Scar Tissue

by Judith Cutler

  ‘Stop! Pull over into that lay-by!’

  Well, not so much a lay-by as a dumping ground for old cars and a trysting place for lovers, though there were much less public ones further up the road in various sections of woodland. However, this was good enough for some, as I proved as I tangled with used condoms. Now wasn’t the time to get litter-conscious, so I sprinted backwards and forwards until his voice came back.

  ‘I’ll be down as soon as I can. Tonight at the latest.’

  I made myself say as calmly as possible, ‘Bring some really scruffy clothes. You may end up painting and decorating. This is where you’ll find me.’ If we met at Crabton Manor that would at least solve the problem of getting me home. I gave succinct directions, hoping he wouldn’t hear the sound of my heart pounding as I talked.

  ‘You want him to paint!’ Paula exploded. ‘You know this is a skilled job – how long did it take you to qualify? – and you tell me to put a complete amateur on my payroll.’

  ‘Amateur painter and professional cop,’ I reminded her. ‘With lots of professional back-up.’ I hope, I added under my breath. ‘You can tell van der Poele that you’re giving him a trial.’

  ‘But he knows we’re an all women organisation.’

  ‘Tell him Taz is gay,’ I replied. And wished I hadn’t. I like the truth, remember, and wanted above all things for Taz to demonstrate to me once and for all he was straight. ‘And I wouldn’t worry about paying him – I’m sure a policeman’s salary is quite enough to live on.’

  She pulled a face.

  ‘Anyway,’ I asked, pulling off my sunglasses, ‘how do I look?’

  She literally took a step backwards. ‘Do you want me to be honest? Really? Well, like a poor relation of Lucretia Borgia. Your colouring’s sort of Italianish – it seems to have darkened a lot overnight. But you’ve got these weird eyes. You could be some sort of Traveller.’

  Seemed all right to me.

  Then, pulling her chin, she added, ‘Trouble is, you still sound like you. I suppose you can’t do any other accents, can you?’

  ‘I could up the Brummie one – how’s this, our kid?’

  ‘You’ll need an interpreter if you want a conversation down here,’ she said. ‘What about a new name? Caffy’s a bit distinctive, in its own quiet way.’

  ‘Trouble is, I feel like a Caffy. Ok, if I look like Lucretia Borgia, how about Lucy?’

  ‘Provided you remember to answer when you’re spoken to. And you’ll need a surname, too.’

  I recalled the apparently friendly sergeant back in Streatham. ‘Taylor? Lucy Taylor?’

  ‘Right, Lucy Taylor. Work. I’ve saved the bargeboards for you.’

  Saved? Left the nasty boring things for me as penance, more like.

  ‘And the soffits. OK?’

  Great! I didn’t think. ‘OK.’ I slipped into my overalls, grabbed my gear and shinned up as fast as I could. Not least because I could hear barking. No doubt the Prozac had worn off.

  I was really glad to have some painting. As usual, it absorbed me. It didn’t require anything really classy, but I would no more have offered slipshod work than Paula would have let me. Plus I was a long way from the ground, and although scaffolding is a great deal safer than a ladder, standing back to gaze admiringly at your work is not an option. So I was quite surprised to hear Paula yelling, ‘Lucy! Get yourself down here. Lunch break.’

  Hell, she meant me, didn’t she?

  ‘Sorry, I was miles away,’ I yelled back, coming down as soon as I’d finished the section I was working on, and joining the others already lounging in their battered deck chairs.

  ‘We always listen to the radio while we eat,’ Meg said carefully, as if I really were a new girl. ‘So we keep in touch with the world.’

  ‘Sounds like we’re nuns,’ Lucy Taylor, the Brummie said, adding, ‘Oh, Meg – not Any Questions! The news is one thing, but all these pompous and pretentious people sounding off about things they know nothing about really gets up my nose.’

  ‘It’s what we always do,’ Paula said clearly. ‘I told you that you’d have to fit in. Like it or lump it.’ Addressing someone behind my left shoulder, she said, ‘Afternoon, Mr van der Poele. We’ve managed to recruit someone to replace Caffy. Lucy. Lucy Taylor.’

  I turned and raised a hand. ‘Hi!’ I said, Brummie as I could make it. I didn’t gild the lily by removing my sun specs.

  Van der Poele merely stared. ‘I hope she’s more reliable than the other one.’

  Bloody hell! All the extra time I’d put in for him and he said I wasn’t reliable!

  ‘She’s got good references,’ Paula assured him. ‘And although I only took her on this morning, you can see she’s got stuck in.’

  ‘I noticed you were late,’ van der Poele observed.

  ‘I’ve marked my time sheet.’ Her voice was very clipped. ‘And we shall work correspondingly longer.’

  Time sheet? She was keeping time sheets for him, as if she were a kid earning pocket money? What a bastard.

  ‘We didn’t expect to see you, Mr Poele,’ said Meg, not very helpfully. ‘The boss said you were off for the weekend or something.’

  ‘The kennels said I’d given them too little notice. You don’t know any other places round here?’ Was he acting, too? Or was his story true, and the hapless kennel-owner about to lose his custom as a result?

  ‘I’m strictly cats,’ Meg assured him.

  He nodded, as if marking that against her, and strolled back to the house. Turning, he yelled, ‘I shall be letting them out for a run soon. If you don’t like dogs, you’d better be up that scaffolding or in the van. But I shall want to check the time sheets.’

  To a woman, we finished our mouthfuls and packed up. With double time on offer, we preferred the scaffolding.

  We got plenty of notice of Taz’s arrival, the dogs being still on the loose although it was a couple of hours since they’d been released. Van der Poele emerged briefly to snarl them to heel, looking hard at Paula, who was halfway down the ladder.

  ‘This could be another new recruit,’ she said. ‘Come for a trial.’

  ‘And if she’s no good?’

  ‘It’s a bloke, and I’ll redo anything in my own time that isn’t satisfactory,’ she said.

  Van der Poele nodded and retired with the dogs.

  It was times like this I remember why I liked Paula so much.

  As soon as it was safe, she climbed down to ground level, and approached Taz with the friendly but businesslike smile of an employer welcoming a potential employee. Her smile increased in warmth when she saw him properly. He was romantically dark and brooding, cultivating the image of a man wandering the earth in his search for a home. There’s a portrait of the Polish composer Chopin by some French artist making him look both haggard and heroic: I think that was what Taz aspired to. In fact, his parents lived in Surbiton and the grandfather to whom he owed his name and his looks was running rings round the staff of the ex-servicemen’s home he had been forced by failing sight to retire to. I’d met and liked them all, especially the grandfather, who’d got me to slip him a couple of audio-books the library at the home didn’t think were suitable for men his age. They’d all made me very welcome. Pity I’d probably never get to see them again. Still, I don’t suppose they were pining for me. Taz would have said brusquely that things hadn’t worked out between us, and no decent parents would have argued about that. They’d always said to drop in whenever I was around, that the break-up wouldn’t make any difference, but it was a promise I preferred to remember than to test.

  I wish I could have blamed the dogs for the way my heart was pounding so hard I could hear whooshing in my ears.

  Paula drew him over to the van, gesturing occasionally at the house and nodding as if he was making the right responses. It looked like a genuine job-interview, if on the hoof. How much was she telling him about his real job? After a few minutes, he disappeared from view, returning with a bundle of clothes. Paula pointed him
in the direction of the outhouse, still mercifully dog-free. When he emerged, she called us all down, and one by one we shook hands with him. Meg might have drooled over Todd. She positively slavered over Taz. Helen giggled rather a lot. I found it hard to look at anyone, especially Taz: no, nothing to do with the lenses. He spoke to each of us with rather less enthusiasm than the occasion deserved. He positively froze my smile.

  ‘How are you on heights?’ Paula demanded. ‘Because I’d really like to finish the very highest level work today. However late we have to work,’ she added firmly.

  ‘I’m not fussed,’ he said.

  Second lot of Brownie points to him. I’d awarded the first lot for his prompt response – he’d taken only about three hours to get here – and for twigging so quickly what was needed. But I knew he didn’t have a head for heights, and although I knew Paula had only suggested that he worked high up so he could talk to me, I countered, ‘I’ve almost finished. Couldn’t he start preparing the window-frames on the level below me?’

  Paula looked hard at me, and at him, but nodded. ‘Those aren’t too bad – should be just a matter of rubbing down and spot priming. But if you think anything else needs doing, tell me or Ca – Lucy. OK? We’ll work on till six-thirty or so. The light may get awkward after that and I don’t want anyone squinting into the sun and going splat.’

  He laughed. I’d forgotten how he laughed. I turned away so he wouldn’t see my face.

  Although we could have talked, we didn’t. I could look down and see between the boards the top of his head and the quick movement of his hands. So why didn’t I? Because something was definitely wrong with the electricity that should have been snapping between us. What had happened to Caffy and Heathcliff? I ought to be lusting for him: the only strong emotion I felt was a desperate hope that he wouldn’t betray us by being incompetent.

  Tea break, and great waves of blushes flooded both Meg and Helen. Paula smiled more than usual. I got back to work as fast as I could. No. I wasn’t jealous because he was flirting with them. I was wondering why I wasn’t jealous.

  It was nearly seven before I got Taz to myself. Helen had giggled and blushed her farewells, after Paula had squashed Meg’s suggestion that we all adjourn to the pub.

  As casually as I could, I asked, ‘Where are you based?’ mouthing ‘Ashford’ so he knew.

  ‘Ashford,’ he said clearly.

  ‘Well, would you mind giving Lucy a lift?’ Paula asked. ‘That way I get to keep the van and I can round everyone up tomorrow.’

  ‘You want me tomorrow too?’

  Paula nodded sagely. ‘You’ve made a good start on the grottiest job. Maybe we’ll see what you can do with a paintbrush.’

  ‘Thanks. Shall I bring Lucy with me?’

  ‘That’d be very helpful. Right, boy and girls – back here at nine tomorrow. OK?’

  ‘What now?’ Taz asked as we walked to his car. Whatever his normal vehicle, this was an Escort that had seen better days.

  I waited till we were safely inside what felt like a Turkish bath. We wound down the windows as fast as we could but it seemed safer than outside. All the same, I managed no more than a mutter: ‘We set out as if for Ashford, then you do some fancy nipping through the lanes making sure we’re not being followed to where I’m living at the moment. A quick shower and then you can treat me to a pub supper.’

  ‘Me treat you? Thought I was doing you a favour.’

  ‘I bet you earn more than I earn per hour.’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  I told him my weekly pay.

  He whistled. ‘How can you live on that?’

  ‘Truth is, it’s hard. But it’s better than my life in Brum, so I’m not complaining. If you prefer, there’s some stuff in the Daweses’ fridge.’

  ‘Who are the Daweses?’

  ‘I think,’ I said as I fastened my seatbelt, ‘that I’d better begin at the beginning, don’t you?’

  Chapter Twelve

  Taz didn’t reply.

  There I was, ready to give chapter and verse of why and how we needed him and he was totally bound up in starting and driving his car.

  I could have howled. But bloody well wouldn’t. I didn’t do howling, remember, not for men, and I wasn’t going to start now. Hell, in an ideal world, Taz would have pulled over as soon as he could into some convenient lay-by – preferably one unsullied by reminders of my former life – and said something like, ‘Let me look at you, Caffy. After all these years… Why, you’re beautiful!’

  In fact, when at last he looked at me it was out of the corner of his eye. He was far more interested in the bends ahead than in my appearance – which I suppose was only right. At last he said, ‘I take it this is some sort of disguise. And they called you Lucy Taylor. May one ask why?’ He sounded weirdly like his mother, a lovely woman as I said, one I’d have liked as a mother-in-law, but perhaps a bit twinsetty.

  ‘It is best if I begin at the beginning,’ I said. ‘You may even want to take notes. Would you rather wait till we get back home? Left here, please.’

  ‘That’s taking us away from Ashford,’ he objected.

  ‘I don’t live in Ashford. I live south of Tenterden, overlooking Romney Marsh. At least, I do at the moment. Not my own place, I hasten to add. I had to leave there in a hurry.’

  ‘Rent problems?’ he asked idly, dropping to second for a tight corner.

  What had happened to the committed, concerned young man I’d known and … loved?

  ‘Bomb problems,’ I said. ‘A letter bomb, to be precise, and what may be another, probably sent by my old friend Clive Granville.’

  At last I had his attention good and proper. ‘Granville! What have you done to upset him?’

  ‘Stayed alive. Not died in a drug-induced stupor. Not contracted HIV – not that he’s to know that, of course, but –’ But it seemed important that Taz should know. ‘Anyway, one day I nearly run into him in Tenterden. Forty-eight hours later my favourite postie gets blown in to the middle of next week.’

  ‘So this lot –’ he pointed at me with his thumb ‘– is part of some witness protection deal. I’d have thought you’d be better off in some safe house.’

  ‘That wasn’t an option. The policeman who interviewed me wanted to blame me, not protect me. But I think he’s bent, so he would, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Look here, you’ve got to have pretty strong evidence if you’re going to make allegations like that!’ His mother’s voice again.

  ‘I told you I should have begun at the beginning,’ I said sadly.

  After a shower, courtesy of Jan and Todd, and a cold beer he’d dug out of the fridge, Taz seemed much more his old self. He was as intrigued as Paula by the fittings of the mobile home, wandering round as if he were a prospective buyer.

  ‘Not a bad place to doss, this,’ he said. ‘Done well for yourself here, Caffy.’

  ‘I told you. This isn’t mine. It’s the Daweses’. I’ve got what I call my eyrie in Fullers itself.’

  ‘Surely they –’

  ‘I’d have been in the way,’ I said firmly. I wouldn’t point out I hadn’t been invited; I didn’t want him getting the idea that the Daweses had been anything other than wonderful. ‘And in any case, Fullers is safer.’

  Something made him look at me sharply, the way he used to look when he was trying to rescue me. ‘Why don’t we have another beer and you can tell me everything? And then we’ll go and get that meal and I’ll tell you what I propose to do.’

  We had a bite in the Crown, the local pub. It was still warm enough for us to sit outside, in the furthest corner of the garden, just like lovers avoiding interruption. In fact bats were the only things to venture into our air space. I was entranced.

  ‘You’re not scared of them?’

  What a conventional question: he should have known me better.

  ‘Not after that Scottish bloke dying of rabies?’ he prompted.

  ‘I’m not proposing to try and catch one. Anyway, these are
a different type, I think. Weren’t his confined to north of the Border?’

  ‘And you’re not scared in Fullers? All on your own?’ Didn’t he remember I’d never been girly?

  ‘So long as no one knows I’m there, why should I be? More escape routes than in the caravan, for one thing. And anyway, if they’re tracking activities via Jan’s mobile, then they’ll find them in London somewhere, so I shouldn’t be bothered.’

  ‘What about mice and other beasties?’

  I turned to look him straight in the eye. ‘After Clive Granville, how can a mouse scare me? Anyway, you told me that you were going to get back our lives for us. The Daweses have a house to renovate. Paula has a business to run. I have a job to do. And the only way we can do these things is if we’re not afraid of death by parcel. Which reminds me, shouldn’t dealing with said parcel be your priority?’

  ‘Where did you say it was?’

  ‘In a far corner of the garden.’ I grabbed his wrist. ‘My God! What if some little animal nibbles it? It’d activate it and blow us all up!’

  ‘So might heavy dew, unless the bag’s waterproof. Oh, well,’ he said, sinking the last of his half in one gulp, ‘I always did say it was better to think on your feet.’

  Fortunately, the Isle of Oxney wasn’t a mobile dead spot. The advice Taz received was simply to move the package into one of the bins, and make sure it stayed covered. The person at the other end of the line was clearly unwilling to ruin his or his colleagues’ Saturday evening. He insisted that things were best done by daylight, though I’d seen on TV impressive lights illuminating enough scenes of crime to make me doubt this. But Taz assured me that the aim was to behave in a very low-key manner, not alerting any more people than necessary to what was going on. The army, complete with armoured cars and goodness knows what else, would become an immediate news item. Special Branch might not.