by Stan Arnold
Charlie answered. ‘Yeah?’
‘Mr Sumkins, hello…’
‘Who the fuck is this and how did you get my private fuckin’ number?’ barked Charlie.
‘Vlad gave it to me.’
‘What,’ said Charlie, in an even nastier tone, ‘you up the spout or got the pox? Shit! I told him a million times, there’s a whole fuckin’ range of public medical services available to the dodgy tarts he’s shaftin’.’
‘No, no. He gave me your card - he said I handled myself very well.’
‘Look, what that useless pervert chooses to watch when I’m not paying him is up to him. If he gets off on watching you handle yourself, I couldn't give a toss.’
‘No,’ said Mrs Hathaway, having absolutely no idea what Charlie was talking about, ‘I’m a fighter - karate, kyusho, tae kwan do, aikido, kung fu, hapkido and aiki jiu jitsu - that sort of thing.’
‘’Ang on a minute,’ said Charlie, ‘I fort for a minute there, we’d got a crossed line with a Hong Kong brothel. Fighter? What d’you mean?’
‘Give me five minutes tomorrow, and I’ll show you.’
‘Sorry darlin’ but it ain’t that easy. I mean what did Vlad see?’
‘Well, if you must know, I knocked someone out.’
‘Who?’
‘Vlad’s twin brother, Vic.’
‘Vic! You’re fucking jokin’ me darlin’. And how’d ya do that? Hit him five times from behind with a crowbar while when was pissed? Then dropped an anvil on his head? I tell ya, anythin’ less and he wouldn’t have noticed.’
‘No, we were boxing and I hit him with four uppercuts.’
There was a short pause.
‘Well, I know Vlad don't hand my card out to just anyone - he knows what would happen to him if he did. I’ll give you 10 minutes at 10 o’clock tomorrow.’
‘Thank you very much Mr Sumkins, but that won't be necessary. It should only take five minutes.’
‘Please yourself.’ He put the receiver down.
Mrs Hathaway smiled - part relief, part nervousness and part satisfaction that everything was on track.
It was a long shot, but she’d now gone too far to turn back.
By way of reassurance, she stood up, walked over to her handbag, opened it and checked her secret weapon was ready for action.
*
Now for Aubrey. She woke him up, by shaking his shoulder, gently.
‘How are you, my little Aubrey?’
Aubrey looked up. His other nostril had reappeared, even though the multitude of purple swellings around his eyes and mouth were still there. In general, he looked as though 24 hours of sleep had done him some, if not a lot, of good.
‘Any grub goin’?’ said Aubrey
‘Well, yes there is?’ said Mrs Hathaway.
‘Good. What?’ said Aubrey.
Years of being beaten by Charlie Sumkins for saying the wrong things had severely limited Aubrey’s powers of conversation. He equated the spoken word with pain.
‘Well you know you said your favourite was mutton vindaloo with chana bhuna side extras and some lager.’
Aubrey nodded and started to dribble.
‘Well, on my way home, I bought a take-away from that Indian restaurant in Frith Street. I’ll pop it in the microwave.’
‘Good, ‘cos all I had to eat when you was out was them apples. Disgustin’ - they tasted like…’ He paused and screwed up his face. ‘…like fruit or somethin’!’
‘You stay propped up in bed, and I’ll get it ready.’
It was true Aubrey was abrupt and appeared ungrateful. But she knew that mutton vindaloo with chana bhuna side extras was his favourite meal. She also knew that, if anything went wrong tomorrow, it would not just be his favourite meal, it would be his last meal.
The microwave microwaved merrily. The meal was delivered and demolished in record time.
Aubrey lay back and belched.
‘Bleeding’ great, darlin’.’
She looked down with some satisfaction and a little concern on her face. The thing was, she hadn't told Aubrey anything about her plans for tomorrow. She wisely decided to wait until the morning to reveal they would be visiting Charlie Sumkins. This was much better than telling him now, and having to deal with, what she feared would be, mutton vindaloo-chana bhuna projectile vomiting on a grand scale.
Chapter 14
Next morning, Aubrey reacted badly to the news.
He clutched his throat and gave a stifled scream. Then he gave an un-stifled scream, which nearly burst Mrs Hathaway’s eardrums. He staggered back from the breakfast table and ran out of the kitchen into the living room-gymnasium where he continued to bounce uncontrollably off the furniture and equipment like a foul-mouthed ping-pong ball that has just been fired from a howitzer.
‘I ain’t goin’. I ain’t fuckin’ goin’. No way, Ho-say - whoever the fuck he is. I’m a fuckin’ goner. I’ve ‘ad it. ‘E’s ‘omicidal. ‘E’ll make fucking mincemeat out of me - an’ you. I’m fuckin’ toast, I tell you. Fuckin’ toast. He’ll make fuckin’ mincemeat outta my balls and have ‘em on toast.’
Mrs Hathaway stood quietly watching this extraordinary performance from the door of the kitchen. She assumed, quite wrongly, that Aubrey’s culinary references were down to the fact that he hadn’t eaten any breakfast. And it was such a good breakfast too - scrambled egg and steak - just like the astronauts have before they go on their missions. Although she assumed, quite rightly, that what she had to do this morning was going to be a lot more dangerous than whizzing round the earth and having to cope with unimaginable toilet facilities.
Mrs Hathaway decided to call a halt to Aubrey’s antics when he tried to unzip her punch bag and get inside. Entering this perceived refuge had proved more difficult than he imagined. When she reached him, Aubrey was hanging upside down with one foot in the bag and the other waving helplessly in mid-air. She started to wonder whether the vindaloo-chana bhuna projectile vomit option would have been a lot easier.
With the help of a rather benign Kyusho pressure point on Aubrey’s neck, she calmed him, helped him up to the kitchen table, and, after cutting his steak into little pieces, managed to get him to eat up all his breakfast.
It occurred to her the pressure point might not have been too benign, as Aubrey seemed to have forgotten everything about his panic attack, including the impending appointment with Charlie. She decided to leave it that way.
*
At 10 minutes to 10 o’clock, the cab pulled up outside Charlie’s office building. As he had been throughout the journey, Aubrey was staring out of the window, happy and silent.
This was not good, thought Mrs Hathaway as she paid the fare. Aubrey didn't even show signs of recognising the building where he must have been many times before.
At five to 10, they were in the corridor, close to Charlie’s door. There was no reception. People just went straight in, and from what Aubrey had said, sometimes, if they were lucky, they came out again.
She bent down and looked into Aubrey’s battered eyes.
‘Aubrey?’
‘Yes?’ he said vaguely.
She had to act. More Kyusho, but this time from Manual Two. She pinching the back of Aubrey’s neck and placed her hand on his forehead. Then after three seconds, she rapidly withdrew both hands, at the same time. It was supposed to cure headaches, and was the only thing she could think of. The manual said do it three times. After the third time, she got a result.
‘Shit!’ cried Aubrey. ‘Th-th-this is Charlie’s office!’ As he turned to sprint off down the corridor, Mrs Hathaway grabbed his collar and tie and twisted tightly. It was a move she’d learned from a course entitled, How to use your opponent’s casual clothing as a weapon. It worked. Aubrey stood to attention, and his expression pleaded for oxygen. She relaxed her grip, and made a mental note that doing these moves on a real person was different from doing them on the course, and maybe she ought to try and go easy on the level of attack she used - at least,
as far as Aubrey was concerned.
She turned and knocked on the door.
‘Mr Sumkins, this is your 10 o’clock appointment.’
A surprisingly cheerful voice answered.
‘Come in, come in. Let’s get acquainted.’
She opened the door. It was a room she knew well. A huge office with expensive oak panelled walls and a creaky Singapore fan.
Charlie was obsessed with Ealing Comedies from the late 1940s and 1950s, and regularly dressed as characters from the films. Anyone who so much as smiled at his outfits would soon have that smile removed, possibly with an industrial grinder.
Today, he was dressed a Donald Houston, who starred as David 'Dai Number 9' Jones in the 1949 film, A Run for your Money, directed by Charles Frend. The film was about two Welsh miners who win a trip to London. Charlie was wearing a long mackintosh, a rumpled suit with a leek sewn on near the top pocket, a cream, soft-collared shirt, a tie and a cable-knit V-neck pullover.
Mrs Hathaway walked slowly towards Charlie with her hand behind her back. That hand still had a firm grip on Aubrey’s collar and tie, and she manoeuvred him so he was hidden from Charlie’s view.
‘Take a seat, my dear,’ smiled Charlie. And, in the same pleasant tone, added, ‘And dump the little shit on the stool.’
She let go of Aubrey and he scampered to the stool, which was where he normally sat when being grilled by Charlie.
‘You noticed?’ she said, with a faint smile.
‘Noticed?’ said Charlie in a much more aggressive tone. ‘Noticed? What do you fink I am - an amateur?’
He pressed a button on his desk and part of the oak panelling slid back to reveal around 30 CCTV monitors.
‘I’m better protected than Fort Fuckin’ Knox. I saw you getting’ out of the taxi. I saw you in the lift. I saw you doin’ that head-patting thing. I saw the pox-ridden ferret start to panic. If you’re within 100 yards of this building, I know exactly what you’re doing. This isn't your fuzzy, Crimewatch was-that-a-human-being-or-a-dog type TV stuff. This is state-of-the-fuckin’-art, high-definition cameras and monitors. So don’t try any fuckin’ subterfuge with me darlin’.’
When he had finished, there was a lot of spit on the top of his desk.
‘Right,’ said Mrs Hathaway, ‘let’s get down to business’.
‘My thoughts exactly,’ said Charlie.
And that said, he put his hand in the desk drawer and pulled out a handgun, complete with silencer, and aimed it straight at Aubrey.
Chapter 15
As Charlie’s gun reached the horizontal, Mrs Hathaway was in like a flash. In fact, you could say she was in like three flashes. First, she shoved her little finger of her left hand down the end of the silencer. Second and third, she, simultaneously, shoved the index finger and second finger of her right hand as far as she could up Charlie Sumkins’ flaring nostrils.
She looked straight into his eyes and spoke with a surprising amount of authority, considering the position she was in.
‘Before you pull the trigger, Charles, I want you to look very, very carefully at my cleavage.’
This was an offer even Charlie didn't get every day. He thought for a second. What had he got to lose? He’d have a look, then pull the trigger.
But it wasn’t going to be that easy. Neatly tucked into her V-necked dress was a piece of paper with ‘READ ME - OR YOU’RE DEAD’ written in black felt-tip pen.
Charlie reached out for the paper with his left hand. As soon as he had it in front of him, she jerked his nostrils forward and down, so he could get a good view.
Mrs Hathaway’s secret weapon had a greater impact than she could ever have expected.
‘Fud me!’ gasped Charlie. ‘Where de fuddin ‘ell did you det dis?’
His right hand dropped from the pistol, which was left, for a moment, hanging off her little finger.
‘Where de fuddin ‘ell did you det dis?’ repeated Charlie, his eyes wide in amazement.
She lowered the gun carefully to the desktop.
‘Where de fuddin ‘ell did you det dis?’ mumbled Charlie as if in a trance.
Taking advantage of the fact that Charlie was, no doubt temporarily, on the back foot, she removed her fingers from his nostrils.
‘Aubrey. Could I borrow your handkerchief?’
Aubrey slid off his stool and walked towards her, holding out his hanky. Each step squelched and it was obvious that, during the exchanges of the last 30 seconds, he had, quite understandably, wet himself.
She took the handkerchief.
‘Go to the bathroom over there, and dry yourself,’ she indicated with a glistening index finger.
‘It should be nice. I only cleaned it a couple of days ago. Use the hair-dryer in the bottom left-hand cupboard.’
Aubrey squelched off.
‘And leave the door open. I want you to hear everything we say.’
She felt confident in handing out these instructions and taking time to clean herself up, because Charlie was still looking down at the paper in disbelief. He was quietly repeating his mantra, but this time with clearer nostrils.
‘Where the fuckin’ ‘ell did you get this?’
She took the pistol and silencer, made sure the safety catch was on, and popped them into her handbag.
‘Nice choice, Charles - 45 calibre Heckler & Koch 23 with Evolution silencer - but we wouldn't like this to go off bang and frighten anyone would we?’
Charlie didn't look up. He just shook his head slowly from side to side.
‘Where the fuckin’ ‘ell did you get this?’
His voice was almost a whisper now.
Mrs Hathaway decided it was time to slake Charlie’s thirst for knowledge.
‘Interesting isn't it? 20-odd years’ old, and it can still stir the emotions.’
Charlie’s head snapped up. He was back on the front foot.
‘Where the fuck did you get this, you fuckin’ bitch?’
‘Now, Charles,’ she said, calmly. ‘May I remind you of three things. One: I’m a lady. Two: I’m not used to that sort of intemperate language. And Three: I’m the one with the gun in her handbag.’
She opened her handbag and looked inside.
‘Oh yes, there it is. I hadn't imagined it. You know what women are like! Heads full of air!’
She laughed, but the steel in her bright blue eyes let Charlie know she wouldn't hesitate to blow his brains out, if needs be.
‘So, let me answer your question with another. Do you remember Delores, the lady you had an intimate relationship with about twenty years ago? Sorry, I only knew her as Delores. I never knew her second name.’
‘Neither did I,’ said Charlie. ‘Strange really, we were on the go for about eight years. If this desk top could talk!’
‘Quite,’ said Mrs Hathaway. ‘Well, Delores and I use to meet up for a chat at the canteen on the second floor.’
‘There ain’t no canteen on the fuckin’ second floor.’
She gave him a disapproving look, patted her handbag and Charlie repeated the sentence without the expletive.
‘There was a canteen 20 years’ ago. If you remember, you closed it down, and re-opened it as a cinema showing pornographic films.’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Charlie, eyeing the handbag, carefully.
‘As I was saying, Delores and I became good friends. You know - an occasional chat over tea and a nice piece of cake.’
Charlie didn't know - he’d never had an occasional chat over tea and a nice piece of cake with anyone, ever. But he nodded.
‘Well, one day, she came in looking really worried. She had this envelope with some test results you’d asked her to pick up from the doctor’s.’
‘And?’
‘She was worried, you know - that it might be something - well, serious. So I suggested she steam the envelope open and check, just to put her mind at rest. So we got the canteen kettle…’
‘OK, OK,’ said Charlie, impatiently.
‘And there w
as nothing serious at all, just a report saying your sperm count was zero.’
Charlie’s head slumped onto the desk.
‘Delores was so relieved. She began to cry, so I suggested she went to the Ladies to freshen up. She left the test results behind and I did something dreadful. I don't know why, but, in those days, do you remember, we had one photocopier for the whole building, and people had to come down to the canteen to make copies?’
Charlie dropped his head to the desk and began to moan.
‘I know I shouldn’t have, but I had a funny feeling that, one day, it might be useful if I had a copy. I’ve never done anything like that, before or since. I put the original back on the table, and when Delores reappeared, she put it in the envelope, resealed it and went off as happy as could be.’
Charlie raised his head, and started fiddling with the end of his leek.
‘So, where’s all this goin’?’
‘Well, I have good reason to believe your associates, Vlad and Vic, have instructions to dispose of poor Aubrey, here.’
Aubrey had returned to his stool, where he sat, hands on knees, looking morose and not fully dried out.
‘Well, yeah. Sort of.’
Mrs Hathaway was not in the mood to be messed about.
‘Don't bandy words with me Mr Sumkins. If I hit you with this handbag, something might go bang. Did you, or did you not, order them to - what do you people say - rub him out?’
‘Well, yeah. Sort of.’
‘I’ll take that as a “Yes”.’
‘Now,’ she continued, ‘I feel it’s my duty to ensure that that doesn't happen. So here’s what I’ve done. Yesterday, I visited a solicitor and gave him a large envelope. Inside the envelope, were 40 smaller envelopes, each containing an explanatory letter and a copy of your test result. The letters were addressed to leading crime reporters, news reporters and billiard hall owners, all over London. The solicitor has instructions to post all the individual letters immediately if Aubrey or I were to die in mysterious or suspicious circumstances.’
‘So,’ said Charlie, trying to brazen it out, ‘I got a nothin’ sperm count, big deal.’
