by J M Gregson
Charlie knew what she was doing, and approved it. He did not resent her budgeting for him; he rather liked it. It was the first time in his life that anyone had really shown a concern for his welfare and his future. He was proud of Amy; knowing what she was about, he became ever more determined not to let her down.
By the middle of the eighties, they had moved out of the deteriorating slab of council flats and into a small house of their own. Charlie modernized it, and Amy transformed the drab interior into a neat and bright little nest. The building industry began laying off thousands of men and the stream of new houses in which Charlie had whistled and planed his way to a modest prosperity almost dried up. But the recession scarcely affected the Peggs.
For Charlie, in the phrase Amy rolled out with increasing relish to her neighbours, ‘went independent’. People who saw the way he had transformed his own house offered him work in theirs, cautiously at first, and confining themselves to tasks that were too small to offer to a regular builder. Planing doors to make them fit; making sash windows which had never opened for years glide smoothly up and down their channels; putting up shelves for wives who had lost patience with husbands who had promised for years to get round to it very shortly.
Because his work was good and his prices were cheap, he was soon much in demand, and the jobs he was offered became more complex. He surprised himself sometimes by the quality of what he achieved. He did not take on major plumbing or construction jobs, because he did not have the equipment and he did not want to employ other staff — his confidence did not extend to that. But he became an expert on heating systems and domestic plumbing and all the other things he had watched from the sidelines during his days on the building sites.
George Lewis, the full-time porter at Old Mead Park, found himself besieged by requests for building modifications before the big block of flats had been open very long. The units might be luxuriously fitted, as the agent’s selling brochure proclaimed, but the affluent people who moved in soon found ways to spend their money on numerous small improvements and adjustments to accommodate their individual modes of living.
It was natural in these circumstances that George should turn to Charlie Pegg. He and Charlie went way back — they had done their National Service together in Cyprus. As a result of that experience, George owed Charlie a debt they never spoke of, but which he was always looking to repay.
The porter’s post at Old Mead Park gave him the chance to do that. He knew Pegg was a good enough workman for there to be no comebacks from his recommendation — indeed, the flat-owners were often pleased enough to slip Lewis a little something for his role as agent in securing this quiet and surprisingly effective little workman for them.
And this work fitted in very well with the other activity which Charlie Pegg had developed to supplement his income. He found himself in and out of most of the flats in Old Mead Park from time to time. Word went round that he was honest and trustworthy, so that the busy residents often left Charlie in the flats alone. They relied on George Lewis to provide whatever supervision and information were necessary; after all, what was the point of paying the salary of a full-time porter in an impressive dark-green uniform if he was not to be useful on occasions like this?
In one small way, Charlie Pegg was not as scrupulously honest as the occupants believed. Nothing was ever removed from these well-fitted homes. Nothing physical, that is: information was a different matter. It was surprising what letters and documents people left lying about. In time he extended that phrase to include unlocked drawers. Charlie read anything that he thought might be helpful to him, paying special attention to the increasing number of flats which had that intriguing modern phenomenon, the fax machine.
Sometimes messages actually printed themselves out before his fascinated eyes in the deserted rooms; it seemed to him not only technological magic but an open invitation to someone with his lively interest in what was going on amongst the entrepreneurial fraternity. In the case of one or two residents who became of special interest to him, he even ran through the messages left on the telephone answering machines, taking care to leave the tape exactly where it had been before he began to listen. There was rarely anything damning there, but it was useful to know who had been trying to contact one or two of the residents. People like James Berridge, for instance.
He did not tell Amy about this little adjunct to his working day. She might not have understood.
Charlie Pegg’s squirrel-like and retentive mind stored away all he learned in Old Mead Park and all the other places he visited to deploy his carpenter’s skills. And he used it to supplement the information, gossip and rumour he picked up in the more obvious hunting grounds for one of his peculiar calling. In the less reputable pubs of Gloucester and the surrounding area, the little snout kept up his connections with the criminal world. Many of the petty criminals who were the only ones he spoke with thought that he was still involved with crime, and he fostered that impression. As he never went to prison again, they gradually came to think of him as a shrewd operator, who associated with the big boys in crimes that went unsolved.
That irony appealed to Charlie Pegg, once he came belatedly to its recognition. He played up to his image a little; it was no more than an occasional knowing smile, never anything as blatant as a wink, but it was sufficient to convince the not very intelligent men with whom he conversed that Charlie Pegg moved with big fish and in deep and murky waters.
As indeed he did; but not in the way they thought. In discreet meetings in obscure places, Charlie passed on what he learned to John Lambert, the man who had been promoted in the years of their association from detective inspector to chief detective inspector and on to superintendent. Charlie was but dimly aware of these gradations in rank, but he took an obscure pride in the rise of his only police contact, the man who had given him help in finding the employment which enabled him to go straight all those years ago. Charlie even cherished the speculation that this rise might have been due in some small measure to the intelligence brought to him at infrequent intervals by his faithful snout. It was an illusion which Lambert was careful never to destroy.
Statistically, ten years is a long time for a grass to survive without broken bones or worse retribution. Charlie Pegg had already beaten the odds. Lambert knew just how heavy those odds were against his man, but he was careful not to remind him of them. A snout whose cover has been blown can never again be of any use to the forces of crime detection.
Charlie Pegg put together what he learned in his legitimate work with what he heard from his promptings during his evening visits to the pubs. He found it an interesting combination: each area tended to make more sense of the other, so that what might have remained obscure hardened into fact in his experienced hands. His income from informing had gone up steadily over the years, as his information had proved reliable and a steady stream of small crimes had been brought to court.
Now he was near to a big one. What he hoped to confirm in the next few days would be worth at least a grand, perhaps more. And he had read in the paper that some grasses might soon be put on a regular salary from the police budget. That would be respectability indeed, and a nice little earner on top of his regular work. Charlie Pegg, who was not given to flights of imagination, dreamed a little about the future.
For a little while, he forgot how dangerous an activity snouting could be.
5
Gabrielle Berridge would have been surprised to learn that Charles Pegg knew anything at all about her affairs.
When she spoke of him at all, it was to recommend his standard of work. Charlie had fitted a new waste disposal unit in her sink when she finally lost patience with the one originally fitted by the builders. She liked the kitchen to function as it should, though God knows she gave it little enough to do; the Berridges had no children and rarely ate in the flat together. And Charlie had made a good job of the cupboard which housed the water softener she had insisted on installing. James had been quite annoyed wh
en she put Pegg into his study to build a cabinet for all the papers he left about, but she did not mind annoying James nowadays; sometimes she positively enjoyed it.
As far as Gabrielle was concerned, Pegg had been entirely satisfactory, not least because she had scarcely been aware of him. She arranged things so that he should do his work when she was out of the place, and thus cause as little disturbance as possible to her smooth routine of life.
This had been for years a rather sterile order, but now it had acquired a glamour, an unpredictability, even an occasional coarseness which she found unexpectedly exciting. These things came to her in the form of Ian Faraday. She would have thought at one time that she could never become an adultress; that was just another proof that you should never become too set in your ideas. As Ian had repeatedly emphasized to her.
She watched his broad back with a secret indulgent smile as he sat up in bed and looked at his watch. It’s time we were moving,’ he said.
He did not sound at all convinced, and she liked that. Firm in getting her into bed, firm in bed, infirm about getting out, she had said to him an hour earlier. He encouraged her to talk dirty, and she was getting better at it. She would have been appalled to know that quiet little Charlie Pegg had heard some of the phone messages to which she had in due course responded.
She ran her index finger lightly up the undulations of his spine, then turned it so that her nail dug in lightly on the return journey. ‘You don’t mean you’re not up to it any more, do you?’ she said. ‘Shot your bolt already, have you, big boy?’
She stretched her lithe form suggestively beneath the hotel sheet, making sure at the same time that the silk still covered her. When you passed forty, it was safer for the curves to be felt than studied. Especially when you were fortunate enough to have a younger lover.
Ian Faraday sighed deeply, pretending reluctance, then drew in the sustenance of an enormous breath. ‘Oh, all right, then! You talked me into it, you shameless, demanding woman.’ He pulled her roughly on top of him; she giggled to disguise her embarrassment and delight as he pushed her limbs uncompromisingly into place.
The next fifteen minutes made her wonder how soundproof the walls were between these hotel rooms; what a good idea those ‘Do not disturb’ cards were to hang on the door!
‘Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety,’ Ian said appreciatively as he eventually slid from beneath her. It was a dangerous line with an older woman, he knew, but he was confident of his ground with Gabrielle Berridge now.
She did not mind. She liked the way he quoted things at her. James had never done that, and it somehow lifted the affair on to a higher plane in her mind. And if Ian was going to identify her with Cleopatra, that wasn’t a bad comparison.
This time she let him leave her, stretching her sated limbs luxuriously as she listened to the shower and pictured him soaping his muscular torso.
In quieter moments such as this, she was prepared to acknowledge to herself that it added a little excitement that Ian was one of her husband’s employees. Though she never put the idea into words, there was a strong sense of ironic satisfaction in the thought that the husband who had treated her with such contempt in their home should be supplanted not just by a man ten years his junior, but by someone whose money came from his own payroll.
Berridge had supplied the car in which they had driven here; and whichever of them paid for their room and their food, the money had ultimately come from James. There was a pleasing neatness about the revenge they were taking. She wondered if Ian ever felt the same neat satisfaction. He was shafting the boss and his wife at one and the same time: she must remember that daring indelicacy. It would please Ian, if she could come up with it at the right time.
Then, almost in the same thought, came the doubt which she was learning was never absent from the mistress’s role. Was that what had attracted Ian Faraday to her in the first place? The knowledge that he was putting one over on the boss? He had said it wasn’t, and she trusted him, but when you were four years older and your lover had the freedom to go elsewhere, you were bound to feel vulnerable.
At that moment, as if he knew her anxiety, he came out of the shower and paused to look down at her tenderly as he dried his hair. Then he sat on the bed and fondled her ink-black hair. ‘Well, serpent of Old Nile, you’ve exercised your wiles again.’
‘Yes, but don’t expect me to leap out of a carpet at your feet. I’m not built for that any more. I reckon old Cleo must have been a mere slip of a girl when she pulled that one off.’
In truth, Gabrielle was slim enough, despite her statuesque delights. He ran his fingers from her hair, across her shoulder, down the inside of her arm, nestling his knuckles in the crook of her elbow joint. ‘When are you going to make an honest man of me?’ he said.
It was so much an answer to her anxiety that she had to check with herself that she had said nothing to reveal it. She knew she should put him off the idea of marriage until it was more practicable. But she found it so delicious that she could not help toying with it, hoping that he would not allow her to dismiss it too quickly and sensibly. ‘We can’t do anything yet, Ian. James is not a man you can cross.’
Her tone belied the sense of her words, hoping he would find a way to refute the argument, though she knew there could be none. His smile disappeared; the little crooked frown she still found so attractive wrinkled his forehead beneath the brown hair. ‘No. You’re right about that.’ He wondered if she knew just how ruthless her husband could be with his enemies; he had seen Berridge operating upon them at close quarters, as probably she had not. ‘But it’s only a matter of time. We’ll find a way.’
‘But how?’ She knew how, but she wanted to hear him outline the glorious prospect again.
‘I must get another job first. Before he knows anything about us, or he’ll stop it. Stop me getting anything worthwhile, anywhere.’ She put her hand quickly upon his, and he smiled at her. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll manage it all right. I’d like something well away from here. I’ve still got contacts up in Manchester, but this damned recession means it’s taking time. There are a hundred people after every decent job. But there are still people who rate me, you know, up there.’ For a moment it was important to him that she understood his worth, in that wider world outside here, where she had never seen him.
‘I know that, you silly man.’ But she could not think how she was to show him that she knew it; she had never seen him with the team he managed. She simply knew that he would be competent and efficient, as he was as a lover. She dropped into the shaky northern accent she had learnt with the university dramatic society for their revue. ‘But will they accept me up there, Willie Mossop, when there’s trouble at t’mill?’
‘Of course they will, you daft ha’porth.’ He had dropped his own Lancashire accent a long time ago, but he fell into it readily enough whenever he chose. He dropped it again immediately now, to show her this was serious. ‘There are nice places to live, you know, in Yorkshire and Lancashire. it’s not all grit and grime. We’ll—’
She pressed her fingers softly upon his lips, enjoying the warm, damp mobility of them. ‘I know there are, but I don’t care where I live, so long as I’m with you. I’m not just a spoilt bitch who needs her comforts, you know. Well, only some comforts, anyway!’ She took the towel and rubbed it softly around his groin, so that he sprang laughing away from her and began to climb awkwardly into his clothes.
She enjoyed watching him, as she enjoyed all his movements. He looked vulnerable now, giggling at her with one leg into his trousers like a gangling boy who is half-irritated and half-embarrassed by the scrutiny. She thought she could see in him the youth she had missed, and dwelt upon it, greedy for all of him, for those parts of his life that were still private from her, despite all their intimacies.
‘Tell me again about the others,’ she said. The words were out before she knew she had formed them. She was even more shocked that she should say such things at
this moment than he was.
Ian stood, comically arrested in the act of zipping up his trousers, looking at her now with wide blue eyes and the hurt look of a schoolboy harshly accused. ‘I thought we’d agreed not to raise that again,’ he said. She could not tell whether he was annoyed or merely surprised.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say it. I don’t know what made me do it.’ She reached out her hand for him, but his movements in the moments which followed were away from her: tucking his shirt hastily into the waistband of his trousers, pulling on his socks, fastening his tie, reaching out for his shoes and his jacket.
There was a pause before he gave her the rebuttal she realized now that she had been seeking. ‘I told you. Those women didn’t mean anything. Not compared with what I feel for you.’ He came sulkily to a halt, aware that he was making the age-old protestations of the adulterer. He turned back to her with what was partly an appeal, partly a rebuke. ‘I thought you already understood all that.’
‘I have. I do.’ She was miserable, feeling herself falling sheer and long from the heights she had so recently occupied, and dizzied with the misery which now threatened.
‘I was divorced for four years before I met you, you know.’ He was combing his hair, sounding apologetic and resentful when he wanted to do neither, watching her covertly through the mirror.
‘I know. Of course I know. And I wouldn’t want you to have lived like a monk.’ She tried to convince herself of that by the force with which she said it, but it was his phrase, not hers, and it came to both of them as a quotation from an earlier, stale exchange. She said rather too abruptly, ‘After all, you had to keep your hand in for the real thing when it came along.’