The Touch of Innocents

by Michael Dobbs

  ‘Stop being so bloody juvenile! I had to make a choice last night. Between you and Bella. So I chose Bella, and not you. For what it’s worth, it hurt me, hurt like hell. And I knew how much it would hurt you, too, so much so that I didn’t feel I could come back last night. Can’t you see?’

  ‘What I see is that you chose to sleep with him, but not with me.’ His eyes welled with pain, battered rather than bruised. ‘I asked only one thing of you, that you tread carefully with me. Don’t go rocking old Humpty, I said, don’t go wobbling his wall. Instead, you drove a sodding bulldozer through it.’

  ‘And what would you have done? Washed your hands? Beforehand or afterwards, Daniel?’

  Her rebuke stung him into silence.

  ‘Don’t turn your back on me, Daniel. Not now. I need you.’

  He sat like granite, grey, impassive, unresponsive. It seemed an age before a tremor ran through the block of stone.

  ‘Had a schoolmistress in the Bay, a Miss O’Donnell. Very particular about hygiene, she was. Insisted that we wash our hands at meal times, after digging potatoes and dissecting frogs. And before we left for Mass. But I don’t recall her ever mentioning sex.’

  ‘A misspent youth, Danny Blackheart.’

  ‘So I guess I’d better stick. I’m committed to this, Izzy. To finding Bella. And to you. Oh, God and Miss O’Donnell help me!’

  She reached over and took his hand.

  ‘I’ll make up for it, Daniel, and that’s a promise. Not just to you, but to myself. I think I deserve someone like you. Just give me a little more time.’

  ‘We’ve got time, I suppose.’

  ‘All the time in the world.’

  The bruising in his eyes had cleared, as though sprinkled with healing water.

  ‘Bloody odd place you’ve chosen, Miss Dean, if that’s a proposition.’

  ‘Let’s say it’s more of a reservation than a proposition.’

  ‘Don’t tell me. First, there’s work still to be done.’

  ‘Yes, Daniel. If only I knew where to start.’

  ‘With a cup of coffee, I would suggest.’

  They found the coffee shop with little difficulty after a phone call mentioning a delivery and mutterings about a scribbled and indecipherable address. It was located close behind the fashionable shopping precinct of Kensington High Street. Tolman’s.

  They had returned to The Stafford and changed their clothes; their roles had also perceptibly changed. Daniel had taken control of proceedings, insisting that he dress down while she dressed up, even over-dressed. He was on edge, mysterious and uncommunicative, perhaps still smarting from her night-time exploits, instructing her to put on high heels and too much make-up.

  ‘I feel like a vamp,’ she complained.

  ‘Great,’ was all he would offer. ‘And we’ll need to take some serious money.’

  Tolman’s was a scruffy emporium, located on the intersection of quiet back streets and out of keeping with the bustle of the fashionable main thoroughfare barely fifty yards away. It was an unambitious, make-shift place, formerly a shoe shop which had failed to float in the backwash of the High Street, with large windows, a small serving counter and potted plants that appeared exhausted in spite of the fact they were artificial, with mirrors along one wall that would have made the shop feel brighter and less cramped had any recent attempt been made to clean them. It was the week before Christmas, yet the only sign of Yuletide decoration was a large bowl on the counter entreating tips. There were no tables, nothing but a narrow ledge that ran all the way around the shop; customers were not expected to linger.

  Harassed mothers perched their bags and babies on tall, scratched stools while trying to tell the owner that tea should be brewed and not stewed, only to be met with shrugs of contemptuous indifference. He had little time for women with their bags and baggage who took up too many seats and spent piss money on piss tea and whose noxious infants pissed on his floor. They weren’t to be encouraged.

  Izzy and Daniel arrived around three thirty and tarried over their coffee, ignoring the impatience of the owner. They had hit the right time, for around four o’clock as December dusk fell the character of the shop seemed to undergo a transformation. The rush was over. Women shoppers had left to pick up their children from school or to begin preparations for dinner, workers on early shifts were hurrying home, tourists headed back to their hotels for recuperation before the onslaught of evening. A new clientele had arrived. Male, five of them, all under forty, a majority in suits with wide lapels and fashionably shapeless trousers, none ordering anything and accepting without comment or thanks the beverages the owner brought across for them. A youth was loitering by the door, pretending to read a newspaper, eyes patrolling the long stretches of approach road that led to the coffee shop.

  ‘This is it,’ Daniel muttered beneath his breath.

  ‘This is what?’ she snapped, grown frustrated with his lack of communication.

  ‘The dealers’ drop,’ he whispered, motioning her to keep her voice down. ‘Watch. Listen.’

  There was a warble and from inside his jacket one of the men produced a mobile phone, conducting a muttered conversation in heavily accented English.

  ‘No more than ten minutes,’ Daniel whispered.

  It took less than five. A woman appeared, thin to the point of anorexia and dressed simply in black trousers and chain-belted smock, ordered a drink from the counter and returned to sit beside the man. She placed her bag on the ledge, open, facing the man.

  Izzy watched the switch. Crumpled notes for sachets. From bag to suit pocket, and back again. A moment’s flurry of activity, not a word spoken. The girl immediately abandoned her drink and the shop.

  Other mobile phones were appearing, deals being done. The next two exchanges were conducted at the front entrance, both with young men in smart business suits who appeared too nervous to enter, their oversized company cars parked illegally and blocking traffic.

  ‘The dealers will stay no more than fifteen, twenty minutes. This is the happy hour. Good location. Can see trouble coming from way down the street, able to disappear into the shopping crowds.’ He sounded analytical but tense.

  ‘Then why are they paying no attention to us?’

  ‘Simple. I told the slimebag of an owner that I was new in town and looking for some action. And you were on my staff.’

  ‘Your staff?’

  ‘Yes. As a hooker. Drugs and hookers often make a tasty sandwich. I’m supposed to be your pimp. They think we’re playing the same game as them. Love the lipstick, darling,’ he smirked in a deep Mayo brogue.

  ‘You bastard,’ she exclaimed, watching another deal go down.

  ‘Yes, but a totally and blindingly brilliant bastard. Come on, they’re beginning to drift away. Time to move.’

  He took her arm, not gently, he seemed very preoccupied, and guided her towards the counter where the owner, an oversized man with an upper and lower stomach separated by the cord of a grimy apron, was emptying coffee grounds.

  ‘Bugger off,’ he greeted. ‘You’ve been sitting around here too long for my liking.’

  ‘Just inspecting your palace of entertainments. Looking before we leap, and all that.’

  ‘Well, it’s fifty quid a week for the seats whether you crap or get off the pot. In advance.’

  ‘Sure. But first I need to check you out with one of your referees. A friend of mine who’s in this game, used your shop. Paulette.’

  ‘I told you already, bugger off.’ The words reeked aggression, but the glance over his shoulder in the direction of the woman washing dishes in the rear of the kitchen suggested a vulnerable flank.

  ‘As I was saying,’ Daniel responded in a raised voice, ‘this girl Paulette—’

  ‘Keep your sodding voice down!’ he whispered hoarsely. The woman had raised tired eyes from the soapy dishes and was looking at the back of the owner’s head in a manner which suggested she was planning a lobotomy.

  ‘I could always
enquire of the lady wife, if you preferred,’ Daniel taunted.

  The owner took a deep breath, fury filling his eyes. He smeared at the surface of the counter with a damp rag, calculating the odds. No contest. This was a battle he had no wish to fight.

  ‘Look, I did have a girl, Paulette. Worked here for a couple of weeks. She was … helping out, while the wife was away by the seaside at her sister’s.’

  ‘Helping out, was she? And not just washing dishes, I’ll bet.’

  ‘She was a dirty little tart, pulling tricks behind my back …’

  ‘You didn’t think she could support a drug habit on what you gave her, did you?’

  ‘Look, I didn’t know about any of that, not when I took her on.’

  ‘Yes,’ responded Daniel contemptuously, glancing around the shop, ‘it’s amazing what a blind eye you have to those sort of things.’

  ‘You’re not Filth, are you?’ the owner demanded in sudden alarm.

  ‘You were telling us about Paulette.’

  ‘End of story. The wife came back early – didn’t take to the weather or the welcome in Clacton – took one look at the girl and gave me the bollocking of my life. Anyway, Paulette was getting really weird by then, bombed out of her bleedin’ skull. Started bringing some strange people into the shop. Had to throw her out.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘’Bout two weeks ago.’

  ‘And where is she now?’

  ‘Don’t know and I don’t bloody care. Nothing but trouble, that one, with all her airs and graces and grubby habits.’

  ‘You must …’ interjected Izzy for the first time. She had felt scarcely able to breathe as the figure of Paulette had been dangled tantalizingly in front of them once again. ‘You must know,’ she protested.

  But Daniel silenced her with a reproachful wave of his finger. With painstaking care, he extracted from his shirt pocket a twenty-pound note and unfolded it beneath the owner’s nose.

  ‘You ain’t Filth, are you?’ the owner pleaded, bloodshot eyes fixed on the money.

  ‘No, but I can arrange for them to come calling. Although I’d much prefer to be clean away, out of this sewage farm you laughingly call a coffee shop. And I will be, as soon as I find Paulette.’

  The proprietor smeared at the counter once more with the rag, weighing a twenty against a fading and not altogether pleasurable memory. ‘Try Endeavour Road,’ he spat, snatching at the note.

  Daniel’s reactions were quicker, moving his hand just sufficiently for the owner to end up pawing the air. ‘Endeavour Road’s a mile long. You can be a bit more precise than that. Where on Endeavour?’

  The twenty was dangling once again.

  ‘I don’t bloody know, do I,’ he seethed, making sure his back was turned towards his wife. ‘But you could try one of the pubs. Seemed to spend a lot of her time there.’

  ‘Now that didn’t hurt, did it?’ Daniel mocked, allowing the note to flutter to the floor on the other side of the counter, forcing the owner to stoop in order to retrieve it. ‘And isn’t that where you belong,’ he continued coldly. ‘With the scum on your floor.’

  She hadn’t seen him like this before. The Daniel she knew – or thought she knew – was good-spirited and patient; the one standing beside her cut like a serrated knife. She took his arm, it was trembling as though wanting to lash out, the bruising in his eyes had turned to blood and she was frightened for him. And a little frightened of him, she thought.

  ‘Let’s get out of here, Daniel,’ she insisted, tugging at his sleeve.

  They’d had enough. He had opened the door – more kicked it down, and she wanted desperately to jump through it before it closed upon her again. Light had entered her life. She felt alive once more, the stirring of hope begun within her, like the first stretchings of a new child.

  She turned to find a knife flashing inches in front of her nose.

  It wasn’t much of a knife, as knives go. The blade, flicked forward from the handle, was less than five inches long and looked unimpressive. For a knife. Mass-produced Taiwan. As though the blade might easily snap with a sharp twist. At very least make an unsightly mess.

  ‘G’day, sports.’ Behind the waving blade and Australasian accent stood one of the men in sharp suits with mobile phones, waxed blonde hair brushed straight back, his fair, almost transparent eyebrows casting unnatural emphasis onto the eyes. They were small, pink, and too close together.

  ‘I don’t want no trouble in here, Mo,’ protested the owner.

  ‘But we’ve got trouble, mate,’ Mo responded. ‘Muscling in on my manor. Trying to carve up a little bit of my business, are we? Could prove difficult. With damaged goods.’

  He drew closer to Izzy until she could smell his peppermint breath and after-shave. She could no longer see the knife blade; he had laid it flat against her cheek, the sharpened point an inch from her eye, applying pressure, forcing her head back, exposing her throat. She had stopped breathing entirely; felt herself rising onto her toes, desperate not to move or flinch, even more desperate to get away from the blade. He could see the fear in her face, smell it. She wanted very much to be sick.

  ‘Steady on, Mo. Lighten up.’

  But the eyes never flickered. Slowly he ran the blade down towards her lip. No blood, nothing more than an angry pink weal and a feeling of terror which trickled all the way down her spine.

  ‘I think there may have been some misunderstanding,’ Daniel said softly. Nothing in the coffee shop moved.

  ‘No misunderstanding. You wanna play the big boys’ game, you need to learn the rules. Which are these. First time I see you round here, you get a free taster, like an ice cream parlour.’ The point of the blade pressed still more firmly into her cheek beside the base of her nose; she tried to move away but her back was against the wall, nowhere to go. She felt the point pierce the skin and as the skin gave way a rivulet of fresh blood crawled its way down over her lip.

  ‘For God’s sake, Mo, you crazy bastard. Not in my place!’

  ‘Just a taste of things to come, pretty girl. Next time I’m gonna stop being a gentleman and start playing Australian rules. Understand?’

  ‘You make your point very well,’ she whispered.

  ‘Enough, Mo,’ the owner pleaded. ‘We can’t do with trouble in here.’

  ‘No drama. Just wanna make sure they understand.’

  But the drama had been all too intense, too captivating. It had grabbed the attention of everyone in the shop, including the look-out at the door. He had been slow, hadn’t seen them coming, driving without lights the wrong way up the short one-way road leading from the High Street. Before anyone had a chance to move, they were outnumbered two-to-one. A fight broke out in one corner. Screams. Stools were overturned, cups smashed, curses hurled. The owner cowered on the floor while his wife screamed abuse, first at the world, then at the customers and, finally and most ferociously, at her husband. Distracted from Izzy, the Australian turned with the knife in his hand but was felled with a vicious kick to his balls. A heavily booted foot stamped on the hand which still held the knife, leaving Mo writhing, retching, unsure which part of his body to clutch with his one remaining good hand.

  Then they turned to Izzy and Daniel. She was pinned to the wall as he was lifted bodily, turned and spread-eagled across the counter, knocking the breath from his body. Only when he bent his neck and saw his assailant produce a pair of handcuffs did it begin to make sense.

  ‘We’re journalists!’ he moaned, trying to manipulate his tongue, which he’d bitten. ‘ID’s in my wallet. Back pocket.’

  They held him pinioned, but displayed no more aggressive intent while they searched for his wallet and checked twice that he was not concealing anything resembling a weapon. A tray of cutlery that sat on the counter with its piles of bent and soap-stained knives, forks and teaspoons was swept to the floor, out of harm’s reach. The Christmas begging bowl went with it.

  ‘It’s here, Sarge,’ one of his assailants acknowled
ged, flicking through his wallet. ‘Daniel Blackheart. Wessex Chronicle.’

  ‘Never heard of it,’ Sarge snapped suspiciously, but reluctantly nodded that Daniel should be allowed to rise.

  ‘And the lady, too,’ Daniel added, sucking air back into his lungs.

  ‘Doesn’t look like a journalist. Or a lady,’ Sarge muttered, inspecting Izzy.

  ‘I hope I look like a tart,’ she responded. ‘That was my cover, which you’ve just blown.’

  ‘Didn’t look as if you had much cover left when we came in, miss,’ Sarge said, nodding at the prone figure of Mo. ‘Here, better clean yourself up.’ He produced a handkerchief.

  ‘Thanks. You got here quickly.’

  ‘Not really,’ Sarge responded. ‘This is a Drugs Squad raid, planned for about three months. Had no idea we’d find a damsel in distress.’

  ‘We cynical members of the media aren’t supposed to believe in coincidence.’

  ‘Believe it. If we’d known these bastards were giving members of the media a hard time, after the treatment we normally get at the hands of the press we might have been tempted to leave it for another three months.’

  ‘OK, I believe in coincidence.’ She smiled unsteadily, still shaken. She liked Sarge. She wanted to throw her arms around him and smother him in kisses. Or burst into tears. So she smiled.

  ‘And I’ll need to know who you are, miss. I’ll need ID. And a statement.’

  The smile faded. The police. British authorities. Her airport subterfuge blown.

  ‘Is this your bag, miss?’ One of the policemen picked up her bag from the floor.

  ‘Thank you, Officer. Let me get you that ID.’

  She hoped it didn’t seem as if she were snatching back her bag in too much haste. She’d only just remembered what it contained. But now she had no choice. ‘Isadora Dean. I’m the foreign correspondent for WCN in Washington.’