“’Ere,” she said, “it’s out of charge.” Which, since it had probably been in Caz’s bag since the late noughties, wasn’t entirely surprising.
“Yes,” Caz purred. “Any chance you could charge it too?”
Now, the squint deepened, the mouth tightening so much that the whole face looked in danger of caving in on itself. “Cost you a bit more,” the shopkeeper said. At which point the bird in the cage sprang back to life and shrieked, “She’s got a shooter, Frank! Get down!”
Again, a hand – the size and colour of a cola-baked ham – was slapped on the counter.
“What you want it unlocked for? What’s on it?” The questions were thick with the suggestion that we were up to something, she knew we were up to something and – even if she didn’t know exactly what we were up to – as soon as she figured out what it was, she’d nail us to the floor.
“My granny’s recipe for gazpacho,” Caz deadpanned, and the battle-axe softened momentarily.
“Put him in the boot,” the bird cawed, adding, “and bring the quicklime,” before the hand slapped the countertop again. The words, “Shut it, Naomi,” were growled and the woman, glancing over her shoulder, called out, “You nearly finished there, ‘Reen?”
The other woman – tall and slender where this one was short and squat, and possessed of a head of wildly-permed curled ringlets all of which were pulled together by a huge red silk bow – peered at the silver-foiled head of the hatchet-faced woman in the seat, patted her on the shoulder, murmured something soothing to the customer and sashayed her way over to the counter, a welcoming smile on her face.
“Ooh,” she said, “customers. New customers. Now that’s a rarity.” She looked pointedly at the older woman as she spoke, before turning her smile on us and holding her hand out. “I’m Rene – Reen – Halliwell. This here,” she gestured at the other woman, “is my mother-in-law, Maureen. She does her own hair so have no fear – I’m not responsible for any of that.”
This was accompanied by a swiping gesture as though the entirety of Mo Halliwell’s being, body, make-up styling and hair were being judged, found severely wanting, and – for the record – being recorded as nothing to do with the daughter-in-law.
Mo stared daggers at her daughter-in-law and held up the phone. “They only want unlocking,” she said, a hint of mockery in her tone, “so I just need you to watch the shop while I go,” and she jerked her head towards the door at the rear of the shop.
Reen sighed. “That’s a shame,” she eyed Caz, “cos I’d have loved to get my hands on your barnet.”
“Sorry,” Caz smiled back, “but the barnet is taken. By Louis Khanze.” She namechecked the latest tonsorial IT boy.
“Oooh,” Reen mimed, impressed, and glanced over her shoulder at the hatchet-faced woman, who now seemed to be completely unconscious in the chair. “Well, if you ever fancy swapping Brompton Cross and the glamour of Maison Louis for this joint and a shared session with Ethel over there, you know where we are.”
“Watch them,” Mo said to her. Her voice had dropped enough to allow her to pretend discretion but loud enough for us to hear and be well aware of just what she thought of us.
“Like a hawk, mein obergruppenführer,” Reen muttered as her mother-in-law stomped off across the shop, through the door to the rear space and out of view.
“Sorry about her,” Reen said to us. “She wasn’t really made for customer service. Oh I love your nails,” she suddenly cried, spotting Caz’s manicure and taking Caz’s proffered hand, the better to inspect the work.
Caz smiled beatifically as the other woman – older, now we were close up, than she had at first appeared – cooed over the work. “I was gonna do nails,” she said with the same sad tone with which Marlon Brando once mentioned he could have been a contender.
“I started going to school to learn it an’ all. Only she,” she jerked her head in the direction Mo had recently gone, “said I’d take too long to learn, so she hired in this Chinese woman. Or was she Pilipino? Anyways, she come from somewhere east. Every day.”
“She commuted from South East Asia?” I asked and Reen, still clutching Caz’s hand, blinked at me as though I had just spoken in tongues.
“Nah,” she shook her head, “Dagenham, I think. For the pittance that that old bitch was payin’ her. So, of course, Mei Ling told her, after about a month of fucking commutes from hell and getting treated like shit by the old cow, to shove her fucking manicures up her arse, and walked.
“Only by that stage she’d got ‘nail bar’ on the sign, so I says again, ‘Can I ‘ave a go at learning it,’ and she says—”
“Stupid cow Reen!” the bird shrieked and Reen glared daggers at it.
“Fucking thing,” she muttered.
“You could go to evening classes,” I suggested, as Caz, her beatific look now turning somewhat rictus-y, attempted politely but firmly to reclaim her hand.
Reen shook her head. “She’d never let me. Watches me like a fucking hawk. Afraid if I got a bit of training I might make a go of this place and show her and her son what for.”
Mention of Mo’s son gave me an opportunity to open a new line of discussion. “How’s Al doing?” I asked and Reen dropped Caz’s hand like a hot brick.
“How d’you know Al?” she demanded, suspicion shadowing her eyes almost as obviously as the powder-blue glitter eyeshadow she’d liberally applied some time, it looked like, in the previous century.
“I grew up in his old neighbourhood. Some of my uncles,” I lied, “used to know him. Odd that your shop’s all the way over here in West London.”
She continued to stare suspiciously at me. “We moved, about fifteen, twenty years ago. There was nothing for us over the river. Al said we might as well see if we could make a go of it up West.
“Except we haven’t really. Made a go of it,” she clarified. “Al wasn’t really cut out for business. He was a plumber for a while, till all his customers started getting burgled after he’d installed their showers and such. Well, burgled or flooded. He wasn’t a very good plumber.
“Wasn’t much of a burglar neither,” she added, a faraway look in her eyes. “Got pinched letting hisself into someone’s place in Chiswick. Did a year, by which time the plumbing business had gone tits up.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.
“I’m not,” she said. “Neither of them,” again, she nodded towards the door that Mo had vanished through, “could organise a piss-up if they had a busload of fucking alcoholics and the keys to a brewery. But they’re good at telling me how useless I am.”
“I hear Al’s inside again,” I said, fishing.
She laughed mirthlessly, glancing with disgust at the myna bird as it suddenly cried out, “Shut it, you slag!”
“Al’s usually either on his way to, or just out of, the nick.”
“What’s he in for this time?” Caz asked as the hatchet-faced old dear in the corner began to snore with a noise like a chainsaw going at a breeze block.
Reen laughed. “Always used to think he was Al Capone. Only, you know how they finally got Al Capone for tax evasion? Yeah, well they finally got my old man for beating the living shit out of some poor kid in Hammersmith. Cos he laughed at his fucking bird,” she cast a disgusted look at the cage. The myna bird, as though sensing it was being discussed, twisted its head and blinked at her. “All over a football game,” Reen added. “Arsenal scored against Chelsea. A fucking football match.”
“I didn’t think he even liked Chelsea. Well,” she shook her head, “the kid he attacked won’t walk again.”
“Reen,” the woman in front of me visibly shrank as the stern voice of Mo Halliwell rang out across the salon, waking the sleeping pensioner, who snuffled, started and plaintively enquired whether she’d had her tea and biscuits yet.
“See to your customer,” Mo ordered, crossing to us and sliding the phone across the counter.
“There’s nothing on this,” she snapped.
“Nothing?” Caz enquired, reaching for it.
“What’s your game?” Mo asked, her eyes flashing angrily as she slammed her hand down on the device to prevent Caz removing it.
Caz paused, dived into her handbag, withdrew two bank notes and placed them on the counter. “Well I guess I’ll just have to try to make granny’s gazpacho from memory.”
“What was she saying?” Mo jerked her head at Reen, who was busying herself removing tin foil from her pensioner’s hair as the old dear noisily slurped a mug of tea.
“We were asking after your son,” I said, wondering whether I could get the irascible Mo on to a nostalgia trip.
No such luck.
“Well now you’ve had your phone unlocked,” she shot another furious stare at Caz, “you can be on your way.”
I persevered: “You ever see any of the old crowd, Mrs Halliwell?”
She took a step back from the counter, the better to peer up at me as a look of utter fury settled on her face.
Even the bird, who had seemed ready to gear up to another round of foul-mouthed tweeting, silenced itself.
“I don’t know who you are,” Mo said, her arms crossed over her defiantly-immobile bosom, “or what your game is but you’ve had your twenty-quid’s worth of my time, so now you can piss off.”
I held up my hands in a placatory gesture, but she was having none of it.
“Piss off!” Naomi echoed and, for once, Mo didn’t slam her hand on the counter top to silence the bird.
“Look,” I said, “I know times are probably hard, what with Al being back inside.”
“You don’t know nothing,” she spat, the fury mixing with something tragic. “My boy’s been cursed his whole life by the likes of you.”
“Us?” I asked, wondering what, exactly, ‘the likes of us’ was. I didn’t have to wonder for long.
“Snitches, sniffers, middle-class ponces poking around in his business.”
“And what, exactly, is his business?” I asked.
“He’s a businessman,” she blazed, “an entrepreneur. He,” she flailed around for the phrase, “he sets up businesses, only some bastard always comes along and ruins it.”
“Like the plumbing job that masked a burglary scam?” I asked, figuring if I could rattle her a little more she’d start to say something interesting.
“My Al had nothing to do with that shit. He was a plumber. A proper one. Had his City and Guilds and all. It was that toerag apprentice he had who was the robber. It was all his fault.
“Al couldn’t see it. I told him, I said, ‘that toerag’s gonna get you in bother,’ and my Al’d be all ‘No Ma, Alex is a good kid. He’s a good learner. Plus, he knows the punters.’” She sucked her teeth.
“Putting on airs and graces and making out like he didn’t come from the same stock as the rest of us. You mark my words – it was his fault that Al got done for them burglaries. My boy was as innocent as a baby on that charge.”
I doubted this fact, but kept my mouth shut.
“But don’t worry,” she said, a cold look coming into her eyes, “I’ve got my eye on him. He’ll pay. Toerag.”
“So you haven’t seen Jimmy Carter lately, then?” I asked, and the fury in her face blinked off momentarily in confusion, then – redoubled – came back on.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she announced unconvincingly. “I never heard that name in my life.”
“Jimmy,” I said, my tone avuncular as though trying to convince her that we were all friends here. “He was a mate of Al’s, wasn’t he?”
“I. Don’t. Know. What. You. Are. Talking. About,” Mo said, enunciating each word as though she were talking to someone who was slow-witted or hard of hearing. Or both.
“I heard he’d been around,” I punted, fishing to see if she’d go for the bait.
She did. “Reen, you stupid cow – what you been saying?”
Reen, halfway through uncovering a set of – even from my vantage point – frankly alarming highlights, began to squawk and protest her innocence but it was too late.
“Whatever she said,” Mo snapped into my face, “was a lie. Stupid bitch is backward. Got no idea what my son ever saw in her beyond her tits.”
I was about to expand on my gambit – let Mo know just how Jimmy had ended up, gauge her reaction, see if it pushed her to any more involuntary admissions – only, at that exact moment, she dipped down below the counter, the myna bird cawed, “Bugger,” and Mo reappeared holding a very large cricket bat, the blade of which was stained with some rather worrying dark red patches.
“Get the fuck out of my salon,” she said and, in the best tradition of tabloid journalists everywhere, I made my excuses and left, hearing, above the jangling bell as the door closed behind me, Mo berating Rene in a string of profanities.
THIRTY-FIVE
“Well,” Caz muttered next to me, “that was productive. Or something.”
I took her arm and steered her away from the shop. “Maybe more productive than you think,” I said, an idea forming in the back of my head.
“Where are we going?” Caz demanded as I walked her across the street, threading through the barely moving traffic and heading for a dubious-looking pub. “Daniel, why are we going to the pub when you have a perfectly good one at home?”
“Cos I want to talk some more with Rene,” I said, “and I’m hoping Mo will leave her unattended for a bit.”
We entered the pub and if there’d been a piano playing, it would have stopped. Likewise, if there’d been a general hubbub, it would have stilled to notice our arrival.
Instead, we got two young barmaids clad in too-tight black t-shirts at the far end of the bar.
Either of them could have noticed us and strolled up to serve us. Neither of them did, so deeply were they engrossed in rifling through a selection of underwear, security tags still clearly visibly attached, which had been piled up on the bar by a pensioner in a flat cap and a mac.
We waited a moment as the blowsier of the two blondes considered the merits of what looked like a black lace thong and bra set, before putting it to one side and diving back into the pile.
I coughed, and the trio jumped.
At the pensioner’s side stood a shopping trolley and with one sweep of his arm he knocked the pile of panties into it, nodded at the ladies and toddled out of the bar, pulling the trolley of hot knickers behind him.
The (marginally) less blousy of the two sauntered up to us, a look of insolence and anger on her face, and looked us up and down as though we were a couple of narcs who had just cost her the deal of a lifetime.
“Awwwlllriiiiight?” she drawled, pulling a cloth from her back pocket and polishing the bar in front of us. “Get you anything?”
“A gin martini, straight up, with a twist,” Caz deadpanned, and it took a moment before the shock registered on the face.
“We got no cocktails,” the marginally less blousy barmaid responded, despite the fact I could see the gin and vermouth within touching distance on the shelf behind her.
“Well, then,” Caz smiled, “let’s just make it two double gin and tonics. Hold the tonics and give me a large glass of Martini Bianco on the side. Danny, what do you fancy?”
Drinks served, cash taken, and the barmaid having sullenly slouched back to the far end of the bar to pick her teeth and discuss Belgian literature with her colleague, Caz and I took a seat in the bay-fronted window of what could have been a pretty little pub, if they’d had any customers, or any staff, and began watching the front door of ‘Mo/Reen’ opposite.
“Pace those drinks,” I said, nodding at the glasses on the table. “We could be here a while.”
“Under the table, Mr Bird,” Caz murmured, downing the first gin in one gulp. “Now, you said an idea was forming. Let’s hear it.”
“What if Jimmy went to Chisel, and Chisel sent him away with a flea in his ear? But what if Alex overheard the conversation?”
“What if the moon was ma
de of cheese and little green men climbed all over it?” Caz responded, and I wondered how strong the bathtub juice was.
“I mean,” I said, “the missing boy. Chisel’s son. General consensus is that he’s been kidnapped. But what if he hasn’t been? What if he’s just absented himself?”
“You think he might have killed Jimmy?”
“Well I’ve been assuming that Billy’s killer and Jimmy’s are one and the same, but what if Alex overheard the conversation and one of two things happened – he either knew his dad had done Billy and whacked Jimmy to keep that from getting out, or he decided to do his own searching for them stones.”
“Those stones,” Caz corrected me. “Really Danny, if you’re going to insist on spending time with the likes of the fragrant Mo and her delightful avian friend, I’m going to have to insist on regular elocution lessons lest you turn into an Artful Dodger tribute act.”
She swigged her second gin. “Now, back to those stones,” she prompted.
“Well, if Chisel’s kid was also looking for the stones, he might have come a cropper with Jimmy, offed him and gone on the lamb. Either way, I think I know where he might be hiding out.”
Caz reached over and relieved me of my untouched second gin. “Is there a reason you’re talking like something out of a Jimmy Cagney B Movie? And if Chisel fils had committed murder, don’t you think he’d have informed his father rather than just going on the run? I mean, the papa is hardly the Dalai Lama.”
“True,” I admitted, “but what if he freaked, and before he could tell Chisel – who doubtless would have dealt with any unpleasantness – the father himself panics and puts out an APB.”
“You’re still doing it,” she muttered, her eyes straying to the window as the daylight faded quickly. “But how does all this bring you to the idea that you know where Chisel junior is?”
“Al Halliwell had a plumbing business,” I said, my own eyes fixing on the door of the salon opposite, “and in that plumbing business he had an apprentice.”
“Ee-i-ee-i-o,” Caz sang. “Get on with it.”
Death Of A Devil Page 24