“You look great, George. Great.”
“You too, Billy. How’s Val?”
“Val? Didn’t you hear? She left me for a bloody rep selling greetings cards. A bloody salesman in a white Ford Sierra!”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Billy.”
“We’re two of a kind, George. Two of a kind.”
Macrae frowned, he wasn’t ready for that. Instead he said, “I came as soon as I heard.”
“That’s what I said to myself in hospital. I said they don’t know. They’d come if they knew.”
“Tell me about it, Billy.”
Rampton took another long pull on his cigarette. Macrae noticed that his fingers were badly stained by smoke.
“You ever come across a villain called Joe Fentiman?”
“Can’t recall the name.”
“You will. He’s one of the new lot south of the River. The days of the old East End gangs are over now, George. The party’s moved south. Bloody Pakistanis and Turks and Christ knows what are running things down that way now. Anyway, this Fentiman sod has got a liquor warehouse down Tooting way. And he specializes in cases of this and that, selling them off at half the price — wines and gin and Bacardi and stuff like that.
“I was working for a liquor company called Three Ways. You ever heard of them? No? Well, no reason why you should. Importers, wholesalers, etc., etc…And they’re always losing stuff. A few cases here, fifty cases there. You know the score. Truck pulls into a transport cafe, driver goes in for tea and a bacon sarny. And when he drives off he’s a few cases light. Maybe ten, maybe twenty or thirty. And he knows because he’s been slipped a few quid and told where to park the lorry.”
“I know the score.”
“Course you do, George. So, anyway, my lot say to me, Billy, you’re the bloody security man, this has got to stop. Well, didn’t take long to find out who was doing the thieving.”
“Joe Fentiman.”
“Yeah. Fentiman and his lads. Anyway, they heard I was on to them so Fentiman comes to see me. Right here in this house. And offers me five hundred quid to look the other way.
“I said to him, you must be joking, my son, you’re pulling in thousands and thousands — I mean Three Ways is losing about a hundred grand a year and that’s only one company. So he says take it or leave it.
“So I said he could stuff it. I said make me a decent offer or get lost. Know what I mean?”
He lit another cigarette.
“He didn’t like that. He was big but not too big — and you know me George. Ready for anything.
“So he says OK…OK…let’s talk some more. Let me go and see my people. We didn’t know you was serious. So I said OK, you go and talk to your people. And I’m just closing the door when three of his lads — I mean I thought I’d been bloody careful — but anyway these three lads pushed the door in and Fentiman comes back, that makes four, and they laid into me. Iron bars. Chains. You name it.”
His voice had dropped. “That’s when I copped this.” He pointed to the recently healed wound on his head. “And this.” He pulled up his shirt and Macrae saw three or four livid scars on his chest and back. “Then they wrecked the place. This is all new secondhand. I tell you, George, I nearly snuffed it.”
“Hard men.”
“Yeah, very hard. Nearly a month in hospital. Intensive care. Tubes everywhere. Have some more.” He held up the cider flagon.
“No thanks. I’ve got a bad gut.”
He poured the remainder into his glass. “Tastes like piss,” he said. “Still, better than nothing.”
“But you’re OK now, Billy?”
“OK? Look at that.” He held out his hand. “Trembles like a fucking leaf. Can’t do a thing to stop it. They fixed me, George. I’m not ashamed to say it. And in more ways than one. When I got out of hospital the firm made me redundant.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Said it was the recession, the bastards, but they took on someone else a few weeks later. Didn’t even give me a decent handshake. Just what they were obliged to pay by law.”
He rose and went to the window, pulled the curtains back an inch and peered into the street. “Sometimes I think they’ll…they won’t be back, will they? I mean there’s no reason now.”
“They won’t come back, Billy. As you say, there’s no reason.” Macrae rose. “I’m on duty in half an hour. Just thought I’d drop in and see how you were.”
“That’s bloody good of you, George. Really good. You were always the best.”
They went out into the hallway. “Listen George. I hate doing this, specially to someone like you. But you couldn’t lend me a couple of hundred could you? I’ll pay you back once I get a job. You know you can trust me. You have my word on that.”
Macrae felt burning gas come up into his throat. “Course I can trust you, Billy. But, laddie, you’ve got to believe me when I say I couldn’t even lend you a tenner. Not even a fiver.”
There was something in the way he said it that was entirely convincing. “Women?” Rampton said.
“Well, not so much women as children.”
“That’s one small mercy. Val and I never had any.”
At the door Rampton said, “Excuse me for asking, George.”
“Don’t be bloody silly.”
They shook hands.
“They were great days, George. I mean at Savile Row. Great days. The villains knew who was boss, didn’t they?”
“Aye, Billy, they certainly knew that. By the way, Billy, did you ever come across a villain called Stoker? Assaulted a PC in Hackney some years back?”
Rampton thought for a moment and then slowly shook his head. “Don’t think so. Why?”
“Just wondered. Look after yourself.”
“Yeah. You too, George.”
Macrae heard the door close behind him, then the clashing of the locks and bars and bolts and chains.
He put his hands in his pockets, hunched forward against the wind, and walked down the street to his car.
The letter came in the afternoon mail and was addressed to Miss Grace Davies. Irene looked at it for a long moment then opened it. At first, because it took her by surprise, it confused her. It also tore at her heart that anyone should still think Grace was alive.
She looked again at the heading on the single sheet of note-paper: Kingswood Publishers. The address was in Covent Garden. The letter read:
Dear Miss Davies, You said you would let me know what to do with the typescript of IN THE FORESTS OF THE NIGHT. I don’t want to send it by post in case you’ve moved as you said you might and in case you don’t have a copy. Could you let me know, please?
I’m sorry things didn’t work out. As I said at the time, I thought there was a good idea for a commercial novel here but that you were too close to it.
Yours sincerely, Juliette Simmonds Senior Editor Irene frowned and read it through again. Typescript? Novel? Grace must have been writing all this time. She stared out at the unkempt back garden as dusk settled on London.
Grace. A novelist!
She must talk to Miss Juliette Simmonds. And she must get back the typescript.
She reached forward to dial the number on the notepaper, when the phone rang. She recoiled, as though it was alive.
“This is Dr Malhotra,” the voice said. “At Linwood House. Your mother is one of my patients.”
Irene felt a cold hand grip her bowels. It was a feeling she had had many times over the years whenever those in charge of her mother got into sudden contact with her. It was never anything pleasant.
“Is she all right?” Irene asked, and part of her mind hoped for her mother’s sake that she was not, that he was ringing to tell her she had slipped away from the battered shell of her body.
“She was the last time I saw her.”
“So why are you phoning me?”
“Well, I was wondering if she was with you. But it does not seem to be the case.”
“It certainly isn’t
the case!”
“You see she is not in the hospital. No one has seen her since breakfast time.”
“But it’s nearly five. For goodness sake, don’t you have checks?”
“Yes we do, and I am going to find out what went wrong. Do not worry about that.”
“But that’s not the point.”
“Yes, yes, I know. We have started an inquiry. After breakfast there was Olde Tyme Dancing in the lounge by one of the Rotary Club groups. Your mother was seen by two of the nurses going towards the TV room.”
“She doesn’t go to entertainments.”
“That is so, and therefore the nursing staff thought nothing of it.”
“Well, she isn’t here and she isn’t in the hospital. What do you propose?”
“We must alert the police.”
“No! Not yet. Give me a couple of hours. I think I know where she might be. She…well, I just think I might know.”
“But I’m afraid we cannot take the responsibility.”
“Responsibility! For God’s sake, you let her out. That’s not responsible, is it?”
There was a silence at the other end of the line. She wondered what Dr Malhotra was? Indian? Pakistani? Sri Lankan?
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have gone off like that. Look, she’s my mother. I’ve handled her in situations like this before. I’ll have her back with you by seven or phone you. And then we can call the police. OK?”
“Sure. OK.”
Irene drove against the early rush-hour traffic, stopped once at a small suburban supermarket, and was coming into the Queenstown Road less than half an hour after taking the call. She parked, picked up her purchase, and walked back along the road. She turned left and left again and abruptly seemed to disappear from the urban scene.
She could hear, in the distance, the trains crossing the Thames on the Southern Railway. But apart from that she might have been in a foreign country. It was a place of broken fences, of ancient no trespassing notices, of almost illegible warnings about guard dogs, of mud and puddles, and tom paper streaming in the wind.
She picked her way through a hole in a fence and walked along a cinder track towards a coal wharf that had not been used for thirty years. She could see the black slick of the river under the lights on the opposite bank.
Once, large cranes had stood embedded in concrete platforms, but they had long since been removed, leaving huge holes like bomb craters. In one of these craters, around a small fire, sat a group of half a dozen people, men and women, as derelict as the site itself.
She heard the noise of someone hawking and spitting and then she saw her mother. She was sitting on the opposite side of the fire and her face was lit by the flames from burning driftwood.
Irene stopped, appalled. Although she could only have been there for some hours, Mrs Davies appeared, by her unkempt hair and generally ragged appearance, to have been part of the group for weeks or months.
It was like a replay. It had happened before. This was where she had been found and this was why Irene was not afraid to come alone. Twice before she had brought her mother out of this crater.
She had been afraid the first time. Then she had come with Grace’s father. But when she saw the men with the cans of lager spiked with gin, when she saw what alcohol and sleeping rough had done to them physically, she knew she had little cause for fear.
This time, she had been clever.
As she went forward into the firelight the group turned hostile faces towards her.
“What d’you want?” a man said. He was dressed in an old topcoat fastened at the front with a large safety-pin. His grey hair had turned yellowish at the ends.
“This isn’t television time. That’s been and gone.” He coughed and spat. “Come here with your bloody cameras!” His voice was educated.
“I’m not a television reporter,” Irene said.
“Every Christmas. Always the same. You come here and take a few pictures. Tell the world how bloody it’s been to us. And then you piss off and we don’t see you again for another year.”
Mrs Davies was looking at Irene over the flames but Irene knew she was not seeing anything. She was so drunk she could hardly keep her head up.
“I’ve brought you something,” Irene said to the group.
All she could see of them were their red faces in the firelight.
“We don’t want your fucking charity,” a woman’s voice said.
But Irene ignored her. She was carrying two six-packs of beer. Now she dropped them. There was a drunken scramble and she went round to the other side of the fire and put her hand under Mrs Davies’ arm.
“Come on, Mother,” she said.
The old lady mumbled indistinctly but allowed herself to be hauled to her feet. She was so frail she weighed almost nothing.
“Goodnight,” Irene said as she led her mother along the cinder path. But the others were arguing fiercely and had no time to answer.
CHAPTER XVI
Leopold Silver — This is Your Home!
Zoe finished lettering the piece of white cardboard and pinned it on to the door of their maisonette so that it would be the first thing he saw when he came up the stairs from the street.
In other parts of the flat were signs like: “This is Leo’s teaspoon,” and “This is Leo’s chair.”
She had spent a happy half-hour thinking up things to amuse him when he came home.
Home!
She had come in and smelled the odours of stale garlic and unwashed socks and they had brought tears of joy to her eyes. Essence of Leo and Zoe.
It was such a lovely place to come home to. Warm yellows and oranges…sunny colours even in January. Then there were the dear chipped coffee mugs and the beloved dripping taps…
The point was they were her chipped mugs, and her dripping taps, and she didn’t have to find an answer for questions like: Why (vy) is that tap dripping?
That was all finished. Lottie was back with Manfred in northwest London, and she was back with Leo — or would be when he got home — in south-west London, and although there weren’t many miles between them, there were all sorts of barriers, like Hyde Park Comer and Marble Arch and traffic jams near Victoria…it didn’t really matter which way you travelled, there were obstacles that made it nearly impossible for Manfred (who hated public transport) ever to get to Pimilico.
Free…!
Wheee…!
She lettered another card: “Home is the Hunter, Home from the Hill!” and put it near the door. Later she would take it down and lay it on Leo’s pillow. It might remind him of his conjugal duties — duties which had been sadly neglected in the emotionally restricting atmosphere of the senior Silvers’ apartment.
Now…
First a long bath without a man’s voice asking in broken English: “Are you all right in there?”
Then, with the heating on full blast (Why do you not wear another jersey if you are cold?) she would make herself some cheese-and-tomato on toast (What are we having for dinner?) and curl up with a book or the TV and wait for Leo.
She felt as though she had been suddenly released from a women’s prison. She had expected to be with Manfred for another night, then the phone — wonderful instrument — had rung and Lottie had been on the other end and the news had come that she was arriving home within the hour.
Zoe would always remember that moment. “Where were you when the phone rang to say that Lottie Silver was coming home?”
“In the loo, m’lud.”
She giggled to herself.
“My wife is returning,” Manfred said. He made it sound as though she was struggling through some vast tundra instead of coming over from Kentish Town — correction, south Highgate.
He had then gone into the music-room and played something very fast and very loud. Zoe wasn’t entirely sure what it was but it sounded like Liszt. She fled joyfully to the spare bedroom and began to pack.
“Poor Liebchen!” Lottie said, when she arrived.
She gave Zoe a large hug. Then she sensed that this might have been a mistake, and said to her husband, “Manfy!”
“You’re back,” he said.
“Yes. I’m back.”
She embraced him while Sidney, their son-in-law, carried in her things.
“Hello, Dad,” he said. Zoe saw Manfred give him a withering look. She knew he hated Sidney calling him that.
“How’s my daughter?” Manfred said, in lieu of a greeting.
“Fine, Dad.”
“Fine? I wish I was fine.”
“Now, Manfy…How have you been?” But before he could answer she turned to Zoe, “How has he been? Bad?”
“No, of course not, Mrs Silver. We’ve got along just fine, haven’t we, Mr Silver?”
Manfred did not reply to this, instead he said to Lottie, “I haven’t got any shirts.”
“Of course you have, I left a whole pile.”
“Not cotton ones.”
“For God’s sake…No, no, we mustn’t argue. Not now.” She began to tidy things.
Zoe had thought the room was tidy enough.
“How’s Ruth’s tooth, Mrs Silver?”
“How is the gap, more like it,” Manfred said. “The tooth has gone.”
“I meant her jaw, really.”
“It’s all right,” Sidney said. He was the husband, he was authoritative. “A bit sore when she cleans but not so bad.”
“You mean she’s brushing it already?” Zoe said, wincing.
“Not brushing,” Sidney said. “The specialist says we’ve been doing it wrongly. He calls it wiggling. You get the brush up under the gum margins and you wiggle.”
“Wiggling!” Manfred said, appalled.
“I show you later,” Lottie said.
“It sounds pornographic,” Zoe said. “But I suppose it’s OK if you don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses.”
The moment she said it she knew it was a mistake. The Silvers — father, mother, and son-in-law — turned to look at her first in bewilderment, then irritation.
Now, in her own home she stripped off, walked naked into the bathroom, and turned on the water for her bath. She examined herself in the long mirror, put her hands on her hips, turned one way then the other, inspected her breasts, which Leo was wont to compare with lemons. She looked upon all this naked flesh with a certain satisfaction.
Never Die in January (A Macrae and Silver Mystery Book 2) Page 13
