Fiddle City

by Dan Kavanagh

  It was almost criminal the way this always worked, Duffy thought. Hendrick crumbled, apologised, agreed, dug out the key and handed it over.

  ‘Two things, though, Mr Duffy.’ This bit was familiar as well; it sprang from the need to reassert oneself as the employer, as the layer-down of conditions, the paymaster. ‘First, I want to know precisely when you’re going over there, and how long you’ll be. And second, I want the key back as soon as you’ve finished with it.’

  ‘No problem.’ Duffy was deferential, as the pattern called for. ‘I’m a bit tied up today, so I reckon I’ll go round Sunday afternoon – middle of the afternoon; three o’clock, shall we say? I’ll only be an hour or two. Can’t be more exact, I’m sure you understand why’ (appeal to ally, to fellow-conspirator; Hendrick duly nodded) ‘and then I’ll be able to give you the key back by about six, I should say. I’ll stick it through your door if you’re not in.’

  Hendrick began to explain in unnecessary detail how to stop the alarm system being triggered when you opened the side door. Duffy half listened to this, just in case it contained anything new, and pretended to concentrate by gazing out of the kitchen window into the back garden. There was a nice crazy-paving patio outside the back door, then a bed of geraniums, then a kids’ play area. There was a sandpit and a paddling pool and a slide. The two girls, who seemed about seven or eight to Duffy, were noisily playing on the slide. One of them was standing up on the top of it now. Duffy winced: it wasn’t far to fall for an adult, but for a child? On to the concrete? It worried Duffy. He shifted his gaze to the brick wall at the end of the garden, which was only about a dozen yards from where he was standing, and found that there was another worry in his head, one he couldn’t identify, one which had something to do with the last few days but which he couldn’t pin down. Meanwhile, Hendrick came to the end of his instructions about the alarm system, and Duffy nodded as if, with some difficulty, he’d just about managed to understand. Clients liked that. It made them think they had a secure system.

  The first thing Duffy did as he drove west was to call at a locksmith’s and get a duplicate key made. He didn’t want to rely on Hendrick’s vacillating assessment of his reliability if he wanted to make another visit; and besides, it was a bit of a traipse over to Fulham.

  He’d lied to Hendrick about the timing of his visit to the shed. Just in case Hendrick wasn’t entirely level with him, he’d decided to go at once. He reached the shed at 11.30 and opened the side door with the key he had just had made (best to check it, in case he had to take it back for refiling). The alarm worked on a trigger-delay of twenty seconds: enough time for Hendrick to toddle up a half flight of stairs and flick the cancel lever.

  Duffy began by the big double doors at the southern edge of the shed. The floor was marked out with coloured lines like an indoor sports arena, and the goods were stacked on their rust-painted racks within differently sized squares and rectangles. Some areas were set aside for regular customers, and had their names on placards hanging above them: Fraser Matthews, Bamco, Holdsworth & French, and so on. Regular shipments thus went to exactly the same place in the shed week after week, month after month, making things easier for Hendrick’s men – or the customers themselves, if they were collecting.

  Duffy examined the freight more carefully than he was able to in the daytime, but didn’t learn much. The documentation tags on the goods were informative to the person with the right to know, and deliberately uninformative to anyone else – like himself. Carrier, weight, number of packages, airway bill number, destination (which meant airport, rather than importer or recipient). Well, that was fair, if unhelpful, enough. Name, rank and number: especially number. Some of the cases announced what was inside them. Calculators here (that was a mistake – Duffy could see signs of interference with one of the cartons), American weekly journals there, refrigerated fish down the far end. Packing-cases, tea-chests, compressed-cardboard boxes, hessian-wrapped bundles. Hendrick was right – what the hell did Duffy think he was going to find just by wandering around? Did he think he was like Alice in Wonderland with her Eat-Me cakes and Drink-Me drinks: that he’d find a big packing case marked Steal Me, and all he’d have to do would be to climb into it, wait for someone to pick it up, then leap out with a pair of handcuffs dangling from his belt and shout ‘Freeze’. Is that what he thought it would be like?

  Still, if this bit was disappointing, he could move on to the next bit. He passed his dunce’s corner and strolled over to the lockers. There were six people working there and a bank of ten lockers. With a small knife he opened the ones he’d seen his fellow employees going to: each contained a set of overalls, plus extra male appurtenances which were either useful at work or couldn’t be taken home: fags, chewing gum, booze, the occasional dirty mag, greasy sweaters. Casey’s locker contained a bottle of Listerine mouthwash, which took Duffy aback; perhaps there was a secret Casey he didn’t know about, one who combed cologne into his hair and shaved his armpits?

  Duffy then opened the four lockers which he’d never seen anyone use. Two were empty; one contained a copy of the Sun from two years ago, the other an unopened tin of dog food. Duffy closed them all carefully, and moved off. Then he had a hunch. He walked back and opened his own locker and looked inside. Hmmm. He nodded to himself. Exactly as he had left it yesterday. So much for hunches.

  The lock on Mrs Boseley’s door detained him for about a minute and a half. Again, he had to move quickly to the cancel lever on the alarm. Then, having checked the precise location of the alarm buzzer under the desk, he sat down in her chair and surveyed the shed from Mrs Boseley’s angle. Yes, there was no doubt you could see a lot better from up here, even if it was only about four feet above the level of the rest of the shed. Over there was that turd Duffy’s corner; that was where we made the little bugger stand; that was where we made him push his trolley and eat shit. Have some calculators, Mr Duffy. Don’t forget to declare them at the gate, Mr Duffy. Few weeks in prison do you, Mr Duffy?

  He stopped himself. He didn’t like Mrs Boseley, but he had no reason to believe that she had anything to do with the calculators. The fact that he wanted her to meant that he ought to be doubly careful before concluding that she did. Stop hating her, Duffy. Go through her desk instead.

  He took out a notebook and started slowly working his way through the desk. He went through box-files full of invoices and copied down the names and telephone numbers of what seemed to be the regular clients. Business looked pretty healthy, as far as Duffy could judge, though he had to admit he wouldn’t recognise a book-keeping fiddle if it stood up and played a tune for him.

  Then he went through the recent correspondence and saw why Hendrick had decided to employ him. One wholesaler of furs had decided to take his business elsewhere – it wasn’t that he wasn’t insured, it was just that if it happened once, it might happen twice, Mr Hendrick, mightn’t it, and it’s so inconvenient (nothing personal, of course) – and a general dealer had said how seriously unhappy he was about the loss of a case of Italian sunglasses.

  In the top left-hand drawer he found Mrs Boseley’s dressing-table: powders, lotions, creams, lipsticks, combs, mirrors; if he looked hard enough, he’d probably find the collar-stiffeners she put inside her cheeks before talking to him. Instead, he went on to the next drawer, where he found her address book. This detained him for some time, though with little profit: no names which made him jump out of her chair; many of the regular clients’ numbers, which was hardly surprising. He looked up the addresses and phone numbers of all Hendrick Freight’s employees, and copied them down. He rechecked B for Boseley, but she appeared to know no one else of her own name. He flipped to the fly-leaf and copied down the home address and telephone number of Mrs E. Boseley. That ‘E’ was the only thing about her he’d found out so far. E for Eskimo.

  He carried on through the drawers and encountered only the normal paraphernalia of office life – a stapler that had conked out, some perished rubber bands, the unused pack
et of Pritt Buddies. In the third drawer down on the right-hand side, however, he found something which was clearly peculiar to this office: a photograph in a frame, placed face-down in the drawer. Duffy very slowly turned it over, as a magician turns over his predictably surprising card. As he did so, he vibrated his tongue against his palate to make a quiet drum-roll noise, then went ‘Ta-taaaaaa TUM’ as the face turned the right way up.

  It was no one he knew. The photo showed a round-faced man in his forties; balding, with little round gold-rimmed glasses, and an indulgent smile on his lips; he was wearing a chalk-striped suit with a rather elaborate buttonhole. A wedding photograph, perhaps? Mr Boseley? Was there a Mr Boseley? It was a recent photo; had the office manager got married in the last five years? He didn’t know. The most probable solution was, of course, the simplest: that it was Mr Boseley, and the fact that Duffy wanted it not to be – wanted, indeed, for it to be some brutish lover with a fully equipped torture dungeon – made him wary of going along with this fancy. One slight question lingered in his mind. It was understandable that you didn’t want to put such a photo on your desktop – people would only smirk at it and Mrs Boseley didn’t look the sort who cared for smirks, but if you put it in a drawer, so that you could reach down and take a look whenever you felt glum, or beset, or sexy, or curse-ridden, wouldn’t you put it in face upwards?

  Duffy reset the alarms as he left and drove to the breakers’ yard. He’d rung them about this mate’s car, the customised Cortina. Not me you talked to, squire. Cortina, eh? Painted to look like a tiger? Well, I’d remember that, wouldn’t I? Think you’re out of luck, squire. Well, all right, if you insist. Into the hut, check the books. Yes, we had a Cortina, but it’s about this size now (gesture like a fantasising fisherman). Amazing how small these crushers can get things, isn’t it? You sure it was sent on here?

  Still, it was a bit of a long shot anyway. And by seven o’clock it didn’t matter. Carol rang.

  ‘Sorry, I tried to get you yesterday, but you seemed to be out.’

  ‘ …’

  ‘It’s about that car.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I had the report read to me. As far as they could work out there must have been some sort of collision before it went over the barrier. There was paint on the offside rear wing from another vehicle, and quite a severe dent in the side where the point of impact was.’

  ‘Puncture?’

  ‘They said the tyres were fine.’

  ‘Steering?’

  ‘They said the car was in good nick. Apart from being crashed, of course.’

  ‘And nothing on the other vehicle.’

  ‘Not a thing. No one stopped. No one saw anything.’

  ‘That’s a great help, love. Thank you.’ Carol smiled at the telephone. You didn’t get those two words out of Duffy very often. She mused fondly on him.

  But Duffy was musing elsewhere. He was thinking: what do you kill for – as near as makes no difference? Do you kill for a case of Italian sunglasses? Do you kill for a couple of boxes of smoked salmon?

  4

  ‘RIGHT ON TIME, MR Hendrick.’ It was always a good idea to point out your own virtue to clients.

  ‘Ah, yes, thank you, Duffy.’ Hendrick stood on his front door step and held his hand out for the key. He didn’t look particularly pleased to see Duffy.

  ‘Wondered if I could have a quick word, actually.’

  ‘Hmm? Oh, very well.’ He led Duffy down the hall and into the kitchen, gloomily shooing the children into the garden yet again. This time they seemed more reluctant than last time. Maybe they got shooed into the garden too much for their own liking. And was there a Mrs Hendrick around?

  ‘Suppose I should have asked you before, Mr Hendrick, but do you mind if we run through your employees? Fill me in on them?’

  ‘Fine, go ahead.’

  ‘Mr Gleeson.’

  ‘You don’t suspect Mr Gleeson?’ Hendrick looked across at Duffy as if he’d got Gleeson handcuffed to him already, gold bars pulling his pockets out of shape and diamonds dripping out of his turn-ups.

  ‘I don’t suspect anyone, Mr Hendrick, anyone in particular yet. But if you don’t start by suspecting everyone then you start suspecting no one, and then you don’t see anything.’ It wasn’t really true, any of this, but it was the formula the clients seemed to like; it made them feel all right about telling dirt on their favourite employees. And Duffy had deliberately started with someone whom Hendrick probably trusted, so that they wouldn’t have to go through the argument again when it came to Mrs Boseley. ‘There are certain routines of investigation which may strike you as irritating, but I’m afraid if you want a professional job done they have to be gone through.’ They liked that line too: it appealed to a shared professionalism, as well as to the small boy in them.

  ‘Of course, of course. Well, Gleeson’s a splendid chap. Been with me four years. Hard-working, never missed a day, gets on with the others.’

  ‘Tan – Chinese, is he?’

  ‘No, Malaysian, I think. Well, he’s very oriental, isn’t he? Yellow and doesn’t say much.’

  ‘Maybe that’s because he doesn’t speak the language too well.’

  ‘Oh, he does, born and brought up here. Nice chap, works hard. Very strong. Does that thing with his hands they all do out there … ’

  ‘Origami?’ (Careful, Duffy, he thought to himself, don’t get too smartass; but Hendrick didn’t blink.)

  ‘No, that smashing bricks and things with the side of your hand.’

  ‘Oh yes, I know what you mean.’ Well, thanks for the warning.

  ‘Casey?’

  ‘Nice chap,’ (oh, come on, Mr Hendrick) ‘works hard. Bit slow on the uptake sometimes. Good driver.’

  Duffy asked about the other two – Botsford and McAndrew – then, slightly apprehensively,

  ‘And, you know, just as a matter of pure routine – Mrs Boseley?’

  Hendrick looked at him sharply, and Duffy gave him the we’ve-talked-about-it gesture.

  ‘Oh yes, very well. Splendid lady, very efficient, completely trustworthy, never misses a day, gets on with the employees very well.’

  And runs a wolf-cub pack in the evening, no doubt, under the name of Akela or something. Hendrick was useless. He obviously had a group of model employees – clean, hardworking, honest, healthy, and so on. It was just that one of them was nicking his stuff, that was all. Duffy switched his tone, as if the professional side of the talk were over, and they were now man-to-man over a couple of beers.

  ‘I’m bound to agree with you, Mr Hendrick, she’s a terrific lady. I certainly knew where I was right from the beginning. She been with you since you started up?’

  ‘Oh yes, five years Mrs Boseley’s been with us.’

  ‘What did she do before? Just out of interest. I was wondering what that sort of lady would have done before.’

  ‘I think she was a senior stewardess on one of the big airlines.’ Hendrick spoke with the tone of one saying less than he knew.

  ‘Why didn’t she stay on? She could be running B.A. by now, couldn’t she?’

  ‘Well I think she could, naturally, but I suppose she thought that if she couldn’t do what she wanted to do, it was best to get out. They don’t let them go on being hostesses after a certain time, you know. Silly rule.’

  ‘I agree. I suppose … ’ Duffy’s tone became even more bottom-of-the-glass, ‘I suppose there’s a Mr Boseley?’

  Hendrick laughed, which was a rare occurrence, and his corpse’s suit juddered about at the unexpected upheaval within it. A dirty lock of blond hair fell across his face.

  ‘Now I see where you’re leading, Mr Duffy. I’m afraid the answer is, I don’t fancy your chances.’

  Duffy persuaded his voice to join in the laugh. ‘Oh, it wasn’t for myself I was asking. I just thought, you know, pity such a splendid lady has to earn her own living.’

  Hendrick still looked roguish, still clearly disbelieved him. ‘Well I gather there i
s one, but I think he’s an invalid. One doesn’t like to pry, but they do say he’s in an iron lung. Poor Mrs Boseley.’

  Poor Mr Boseley, thought Duffy; not only in an iron lung, but having Mrs B. as your ray of sunshine. He shifted his tone back to the professional one.

  ‘What about McKay? What was he like?’

  ‘Oh, very hard worker, good driver, been with us some years.’ Helped run Mrs Boseley’s wolf-cub pack, no doubt. Very handy with a tent-peg. Drove old ladies across the street in his tiger car. Did a lot of work for charity.

  ‘So what we have, Mr Hendrick, is that all your employees have been with you for some time – at least a couple of years?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And thefts only started about six months ago.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hmm. And one other thing. I suppose none of your employees have criminal records?’

  Hendrick pushed the dirty blond lock back where it belonged.

  ‘Oh, but I’m sure they’re perfectly rehabilitated.’ Uh-huh.

  ‘Tell me, Mr Hendrick.’ Duffy was getting extremely pissed off, but tried to sound merely reproachful.

  ‘Well, Tan did knife someone once; but he was very young, he didn’t know what he was doing. I’m sure it was under extreme provocation. That’s why he’s taught himself to do that thing with his hands.’ (So that he breaks their bones instead of having to knife them.) ‘And Casey has hit a few people in his time.’

  ‘How many convictions?’

  ‘Four, actually. But it was always a six-and-two-threes situation, from what he tells me. I mean, I don’t think he’d hit anyone just for the pleasure of hitting them.’

  ‘Don’t you think I ought to have known this before?’ Bloody clients.

  ‘Oh, well, I didn’t think it was relevant. I mean, none of my employees have any convictions for stealing. And none of them have got into fights – not on my premises anyway. I’m afraid I thought it might only prejudice you if I told you earlier.’