by Dan Kavanagh
When silence and stillness from the verandah indicated that Nikki had finished her performance, he got off his haunches and gave her a standing ovation. She did the prima ballerina bit, bowing and all that; whereupon Duffy quickly pulled a few dandelions and daisies out of the grass, shuffled them together into a bouquet, and shyly edged forward to present them. Mademoiselle gave him a curtsey of thanks. He stepped up on to the verandah.
‘Very nice, Nikki, very nice. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble with your ballet classes.’
As he was talking he crossed behind her to the window. He leaned back and pressed his palm against the glass. Then he stood away and acted the big surprise. ‘Hey, look at this, Nikki.’ She turned round and, at his bidding, examined the full set of fingerprints left on the dirty glass. ‘I wonder who left them there?’ Nikki shrugged, then laughed as Duffy took her hand and pretended to match it to the broad spread of the marks.
‘I used to be a policeman, you know,’ he said. ‘If someone had broken into this summerhouse we’d have come along and a fellow with a brush and some special sort of dust would have gone over all the door-frames and window-frames. Now, say those weren’t here’ — he rubbed away his own prints with a wetted corner of handkerchief- ‘they’d still be able to catch the fellow.’
‘How?’
‘Well, you leave prints even if you can’t see them. You leave prints all the time, on everything you touch. Your knife and fork, that sort of thing. You may not see them but they’re there right enough.’
‘How long do they last?’
‘Weeks,’ said Duffy. ‘Weeks and weeks.’ There was a silence. Nikki held her bouquet of dandelions and daisies. Duffy timed the next bit carefully. ‘Mrs Colin’s very upset. She’s very fond of you, Nikki. She won’t be cross. Just tell your Dad.’
He could see the child’s lips push forward, then came a bit of a frown. ‘She shouldn’t have stopped me watching video. It’s not her house.’
‘No, it’s not her house. But would your mum have done any different if she’d found you in there?’
She didn’t reply. They set off across the lawn. After a dozen or so paces, Nikki, still carefully holding her bouquet, slipped her hand up and into Duffy’s. ‘Next time I’ll wear gloves,’ she said crossly. In spite of himself, Duffy burst out laughing. He was still smiling when the explosion occurred.
The estate agents acting for Izzy Dunn had not gone into much detail about the construction of the stable block. In fact, it was an architectural hotch-potch. The two stables themselves dated back to the time of the not-quite Lord Mayor; the Hardcastles’ cottage, at the other end of the block, had been put up ten years later with no particular regard for stylistic harmony; and the central section, which not surprisingly had given its designer a number of problems, had been completed only a few years before Izzy Dunn moved in. As it was modern, and flimsily built — merely a horizontal and vertical skin designed to protect three cars from the rain — the force of the explosion did not initially damage either the Hardcastles’ cottage or the stabling proper. The danger to them was from fire, not blast.
When Duffy arrived people just seemed to be staring: at the blown-out garage door, the hole in the roof, the blazing car. Mrs Hardcastle, who had telephoned the fire brigade, stood on the gravel clutching her handbag and her wedding album. Vic, who had also called the fire brigade after a long wrangle with Damian, who wouldn’t get off the phone, was shaking his head. Taffy and Damian looked as if they were waiting for someone to start setting off the fireworks. Only Belinda, trying to calm two hysterical horses, was actually doing anything.
‘Anyone in there?’ asked Duffy. They nodded a negative. The middle car of the three was still burning hard. If the Range Rover on the left caught fire, then the stable proper would go; if the MG caught, then the Hardcastles would join the list of the nation’s homeless. Duffy ran to his van and backed it across twenty yards of gravel towards the fire. He stopped about fifteen feet away, got out, opened the back and took out his towrope.
‘Taffy,’ he shouted as he started crawling under the Sherpa to fix one end of the rope. ‘Taffy,’ he shouted again. There was a pause, then the sound of feet sprinting across gravel. From under his van, Duffy thrust the clamp on the other end of the rope out towards his tardy helper. ‘The axle, not the bumper,’ he shouted. ‘I know,’ came the testy reply. Perhaps Taffy’s voice had broken slightly with the excitement; and perhaps he’d also slipped into a pair of velvet trousers which hadn’t previously been on display; but this seemed unlikely. Duffy jumped into the van, pulled the protesting Range Rover clear, backed up hard to the MG, saw Damian clamp the axle, and towed that to safety. Then they all watched the purply Datsun Cherry burn. After ten minutes or so, when the flames were beginning to die down, the fire brigade, clanging a needless bell, tanked up the drive and swirled to a stop in front of the porch. Vic shook his head. ‘Look what they’ve done to my bloody gravel.’
6. Bedrooms
THE LAST PERSON OUT of the house to see the fire brigade douse the wreckage of the purply Datsun was its owner, Sally. She looked from Duffy to Vic, from Vic to Taffy, as if seeking permission to giggle. It wasn’t forthcoming. Finally, Damian, brushing at some singe marks on his velvet jacket, murmured, ‘Frightfully unstable, these foreign motors,’ and that did the trick. Sally was back to her usual irritating self, and Damian, his surprise moment of heroism over, was also reverting as fast as possible.
‘I’ll have to buy a new set of maps,’ giggled Sally, the funniest thing she’d said since the last funniest thing she’d said.
‘It’s my bloody garage,’ said Vic, who wasn’t at all entertained, ‘and it nearly took my bloody stables.’
‘Sorry,’ said Sally. ‘Sorry. It’s just … it’s just …’ she wasn’t even sure she could contain herself long enough to get the sentence out, ‘It’s just that these foreign motors are so frightfully unstable.’
‘Well done,’ said Duffy to Damian.
‘I didn’t need to be told about the axle,’ he replied huffily. ‘I’ve seen enough films where the bumper just gets pulled off.’
‘Check. I thought you were going to be Taffy.’
There was a pause which invited the ex-con to explain himself. ‘Always had this fear of fire, see. Two-bar electric fell on me when I was just out of my pram. Had this phobia ever since.’
And Moscow’s the capital of America, thought Duffy. Strange how everyone had phobias these days. Nobody had phobias where he came from. Nowadays, if there was anything you didn’t want to do you had a phobia which stopped you doing it. I’ve got a phobia about sitting on the top deck of a bus. I’ve got a phobia about cigarette smoke. I’ve got a phobia about wearing a seat belt. What they meant was they didn’t like it. Duffy didn’t care for aeroplanes, but he wouldn’t say he had a phobia about them. He’d just say they made him bloody frightened; he just knew that if one of them took off with him on board he’d be shitting himself all the time until it crashed, which it inevitably would. That didn’t seem to be a grand enough feeling to call a phobia. Maybe Taffy also had a phobia which led to him thieving and hitting people with iron bars. Oh, it’s not that my client is a criminal, your Honour; it’s just that he has this phobia about going straight. Oh well, in that case, three months’ probation. And then there was this new posh word Duffy had seen around called homophobia. In the old days there had been people who were prejudiced against homosexuals, or gays, or queers, or whatever people who were prejudiced against them called them. Nowadays these people didn’t have prejudice, they had homophobia. Duffy disapproved. It sounded too much like a clinical condition, too much like something you couldn’t help. So after kicking him in the groin and stealing his wallet you also stamped on his spectacles? Yes, officer, you see I got this attack of my homophobia. Shocking, it always comes on at this time of year, nuffink I can do about it, must be the east wind or something. Oh, I’ve also got this phobia about being arrested and charged and sent to prison.
Well, in that case, on your bike, son, and watch the weather forecast more carefully next time.
‘I suppose this means the boys in blue crawling all over the place again,’ said Vic, who clearly suffered from an advanced case of copperphobia. ‘What about a spot of lunch while we’re waiting?’
That’s another thing about posh people, thought Duffy as they moved inside. They eat a lot. Even someone like old Vic, who had only acquired the trappings of poshness recently, while remaining awesomely unposh in his own person, went on about his dinners. They drank a lot, and they ate a lot. What’s more, they thought about it before they did it. They didn’t just go out for meals, they read up in magazines first about where to go out for a meal. They didn’t merely eat when they were hungry, or when it fitted in, they had thumping great dinner-hours which were always observed. If you wanted to torture any of this lot, all you’d have to say was, ‘We don’t know what time lunch is,’ and they’d blab anything you needed to find out.
For the first ten minutes or so, Duffy looked rather hard across the table at Nikki. It was probably a psychological tactic which the European Court of Human Rights would have deemed illegal, but at least it worked. She slid from her chair, went and sat on Vic’s knee, and whispered in his ear. Vic frowned at first, then nodded, muttered ‘Good girl,’ and pushed her off towards the kitchen, presumably to find Mrs Colin.
Since this tactic had worked so well on Nikki, he transferred it now to Sally, frowning at her across the table in a way that might look vaguely menacing. After a while she noticed this and said, ‘You all right?’
‘Fine,’ said Duffy.
‘Only you’ve got a funny expression on your face.’
‘What do you think happened?’
‘Happened?’
‘To your car.’
‘Dunno. Expect I left the ignition on or something,’ she said rather airily. Then she caught Damian’s eye and they chorused through giggles, ‘It’s just that these foreign motors are so frightfully unstable.’
‘Knock it off, kids,’ said Vic.
‘Electrical fault?’ Taffy suggested. Well, at least he wasn’t blaming the car’s combustion on society’s malice.
‘When it isn’t running?’ said Duffy.
‘Could happen.’ Taffy was determined to back up his hypothesis, even if only because it had been attacked. ‘F’rinstance, something like a squirrel could have got inside and chewed through a cable, you never know.’
‘Round up all the usual squirrels,’ bellowed Damian.
‘Gypsies?’ suggested Belinda.
‘Could it have been … summer lightning?’ This from Lucretia.
Christ, thought Duffy. Talk about another world. Or maybe they didn’t want to think about it until they’d finished lunch. Well, he’d had enough to eat already. ‘Christ,’ he said forcefully. ‘Squirrels? Summer lightning? Gypsies? If it was squirrels, why aren’t cars blowing up all over the place? I mean, it took the roof off, didn’t it?’
‘So what do you think happened?’ Lucretia didn’t seem too dismayed by the rejection of her thesis.
‘I think someone put a bomb under it.’
‘Hang on, this isn’t Northern Ireland,’ said Vic.
‘Or someone set light to it, which isn’t all that easy unless you know what you’re doing, and the explosion was the petrol tank going up. The coppers are quite good at finding out. They get a lot of practice nowadays.’
Duffy’s suggestion was not very well received. He wondered why Sally wasn’t asking more questions. He tried his questing look on her again.
‘Who’d do something like that to my car?’ she said, rather as if prompted, which indeed she had been.
‘You tell us?’
‘No idea. Maybe someone’s in love with me,’ she laughed. There was a tricky silence. Yeah, like Jimmy was in love with Angela, most people were thinking.
The fire brigade went away, and the police arrived. Perhaps we’ll get the ambulance as well before the day’s out, Duffy thought. Actually, the padded van would be more like it as far as some of those around here are concerned. They could take Taffy away and see if they could do something for his phobia about two-bar electric fires and anything upwards. They could take off Damian and find out why such a lazy, irritating prat didn’t mind singeing his velvets when he hadn’t even been asked. They could certainly put Sally under the lens and see if all her grey matter had dribbled out of her ears while she was asleep one night; perhaps a squirrel had climbed up her nose and chewed through a few cables inside her head — that might be the reason. And while they were about it, Duffy thought, they could examine Lucretia and tell him if she would by any chance be willing to go to bed with him.
They were told to stay within hailing distance of the house and await Detective-Sergeant Vine’s summons. After turning down Damian’s offer of some blindfold snooker, Duffy wandered out into the garden, vaguely hoping to find Lucretia. All he turned up was Taffy sitting on a bench with a thick volume over his knee. Duffy coughed a lot as he approached, knowing that cons — even incredibly reformed ex-cons who wouldn’t steal the dandruff from your collar — don’t like being crept up on. It makes them jumpy, and where they jump can end up being painful.
Taffy glanced up from his book like an Oxford don disturbed by a window cleaner. Hey, Duffy thought, don’t you try putting me down as well. You haven’t come up the slimy ladder that fast. Pointedly, he sat down on the bench beside Taffy; pointedly, Taffy carried on with his book. Duffy squinted across at the running title. Taffy was reading Theories of Social Revolt. He was doing it, Duffy also noted, without moving his lips or tracking his forefinger along each line like a wriggling salamander.
‘Good, is it?’ he asked, after a tactful wait until Taffy got to the end of the chapter.
‘Bit simplistic. You wouldn’t think he’d ever looked at Laing.’
‘Surprising the gaps in some people’s reading. By the way, what’s the one about the nun with big tits?’
‘Eh?’ Taffy turned towards him for the first time, shifting his hulky shoulders all the way round as he did. They made the head look laughably small, but you didn’t grin because of the still way the eyes rested on you.
‘Lucretia said you like to tell it with the port and nuts.’
‘Sounds like she’s having you on.’ Taffy started to swivel his torso back towards his book, as if he could only read when chest-on to the page.
‘You still keep in shape?’ Taffy arrested his movement. ‘Got some weights myself,’ Duffy went on, referring to the dusty bar-bells which skulked in his fitted cupboard. ‘They sort of wear you out, though, don’t they?’
‘Not if you’re fit. Got to go through the pain barrier, that’s all.’
‘I guess I never came out the other side. I’m a goalkeeper myself.’
‘You look a bit small for a goalkeeper.’
Duffy rattled on. He kept throwing out hooks, but none of them would catch. ‘I suppose I’d get more exercise if I moved upfield. Snooker doesn’t exactly keep the muscles in trim, either. Not even if you play it the way Damian and Sally do.’ Taffy didn’t respond. ‘Have you seen the way they do it?’
‘No.’
‘She takes her knickers off and sits in a corner pocket and he tries to pot the balls you know where.’
‘Well, as long as it doesn’t frighten the horses, eh?’ Taffy went back to Theories of Social Revolt. Duffy wondered what it took to get a rise out of him. Quite a lot, obviously. That was another thing about ex-cons. After years of being cooped up you either came out with a hair-trigger temper, in which case you found yourself back inside again pretty soon; or else you learned to keep the lid on it. Taffy kept the lid on it so securely that you didn’t even see a puff of steam. This took a lot of practice. Duffy imagined him in Maidstone or wherever: pull-ups and push-ups every day in the cell, thoughtful visits to the chapel and the library, a new line in politeness to the screws — all to make the parole board believe he’d really calm
ed down and got all that pus out of his system. Sometimes it was for real, of course, but mostly the cons would just be faking their new-found serenity.
One of the things that helped them fake it was fancy tobacco. Every so often, when there wasn’t a royal wedding or garrulous star-fucker to fill the front page, the tabloids would wheel out the old story about drug-pushing in Her Majesty’s prisons; how shocking it was that criminals were still able to go on committing crimes even when locked up, how the heroic Police Sniffer Dog Freddie (photo above) had located a milligram of hash in some lifer’s bum, how if there wasn’t law and order in our jails what hope was there for society, and by the way if you’re exhausted by all these words just turn the page and you’ll find this week’s descendant of Belinda Blessing with her tits snouting out of the paper at you. Every such investigation would duly conclude with a stern statement from the Home Office that it was fully committed to stamping out the use of illegal substances in Britain’s jails. What Duffy knew, and what the Home Office was thick if it didn’t, was that the drug searches in Her Majesty’s prisons could often get a bit perfunctory. The screws were well aware that if a con was smoking a nice fat home-made roll-up, then the chances of him getting off his bunk and teeing off with an iron bed-post weren’t very great. In the old days they used to put things in the prisoners’ tea to calm them down. Now, if the prisoners chose to put things in their own tea, or in their own cigarettes for that matter, who would bust a gut to restrain them? The habit was hardly surprising, what with all the overcrowding and the boredom. The screws could also work out that if they pretended not to notice that the tobacco smelt a bit funny, and the cons realized that the screws knew but did nothing, then this could turn into a handy extra means of control. I’m on to your little game, my son, but the Big Boss doesn’t get to hear of it as long as you don’t give me any trouble. Any naughtiness and before you know where you are I’ll have Sniffer Dog Freddie so far up you that only his back paws and the tip of his tail will be showing. Do you read me, my son?