by D. B. Martin
‘How am I gonna get him to come with me? He knows I wouldn’t go and do something like that off my own bat. And won’t he go down for it?’
‘Exactly.’ Jaggers smiled, a thin satisfied jeer. ‘It’ll be easy to get him to go with you. Just tell him I’m gonna take the cash off you when you’ve done it ’cos I’ve threatened you. He’ll be there like a shot – you see. Unless you don’t want to help me, and then ...’
The alternative didn’t bear thinking about. Once was enough to make my insides knot and my lungs become a vacuum. I gasped out my agreement, and our fates were sealed. I’ve since understood how the criminal mind works, and the mentality that cannot be bettered by a rival. Jaggers had already worked it out – the fact that regardless of how risky it might be, the twin lures of me in trouble and Jaggers getting one over on him would be sufficient to get Win on the scene and as vulnerable as I had been with the bag round my head. It was a catch-22 for me. Without Win I was at Jaggers’ whim, with Win around I was always going to be under pressure to be used and abused in order to get rid of Win. If I declined to get involved altogether I set up the rest of my time at the children’s home to be one long nightmare of abuse. Overall, being in Jaggers’ gang was the less daunting because my smattering of practical psychology by then had already also told me that once I was no longer of use as a lever, Jaggers would probably lose interest in me and then life would be considerably quieter and safer. I sacrificed Win for safety as the town of Maycomb sacrificed Tom Robinson to racial inequality. What I didn’t know – and maybe it would have made no difference even if I had because the dilemma I was in wouldn’t have changed – was that Jaggers always planned to be there and taking an active part. It wasn’t merely a rob-and-run, and then dump the goods on Win to take the rap. It was to make sure Win not only went down, but that he went down for a very long time.
Jaggers appeared out of nowhere and beat the old woman to a pulp whilst Win and I looked on aghast. The die was cast. She fell to the ground moaning and I was shocked in the way I’d been when I’d seen Mrs Fenner’s cat dead. The bloody straw-coloured fluid running from her nose and dripping onto the pavement was like the brown gunge – just no maggots. My fertile mind added them later as she lay cold and dead on a mortuary slab. The bobby’s whistle sounded like a miniature klaxon as Jaggers grabbed the bloodied bag from me and shoved it into Win’s hands. Win was rooted to the spot, but instinctive reaction opened his hands to accept the bag whilst I gawped.
‘You set me up!’
I shut my eyes to Win’s face but it didn’t stop me imagining it later – like the maggots. He accused me, not Jaggers, but I knew who’d alerted the bobby. When I opened them Win was struggling to get up from where Jaggers had pushed him on top of the old woman, clothes covered in her blood.
‘Yeah, clever little brother you got, sucker!’ Jaggers grabbed my arm and pulled me away with him. I stumbled and almost fell but he half carried and half dragged me until we were out of sight round the corner of the road. Our running footsteps had drowned out anything else until then but standing behind the rickety fence bounding the terrace yards and struggling to stifle our panting I could hear the shindig surrounding Win and his victim. More whistle blowing and more feet, and Win’s voice stridently denying attacking her. Ambulance sirens followed, and then police sirens. I listened, dazed, until eventually Jaggers shook me and shoved me hard in the back to make me move.
‘C’mon. Stayed here long enough. Your brother’s doing his party piece now and we’ve got to scarper. Good job though,’ and he sniggered.
I’d never done anything until then that my conscience told me was absolutely and utterly wrong. That was one of the few times I have. I would not share that with Atticus. I’ve never shared it with anyone, yet Margaret had included it on her list. The woman’s name and the date. This mugging case was a replica. Was that why Margaret had been so intent on me taking it? Was it a sort of redemption, even though I would never obtain redemption from Win?
I didn’t see him again after that day. The police took him away in the panda car and someone from the children’s home had to sit in on the interview. He told the story as it had happened but no-one believed him. His quiet and studious little brother set him up? Highly unlikely, although of course, there was my name on the police record for ever and a day. Jaggers and I denied it, of course, and after a while Jaggers did leave me alone – once he’d found another use for me.
I got used to putting the guilt in a box and never lifting the lid to examine it after a while. I learnt how to store many things in there over my remaining time at the children’s home – self-respect, belief and the ability to love amongst them. I kept out of the box my instinct for self-preservation and the firm belief I’d never let myself be used by anyone ever again, unless the price was worth it. I would always find a pay-off for myself. Emotion, trust and reliance on anyone was a weakness that could lead to the most devastating vulnerability. Show nothing and share nothing. That way you stayed safe. That was my final lesson there – and what eventually got me out of the gutter I’d crawled into, although at that moment in time, as Win entered Borstal and I connived in sending him there, I still had a very long way to go before I did so.
7: Danny
‘It were when Nobby rang and Mum and Dad weren’t there so I had to talk to him ’cos I’m the oldest,’ he squared his shoulders importantly, ‘and he told me we weren’t to say nothing about where Dad was or how long he’d been away. Just to say he’d gone down the boozer and hadn’t come back yet. The little ones were grumbling about wanting something to eat and I don’t know how to cook stuff so we had toast. Sukie had one of them jumping beans and she was letting it jump all over the kitchen. I told her to leave it but she don’t listen to no-one and she set it off on the counter top and it jumped all over the place until it went in the toaster. She stuck her fingers in before I could stop her and the whole place went bang. Then the lights went out. It were like we were in a cave and it stunk – like a bonfire.’
‘When did this all happen, Danny?’
‘On Sun-day night. Mum said Dad was a prick ’cos he hadn’t come back yet and the tallyman would be back on Mon-day, but it weren’t going to be the usual one so she was in the shit and she’d have to do something about it. She dolled herself up in her gear and I knew she were going off down Brommy Street.’
‘The red light district?’ I queried of Miss Roumelia.
‘Yes,’ she said quietly, stealing a glance at me and then looking carefully back down at her hands, clasped in front of her on her lap. A cursory assessment would have indicated they were relaxed but I could see how the thumbs pressed tensely into the fingers, making indentations of lighter flesh where they dug in. The naked pink of her palms peeped through the fretwork of darker fleshed fingers. In that moment she seemed more vulnerable than the boy. Unexpectedly I felt immensely sorry for her. The emotion was somewhere between the kind of protectiveness I imagined a father might feel for his daughter and a mentor might feel for his protégé. It didn’t sit well with the more lurid thoughts that had overwhelmed me earlier and left me feeling uneasy, like something was crawling around my chest cavity and making my innards twitch whenever they came into contact. I must have kept my eyes on her for a moment too long because the next glance she sneaked caught me out and the beast in my guts did a complete three-sixty degree turn. I turned my attention swiftly back to the boy.
‘What happened then?’
‘The little kids were all crying but Gazz found his torch and I found the switch thing Mum usually fiddles with when we’ve had a power cut and then the lights all came back on. It still stunk and Sukie were out cold, with her hand all red and black and the fingers stuck together. It looked foul. I thought she were dead but she were breathing so we put her on the settee and she woke up a bit later. Moll wrapped her hand in a wet tea towel ’cos that’s what you’re s’posed to do with burns. Moll wants to be a nurse, see, so she knows them things – but Sukie wouldn’t stop crying an
d her hand started to swell up. By the morning it was like a balloon, and all gunky-like, then it started to go brown. Moll said she needed the hospital but we couldn’t get her there and Mum still wasn’t home so in the end I knocked on Frankie’s door and asked his Mum what to do. I could have spit when I saw Mrs Nosy Parker there.’
‘Mrs Nosy Parker?’ In spite of myself, I wanted to laugh.
‘Oh she ain’t called Mrs Nosy Parker, she’s Mrs Parker, but she ain’t half nosy. Mum says if she’d been Pinocchio someone would‘ve taken a circular saw to her long before now.’ It was the kind of thing my mother would have said if there had been circular saws and Mrs Nosy Parkers around in my childhood. I felt a surge of loss for the mother I’d not seen for so long – and whose remembered face was now so shadowy I couldn’t say for certain whether she’d had blue or brown eyes, dark or light hair. Probably she was already dead and I would never be able to answer that question for myself. By comparison, I felt nothing for Margaret other than an unsettled irritation that my pattern of life was so irrevocably changed by her death and I had yet to establish how – or what – the new pattern would be. Anger also, of course – for her interference.
What was wrong with me? I didn’t mourn my wife, yet I felt overwhelming grief for the mother who’d abandoned me nearly forty years ago. Added to that was the inclination to alternately spar with and lust over a black woman almost half my age – whose first name I didn’t even know – so intense that I could barely maintain basic concentration on the case in hand?
I managed a weak ‘Oh,’ and a smile, but it didn’t seem to matter. Danny carried on unbidden whilst I watched the bowed brown head of the siren opposite, half-listening to the story, and the rest of my mind alert to the slightest movement from her that would give me a clue as to how I should respond.
‘Her fingers looked like burnt sausages, all stuck together. Frankie’s mum said we ought to take her to hospital too, and Mrs Nosy said Frankie’s mum should take her and she would sit with us. I didn’t want her in our house but there weren’t much choice. Frankie came in with us so it weren’t so bad. We played with the meccano Dad brought home last time he were away, so we stayed out of Mrs Nosy’s way, but she wanted to know where Mum was. I didn’t tell her. Said she’d gone to the shops, but she looked at me like I were lying and when she called us back downstairs at lunchtime, the pigs were there and so was some snotty man from the social – not her then, though.’ He jerked his thumb at Miss Roumelia. ‘Her name’s Kat.’ She opened her mouth to protest but closed it again without saying anything, like a fish gulping in water. ‘I don’t mind her. She’s OK. If I were you I’d think it were OK that she fancied me.’ He winked at her as her face changed from embarrassment to shock and then back to embarrassment. Suddenly I liked him.
‘I expect if I were me, I would think so too,’ I replied, stealing a glance at Miss Roumelia – Kat – whilst wondering what the hell I was doing. I found myself saying, ‘I thought it would be something more exotic like Jasmine,’ before I could stop the words tumbling out. The boy sniggered and I was tempted to see how it had been received, but I kept my eyes firmly on him and urged the story on. The boy glanced once at her, a twisted smile hovering round one side of his mouth, and then shrugged.
‘The pigs wanted to know where Dad were but I remembered Nobby’s phone call and you don’t cross Nobby so I said he were down the boozer. Mum still weren’t back so it were down to me to be in charge, whatever that nosy cow Mrs Parker said, but the pigs said they couldn’t wait there for ever for Dad or Mum to come home and we would have to go with the snotty man. ‘He called in someone he called a colly-something.’
‘Colleague?’
‘Yeah, that’s it – and he said I had to go somewhere different to the little kids ’cos I said I was fourteen when I was trying to get them to leave us home until Mum or Dad turned up. They said ’cos I was a teenager I couldn’t go to the little kids’ home, I had to go to the big kids’ one. I’d heard of it before ’cos Nobby told Dad he was waiting for his Josh to get out of there at sixteen so he could help him out on the jobs, but until then Dad had to – and he give him that look that them other tallymen do and you know you ain’t going to like it, whatever it is they’re going to do.’
‘So they were all taken into care then?’ I asked Miss Roumelia – Kat. I savoured the name. Yes, it was better than Jasmine – far less stereotypical, but amusingly appropriate. Kit-Kat. I wondered what chocolate she would taste like. She seemed to have recovered her poise during the last section of Danny’s tale. The polite professional was back in place, covering her embarrassment with efficiency and red tape.
‘Temporarily, but Danny’s mum turned up almost immediately afterwards, and the youngest ones were allowed back home then. She said she’d been attacked the evening before and spent the night and part of the next morning in A&E with suspected concussion. She was going to press charges but the attacker counter-accused her of prostitution and all charges were dropped on both sides eventually.’
‘It were him,’ Danny interjected. ‘Mean bastard!’
‘Who?’
‘The other tallyman – he beat her up, I bet. ’Cos she didn’t have the money for him. It’s all his fault, this.’
‘Well, Danny, he may have been part of the reason you ended up in care, whoever this tallyman is, but he wasn’t the cause of you beating up an old lady, was he?’
‘No, he weren’t the cause, but ...’ the pause was intentionally dramatic, and Kat and I both registered it – the implied revelation hanging tantalisingly from the silent gap between the words.
‘But?’ I asked for both of us.
‘But,’ he hesitated, picking at a scabby finger, and watching the blood start to well up alarmingly from the tiny scratch. Miss Roumelia – Kat – gave him a paper hanky and they wrapped it tightly round his finger. It blossomed red through the folds and she gave him another. The second tissue seemed to stem the flow.
‘But?’ I prompted again.
He reverted to his song-sing defence. ‘I weren’t there and it weren’t me.’
‘Danny...’ Kat started on the persuasion routine, but I shook my head at her. This wasn’t the time. We’d done some scene-setting and perhaps more, even though we hadn’t yet tackled the main event, but Danny had also unintentionally gone too far towards telling all the story before back-tracking to his safe place. Kat thought he was acting as scapegoat for the boys in the gang, or a little more. I wondered now if he was scapegoat for something far more sophisticated than young delinquents. I leafed through the papers until I found the page I wanted.
‘This tallyman – how much do you know about him?’
‘Which one? They’re mainly bastards – take your TV and stuff if you don’t pay up – or rough your place up a bit until you do.’
‘I gathered that, but do they use violence on people to get money out of them?’
‘I dunno.’ I sensed him tensing up.
‘Mrs Harris – did you know her beforehand?’
‘Why?’ he hedged.
‘You did know her then?’
‘Why do you think I did?’
‘Mrs Harris – the old lady who was beaten up.’
‘One old lady looks like any other, don’t they?’
‘Why did you choose her?’
‘I didn’t.’ The inflection was wrong. Heavy on the ‘I’ and not on the ‘didn’t’.
‘Who did then?’
‘I dunno.’
‘Someone chose her and told you what to do?’
‘I ain’t saying no more.’
‘What do we know about her?’ I asked Kat.
She looked blank. ‘Just that she was the victim of the attack.’
‘What has happened to her estate? Her home, possessions and so on?’
‘I don’t know. I think it’s being wound up and there are some creditors.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know. I could find out, if it’s important.’
/>
‘Is it?’ I looked across at Danny. ‘Might it be important for us to know who her creditors are?’ He looked blank. ‘Who she owed money to?’ His mouth went back to the grim line and the mutinous expression returned to his face.
‘What are these tallymen’s names?’ Danny didn’t answer. ‘We can find out quite easily, Danny – and if you want me to help you, remember you need to help me, otherwise I might decide not to bother if you waste my time.’
‘Mr Juste has an awful lot of other things to see to at the moment, Danny – his wife died a couple of weeks ago ...’ her voice tailed off as she realised the inappropriateness of the comment. She cast an apologetic look at me. I swallowed my irritation with her inept attempt at helping, but it was Danny who really deflected my annoyance.
‘Yeah I know. Sorry about your missus. She were nice ...’ Then almost as an after-thought as I reeled, ‘Win.’ It was so unexpected I had to hide my shock by clearing my throat.
‘Win?’ The beast in my gut rumbled uneasily. ‘Win what?’ He looked at me thoughtfully, obviously weighing up whether to wind me up or let me down gently. He suddenly laughed explosively.
‘Dunno. Just Win – big fat bloke with a funny scar under his ear – like a vee.’ I didn’t hear the words in the order he said them. The beast took over. Kat looked at me timidly. My face must have been the same as the beast’s.
‘Do you know him?’ she asked.
I remembered the day my Win had got his scar – missing his footing when he’d been scrambling up a tree after a spat with Jonno, and crashing down onto the sharp pointed bean cane abandoned by the roots – probably one of our earlier abortive attempts at making bows and arrows. The amount of blood that had gushed out and covered us had been inordinate compared to the size of the wound, but a sliver of the frayed end of the cane had been forced sideways, almost slicing through his jugular. The scar it left had been his claim to fame from that point onwards – an inverted V – just under his ear. V for victory he’d said – just like his namesake had managed.
