“So be it, madam.”
“And Goldman?”
“That, if I may say so, is the beauty of my scheme. The favourite this year is a horse called…”
“Summer Lightning.”
“Precisely. What could be better than fabricating a kidnapping plot and persuading the owner to employ Goldman as bodyguard to the animal? My confederates would then have an open field to dope the creature.”
“And Goldman?”
“As you wish…we can either kill him or so discredit his pathetic little business that no-one would hire him to protect so much as a child’s bag of sweets.”
“Or both.”
“Exactly, dear lady.”
“I like it Lau, I like it. But make no mistake. This is your last chance. The Baron doesn’t suffer fools gladly.”
“Who does, Mrs T? I will call you to confirm the arrangements in the usual way.”
The sound of a bird’s wings flapping was heard outside. She turned to see what it was and when she turned back he was gone and all that remained was a cloud of blue smoke.
Did he really imagine he could impress her with his Ali Bongo magic tricks?
Part Twenty-One
The telephone trilled intrusively like a budgie on heat. Otherwise all was quiet, if anywhere in North London could be said to be quiet.
The intrepid Goldman lumbered across his empty office and snatched up the receiver. He didn’t want to be Hymie Goldman any more, it just meant trouble.
“Spear and Jackman!” he yelled, into the mouthpiece.
“Sorry, I thought this was the number for Goldman Confidential.”
“It is lady, but we have to be careful,” said Hymie, more calmly.
“Do you? Why?”
“No names, no pack drill, I’m sure you understand. What can we do for you?”
She sounded well-to-do, if you could sound affluent, well educated and stylish on the phone.
“I gather you have experience with horses Mr Goldman.”
He resisted the urge to say ‘nothing was ever proven’ and started trawling through what passed for his mind to see if he either knew anything about horses or about anyone who may be interested in them. He drew a blank.
“Yes, I adore them,” said Hymie, unfazed.
“Oh, splendid. My name is Hunting-Baddeley; Lucinda Hunting-Baddeley of the Suffolk Hunting-Baddeley’s. You were recommended to me by an old friend of the family as a good man to have around in a tight spot.”
How did she know; he’d been in a tight spot for years.
“Of course, but could you be a little more specific?” asked Hymie.
“I thought I was being as clear as crystal; I want you to come over and babysit Summer Lightning in the run up to Chelters, as we’ve had kidnapping threats.”
“Chelters?” he queried.
“The Gold Cup.”
“Oh yes, of course.”
She wasn’t on acid, she was just la-di-da.
“Well, perhaps I can drop in and see you to agree terms?” she suggested.
“Spiffing. Or should I come to see you? It’s no trouble,” he added hastily.
“Thank you, but I’m often down in the old Metrop. so it’s no bother and I rather like to see who I’m dealing with on their home turf. I always think you can tell a great deal about someone by their taste in furnishings.”
He wanted to laugh hysterically. She wouldn’t be able to tell much about him from his furnishings; he didn’t have any. What did that signify except bankruptcy?
“Did you say who recommended me? I’d like to thank them personally.”
“Why, it was Edna Timmins, such a nice little old lady and so knowledgeable about equestrian matters. She did ask me not to mention her by name, but I couldn’t see what harm it could do. Of course you’d want to know you had a satisfied client, but do keep it to yourself please, as I wouldn’t want to upset the old dear.”
‘Mrs Timmins? Was the world going mad? Why would she be recommending him?’
Something didn’t add up.
“Of course, Mrs Hunting Badly.”
“Hunting-Baddeley.”
“Quite so.”
“So, shall we say next Tuesday afternoon at 3pm? You’re at 792A Finchley Road I believe.”
He groaned inwardly. “Yes. Yes, of course. I look forward to it.” He replaced the receiver.
It was inconceivable that Mrs Timmins should have recommended him. The last time they had spoken she had threatened him with bodily injury, and she had meant it. Perhaps she had something against this Hunting-Baddeley woman and thought she was doing her a bad turn. Perhaps she disliked horses and thought he would make a hash of the job. It didn’t really matter; he didn’t intend to ask her and there was no other way he could find out. He still seemed to have come out on top…as long as he could acquire some office furniture by Tuesday.
He lifted the receiver again and dialled Murphy’s number. He hadn’t seen Mike since just after their last Police interrogation, but felt sure he must be missing him. The phone number was unobtainable.
As he sat there wondering how on earth he could find his old pal the clumping of heavy boots on the stair outside heralded the arrival of the man-mountain himself. He wasn’t looking any too chipper.
“You may not believe it, but I’ve just been trying to phone you. Your phone’s been disconnected. Anything I can do?” asked Hymie, solicitously.
“I think you’ve done enough already, you great spawny-eyed wassock! A few weeks ago I was an honest, hard-working doorman with a secure job. Now look at me!”
Tact and the desire not to have his face re-arranged kept the irrepressible one’s mouth tightly buttoned, but he couldn’t help noticing what a state his old friend was in; he hadn’t shaved, his clothes were badly creased and his shoelaces were undone.
“I can’t get a job as a bouncer anywhere. I’ve lost my flat and I feel like I’m constantly being watched.”
“Try not to be so paranoid, Mike,” said Hymie, himself a prince among paranoiacs.
“I’m trying, but it’s not so easy when everyone’s out to get you!” lamented Mike.
“Don’t worry, be happy,” sang Hymie, tunelessly. “I have a new case, Mike, and I want you to be in on it with me. We’ll be laughing all the way to the bank, believe me, it’s money for old rope…”
“Do me a favour H...”
“Sure.”
“Don’t do me any more favours! Or I might just forget we go way back and beat nine kinds of crap out of you!”
Hymie hadn’t realized there were nine kinds of crap but could see this wasn’t a good time to broach the subject.
“Mike, all we have to do is baby-sit one measly racehorse.”
“Oh, pardon me, I was forgetting you’re a qualified vet, known throughout North London as the horse-man of Finchley…what could be simpler?”
“Come on Mike, what can it take to look after a racehorse? We just have to make sure no-one nicks it before the Gold Cup.”
“Where’s the catch?” asked Mike, like a man covered in bee-stings being asked to collect some honey.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“If this is one of your cases, there must be a catch somewhere, it stands to reason.”
“Well, I wouldn’t put it quite like that, but we do have to find some office furniture for a meeting with the client next Tuesday. But other than that…”
“Other than that? Where are you going to find some office furniture that quick?
“I thought maybe you had some contacts,” said Hymie, hopefully.
“You thought wrong. I’m broke and my credit rating is only just on the right side of criminal. A blind beggar wouldn’t lend me a brass farthing to please his dying mother. Don’t look at me like that either; it’s not my fault.”
“Look Mike, this could be our best chance ever of making some easy money. Trust me. We’re not gonna throw it all away just because we can’t get our hands on a few sticks of fu
rniture, surely?”
“Why do I know I’m gonna live to regret this?”
“You do know someone then?”
“Hold it, no promises, Hymie, but I think that perhaps, maybe, possibly I might know someone who could help.”
“Great!”
“Wait a minute, what’s in it for me?”
“The satisfaction of a job well done?”
“How much?”
“You get me the furniture and I’ll cut you in for a third of whatever I make.”
“A half!”
“Forty percent?”
“A half!”
“You’re a hard man to do business with,” protested Hymie.
“Do we have a deal?” persisted Mike.
“Alright…half it is,” agreed Hymie. What was there to lose? Half of nothing was still nothing.
“Oh, and there’s one other thing,” added Mike.
“What’s that?”
“You couldn’t lend me a fiver for breakfast could you, I’m starving?”
Hymie reached into his shirt pocket and retrieved one of the chronically few surviving specimens from Lucy Scarlatti’s thousand pound advance. In trying to advertise his own commercial acumen to a would-be business partner he could hardly admit he couldn’t spare a fiver.
Mike headed off to the Black Kat to re-fuel, leaving Hymie to mull over how they were going to raise enough capital to get the horse baby-sitting business off the drawing board.
He discounted Ceefer Capital. Somehow he expected them to try and tie him up in watertight legal agreements, even if they were willing to cough up. Besides, he was saving them for a rainy day. Since every day was a rainy day at JP Confidential, he probably meant a torrential downpour.
‘I’m about due for another pop at the bank that likes to say yes’ he thought. ‘Surely they will take the long view and realize that by supporting my fledgling business now, they will reap the benefits tomorrow.’ It was an interesting theory.
He thought of his bank manager, Tony someone or other…Turbot, wasn’t it? and his confidence in the scheme began to deflate, like a dinghy with a slow puncture. Turbot was your archetypal modern bank manager; lacking in imagination, emasculated to the point of needing a chit from Head Office to wipe his nose, and having an absurd obsession with collateral. He reflected on the gross unfairness of life; on how this two-dimensional turd should command public respect, while he, a hard working professional man, should be censured and derided, and then he wrote a letter, never intending to send it.
“Dear Mr Turbot, no, Dear Tony, yes that sounds better.
Thank you for your letter of the 14 inst., whatever an “inst.” is, explaining why you had charged me fifty seven pounds and eighty three pence in administration fees; presumably to write those charming letters telling me I was overdrawn. Nice though it was to receive them, I already knew, thank you. In fact I was sitting in my office wondering how the heck I was going to pay your original charges when the letters rolled in to notify me I had struck the bank charges mother-lode.
I am sorry to have to tell you that sarcasm is wasted on you, that you are an excrescence, not to mention a carbuncle on the bloated rear end of capitalism. Call yourself a bank manager? Why, you couldn’t manage your way out of a paper bag. As for nurturing new business, as your advertisement claims, you wouldn’t recognize an up and coming business if it ran over you in a bus.
Long may you rot,
Kind regards,
H.Goldman (Mr)”
He wondered if he hadn’t been a little gratuitous in his insults, although fulsome in his praise early on. Nevertheless, he did feel much better for venting his spleen and went through the process of enveloping and addressing the letter just to get some kind of closure. He had done it before; he never posted them, it was just a kind of therapy.
Next he wrote the letter he was intending to send; the one which explained that he needed some office furniture to clinch a lucrative contract with a well-heeled lady from Suffolk. He was sure that this was just the sort of thing the bank would like.
Later that day when a kindly old lady found a dog-eared brown envelope in the Finchley Road, she attached a dog-eared old stamp and posted it. She returned home with the sense of contentment that comes from having done a good deed in a selfish world.
Part Twenty-Two
The night was dark, pitch black with not a star in sight. A chill wind blew in from the East and anyone who had a home to go to was in it.
In the small wooden hut at the back of Pinner Parish Church strange things were beginning to happen. Arcane things, things honest respectable men and women would do well to avoid.
A tall man in a Crombie overcoat passed through the bushes alongside the hut and disappeared into its dark interior.
“Pungghhh! Puuuunnnnghhhhh!!”
The unholy congregation of the Brothers of Pung sat around in a circle, cross-legged on the floor. Their garish robes and puerile addiction to saying “pung” at the slightest provocation marked them out both as complete idiots and as dedicated members of the order. They “punged” reverently in the age-old ritual of summoning the Mighty Jong. Brother Decca hastily joined the circle with seconds to spare before the latter made his grand entrance from behind the black moth-eaten stage curtains at the back of the hall.
Only two of The Brethren knew the true identity of the Mighty Jong, and they were sworn to secrecy on pain of the ritual of The Boot. All members feared this dark ritual, as well they might.
It was widely believed that the MJ, as he was often referred to, was a senior ranking Police officer; or why else would the rest of them be there?
The MJ stood before them in his blue-grey pinstriped suit, covered with bits of garden cane, symbolic of Holy Bamboo. His face was hidden behind an enormous mask; the ancient Helm of Hendon, which bore a startling resemblance to an outsized policeman’s helmet with two eyeholes cut out.
He assumed his place of honour at the plinth in the centre of the gathering and commenced the meeting with the usual announcements.
“Are all the Tiles of our Holy Order safely gathered in?”
“Yes, oh Mighty Jong!”
“Are the Four Winds assembled in the eaves?” he continued.
“We are, oh Mighty Jong!” The words were accompanied by a ceremonial breaking of wind.
These were the lookouts posted at the four corners of the hut.
“Good, then I’ll begin. Join with me in our oath of allegiance.
By the Helm of Hendon,
By the truncheon and toecap,
By the Sword of Justice,
And the Might of the Right,
We will strive ‘gainst the heathen,
‘Gainst the spirits of evil,
The Golden Pig Page 13