‘You two children enjoy yourselves,’ she said. ‘Rev. Pot will take me home on his pillion.’
And she hadn’t even mentioned the suit, thought Joe as he and Beryl hurried out of the church.
Just ahead of them Georgina Woodbine was walking alongside Sally Eaglesfield, holding her arm and talking earnestly into her ear. The girl suddenly pulled away, shouted, ‘No! I don’t believe you any more. Keep away from me!’ and ran away down the side of the church where Joe had found the boy in the box. Georgie stared after her, then, as if feeling Joe’s gaze, she slowly turned her head to look at him. It was not a friendly look. Then she strode away, presumably to the Cloisters car park.
‘Don’t think you’ve much chance of playing an air on her G-string,’ said Beryl judiciously. ‘Mrs Woodbine, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right. And I hope you ain’t thinking of bringing your nurses’ home humour into the Glit.’
‘Too subtle, huh? So what’ve you been doing to rattle the lady’s cage?’
‘Don’t know,’ said Joe.
‘Maybe she thinks you blew up her kitchen,’ said Beryl.
‘No. We got on OK when I called for my jacket. I mean, at least she was polite. It was only after she saw me talking to Sally …’
‘That the girl with the clarinet? Tell you what, Joe. If I were a detective, and I could prove that child had been anywhere near Mrs Woodbine’s kitchen before the bang, I’d have her straight in the padded room for questioning.’
Joe said, ‘But she was … I mean, why should she …?’
Beryl laughed and said, ‘Don’t take me so seriously, Joe. And try to remember, we’re both off duty, right? So let’s get down to the hellhole and start enjoying ourselves!’
18
The Glit was pretty full for a Tuesday and they stood at the bar while they looked around for a seat.
‘There you are, Joe,’ said Dick Hull, pushing a pint of Guinness at him. ‘Saw you come in. Thirsty work this singing, eh? You in the choir too, miss?’
‘Yes,’ said Beryl. ‘And it’s thirsty work for us sopranos too. I’ll have a lager till my friend comes out of his trance.’
‘Sorry,’ said Joe. ‘I was just going to ask. Hello, Gallie.’
It had been the sight of the girl’s approach which distracted him. She was wearing an outsize Save the Whale T-shirt, with a dog chain round the waist to make it a mini. Her legs were pale and skinny and slightly knock-kneed and her make-up would probably have won prizes in a geisha house. But to Joe, his mind still echoing with Haydn’s joyous rhythms, her outrageousness was only the shocking freshness of Spring.
‘Can I have a quick word?’ she said.
Joe glanced uneasily at Beryl, who gave him an old-fashioned look.
‘Back in a mo,’ he said.
Galina led him to a corner where her gang had kept the usual pair of seats. Locking one of his legs firmly between her bony knees, she leaned forward and said, ‘Grandda says he’s resigning from the club.’
‘What? Why? Is this because of the other night?’
‘He won’t say. I’m so worried about him, Mr Sixsmith. If I could lay my hands on the bastard who started all this, I’d tear his balls off!’
Her vehemence didn’t fool Joe. This was a bright kid and if Joe, on the strength of one encounter, had got a sense that old Taras wasn’t acting like an innocent man, how much more strongly must she have felt the same thing?
He said, ‘Look, try not to worry. I think I’m getting somewhere and I think we can make this whole thing go away. Old folk don’t like upsets, that’s all it is. Couple of weeks and things could be back to normal.’
His concern for Galina had made him offer more reassurance than was his to give. It was a trap his concern to ease pain often laid for him and he’d trained himself to be nimble enough to steer clear of it. But with her eyes desperately seeking succour at a range of less than six inches, it was hard to count consequences.
He sat up straight and pushed his chair back a foot.
‘I know you’re doing your best,’ she said without conviction. ‘I think someone wants you at the bar.’
Beryl, he thought guiltily. But when he turned he saw that she was deep in conversation with Dick Hull. His gaze moved along the bar, and suddenly he found himself looking at the smiling face of Dunk Docherty. What the hell had he been thinking of, saying he could be contacted here? Worse, as he watched, the young reporter slid off his stool and started moving towards them. He thought of bluffing it out. But if his abacus mind could add up Dunk’s job, description, and swollen nose to make the mysterious investigator, the girl’s hi-tech calculus would have no problem getting there.
He turned back to her and said urgently, ‘Gallie, I’ve found out who it is asking all these questions. He’s a reporter on the Bugle, and I think we can control him, but the thing is, this is him approaching, so please, stay cool, play him along, OK? If you make a fuss it’ll only make things worse. OK?’
There was no time to get the reassurance he’d have liked. Docherty was at his side, smiling broadly and saying, ‘Hi, Joe. Now I see what brings you here. All this lovely talent. I must get in more often.’
He was wearing stonewashed jeans and a sandwashed silk shirt in a repulsive shade of puce. He looked like a teenage kid up from the country determined to show he knew his way around. Gallie’s friends were viewing him with the jaw-dropping horror of the first guy to see the vampire in an old Dracula movie while the girl herself looked ready to sink her teeth in his jugular.
Joe said heartily, ‘Dunk, nice to see you. Gallie, meet an old friend of mine. This is Dunk Docherty, ace reporter on the Bugle. Dunk, this is Gallie Hacker.’
‘Hacker?’ repeated Dunk, puzzled. Then light dawned and he said, ‘Oh, Hacker.’
He didn’t quite give Joe a thumbs-up, but his nice-one smile was like a neon ad. He perched on the edge of the table, causing the gang to grab their drinks with exaggerated concern.
‘Hey, sorry, fellas. It’s a wee bittie crowded here,’ said Docherty flashing an all-boys-together smile which provoked them to an unprecedented articulacy.
‘What’s he on about?’
‘Want a wee, piss off to the bog.’
‘You a foreigner or wha’?’
‘No, he’s a doughnut. Dunk the doughnut!’
This pinnacle of wit left them all dizzy with laughter.
Joe stood up, seized the young reporter by the arm, said, ‘Need a word. See you later, Gallie,’ and led him forcibly to the bar.
‘What the shoot do you want?’ he demanded.
‘You said I could contact you here about the dosh,’ protested Dunk. ‘Also, I’ve had another tickle.’
‘You what?’
‘Someone else rang, said they’d heard I was asking about the boy in the box and she had info.’
‘She?’
‘Yeah, you know. A girl. A wee hairie. I’ve fixed up for you to meet her.’
‘Me? Why can’t you meet her yourself?’
‘Because the first guy rang back and I’d fixed up a meet with him already. It’s OK about the dosh, is it?’
He counted fifty into Dunk’s hand. All around him, eyes looked the other way. Think I’m making a score, groaned Joe inwardly. Bang goes my reputation.
‘And here’s something for you,’ said Docherty.
It was a photocopy of a photo of the boy in the box’s face. Joe supposed some attempt had been made to liven it up, but the Bugle’s editor had been right. No way this face was anything but dead.
‘I’ve been passing a few of these around the drop-outs,’ said Dunk. ‘The girl saw one, says she recognized him.’
‘From where? When?’ asked Joe.
‘That’s what she’ll tell you when you show up tonight.’
‘If I show up,’ said Joe grimly. ‘You could have arranged to meet her some other time, couldn’t you?’
‘Yeah, I know,’ said Docherty a trifle shamefaced. ‘Sorry.’
Joe was on to him. He said, ‘You thought, why should I be doing all the work when there’s no guarantee this guy’s going to come through for me? Right?’
‘Joe, if I’d known what a fast mover you were … how’d you get a line so quick on the Hacker chick anyway?’
‘Trade secret,’ said Joe curtly. ‘So when are these meets?’
‘Half an hour. But you’ll need to start moving soon. Yours is down the Scratchings …’
‘The Scratchings?’ said Joe aghast. ‘You’ve fixed for me to go wandering round the Scratchings at dead of night?’
‘I thought you PIs were indomitable.’
‘I’m domited, you’d better believe it,’ said Joe grimly. ‘And where’s your meet?’
‘St Monkey’s boneyard, which ain’t no picnic either,’ protested Dunk.
‘It’s a garden party by comparison,’ said Joe.
‘Yeah. Look I’m sorry, Joe. If you don’t want to go, then just scrub it. This chick who phoned, to tell the truth she sounded a bit Waldorf, know what I mean?’
‘Waldorf?’ said Joe.
‘Off the wall,’ said Dunk. ‘Probably just desperate to score and got the notion this was an easy way of making a buck. So forget it. If she rings again, I’ll go.’
Joe considered then said, ‘No, I’ll go. You’ve been to so much trouble to fix for me to meet with a possibly desperate druggie in the Scratchings after dark, it’d be a professional discourtesy not to turn up. How’ll I know her?’
‘I described you and that old banger of yours, so she’ll find you,’ assured Dunk. ‘I’ll just get myself another beer before I hit the road. Contact you later at home to cross check?’
‘I’ll give you my number.’
‘Don’t worry, I got it,’ grinned the youngster. ‘The Bugle knows everything.’
‘You mean I’m on file?’
‘Yeah, it’s a big blueish one. It’s called the phone book. See you, Joe.’
He turned to the bar and Joe went to rejoin Beryl.
‘Hi, Joe,’ she said. ‘You still here? Dick was just telling me about this idea you and him have cooked up for some of us to come down from the choir one night, do a trailer for The Creation. Why’ve I not heard about it? Not trying to cut me out, are you?’
‘No, of course not. I mean, it’s just an idea, I mean it’s not even an idea, it’s one of Dick’s crazy notions …’
‘Joe thinks you’re too good for us,’ said Dick Hull.
‘Joe, is that right? That sounds downright elitist to me. But he’s right in one way, Dick. We are good, we’ve won prizes, you know about that?’
‘That’s what I need,’ assured Hull. ‘A class act for a class venue.’
‘You say so? Well, as you’ll know with your showbiz experience, Dick, you’ve got to pay for class. So what kind of fee had you and Joe come up with?’
‘Now hold on,’ said Dick anxiously.
Joe, who knew from experience that Beryl was capable of keeping him and Dick and another two or three fellows besides spinning in the air till they didn’t know their asses from their elbows, cut in quick, ‘Beryl, I’ve got to go now. Business. Sorry.’
‘That’s OK. Business has got to come first. What business in particular tonight, Joe? Saving whales, is it? No, sorry. I see the safety of whales is in someone else’s hands.’
Joe followed her gaze. To his horror he saw that Galina had joined Dunk Docherty at the bar.
‘Oh shoot!’ he said.
‘Don’t take it to heart, Joe,’ said Beryl kindly. ‘Whatever goes around comes around, and I’m sure your friend goes around quite a lot. Now, Dick, we were talking money. Here’s the way I see it …’
When the whole world turns against you, anywhere dark and lonely can seem like a refuge. Even the Luton Scratchings.
With a deep sigh, and unnoticed by more than half a dozen pairs of eyes, Joe turned and left.
19
The Lost Traveller’s Guide’s sole reference to the Scratchings is sinisterly brief.
If, having strayed into Luton, your efforts to regain the right road lead you into an area of dust, decay and derelict brick kilns called the Scratchings, then you are lost indeed.
It might be assumed that the name derives from the excavation of the local plum-red clay from the many uncapped pits which add to the area’s perils. But in a paper read to the Luton Archaeological Society by Rev. Pot who was an amateur of such matters, it had been pointed out that the first recorded form of the name, in agricultural records long preceding the brick industry’s workings, was Scratches Ings. Scratch, or more commonly Old Scratch, being a popular agnomen for the devil, and this area being damp, low lying, and frequently aswirl with sinister and misleading mists, Rev. Pot theorized it was more than likely that the superstitious locals should have named it the Devil’s Meadows.
Joe had been present at the meeting, hijacked there by the irresistible will of Aunt Mirabelle as part of a Boyling Corner Chapel claque. He had found Rev. Pot’s paper even more boring than his sermons, but that had been in the fusty lecture hall of the old library where the Archy. Soc. held their meetings. Now, as he turned off the narrow metalled road and began to creep down the even narrower rutted and potholed track which led to the old workings, boredom was not a factor. Alongside the superstitious fear roused by memory of the pastor’s paper there was the plain physical fear caused by his awareness that when the drop-out elements in Luton society could drop no further, the Scratchings was where they usually ended up.
The track levelled off and widened. In the headlights he could see the tumbledown buildings wreathed with mist like mistletoe on dead oak trees. He stopped the car, but kept the headlights on and the engine running and he made sure the doors were locked. The place looked completely deserted but he knew better. Places like this were never unoccupied. Forget Rev. Pot’s devil, forget the casualties of the way we lived now. Any place where people had once worked, day in, day out, for enough years to leave a mark on their individual lives had something stamped in it which not even the reclamative powers of nature could totally erase. He felt it most strongly, of course, whenever he went near the empty buildings which had once housed Robco Engineering. There his own personal memories were the key. Here it was the memories of all those long gone under, who had once centred their often short lives and certainly little hopes on this place, that trailed around his mind like the mist around the buildings, seeking a purchase and a shape. He felt this deeply. Blood sympathy, Butcher had once called it, meaning he didn’t know exactly what, except that maybe it was having it that kept him sure he was in the right business even when everything – and everyone – else said different.
There was a tapping at the window. He jumped so violently that had he been any bigger he’d have bumped his head on the roof. ‘Shoot!’ he said, angry that his preoccupation with the dead had made him forget the living. He was lucky it was only a knuckle that was coming in contact with the misting glass, not a coal hammer.
He wiped away the condensation of his breath and saw a woman’s face, so emaciated it looked like the flesh had been painted on the skull with a watercolourist’s brush. She could have been anything from sixteen to sixty.
He wound down the window a space too small to permit even the skinniest finger to get a purchase.
‘You the one wants to know about the dead kid?’ she asked.
‘Yeah. You knew him?’
‘No.’
‘Know his name?’
‘Maybe.’
You don’t know much then,’ he said.
‘More than you, dickhead,’ she snarled. ‘So what’re you paying?’
Joe considered. It was the denial of personal acquaintance that made up his mind. If she’d got nothing to sell, she could have made up a whole genealogy to con him.
He said, ‘Ten, if it’s any good.’
‘Sod off. I need twenty, I’ve gotta have twenty.’
No difficulty in guessing what she needed it for. The
need meant he shouldn’t have much problem haggling her down to ten or even less. But that was like those bastards who got themselves laid for a packet of fags after the war, any war.
He said, ‘OK, twenty.’
He opened his wallet, took out a note and slipped it through the crack in the window.
‘This is only ten!’
‘You get the other ten when you tell,’ he said, showing her a second note.
‘How do I know you’ll give it me?’
There was something so childishly plaintive in her question that the upper parameter of her age plummeted.
‘How old are you, dear?’ he said gently.
‘What’s it to you?’ she snarled.
Fourteen, fifteen, he guessed. Perhaps, God help us, younger. He wanted to tell her to get in the car, he’d take her home or if she didn’t want to go home, he’d take her somewhere they’d look after her. But he knew that if he wanted to make her run, the biggest threat was kindness.
But he couldn’t stop himself asking, ‘Why do you do this stuff, dear? It’s screwing up your life. Why do you do it?’
It was a really pathetic question, pointless to ask, impossible perhaps to answer. But surprisingly she gave him one.
‘Because it makes me feel like you bastards say I ought to feel!’ she screamed. ‘Now do I get that other ten or what?’
‘You got something to tell me, you’ll get it,’ he said, pushing a corner of the note through the crack. ‘So talk.’
‘I only saw him once but I recognized his face from the photo.’
‘Where’d you see him?’
‘Down the Uni.’
‘The University? What were you doing there?’
‘What’s up? Think I’m not fucking bright enough?’
‘Not old enough, maybe.’
‘I’m as good as any of them wankers!’ she yelled.
‘I’m sure you are,’ Joe assured her. ‘So what were you doing there?’
‘There’s a lot of stuff gets moved down there, know what I mean? And them stupid gits sometimes leave it lying around if you can get into their rooms.’
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