Touchstone Season One- Complete Box Set

by Andy Conway

  “You should put a bet on. I know a decent bookie.”

  Powell chuckled. “Normally, I could just deal with him the moment he turned up to claim his winnings. Make him go away. For a long time.”

  “You mean murder him.”

  “But this whole press thing. Clever move. Kind of spoiled it for me. Everyone in Birmingham knows about it now. Be bad for business if he turned up at one of my shops with a camera crew and I had to shoot him.”

  “I’m sure you’d get one of your boyfriends to do it for you,” she said.

  The thugs bristled but Powell seemed not to hear it. “Now, I can just about take the near two grand he’s already gypped me out of, but I’m bloody well not gonna let him diddle me out of another 350.”

  “You win some, you lose some,” she said, and again bit her lip. Why didn’t she just shut up?

  Powell grabbed her chin and pulled her face up to his. A blast of halitosis choked her. “So you’re gonna tell me how he’s done it or I’m gonna get Nev here to cut your face open.”

  “What makes you think I know how he’s done it? I’ve never put a bet on in my life!”

  “But you know. I can tell.”

  “I don’t know what the hell he’s done. I don’t even know him!”

  Powell stepped back, laughed and looked at the others. They laughed too.

  “Now that’s a funny thing to say. You see a little birdy told me he’s your brother.”

  Rachel felt her tongue turn to sand. Olive. The grandmother who would have done anything to protect her in another life had delivered her to the wolves.

  Her voice came from the bottom of a well. “Yes. Okay. He’s my brother. I was looking for him. I knew he was in some kind of trouble. I don’t know how he’s doing it. Honest. But surely all you have to do is take the betting slips off him.”

  Powell chewed the inside of his cheek. She knew he’d already thought of that, so what was going on? Maybe Danny didn’t have them on him. Maybe they thought she would know where they were.

  Powell didn’t say anything. He turned and walked out. The thugs followed him and she was alone again.

  She was alone for another hour or more and the room darkened. She was thirsty and hungry and frightened. In the end, just before it became totally dark they came again, but this time it was only Nev.

  She remembered Powell’s earlier threat and thought this was it: he was coming to cut her face up. She shrieked as he pulled her up from the floor and heard someone shout from far away – someone shouted her name. Charlie’s voice.

  Nev shoved her out into the corridor and marched her along, bumping against the stone walls, his fist gripping her collar. She squinted at bright light as they came out into a larger room. She heard the others as she was thrown into a chair and her hands quickly tied behind her.

  When she’d blinked away the blindness she saw Charlie and Danny were both tied up and seated next to her and Powel was standing there stroking his chin like he was trying out a furniture arrangement. The thugs, all three of them, stood behind him and showed no signs of being bored by their day of work.

  “Rachel, are you all right? I’ll bloody kill you, Powell, if you’ve done anything to her!”

  “Well, isn’t this lovely,” said Powell. “All together again. If I’d known you were coming I’d have baked a cake...”

  “Look, Bernie,” said Charlie, trying to sound like a man conducting a business deal, not someone tied to a chair and about to be murdered. “You’ve made your point. You’ve got the boy’s betting slips. Without them he can’t harm you. Just let the kids go. No one’s going to say anything about it.”

  Powell ignored him. “Have you all heard of Castle Vale?” he announced.

  Rachel looked at the others, puzzled. She’d grown up with her father’s dire warnings about what a notorious dump the Castel Vale estate was – a high rise nightmare just past Erdington that the city had forgotten about and left to loan sharks and youth gangs. Then it had been transformed with millions of pounds of public funds and only made fit for human habitation again after most of the high rises had been demolished and the gangs driven out. For most of her life, though, those two words had represented everything that was wrong about post-war housing.

  Where was this going?

  “It’s the future utopia,” said Powell. “And you’re going to be part of it. They’re taking all those nice poor people out of those horrible slums and they’re putting them in a load of lovely new high rise flats with all mod cons. It’s a brave new world and I’m letting you in on the ground floor.”

  The thugs chuckled with venom.

  “Well, more the basement. The foundations, to be exact. They’re building them right now. Lots of lovely concrete foundations deep in the ground, and you’re going to be part of it. Imagine that.”

  “Danny,” called Charlie, his voice rising to a desperate pitch now. “Just give him the betting slips. Do that and it’s all over.”

  “Oh we’ve looked,” said Powell.

  He took a suitcase from the table and threw it at Charlie’s feet. Danny’s clothes spilled out and they could see the lining had been ripped apart.

  “Nothing. Which means he’s hidden them somewhere. So I either wait to find out where, or get rid of the only person who knows where they are.”

  “Danny, just tell him the truth,” said Charlie. “Tell him about Amy.”

  Danny flinched and glared at Charlie. “What do you mean?” he spat.

  Powell was intrigued. He could see this was real.

  “He’s done all of this for Amy Parker,” said Charlie. “The money was for her, not him. And she’s dead now.”

  Danny’s head slumped back down again.

  Powell looked from him to Charlie and to Rachel. “Who the hell’s Amy Parker?”

  “An old friend of his,” said Rachel. “The money was for her. She died Monday night.”

  “It’s true,” said Charlie. “You can check with the Selly Oak Hospital, she’s being buried tomorrow.”

  All three had the look of people who’d finally admitted to the truth, but Powell was wondering how it changed his situation. “That’s nice but unless the slips are being buried with her I’ll hold off on the black armband.”

  “I burned them,” said Danny.

  “What?”

  “I don’t want the money now,” he said, talking to the floorboards. “It was all for Amy.”

  Powell stared a while longer, then he looked at his thugs as if wondering whether he could back down in front of them. He looked at Rachel and she did her best to look like a girl who believed every word Danny had said.

  Powell walked out and they listened to his shoes tramping down the corridor and scraping into a room down there. They heard the ding of a telephone bell. He was picking up the phone to make a call.

  They might actually survive this, thought Rachel.

  They heard Bernie Powell mumble for a while then the chime of the phone as he put the receiver down again. He took a hundred years to walk back up the corridor to them.

  “How do you know her?” he said.

  “We go back a long way,” said Danny, giggling into his lap.

  Powell’s face contorted with fury.

  “Bernie, he’s upset,” said Charlie. “They were close. He was doing it all for Amy Parker and she’s dead now, so there’s no point.”

  Powell ignored Charlie and glared at Danny. “Why were you giving the money to her?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  Powell lunged for him, threw Danny’s head back and smacked him hard across his face. Rachel thought she heard something crack.

  “Don’t get lippy, son. You are definitely not in the right place for lippy.”

  “She saved his life!” shouted Rachel. “She saved his life, a long time ago.”

  Powell looked from her to Danny and back again, like a dog watching tennis.

  “It’s true,” she said.

  Danny�
�s head was still slumped over but they all saw that tears were dropping onto his trousers now and his shoulders began to jerk with sobs.

  “Bernie, listen to me,” pleaded Charlie. “This has all got out of hand but we can end this tonight. He’s not going to cause you any damage now. The slips have gone. The whole reason for him winning the money has gone. She’s dead. There’s nothing more to worry about. You let us go and I’ll make sure he disappears and you never see him again. I give you my word.”

  “Your word? What use is your bloody word to me?”

  “I want to live, Bernie. I’m not going anywhere. But I can personally vouch for the fact that he will walk out of here tonight and be gone without a trace within the hour.”

  Danny’s head came up and he spat through blood and tears. “No, I’m not going back tonight.”

  “Danny! Just do what he says!” Rachel screamed.

  “I want to see her funeral, tomorrow, midday,” said Danny quietly. “I do that, then I go.”

  “You’re in no bloody position to make demands,” said Powell.

  “Then kill me,” said Danny, smiling up at him. “Either do that, or let me go.”

  “It’s not just you here, you know!” Rachel cried.

  “Let me see my friend buried. Then I disappear.”

  Powell clenched a fist and seemed to use all his self control to stop himself smacking him another one.

  “If I ever see you again,” he said, “you’re a dead man. And if you’re not playing straight with me, if those betting slips turn up, he’s a dead man.”

  He pointed at Charlie and then turned swiftly away and walked out of the room. The heavies stared at them for a while as they all listened to Bernie Powell’s footsteps echoing down the corridor. A door slammed somewhere and reverberated through the deserted factory and only then did Powell’s thugs untie them.

  — 45 —

  POWELL SAT IN THE FRONT seat with the driver. The other two thugs sat facing them lined up across the back seat. Rachel tried not to look up because every time she did she met Nev’s eyes and thought about him cutting her face up.

  As they trundled along deserted suburban roads with only milkmen in white caps driving floats for company, she thought that at any moment Powell might change his mind and order them to go back and throw them into a pit and have concrete poured on them.

  Which was why none of them said a word.

  After a while, the car pulled up in Moseley village, just outside the shop that would one day become Mrs Hudson’s costume hire. No one moved until Charlie opened the door and motioned Rachel to get out, then Danny. As he joined them on the pavement, Danny’s suitcase landed at their feet and the car sped away quickly.

  “You’re staying with us tonight,” said Charlie.

  Danny nodded and followed meekly behind as they trudged through the ginnel between two shops and walked up the stairs to the apartment.

  Charlie showed Danny to his bedroom and told him he could sleep there for the night. He put a record on, poured a brandy and took his service revolver from a cupboard and sat in the armchair.

  “I’m tired,” said Rachel.

  “Go to bed. It’s a long day tomorrow.”

  She nodded, wanted to hug him but felt a little scared, he was sitting there with a gun and all, so she walked to her bedroom. Before she closed the door, she turned back.

  “Thank you, Charlie.”

  He nodded but seemed very far away.

  — 46 —

  SHE WOKE IN THE MORNING still wearing her clothes, lying face down on the bed. There was a smell of bacon. She followed it, feeling ravenous, desperate to remind herself she was alive, and found the lounge full of morning sunlight and the table laid for breakfast.

  Charlie emerged from the kitchen in the same clothes he’d worn yesterday – had he slept at all? – and smiled to her.

  She slumped at the table and ate a slice of toast with jam as if she hadn’t seen food for a week.

  Danny emerged, yawning, stretching, looking like death, and joined her shyly.

  She went to the kitchen and asked Charlie if there was anything she could do and was glad when he put her in charge of making the coffee.

  He instructed her on how to put the filter paper in a cone inside the coffee maker and how much to spoon in and where to pour the water. It looked complicated but was fairly simple once someone had shown you. It felt good to be there with him, making a meal, as if they were a couple. She knew she was going to miss him.

  They served up bacon and sausages, fried in lard, and scrambled eggs and grilled tomatoes, and he made fried bread as well as toast, and once it was all on the table they demolished it like prisoners, no one talking, each of them devouring life.

  Then there was an hour or two when they took turns in the bathroom, Charlie and Danny both shaving and dressing up in suits. Charlie found a spare black tie for Danny to wear, and she found a black dress in her wardrobe and recognized it from the photograph. Later today, they were going to take the car out to the country and have a picnic together and take the photograph that would be pinned up on the wall in this apartment. Would Danny take the picture? Would he be with them? It seemed absurd.

  She dried her hair and pinned it up and put the black dress on with stockings and court shoes and a pearl necklace and felt like an old movie star. When she came back out, both men looked up at her and seemed surprised at the transformation and she wondered if she looked stupid.

  Charlie said, “You look wonderful.”

  Danny nodded and seemed embarrassed.

  They drank more coffee and Charlie smoked and Danny asked for one too and they sat around, unbearably tense all morning, both men checking their wristwatches every couple of minutes. It felt so weird, too weird, to share the same room with him, the man who’d become her enemy, destroyed her life, and to not confront him with it. He had received her letter about Esther, his child with Maddy, but he didn’t seem at all concerned about any mention of her name.

  She was worried that it might not be appropriate to take Danny to the funeral. How would Maddy react? But when Danny disappeared to the toilet, Charlie told her he’d telephoned Maddy and informed her he was bringing Danny to the funeral. She hadn’t seemed to mind at all, which was a surprise.

  “Shouldn’t we be there, at her house?” she asked.

  “She says there are enough friends and relatives all standing around looking glum. We don’t need to be there. We can go straight to the church.”

  At 10.30, Charlie checked his wristwatch for the hundredth time and announced it was time and they gathered themselves together and checked themselves in the mirror again.

  “Take your case,” said Charlie.

  Danny seemed surprised but went to the bedroom and picked it up. The doorbell rang and they filed down to the street where a black cab waited.

  Charlie had announced that they couldn’t take the Roadster because it only had two seats, but he also didn’t think it entirely appropriate to turn up for a funeral in an iris blue sports car.

  The driver said nothing to them, painfully aware of the destination of Brandwood End Cemetery, and drove slowly, even though they weren’t in a cortege, southwards along the Alcester Road, through Kings Heath high street, teeming with too much life and too many people that knew nothing of Amy Parker. Women clutched baskets and thronged before grocers with bunches of bright bananas hanging from their awnings. Young mothers pushed babies in giant prams that were as big as the curved chrome cars all around. Teenage girls in summer frocks and cardigans glanced shyly at teenage boys with quiffs who stared into record shop windows. Old men in flat caps sat on benches outside the church, where a policeman directed traffic with white gauntlets on his forearms.

  It was the quaint suburban life you saw in Ladybird books about Peter and Jane; a primary colour high street where everyone smiled and the sun was always shining.

  Peter and Jane Go Shopping.

  But it was a world run by men like Lashfo
rd Piplatch and D.I. Davies and Bernie Powell.

  Peter and Jane Get a Concrete Overcoat.

  They passed through the high street and eventually turned right, down some suburban back streets before gliding into the cemetery. The driver let them out and talked to Charlie about picking them up later; a mumbled arrangement she couldn’t hear. Charlie took Danny’s case and put it in the front passenger seat.

  “He’s coming back in half an hour,” he said.

  Danny nodded and they trudged towards the chapel where a handful of people were gathered, some smoking, all shuffling nervously. It was a beautiful morning, sunlight blessing the freshly mown grass lawns, a light breeze rustling the oaks.

  The funeral cortege wound its way towards them and Danny flinched at the sight of the hearse.

  Rachel noticed there were only three cars following it and a sorry collection of mourners emerged. It didn’t seem that Amy Parker had made many friends in her life.

  Maddy stepped out from the first car with her daughter at her side, leaning down to whisper encouragement to her. A few of the people who’d been waiting there stepped forward to offer their condolences. Maddy looked past them to Danny and frowned and seemed on the point of tears and pulled Esther closer to her side.

  Rachel nodded and winced a half-smile, not knowing if it was appropriate to go and talk to her or not.

  Charlie stepped forward and grasped Maddy’s hands and kissed her on the cheek and said a few quiet words. She nodded and looked over again at Danny and followed the coffin inside to the cool interior of the chapel.

  A priest came to deliver the eulogy and sped through it with the alacrity of a man who was already late for his next appointment. He even checked his wristwatch at one point. It seemed barely a quarter of an hour had passed before an organist was whining through a melancholy dirge and the coffin was being shunted back down the aisle.

  It was shoved back in the hearse and everyone got in their cars, except for those who hadn’t arrived in any, and the cortege drove off. They set off walking down the gentle slope of the path and could see the huddle of gravediggers waiting for them in the distance.