by David Belbin
‘I’ll tell you when we get there,’ he said, putting the roll-up in his mouth.
‘Sorry,’ Nick told him. ‘You can’t smoke in here.’
‘Yeah, but someone has, han’t they? I can smell it. Tell you what, I won’t tell if you don’t,’ the guy told him, lighting up.
Sometimes a cabbie was like a teacher. Discipline had to be instantaneous and consistent, otherwise you lost control. Nick slammed on the brakes.
‘Either the fag goes out or you do. Rules.’
Nick didn’t look in the rear view but he could feel the guy staring at him with hatred, or something like. Then he heard the door open.
‘All right. It’s out.’
‘The ride into town’ll be four quid. Let’s have it now.’
While you were in control, use it. This was an ordinary saloon. There was no way for Nick to lock the doors to prevent the guy doing a runner at the end of the ride if he chose to.
‘You’re joking.’
‘It’s the rules.’
‘Who makes the rules?’
‘I do.’
‘Sod that,’ the youth said. ‘I’ll pay you when we get there.’
He didn’t have the money. Nick could sense it. He could smell the street on the guy, too. Even if he had the money, he wouldn’t pay if he could help it.
‘Get out,’ he said, turning so that the crusty couldn’t jump him.
‘Make me.’
Nick reached beneath the seat with his right hand. The guy went into one of his pockets, probably had a knife. Nick darted forward with his left, pinched the guy’s bollocks so hard that tears ran down his face. A trick he’d had to learn inside.
‘Stop, stop!’
Nick let go.
‘You’re a fucking maniac,’ the pipsqueak said, opening the door.
‘S’right, but at least I don’t have to get my rocks off fucking thirteen-year-olds,’ Nick shouted as the guy hobbled along the side of the ringroad, leaving the door open. Nick accelerated so that the door caught the jerk on the side before slamming shut. What chance for the girl he’d been screwing? Nick had few scruples where sex was concerned, but he’d never knowingly had an underage girl.
Stop moralising, Nick told himself. For all he knew, it might have been the girl who did the seducing. Nick used to be professionally responsible for girls her age, otherwise he might feel differently. Was he really concerned about the girl’s welfare? No, what it came down to was that girls under sixteen didn’t turn him on. He needed to put all the old liberal, seeing both sides of the story crap behind him. Ethics were a luxury he couldn’t afford. He should take whatever was on offer, but keep to the law, even when he didn’t agree with it. Without law there was chaos: tough on the causes of crime, he’d heard that one inside. He wondered what Sarah made of all that. Sarah, who had been on his mind all day. Sarah, who had never been far from his mind for the last fifteen years. Sarah, with her Tory-boy lover.
8
The call-out took Nick to a library in one of the city’s biggest council estates. He was early and got out of the cab for a smoke. A sign on the library door announced that this morning there was a surgery with Sarah Bone, MP. The photo was a bad one. Sarah wore a forced smile and big hair that didn’t suit her. The red jacket she was wearing matched her lipstick. Red might be the party colour but it made her face look ghostly-pale. He wanted to see what the real Sarah looked like, but before he could summon up the nerve to go inside, a woman came out: bottle blonde, ample chested and hard faced – one hundred per cent Nottingham.
‘Waiting for me?’
‘Polly Bolton?’ Nick stubbed out his rollie and opened the cab’s back door. ‘Meeting your MP?’
‘Recognised her, did you?’ She sounded bitter about something.
‘Saw her in the paper a while back. She was dating some Tory.’
‘They were having a work meeting, she says.’
‘In that dress?’ Nick glanced in the mirror, checking out the woman’s breasts again.
‘If I went out in a dress like that, I’d be looking to pull.’
‘If I saw you out in a dress like that, I’d be first to make a move.’
The woman laughed. ‘You flatter all your punters, do you?’
‘No, love. Only the ones I fancy.’
In Sheffield, where Nick came from, love was the equivalent of duck in Nottingham, a friendly endearment. In Nottingham, his home since university, he used it more sparingly. He parked outside Tesco. Polly leant forward to pay and flashed him a smile that was more than friendly.
‘Can you pick me up just after ten? By that door?’
‘Sure.’
‘It’ll be you, will it?’
‘I was planning on finishing around then, so I’ll make it my last stop.’
He watched her hurry into the supermarket and wondered why he’d volunteered that last piece of conversation. No, he knew. She might be a little older than him and her hair colour came out of a bottle, but Polly Bolton was still handsome. Maybe Sarah, after all these years, had done him an unintended favour. She owed him one.
Six hours later, in New Basford, Polly’s babysitter left, taking a toddler and a sleeping baby with her. Polly and Nick went straight to the bedroom. They kissed and undressed in the dark, then had at each other. After five years without a woman, Nick was desperate for a coupling of any kind and Polly’s need seemed as urgent as his. Their bodies were raw meat. Their encounter felt more like wrestling than an act of love. For both of them it ended too quickly.
‘Will I see you again?’ Polly turned the light on. Her naked body was fuller than he’d expected, yet softer, more youthful. He’d forgotten how much better some women looked with their clothes off.
‘Try and keep me away.’
‘You can stay if you want.’ The words teasing rather than tender.
‘If I didn’t have to return the car, I would.’
‘Best excuse I’ve heard in ages.’
‘Hear a lot of excuses, do you?’ He pulled his trousers back on.
She wasn’t embarrassed. ‘How easy do you think I find it to meet a decent bloke when I have four kids to look after? You’re the first I’ve been with in a long while.’ The neighbour who had been looking after the kids was also a single parent, she said. They took it in turns to babysit so that they could each work the few hours they were allowed before it cut into their benefits. Some nights, therefore, she had six kids to see to.
‘How old are they?’ he asked.
‘Oldest is in her first year at secondary school. Youngest is seven. The oldest two aren’t mine. They’re my brother’s, who died.’
‘Oh.’ Nick thought it best not to ask what happened to their mother. ‘Have you been single long?’ he asked.
‘I split up with Phil nearly six years ago. We were married four years. I were twenty when we wed. Too young.’
Nick was surprised to find that Polly was five years younger than him. But looking after four kids would take it out of you.
‘How long have the older two been with you?’
‘About five years now. It was rough at first. Both their parents were killed on the same day. But they’re good kids. They cope.’
‘How did they die?’
‘Murder. It’s a nasty story. I’d rather not tell it.’
‘Sure.’
Nick didn’t need to ask why Polly’s husband left. Two extra kids, probably still traumatised, constantly reminding you of a tragedy. He kissed Polly lightly on the lips. ‘You were my first in a long time, too.’
‘Do you really finish at ten?’
‘No, I often work until three at weekends. That’s when you make the money.’
‘You can come late if you want.’
‘I really do have to return the car.’
‘I don’t mean tonight. You can come late at night, any time. I sleep badly. Just ring me first.’
He understood what she was offering. ‘We can go out. It doesn’t have to be jus
t . . .’
‘I don’t do relationships, duck. I know you’re holding something back and I don’t care. If you’re married, living with someone, it’s no skin off my nose. I’m after the same as you’re after, something to look forward to at the end of a day. Now, go quietly. I don’t want you waking the kids.’
Polly was only half alive, he decided as he drove back into the city. Whoever took her brother and sister-in-law’s lives took a large part of hers too. Most of the time, he only felt half alive himself. But not tonight.
The arrangement was that he dropped the cab off at the owner’s house and one of the lads was there to pick him up, dropping him off at his brother’s on the way to their next job. Sometimes the driver charged him a little, sometimes he got a freebie. Nick did another hour’s driving before knocking it on the head. He parked the car outside Bob’s, slipping the keys through the door. His taxi showed up when he was coming back down the path. Nick got in the front seat, as was expected. The driver looked familiar, but not from the cab office.
‘Don’t I know you?’ he said, as they drove back into the city.
‘Don’t think so,’ the driver said, keeping his eyes on the road, driving at a steady thirty, his shaved head glinting when a police car swept by in the opposite direction. ‘I’m sharing a car, like you.’
‘Right.’ The guy might have convictions, too, so it didn’t do to ask many questions. Nick directed him to Joe and Caroline’s. When they stopped, he tried to pay.
‘Forget it. You’ll do the same for me one time.’
‘Appreciated. I’m Nick.’ Nick offered his hand. The guy turned to him for the first time. His grip was rock hard.
‘I’m Ed.’
9
At the Commons it was easy to avoid people you wanted to avoid, especially when they were in another party. A problem only arose when you sat on a committee with them. Jasper March was on the Justice Select Committee, so Sarah had to share the same semicircle of leather upholstered chairs as him once a month. When Sarah took the spare seat, to Jasper’s right, the MP forced a smile. He wrote ‘sorry’ on his top committee paper.
‘You should be,’ Sarah wrote back.
‘Lunch to apologise?’ March wrote beneath her reply. This schoolboyish note passing was open to all sorts of misinterpretation, but the damage was already done. The Commons, a hotbed of gossip, now had them conducting an affair since the previous summer, when they had sneaked a long weekend in San Tropez – at least that was what Steve Carter had heard from somebody at Transport.
When Sarah didn’t reply at once, Jasper added to the note: ‘Somewhere quiet but expensive?’
Sarah ticked the word ‘lunch’ but crossed out the other four words, replacing them with: ‘My office, tomorrow at one. Bring sandwiches.’
Jasper ticked the word ‘one’ and wrote underneath, ‘but come to mine. Much better view. And I have a fridge.’
Next day, at the appointed hour, Jasper poured Sarah a glass of Chablis. ‘You’ll like this. Recent vintage but from the old vines. Lots of character.’
He was right. Sarah sipped her wine and took a crayfish salad sandwich from a pile Jasper had acquired at Pret A Manger.
‘I’m sorry that the just good friends line didn’t take with the press.’
‘No, you’re not,’ Sarah told him. ‘You should be grateful I didn’t tell them the one thing that would’ve convinced them their story was crap. That you’re gay.’
‘Are you saying that because I didn’t make a pass?’
‘Don’t flatter yourself I wanted one. If you’d told me what you were up to, I would have understood. I might even have said yes. Having the press jump out at me, then letting me work it out for myself, that wasn’t very clever.’
‘A couple of tabloids were sniffing around my marriage,’ Jasper admitted. ‘I panicked.’
‘Why? I can’t believe your wife’s going to tell them the truth.’
‘She won’t if I settle things to her liking.’
‘She must have known what you were like when she married you.’
‘She knew, but . . .’ March had already finished his glass of Chablis. He poured himself another. ‘I used to be more . . . ambivalent than I am now. Melissa hoped my sexuality would develop in one direction but, as things turned out, it went in the other.’
Sarah wanted to talk about Barrett Jones and Ed Clark, not Jasper’s delusions of bisexuality. ‘There’s a delicate matter I need to share with someone. Can I trust your discretion?’
‘Sure.’
Sarah poured herself a second glass of wine and told Jasper March about Ed Clark’s confession.
‘What do you think?’ she concluded. ‘Is there any way I can find out the truth?’
‘Let it go,’ March said. ‘There’s no percentage in publicizing Clark’s guilt, for you, or him. That was a very effective campaign you organised, but it sounds like the police have his number. He’ll be convicted of something else in due course. Or clear off abroad when his compensation comes through, if he has any sense.’
‘Compensation could take years. And the police have to be extra careful with him. So neither answer’s any comfort to the woman who’s bringing up his victims’ kids.’
‘You can’t tell her anything that will bring their parents back. Some people you can’t help. You must have discovered that by now.’
He had given the answer she was expecting. ‘I had, but sometimes I need reminding.’
‘I still owe you one,’ Jasper said, as she got up to go. ‘Sorry I couldn’t help much with that last thing. If there’s ever anything else . . .’
‘I won’t be here long enough to call in that debt. Unless, that is, you’ve got any dirt on Barrett Jones which might help my campaign.’
‘Ah yes, I can see how you’d be upset about having a minister like Barrett parachuted in to oppose you. Nobody likes a carpetbagger, do they?’
Jasper chuckled and held the door open for her. Sarah wondered whether the seed she’d just sown had landed on fertile ground.
Billboards in Nottingham boasted that British Rail could take you to London in ninety minutes, but the train Nick was on took two hours, as it always had done. St Pancras hadn’t changed either: a grim, gothic pile that stank of tar and burnt oil. Nick walked into Bloomsbury. There were still plenty of cheap hotels around Great Russell Street. If he needed to stay over, a basic room was thirty quid a night. An overnight stop would give Caroline and Joe a break. Caroline, he’d begun to sense, was fed up of his constant presence. She probably wasn’t happy about him driving a cab for Joe, either, but was too tactful to tell him so.
Nick was here on the scrounge. He needed to find money for the deposit on a flat, and didn’t want to go begging to his younger brother. A phone call might suffice but in person was better and, anyhow, Nick couldn’t get Andrew’s new number. He’d rung round a few old friends and acquaintances the day before, people he hadn’t spoken to since he’d been convicted. The conversations weren’t comfortable.
‘Nick Cane? Been a long time . . . Didn’t . . .? I can understand you not wanting to talk about it. Haven’t seen Andy in five years I’m afraid. No, I don’t know who might know. Probably ex-directory. He’s gone up in the world. Wouldn’t surprise me if he’s permanently in New York now.’
‘Andy Saint? He still has his place in London, I think. Last I heard of him was in the financial pages, land development, that sort of thing.’
None of the people Nick had spoken to suggested meeting or catching up. Middle-class criminals were rarely caught. The bad smell that came off Nick might attach to them. But as far as everyone knew, Andrew’s home address hadn’t changed. Nick could find him. A letter wouldn’t do. It might be opened by somebody else. Also, Nick didn’t want to give Andrew time to think. The Saint owed him and that should be that. How much he owed was open for discussion.
Nick took the tube to Notting Hill. When Andrew bought this place, it was dirt cheap. The house was a white-walled, six
-bedroom wreck that had been squatted in throughout the seventies, abandoned and boarded up in the early eighties and finally sold for a song just before the property boom got under way. Andrew’s place was freshly painted in Sherwood green. The windows looked new. Smart paving tiles had been laid at the front where there used to be scrub and weeds. A Merc was parked in the drive. It was in the same league as the other vehicles on the street. Most were big cars with child seats and plenty of leg room in the back for the teenagers they dropped off at Holland Park School.
The bell used to be two bits of wire you pushed together. At least then you could hear it ring. The new one made no noise. There was an intercom. A round aperture high in the porch might be a security camera. Nick wasn’t expecting Andrew to be at home. He may have to wait hours before he returned. Would Andrew have been expecting him to show up at some point? If Nick hadn’t failed that drugs test, he could have been out three months ago. But people on the outside were liable to forget that prisoners could earn remission of part of their sentence for good behaviour. Andrew might think that Nick was still serving his full time.
The footsteps Nick heard would be a housekeeper. Nick would ask when the boss would be home and refuse to leave his name. He was ready to hang around for a couple of days if that was what it took.
But, to Nick’s surprise, the figure who half opened the door was Andrew – a smarter, less portly Andrew than when Nick had last seen him. His glasses were mildly tinted. Nick thought he saw momentary confusion. Then a warm smile spread across his old friend’s face.
‘Nick! You’re back with us. Come in, come in.’
They hugged.
‘I’d have rung first but you’ve changed your number,’ Nick said.
‘No need, no need. It’s great to see you.’
Nick followed Andy into the kitchen. The house was an odd mix of shabby and swish. Old floor tiles, new kitchen units. A cork notice board displayed only a couple of takeaway menus and a taxi card.
‘Sorry, mate. I should have stayed in touch when you were inside, but life got insanely busy. Things are so much more complicated when you go legit.’
Nick smiled. ‘Completely legit?’