by Tom Trott
The house itself looked like a 1930s build, or thereabouts. Nothing too ostentatious, not one of the mock-Tudor monstrosities that, like all the richest suburbs, make up much of York Avenue. Instead, theirs was a house you could be proud of without boasting. A modest red brick, first floor rendered, tasteful stained glass panels above the windows and on the pastel-blue wooden door. I say blue, it was blue and green at the same time. The colour of a mermaid’s tail.
The eight-storey flats I was parked under were ugly to the point where I was glad the reflections off the windows blinded me if I was foolish enough to look. When the sun slipped behind a cloud I could see “Vote Leave” posters, and ratty blinds behind all the windows but one. That other one was net curtains, narrowly parted, and behind them a pair of beady eyes that whipped away. A nosey neighbour. Every detective loves a nosey neighbour.
I waited for someone to exit and caught the door before it latched, then wandered up the three flights of stairs to what I thought was the right door. After I knocked, I heard some shuffling and then the door opened just an inch, the chain still on.
‘Who’s there?’ squawked a jittery voice.
There were those beady eyes, moustache, and a screwed-up face to match. She must have been a hundred if she was a day.
‘Hello, ma’am. I was wondering if I could speak to you.’ I showed her a card that read “George Webster, Brighton & Hove City Council”.
‘What could you want to speak to me about?’
‘It’s about crime prevention madam, I just want to ask you a few questions.’
Those eyes of hers took me in. My clothes, my shoes, my attempted smile.
‘Crime prevention!?’ she shrieked, ‘I wasn’t born yesterday.’
I believed her.
‘You’re nosing around about those two over the road.’
I couldn’t deny it, so I just stared at her.
‘I’ll make you a cup of tea.’
She took the chain off and shuffled out of sight. I followed inside, into her chintzy grotto. Where other people have photos of family, she had photos of the Royals. It was that cliché. Everything was pink and beige like rhubarb and custard. Antimacassars. Nest of tables. And dusty boiled sweets waiting in glass bowls for the fingers of children who never visit.
From the living room I could see down to the Tothovas’ house, in fact it would give you an incredible vantage point into the front bedrooms. But at the moment those curtains were closed, just like every other room in the house. If you didn’t know better you would think the place was empty.
‘You don’t take sugar, do you?’ asked a voice over my shoulder. The crone had returned.
‘Just as it comes,’ I lied. ‘Which room is that?’
She shuffled over quickly and glanced down for less than a second, ‘Study on the left, girl’s on the right.’ Then she handed me my thimble of tea and shuffled to her chair with barely disguised agony.
The girl’s bedroom. I wondered what I could see if those curtains were open. Price? Parker? PCs bagging teddy bears and clothes for the dogs?
‘Do you know them?’ I asked her.
‘No. Seen plenty of ‘em though.’
‘Oh?’
I was leading her, and she picked up on it: ‘‘ere, what is it you do anyway? You’re not from the paper are you? I don’t want my name in there.’
‘You haven’t told me your name.’
She frowned, but in a way that made her look more satisfied. I sat in the chair nearest the window and smiled, doing my best to appear harmless.
‘You see a lot of them, you said?’
‘I’m not nosey,’ she reassured me.
‘Of course not. I understand, you’re just looking out for your neighbourhood—’
‘I’m not looking out for anyone,’ she snapped. She tried to adjust the antimacassar behind her head but it was too far for her to twist so she gave up. ‘It’s all repeats on the telly, and my grandson won’t visit anymore, so I spend a lot of my time just staring out there for something to do.’
She should buy a book, I thought. But then again, at her age she might have read them all.
‘You can’t look out that window without seeing them,’ she added, just to make it even clearer that she was not a snooper.
‘The papers make them sound like great people.’
She snorted in derision. She hadn’t meant to do it. But she had, so I just stared at her with my eyebrows raised.
‘They’re not so special,’ was her only explanation.
‘How exactly?’
‘Nothing important.’
‘Like what?’
‘That girl is too young to be going to bed at nine o’clock.’
‘What time would you put her to bed?’
‘I don’t know, but definitely no later than half eight.’
This was a waste of time. The only thing she could tell me was when they put the bins out.
‘I’d better be going, thank you for the tea,’ I said as I stood up.
‘You haven’t touched it.’
I pulled from my pocket a business card with the office number and address.
‘This is my card. My real card. If you see anything suspicious, anything at all, call me.’
I offered it to her talons but they didn’t take it, so I placed it on top of the boiled sweets instead.
Nothing much happened over the next three hours, but the process of sitting by my bike and watching anyway took me back to the days when I used to do things properly. Whenever that was.
For old time’s sake I took a dusty notebook and pen out of a saddlebag and logged the little that happened:
3:37pm — Uniform leaves house, (female, black, short dark hair, attractive). Nickname: Bunny Rabbit. Makes phone call in police car #1
3:43pm — Bunny Rabbit returns to house
3:57pm — Loitering car (susp. journo) leaves as traffic warden arrives
3:58pm — 2nd loitering car has residents parking permit. Suspicious, may be fake. Traffic warden not suspicious, leaves
4:17pm — Bunny Rabbit exits house and leaves in p/c #1
4:43pm — 1st journo car returns, has to park further down road. Man waits leaning on car, smoking. (35-ish, white, black coat, ginger hair). Nickname: Carrot Top
Occasionally the curtains would twitch. If Parker or Price were in there they’d recognise me. Anyone else, I wasn’t so sure. But there was no way Parker or Price could be in there for that long, they would be too busy trying to get on the News at Ten. It was only me who was sitting here like a mug.
Nothing else happened until half six. Being July the sun was blazing, tricking everyone into thinking it was still the afternoon. It shouldn’t be allowed.
By now I could hear the sounds of car horns and buses drifting from Dyke Road, the cram of families now attempting to leave the city. Tired, scrappy kids sitting in sweaty backseats, with chips in their stomachs, salt on their skin, and sand in their underpants. Well, not sand in Brighton. Pebbles in their underpants, maybe. That would be uncomfortable.
I almost missed the front door opening. I kept my head down and watched through my visor as a uniformed officer trotted down the steps, into the panda car, and got it running. Carrot Top had noticed him too, one foot in his car now.
Two minutes later Mr and Mrs Tothova were escorted down the steps and into the back seat. She had changed her clothes. The black & white pulled out into the road, Carrot Top jumped behind the wheel of his battered Volvo and was off after them in a second. I straddled my bike, summoning it to life and letting it roar as loud as it wanted to, getting it out of its system. This was a covert operation, after all. Then I chased after them.
After the Seven Dials, down the side of the station, we all had to wait at the lights onto Queens Road. I stayed behind Carrot Top, both keeping our distance to stay unnoticed, and with me doing something I never do: not skipping the traffic and just waiting my turn in the queue. Pretending I was a car.
The ligh
ts went green and the black & white made it through, but as the drivers in front of us slowly woke up it was clear we weren’t going to make it through this cycle. So tough love to Carrot Top, I did what I always do: shot down the side of the queue, and through the lights on amber.
Once we had emerged from North Road onto the Steine, they pulled up in front of a church. It was obviously there, and had obviously been there for over a hundred years, but I had never noticed it. It didn’t seem that anyone else could see it either. It was lost amongst the Sturm und Drang of a hot Saturday evening, like a shy virgin in the corner of a party. Being in the shadow of both St Peters and St Bart’s, this little nonconformist church was never going to get noticed, even with its doors open, inviting, golden light spilling suggestively down the steps. The police escort seemed pointless here, even pretentious. The cider swilling teenagers, the stag dos, the hen parties, they didn’t give a shit who these people were. Or what had happened to their daughter.
The uniformed officers waited in the car, engine off, as the Tothovas trudged up the steps and disappeared. I had to keep moving so I cruised on to the next left and zipped round the back of the block. Behind the church was a quiet car park, belonging to one of the strange blocks of flats that dot the town centre; the zoning laws refusing their removal like Chinese nail houses. I found a suitable dark corner to hide my bike from traffic wardens and thieves.
To approach the side door I pushed through a crowd of people that were lingering in the alley, but as I got closer I could see they were queueing to get in. Queueing for what, I had no idea. Wanting to keep a low profile I marched to the back of the queue and took my place like a good little boy.
Most of the people making up the line looked on the cusp of homelessness, with a few earthy, arty, hippy types sticking out like salad at a barbecue. I kept my head down and listened to their conversations.
‘I wonder what we’ve got tonight?’
‘Smells like curry.’
‘Lovely, I could do with a curry.’
‘I saw them carrying crates in earlier. Looked like sweet potatoes to me.’
‘They might be doing two things.’
‘Might be curried sweet potato soup.’
‘Might be sweet potato curry.’
‘Can you do sweet potato curry?’
‘Of course you can. Chuck some lentils in, lovely job.’
Was this a pop up kitchen? One of the many things popping up in bohemian parts of the city: pop up markets, pop up cafés, pop up theatres, pop up artisan cheesemakers, pop up breweries. It was the fashion to pop up at the moment. I might set up a pop up detective agency, no rent would be a plus.
Apart from the arty types though, most of the people in the queue didn’t look like they could pay seven pounds for organic falafel, so I guessed it was free. It was here for those who needed it. And for the hippies abusing the system. The stuff was probably past its date, given away by supermarkets, and the tree-huggers would feel a self-righteous warmth in their breast for eating it. I might come here regularly.
After what seemed like half an hour the side doors to the hall swang open and the line began to shuffle in. Now I could smell the curry, and it smelt good. I even began to salivate, I hadn’t realised how hungry I had got waiting outside their house all afternoon. All I had eaten today was avocado toast.
As we approached I could see the row of tables set up for serving. Diners picked up a plate canteen-style, then stopped at each person to get their bits. I could see the Tothovas already, they were right in the middle of it, dolloping rice and something else on people’s plates. He was still in his Thursday shirt but she was dressed all in white. Every second person said a few extra words to them and they nodded in thanks, gave a feeble “we’re all right” smile and scooped more rice. They must have felt like shit, but they gave good face.
I shuffled along the line and picked up my plate. Then some forgettable posh do-gooder offered me a poppadom and I said yes. Then I was onto mummy Tothova, who offered me wholegrain rice of course, this is Brighton, after all. It might even have been wild rice: the rice for people who want something even more self-righteous to trump their wholegrain friends.
I studied her face for the two seconds I had. From a distance she had looked like a damp flannel, wrung out and hung up here to dry. But up close she was radiant. There’s no other word for it. She wasn’t young, not girlish at all, it wasn’t youth that she radiated, but life. Beauty. Light. I don’t know, it was impossible to quantify. She looked like a creature from another time. Another world. From the sky. From a woodland glade. An elf maiden. Her hair as golden as Botticelli’s Venus’, her dark blue eyes deep ocean pools. Her white skin looked as cold as porcelain and you wanted to place your warm hands on her cheeks but were afraid of what would happen if you touched an angel. Stop me if this is becoming too much for you.
I felt a sudden swell of sympathy for her, and I wanted to say something like all the others. But it wouldn’t help. And what she needed was for me to nod, say thank you, and leave all the rest unsaid. So that’s what I did.
Next, Mr Tothova offered me some dark daal of some kind, and I love daal so I said yes. He slopped it onto my plate and I studied him now. He looked hollowed out, like he might have been slopping himself onto the plate, serving himself up to me like they served themselves up to the media. Everything on the surface was fine, but the inside was empty. A stiff breeze would topple him.
I moved onto the next volunteer, not registering them, just looking at the steaming vat of sweet potato curry. It looked nice. I mean, I wanted something more substantial than sweet potato, but that’s not why you have a curry, is it? It’s all about the spices that were tickling my nostrils.
‘Hello, chief,’ the man said in surprise.
I looked up. It was Lenny. Lenny was a homeless guy whose spot used to be outside my office. He used to do the occasional errand for me, but I hadn’t seen him in months and had been wondering what happened to him.
I didn’t say anything, giving him a little wink to let him know I was incognito. He nodded, and I said my thanks and took my plate toward the tables.
It was ok, after all that. Not great. It smelt nice, but the taste was the sort of thing that wouldn’t offend anyone’s taste buds. It filled the hole in my stomach.
Once they had walked round the tables offering seconds, Lenny came and sat at my table.
‘Evening, boss.’
‘Good to see you again,’ I told him.
He looked well, his grey stubble was clean and glistening, and he had some colour to him that suggested he had been sleeping under a roof. I couldn’t tell if he had a new camo coat or the old one clean, but I was glad to see he was doing well, and I told him as much.
‘Like you care,’ he said with a smile.
‘Do you work here?’ I asked.
‘I volunteer once a week. These guys helped me a lot. Got me somewhere to live, work.’
‘What work?’
‘What I used to do: construction. It’s not at the level I used to do it, but it’s still good.’
I nodded, glancing over his shoulder at the other volunteers who were milling around. ‘You said these guys helped you, who are these guys?’
‘The charity: Firstlights.’
‘First lights?’
‘No, Firstlights.’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘It’s one word: Firstlights.’
‘Fine, whatever. The Tothovas, they volunteer here too?’
‘They run the thing. It’s their charity.’
‘They started it?’
‘Right.’
Maybe they were saints. ‘Did they ever bring the girl here?’
‘Joy? One time. Sweet girl, very smart.’ He took a big gulp from a mug of tea. ‘How about you, boss?’
‘How about me-what?’
‘How’s the search going for your nemesis?’
I smiled mirthlessly. ‘He’s not my anything, I’m his nemes
is.’
‘Hello!’
I looked up. The posh guy who had served the poppadoms had dragged a chair from the next table and was muscling in between me and Lenny. Late twenties, with floppy black hair, thick eyebrows, white designer shirt, designer jeans, and polished black shoes. He was one of those people right at the topmost tier of upper middle class, and as a result even his volunteering clothes looked too nice to drop curry on. He was born in formal wear. Spot him out of context and you would think he was on his way to a wedding.
‘Are you a friend of Lenny’s?’ he asked.
I gave Lenny a quick look but he was ahead of me: ‘No, we was just chatting. This is John.’
‘Nice to meet you, John,’ he held out a hand, ‘I’m Tab.’ I didn’t know if that was a name or what.
I just nodded. He took the hand back and didn’t look insulted.
‘So what are you chatting about over here, it looked quite intense, I thought you must know each other.’
Lenny kept up the act, ‘I was just telling John about Firstlights, he’s not been getting much work at the moment.’
‘Oh really, what’s your trade?’ he asked.
‘Whaling,’ I answered.
‘Oh really?’
God, he thinks I’m serious. ‘No, I was joking.’
‘Oh, I see.’ He looked forlorn, as though he had grown up with the hope that one day he would understand jokes.
‘I’m a taxidermist,’ I explained.
‘Oh really?’
‘Yes.’
‘What do you specialise in?’
‘Whales.’
‘Oh really?’
I just nodded. ‘Yes, really.’
Lenny cut in: ‘He was just asking about Firstlights.’
‘Why is it called Firstlights?’ I asked Tab.