by John Creasey
Lilies or roses? - that would make Benson laugh!
Cunningly, Mulliver did the vitriol job through a third party, so that Simple Si could not possibly give him away to the police. The man the lad could have given away was now well out in the English Channel, on his way to Australia as a stoker on a small tramp steamer, and there was no danger from him either. So Mulliver felt quite safe. If he was at all uneasy, it was that he had kept young Syd here, but he’d received the order from Benson, and he hadn’t seriously thought of refusing to obey. He had known of a dozen places where he could hide the boy, and had decided that the safest was in the doss house - in one of the tiny little private rooms where he lived himself. There had been no trouble at all with young Syd when he’d told him that it was his father’s instructions.
All Syd wanted was to see his father.
And on the morning of the fifth day, the morning after Jingo Smith’s capture, the morning after Gideon had become a hero, the morning which had gone so well, young Syd Benson met his father for the first time in four years.
Young Syd hadn’t realized what was going to happen.
Mulliver hadn’t warned him, but Benson had arrived in London the previous night. He had several days’ stubble on his lean face, and looked rough and vicious. Freddy Tisdale was still with him. They had come in on a big truck from Birmingham; the journey had been arranged by Benson’s Birmingham friends, and they had arrived in the darkness of early morning. They hadn’t gone to the doss house but had been hiding inside big barrels in an empty warehouse not far from the spot where Jingo Smith had made his attempt to blow himself and others sky-high.
It was more an oil dump than a warehouse, not far from Charlie Mulliver’s place. It was easy for Benson and Tisdale to get across roofs to the doss house and eat, but at the slightest warning they could go back to the warehouse. It was true that if the police searched the doss house they might find evidence that Benson and Tisdale had been there, but to take all reasonable precautions against that, whenever they were there, they wore cotton gloves and so made sure they didn’t leave prints.
The doss house emptied during the day; from ten o’clock until five or six in the evening, there was no one there except Mulliver, a drab who did some of the cleaning for him, and occasional visitors.
It was not until the night guests had departed that Mulliver had gone in to see young Syd and said with that tone of simulated kindliness,
“Your Dad wants to see you, Syd. Coming?”
Young Syd Benson, unable to realize that he was actually looking upon his father in the flesh, stood on the threshold of the dingy little room where Benson and Tisdale spent some of their time. Tisdale was over at the warehouse; Benson wanted to see his son alone. Mulliver gave the boy a push and sent him further into the room, then backed out and closed the door. He kept near it, however, ready to raise the alarm if anyone arrived unexpectedly.
Father and son stood looking at each other.
Young Syd just saw a dream, a dream which had become real for a few minutes on the television, only to fade. Now it was back. The black stubble made no difference; the thin face made little; the sharp lines at the side of the mouth meant nothing to him. The living part of his father’s face was in those pale eyes.
Benson’s black stubble made them look much brighter and lighter even than they were. Shimmering. They were fine eyes, too; and the man who stood there, the dream which had come to life, was striking to look at. With his chiselled chin and his sharp nose and the deep eye-sockets, Benson was handsome in a kind of piratical way.
The odd thing was that they stood so still for a long time.
Young Syd was just numbed, unbelieving, and yet rising toward a tremendous exaltation.
Benson did not feel like that, but he felt an emotion which he had never experienced before: a kind of pride in his son, a kind of satisfaction that here in front of him was a chip off the old block. No one could doubt that he was face to face with his own flesh and blood.
“Hallo, boyo,” Benson said very slowly. He clenched his right fist as he moved forward, and pressed the knuckles against the other pointed chin. Young Syd didn’t give ground, even when Benson increased the pressure so that it must have hurt. Then: “How do you like seeing your dad again, boyo;” Benson asked in that clipped, grating voice, and he looked almost savagely into his son’s eyes.
“It’s the only thing I’ve wanted for a long time,” young Syd breathed.
Benson took his hand away from the child’s jaw and gripped his shoulder. His finger bit deeply, but Syd did not flinch. He shook his son two or three times, making him sway forward and backward, but nothing altered the way that young Syd looked at him, with light that was almost of veneration in his eyes.
“Well, I don’t mind getting a look at you again,” Benson said, and let the boy go. “You all right? They been looking after you?”
“Yeh,” said young Syd.
“If they haven’t, you just tell me.”
“I’m okay,” young Syd said firmly.
“Sure, you look okay to me,” his father said, and grinned. “Didn’t expect me to get out of the jug, did you?” ‘
“Yes, I did,” said Syd flatly.
Benson exclaimed: “What’s that?”
“Course I expected you to get out! I used to tell the other chaps that you wouldn’t stay in jug all that time,” boasted Syd, and his eyes were still radiant. “I was right, wasn’t I?”
“You knew a thing or two,” agreed Benson, and his eyes seemed to soften. “Well, I’ll tell you another thing, boyo I’m not going to let them take me back.”
“I bet you’re not!”
“Now I’m out, I’m out for keeps,” Benson said, and his eyes narrowed, his voice dropped. “Sometimes to get the things you want, you have to do things you don’t like, Syd. Get me? You heard about that cove in the car park, up in Millways?”
Syd gulped, and nodded.
“Well, do you know what he was going to do? He was going to shop me, Syd, that’s what he was going to do. Couldn’t let that happen, could I?”
Syd gritted his teeth and shook his head.
It wasn’t because he felt any sense of horror or reproach; it was because the emotion he had held in check, unknowingly, was beginning to force itself to the surface. Tears stung his eyes; and it was a long, long time since he had cried. He stood there, jaws working, teeth gritting together, and tears glistening in those eyes which were so much like his father’s. Benson stopped speaking. He did not understand this behaviour at first, and his manner changed; he was resentful, wary. Then, before he could do anything to stop it, the boy had flung himself forward and crushed himself against him, crying: “Dad, oh Dad, Dad, Dad!”
Benson stood quite still, feeling the pressure of the taut young body, the hardness of his son’s head on his chin, the grip of his son’s arms round him. He heard the choking, sobbing cries. He felt something he had -never known before, something which had not even been within his understanding. His own eyes felt the sting of sharp, unfamiliar emotion - something that he hadn’t felt when he had been sentenced, that he hadn’t felt for a single moment while he had been at Millways.
The boy began to shiver.
Gradually, he went still.
Benson eased him away, and said with a rough kindliness which was quite foreign to him: “Now take it easy, kid, you’ll be all right. Just take it easy.”
They waited there, feeling different now, Syd sniffing and rubbing the sleeve of his jersey across his eyes and nose, Benson watching him with that newfound pride and a fierce sense of complete possession. It was not really long, but to them it seemed a long time before he spoke.
“So that’s okay, now forget it, see. You want to know something? I’ve got a plan to get out of the country, go somewhere the bloody coppers can’t get me.”
“Sure. South America. You heard of South America?”
Young Syd, still sniffing and still not able to trust himself to speak properly, just managed to nod.
“Well, that’s where I’m going. A pal of mine can fix me up on a ship; I’m going as a member of the crew, see. False name and all that, and I don’t need no passport. As soon as I’m three miles outside the British waters, I’m free as the air, see. The captain’s in the know, but he’s a foreigner and he’s getting well paid for it, so it’s okay.”
“That – that’s good,” Syd said.
Benson thrust out a hand, put his forefinger under the boy’s chin, and forced his head back. The eyes were not yet completely free from tears, and were red and swollen.
“Say, what’s this? Don’t you want me to go?”
“Oh, yeh, course I do!”
“You didn’t sound exactly enthusiastic.”
Syd didn’t try to look away, but said clearly, “I won’t see you again for a long time, will I?”
Benson began to grin again; then he relaxed properly for the first time, took out a packet of cigarettes, and flicked the match across the little, shadowy room.
“So that’s the trouble, is it? Don’t want to lose me again, eh? Well, you needn’t, boyo. They can try to separate father and son, but we know a way of putting that right, don’t we? You want to know something? There’s just one little job you’ve got to do for me, and then we’ll get aboard this ship together. You come as a cabin boy, like they did in the old days. Okay?”
Syd said gaspingly, “Can – can I really?”
“Think I’d lie to my own flesh and blood? Sure, you can come, I’ll fix it. But don’t forget that job you’ve got to do first, will you?”
“Just tell me what it is, and I’ll do it!”
“That’s the boy.” Now, Benson’s expression changed again, and the look in his eyes was hard and calculating; much as it had been when he had talked with Freddy* Tisdale up in the furnished house in Millways. He stared for a long time, until the child began to shift his feet, uneasy and unsure of himself. “Okay, let’s talk,” Benson said abruptly. “How’s your ma?”
“She – she’s okay.”
“She never talk about me?”
“Not – not much.”
“She try to turn you against me?”
“No,” said young Syd, because it did not occur to him that his father might want him to lie. “ She only talks about you if - well, if something happens to remind her. Like the escape from the prison. That – Dad, it was your idea, wasn’t it?”
“Mine and no one else’s,” Benson boasted.
“I knew it was! I told everybody at school it was you, and there was a chap named Lewis, he said it was Jingo Smith. I didn’t half sock him one!”
“That’s the ticket,” Benson said, with deep satisfaction. “Anyone says anything you don’t like, sock him one. It was me who thought up that escape, and don’t you forget it. And I’ll get the two of us on that ship going to South America, don’t you forget that, either. Your ma get those headaches like she used to?”
“Sometimes.”
“Still take aspirins?”
“Yes.” Syd looked puzzled, but didn’t ask a question.
“Just goes on the same way, eh? This guy she’s got living with her, you like him?”
“I—I don’t know who you mean?”
“This Small, Art Small.” Benson was impatient.
“Oh, him,” said Syd disparagingly. “He don’t live at home, but he comes round most nights, so he might just as well. If he don’t come home, she goes out with him to the pictures or somewhere.”
“Like him?”
Syd answered slowly, as if he hadn’t given the matter any thought at all: “Well, no, not exactly.”
“Okay, forget him. What about your sister? She okay?”
“Oh, yeh, she’s fine.”
“Get on all right with you, does she?”
“She’s okay,” Syd said; “she’s like anyone else’s sister; you know what sisters are like.”
Benson grinned.
“That’s where you’re wrong, son, I never had a sister. Never had a ma or a pa, either. Orphan brat, that’s what I was. Had to fend for myself from the time I was nine, and don’t you forget it. That’s how I came to know the best way to look after Number One. Now, listen to me, boyo. You’re going back home, see. You’re not to tell your ma or anyone else you’ve seen me. Just say you’ve been holding out in Charlie Mulliver’s place, the police won’t worry much about Charlie. Just go home and be yourself, see. Don’t talk about me to anyone, just be yourself, just look as if you knew you was going to stay there for the rest of your life. You’ve gone back because you didn’t see the payoff for you if you stayed away. Got all that, Syd?”
The boy was eager.
“Yeh!”
“That’s fine. And listen. You say your ma still gets those headaches and takes aspirins?”
“Like I told you.”
“That’s fine. Well, I’m going to give you some special aspirin tablets, boyo, and you’re going to look after them until you get back. First time your ma says she wants an aspirin, you go and get them for her, see, and you give her one of the tablets I’m going to give you. Got that? One or two, makes no odds, but she’s to have them instead of the aspirins.”
Syd, his eagerness slightly dulled by a kind of bewilderment, asked slowly,
“I can do that, okay, but why? Are they better than ordinary aspirins?”
“I’ll say they are, son,” said Benson; and now his expression was wholly evil, hard, vicious, in spite of the fact that his lips were twisted into a smile. “They’re tons better. She’ll go right off to sleep, see, and then you can sneak out of the house and come right back here to me. She just won’t hear you, that’s a fact. We’ll get off on that ship for South America right away, then. You understand?”
The boy’s eyes held a light which they had never shown before. He could not speak, could only nod. When his father held out a little bottle in which were two white tablets which looked like aspirins, he took the bottle and put it in his pocket without saying a word. He was swamped by emotion again, but not so helplessly as before, and this time he forced it back by his own efforts.
Benson gripped his shoulder with that same painful tightness.
“Okay, boyo?”
“Sure.”
“That’s fine,” said Benson, but he didn’t relax his grip. “Now listen, son. The police will ask you a lot of questions, you know what these perishing dicks are like. So they ask you questions. You don’t tell them a thing. You didn’t see me, you haven’t heard from home, you just stayed at Charlie’s place, until you realized there was no future in it. Understand?” Now his grip was really painful, and the boy drew in his breath but made no attempt to get clear. “Listen to me, boyo, if you so much as whisper that you’ve seen me, that trip’s off, see. I won’t wait for you, I’ll go on me own. Understand?”
“I wouldn’t tell them if they killed me”, young Syd said.
18. Benson Talks
Benson stayed at Charlie Mulliver’s place for an hour after his son had gone, and then slipped along an alley and over some roofs to the warehouse, using a window which appeared to be locked from the outside, but had been rigged so that it could open easily. He had a bag with a packet of food, four bottles of beer, cigarettes, matches, chocolates, and a pack of playing cards. He was through the window in a moment, and stood by it, listening intently for several seconds; he heard no sound of anyone approaching.
He turned round.
There was a strong smell of petrol in the warehouse; thousands of gallons of petrol in forty- gallon metal drums were stored here. There were other fuel oils
, too; the place would become a ready-made incinerator if a naked flame got near any of the oils. It was dark and gloomy except near the window, yet Benson did not use his flashlight. He picked his way over the metal drums, kicking against one now and again so that it gave off a deep booming note, but the window was closed and the warehouse was almost soundproof.
He reached a doorway which led to a pair of wooden steps, a big, square freight lift with open ironwork gates, which led to the floors above. He used the stairs and, as he neared the first landing, heard a whisper of sound. He tapped three times on the wooden handrail, and immediately the handrail quivered from Freddy Tisdale’s responding taps. Then Freddy called softly: “Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine.”
“Got some grub?”
“Plenty.”
Freddy said, “And can I use it!” He was at the first landing, arid now he turned away, in the gloom, toward a little room which had once been used as an office but had not been needed for that purpose for a long time. On the floor along two sides of the walls were bundles of rags, making rough mattresses, and there were blankets for the men to throw over themselves at night. There was a small table, two packing cases to sit on, a candle in the neck of a beer bottle, and a safety lamp. The only light came from a small, frosted glass window set very high in the wall, and they lived here in a state of almost perpetual gloom.
Benson put the food on the table. Freddy tore at it, then opened a bottle of beer and tossed it down his throat; the gurgling seemed very loud. Looking at him, Benson saw the line of his neck, almost straight from his breastbones to the tip of his chin. A funny thought occurred to Benson, then: that a knife laid against that throat would make the flesh twang like tightly stretched wire being cut.