by Andy Conway
“I didn’t like that man,” said Rachel.
“He’s not a very nice man,” said Charlie. “And I think Danny’s about to find that out for himself.”
— 25 —
RUMPLED SHEETS AND the sweet smell of her perfume. Danny turned over and squinted at piercing sunlight through the attic window. He was in her bed. Kath’s bed. He sat up, head throbbing, and blinked at the room. She wasn’t there.
Had they?
No, he was in his own room. The manic jazz drummer from last night was still banging inside his head. Hungover.
He spilled out of bed and crawled over to his suitcase, which lay in the corner of the room, his things exploding out of it, and found some of his casual clothes.
Last night, she had taken him out on the town to celebrate his win. It should have been a laugh, but he had felt down. He knew it was the adrenalin crash that would inevitably follow the fight with Lashford, bringing gloom and fear and paranoia. He’d been scared, looking over his shoulder all the time, expecting a punch to land on him at any moment from a random stranger for no reason other than his face didn’t fit; he didn’t belong; everyone could see it. He had dived into alcohol. They’d eaten at a Chinese restaurant, all formal and purple with liveried waiters, and moved on to a jazz club that had become a blur.
They had kissed.
A sudden remembrance. The taste of her lips. Standing on a street corner waiting for a cab. The warm night air. They had kissed. The warmsoft taste of her lips. He had pulled away and was gallant. Was she disappointed? Just as the taxi pulled up to the kerb.
He remembered nothing after that. No, wait. Running down the black alley hand in hand, laughing, stumbling up the steps to the flat.
Had they?
He checked his face in the mirror. The whites of his eyes looked yellow. Today was going to be hell.
The money. Where was it?
He flinched and looked around the room. Bedside table, suitcase. He rushed over to his suit jacket, hanging limply on the back of the door. A thick wad of notes in the inside pocket. He’d gone out on the lash with all of that on him, got so drunk he didn’t know where he was. Stupid.
He needed to keep it somewhere safe. Her place? What if it was burgled? A bank? No. He should go back to Amy’s house and hand it to her, say nothing, just give her the money like he’d intended; put it in her hand before she could say anything or shout at him. Or even just post it through the letterbox.
His belly flipped over. Amy scared him now. The way she’d screamed at him; made him run like a frightened child in a storm, expecting the sky to fall on him. He couldn’t face her yet.
He trudged downstairs following the smell of sausages and the sound of the Beach Boys.
Kath was struggling with a tiny old cooker in the kitchenette that was little more than a cupboard, sausages spitting at her from a frying pan. She looked startled, wiping her freckled face with a tea towel.
“The bangers are a bit feisty,” she said.
He winced. “Can I help?”
“Gosh, you’re a modern chap. Sit down. Can you face it?”
He slumped at the dining table and looked out at the village, traffic busy, so many people darting to and fro in the morning sun; normal people with clear heads and stable digestion. The lucky ones.
“I’m not sure.”
“You were knocking it back a bit last night,” she called. “Still, I guess now you’re rich and all, it’s expected.”
“Do you know where I could buy a money belt?” he asked.
She turned with surprise. “You’re not going to carry it around with you?”
“I don’t really trust banks.”
She slid sausages onto plates and slapped fried eggs and fried bread beside them and brought them to the table.
“Nice healthy breakfast,” she said. “It’ll put a lining on your stomach.”
He stared at the plate and felt his belly lurch like he was at sea. The problem with the past was the food was so awful. But it might be the only thing to cure him. He tucked in and forced it into his mouth.
She poured cups of tea from a real teapot, using a strainer to collect tealeaves and as soon as he gulped some of it down, he felt like a paramedic had punched an adrenalin syringe to his heart.
He ate on in silence.
“We could try Rackhams,” she said. “They’re very exclusive and discerning. Bound to have a money belt.”
“Okay,” he nodded. “Let’s do that.”
He wondered if he’d survive getting into a vehicle without throwing up.
“What else do you want to do today?” she asked.
He remembered it was the quarterfinals tomorrow. No games today.
“Nothing,” he said. “Lie down and quietly die.”
She giggled. “We can do that. Or go the pictures. There’s a new Michael Caine movie on. Alfie. Might be good.”
He looked up to her face, sipping her tea, watching him eat.
“Last night,” he said. “Did we?”
“What?”
“You know.”
She smirked and shook her head. “Certainly not.”
“Oh.”
“You kept talking about someone called Amy.”
He pushed his plate away and cradled the teacup in his palms. “What did I say about her?”
“Something about wanting to make things up to her. Because you saved her life. Which didn’t quite make sense.”
“I was very drunk.”
“And did you save her life?”
He nodded. “Yes, but I don’t think her life has been all that good since I did.”
Kath hummed along to the radio and nodded as if she understood totally. “Perhaps she was meant to die,” she said.
“Don’t be stupid. Nothing’s meant to happen.”
“We don’t know that. It might seem like the good thing to do but it can mess up a lot of things, saving a life.”
He slurped the last of his tea and felt the bitter taste of tealeaves on his tongue.
“Are you still in love with her?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I was, a long time ago. But things have moved on a bit. There’s a lot of... stuff... between us now.”
She stared at him for ages, as if he had more to tell her, but he shrugged it away.
“Oh,” she said, reaching for the newspaper that was lying folded on the table. “You should take a look at this.”
He opened it, a sharp pain behind his eyeballs as he tried to focus on the newsprint.
A headline to one side. Mystery Punter Stings City Bookmakers for Cool Grand. A grainy photo of a man walking out of a bookmakers’ on New Street, taken from a good way off. There was a woman with him whose face you couldn’t see, she was approaching him, back to camera. The man was looking over to her because he’d just seen her, a smile just beginning to play on his lips. He was wearing a suit and a cheap pair of sunglasses he’d only just bought because of the brightness of the sun that morning. The face was his.
— 26 —
THE FACE WAS HIS. IT was him. It must be him.
It couldn’t be him.
D.I. Davies brushed the blot of pixels on the newspaper, as if it might bring the picture into focus, and tried to recall the features of the spy who’d escaped in 1940. He knew that the more he stared at the photo, the more it would become the face in his memory. He needed to forget about the picture and relax and let the face swim through twenty-six years of dogged police investigation to the forefront of his mind.
He pushed himself back in his chair and closed his eyes, trying to shut out the clatter of Doreen’s typewriter just outside his office.
The station going up in flames, after the swarm of rats, the smell of Sergeant Webster’s body frying. They’d arrested the boy that day. Reg had seen him signalling in the churchyard during an air raid a couple of nights before. He’d been cocky, like he knew he would escape. A strange contraption found on him that suggested American or Ch
inese involvement. But he’d been a Jerry agent; he was sure of it. Escaped during the air raid that night.
Lieutenant Eckersley had interrogated him and kept something quiet. The Lieutenant had been in the Special Intelligence Service, it was rumoured. Younger than himself but had shot up the ranks like posh boys always did.
The bomb had destroyed it all: the photograph they’d taken of him, the interrogation report. Wiped clean. He had disappeared into the night and was never mentioned again.
Davies opened his eyes and looked at the newspaper.
It was the same face. But as he was then. The spy would be in his late forties now, much older. Could this be his son?
He reached for the other half of his ham and pickle sandwich and stuffed it into his mouth, cursing himself for always eating the lunch his wife packed for him during his morning break and promising himself again that he wouldn’t go out for fish and chips come twelve.
He knew he would. He always did.
Amy Parker. The spy had carried her address, along with a list of bombing dates. She hadn’t recognized him; denied all knowledge of him. Had she known him?
His gaze fell disconsolately on his belly. His shirt was too small. She’d shrunk it again in the wash, the stupid mare. His belly was pushing it out and the button hanging on like a tent peg holding down a marquee in a hurricane.
He read through the few inches of copy again and sighed at the byline by Post Reporter. If he knew who’d written it he could telephone them instead of having to walk all the way over there. He threw his suit jacket on and stomped out of his office and through the typing pool outside, thick with cigarette smoke.
“Back in half an hour, Doreen,” he called as he passed her desk.
Horn-rimmed glasses, garish lipstick, ciggie hanging at the corner of her mouth. She didn’t look up.
He checked his watch. Eleven-thirty. He’d be finished by midday. Lunch-time. “Make that an hour, Doreen.”
He took the lift down to the ground floor and walked out of the modernist Lloyd House headquarters, crossing the zebra with the Belisha beacons and trotting up the steps in his suede loafers to the new ultra-modern Post and Mail Building, its pages on display along the ground floor windows.
— 27 —
THE PICTURE WAS A FUZZY grey and seemed to be filmed through a snowstorm, with graphics that could be bettered by any five-year-old with a laptop, and yet it was the BBC and their coverage of the World Cup.
Rachel observed Charlie watching the game unfold, thinking how ironic it was that he knew what the score would be and she didn’t. One of the Argentinean players was being sent off but no one seemed to know why.
She sat at the table by the window and looked out over Moseley village on a Saturday afternoon. Quiet, probably because England were playing.
She leafed through the Birmingham Post again and the story on page five. The same picture of Danny’s grainy face, alongside one of Councillor Lashford Piplatch. She’d examined his face all morning. The face of the man who was married to her Nan, but would desert her sometime soon: walk out and shack up with some tart he was seeing at work.
It was a new exciting lead on the Mystery Punter story. The man who had fleeced a host of city bookies of a thousand pounds was called Danny Moore and had stayed with Mr Piplatch’s mother-in-law, renting a room at her guesthouse in Moseley for the duration of the World Cup. Mr Piplatch had evicted him from the said property after an argument during which Mr Moore had become drunk and insulted his wife. One thing he had mentioned, though, was that he had already placed other bets on the outcome of the World Cup Final; bets which stood to make him nearly 200 times what he’d already won. Naturally, he hadn’t told Mr Piplatch what these wagers were.
She gazed out of the window at the village green. He was out there somewhere.
“What do you think he’s up to?” she said.
Charlie glanced over reluctantly. He looked quite dapper, watching the match with his glasses on and still dressed like he was going for a job interview. This is what she liked about the past: everyone knew how to dress.
“Apart from using your touchstone for a tawdry bet? I’ve no idea. Although I suppose that’s what I’ve done too. We can’t really point the finger at him, can we?”
The half time whistle went and he looked at her properly.
“I think it’s something more.” she said.
“Such as?”
She shook her head. She didn’t know. She’d started to believe that the touchstone was some giant cosmic joke being played on her. It had lost her everything. And then the thing with the car. The licence plate had never been visible on the photo. Charlie and Rachel, having a picnic in the country somewhere – something that would take place over the next few days – with the blue sports car in the background. It hadn’t clicked when she’d taken the ride with Martyn; not until she’d come here to 1966 and seen Charlie’s car. The same car. The same licence plate.
In forty-five years’ time, her father was going to buy it.
“What if he’s giving the money to Amy?” she said.
“Why would he do that?”
She shrugged. “The last time I saw him, in 1940, when he was handcuffed in the back of your car, he said he’d always be there to stop me from harming her.”
“You’ve no intention of harming her. He knows that. Doesn’t he?”
“There was something about the way he said it. Very protective. We should ask Maddy.”
She looked at him hopefully. He shook his head and winced.
“Not a good idea at the moment.” He came over and looked down at the newspaper, hands on hips. “I know who.”
He reached for the telephone and dialled, the rotary whirring back into place between each dial. It would take you an hour to phone someone if they had lots of nines in their number, she thought.
“Hello, Olive?” he said. “Yes, it’s uncle Charlie.”
Rachel raised an eyebrow. Uncle? She remembered Winnie being Charlie’s housekeeper during the war, and Olive as a girl running around the flat. Perhaps he’d always been like an uncle to her. Maybe Martyn would inherit the car, not buy it by accident.
“What say we meet in an hour? In Druckers? Excellent. See you then.”
The telephone chimed as he put the receiver in the cradle. It was like one of those children’s telephones that were on wheels.
“She’s curious. And she’s leaving Martyn with her mother, which means you can come.”
“Oh God, I’m going to meet my Nan again.”
“We’ve got an hour to concoct a story to explain your interest in Danny.”
— 28 —
HALF-TIME. DANNY STOOD by the window, arms folded, looking out over the village green.
“Why don’t they have TVs in the pub?” he said. “Why has no one thought of that?”
Kath paused, putting on her jacket. Another slip he’d made. He had made about a dozen of them since staying here and she’d pretended to ignore them.
“And where do they have TVs in the pub?”
He flinched, looked at her with alarm and tried to swallow back the words.
“Er... America. They watch sports in the bars over there. There’s always a TV on a top shelf.”
He was a terrible liar. She smiled to herself. “You’re not going to the pub. It’s safer here.”
“It’s unbearable,” he pouted.
“Blame Lashford bloody Piplatch,” she called as she danced down the hall and slammed the front door.
She trotted down the iron steps feeling warm sun on her face. The courtyard was empty and she tripped through the hole in the wall into the Victoria Parade alleyway. She knew it wasn’t the alley that was called Victoria Parade; it just bore the legend above the alleyway. It referred to the entire row of shops on this side of the street.
She turned straight into Mitchells butchers on her right. It smelled reassuringly of sawdust and she smiled privately at the thought of coming here every weekend for ta
pas and cocktails when it was called La Plancha. A transistor radio played a dainty folk tune, something about sitting on a fence, that instantly made her feel giddy. The assembled butcher boys in their striped aprons looked nervous and she realized they were waiting for updates on the England game.
They wrapped her steaks in greaseproof paper and she dropped them into her basket and walked down to Pickmere’s to buy some beer and wine for them to drink over the next few days. She caught her reflection in the window: smiling like an idiot at nothing in particular, the familiar flutter in her belly, humming a tune.
Oh God, she’d fallen for Danny.
She stopped dead, closed her eyes and cursed herself. This was bad. This was really bad. She heard a camera shutter fizz and opened her eyes to see him pointing his Leica at her. The young guy in the trilby and blue Harrington.
Pete Wethers.
He grinned cockily and sauntered over. “Knew I’d see you if I hung around long enough. Took your time, though.”
“What do you want?”
“The next story, darling. Always the next story.”
She started walking, head down.
“Go and ask Lashford Piplatch.”
He trotted alongside her. “I’ve had his story. It’s yours I want now. I mean, what’s your angle in all this?”
“I don’t have an angle.”
“Aw, come on, girl. You walk in, all mysterious, say you know the guy, invite me to come along and snap him. Then you just disappear from my life.”
She was heading for the alley. No, she shouldn’t lead him back to where she lived, where Danny was right now, where they had their headquarters. Stupid, stupid, stupid! She stopped and turned and walked back the other way.
“You know where he is, don’tcha?”
A bus. There was a bus sailing through the lights. The stop just outside Barrow’s. Her feet quickened. He trotted in front, walking backwards, snapping at her.
“What’s his bet? Everyone wants to know? Who’s he got to win it, eh?”