by Cathy Sharp
‘You’re a fool, Maggie Hastings. You and your father both – it isn’t wise to upset my boss …’ he countered before turning to slouch off, a scowl on his face.
‘Who was that, Maggie?’ Archie asked.
‘Just a slimy toad I want nothing to do with,’ Maggie said and glared at him, then, as she recognised him, her expression cleared. ‘Well then, Archie, where have you been these past weeks? Shame on you for lettin’ me dad down – and after he took to you right off.’
‘It wasn’t my fault, Maggie,’ Archie said, giving her a rueful look. ‘I wanted to work for you Saturdays and when I leave school and I’ve asked Mr Hastings if I can – he told me to have supper with you this evening, and said you’ll tell me where to come …’
‘We’re not far off Commercial Street,’ she said. ‘5 Cheney Walk, down a little alley. What are you doin’ the rest of the day?’
‘Helping Billy Baggins,’ Archie said. ‘He’ll be back for me in a minute …’
Maggie’s smile left her eyes. ‘I used to think Billy was a good lad, but he’s got in with that Mr Connolly now …’
‘Billy’s all right,’ Archie stood up for his friend. ‘He’s straight, is Billy – and he’s my friend.’
‘Well, I hope you’re right,’ Maggie said, ‘but he wants to be careful workin’ for that man … he’s a bad ’un.’
‘Who is Mr Connolly then?’ Archie asked, puzzled. ‘I thought he was respectable – owns a lot of market stalls, like your dad …’
‘He does but he’s not like my dad and don’t you think it,’ Maggie looked cross. ‘Billy wants to watch what he does or he’ll be tarred with the same brush …’
Archie was about to ask her what she meant, but Billy was walking towards them, and Maggie shoved a scrap of paper in his hand. ‘That’s where you come, but just be careful of that rogue and tell Billy to be the same.’
Archie shoved the scrap of paper in his pocket and nodded to her. He was thoughtful as he ran up to Billy.
‘All right, young ’un?’ Billy asked. ‘Ted treat you OK, did he?’
‘Yeah, I’ve got to go to tea tonight and tell him me story and then he might give me a job …’
‘You’ll do well with him and Maggie. I would have liked to work with them when I left school but Sister Beatrice thought I needed to learn a trade and now I’ve got a good job.’
Archie hesitated, wondering whether to tell Billy what Maggie had said about his boss. She had a fiery tongue and she’d soon told the man she didn’t want hanging round her stall to clear off … perhaps she’d got a grudge against Mr Connolly. Archie didn’t want to upset Billy, who’d been a good mate to him so he kept his thoughts to himself.
‘Did you have a look round the clothes stalls, Archie?’
‘Yeah, I got told to shove off twice,’ Archie said and grinned. ‘I think they thought I wanted to pinch somethin’ but what good would a woman’s dress or coat be to me?’
‘Someone had coats for sale this morning? Winter ones?’
‘Yeah. Only a couple but they looked good cloth …’
‘Right, you’ve done well,’ Billy said. ‘Now I’m going to take you to look at some stuff where my girlfriend works and I want you to tell me if you see anything that looks like things you saw this morning – I mean stuff that could be from the same rail, do you understand?’
‘Yeah, I reckon you’re lookin’ for pinched stuff,’ Archie said. ‘The bloke what had the coats were a shifty-lookin’ sort …’
‘Well, I only want to know if you saw anything you think might have been the same as things I’m goin’ to show you now …’
‘Archie said the coats were like the ones on our rails?’ Sam said later that morning. ‘What colour?’
‘One was red and the other was grey.’
Sam opened his stock book and checked, then nodded, ‘Yes, it says here that four grey coats were completed on Thursday last and four red … We’ve sold three red so there should be one left, and we’ve sold two grey coats.’
‘You’ve got one of the grey, no red and six of purplish tweed,’ Billy said and frowned. ‘That’s not a coincidence, Sam. Two coats gone and two coats on the same stall in the market …’
‘But who owns the stall?’
‘From what Archie told me, I think it must be Dick Wright … ugly little devil and quick with his tongue as well as his fists …’
‘I know him,’ Sam nodded and then frowned. ‘He just runs the stall for someone else … I’ve seen someone there collectin’ money off him.’
‘What’s the matter, Sam?’ Billy asked. ‘Why are you lookin’ at me like that?’
‘Because you’re not goin’ to like this,’ Sam said. ‘I’m sorry, Billy, but I’m afraid it all points to one man …’
‘I’m sorry, Anna,’ Mary Ellen said when the girl came back from her interview with Sam that lunchtime. ‘We’ve had too many thefts recently, and you were the only one that had the opportunity to remove those coats …’
‘You’re always in there,’ Anna said in a sulky voice, but her eyes didn’t quite meet Mary Ellen’s. ‘It could’ve been anyone. How could I have smuggled them out?’
‘Why don’t you tell me?’ Mary Ellen invited. ‘If you told us how it was worked Sam might give you a reference.’
‘To hell with you and your job,’ Anna sparked to life suddenly. ‘You can’t prove nuthin’ so don’t think I’m goin’ ter tell you.’
Mary Ellen shook her head as the girl walked out of the workshop. It was disappointing to discover that she’d been a part of the conspiracy to steal from Sam. They’d taken her on because she’d spun a tale of having a mother and four younger sisters at home to support, but now it seemed it was all lies; Anna had come here to deliberately help take their stock.
‘I knew it had to be her,’ Yolande muttered as the door shut behind Anna. ‘It only started after she came here. Sam gave her a decent job but she didn’t have the sense to know how lucky she was …’
‘I wonder why she got involved,’ Mary Ellen said. ‘I mean she couldn’t do it on her own, could she? She has to have an accomplice …’
‘I saw her in the café with a bloke the other day,’ Jilly said, looking up from her machine. ‘Good lookin’ … wears a Teddy boy suit. She looked frightened … as if he’d been threatenin’ her …’
‘You think he forced her to help?’
‘I saw him grip her arm … vicious, he was. I wouldn’t go out with a bloke like that however good lookin’.’ Jilly frowned. ‘I think I heard her say his name was Stevie something …’
‘Stevie?’ Mary Ellen frowned. She remembered seeing a bruise on Marion’s arm, but when she’d asked her where it came from, she said she’d knocked herself at work. She’d refused to look at her when she made the excuse and Mary Ellen had wondered, but she’d thought Marion had too much sense to go out with a man who hit her. Yet some men could be very persuasive. ‘You think this bloke was forcing her to steal for him?’
‘Yes.’ Yolande nodded, then, ‘It’s likely. I’m not sure how she did it, but she must’ve moved things when no one was lookin’ …’
‘All I can think is that she slipped things in with the rails of cabbage stuff that one of the customers had bought, so when they collected it no one noticed the odd extra garment amid the armfuls …’
Mary Ellen inclined her head. She thought Yolande was right; Sam and Billy had worked out it was the only way that it could be done, but how Anna had slipped in there at just the right moment no one could guess. Wandering over to Anna’s station, she looked toward the window and saw that it looked out into the back yard. A man was working, stacking crates. Of course, it was a communal yard shared with the small leather workshops next door, and that meant anyone could enter. Someone could signal to Anna that now was the time and she could slip into the showroom on the pretext of visiting the toilets, quickly moving the articles to be stolen while someone kept Mrs Baxter or Sam busy … It had to be the way,
the only way she could work with an accomplice. Anna would move the things she’d been told to steal and then, before anyone was aware, the customer would take his goods and no one would realise that hidden in the great pile of cabbage were two good winter coats.
Returning to her own station, Mary Ellen picked up the work she wanted to complete and carried it to Anna’s place.
‘Why are you doing that?’ Yolande asked, because, as one of the senior seamstresses, Mary Ellen’s bench was at the front of the workshop, while Anna’s was at the back.
‘Lots of light here,’ Mary Ellen said. ‘I’ll try it for a couple of days, if you don’t mind, Yolande?’
‘It’s up to you, but we shall be employing another girl as soon as we can find someone decent …’
‘Yes, well, we’ll see what happens then,’ Mary Ellen said.
Whoever Anna’s contact had been, he wouldn’t come once he knew that she’d been sacked, so it was going to happen in the next day or so or not at all …
CHAPTER 22
‘Well, that’s a rare tale and no mistake,’ Ted Hastings said and sipped the strong hot tea his daughter had poured to go with the meal of hot meat pie, chips and mushy peas she’d fetched from the shop. ‘Had enough to eat, lad?’
‘Yes, thank you, sir,’ Archie said and smiled. ‘It was great …’
‘Yeah, well, if you work for me you can look forward to pie and chips or fish and chips twice a week. I’ll employ you on Saturday mornings until you leave school, and then you can come with me every day. I reckon it would be best if you stay with me ’ere once you start full time, Archie. We ’ave to be up early mornings to get set up in time for when the eager beavers arrive – and then we have to go to the wholesale markets two or three times a week, pick up fresh supplies for the veg stall …’
‘You’ve got several stalls, sir?’
‘Yeah, I own six, but I rent four of ’em out to mates of mine, blokes I trust. Jimmy’s gettin’ a bit long in the tooth though. I’m thinkin’ of keepin’ it myself when he packs it in – and I’ll need a good strong lad to run it, but that won’t be for a couple of years: long enough for you to learn the trade. In time I might even let you ’ave one of ’em fer yerself …’
‘I thought you might not want me when you knew it all,’ Archie said, a flush in his cheeks, because he’d told Ted that he’d borrowed money from Halfpenny House, but intended to pay it back. ‘I know some of what I did wasn’t right – but I had to. Sister Beatrice said it was a mercy we did because June might have been hurt worse if she’d been left with them lot …’ Archie scowled. ‘I reckon what he did do was bad enough – the filthy beast.’
‘You’re right there,’ Ted said. ‘If I could get my hands on him I’d thrash the bugger to an inch of his life …’
‘Now then, Dad,’ Maggie chided. ‘You mustn’t say things like that – let the law deal with those people. You’ll only end up in prison yourself …’
‘It’s just a figure of speech,’ Ted said and looked a bit sheepish. ‘But I should like to see that bugger squirm.’
‘Language, Dad,’ Maggie said and got up to clear the plates. She smiled as Archie sprang up to help her. ‘You’re a guest, Archie. Sit and talk to Dad for a while. I can manage the washing up.’
Archie nodded and followed Ted to his chair by the fire, pulling up a tattered leather pouffe to sit at his side. The cottage was of a comfortable size with a large kitchen in which they lived and a room of similar size across the hall, which was the parlour, but usually contained boxes of stuff Maggie sold on her stall. She’d told him to use the toilet upstairs before they ate, and Archie had seen there was an old-fashioned bathroom with a Victorian rolled-edge bath and big brass taps, also a toilet and basin, and a towel rail that was warm to the touch and probably heated by the closed stove in the kitchen. There were three bedrooms, but Maggie had told him that one of them was tiny and at the moment used to hold stock.
‘If you stay with us when you leave school, as Dad wants, I shall have to put it all in the front room,’ she said and grimaced. ‘Not that it matters. I’ve no time for polishing a fancy parlour and I’m certainly not about to start courtin’ …’ She burst into laughter and Archie smiled with her, although he didn’t see why it was funny. Maggie was no older than his ma and she could probably find a husband if she wanted one.
The kitchen was one of the cosiest rooms Archie remembered seeing, despite its size, because it was so warm and homely; at one end there was a huge dark oak dresser that Archie thought might be what people called a Welsh dresser; a big scrubbed-pine table dominated the centre of the floor and there were two comfortable armchairs, a rocking chair and a wooden grandfather’s chair grouped near to the stove. Above the blackened stove was a shelf on which were arranged a rack of pipes, some tapers, a couple of blue-and-white vases, with bits of paper tucked behind them, and a brass box that looked as if it had come from the First World War. Archie’s father had shown him his grandfather’s box once and it was just like the one Ted had.
‘They were sent out to the troops in the first big war,’ his father had said. ‘They had a few cigarettes, a bar of chocolate and a message inside. Your grandfather ate his chocolate and shared the fags with his mates, but he kept the box with him all through the war and it saved his life.’ He’d shown Archie where a bullet had lodged in the lid, which had stopped it penetrating Grandfather Miller’s chest.
‘Now, tell me a bit about your ma,’ Ted said as he filled a pipe with tobacco and lit it with a taper from the fire. ‘What happened to her – and why are they going to let her out soon?’
Billy had decided the first thing he would do was to repair some of the window frames. Wind was blowing in through the cracks, and although it was still summer it would soon start to turn cooler and he wanted this place warm and cosy – and safe – before he brought Mary Ellen here to see his new home.
He spent several hours replacing rotten wood and fixing broken catches, because the last thing he wanted was someone climbing in during the night and catching him unawares. By the time he’d finished he was tired and ready for sleep. The rooms had a kitchen of sorts, but no way of heating a drink before he went to bed so he opened a bottle of beer and took a few swigs. Perhaps it would’ve been better to wait until Sam had got the electric and a few things fixed before he moved in, but he’d been impatient to get started.
Tomorrow, he would buy some paint and make a start on the ceilings. The kitchen had a sink, but it was stained and Billy thought he might buy a new one. He could buy some old cabinets from one of the many second-hand shops in the district, strip them down to the wood and repaint them – make the kitchen look modern and clean for Mary Ellen. She was used to that nice modern flat Rose rented from the council so he couldn’t expect her to move into a dump like this …
What was that? Billy stiffened as he heard a noise from outside … in the back yard. It might be nothing, but he knew the leather workshop had packed up for the night long ago. Putting out his oil lamp, he went to stand at the window of the bedroom which overlooked the yard. At first it was too dark to see anything, but then he caught sight of a shadowy shape that moved cautiously towards the back door of their premises; another followed a second or two later, and then another. He waited a few minutes longer, but no one else followed. Three of them, then, but he could probably manage that many if he was armed. He heard a splintering sound and knew they’d attacked the back door. Sam had spent money on reinforcing that recently with several extra bolts and locks and they wouldn’t get in that way so he had time to surprise them.
Billy reached for the club he’d placed near the door leading out to the landing where he could easily find it. His hand clasped the smooth surface and he bared his teeth in anger as he heard glass shattering. The bastards had given up on the door and were now attacking the windows. Sam had started to put metal bars across them, but the job was only half finished; they’d thought they had a little time, time for Sam to put the phone
in so that Billy could call for aid if an attempt was made to break in, but it looked as if he was on his own …
He walked softly down the stairs, hesitating for a moment before he went through the hall to the stockroom at the back where the raw materials were kept. He could hear muttering, a raucous laugh as they discovered bales of material, sewing cottons, buttons, zips and all the other bits and pieces the girls needed for their work.
Billy swore softly. Not content with their pilfering, they were determined to strip Sam’s place of as much as they could. He paused then threw open the door, snapping on the light. Three startled faces turned to look at him and ugly great brutes two of them were too, but it was the third one that shocked him.
‘Stevie Baker – what the hell are you doin’ here?’
‘What does it look like?’ Stevie sneered. ‘We’ve come to teach Sam a lesson – so get lost and we’ll finish the job.’
‘I can’t let you do that, Stevie. Sam is a good mate – ’sides, I’m his night watchman.’
‘You bloody fool!’ Stevie looked genuinely shocked. ‘Connolly will do his nut when I tell him you’ve gone over to the enemy …’
‘I took the job of collectin’ rents,’ Billy said, ‘but I was a mug. I’ve been collectin’ protection money and I’ve had enough of bein’ taken for a fool …’
‘If you think Connolly will let you get away with this, you’re a bigger fool than I thought,’ Stevie said. ‘Now just get out of the way – unless you want to get hurt?’
‘Why don’t you and your thugs leave before you get hurt?’
‘He needs teachin’ a lesson, Stevie,’ one of the burly men said. ‘I’ll soon deal wiv ’im …’
Billy took stock. He could handle Stevie easily enough but the other two were muscled, rough types and he would get the worst of any fight.
‘I think you should leave before my boss and his friends arrive,’ he said, deciding to bluff it out. ‘Not that I need much help to persuade you to go, gentlemen …’
