Rags, Bones and Donkey Stones (Sequel)

by B A Lightfoot

  ‘That’s alright, Chopper,’ Bridget smiled. ‘God forgive us for speaking ill of the dead but I think that that seems a fair description to me as well.’

  Liam heard the door bang open as if hit by a gale force wind followed by a yelp, a few muttered oaths about the pile of coats hanging up in the hall, then a jangling clatter as a bicycle was dropped into place.

  ‘That will be our Billy,’ Liam said. ‘He has the same problem every night with that bike. Why doesn’t he just take it round the entry and leave it in the yard to save himself all that trouble?’

  ‘Because he said that there is too much dog dirt in the entry and he doesn’t want to have to inspect it every time he goes out. He was most embarrassed when he cycled over to Amy’s and it stank to high heaven. I’ll just go and get him a pot for his tea.’

  ‘That’s bloody good, isn’t it?’ Liam whispered to Chopper when his wife had disappeared into the kitchen. ‘Billy gets a pint pot when he comes in and we get these poncy little cups that you can’t get your finger through the handle. Oh, hello son. Did you get that truck washed down, then?’

  ‘Hiya Dad, hello Mr Hennessy. Aye, I got it finished. It’s ready for in the morning. You’ll never guess who just came down to the yard.’

  ‘It wasn’t your mate, Hamster, was it?’

  ‘Oh, how did you know? Has Mam already told you?’

  ‘Maybe I just have a sixth sense for these things; a father’s ability to read his son’s mind.’

  ‘And maybe you just haven’t,’ Bridget said, coming through the door with the pint pot steaming with the fresh brewed tea. ‘Your dad guessed who it was from my description.’

  ‘Well, alright, maybe I did,’ Liam said, slightly deflated. ‘What was this about the donkey? Has he come into a bit of money or something?’

  ‘No, it was Cheerful’s. He had asked Hamster to take that note to the Turk’s Head for the Boss, like Seamus told you. Then that night, he came over and told Hamster that he was leaving and he wanted Hamster to have the donkey because he would have no further use for it.’

  ‘Leaving?’ Liam said. ‘Where was he going?’

  ‘He wouldn’t say. Hamster said he looked a bit pleased with himself. You would notice that with Cheerful.’

  ‘What? Did he just up and go without a by-your-leave or anything?’ Chopper asked.

  ‘Well, apparently. He said that he was just slipping quietly out. He gave Hamster a letter that he said was an official transfer of the animal but not to show it to anybody unless he was forced to prove that he was the rightful owner. Then he went.’

  ‘Funny that he didn’t come over with the donkey before,’ Bridget said. ‘I mean, seeing that he was obviously so pleased, you might have expected him to have brought it over earlier.’

  ‘Oh, yes, he probably would have done but the police haven’t let them move off the premises for the last two days,’ Billy explained. ‘Apparently they found the body of the Boss just a few yards up the arches from where the stables are.’

  ‘That’s right, son,’ Liam said. ‘We have just been reading about it. Chopper brought the paper.’

  ‘Well, apparently they kept them there to question them and to make sure that the story didn’t get out. One of the Boss’s lads told them that he got called away and that Hamster had brought the note. They took him up to Whitworth Street but let him go back at night to look after the donkey. Nobody asked him where he got it from so he never said.’

  ‘Did he tell them that the note had been given to him by Cheerful?’ Liam asked.

  ‘Yes, but he said that he had no idea what was in it and, anyway, he can’t read so there was no chance that he could have sneaked a look.’

  Liam stared glumly at the newspaper headlines. ‘So the only lead that they have has just disappeared. Now all the focus will turn on me. They won’t bother what was in the note; I am the one who has the motive so they will just assume that I had something to do with it.’

  ‘I don’t suppose that this will help much,’ Billy said, taking a piece of folded paper from his wallet. ‘One of the lads at the stables told Hamster to give it to me. It’s from page five of last night’s Evening News.’

  Liam took the torn-out extract and read aloud the poignant headline, ‘Sad Vagrant Found Dead.’ The small article continued ‘Gravediggers at Southern Cemetery yesterday morning found the body of a man lying on one of the graves. From papers found in his possession, police have identified the man as George Flaxman. The grave is said to be that in which his father-in-law and his late wife, Alice, are buried.’

  ‘Apparently, this George Flaxman is Cheerful,’ Billy said. ‘It seems weird, him having a proper name, you know, like a real person.’

  ‘Well, I suppose your friend Hamster has a proper name as well, hidden away somewhere,’ Bridget said. ‘But you are right; it doesn’t help much.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ Liam growled. ‘What a right bugger’s-muddle this is turning out to be. I’m going for a pint with Eddie. Do you fancy one, Chopper? And in the morning I am going to see Nellie Grimshaw and see what she might have to say.’

  ‘You make us a cup of tea, love, whilst I just finish going through these papers,’ Nellie said, ushering Liam through to the living room. ‘I shan’t be a minute. The kettle’s already on. Make sure that you put a warmer in the pot before you put the tea in. You’re not looking too chirpy this morning. I would have thought that you might have been glad to see the back of that fool, Meredith.’

  ‘Aye, well, I suppose that I am in a way,’ Liam growled, splashing some water from the large copper kettle into the teapot. ‘But I told you about the meeting that I was trying to set up. Well, it just went all wrong and it has gone worse from there.’ Liam told Nellie that, apparently, a lad that they called Hamster from the stables had come down to the Turk’s Head and given Meredith a note. As a result, he had slipped out of the pub early and the next thing that they know is that he had been found hanging. Liam stirred the tea in the pot and looked in the drawer for the strainer. ‘Somebody had told the police about the meeting and the place was crawling with bobbies.’ He took a china cup and saucer from the cupboard and unhooked Harry’s pint pot, which Liam was now given on his visits, from under the shelf. ‘So who are all the fingers pointing at? Muggins here. Me, that’s who.’

  Liam poured the tea and carried the mug and the cup through to the living room. ‘That looks fine, thank you,’ Nellie said, inspecting the tea to ensure that it had the correct amount of milk. ‘Don’t take on so about this business. I’m sure that it will all be sorted out in the end.’

  ‘How can it be sorted out?’ Liam demanded. ‘The bloke who sent the note was from the stables. He might have been able to explain things but the inconsiderate sod has been found dead. I’m the one with the motive. All the fingers will be pointing at me.’

  ‘That might not be the case,’ Nellie said calmly. ‘Apparently they have a witness. Not a very reliable one, admittedly. I have been making some enquiries from a few friends because I heard about this a couple of days ago. The police have picked up a tramp who dosses in the next archway; having an afternoon nap after drinking a bottle of cider that he’d pinched from somewhere.’

  ‘He wouldn’t be much use, then, if he slept through it,’ Liam grumbled, wiping his lips after a mouthful of his tea. He watched Nellie as she signed some papers and put them into an envelope. She replaced the others into a buff manilla folder. She seemed coolly oblivious to his feeling of desperate gloom. ‘Not likely to be of any use if he slept through it. He won’t have heard much, anyway, with the trains rumbling over and him being half cut.’

  ‘Well, apparently he told the police that he heard a couple arguing and a baby crying. He said that the woman was shouting something about telling his wife everything. The man was getting really angry and she started screaming. Then the noise stopped suddenly. He said that he heard a donkey braying. He went to the end of the archway to see if he could see anything.’

&n
bsp; ‘And did he?’

  ‘He said that there was a man with a donkey just coming out. There was a woman carrying a baby with him. They were both smiling. The man took an envelope out of his pocket and gave it to the woman and she gave him a kiss. He heard the woman say that she would have to go now; she had only borrowed the baby for a couple of hours. The police confirmed that they believed the man was your George Flaxman. It was some meths drinkers who use the arch that found Meredith later. They went for a policeman.’

  ‘Bloody wars, sorry, Nellie. What’s that all about? I’ve got a headache coming on trying to take all this in. From what we have been told, Cheerful George certainly had a grudge to settle against Meredith. The police don’t know, though, that he did have a motive so the suspicion will still be on me.’

  ‘Well, I am not so sure about that,’ Nellie said. ‘The police knew exactly where you were because they had been told that you were the ring leader and they were watching you all afternoon. They even followed you and that Chopper man home.’

  ‘Oh, right, that was a bit of luck. Whoever it was that ratted on me managed to do me a bit of a favour.’

  ‘They did. And talking about rats, whoever had killed Meredith had cut off his er… his old man. The police found it after the rats had been chewing at it.’

  Liam shuddered. ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about, Nellie.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t. And you can thank George Flaxman for that favour. It was him that told the police about your plans.’

  ‘What!’ Liam almost choked on his mouthful of tea. ‘The treacherous sod. I thought that he was on my side and all the time he was going behind my back and informing on me.’

  ‘Liam, calm down,’ Nellie said firmly. ‘You were doing nothing wrong in just wanting a business meeting with Meredith. It was more the fact that you were taking a small, private army with you that raised the concerns. There are some amongst the higher-ups that had a vested interest in ensuring that it stayed peaceful.’

  ‘So why would this Flaxman try and make trouble for me when he hated Meredith himself?’

  ‘I would guess that he didn’t think that your idea of justice was severe enough. Your solution was basically to put Meredith out to grass. He wanted something much harsher. By telling the police about your plans he gave you an alibi so that suspicion wouldn’t fall on you.’

  Liam began to relax as the significance of Nellie’s observations sank in. ‘I suppose that he didn’t want Meredith disappearing off the scene before he had got to him.’

  ‘That’s right. I would imagine that when he heard about your meeting, everything just fell into place.’

  ‘Well, I suppose that it takes the pressure off me. But how do they prove anything now that Cheerful is dead? They won’t know that he had such a serious grievance.’

  ‘No, they would find that hard to establish because all the porters will stay tight-lipped,’ Nellie said. ‘There are a lot of people, though, who are very worried about what might appear if they start turning stones over. It looks as though it might just be swept under the carpet. My guess is that, at the end of the day, the tramp’s evidence will be used selectively to bring a suicide verdict.’

  Chapter 26

  The headphones were beginning to chaff Edward’s ears. He had been listening intently for over half an hour now, trying to pick up a signal from the new crystal that he had acquired – a pea sized piece of galena set in a bed of solder. He had been making microscopic turns of the handle that moved the ‘cat’s whisker,’ a piece of thirty gauge phosphor-bronze wire, over the surface of the crystal trying to find the spot that would pick up the signal. He went outside to make sure that the aerial wire was still hanging from the bedroom window and the copper rod that formed the earth was pushed far enough through the gap between the paving stones.

  When he came back into the room he was coughing violently from the effects of the cold air outside. He sat in his chair, drank his tea and smoked a cigarette. Laura was knitting something fawn in the chair on the other side of the fireplace and shuddered as she listened to her husband’s racking cough. She had got the younger children to bed but their son, Eddie, and their daughter, Pippin, were still out. ‘Are you not having any luck yet?’ she asked.

  ‘No. You know what it is like trying to find the right spot. I might have bought a duff crystal. I’ll have to save up and buy one of those new vacuum tube sets.’

  ‘There never seems much to listen to when you do finally manage to tune them. It hardly seems worth all the effort.’

  ‘I have heard some good programmes on there. It’s nice to listen to the music and you get some interesting discussions occasionally. I’ll give it another go.’ He sat down at the table again and reaffixed the headphones. He knew that his cough was worsening; he always tried to muffle it, to hide from his family the rasping, retching noise, but he often caught Laura’s eye watching him. It was Thursday, the day for cleaning the bedrooms, and he had given Laura a hand to do them. Sweeping the rugs had been the worst part. He had soon become totally exhausted, glad of the chance, when it came, for the mug of tea and a quiet few minutes to tune his crystal set. There was no point in wasting money on a visit to the doctor; they had no more idea of what to do about the men, like him, who had been gassed than the widely respected Granny Higgins had. A spoonful of her linctus and a cigarette generally eased things when he was forced to get up during the night. You rolled the syrupy mixture of herbs and spices round your tongue and let it slide gently down your throat. A cigarette afterwards always tasted like those French ones that they had had to fall back on when they couldn’t get hold of Woodbines. Chopper Hennessy had once told him that Granny Higgins had asked him to let her know if he spotted willow trees when he was doing his rent rounds and Liam had said that he was sure that he had seen a Tom Mix film where the Indians in this tribe were chewing branches that they had cut off a tree, and that was probably willow.

  As he traced along the side of the crystal he thought that he picked up a sound then realised that it was only the muffled voice of Laura saying something about having forgotten how many rows of her knitting she had done. Maybe he should apply for another assessment by the Army doctors. What could they do, though? Half the lads standing on the rails at Cross Lane corner were coughing like him; especially with this cold weather that they had been having. Perhaps it would settle down when things got a bit warmer. He’d been finding it a bit difficult loading and unloading the boxes but Liam had now put him on driving so things had been much better. Just got so short of breath; absolutely knackered when he had whitewashed the backyard last Sunday.

  He had almost collapsed recently when he had gone to the swimming baths to watch Ben in the schools gala. After only a short time watching the races in the steamy heat he had felt the burning sensation in his nose and throat, the stinging in his eyes. He had gasped for breath as the stifling, suffocating pain had grown in his chest and he had felt the choking asphyxiation as his legs began to crumble. The echoing, hollow shouting and screaming had welled into an overwhelming pain in his head. A hazy mist rose up, enveloping him. The green gas cloud had billowed up out of the bottom of the ditch, rolling relentlessly forward. He had struggled to stay upright; the gas was heavy and would accumulate in the lower ground. He needed to stay on his feet until he got Liam clear of it. The cloying mud vacuum-sucked at his feet, binding tightly to his boots. Blood was running over his gas mask where he had hastily fitted it over Liam’s head. Pulling on one weary leg pushed the other boot further into the mud. He heaved and strained, bullets pinged into trees near his head, the smell of the gas made him retch. Slimy, unending mud dragged on each laboured step and clung at the body of his friend as he dragged him through the ditch. Voices shouting, sweat blurring his vision, the evil, green gas teasing around his tortured body. He saw the young nurse’s anxious face as he had struggled to drag the oxygen mask off his face. The white walls in the hospital, white coats, the nurse holding his head up as she tried to give him
milk. No place there in that bleached, pristine infirmary for slime, for green gas, for bright red blood coalescing into muddy brown as it dripped down the shoulder, onto the filthy tunic. WHERE WAS LIAM?

  Young Edward had almost carried him outside and sat him on a low wall where the pain had slowly subsided. He remembered his son assuring a policeman that, no, his dad was definitely not drunk and that if he had been out there himself in those sodding trenches he would have known that it was that bloody German gas that was killing his dad. Edward had not heard his son swear before and felt quite uneasy as he thought about it. He supposed it was all a part of growing up. The young lad had been forced to do that quickly in the four years that his dad had been away. At least the dispute over the right to the rocking chair had been resolved by default as the lad was out most of the time now. His new girl friend was a good looking young lady; very confident and a pleasant personality. Edward had always thought that his son might finish up with Pippin’s best mate, Amy, but she seemed to have set her cap at Liam’s lad.

  He held his breath as he heard a sound but it was just Laura uncrossing and re-crossing her legs. When he had been brought back from France, then discharged a few weeks before the Armistice, he had wondered how he could make things work. He had felt so vulnerable; no regimented routine, no battle orders, no Sergeants or Majors, no Captains, no structured group that took control of his life, though with little responsibility. That was, perhaps, a bit unfair. The officers in the field did seem to care; the Government and the Generals, standing so far away from the action, just regarded them as cannon fodder. Throw a few battalions into that theatre of war and see if we can make a few miles, a few yards even. We’ll take a head count at the end of it and hope that we have enough to push on a bit further. The family had learned to manage without him. But when he had come home he hadn’t really had the will to try very hard. He had felt ill and lonely and isolated. Laura had been anxious and caring but she had a demanding timetable that he had found difficulty slotting into. He had seen his friends blown to pieces; now the kitchen needed painting. He had walked on corpses of school mates that were being eaten by rats; now wood needed chopping for the fire. He had seen the entrails hanging out of one of his best pals and had dragged the other, a bullet through his head, out of a chlorine-filled trench; here in Salford the cast-iron coal grid was cracked and needed replacing. He had eventually felt more settled after Liam came back and, give him his due, young Edward had been supportive and helpful, but from a distance. It was just this bastard cough that was getting him down. These frosty mornings and the freezing winds gave him no release. If only the weather would pick up a bit.