by Jan Toms
He looked to Victor for his reaction. ‘Fancy,’ he managed to murmur.
Alan nodded. ‘So, we have a bit of a dilemma. We’ve never had much trouble on the Island with organised crime but we do know that the Blues Brothers have included our area in their theatre of operations.’ He looked troubled again. ‘If this is turning into a gang war, then a lot of local people might be caught in the crossfire.’
At that moment, Charity came in and plonked herself on the arm of Victor’s chair, putting her arm around his shoulders. Her breast touched his cheek and he jumped. At the thought of any later encounter of the romantic kind he quailed. He desperately wanted to go home. Alone.
Somehow they stumbled on through the evening. Alan and Charity made most of the conversation, Victor struggling hard to concentrate and to appear normal. To his relief, Alan didn’t become the heavy father and ask him what his intentions were towards his daughter. He already knew about his job so he didn’t need to ask about his prospects. What he didn’t know was that Victor had accidentally been instrumental in three deaths and the outcome might be a bloodbath. Vitcor felt faint again.
‘What’s the matter, aren’t you well?’ Charity sounded just a tad irritated.
‘B-bit of a headache,’ Victor said.
‘Well, perhaps you had better have an early night. I’ll walk home with you.’
‘No!’ The word came out far too quickly.
Alan said, ‘Charity, Victor is quite capable of getting home on his own. No one is going to assault him.’
Assault. That word again. It covered a multitude of things, all of them unpleasant.
Charity, clearly annoyed at her father’s interference, came with Victor to the door, helped him on with his jacket and brushed some invisible specks from his shoulders. For a moment Victor thought that she was going to do up his buttons for him, but instead she stepped back and inspected him like a mother seeing her child off to school.
‘Well, I – I’ll see you,’ he started, hoping that it wouldn’t be too soon.
Charity held up her face to be kissed. When he went to peck her on the cheek, she twisted his head around and applied herself to his lips, pressing her pelvis close to his. ‘Don’t worry,’ she whispered, ‘your secret is safe with me.’
Secret? He leaned against the doorframe for support, then took Fluffy’s lead and escaped into the night.
FOURTEEN
The security guard found Dodge the next morning. He was lying in a pool of urine and sobbing to himself. ‘I’ve been here all night,’ he wailed. ‘I’m thirsty. My leg really hurts.’
The man sent for an ambulance and they carted him off to hospital. His leg was X-rayed, but it was only sprained and a bandage was applied. He was, however, kept in overnight because, having got so cold, they thouht he might have hypothermia.
Although he was exhausted, Dodge kept fretting, wondering what had happened at the meeting the evening before. He thought they would have wondered where he was, until he remembered that he hadn’t signed the note. That meant that Barry Hickman and Vincenzo Verdi had been forced into a private meeting. He wondered what they must have talked about. Perhaps they had agreed to join forces against him and his brothers? Perhaps he had caused the very thing he was trying to avoid and now the Blues Brothers would be annihilated. He started to cry until a nice male nurse said, ‘You’ve had a shock. I’ll get you something to take.’ After that he felt better, but he knew that he must get out of hospital and find out what was going on.
He was discharged that afternoon with some painkillers, and a crutch to help him get around. They ordered him a taxi and when he got home the first thing he did was to ring Something for Everyone, just to check if there were any messages.
He recognised the voice of the girl who answered the phone. She did the store’s accounts. ‘Mr Rodriguez, where are you? I was worried, especially in view of what’s happened.’
He started to explain about his accident then, he said, ‘What has happened?’
‘Do you know a man called Angus Kilbride?’
‘Yes, what about him?’
‘Well, he seems to have died on Monday night down near Rylstone Gardens. I just thought that after the other deaths…’
Roger couldn’t think fast enough. Surely this couldn’t be another coincidence? Perhaps Barry Hickman had taken Fingers along for protection and Vincenzo had wiped him out? His first instinct was to rush down to the office but then he remembered his leg and that he was stuck.
‘Thank you for telling me,’ he said to the girl. Slowly he came to a conclusion. It couldn’t have been Barry Hickman who killed Fingers because he was one of their own. That definitely left Vincenzo. Gradually it dawned on him that this was yet another commission that Verdi had carried out on the Pretty Boy’s behalf and this time Dodge was certain that he hadn’t actually asked him to do so. Perhaps this was what hitmen did, act on your behalf whether you had told them who the target was or not. Anyway, you didn’t argue with a hired assassin. Reluctantly, he thought that he had better pay up before Vincenzo came to look for him. His hands were shaking as he wrote out yet another cheque. In spite of struggling with the crutch, he forced himself to hobble to the postbox on the corner. He felt angry with himself for paying up and yet he was too afraid not to do so.
Back at the flat, he made a coffee and sat on the sofa with his bad leg stretched out in front of him. All the crazy events swirled around in his head. Certain things were becoming inescapable. If the problems were ever to be sorted, it seemed that the hitman was the real fly in the ointment, the obstacle preventing any peaceful solution. Perhaps the time had come for someone to take Vincenzo Verdi out.
Barry’s meeting with Harry’s Turkish contact had not gone well. The man was asking for more money and threatening to go elsewhere if he didn’t get his way. Barry tried to think what Harry would do in his place – beat the guy up probably, but he was bigger than Barry and besides, he couldn’t stand violence. In the end, he had agreed to an interim increase while making it clear that it was still under negotiation.
He slept badly, wondering what Harry would say when he came back, wondering what had happened at the rendezvous at Rylstone Gardens. He did not hold out any great hopes that Fingers had discovered anything useful. In all probability he would come back with a series of photos of either the sky or headless subjects. He didn’t look forward to seeing Fingers and being treated to that awful stench of unwashed clothes and rotting teeth.
When he arrived at the office on Tuesday morning Sonia, for once, didn’t look sulky. Instead, he thought that she looked quite worried.
‘Have you heard what’s happened?’ she asked.
‘No?’
She came round the desk. ‘It’s Fingers, something happened to him last night. He collapsed in the road out Greystones way. He’s dead.’
‘What?’
‘He died. They think he had a reaction to something he ate.’
Barry sank into the nearest chair. The bastards! Fingers must have been poisoned. He immediately thought that this was a set-up organised by the Blues Brothers – only Dodge Rodriguez couldn’t have known that it was Fingers who would be coming instead of him. If he had gone himself… he couldn’t bear to think about what would have happened if he had gone himself.
Sonia said, ‘Here’s something to cheer you up though. Apparently young Rodriguez had an accident yesterday and he’s broken his leg. He was stuck all night in a warehouse.’ She gave a little giggle.
Barry felt that he couldn’t take on board one more piece of information but gradually the truth filtered through – if Dodge hadn’t been at that meeting, then who had? He came to the conclusion that that only left Vincenzo. He must have set up the meeting himself and it must have been he who had taken out Fingers. A horrible mixture of guilt and anger consumed him. If he hadn’t sent Fingers he would still be alive. If he had gone himself, he would be dead!
Right, he thought, time for this to stop. It was going to be
dangerous but it was definitely time that someone took out Vincenzo Verdi.
Walking home from Charity’s house, Alan’s news circled like a whirlwind in Victor’s head. What on earth was going on? How had he come to be involved in what seemed to be a serious gangland feud? As he walked, he half expected a sinister figure wielding a dagger to step from the shadows. How did you defend yourself against a knife? Why had he never attended self-defence classes? He knew the answer without even asking the question. Small, skinny, timid, he had long ago recognised that if anyone ever attacked him he would simply give in. He had a vision of himself on his knees, pleading for mercy. It was a shameful image, and if he was to survive he needed to learn how to fight back.
He reached home safely, then wondered if a member of the Blues Brothers or the Pretty Boys might be waiting for him. Perhaps they knew who he was, where he lived, and had been staking him out? What would he do if they jumped him?
He fumbled in the mailbox and carried his post indoors, turning on all the lights as he went and pushing doors wide open before he entered a room. The house seemed reassuringly silent. Fluffy did a quick tour of inspection and finished up some Doggybics that were still in his bowl. The kittens had clearly retired for the night. There were no unwelcome intruders.
Taking off his jacket, he pulled the curtains shut before sitting at the table and looking through the mail. Oh no, not again! One of those unwelcome envelopes greeted him. This time it was a white one. His hands began to shake as he sliced it open. As before, there was a folded sheet of paper and this time it also contained an enclosure, another cheque for £25,000 drawn on the National Bank of Jersey. Gradually, an unbelievable connection was forming in his mind. Could these mysterious payments really be some sort of pay-off for having disposed of members of the two gangs? Did some mysterious company arrange murders and he was somehow on their books? Victor tottered to the sink and poured himself a drink of water.
He turned back to examine the piece of paper but this time it was blank. Did that mean that this was an end to it? Had all the villains been bumped off? Perhaps the gang had decided to employ someone else who used more conventional methods like a gun with a silencer or a grenade through a window. Carefully, he went round the house and locked every door and window.
That night he left his bedroom door open so that if anyone happened to creep up the stairs, then Fluffy would be sure to hear them and give the alarm. He wished that he had shutters on the windows but it was a bit late for that now. He wished that Fluffy was a Rottweiler or a Doberman. He wished that he was braver. He wished that he had a gun and knew how to use it.
The phone was by his bed and he wondered whether to leave the bedside lamp on so that he could quickly dial 999 if the need arose. The light might guide the intruder to his room though. Feeling distinctly scared, he turned the light off and leaped into bed, pulling the duvet up to his ears, then lowering it so that he could hear any noise, however slight.
His last thought before falling asleep three hours later was that something was going on here and he was way out of his depth.
Charity poured herself another glass of wine and sat down in the chair so recently vacated by her lover. She was all of a tingle. There was so much that she didn’t know about Victor and for the moment it seemed that everything she discovered only added to the mystery. He was no longer a rather nondescript, timid tax officer, but a master of disguise, living a double life. She rippled with pleasure.
Across from her, Alan was holding the Clarion but not really reading it. Eventually, he said, ‘I think it might be better if you stopped seeing young Victor Green.’
She looked up in surprise. ‘Whatever for?’
Alan looked troubled. ‘I didn’t say anything while he was here but there are some details that the public don’t know.’
She frowned and, putting the paper aside, he said, ‘There have been the usual enquiries in the neighbourhood of Rylstone Gardens and when asked, the park attendant said that there was a man with a small white poodle hanging around the gate at closing time. His description fits Victor.’ He looked at her to see her reaction but her expression was unreadable. He added, ‘When they did the post-mortem, Fingers had puncture marks on his ankle, exactly like Mauler Maguire. The pathologist thinks they were bite marks made by a small dog.’
Charity’s eyes widened. Then perhaps Fluffy was the Angel of Death! It was no good, she had to find out exactly where Victor had been on Monday night. She paused in her thoughts. On the one hand she longed to be the one to unmask a master criminal but on the other, she was talking about her own boyfriend. Perhaps she could persuade him to go straight? One day when she and Victor were married and had two children, a boy called Alan after her father and a girl called Victoria for her mother, her father would say to her, ‘I wonder what became of Vincenzo Verdi? He just seemed to disappear. Perhaps he died?’ She smiled to herself.
‘Charity, are you listening to me?’ Alan couldn’t interpret her expression. He was expecting her to argue with him, to say that she wouldn’t give him up, to say that her father had no right to tell her what to do, but the smile? Now he was truly at a loss.
FIFTEEN
The combination of a sleepless night and the discovery that he had been implicated in three deaths meant that Victor didn’t feel well enough to go to work the next morning. He was consumed by the knowledge that sooner or later someone was going to come and ‘take him out’ or ‘finish him off’ or ‘see to him’. However you put it, his life must now be in danger and he didn’t know where to turn for help.
He phoned the office to say that he thought he had the flu, giving a rather convincing cough for good measure. ‘Well, let us know how you are tomorrow,’ the receptionist said. She was a nice, motherly lady who never tired of telling him that her daughter was about the same age as him. It hadn’t occurred to him until now, but it seemed that her daughter might be another young woman looking for a husband and her mother had him lined him up for the role. ‘If you need any shopping or anything, I could ask Elizabeth to pop in on her way home,’ she offered. Elizabeth – strange that the girl should have the very name that he had invented for his private Madonna.
‘No, really. I have a friend coming round later.’ He left her to make of that what she would.
He crawled out of bed to let Fluffy into the garden, anxiously watching through a crack in the door in case someone was lurking nearby to take the dog hostage. He tried to imagine what he would do if Fluffy was kidnapped. He imagined saying, ‘Let the dog go, take me instead,’ but he wasn’t sure that he was willing to swap his own life for his sometimes-difficult pet. When Fluffy finally came back in Victor locked the door, fed him and the cats, made a cup of tea and retreated upstairs. If anyone broke in he would barricade the bedroom door and phone the police.
As he feared, Charity arrived at about ten to take Fluffy for a walk. From the bedroom he could hear her clunking around downstairs, talking to Fluffy, and from the sound of drawers opening she was generally tidying up and making herself useful. It wasn’t until he gave an accidental cough that he heard her stop in her tracks and call up, ‘Is anyone there?’
‘It’s me. Not too well,’ he called out. As she came to investigate he quickly added, ‘I shouldn’t come too close – I might be infectious,’ but Charity was a hardy girl and not afraid of the odd germ.
She placed her hand on his forehead, pulled down the lower lids of his eyes and told him to stick out his tongue. Obediently he did so.
‘Hmm.’
Lying in bed he felt particularly vulnerable to her attentions. It seemed that the same thing had occurred to her and, having been denied the evening before when he had come to tea, she clearly decided that now was a very good time indeed.
‘Charity, please!’ Victor hung on to the cord of his pyjama trousers but she slapped his hand and said, ‘Don’t be silly, I just want to see if you have a rash anywhere.’ He knew when he was defeated.
Charity seemed in good f
orm. She kept calling him darling and muttering something about standing by him no matter what. She mounted him like a runner in the three-thirty at Kempton Park while, like a Victorian wife, he lay back and submitted. When she had sorted him out, she said, ‘I think you had too much to drink last night, that’s all.’
He was too exhausted to argue. In all fairness, though, he wondered if he should warn her that he was expecting someone to come round and ‘snuff him out’, but that would call for an explanation that he just wasn’t up to giving. ‘I think I’ll just try and sleep,’ he offered, and Charity went off to take Fluffy for a constitutional.
‘Did you see anyone?’ he asked on her return.
‘See anyone?’
‘Anyone outside – you know, lurking about.’ Quickly he added, ‘I saw something in the Clarion about a spate of burglaries. I thought perhaps someone might be casing the joint.’ She gave him an indulgent little smile. ‘Don’t you worry yourself about that. Besides, you’ve got the dog.’ As an afterthought, she added, ‘Anyway, I can stay the night, keep you company.’
‘No! I – I wouldn’t want you to catch what I’ve got.’
It was hopeless. She spent the day cleaning in corners, rearranging the kitchen, then the bedroom. She had all his clothes out of the wardrobe and advised him strongly to get rid of certain items: ‘Really Victor, no one wears these any more.’
To escape, he closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep.
At her insistence, Charity did stay the night. Victor realised that he had never actually slept in a bed with anyone before and he didn’t like it. Whichever way he turned, part of her anatomy always seemed to be in the way. She flung an arm across his chest, trapping him and, later, her leg insinuated its way between his and he was treated to another attempt at what she called ‘making love’, but his manhood had a mind of its own and defied her.
