being pushed by a man uglier than sin, as his nose had been broken at least once. A shot rang out.
Time froze for a few seconds.
The screaming began, as did the rush towards exits. At exactly midnight, the first bullet entered Dave’s chest, and a second hit him during his descent to the ground. Shuttleworth leapt from the wheelchair and fired again, this time without a blanket to conceal the weapon. Chaos ensued. The pusher of the chair was also armed. He sent a bullet flying above the heads of a small gathering. ‘Don’t move if you know what’s good for you.’ His accent had been born in London.
Shuttleworth walked towards the main entrance, his gun waving back and forth across terrified faces in the group who had moved in the direction of Lime Street after travelling up on the London train. Children cried, while one young woman collapsed in a dead faint. Behind Shuttleworth, Broken Nose shuffled backwards, his revolver trained on those who remained on the station’s forecourt. ‘Lie down,’ he yelled.
People inside the station’s large forecourt dropped to the floor, though Nellie remained upright with the dog by her side. ‘Murderer,’ she called. ‘Shoot me. Go on, show us what you’re made of – shoot a woman in her sixties.’
He ignored her and continued in reverse close behind the now self-propelled Shuttleworth, both travelling towards would-be escapees who remained motionless, some guarding the unconscious female on the ground.
Within seconds, the roar of an engine and the screaming of tyres filtered past the throng at the main entrance. Shuttleworth and Broken Nose were gone. PC Earnshaw, with two bullets in his chest and one in his lower back, lay in a widespread pool of blood. Two detectives ran towards Dave. Nellie and Mary rushed to his side with Nelson, though the dog carried on until he reached the wheelchair. Its inner pockets were stuffed with small, transparent bags containing a white powder, and he sat nearby until a detective joined him and confirmed the dog’s discovery.
Nellie murmured a few words from the Latin Pie Jesu and stroked blessed water on the fallen man’s forehead. Officers who had tried in vain to discover the make and registration number of the getaway car returned to the scene. Over a hand-held radio, a man shouted repeatedly, ‘Officer down, Lime Street Station.’
Dave’s bleeding slowed, its pace advertising a faltering heart.
Nellie raised her hand in a small gesture of benediction. ‘In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, may you rest in peace, my dear, dear friend.’ As he left the mortal coil, Sister Helen Veronica held his hands while Mary Veronica knelt by his head. ‘He’s gone, Nellie,’ she whispered.
‘Yes. St Peter had better let him in, or I’ll be having words with him one of these days.’ Still kneeling, she sat back on her ankles. ‘Oh, Mary, Dave has a wife and children.’ Only then did Nellie’s tears flow. Nelson, having concluded all business connected to drugs, walked over to his mistress and began to lick the grief from her face. She smiled through her tears. Nelson was a footrest, a draught excluder, a waste bin for unwanted food, a companion and a very close friend. At this moment, he was a rather damp handkerchief. Even now, he made her grin.
Mary used a real hanky to dry her own tears. ‘Sometimes,’ she whispered, ‘I wish I’d joined the Poor Clares instead.’
Helen made no reply. She rather liked being a co-opted, undercover police officer. She turned and saw grown men, plain clothes coppers, mopping at their eyes. ‘If his wife is in need of help, let me know so that I can send one of my friends to do whatever’s necessary,’ she advised them. The seedy side of life was very much the business of Veronicas. Like the saint after whom their order was named, they were there to mop up the blood and tears of mankind, to help with children, the poor, the criminal, the aged and the disabled. It was not the easy life. She spoke to Mary eventually. ‘They don’t even have shoes.’
‘What? Who?’
‘The Clares. It’s my belief that contemplation should be left to Buddhists. They make such a lovely job of it.’
The two nuns stood with detectives near the cooling body of a good friend. Shuttleworth was now a marked man. ‘You’ll find him, won’t you?’ Mary asked.
‘We will,’ the nearest officer replied.
Police took statements or names and addresses from all who remained, and the ambulance didn’t sound its siren as it pulled away, since the passenger was en route for the morgue via the pathology department.
‘Eddie,’ Smelly Nellie whispered to Holy Mary.
‘Oh, my goodness, yes,’ was the answer. ‘He’s CID now, isn’t he?’
Nellie nodded. ‘They were like brothers. When they were split up, Dave went quiet. Eddie’s down by the docks looking for that murderer.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘There’ll be officers doing voluntary unpaid overtime till they find Shuttleworth.’ She paused. ‘Why did I nod at Dave when Nelson did his Rhodesian Ridgeback imitation? Why didn’t I signal a plain clothes man?’
‘Stop it, Helen. Thinking like that will do you and the rest of us no good at all. I could have gone to him and held him back, because he stuck out like a sore thumb, him being the only one in uniform. Just pray for him; we can’t save the whole world.’
‘He was our friend, Mary.’
‘So is Jesus, but no one stopped the crucifixion, did they? Come on. Let’s make our statements and go home.’
After some rearrangements of beds and rooms, Belle, Tom and Max moved in to Meadowbank. They would stay for just a couple of nights, since Eve, no longer in pain because of her tablets, refused to rest. The place would be up and running within days, so Eve became Führer once more. Wherever she went, Tom’s black Labrador followed her.
‘He knows,’ Tom whispered to his wife.
‘That she’s dying?’ Belle’s eyebrows shot heavenwards. ‘Don’t talk so daft, Thomas Duffield.’
‘Watch,’ he advised.
She watched. ‘It’s because she keeps feeding him all kinds of rubbish.’
Tom sighed. ‘O ye of little faith.’
‘Dogs followed Hitler,’ she murmured.
He grinned. ‘Eve would have scared the shit out of him.’
Meanwhile, phone calls were made, carefully worded advertisements placed in local papers, and Eve was on a roll. If she was bloody dying, she would leave a decent business for Kate. Rooms were allocated for the Gilroy twins, for a Joan Warburton and for Betty Halliwell, who was to be Baby. Belle helped, as did the other girls, while Tom did a demonstration with commentary on how to paint a wall with one hand and a hook.
Belle took a cup of tea to Eve in the office. ‘How are you?’ she asked.
‘How am I? I’m sick of people asking. How I am is how I am.’
‘They care,’ Belle told her. ‘There’s even a crack in Angela’s armour.’ She paused. ‘Where is it?’
> ‘Where’s what?’
‘Don’t act soft, Eve. Where’s the bloody cancer?’
The madam folded her arms. ‘It’s on safari, travelling through the equator towards the Antarctic.’
‘Eve!’ The syllable was coated in impatience. ‘Can you not answer a question properly for once?’
‘Spreading,’ Eve snapped. ‘Mad Mannix keeps trying to get me into hospital – I suppose it’s his job. But I’m not spending the last months of my life in that funeral parlour. I’ve got the pills, and when they stop working, I’ll get what Doc Mannix calls more serious palliative treatment. Is that pink room ready for Betty Halliwell?’
‘Yes, it is. Eve, I’m sorry, but Tom and I will have to get home. Lisa’s taking full advantage of things; she thinks she’s in charge of two houses now.’ Belle sighed. ‘I had this good little girl who was happy with a box of chalks or a picture book, and now she’s walking about as if she owns the bloody street.’
Eve grinned. ‘You’ve a good man there, Belle. You lean on him, because he won’t fall over, and Lisa will come good. It’s a phase, babe, just something she’s going through because her life’s changed a bit. It’s all a matter of showing off – they do that, especially little girls.’ How she wished she’d had a child or two, but feeling sorry for herself wasn’t going to help, so she tucked away those thoughts and concentrated on now.
Midnight on Lime Street Page 26
