Backhand Smash

by J M Gregson

  ‘Get on with it, you daft wally! Before I lose the urge.’

  ‘I couldn’t let you do that. But you may need to take the initiative.’

  So she did. And it was wonderful. Percy wasn’t sure how long it was before he gazed at the ceiling again with an exhausted grin. ‘BLOODY HELL, NORA!’

  ‘You see, I didn’t come apart in your hands.’

  ‘No, you certainly didn’t do that. It was quite reassuring really. And several other things as well.’ Some time later, when she thought he had dropped into the sleep his efforts had warranted, Percy Peach said drowsily, ‘Will it be girls on top all the time now?’

  THREE

  The man in charge of the betting shop in Darwen was older than Abe Lockhart had expected him to be.

  He watched him for a while to make sure that he was in fact the manager. He was definitely in charge of things; he was issuing orders to the staff and seemed to have a good relationship with them. One of the younger women went and spoke to him in his office, obviously asking if she should accept a large stake on first race of the following day at Goodwood. The manager asked her a few questions, then nodded and smiled at her. She seemed to know him well and there was no hint of any sexual harassment. For a man who made his living by violence, Lockhart could be quite a Puritan when it came to sexual harassment.

  Betting is one of the growth industries of modern Britain. The shop did a steady trade, without being at any time hectically busy. The manager left his office and talked to the punters at one point. He seemed quite an affable chap. Pity he was going to suffer, really, especially as he’d done nothing personally to offend Jason Fitton. He was merely a pawn in a very ugly game. Abe told himself that he couldn’t be too choosy about ugly games: he’d be out of a job without them.

  Abe Lockhart was an executive now, he supposed – he’d always been a little puzzled by what that word meant. He was issuing orders to his subordinates here, supervising the successful completion of an operation. That surely must make him an executive. He went back to the car, which was parked no more than fifty yards from the alley they had agreed upon, and spoke to the two ape-like figures within it. ‘Right. Place will be shutting in around five minutes. Time you were in position. Remember what we agreed.’ His chest swelled a little with pride as he watched the two big men move swiftly into the shadows he had indicated.

  Clyde Northcott had been right about his serve. When he got it in, it was a good one. The problem was going to be getting it in with any consistency.

  They’d knocked the balls around carefully for ten minutes before they started. Clyde had been conscious of a swelling group of boys in their early teens beyond the tall metal fence that surrounded the courts. They were assembling to appreciate the curves of his opponent rather than her tennis skills. He was wondering what he should do about this, rather than concentrating on honing his rusty timing of the forehand drive, when Elaine Brockman dismissed the boys in this fan club with a phrase that was vigorous, unladylike and surprisingly effective – the youths pissed off as bidden, as they would not have done for him. This girl had hidden depths, even if they were hardly romantic ones.

  Clyde was still pondering this when she used a similar expression to him. He was astounded, because he didn’t think he’d done anything wrong. Apparently, his fault was that he was treating her with too much consideration. ‘I’m not a child learning the game. I’m a woman who’s played for years. I’m a bit rusty, as you are, but I shall be highly insulted if you continue to play patball with me!’

  Clyde wasn’t aware that he’d been doing that. He’d been taking it easy, admittedly, but that was mainly because he wanted to get the ball into the court and avoid making a fool of himself in front of this enchanting presence. As if to emphasize her point, Elaine now timed a backhand perfectly and sent it speeding past his despairing racket to hold her service and claim the first game. Then she stalked back to the baseline, crouched ready to receive his service and gave him a quite annoying grin.

  Enough was enough. There were limits, even with a woman who looked like this. Clyde frowned fiercely, tossed the ball for the first time precisely where he wanted it above his head, and produced a serve that recalled his best ones as an erratic sixteen-year-old. It whistled past his floundering opponent and he snarled, ‘That one fast enough for you?’

  ‘Not bad. Was it a fluke, though? Are you going to produce them with any consistency?’ Elaine walked to the backhand court, danced on her toes in preparation and gave him a smile designed to infuriate. The ball flashed past her an instant later, but it was wild and long, the first half of an ignominious double fault. Clyde found his opponent giving him that smile again as he mouthed a silent oath.

  Northcott got the message. He concentrated fiercely for the rest of their hour, telling himself that this girl could play, that this wasn’t just the happy social outing he had anticipated when he had accepted her invitation to give him a little practice. And with concentration and honest effort, his muscle memory revived. By the end of the hour, he was timing his ground strokes quite well and the ball was flying away and pitching within court for the most part.

  He realized belatedly that Elaine was a considerable player, though out of practice because she had played only intermittently during her university years. When his length was short, she was good enough to punish him; he also did his share of chasing unavailingly after balls into his backhand corner. But he managed to produce a couple of real cannonballs in his final service game, which enabled him to clinch the set with a flourish.

  ‘You’ll be OK,’ was his mentor’s verdict as they left the court. ‘There’s a pub beside the main entrance to the park which has a garden at the back where we can go in our tennis gear. Do you fancy a drink?’

  ‘There’s nothing I fancy more at this moment!’ said Clyde. There was one thing, but even big black hard bastards had to be gentlemen on occasion.

  ‘Just don’t expect me to make the running all the time. It’s not ladylike,’ said his companion as she led the way.

  Fitton’s muscle waited a while to do their business with the betting shop manager. Daniel stayed in his office for a good ten minutes after his counter staff had departed, checking takings and records. It had been a successful day, in his judgement. Only one favourite had won, and that hadn’t been heavily backed. The football season had not yet started and there had been neither a World nor a European Cup this year, which meant that the football pundits had been quiet. But betting men got itchy quickly and found other fields in which they could persuade themselves they were experts. With some ingenious combinations on offer, there were quite a few bets on cricket coming in, in this Ashes year.

  He’d report his thoughts to his son-in-law. Takings were modest but steady, he thought; hopefully the business could stand on its own feet for a while yet. He was grateful to his son-in-law, Dave Forshaw, for letting him stand in as manager during the regular man’s holiday.

  It made you feel less useless when you could still take charge of a modest enterprise like this and deliver competent reports on the day’s takings to the owner. And it was nice to be trusted, even if you were a relation. Daniel made sure that the safe was securely locked and shut the doors of the shop carefully. You might be a little slower when you’d passed sixty-five, but you were more thorough and more reliable than younger men with different concerns.

  Daniel locked the door carefully, looked up and down the street, and found it deserted beneath the lamplight at this late hour. The sky had closed in and the first heavy drops of rain were beginning to fall. He was glad he’d remembered to bring his umbrella; he put it up and turned it against the wind and the beginnings of the rain. His car was only a hundred yards away and he was suddenly glad of that. He was surprised how tired he was after eight hours in the shop, even though he’d only taken over at two o’clock. He wasn’t used to a full day’s work any more, he told himself wryly. He swung his briefcase a little as he moved towards his car and home.

/>   When it came, the attack was swift, effective and almost silent. These men knew their business, though in fact beating people up is by no means the intricate science they liked to pretend it was. They had a heavily gloved hand over the victim’s mouth almost before he knew he was being attacked. His cheekbone was broken before he fell; the kicks upon his writhing body were delivered rapidly and clinically. Lockhart stooped over the prone figure in the alley, muttering a curse and an injunction to keep silent, but neither he nor his minions who had delivered the attack knew whether the victim was still conscious enough to hear them.

  They were gone before anyone even realized there had been violence. Their car was three miles away on the road back to Brunton by the time a passing pedestrian heard the faint moans of their victim.

  Clyde Northcott’s interview for membership of Birch Fields Tennis Club had its humorous aspects. A theatre audience might have found it highly amusing, but there was no audience of any kind, and all of the people involved in the action were far too conscious of their positions and responsibilities to derive enjoyment from it at the time.

  Clyde was dressed in a suit and tie. That was a novelty for a start. He usually wore sweaters and trousers for his plain-clothes CID work. Occasionally a jacket, if a visit to a particular place demanded it, but very rarely a tie. Few of the officers at Brunton nick had seen him wearing a tie since the memorable day a couple of years ago when he had featured as best man at the wedding of Percy Peach to Lucy Blake and set the bridesmaids aquiver with his presence. But he was feeling very stiff in suit and tie in the anteroom at the tennis club. He tried with scant success to look at ease as he waited his turn for interview and turned the pages of a tennis magazine he was not reading.

  He still wasn’t sure how he came to be here. At this moment, he was in fact quite sure that he didn’t want to be here. It was mainly because of the steady insistence of Olive Crawshaw. Everyone told him that Mrs Crawshaw meant well and had his best interests at heart. That might be true. But all Clyde knew for certain was that Olive was not an easy woman to resist. He had tried, so he knew that. Mrs Crawshaw hadn’t even acknowledged his resistance, let alone produced arguments against it. She was an irresistible force of nature. Tsunamis must be like her, Clyde felt; he hoped she would not leave similar disasters in her wake.

  There were three people for interview and Clyde was the last on the list. He’d hoped to see the other two when they’d been before the committee, so that he could discover how they’d been treated and maybe pick up a few pointers for his own exchanges. But they did not come back to join him; it was as though they had disappeared from his life when they passed through the door at the end of the room and into the inner sanctum of the committee. He’d seen a film a month or two ago about people in Stalinist Russia who became non-persons and disappeared from the face of the earth without leaving any traces behind them. They must have felt much as he did as they waited for the decisions of Beria and the KGB. That was ridiculous, Clyde Northcott told himself firmly. This wasn’t life and death. It just felt like it.

  He couldn’t hear anything from the room beyond the door, hard as he strained. There was a low hum of conversation, but not a single word could he distinguish. Once he heard what he thought might be laughter, but he couldn’t be certain. His heightened imagination pictured something much more sinister. As each minute dragged past, he just wanted this business over and done with, wanted more than anything to be hurtling through the night on his Yamaha and feeling the cool, uncomplicated breeze against his face. Yet when a man with a cheerful face opened the door and called him in, he wished illogically that this confrontation could be postponed indefinitely.

  The man said that he was the secretary. He led Clyde to the appointed chair and introduced each of the other four people behind the table. Clyde nodded a nervous acknowledgement to each of them in turn but registered not a single name or office as they were enunciated to him. He knew Olive Crawshaw. She sat at the chairman’s right hand. Like the Son of God, some forgotten and unwelcome voice from Clyde’s childhood reminded him. She gave him a bright smile, which he realized belatedly was meant to be encouraging. He grinned weakly back at her, but the chairman was already directing his first question at this last interviewee of the evening.

  ‘I see from your application form that you are a police officer, Mr Northcott. We don’t get many of them applying for membership of our club.’

  Clyde said, ‘I see.’ There didn’t seem to be much else to say. He could think of lots of reasons why policemen and policewomen wouldn’t want to apply for membership of Birch Fields Tennis Club. Principally, because they wouldn’t want to be sitting exactly where he was now, trying to find answers to all sorts of stupid questions. It didn’t seem that it would be helpful to voice that thought at this moment. So he grinned weakly and said nothing more.

  It was left to the chairman to say, ‘Can you think why that would be?’

  Clyde said, ‘Not many officers play tennis. Not compared with football and cricket. And even golf, I think.’ Percy Peach had been a damned good cricketer, it seemed. And, apparently, nowadays he was quite a good golfer. He’d never mentioned playing tennis. Clyde said desperately, ‘We’re getting a lot more women recruits nowadays. I imagine more of them play tennis.’

  Olive Crawshaw said brightly, ‘So you might prove to be an ambassador. The Pied Piper who leads in a whole phalanx of your colleagues behind you, Mr Northcott.’

  The chairman did not seem to think that would be a welcome development. Arthur Swarbrick looked Clyde up and down and said, ‘Why do you wish to become a member of Birch Fields, Mr Northcott?’

  Clyde had rehearsed the answer to this: it was an obvious question. But what he had prepared deserted him at the critical moment. He said desperately, ‘I used to play when I was a boy – well, a youth really. And I play football, but I don’t really do any other sports. So I’m doing nothing in the summer as far as sports go. I sort of thought that …’

  Olive Crawshaw came forcefully to his rescue as he faltered. ‘Mr Northcott is a player of considerable talent and a young man of pleasing personality. He would be a valuable addition to our list of members.’

  ‘You’ve seen him play, have you, Olive?’ This was the secretary, presumably trying to be helpful.

  He received a withering glance for his query. ‘I haven’t personally witnessed Mr Northcott’s performance on the courts, but I have received excellent reports of it. He is far too modest to boast of his talents here, but I have reason to believe that he would be a considerable asset to the playing resources of the club, as well as a desirable addition to our membership, for the reasons I have already specified in sponsoring his application.’

  There was a pause whilst the interview committee members consulted their copies of Clyde’s application form. Then the chairman said, ‘Birch Fields is an exclusive club. I make no apology for the use of that adjective. It means in my book that we have standards and that we maintain quality.’ Swarbrick cleared his throat menacingly, as though daring anyone to challenge him, and addressed himself directly to Northcott. ‘There has of late been a move to expand the social boundaries of our membership. You would be one of the implementations of this new policy.’

  Clyde caught a stirring of discomfort in both Olive Crawshaw and the secretary. It was probably that which enabled him to find his voice and speak with conviction for the first time. ‘Do you mean that I’m to be the bit of rough life that will demonstrate to the town how enlightened you have become?’

  In the shocked silence, it was Olive Crawshaw who recovered first. She darted a venomous look at the chairman beside her and then said equably, ‘Not at all, Mr Northcott. I’m sure I speak for the committee and the membership at large when I say that we welcome a relaxing of those social boundaries that have long been out of date. You may come from a very different background from that of most of our older members, but you will be all the more welcome for that. And you will be by no means isolated
within the club by the nature of your family background. We are planning to recruit many other players from what would once have been called the working classes.’

  The chairman seemed to have frozen, but there were stirrings of assent amongst his companions and even a muttered ‘Hear! Hear!’ from someone away to his left. Then the person on his immediate left spoke for the first time, raising an issue that was in the mind of everyone in the room but one which no one had cared to broach. Jason Fitton said quietly, ‘Do you think your ethnic background would cause you any problems in this club?’

  Northcott knew Fitton and his reputation, though he had never spoken to him face to face before. He was gathering confidence now from the divisions he sensed on the other side of the table. ‘My ethnic background is no problem to me. My colour might raise problems for others. I haven’t so far seen other black faces at Birch Fields.’

  The issue that had been in every mind, including Clyde’s, was out in the open at last. Better to have it discussed here and now, he thought, than in guarded tones in his absence. No skin off his nose: he could still walk away from this, whatever Mrs Crawshaw thought, if it pleased him to do so. He thought it probably would.

  The chairman said hastily, ‘I’m sure there is no racism in this club. I’ve never been aware of any.’

  Those two weren’t quite the same thing, as his fellow committee members were aware. Olive Crawshaw took a deep breath. ‘We already have a considerable number of Asian members, Mr Northcott. Since you raise the issue, I have to admit that I think you will be the first black person to become a member of our club. I think you are probably also the first one to apply. My opinion – and my intention – is that you will be the first of many.’

  Clyde felt suddenly very calm. He could not have said why, but he was aware now of all the information he thought had passed him by during the introductions. ‘I am grateful to Mr Fitton for raising this issue. I would far rather it was discussed openly than muttered about behind embarrassed hands.’