by Clive Mullis
Frankie stopped mid-flow and regarded Rose, her hands dropped and they both pursed their lips, until Rose poked her tongue out at him. The cart bounced again and Rose grabbed Frankie’s leg to stop herself from falling.
‘Easy, girl,’ said Frankie, ‘I didn’t tell anyone, honest.’
Rose sniffed in return.
After a few minutes of quiet, as they watched the city retreating over the bridge, Frankie slowly stirred again. ‘All right, I’ve got to know, haven’t I?’
‘Only if you want to,’ replied Rose with a sigh.
‘I don’t want to, but you’ve said too much anyway, so you might as well carry on.’
‘Only if you’re sure.’
‘I’m sure.’
Rose pondered again, and Frankie waited patiently. ‘It’s not a big thing you know; if I tell you, you will probably wonder why I bothered at all. It’s just that—’
‘Fer God’s sake, Rose, get on with it, we’re nearly there.’
‘Frankie, I’m unburdening myself, so let me take my time.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Yes, well.’ She waited a few seconds longer before beginning. ‘It’s just that last night, after you and Jethro left, Jack became a bit, er, romantic, if you like.’
‘Oooo! He didn’t say anything this morning.’
‘He wouldn’t, because nothing happened. He started to tell me something, but then I noticed some people listening, so I turned the conversation around and made it into something else. I was grateful really, because I wouldn’t have turned him down. I made light of it all, and I think he was disappointed; but I’m sure he thinks I turned him down.’
‘So what’s the problem? Take him aside and finish talking then.’
‘I can’t. If I did, and we sort of started seeing each other, then he might become a little over-protective.’
‘Well, probably.’
‘But I don’t want that, not at the moment; I want to be in the thick of it, especially while this job is going on; but I still want to say yes to him.’
‘So why are you telling me this, if you don’t want me to tell him?’
‘He’s a man. So when a man thinks he’s got turned down by one girl, he will probably look for another who won’t turn him down, won’t he?’
‘Ah,’ the penny dropped. ‘You want me to stop him.’
Rose reluctantly nodded. She shrugged her shoulders apologetically and settled back into the cargo. ‘Only until this job is finished, then I’ll say yes.’
‘If I can’t tell him, then I can’t promise anything, you know that, don’t you?’
‘Yes, but he listens to you, and I know you would do your best.’
He grinned. ‘On one condition.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You give your old Frankie a hug.’
Rose now ventured into the brews for the third time, and it didn’t improve with familiarity. Night-time had been by far the worst, because of the difficulty in seeing who was coming up behind to tap you on the head, and there were the screams of course, which tingled the spine, because the reason and the whereabouts of the screamee were unknown. Now, with the daylight, it became a busy trading area, with shops and stores selling all manner of things. Unlike the first time, there seemed to be many more people out and about and the noise increased as they passed through, everybody being out to make a quick dollar. As they passed the Colliderscope again, Rose stopped to have another look, because she just thought how sad people were to trust in something like that. It looked busier than last time, with at least seven customers all staring at their little screens, or, as she thought, mirrors. As she watched, one of them came to the end of his time, so the proprietor walked over and covered the screen. The customer pleaded with him for just another few minutes, but the man shook his head and held out his hand indicating that it would cost another ten dollars. The customer’s head sunk and he slowly got up, heading reluctantly for the door.
Frankie nodded at the man as they made eye contact. ‘Any luck?’
‘Yep, and all of it bad. Every bloody time he covers the screen, I sees something, just as the cloth comes down. Every bloody time. He won’t give me even a second more, and that could be just the thing I’m looking for. I tells him he can have half, but he just don’t want to know.’
Rose and Frankie watched him as he walked bow-legged down the street, muttering and swearing and bemoaning his lot to everyone he passed.
‘If he sees something, then it’s a trick of the mind, isn’t it?’ asked Rose.
Frankie nodded. ‘Yeah, how many times have you looked in a mirror, and just as you move away, think you saw another movement behind you?’
‘Especially when you’re looking in earnest, yes, I can see that, but how can the man who owns this place have the nerve?’
‘Makes money. Everyone wants to make money. This guy used to be a middle man for the smiths hereabouts, until he copped on to this little scam. Better than selling spoons and knives to those north of the river. It’s the middle men, like him, who are the scum around here, well everywhere really. They do none of the work and take all of the money, from both ends. I tell you, get rid of all of them and this place would be a whole lot better for it. They’ve got no conscience, they don’t care, they just see the dollar signs; they’re nearly as bad as lawyers and bankers, but I must say, nowhere near as bad as politicians.’
‘Jack’s father’s a politician.’
Frankie nodded again. ‘Yeah, but he’s the exception which unfortunately proves the rule. That’s why he never gets a major post in government, but they have to keep him close so that they can keep an eye on him.’
‘Lawyers and bankers aren’t bad though.’
Frankie laughed. ‘The Lawyers sit between the victim and the accused, charging the twearth, and making any trial or litigation last for as long as possible; for the simple reason to screw as much money out of everyone that they can. Bankers, well I call them the merchant wankers, because that’s what they are. You put some money in a bank and they’re meant to keep it safe, but what do they do? I’ll tell you, they use our money to fund their gambling habits, they gamble our money and take as much as they can from us, and then plead that the markets are bad, so it’s our fault that they lost it all. Middle men, all of them.’
Rose moved her head from side to side, weighing it all up, and then nodded, as she could see that Frankie had hit the nail on the head. The reality of the fact is that those who are meant to help only help themselves, and it made her feel hollow inside. She then thought of the hopes of all the people around here. ‘Ten dollars is a lot of money for these people, I suppose?’ she said, looking through the window.
‘Oh yes. If they do work, ten dollars is a week’s pay for them. Most of them work on the docks, or for the tanners, collecting piss and shit. I told you the other day, hope isn’t cheap.’
They left the Colliderscope behind them just as another victim walked into the shop. Rose shook her head at the sadness of it all, but inside knew that you would never be able to stop people dreaming; and there would always be someone around to make money from them.
News of their excursion into the Brews had gone ahead of them as always and Gerald waited for them with mugs of tea for a change, the beverage brewing in the pot as they arrived. Crinning hovered around his master’s elbow until Gerald waved him away with an impatient twitch of his hand. His jacket and hat of hundreds of buttons had gone, replaced by just a plain and simple waistcoat. He grinned as he held out a comfy chair for Rose to sit down on.
‘Come on my lovely, park yer harse down ‘ere.’
Frankie waited, but an invitation for him didn’t come, so he shrugged and sat down anyway.
Gerald sat opposite. The three gathered in a little circle, rather like a mothers meeting, until Gerald poured the tea and they sat back, cradling their mugs. ‘So,’ began Gerald, ‘to what do I owe this little pleasure then?’
Frankie leant back and took a sip. ‘Dr
ugs, Gerald. And a whole heap of them too. You’ve probably heard about Maxwell by now, how he and his head parted company.’
‘Oh yes, lots o’ talk doing the rounds about that.’
‘Well, he’s been one of the men bringing the drugs in, and obviously we wanted to have a little word with him about that. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen, but the drugs are still sitting there; and now we want to know who is going to take up where Maxwell left off. This is where you come in.’
‘Don’t like drugs, never ‘ave,’ said Gerald, dunking a biscuit. ‘Anyone ‘round ‘ere ‘o gets involved in that sort o’ thing gets turfed out pretty damn quick. Snodgrass was one, but you now got him banged up. Why me?’
‘For the simple reason you don’t like them. We could ask the feelers, but they’re so bloody clumsy they’d get spotted straight away. You though, have different resources, shall we say.’
Gerald nodded, acknowledging the sense of that as he listened; his mind drifted a little, and while he contemplated, the soggy part of the biscuit teetered on the brink. Rose watched mesmerised as it wobbled precariously, until he finally rammed it into his mouth at the very last second. ‘Got loads o’ resources I ‘ave,’ agreed Gerald. ‘So what exactly would yer want me to do?’
‘Well, Cornwallis should at this moment be speaking to the King of the Dwarfs. The drugs are stored in the dwarf tunnels down by the docks, under a warehouse. He’s going to ask the King to keep an eye on the pile. What we want you to do is to keep an eye above ground to see where it goes and who’s doing the fetching. I tell you Gerald, the pile of drugs is huge. We reckon it’s the main supply, not only for Gornstock, but for everywhere else besides; that’s why we want to see what happens, find out who controls it all.’
‘Huge you say? Don’t like drugs at all, eats away at society, it does, all that shooting, snorting, sniffing, smoking. Stops people doing what they should be doing, gives ‘em a false outlook on life. Life is fer living, get into drugs an’ life is fer dying, if you harsks me.’
Rose found Gerald’s opinion hard to reconcile, even though she agreed with it. ‘But you rule in the Brews, which is a crime ridden society.’
‘Crime, yes, my girl, but folks ‘ere are poor, an’ they’s gets into crime in order to make better lives fer themselves. Put drugs into the equation an’ the whole thing changes, crime is a way to get the next fix. Drugs makes ‘em lazy, they won’t work to get out, but just to get smacked up to forget. Then they forgets ‘ow to do anything else; they lose all pride in themselves, so they become parasites. I ain’t naive, my girl, we got a drug problem in the Brews, but I do all I can to get rid of it; an’ that is why I’m going to help you wiv this little problem o’yours.’
CHAPTER 12
‘Now, Mrs Gridlington, all the files are there on the shelves, they’re a little dusty, but they have been there for a while.’ Cornwallis conducted the new secretary around the office, which didn’t take long as there wasn’t much to see. ‘You can use my desk until the new one for you arrives, which should be later on this morning. Any questions?’
‘No, Mr Cornwallis, it all seems very fine. But the files, do you not keep them locked away?’
‘That’s a question, Mrs Gridlington; you said you didn’t have any.’ Cornwallis groaned inwardly as he said this, he wanted to be jocular, try to put the woman at her ease, but it came out more as an accusation than a joke. He gave a lopsided smile and watched as she crossed her arms and tilted her head to the side. All she has to do now was to impatiently tap her foot. ‘My little joke, Mrs Gridlington,’ he added, lamely.
‘So it was, Mr Cornwallis, a very little one.’ She raised one eyebrow, very much like a schoolmistress when she sees a child being naughty. ‘However, the files I believe are confidential, and as such should not be on public display.’
‘They’re not, they’re in the office.’
‘To which the public has access, and so they are in full view of the public; therefore they are on display.’
Cornwallis had to concede the point in the end, so he had to also concede that there needed to be somewhere to store the files, which meant using the room next to the office. At the moment, they had a wall in the way, so he agreed to get someone in to make a door and to brick up the entrance in the hall. This was all getting very expensive. He’d taken on two new people in the last few days, and now he had to redesign the whole office just to accommodate a secretary that he didn’t really want in the first place. He decided to make a point and send the bill to his father, considering he and Rose came up with the idea.
He’d sent Rose and Frankie off first thing this morning to see what they were doing at the finance house. Algernon was still keeping an eye on Dumchuck and Kintersbury, so he would have to see him later to find out what they had been up to overnight. Frankie and Rose had met up with Algernon last night, and they said that they had been keeping a low profile since Maxwell’s demise and hadn’t ventured outside their houses. Perhaps the dark might have encouraged them to be a bit more adventurous.
Mrs Gridlington began to pull a few of the old files and parchments off the shelf; Cornwallis offered to help as she had to reach up, but she turned him down flat. ‘No Mr Cornwallis, I need to get all this in some sort of order, so I would prefer it if you would just leave me be.’
Cornwallis had already begun to help and he pulled at a very thick file just above her head, unbalancing everything below, encouraging it all to slide off. Mrs Gridlington looked up just as everything began to fall. She leapt backwards out of the way but went straight into Cornwallis’ arms. He stumbled back and lost his balance, and the two of them crashed to the floor. Cornwallis’ arms flailed around, and he found he grabbed Mrs Gridlington in all the wrong places; in fact, he suspected he grabbed some bits that even Mr Gridlington had never touched. The experience left him bemused to say the least, because Mrs Gridlington dressed in a tidy but very matronly way, but what he had touched did not equate with what he had seen. Mrs Gridlington had a very well-toned, slim and lithe body. She didn’t squidge, nor did she squash, except when he felt her chest scrunch up against him; and there too he found an anomaly, because they were firm, round and quite large.
‘Mr Cornwallis,’ she breathed, just inches from his face. ‘If this is what you call “a getting to know your employee” session, then I think it might have gone a bit too far.’
Cornwallis rolled her off and clambered to his feet with his face burning bright red, he held out a hand to help her up and offered a grovelling apology. ‘I am ever so sorry, Mrs Gridlington, I do beg your pardon; a complete accident, I would never… I’m sorry, but I would never…!’
‘It’s all right, Mr Cornwallis, my fault entirely.’ She stood up and brushed the dust off her dress. ‘Those files were to blame, coming down like that; I hope I didn’t hurt you.’
‘Not at all, Mrs Gridlington, I apologise again, I shouldn’t have reached up.’
Her eyes sparkled just for an instant, and a hint of a smile played at the corner of her lips; and then she shut it all away again. ‘Mr Cornwallis, consider it purely an unfortunate accident. Let’s put it behind us both and think no more of it. Now, you go about your business and leave me to sort everything out here,’ and she began to shoo him out the door. ‘Just one thing, Mr Cornwallis; where do you plan to be today, just in case anything comes up? A secretary must know how to contact her employer in the event of an important development.’
‘Oh, right,’ mumbled Cornwallis. ‘Er… I… er, I should be meeting my two colleagues at the Gornstock Trust and Holdings, Mrs Gridlington; it’s a finance house, but it’s all hush-hush. We won’t be in the building, you understand. Then later I will be seeing someone, but I couldn’t tell you where.’
‘Of course, Mr Cornwallis, I understand totally,’ she said, tapping her nose. ‘Discretion is my middle name.’
Cornwallis bounded down the steps as if in a hurry to put distance between himself and Mrs Gridlington, he stopped briefly before ve
nturing outside and took a deep breath. He thought all that business upstairs very disconcerting, she hadn’t got ruffled or shocked by what happened, whereas he felt mortified. Perhaps Mrs Gridlington had hidden depths, and if so, Mr Gridlington might be a lucky man. The door to the left of him swung open and his newest tenant poked her nose out.
‘Good morning, Mr Cornwallis.’
‘Oh, good morning, Miss Thrape. How’s business?’
‘Steady, thank you,’ Miss Thrape replied sweetly. ‘Could I have a quick word with you before you go?’
Cornwallis smiled. ’Of course, though it will have to be quick.’
Miss Thrape returned the smile and turned to lead him through into her inner sanctum. Cornwallis hadn’t been in here since she had taken over the rooms and the plush furnishings and deep rich colours impressed him; an amalgam of tastes, from the antique to an eastern harem, old furniture and velvet wall hangings with cushions everywhere. His nose noticed a sweet smell of incense from joss-sticks smoking lazily from a vase standing on the table. It might not be to everyone’s taste, but he quite liked it.
‘I have been contacted from someone from the other side who wishes to give you a message, Mr Cornwallis.’ She sat down in a tapestry covered armchair and indicated that he should sit opposite. Sitting demurely with her hands placed on her lap, she began to bite her lower lip. ‘You have to understand that I wouldn’t normally do this sort of thing, however the departed insisted and wouldn’t let me rest until I promised to speak with you.’ She looked at him with soft apologetic eyes. ‘I hardly had a wink of sleep last night as he kept going on and on and on.’
‘I’m sorry, Miss Thrape,’ replied Cornwallis, somewhat surprised. He avoided this sort of thing as a rule as he had no wish to know what anyone from the other side wanted or thought. Mostly, or so he’d heard, the messages were always obscure and bore little relation to reality. He’d come to the conclusion that most mediums were charlatans who were only in it for the money they could screw from potential clients. He knew that a few were real, but they were very few and far between. He hoped Miss Thrape was one of these as he found her attractive with her long dark hair and slim figure. She had a heart shaped face with deep brown eyes, which, he couldn’t help but notice, now began to smoulder as she looked back at him. She wore a long tight fitting black skirt with a tight red blouse, low cut to show a cleavage that held a lot of promise. So as far as he was concerned, as long as she didn’t hurt anyone, she could do as she pleased. ‘Perhaps you could tell me what the message is?’ He continued, as he crossed his legs.
