Ventriloquists

by David Mathew

  ‘Buy your own.’

  ‘Maggie sent me.’

  ‘What? I have work to do, Tommy.’

  ‘Maggie sent me. To retain your skills for finding things. Mainly children.’

  ‘What are you on about?’

  Tommy nodded towards Snow White. ‘Are you sure you want Bob Marley to hear this?’

  ‘Yes. I’d like a witness,’ Yasser answered.

  ‘The only reason she took the white girl is she had her own girl stolen from her. And she would like to pay you to find her. You impressed her, boy.’

  Yasser’s heart was calming and steadying. A cauldron of questions bubbled in his mind, but one in particular made a much louder pop and flashed an image of a pair of Gucci loafers.

  ‘How much is she offering?’ Yasser asked.

  4.

  Maggie was early. Yasser knew she was early without needing his wristwatch: he was early himself and she arrived only a few minutes after him. Without so much as a word of invitation from Yasser, Maggie entered on his passenger side.

  ‘Not a bare hint of petrol,’ she said by way of a greeting.

  ‘They were bullshitting me.’

  ‘They were testing you. There’s a big difference.’

  ‘How did you get here?’ Yasser asked.

  ‘How do I get anywhere? The 61 bus... Thanks for meeting me.’ Maggie had yet to meet Yasser’s eyes; her focus was straight ahead. ‘I’d’ve understood if you told me no.’

  Yasser started the engine. ‘Where to?’

  ‘Do you know Hockliffe?’

  Yasser moved the car towards the car park’s exit ramp. ‘It’s a name on a sign,’ he told her. He reached out the window to feed his ticket to the machine. The barrier rattled erect to let them out.

  ‘I’ll direct you... A prepaid ticket, eh? Man of means.’

  Yasser indicated left. ‘I paid for thirty minutes. That’s all I was gonna wait,’ he said.

  Maggie laughed. ‘Treat em mean and keep em keen, eh Yasser? What happened to a woman’s prerogative to be late for everything?’

  ‘What happened to a child’s – to live like a child?’

  ‘Amen to that,’ Maggie whispered, and turned Yasser’s way for the first time. She only saw him in profile – he was watching for a space in the Dunstable traffic on West Street – but perhaps he had sensed her. ‘We need to turn right, by the way,’ she said, blinking back tears. ‘Then left at the crossroads, up the A5...’

  After nearly a minute a works van and a motorcycle allowed them to cross the thoroughfare and ease into traffic. Having negotiated the manoeuvre, Yasser experienced a failure of patience with Maggie. ‘Tell me about your little girl,’ he said. ‘Where did you lose her?’

  ‘I didn’t lose her. She was stolen.’

  ‘Where was she stolen?’

  ‘In Hockliffe.’

  ‘...Are you serious? You’re taking me to the scene of the crime?’

  A red light at the crossroads held them still. For the first time in this vehicle their eyes met. Something nervous but mischievous tinkered with the left side of Maggie’s mouth.

  ‘Where else did you have in mind to start the search?’ Maggie wanted to know.

  ‘I haven’t agreed to anything yet!’ Yasser protested.

  ‘Yes you have, Yasser. You turned up.’

  ‘To discuss it!’

  ‘Baloney... The light’s green. And besides, I’ve got something in my handbag for you. It’ll soothe your doubts, to be sure.’

  5.

  Hockliffe is a pleasant Bedfordshire village, smeared a brown-chrome combination this morning, about eight miles from the camp where Maggie lived. She knew the way adroitly: as though she were directing Yasser to her own refrigerator.

  For Yasser’s part, he had believed he was being led to a house or a pub – either of which would have fit. But this?

  ‘A dog-grooming shop?’

  The sign outside said LEIGHTON PAMPERED POOCH.

  ‘Bridget lives here. Follow me. Though don’t speak too much,’ said Maggie, opening the passenger side door.

  ‘And who’s Bridget when she’s at home?’ Yasser demanded, stifling the murmurs of the expensive engine.

  ‘She is at home. She’s my cousin. She used to look after Paloma.’

  It was the first time that Yasser realised that he didn’t even know the name of the allegedly abducted daughter. Well, now he did. And furthermore, he knew a bit more than the black and white of fib versus truth. The existence of a child carer lent Maggie’s story a puff of wisdom and verisimilitude.

  If this is a set-up, Yasser considered, it’s a good one.

  He had deliberately not brought cash with him this Monday morning. Only now – with a bell tinkling above the door as they entered, and Yasser’s sphincter muscle ceasing its endlessly curious gulping – did he start to wonder if he’d overplanned.

  ‘Bid!’

  ‘Mags! Hang on a mo,’ said the young woman standing at a table on which a West Highland Terrier stood proud but snuffling under the influence of some sort of canine chill. ‘I’ve just got his gonads to go around.’ With which she flicked a switch, and the electric razor that she carried fired back into life.

  The dog did not so much as blink as Bridget reapplied the tool of her trade to the tools of his. The dog was no fool.

  ‘This is Yasser,’ said Maggie.

  ‘Well, I didn’t think it was Stevie Wonder,’ Bridget responded. ‘Put the kettle on, Mags, and for fuck’s sake let the teabags drown. Enough of your cat piss. I can afford a couple of teabags.’

  Yasser waited near the door for further instruction. One question in his mind among many was this: What the hell have I got myself into?

  6.

  ‘Pamona was taken from us about three months ago,’ said Bridget.

  ‘Two months and twenty-three days,’ Maggie interrupted.

  ‘ –and it’s all my fault.’

  ‘No it’s not, Bid.’

  ‘Yes it is.’ To Yasser she said: ‘I hold myself utterly responsible. It was a shopping centre – the one in Aylesbury.’

  Yasser was frowning. ‘And the police couldn’t trace the CCTV?’ he wondered.

  ‘There were no police.’ This was uttered as a Maggie and Bridget duet.

  Yasser continued to frown. ‘You didn’t report it?’ he asked, incredulous.

  ‘Report what?’ Bridget sounded angry. ‘Another Pikey kidnapping?’

  ‘No we didn’t,’ Maggie said simply.

  Bridget sipped her tea (it had been deepened appropriately dense as a brew) and said: ‘I had a stomach upset. At any one time I was one fart away from disaster, Yasser. I had a bowel like a depth-charge.’

  ‘I get the picture.’

  Bridget shook her head. ‘I went into the Ladies. I left her outside in her pushchair. And it was the last time I saw Paloma.’

  Maggie copied Yasser’s frown. ‘I won’t have you giving up on her, Bid, I’ll give you that for a starter right now.’

  Bridget sighed. ‘I’m not giving up, Mags,’ she said, straight but quiet.

  Seconds drifted past. It was Yasser who broke the silence.

  ‘I thought you said she disappeared in Hockliffe,’ he said to Maggie.

  ‘I did,’ Maggie started to say.

  ‘She was seen here afterwards,’ Bridget explained. ‘I was frantic. Frantic. I didn’t know what to do. I went from shop to shop, searching. I remember screaming. God knows how I drove back here – I couldn’t get anyone on the phone, so I get it into my head – this is stupid, I know it – but I got it into my head she’d got home here. On her own. Somehow. She’d either been picked up and collected, or... or I don’t have a clue what. She didn’t bloody fly.’

  Yasser nodded. ‘Who saw her here?’ he asked.r />
  ‘Lulu. Louise,’ said Bridget. ‘She works for me. She swears blind she saw Pamona walking through the door.’

  ‘Walking?’

  ‘I know! She’s barely at a crawl, but Lulu’s adamant. What do you call it? A visitation?’

  ‘I suppose. A haunting.’

  ‘She was here, Yasser,’ Maggie said quickly. ‘I don’t doubt it for a second. Not that I can explain it but I believe it.’

  ‘Okay.’ Yasser breathed deeply. ‘Okay...’

  Maggie repeated, ‘She was here...’

  The Moron and the Nurse’s Dog

  1.

  Connors stared at Dorman in disbelief.

  ‘You’re having me on.’

  ‘Nope.’ Dorman was eating chicken from a bucket: one drumstick, one slurp, one chew, and down it went; on to the next, the bone discarded into a small paper dish. There were already a lot of wet bones; and on the table, only the coleslaw remained untouched: Dorman believed coleslaw was the Devil’s work.

  Connors persisted. ‘There’ll be law all over the place,’ he said. ‘Swarming.’

  ‘Don’t care. I’m going back.’ Dorman slurped. ‘Gonna do what I shoulda done before.’

  ‘But it’s just a dog, mate!’

  ‘Yeah. A dog that bit me.’

  ‘A dog that bit you while protecting his property!’

  Dorman chewed – the muscles in his temples bulged – and replied: ‘Dog ain’t got no property. It’s just a dog. As you say.’

  ‘His property. The owner’s.’

  Dorman sniffed. Although he disapproved of such logic, he was a man for the easy life, or so he said. Besides, the job had exhausted him, and he couldn’t be fussed to fight. So he changed the subject. ‘Are you sure you don’t want no chicken?’ he asked.

  ‘No I don’t. Thanks.’

  ‘It’s delicious. I wish I had a place like this near me.’

  They were eating (or Dorman was eating, Connors had taken no more than a few fries) at a table half a mile from the house they’d entered. Dorman had been firm on this point: to buy dinner afterwards. Some professionals, he explained, spent the following twenty minutes, thirty minutes, trying to race out of the immediate neighbourhood, usually in light traffic. They bought attention. The car got noticed; or your mug was caught on the station camera. Whatever. But if you kept a clear head (no alcohol: another of Dorman’s rules) and did something normal, like order a family bucket, somewhere close to where you’d explored, no one asked. You were invisible. At the very worst, it was their word against yours; and yet…

  He was determined: he would return to the house, to butcher the family canine. The one that had taken out – forcibly removed – what felt like a pound of flesh from his left glute. The wound stung. It was only fair that Dorman should have his own pound of flesh, was it not?

  ‘Finished?’ Connors asked. Barely a few minutes had passed, but Dorman was one of the fastest eaters he’d ever seen. Defeated by Dorman’s stubbornness, Connors had sloped outside for a cigarette and when he’d got back there was only one piece left for the other man to suck clean. It was hardly worth sitting down again.

  As the two men exited, they made a point of saying goodbye to the guy behind the till. If it ever came down to it, they’d want to be remembered.

  2.

  Massimo helped them with the bags. ‘Anything to report?’ he asked.

  ‘Pretty routine,’ Connors replied.

  ‘Apart from the German Shepherd you failed to mention,’ Dorman added sourly.

  ‘Really? I didn’t know nothing about a dog.’ Massimo sounded genuinely surprised. ‘Sorry about that, lads.’

  The bags were laid on a table and Massimo said, ‘Right. Let’s be having you then. What have we got?’ He opened the first one. ‘Laptop…nice… A games console. Blimey! Bit old to be playing computers, I woulda thought. Grandkids, maybe.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Connors agreed. ‘Do you mind if I get a drink, Mass?’

  ‘Bar’s in the games room, three doors down on your right. I’ll have a brandy. No ice.’

  ‘Dorman?’

  ‘Diet Coke… Use your privy, mate?’

  ‘Second on the left,’ said Massimo, now opening the second of the seven rubble-strength black bags. ‘And clean up if you splash, eh? Gail’s a demon for toilet hygiene.’

  In the corridor Connors whispered to Dorman: ‘But he must be something else as well. Place is even bigger than it looked outside! You don’t’ get a gaff like this being a fence.’

  Dorman sniffed. ‘Don’t let him hear you call him that: he hates it,’ he whispered back.

  ‘What’s he prefer?’

  ‘A transferral executive, believe it or not.’

  ‘…You’re pulling me leg.’

  ‘Straight up! Here’s me,’ Dorman added, referring to the door he’d been directed to.

  Connors wondered what might be behind the other doors he passed. There were even a few further on from the one he’d been directed to. Parenthetically he considered how cool it would be to tap this place.

  The games room was larger than the library, where they’d left Massimo to rifle through the haul. The baize on the pool table – a vibrantly bloody red – matched that of the eight-foot-high curtains. A pinball machine winked different colours in random arrangements. An exercise bike stood in the right-hand corner, facing a vast plasma screen that was currently switched off.

  Most importantly, the bar was to the left. Connors trekked over and fixed the drinks. After a moment’s hesitation he had a swift shot for his troubles – down in a swallow – and then filled his glass up again.

  Dorman was exiting the bathroom. ‘See the mess that canine’s caused!’

  ‘No thanks!’

  ‘I tell you…if not tonight, then soon.’

  ‘Keep on with the not-tonight idea,’ Connors suggested.

  Massimo had concluded (or cancelled) his inventory. As Dorman and Connors re-entered the library, the Italian was browsing the spines along one shelf of the floor-to-ceiling bookcases that hemmed in the room. He didn’t turn.

  Connors placed the glasses on the table, near one of the bags. Dorman claimed his Diet Coke and said, ‘Mass? Everything okay?’

  Massimo didn’t turn. He spoke to his book collection.

  ‘You’ll have to go back, boys,’ he said. ‘You were in the wrong house.’

  3.

  Bernadette had calmed down considerably by the time she’d returned home. She was definitely still irked – she knew her tempers well enough to understand she’d have to sleep it away – but she was nowhere near as enraged as she had been when that drunken wit had spewed up half of the Last Supper on her regulation shoes. He’d been bugging her before this – demanding to be next to see a doctor, complaining about civil liberties and the importance of his own individual National Insurance contributions – but the tepid vomit footbath had been the end of the line.

  She’d told him to leave. She’d warned him that Security would want a word…and then – then – of all the damned things, that bossy cow Margaret had admonished her to keep her voice down!

  Bernadette’s night was thirty seconds away from becoming worse.

  Scented bath, glass of wine, slice of toast, she predicted; then bed. Decisively and defiantly – bed. Tomorrow being another day, and all that.

  She turned the key and opened the front door. A few seconds later, in the pokey front room, she breathed, ‘Oh my God…’

  No TV where a TV should be – where she’d left it this afternoon. No player, no console… Just Chelsea, the four year-old German Shepherd, nudging up to her, happy to see her, the long tongue extended – wanting to play, whatever the hour.

  ‘I’ve been burgled, haven’t I, hon?’

  Not moving from the spot, she called Chris.

 
‘Is it important? Only I’m holding a straight flush and the boys are shitting a rucksack apiece.’

  Bernadette heard a chorus of taunt-filled laughter.

  ‘They think I’m bluffing. Well it’ll cost you, Tommy, to find out!’

  More laughter.

  ‘We’ve been robbed,’ Bernadette said through the noise. ‘Can you come home?’

  ‘Aw, you said it was okay I played tonight, babe. I won’t be long.’

  ‘Did you hear the first part of what I said?’

  ‘No.’

  Bernadette repeated herself.

  ‘Arsecakes… Give me fifteen minutes.’

  4.

  Dorman said, ‘But it can’t’ve been. They had a sign on the side of the door!’

  ‘Saying what?’

  ‘Seventy-seven! Seventy-seven Wilberforce Drive.’ Dorman turned to Connors for moral support, and the other man nodded enthusiastically.

  Finally, Massimo span on his heels and faced them across the table.

  ‘If I’d wanted you to go to seventy-fucking-seven,’ he said slowly, ‘I would’ve sent you to seventy-fucking-seven.’

  ‘But you did, Mass!’

  ‘Eleven. The job was eleven Wilberforce Drive.’

  ‘It fucking weren’t!’ Connors protested.

  ‘You got the paper?’ said Dorman.

  The sheet had been torn from a ledger. On it, in black ink, handwritten, was the address. Gratefully vindicated, Dorman snatched the paper from between his partner’s fingertips and skirted around the table.

  Massimo read the address. ‘Eleven Wilberforce Drive,’ he said.

  ‘You blind?’ Dorman retorted, indignantly. ‘It clearly says–‘

  ‘They’re ones, you idiot!’

  ‘…Well they look like sevens! Why’ve they got them silly hats on? A one’s a stick, Mass. It don’t have…’

  Massimo was not to be out-decibelled or out-logicked. ‘A seven has a line through it.’ He prodded the sheet of paper. ‘And they don’t. That’s a one. And that’s a one as well. You put em together and what’ve you got? Bibbadee bobbadee boo. Eleven…’ He shook his head sadly. ‘You pair of jokers. And to think you came recommended…Get back in your van.’