Backhand Smash

by J M Gregson

  ‘We’ve had our first scan.’ Lucy had planned to delay this, but she couldn’t hold out against the eagerness on her mother’s face. She reached into the handbag and brought out the picture which showed a tiny curled thing, which even at this early stage you could recognize as a child, or what was going to be a child.

  Agnes stared at it in wonderment and joy and gave a little gasp of pleasure. There was a long pause before she said, ‘We didn’t have these things in my day.’ And then, still gazing at the tiny foetus after another pause, ‘How on earth can these abortion people say that isn’t a human life?’

  ‘Let’s not get on to that, Mum. I happen to agree with you, but some of my colleagues would say that was anti-feminist. Let’s just say that everything seems to be going fine with Horace at the moment.’

  ‘It’s a boy?’

  ‘It’s still too early to tell, Mum. We don’t want to know until the baby arrives. But we have to call it something, so Percy came up with Horace. Apparently after some cartoon character that he remembers and I don’t.’

  Percy beamed his satisfaction at such invention. ‘Hungry Horace, Mrs B. Lucy has to eat for two, you see. But things are going well, apart from a couple of weeks of morning sickness, which I’ve managed to cope with quite well.’

  Agnes rolled around on her sofa and cackled inordinately. ‘You’re a regular caution, you are, Percy Peach, and no mistake!’ It was her favourite description of her favourite man.

  She was over seventy now, but her culinary skills had only sharpened with the years. Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and three vegetables midweek. Percy poured the wine and savoured the food, raised his glass to his hostess and said, ‘You’re spoiling us, Mrs B. Us and Hungry Horace.’ He nudged Lucy’s stomach appreciatively.

  After apple pie and custard, they sat in front of the fire in the low-ceilinged lounge. They were warm, well fed and soporific. Lucy couldn’t drink at present, Percy was driving and had consumed his ration, and Agnes wasn’t a drinker and claimed she had already had enough to make her silly. No one fancied an intellectual challenge, so they sat and exchanged harmless gossip about the villagers who were Agnes’s neighbours. Lucy was particularly interested in a man she had called ‘uncle’ in her childhood, who had seemed a pillar of the community and the local church, until he had caused a local scandal and much excitement in the village by leaving his wife to set up house with a younger woman four years ago.

  ‘He’s back home from the other side of Yorkshire,’ said Agnes, as though the man had returned from the furthest realm of Hades. ‘Enid’s taken him in, but I don’t know whether it will last.’

  ‘You never do with men, do you?’ said Percy sanctimoniously. ‘But at least his wife is displaying the spirit of Christian forgiveness. I only wish my own wife would show more of that.’

  Agnes ignored her daughter’s outrage at this. ‘You’re a proper caution, Percy Peach, and no mistake. I just hope Hector’s back for good – he doesn’t seem a bad man, to me – just a daft one. They seem all right together, but you can never tell what goes on behind closed doors, can you? Appearances can be deceptive.’

  ‘Indeed they can, Mrs B. And now I must drive your daughter carefully home and tuck her safely up in bed for the night. You’ve no idea of the noises she makes in the morning, but I don’t broadcast it at the station.’

  Lucy was too tired to come back at him. It was good to leave on the sound of her mother’s laughter and to know that the three of them had enjoyed a happy evening together. He had his compensations, Percy. Not many sons-in-law took such pains to amuse their wives’ mothers.

  He was genuinely solicitous about her welfare, sometimes too much so for her taste. ‘I’m quite all right, you know,’ she said later as they prepared for bed. ‘Don’t fuss. I don’t need cosseting.’

  ‘Pity. I enjoy the odd cosset. But in that case, your bum looks big in that!’ he said daringly as she disrobed.

  ‘I told you, I’m putting on weight, and not just on my belly,’ Lucy disrobed to bra and pants and surveyed her rear dolefully over her shoulder in the mirror.

  ‘The more of that bottom the better,’ said Percy with conviction. ‘You can’t have too much of a good thing.’ He waited until she was installed on her back in the double bed, then kissed her naked belly gently, his nightly compliment to Horace.

  She was asleep quickly, but it took him a while longer, thinking of the evening that was gone. She was a wise old bird, Agnes Blake. She compensated for her lack of formal education with common sense and her vast experience of life. It was almost a watchword for the CID, what she’d said: you never knew what went on behind closed doors. And appearances could certainly be deceptive. They were probably particularly so in the case of Jason Fitton’s death.

  FOURTEEN

  Younis Hafeez was keeping his eye on the police investigation into his enemy’s death. He had his spies abroad and he knew on Wednesday morning that there had been as yet no police talk of an arrest.

  That was satisfactory, as far as it went. Meanwhile, he needed to get on with his takeover of Fitton’s lucrative businesses. The police had said they knew of his intentions, but if he proceeded with caution, he could still take control. Prostitution and gambling were sure-fire ways of making money and would remain so for the foreseeable future. Loan-sharking had experienced bad publicity of late; it was subject to more scrutiny and was thus less profitable. But he’d take that over too, because it came with the Fitton package. He was going to be the biggest and most powerful man in this area, and it wouldn’t do for people to think you couldn’t handle everything your predecessor had taken on. The police hadn’t managed to control Fitton, and they wouldn’t control him.

  He’d worked out the finances long before Fitton had been killed, and he reckoned he could manage it. It would be tight, for a few months, because there were a lot of people to sweeten before the profits began to accumulate. But he could do it and he would do it. He’d cut out the middleman. Fitton had been that in the most profitable business of all. Procuring young girls and young boys for middle-aged men with fat wallets and perverted tastes brought in unbelievable money.

  The market was still there and probably growing, despite the recent arrests and exposures in Rotherham and Rochdale, in Derby and Oxford. He knew two of the men in the Oxford gang who had been sent down for upwards of twelve years for preying on vulnerable teenagers. That must be a warning to him. He was safe, so far, but he needed to be cautious in the next few months. Procuring youngsters was high-risk, but high profit. He would need to be more careful than that playboy Fitton had been, but he had the knowledge and the contacts to do this. He was sure that he could cover his tracks and outfox the dull-witted police teams, who had always previously been one step behind him in the contest.

  Like many major criminals, Younis Hafeez was vain about his intelligence. And like many people on both sides of the law, a touch of megalomania set in as his powers grew.

  He had his own hardmen – mostly Asian and all efficient and ruthless. But he’d need more as he expanded into Fitton’s territory, and he’d need men who knew this ground and had been used to controlling the people on it. It was always better to frighten people into submission than to use violence, because violence brought attention you did not wish to attract to your activities. But you needed a judicious amount of violence, pour encourager les autres. Word got round and people deferred to you when they knew you had the power to enforce your decisions.

  Hafeez had a distaste for the men he used for these things. You needed muscle, yet at the same time you despised it. These men were necessary tools, but he didn’t want them coming to the penthouse office where he had met the police on Monday and where he entertained the affluent men who were his clients in his various other enterprises. If he was going to use the men whom Fitton had used, he would see them elsewhere, in the buildings he was going to take over from the dead man.

  He was back in the Brunton casino, installed now in what had be
en Jason Fitton’s office there, dealing with two of the hardmen who had been Fitton’s muscle. He was going to take them on: word got around and it was good for morale lower down the organization for people to know that they could keep their jobs if they were good enough. But he would put them through the mill a little first. That was both his habit and his pleasure.

  Abe Lockhart and his companion shuffled into the room and shut the door carefully behind them. They wanted to assess this new presence in their lives, who could cast them aside or take them on to new things, but they were not used to looking people directly in the eye. The sly sideways glance suited them much better: they were more used to looking down at the boots they sometimes used to enforce their commissions than to studying people’s faces. Nor did they like bloody Pakis. But this one had money and power. They had better pretend they respected him and whatever it was he stood for.

  Hafeez didn’t disguise his dislike as he looked at them across Fitton’s desk. These brutes were like Macbeth’s murderers: in the catalogue they went for men, but they were dogs really – necessary but vile. That was one of the good things about an English education: it enabled you to see things for what they were. And one of the other good things about England was the law, and the latitude it allowed to clever men like him.

  He said very precisely, with his diction emphasizing their different worlds, ‘It seems the two of you are now unemployed.’

  Lockhart spoke for the pair of them, as he normally did. ‘We was hoping you might take us on, like. We was very sorry to hear about Mr Fitton.’

  ‘Were you really? Well, the man was your meal ticket, I suppose. I’m taking over here now.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Forrester told us that. He said you might find a use for us.’

  ‘Did he? Very generous of him, considering that I haven’t yet decided whether I shall have a use for him, let alone people like you. I can get bruisers very cheaply, Mr Lockhart. Can you give me any reason why I should employ you rather than others?’

  ‘We’re efficient, Mr Hafeez.’ He’d memorized the name before he came in here, but he still hesitated over it. ‘We’re good at what we do. Mr Fitton never had any complaints. We’re also discreet. We keep our lips zipped tight about whatever we are asked to do.’

  ‘That’s the minimum requirement. Anyone in my organization who breathes a word of what they have done or been ordered to do is out. Down and out, in fact: there are plenty of other heavies who would be happy to break your legs before they took your places.’

  Lockhart gave a weak smile; he’d offered all he could think of offering. Words weren’t his strength, and still less the strength of his companion. He looked sideways at that powerful, limited presence, then back at Hafeez with a grim expectancy. ‘We’re in your hands, sir.’

  ‘Then you have some grasp of reality. I require men like you, because not all the people I have to deal with recognize reason when they see it. I need men like you to make them see the error of their ways.’ Then, in case scum like this did not comprehend understatement, he added, ‘I need people to draw blood and break limbs. Sometimes to do worse than that. Are you up to the task? Are you skilled in violence?’

  ‘We’re up for it, sir. And you’ll find we’re very reliable.’

  ‘You’d better be. You’ll get the same retainer you were on before, with extra for any special jobs I may wish you to undertake. You’re on trial; this will be a probationary period.’

  They wouldn’t know what that last phrase meant, but he was happy to leave men like this feeling ignorant and inadequate. And it didn’t really mean anything. Men who lived by violence were always on trial, always as good or as bad as the last brutality they had applied. They stood in front of him waiting to be dismissed: he had never invited them to sit. He couldn’t be gracious to thugs like this, even now, when it would cost him nothing and mean nothing. ‘You’ll get orders in due course. Now get out.’

  Olive Crawshaw was feeling the strain. Four months ago, the doctor had told her that her husband had early-stage Alzheimer’s disease. She’d asked the GP if he was sure of that, because she’d noticed only an increasing tendency to forgetfulness in Eric. Things had moved rapidly since then. He was safe enough at the moment, but she’d need to get someone in to watch over him at some point during the next school year. That wouldn’t be easy, because he was tetchy about his condition: naturally he was. She’d have been the same herself – would be the same herself, if it ever happened to her.

  Eric was sixty-eight now. He’d been fourteen years older than her when they married and she’d always told herself that she must be prepared for problems later. But much later, she’d hoped. Alzheimer’s was a hazard for the eighties, she’d naively thought. It was only after he had been diagnosed that she found that people much younger than Eric could be affected.

  He peered out now between the curtains, as he had never done until a year ago. ‘There’s someone at the door,’ he said. ‘Someone in a car.’ She’d told him twice that the police were coming, but he’d forgotten twice.

  ‘It’s all right, Eric. They’re from the police station in Brunton and I knew they were coming. I invited them to come, you see. It’s about something that happened at Birch Fields after the summer ball.’

  ‘The tennis club.’ Eric nodded happily, as if congratulating himself on making the connection.

  ‘Yes. I don’t think it will take very long. You can stay here and watch the television and I’ll take them into the dining room.’

  ‘I want to come with you. I want to make sure it’s all right.’ His ageing features set into the pout of a stubborn child. She found that more moving than she could ever have imagined it would be.

  She introduced him to the two policemen, then said that she would talk to them elsewhere. Peach sensed immediately that Eric was not a well man, though she had no idea how he knew that. He said much more gently than was his wont, ‘We might need Mr Crawshaw to confirm your whereabouts early on Sunday morning.’

  ‘That won’t be possible, I’m afraid. He wouldn’t be a reliable witness.’

  ‘One o’clock. Time for the news,’ said Eric cheerfully. He went over and switched the television on, even though it was in fact nowhere near that time. It was a Sky sports channel and a footballer raced briefly across the scene. ‘We won the Premier League, you know,’ said Eric. ‘Everyone said we couldn’t win it, but we did. I was there. Liverpool, it was. Even the Kop cheered when they heard we’d done it.’

  Peach went over and looked him in the face. ‘I was there too, Mr Crawshaw. It was a great day for Brunton, wasn’t it?’

  Twenty years ago, in 1995. He’d been nineteen then, watching his beloved Rovers triumph despite defeat at Liverpool on the last day of the season. He could remember feeling sick with excitement in the last minute as the news came through that Manchester United had only drawn at West Ham and the title belonged to Brunton Rovers. He grinned at Eric Crawshaw. ‘We had Alan Shearer then. He scored on that day.’

  Eric was delighted. He clasped his hands together exultantly. ‘Running on to a cross from the right wing. Hitting it first time. He was the best we ever had, was Shearer.’ As with many Alzheimer’s sufferers, Eric’s medium- and long-term memories seemed to grow sharper as his short-term one declined.

  Percy said, ‘He was that. The very best. A hundred and thirty goals in four years. The finest we ever had.’

  ‘I can remember Ronnie Clayton and Brian Douglas,’ said Eric proudly.

  ‘Can you indeed? You’re a lucky man, Mr Crawshaw. That’s long before I was born.’

  ‘I were nobbut a lad then.’ Eric gazed fondly past his listeners and into the 1950s and 1960s of his childhood.

  He’d lapsed from his previous standard English into Lancashire dialect with the last phrase. Olive said fondly, ‘That’s what his dad used to say when Eric was a child. I think he had a friend on the turnstiles who used to shove Eric underneath, when he was very small.’

  She picked up the remote contro
l from the television and switched to BBC One. ‘Bargain Hunt will be on soon, Eric. You like that. I’ll have a talk with these gentlemen and be back soon.’ Eric’s eyes were on the television now, as if he had forgotten the visitors. ‘I were nobbut a lad,’ he repeated as they left him.

  Olive kept her face studiously unemotional as she took them into the dining room and shut the door behind them. She didn’t want to reveal her feelings to these strangers, still less to accept their sympathy. But she said to Peach, ‘Thank you for that. It does him good to talk, even if nowadays it’s always about the past.’

  ‘I’m always happy to talk about the Rovers. DS Northcott is useless on that. He’s more into motorbikes. And tennis, of course. I’m told he has hidden talents.’

  ‘I’m sure he has. But his tennis ones are going to become more public over the next year or two. I think Clyde has the potential to make the first team at Birch Fields, if he plays regularly and tests himself against our best players.’

  Percy grinned, then moved swiftly into the business of their visit. ‘We’ve been questioning people there, as you’d expect in these circumstances. They tell us that you didn’t like Jason Fitton at all, Mrs Crawshaw.’

  Peach was uncharacte‌ristically gentle, almost apologetic for raising the issue. He was trying to rid his mind of the image of the sixty-eight-year-old man in front of the television next door.

  ‘I’m not going to deny that. Fitton was a smoothie, when it suited him, but the more I saw of him the less I liked him.’

  ‘This goes back some years.’

  It was quietly spoken, but it was a statement, not a question. Olive responded with, ‘We came from different worlds. He was the privileged Eton schoolboy and I was a passionate believer in the state education system and what it can achieve.’

  Peach smiled, sensing that in this situation persuasion was going to bring more than bluster. ‘We can’t blame Eton for everything; the real faults lie with Jason Fitton. He was one of those who used a modicum of intelligence and a good education for bad purposes. Had you a particular reason to dislike him?’