by Mia Dolan
‘Listen to me. Listen to me … Do you hear my voice, Garth?’
Even as she said the words, the frenzied twitching lost its momentum, his eyes stopped rolling and stayed fixed on hers. Only the dribble remained staining his shirt collar and pullover.
He nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Did you go somewhere?’
‘Yes. I couldn’t breathe, Auntie Rosa. And I was all alone buried under dust and dirt and bits of old clothes.’
Rosa brushed away the dirt that had been flicked onto his face. ‘Like a tomb.’ Her voice shook slightly as she said it. She too knew what it was like to be buried in a tomb with dead people.
He nodded.
Babs came running back. ‘The telephone wasn’t working. How is he?’
‘Fine,’ said Rosa. She brushed Garth’s hair back from his face. ‘There’s still some fruitcake left,’ she said to him. ‘Can you manage another slice? Fine. He will be fine, I think. So no ambulance is coming?’
‘No. But I did see Father Justin pedalling by. He was on his way to see some dying woman so said he would ring the place Garth was in before. He was certain they’d come.’
‘Barbara, you are the stupidest woman I have ever met. Do you not realise what you have done?’ Rosa’s face was like thunder.
Babs frowned. ‘I got help. That was what I was supposed to do, wasn’t it?’
Rosa shook her head. ‘Father Justin treads a narrow path and his mind is no different. He sees Garth on the outside only. He does not know what lies beneath, and even if he did he would go out of his way to destroy it.’
Babs didn’t have a clue what her mother-in-law was talking about, though it was bound to be about dead people and seeing things that other folk couldn’t see. She couldn’t see anything herself but she wanted to stay on the best side of her. She wanted her to look after her kids if – or rather when – she got another job.
‘Stand out on the kerb and tell them it was all a mistake,’ said Rosa. ‘Tell them he tripped and hurt his head. That was all it was. He is quite alright now.’
Babs stared at Rosa Brooks. Her mind was working like a steam train going full pelt along a straight line. She had to keep reminding herself that Annie needed to be looked after when she returned to work and her boys needed to be fed when they got home from school. She wouldn’t be home until later. They could make their own way home then …
‘OK. I’ll sort them,’ she said.
‘Your skirt is wriggling up,’ Rosa pointed out. She looked disdainful.
Babs opened her mouth, a sharp retort on the tip of her tongue, before reminding herself that she was here on a mission.
Tugging her short skirt down over dimpled thighs until she looked reasonably respectable, she shot out through the house. The ambulance emblazoned with the insignia of the mental home was chugging to a stop beside the kerb. Brushing aside the midges attracted by her cheap hairspray, she sauntered like Jayne Mansfield on three-inch heels, getting there just as the two men crew flung open the doors. One of them was carrying a straitjacket. The other had a clipboard tucked beneath his arm.
You haven’t lost the old magic, she thought to herself as their eyes settled on her best bits before smiling at her and asking the whereabouts of the patient.
‘False alarm,’ she told them, putting on her sexiest pout, one hand resting a hip flung to one side. ‘The poor chap only hit his head. In fact it seems as though he’s had some sense knocked into him. He’s come round quite normal in fact. Wouldn’t surprise me if he gets a job as a brain surgeon next.’
One of the blokes tugged his attention away long enough to shove his cap back on his thinning hair and shake his head. ‘Sorry, love, but once we’ve been called out on a job we’ve got to go back with somebody. I also have to say we don’t look kindly on people who call us out on false pretences.’
His mate, whose waistline equalled his height, nodded and confirmed it was so in a high falsetto voice.
‘Look, boys, I had to do something,’ she said, thinking on her feet as she shrugged one well-shaped shoulder. ‘That Father Justin is a right card. He might have taken a vow not to have anything to do with women, but you take it from me, give the old goat half a chance … so when my brother fell and hurt his head and I got the call from my aunt, well, I had an excuse … I told him that dear Garth had gone potty again and he called you boys.’
The two men looked at each other then back at her. ‘Father Justin?’ said the fat one. ‘Are you saying the old geezer likes a bit of hanky-panky?’
Babs knew how to undulate from her head to her toes. It was as though her body flowed like water curving around bends in the riverbank.
‘Well, you can see how I am. He can’t resist me. Reckons he dreams about me at night and – well – I leave the rest to your imagination, boys. If he were nine years old I’d say it was a wet dream. Wouldn’t you?’
The two men smirked and there was that look in their eyes that men have when they think they know it all and have done it all. Babs knew that look. Men had looked at her that way since she was fourteen years old. She’d won them over. She knew she had.
‘We … ll …’
There was no sign of either Rosa or Garth in the garden. Babs headed for the back door to find Rosa had Garth sat in one of the big armchairs of the pair that sat on either side of the fireplace. His scrawny neck and overlarge head sprouted out from within the folds of a rough grey blanket. His neck being so scrawny and the blanket so large, he reminded her of a tortoise emerging from its shell. He was holding three crayons in his hand. He’d obviously been drawing – his other favourite pastime besides planting cabbages. Rosa had bought Garth a sketch pad in Woolworths. She was holding it open and frowning at whatever it was he’d just drawn.
‘He looks a lot better. Just as well that they’ve gone,’ said Babs. ‘Though Father Justin will not be pleased.’
‘It has probably made things very awkward for him,’ Rosa said softly.
Babs chortled. ‘Not half as awkward as I have that’s for bloody sure.’
Just for once Rosa didn’t reprimand her use of bad language. Her eyes were on Garth. Normally, despite any eventuality, he was jabbering away like a clueless mina bird. But not now. He was sitting silently, the glowing coals of the range sending his deep-set eyes into dark shadow, the contours of his face into dark almost demonic relief.
Rosa looked worried.
Babs felt uneasy. ‘What is it? What’s happened?’
‘Garth came in from the garden and would not speak. I gave him a piece of paper and some crayons. Even though he cannot read and write he can draw pictures.’
Wordlessly, Rosa passed Babs the piece of paper on which Garth had drawn one of his pictures. On one occasion in the past he’d drawn two people buried beneath a pile of earth. The incident had actually occurred when one of the neighbours had been buried beneath a pile of earth. The neighbour had been digging a nuclear fallout shelter – he’d been obsessed about the Russians invading. The supports for the underground structure – dug in his own back garden – had fallen in on him. He’d been killed. Garth had been helping him and had survived.
Babs frowned at the drawing. She shrugged, not understanding. ‘It looks like a couple of cowboys in a gunfight. Or at least one of them looks like a cowboy. He’s wearing a cowboy hat.’
‘And the body lying between them?’
Babs looked as directed. The rough drawing showed a female form with long blonde hair.
‘Oh Christ,’ she muttered. She’d recognised Marcie and according to the drawing she might already be dead.
Chapter Forty-one
TONY BROOKS HAD signed himself out of the hospital the moment he was bandaged up and headed back to his bedsit to lick his wounds. Today he would sort things out with Marcie and perhaps nail that jerk Roberto. So far he’d hardly managed to get out of bed even to go down to the phone. When he had managed to phone his daughter, there was no response. There was no answer from the phone box
at the end of Endeavour Terrace either. Sod it! Give it a few days and he’d give them a ring then and tell them what had happened. He’d have it straight in his head by then.
He’d crawled back to bed. He needed to rest. The doctors had told him that. His ribs would take some time to heal.
He turned his pillow over to the cool side in an effort to ease the thudding in his head. If it had been a hangover it would have worked but today it didn’t. The hammering continued.
Peering out from beneath the pillow he saw the sliver of daylight piercing the slim gap between the dark-pink curtains – hardly the right colour for a man’s room, but hell, this was hardly home.
Blearily he peered at the cheap alarm clock sitting on the bedside table. Eleven thirty. Time to get up. And still the hammering, though now he realised that it wasn’t in his head. Someone was hammering at the door.
Groggily, he eased his legs out from beneath the pile of tangled bedclothes and staggered across the dull brown lino to the front door. His ribs were still heavily bandaged.
The two Jamaicans had mean faces. Their pinstriped suits had padded shoulders. Either that or they really were wide enough to hold up a road bridge. At first he thought one of them might be Ella’s husband but he realised that they were men he’d collected rent from in the past, though usually he had back-up muscle on hand, and in fact Victor himself had done the last collection as he recalled. Something about teaching Roberto the ropes. He wondered briefly how they had found his gaff before realising that it was time for a quick exit.
‘We want the ring,’ they shouted. ‘That is all.’
He didn’t have a clue what they were talking about and wasn’t about to wait and find out. Broken ribs or not, he was out to break the four-minute mile.
The lock wouldn’t hold for long, and there was no time to dress. Grabbing what he could, he climbed out of the window dressed only in his underpants.
A tousled head came out from the other side of the bedclothes.
‘Tony?’
The girl was a nightclub hostess. They’d got drunk together the night before. God knows what else they’d done. He couldn’t remember. Couldn’t even remember what her name was though it might be Freda – or Frankie – something like that.
He was gone, out of the window and taking the long jump to the ground. Luckily he was only on the first floor. If he’d been on the second he’d have broken his leg. As it was his bones jarred, but he hit the ground running.
He wasn’t stupid enough to stop. If he could jump out of that window so could his two visitors if they’d a mind to. Or they might not, he thought, as he ran, his bare feet slapping along the concrete of the back alley. They weren’t as desperate as him. Either way he wasn’t staying around to find out.
He stopped to put on some clothes at the rear exit to a transport café fronting the North Circular. It boasted a pair of wooden gates at the entrance and they were mostly kept closed. Tony slipped through.
The owner, who was also the cook, came out to tip some food waste into a bin. The stink of old grease came with him and smears of food decorated an apron that at some time had been pure white. A half-smoked cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth. Tony knew him as George, an old soldier with a beer belly and a rotten taste in food. Fry-ups were top on his list.
He didn’t look surprised to see Tony in a state of undress – almost as though he was never surprised to see anything in his back yard. Rodents mostly.
‘Alright, Tony. How you doing?’
‘I’m in a bit of a rush.’
‘You in some kind of training?’ he asked in a desultory fashion.
‘Too fucking right. I’m out to break the four-minute mile,’ said Tony while glancing nervously at the ramshackle gates. So far so good. They stayed closed.
Tony fastened his trousers and shrugged himself into an Aran cable knit. He looked down at his feet. ‘Got a pair of shoes I could borrow, George?’
‘Have these.’
George slipped his feet out of the tartan slippers he was wearing. Tony looked down at them in dismay.
‘Not exactly Italian leather are they, George? Though I suppose beggars can’t be choosers.’
‘Ten bob to you.’
‘I only want to borrow them,’ Tony protested. ‘Anyway, I didn’t bring any money with me. I came out in a bit of a rush if you know what I mean.’
Having come out of the army to unemployment, George had strayed into gangland. He knew how rough it could be out there. ‘You can owe me.’ He jerked his thumb at the kitchen door. ‘Wanna nip through?’
Tony was never one for looking a gift horse in the mouth when there was trouble on his tail. He took instant advantage of the offer. ‘Ta, mate.’
The kitchen swam in grease. Each mouthful of breath was greasy and the slippers stuck to the grungy floor beneath his feet.
The café was stuffed with lorry drivers and tradesmen scoffing their midday meals. Bubble and squeak topped with an egg was number one on the menu. Tony grimaced at the thought of it. Knowing George, some of the stuff in the mess of vegetables beneath the egg had been simmering on the hob for weeks. Still, the blokes who frequented the place were used to grub like that. Their old ladies probably cooked much the same way: plenty of fry-ups and plenty of lard.
Halfway through he spotted two familiar figures in pinstriped suits. They slowed outside the café and peered in. Tony ducked into a spare seat opposite two blokes big enough to form a barrier between the black guys and him.
They looked at him then at each other. One of them glanced briefly over his shoulder before going on piling a fork with bubble and squeak dripping with runny yolk.
Tony fingered the few pounds he had in his pocket. He considered his lying to George justified as he’d need the price of a taxi.
The bloke opposite him was very round. The braces of blue overalls strained over his shoulders. His cutlery clanged onto the plate.
Tony met the look in his eyes.
‘Need a lift, mate?’
Well, that was something of a relief. Tony answered that he wouldn’t mind. ‘Where you going?’
‘Isle of Sheppey. Got some sheet metal to deliver to an engineering works in Sheerness.’
‘That’ll do me fine,’ said Tony, unable to hide his relief. ‘I live there.’
Michael knew something really bad must have happened to make Marcie leave her flat and her business so suddenly.
‘So!’ he said to Sally. ‘Where’s she gone?’
Sally was dancing at the Jamboree Club that night. She had a resident spot there on a Friday night because she was that popular with the punters.
‘Don’t know,’ she muttered, fastening her suspender onto one of her fishnet stockings.
She took time to straighten her seam, running her hands over stocking top and bare thigh. She did the same with the second stocking, seemingly too busy to bother with the likes of him.
Michael wasn’t fooled. Sally might be blasé on the outside, but he could tell she was nervous.
‘Your bloke in tonight?’
‘Might be.’
‘The German or the copper?’
‘The copper. And Klaus is Swiss, not German.’
Sally’s ‘lesser lover’, as she called him, was a copper, an inspector in the vice squad who had got into the habit of taking his work home with him. Sally was a fine piece of work alright. She was sassy, sexy and as bold as brass. She was also Marcie’s friend.
Being purposely evasive to Michael’s enquiries, his patience was wearing thin. He grabbed her upper arm. ‘I want to know what happened to make her leave, Sally.’
‘You’re hurting.’
‘You’re struggling.’
‘Damn you.’
‘Tell me. I don’t want to hurt her, Sally. I love her. Do you understand that?’
Her eyes had a brittle sparkle to them when she looked up at him. Her bottom lip curled in anger. ‘You Camilleris …’
‘I’m not like them
. Anyway, my name is Jones.’
‘Your blood’s the same,’ she spat.
‘No. That’s where you’re wrong. Did you tell Roberto where she was?’
‘Of course not.’
‘You and him had a bit of a fling – don’t think I don’t know about it. Does Marcie know you had a fling with him? Well, Sally? Does she?’
She looked ashamed when she shook her head. Michael found himself feeling sorry for her. He let go of her arm. He sensed she was close to tears and also how upset she was.
‘I didn’t tell Roberto where she was. Honest I didn’t.’
He believed her, but there was something else going on here, something he didn’t quite understand. Normally he would have shoved off, but he didn’t. It wasn’t in his nature to intimidate women, but he decided to push her that bit more. He wanted to find Marcie. He wanted to know she was safe.
‘Have you tried her father?’
He nodded. ‘He’s done a bunk too. Latest reports are that he’s heading for home on account of messing around with someone’s wife.’
‘Oh!’
Sally swivelled round in her chair to face the mirror. It was surrounded with light bulbs just like the ones in Hollywood films. Her hand shook as she applied lipstick.
Seeing this, Michael rested his hands on her shoulders. He felt the shiver of fear that ran through her and knew it wasn’t because of him.
‘You have to tell me,’ he said, his eyes meeting hers via the mirror. ‘Who betrayed her?’
For the first time ever on a Friday night, Sexy Sally did not take off her clothes in front of a baying audience of horny men. She’d broken down and told Michael all he needed to know. She’d told him about Allegra being his father’s mistress and Allegra’s beautiful face being bruised and battered when she’d gone round to see her after Roberto’s outburst. She told him about Carla and also about the person who was funding the whole operation. He was still numb when he crossed London to see his father, the only person who could stop Roberto in his tracks.
Chapter Forty-two
THE TAXI DRIVER helped Marcie alight from the taxi that had brought her from the railway station to Endeavour Terrace. He also helped her out with the luggage she’d managed to bring with her.