by Zoe Sharp
As I watched, one of them lifted the mug to his mouth and drank, and as my gaze followed its progress I realised I was looking at a face I knew. It was the boy from Fariman’s garden.
Roger put the mug back on the table, keeping one hand round it, using the other to illustrate his speech as he talked earnestly to his companion. It was with some sense of shock that I recognised the other boy, too.
He was probably the last person I would have expected to find relaxing in the company of a teenage thug on the fast track to a long stretch inside. Yet there they were, chatting away like old friends.
Nasir.
Five
The driver of the car behind me blew his horn, making me jump, and I realised that the taxi was long gone. I hastily booted the bike into gear and flung the clutch out with all the finesse of a first-day learner. The Suzuki made its displeasure plain by bounding forwards, and then refusing to drop cleanly into second.
Cursing under my breath at the fluffed change, I brought my mind back onto the job in hand. The last thing I could afford to do was try and ride through darkened rush-hour traffic preoccupied. I like my legs just the shape they are, thanks all the same.
With an effort I pushed the significance of what I’d just seen way into the background. Roger was from Copthorne. Nasir was from Lavender Gardens. They should have been at each other’s throats. Race almost didn’t come into it.
I swung across Greyhound Bridge and onto the road to Morecambe, filtering down the outside of the cars when they shuffled to a standstill. It didn’t take long before I was turning in to Lavender Gardens and weaving through the gloomy back streets.
I’d let my brain wander by this point, churning it over and over to try and make some sense of it. What on earth was the connection between Roger and Nasir? I knew Nasir had been in trouble, too, but I also remembered the way he’d flown off the handle over the attack on his uncle.
At the time, I’d thought his anger was aimed at Roger and his mates, but it wasn’t. He knew far more than he was telling about all this. I needed to talk to him about it. Try and get something more out of him. Perhaps O’Bryan might have a better idea of what was going on. As I turned in to Kirby Street, I made a mental note to give him a call.
Then a big man carrying what looked like a baseball bat stepped out of the shadows into the road in front of me.
My first thought as I grabbed for the front brake was that Roger had somehow already got wind of my intention to go the distance, and had sent the boys round. Timing and logic didn’t come into it. This was straight gut-reaction fear.
The Suzuki’s tyres slithered on the wet greasy tarmac as I locked the wheels up tight, stepping the back end out. Somehow, I managed to bring the bike to an untidy halt within about six feet of him, slanted across the road. I put my feet down, shaky, heart bouncing against my ribs.
The man had made no move to get out of my path. Arrogance made him confident that I would stop in time. That I wouldn’t dare run him down. I wondered if he tried the same tactic with buses and trucks.
For a couple of beats, nothing happened. Then he swaggered forwards to meet me, and I saw that the baseball bat was actually one of those oversize torches. The type so favoured by jumped-up security guards without the authority to carry a weapon for real.
He came right up to the fairing, crowding me, tall enough for me to have to crick my neck up to make eye-contact with him through my visor. His was a face that had seen some action, the bridge of the nose lumped with scar tissue. There was the line of an old knife wound cutting through his moustache stubble from nostril to upper lip.
He was a sizeable bloke, wearing the black bomber jacket and dark cargo trousers of the professional bruiser. I’ve come across enough of them in my time to recognise the type without needing a diagram. I was reminded strongly of Langford.
It was only when he spoke that my preconceptions took a knock. “OK, sonny, where do you think you’re going?” he demanded, surprising me with the genuine cut-glass accent that came out of his thuggish mouth.
I didn’t bother to correct his mistake. Even in these enlightened times nobody expects a girl to be riding a motorbike. “Home,” I said shortly, my voice muffled by my scarf. “What’s it to do with you?”
“You’d be wise not to take that tone with me, my lad,” he warned with a grim smile. He thrust his chin forwards, showing me his teeth and the whites of his eyes all the way round the irises. The skin of his face was stretched over wide cheekbones that protruded through it, revealing the shape of his skull.
Close up, he was older than I’d first thought. Even under the streetlighting, I could see that the hair cropped short to his scalp was silver, not blond. The lines were etched deep into his face like penknife graffiti in an old school desk.
“Come on,” he said, roughly now. “Let’s have that helmet off and have a look at you.”
“What? You’ve got to be kidding?” I managed, appalled. “Who the hell d’you think you are?”
At that moment another figure appeared from a ginnel between two houses and joined the first. He was younger, shorter, not so broad in the shoulder, but the haircut and the uniform was the same. This was starting to get creepy.
“You got trouble, boss?” he asked, not taking his eyes off me. His voice wasn’t nearly so far upmarket, but he was trying hard to match it, and his tone was hopeful, spoiling for a fight.
I pride myself on being a pretty good judge of sticky situations, but I didn’t have to be to work out that now was a good time to back down.
With a sigh I yanked my gloves off and undid the chinstrap holding my battered old Arai helmet in place, pulling that off over my head.
For a moment, surprise held them still, then the big bloke laughed.
“Well, well,” he said softly. “I’d no idea that I was in the presence of a lady.”
“You’re not,” I said, my voice icy. “I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me who you are and what the hell is going on?”
“My apologies,” he said, mocking. “My name is Ian Garton-Jones. Myself – and Mr West here – and my colleagues, have been contracted in a clean-up capacity on this estate.”
I suddenly remembered my last conversation with Mrs Gadatra over the garden fence. She’d mentioned a Mr Garton-Jones, but I feigned ignorance. “Clean-up?” I queried, frowning.
“That’s correct.” He showed his teeth again. Friday would have made the gesture look more friendly. “We’re here to gather up all the rubbish, the crap, the dregs, and the trash, and keep it off the streets,” he said with deliberate emphasis. The inference was clear.
“Animal, vegetable, or mineral?” I asked flippantly.
He shrugged. It was of no importance to him. “Whatever it takes.”
“And that involves doing a ‘stand and deliver’ routine on every passing motorist coming into the estate, does it?”
“Oh that’s just a temporary measure, Miss—?” He left the question hanging.
“Fox,” I supplied, unable to find a reason other than pure pigheadedness not to tell him who I was. Even so, it was tempting. “My name is Charlie Fox.”
“There, you see, it’s not so bad, is it, Miss Fox?” Garton-Jones said. His tone was supposed to be soothing. It only succeeded in winding my irritation up a notch higher. West stood slightly back and to his left, keeping quiet, but missing nothing. “Once we’ve identified everyone with a right to be here, you won’t be troubled again.”
When I gave my name, West pulled out a hardbacked notebook from his inside pocket and flicked on his own torch as he studied the pages. “I don’t seem to have you listed as a resident here, Miss Fox,” he said politely, his voice deceptively mild. “Would you mind telling me the purpose of your visit tonight?”
“I’m house-sitting for a friend,” I bit out. I knew I was going to have to tell them more than that, but they were going to have to work for it.
“House-sitting?” Garton-Jones repeated, his interest quickening.
“For whom? Which house?” He rapped out the questions. Despite his upper-class accent, the civility was little more than a cigarette-paper thin veneer covering the savagery underneath. I knew that if I was clever I’d stop being obstructive now, and tell them what they wanted to know.
So, I gave them Pauline’s name and address, told them how long she was going to be away. West jotted it all down in his notebook, which he shut with a snap when he was finished.
“OK, Miss Fox,” Garton-Jones said. “You can go now. We’ll be having a word with Mrs Jamieson when she returns, though. Just to let her know that there’s no need to trouble any of her friends in the future. Streetwise Securities are in control of this area now. Next time she’s away, we’ll be looking after her property.”
I bridled silently at his smug tone. Pauline would probably have something to say about that, but it wasn’t up to me to put words into her mouth. “I’m sure she’ll be thrilled,” I told him sweetly.
Garton-Jones either didn’t hear the sarcasm or chose to rise above my low wit. “It’s all part of the service,” he said neutrally, standing back and waving me on with a slight bow.
I tugged my helmet back on, trying not to mutter under my breath. But, as I toed the bike into gear, I was blinded by the sudden flare of main-beam headlights from the other end of the street.
“What the—?” Garton-Jones spun round, jerking a hand up to protect his eyes.
I heard the roar of a big V8 engine, being caned straight down the middle of the road. The sound seemed to leap towards me, increasing in size with such speed and ferocity that for a moment I was paralysed.
At the last minute, I grabbed a handful of throttle and banged the clutch out. The bike jumped forwards like a racehorse leaving the starting gate and shot across the road.
I just about managed to slot into a gap between two parked cars, and jolted clumsily up the low kerb onto the pavement, stalling the motor.
I twisted round to see Garton-Jones and West dive out of the way with an undignified haste that was grimly pleasing. It was difficult to make out much more than the basic shape of the vehicle that came barrelling through the space we’d so recently vacated. One of these new four-by-fours, with a set of industrial bull-bars on the front. Other than that, I couldn’t even have given you the colour.
It reached the corner of the street and slithered round it in a near-perfect sideways drift, engine howling as the tyres skittered over the wet road surface. I couldn’t suppress a certain amount of admiration for the driver. Whoever was behind the wheel obviously knew his stuff.
Before the taillights had even disappeared, Garton-Jones had grabbed a walkie-talkie from his belt and was snarling into it. “Gary! What the fuck’s going on at your end?” he demanded. “That damned Grand Cherokee with the Dutch plates on it has just been through here again like it’s a fucking racetrack. Either keep that end of the estate locked down, or I’ll put someone in charge who can.”
He shoved the walkie-talkie into his jacket pocket without waiting for a reply. He glared first at West, and then across at me, as though daring either of us to comment. Neither of us fancied the prospects of that move overmuch.
I busied myself with flicking the gear lever back into neutral so I could kick-start the bike again. I rode it carefully ten metres along the uneven pavement until there was a gap between the parked cars, and dropped back into the road.
As I rode the short distance to Pauline’s place, I reflected that the arrival of Garton-Jones and his mob on Lavender Gardens should have meant things had just got better. So why couldn’t I shake the feeling they’d just taken a downward turn? And one so steep it was more like a nose-dive.
***
That evening, unable to put it off any longer, I rang Pauline in Canada.
I’d been avoiding making the call, in the hope that things were going to get better. The likelihood of that one was far away, and growing dimmer all the time.
I couldn’t lie to her when she asked what had been going on, and even though I severely edited down the truth, she was still horrified by news of the attack on Fariman, and the arrival of Garton-Jones and his boys.
“The Committee were talking about calling his lot in before I left, but I didn’t think they’d be stupid enough to actually go ahead with it. They’ll bleed us dry,” she said bluntly, her voice coming across the transatlantic line as clear as a local call. “Oh, why did this have to happen now, when I can’t do a damned thing about it?”
“There’s another Committee meeting next week. I’ll go,” I heard myself saying. “I’ll try and stall them. He’s just totally the wrong man for the job.”
“OK, Charlie,” she said, still sounding worried, “just don’t do anything rash, will you?”
I said of course not in what I hoped was a convincing tone, and Pauline rang off, slightly more reassured.
I didn’t want to go walking into that meeting completely blind, but it still took me a few moments of staring at the telephone to make the decision to call Jacob and Clare for help.
If you’d asked me at the beginning of last winter if they were my friends I would have said yes without hesitation. Then I’d put Clare in a position of danger from which she’d been lucky to escape alive. It wasn’t that they hadn’t forgiven me over it, you understand.
I hadn’t forgiven myself.
I picked the receiver up quickly, and dialled before I had chance to change my mind. Jacob answered almost straight away.
“Oh, hi Charlie,” he said. Was it me, or did he sound a little cool in his greeting? “Long time, no hear.”
I could picture the long rangy figure, his dark wavy hair flashed through with grey. He would be sitting at the scrubbed pine table in the kitchen of their big, comfortably untidy old house just outside Caton village.
In theory, Jacob had a study from which to run his classic motorbike spares and antiques business, but I’d never seen him do any work there. He always preferred to use the kitchen, where he could listen to the radio and be company for the dogs.
Even now, once Clare was home from work in the evening, he tended to stay put, still making or waiting for phone calls from other dealers in the States. He always complained that they had no idea which way time zones operated.
“Sorry, I’ve been a bit up to my neck,” I said, feeling even more guilty that I was only ringing now because I needed a favour.
“So, girl, when are we going to see you round here for some supper?” he said, and I realised I’d been being oversensitive. “I’ve got this great new way of roasting lamb that’ll have you drooling.”
“Sounds great. I’ll try and get up there soon,” I promised. “I’m house-sitting at the moment. A friend’s place on Lavender Gardens.”
“Yeah? Well, I hope you’ve got your bike alarm set fine, then, because from what Clare tells me all things both red hot, and nailed down have been disappearing from round that neck of the woods lately.”
Clare works for the local paper, the Lancaster & District Defender, so she gets all the news and gossip before it filters down to us proles. Not that she’s a journalist, but even working in the Accounts department she still hears plenty.
“I was hoping she might be able to give me a bit of gen about that, actually,” I said, wincing in case Jacob saw through my obvious ploy. If he did, he was too much of a gentleman to comment on it.
“Hang on,” he said. “I’ll give her a shout. She climbed straight into the bath when she got home and I think she might still be there, the wrinkled old prune.” I heard him cover the mouthpiece to yell for Clare up the stairs. “No, you’re in luck,” he said after a moment, “she’s surfaced and she’s on her way. You take care now, Charlie,” he added softly, “and don’t leave it so long next time, hey?”
“I won’t,” I told him, unable to suppress a warm, gooey kind of feeling at the rich sincerity in his voice. Jacob has that persuasive way of talking that makes even the most casual of conventional remarks seem like it’s been sa
id just for you. The best thing is, he hasn’t the faintest idea he’s doing it. If he wasn’t just about double my age – not to mention well and truly spoken for – I’d be in there like a shot.
Still, the age thing has never worried Clare much. She’s twenty-six, like me, but there the similarity ends. I’m afraid I can’t lay claim to blonde supermodel good looks, nor her ability to ride her Ducati 851 Strada like the local B-roads are her own personal racetrack.
She and Jacob have been together for as long as I’ve known them. They might seem an unlikely couple, particularly as he’s partly crocked up from too many youthful motorbike racing accidents, but I couldn’t honestly imagine either of them with anybody else.