Scar Tissue

by Judith Cutler

  My mouth left a message without consulting the rest of me. ‘Taz: last time it was me in danger. Now I think it’s you.’

  I was just about to give the name of the hotel when I saw that Jan was scribbling figures on a sheet of paper. ‘Mobile phone number,’ she mouthed.

  I read it out to him.

  ‘There,’ said Jan, as if the whole thing had been her idea. ‘Now, when did you last do the sights of London? Because it’s a lovely day and a sin to be inside.’

  We were at the Tower of London, appropriately enough, when Jan’s phone rang. She handed it straight to me.

  ‘Taz? Are you paying for that hotel room?’

  No wonder he asked me to repeat the question.

  ‘No, of course I’m not. Moffatt said he’d put it on to the Kent Constabulary account. Or get them to pick up the tab or whatever.’

  ‘The hotel thinks different.’ I realised I was in the way of a Japanese family armed with more camera equipment a jackdaw could shake a wing at. ‘You’re being set up.’

  ‘We’d better talk. Not here. Where are you?’

  ‘Just by Traitors’ Gate.’

  Todd and Jan sank into the shadows when Taz appeared.

  ‘I phoned the hotel. You’re right. Caffy, you’ve got yourself into something big here. Bigger than I thought, even,’ he added after a moment.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ I thought that after you’ve got yourself I was being generous to say we.

  ‘It’s all right for you,’ he grumbled. ‘You can just disappear. Do a moonlight. You’ve done it before.’

  Implying I was in practice, so no doubt it would come easy. I ought to put him right. But there wasn’t time. ‘How do I live? Like I did before?’

  He flushed. ‘There must be casual work…’

  There was Todd and Jan’s apparently bottomless pocket, but I wouldn’t say so. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’m being set up.’

  ‘Quite.’ I didn’t point out that I’d used the same words only half an hour before.

  ‘If you weren’t around, perhaps that’d get me out of it.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’ I tried to suppress the scorn in my voice. ‘You say nothing, Taz, and you’re theirs forever.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘But me no buts!’ Now where on earth had that sprung from? ‘You have to take this to the very highest authority you can. You’ve got me as a witness. You’ve got Paula’s photos and rope to back you – Taz! What did you do with them? You handed them over to Moffatt, didn’t you?’

  He looked at his feet. ‘He seemed such a decent guy. Plus being a very senior officer.’

  ‘“A man can smile and smile and be a villain.”’ Or something like that.

  Taz blinked. ‘You’re right.’

  And this was a man with the best public school education.

  I didn’t blame him for falling for Moffatt’s charm. I had myself – nearly. And of course, young cops naturally fall into respect mode when with a man further up the promotional tree than he can even aspire to. Wrong there, Caffy. Taz aspired to head the Met. Well, if we could pull this one off, maybe it’d help.

  ‘We’re not quite on our own, Taz.’

  He didn’t need words to tell me that he didn’t rate Paula’s Pots high in the fight against crime.

  ‘You remember the caravan. All that ducky equipment. Well, there are the owners. Todd and Jan Dawes. You remember,’ I prompted, ‘the pop star.’

  ‘A pop star!’ Another sneer.

  I’d wipe it off his face as I ought to have wiped the first. I said mildly, ‘And his lawyer wife. I think we should join them for lunch.’ We’d spoken about a picnic here. I almost called them over. But I saw a little glint over Taz’s shoulder. Security camera! Security cameras everywhere in a place like this.

  ‘Meet us by the exit. Meanwhile, Taz, I don’t know if you did any acting at school, but you’re up for an Oscar now. You’re going to tell me to get out of your life and never darken your phone again. And I’m going to burst into tears and run away. You’ll stalk off in the opposite direction. And it’ll all be videoed by CCTV.’

  Jan and Todd joined me a few yards from the chaos of the exit. ‘You poor child!’ Jan enveloped me in a warm hug. ‘Let him go, the shit. He isn’t worth it.’

  ‘I know he’s not,’ I whispered. ‘But all that lot was a charade for the cameras. He’s agreed to accept your advice. There he is, over there.’

  We sneaked into a loud, nasty pub. We sneaked out again, Todd, tapping his ear.

  ‘Loudspeakers,’ he said. ‘Lost a lot of hearing in both ears. I’m fine in small groups, but with background noise all I can do is try to lip-read. It’ll be a hearing-aid soon, but somehow that’s an admission of defeat.’

  Jan squeezed his hand. I wished I could. It was a big confession to make for a man who needed the Megs of this world to believe he’d be young forever. After a moment, I reached for the other hand, and squeezed that.

  We walked higgledy-piggledy back towards Charing Cross, eventually finding a café with outdoor tables. Goodness knows what traffic muck we’d eat with our food, but at least Todd would be able to hear the conversation. Taz was despatched inside to order.

  ‘Are you sure he’s up to this?’ Jan asked, not mentioning what this was.

  ‘He’s got to be. If he gives in now he’ll be under their thumb forever. Moffatt and the others will have bought him, just as Granville bought me. And their brand will be even deeper than mine.’

  Taz was coming back. I started to talk about historic buildings.

  ‘You’re prepared to go back to Fullers?’ Taz squeaked when I told him my plans.

  ‘If you’re prepared to go with Jan or one of her colleagues to the Police Internal Investigation people, yes. You see, I reckon Paula and I know what may have started out as a priest hole but which may not be a hiding place for something even more valuable than the hooch I suspect Free Traders used to keep there.’

  Todd shook his head. ‘They wouldn’t risk keeping illegal immigrants there. People leave evidence.’

  ‘Who says,’ Jan reflected slowly, ‘that people are the only things – oh, what a dreadful word to use! I’m sorry! – that need hiding? People smuggle all sorts of commodities.’

  ‘We’ll find out if I go back,’ I said, trying to stop my jaw setting in a stubborn line. ‘Paula and I were nearly on to it. You see, Marsh only got interested in what I was saying about the corpse at Crabton Manor when I mentioned the Pots were hoping to work at Fullers. The moment I mentioned the name, he was out of the room. And when he got back in, he’d found out all about my past. Then he slung me out.’

  ‘If only you had a witness,’ Jan sighed.

  ‘No, I don’t. But I do have a friend at court. In the police station at least. Her name’s Sherree. She was kind to me when I turned up. Funnily enough I returned the favour last night.’ I explained. And then remembered. ‘The terrible thing is I might have got her into trouble too.’ I told them about the pen.

  ‘Well done,’ Taz said, through a mouthful of egg and cress.

  Todd seemed to realise the darker implications. ‘So either they’ll believe Sherree doesn’t know where it’s come from – in which case she may find herself in the shit – or they will believe her, and they’ll know you’ve twigged and are therefore all the more dangerous. And she’ll still be in the shit. But probably nowhere near as deep as the shit you’re in. Oh, Caffy.’

  ‘How did you realise you were being spied on?’ Taz asked.

  ‘Sid – the man they’d put in undercover – used a couple of words and phrases I’d used to Paula the previous evening. I thought it might be coincidence at first. Then, although he had the chance to go into the Manor for a look round, he didn’t take it. And he seemed so critical of us – well, I lost faith in him.’ Him and most of the human race.

  Todd put up a hand. ‘Did you have the bag with you when you did your recce around Fullers?’

&n
bsp; I shook my head. ‘I was the butchest dykiest decorator you’ve ever seen. Far too butch for a bag, anyway.’ I did a little impression of myself: they managed to laugh.

  ‘So they’ve no idea what you found?’

  ‘No, but they may know what I was looking for. I had my bag near me while we were talking about our plans. On the ground. We were at a picnic table in a pub garden.’ I willed Taz to say I was probably out of range, but perhaps he was too low in the pecking order ever to have learned about surveillance aids. Perhaps I’d kept cheerful so far on adrenaline: all of a sudden, it subsided, and all my hope and optimism drained.

  And then I realised that both my hands were enclosed in warm firm grasps. Todd and Jan were there for me. And if they could pop the steel back into my sagging spine, there was no knowing what they could do for Taz.

  With Jan’s contacts it didn’t take her long to learn whom to phone at Scotland Yard. I supposed I’d dimly suspected that the place only existed in fiction, the sort where local plods are so bewildered by the Murder of one of the Gentry at the Big House that they have to summon aid from the aristocratic brainboxes in London Town. I’d seen the rotating post outside New Scotland Yard often enough on TV to believe in that, of course. We decided not to go mob-handed. Todd and I would hang around while she marched Taz off with her.

  ‘What do you want to do now?’ Todd asked.

  With Todd I could say things safe in the knowledge I wouldn’t shock or disappoint him. ‘You see that ice cream seller over there? I can’t remember how long it is since I had an ice cream.’

  He smiled kindly, adding, as he fished in his pocket for change, ‘I warn you – it’ll taste of nothing except sweetness. Cold sweetness.’

  ‘What should it taste of then?’

  ‘Well, vanilla or strawberry or whatever. That soft stuff – it’s got all the charm of…of wallpaper paste!’ he concluded triumphantly.

  ‘I’ll give it a miss, then. What I really want,’ I said, ‘is to get back to work. I’m letting the others down.’

  ‘Or endangering them – which is, as I recall, where we came in.’ He grinned. He wasn’t blaming me.

  I nodded. ‘In that case, I want to be at Fullers, getting them out of danger.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘If I can find that passage, if I can have evidence no one can argue with, then everything can be wrapped up.’

  He shook his head. ‘Very dangerous.’

  ‘Not as dangerous – for Fullers, that is – as having a load of plods attacking the place with those rams they use to open people’s front doors. They wouldn’t do Fullers’ plaster and woodwork any good at all. And probably not dangerous at all if the police think I’m safe and sound at the hotel. I bet they checked with reception and found I was a dirty stop-out last night.’

  ‘Where did you sleep?’

  ‘Back at my flat. Some obliging soul had cut off my electricity, though I don’t recall telling them to.’

  He gave me one of his shrewd looks. ‘How do you pay?’

  ‘Direct debit.’

  ‘Have you checked your statement?’

  Funny, I didn’t expect Todd to know about all these day-to day things: if I’d thought about it, I’d have expected him to have secretaries and accountants and housekeepers to do dull things like paying bills.

  ‘Not yet. There wasn’t one – hang on, there was hardly any post, either! You don’t suppose – Todd, am I officially dead?’

  He pulled a face. ‘That might be a good thing. Wasn’t that the plan when they blew up the caravan? To prove to Granville that you were dead?’

  ‘Or at least in hospital. You know what, I must have missed the announcement of my own death.’ There was what would have been a silence except for the roar of the traffic. After the country, even after dozy little Ashford, it was deafening. Had it been as bad as this in Birmingham? And it wasn’t just traffic, it was people. Everyone seemed to be yelling.

  ‘I bet we could find a better ice cream,’ Todd said.

  While we waited for room service to deliver it, I used Todd’s phone again, this time to check with my bank what had happened to my direct debits. They’d all been returned, account not known. Someone had been busy on my behalf. ‘Well, don’t, whatever anyone says, whatever documentation they have, close down this account,’ I said firmly.

  ‘We only do that if we get a death certificate,’ the helpful Northern voice told me. Where was she from? Leeds?

  ‘Even if you get a death certificate,’ I insisted. ‘Do nothing unless I tell you.’

  ‘You can’t tell us if you’re dead, though,’ she said delicately.

  ‘I don’t intend to die,’ I said. ‘Look, if I do, a friend will phone giving you my password. But only then can you close my account. My overdraft, more like.’

  The girl didn’t laugh.

  The ice cream was excellent. Todd watched as if fascinated by the thoroughness with which I cleaned the glass.

  ‘Why didn’t you have one?’

  ‘At my age, you have to watch all sorts of boring things like calories and cholesterol. Plus the cold makes my teeth jump.’ He grimaced. ‘I’ve been thinking: do you really think you could find the hidden room, passage-way, whatever, at Fullers?’

  ‘If Paula and I couldn’t, I don’t know who could – unless they knew about it already, of course, or went round with those ram things.’

  ‘I’ll have to talk this through with Jan, of course. But if you needed someone to ride shotgun, with a fast getaway car, I’d be game.’

  ‘It doesn’t exactly go with watching calories or cholesterol. If you’ve got a dodgy heart, Todd, it wouldn’t be wise.’

  He roared with laughter. ‘My heart’s fine. How old do you think I am, for God’s sake? But it was kind of you to think about it,’ he added. ‘I want to die at a ripe old age, as I hope you do. The other thing we’d have to worry about is muddying the police waters. If only we knew who was doing what to whom!’

  ‘And if we could trust Moffatt when he said he’d involved all those police and other agencies. He certainly got the caravan blown up, and – Todd, I believed him! Or my tum believed him, after that wonderful meal. And the booze, of course.’

  ‘Well, we know the caravan was blown up. The people your Taz notified did that.’

  ‘Not “my Taz”.’

  ‘I though you said that dramatic parting was fiction?’

  ‘It was. We seem to have parted a while back – not sure when.’

  ‘So you’re footloose and fancy-free?’ His face crinkled in a smile.

  Jesus, he wasn’t going to make a pass at me? Surely not! I hadn’t felt a single vibe! I loved him like I’d have liked to love my dad, if you see what I mean.

  I waited too long to reply. He looked at me closely. ‘I’m sorry. It’s none of our business, but Jan and I were just wondering why there wasn’t a man in the life of such a pretty young woman, that’s all. Pretty until the makeover, at least,’ he added, laughing and ruffling my mop.

  A man! After all the men who’d flitted through my life, would I ever need another one? Maybe a young and unattached clone of Todd. But what decent man would want to take up an ex-tart, even one who’d been celibate for years? I think Todd knew he wasn’t getting the whole answer when I replied blithely, ‘Absolutely footloose and fancy-free.’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Todd was just tempting me with full afternoon tea either in their suite or, better still, he said, in the hotel lounge so I could people-watch, when the phone rang.

  Picking it up swiftly, he mouthed, ‘Jan,’ to me, and settled down to listen, his face increasingly stern. ‘You’re joking! …I don’t believe it! … You cannot be serious!’ he added in John McEnroe mode. At last he cut the call. ‘You may not believe this,’ he said, almost grinding his teeth, ‘but the man they need to see is in a meeting. And the man below him. And his deputy. All very important! Top brass! All too bloody busy talking about fighting crime to fight cr
ime.’

  ‘Is there no one else –?’

  ‘I’m quite sure there is,’ he said grimly. ‘But you don’t know Jan like I know Jan. She’s going to see the top man if she has to sit there till midnight. And maybe she’s right, in the present instance. Maybe only the top guy has the clout to sort all this out. OK. Did you want that afternoon tea or do you want to check dutifully into your hotel and suss out Fullers?’

  I blinked. ‘What about Jan – don’t you want to discuss it with her?’

  ‘The mood she’s in now she’d tell us to go and make sure we took a machine gun. Two machine guns. I’ll send her a text message. If I can remember how, that is. Jesus, Caffy, remember to take your gingko biloba!’

  I smiled vaguely. He wasn’t to know a packet of pills like that would consume my entire food budget for a week – and more. He was now fizzing with energy, and no amount of sitting around feeding his face with fine food would calm him. So I said nothing as he bundled us into his Range Rover, delivered to the front door by a young man I wanted to yell at not to be so servile. Valet-parking was a job, for God’s sake: if he was doing it well, he should hold his head up.

  Todd drove slowly out of London – slowly was the only way – and then pulled over. ‘I bet you’d like to drive, wouldn’t you?’

  I risked asking outright. ‘How did you know?’

  He laughed. ‘You’ll tackle anything, Caffy. I like to give you a challenge to rise to. Go on, try it! Your excuse is that I need to work out how we get you into the hotel without them seeing me and get you out again without them seeing you, and I can’t think while I drive.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about nothing else while you drove,’ I admitted. ‘But the first’s easy. You drop me somewhere off-camera if they’ve got any, that is, and I walk. But we’ll need to find a thick hedge – since that’s what they’ll be expecting, I’ll change back into my working gear.’ I patted the carrier bag on my lap.

  ‘I wondered what was in there. OK. It won’t be so bad walking in those trainers. But what about escaping?’