‘Trinidad and Tobago?’
‘The heavies, luv. Big black bastards whose ancestors hail from sunnier climes.’
‘Oh! Good grief. Yes, well, I’m delighted in that case that Alf’s going. I certainly don’t want any broken legs decorating my back yard, thank you very much, and what am I supposed to do if they come to the door?’ I asked a trifle nervously.
‘Send them straight down to me, luv. I’ll sort them out.’
Really? I looked dubiously at Mac’s tiny frame. ‘Well, I sincerely hope you’re right.’
‘Oh, they wouldn’t touch me. I know too many influential people, see,’ he tapped the side of his nose. ‘Too many people wiv more subtler, but probably more interesting, mefods of persuasion.’
‘Oh! Right.’ Bloody hell. Yes, I imagined he did. It occurred to me that Mac had probably led quite an exotic life – this tiny little man who’d protected his big, lumbering, younger brother from a vile stepfather, been through Barnardo’s and then out the other side into the turbulent East End. I expect Mac knew quite a few colourful characters.
‘So don’t you worry, luv,’ he said, taking my elbow again, only this time, subtly propelling me housewards. ‘We can handle it. Only I’d be ever so grateful if – you know.’ He tapped his nose again. ‘Mum’s the word.’
‘Oh – yes, of course. I mean, I don’t know anyone to tell, Mac.’
Don’t actually know anyone in gangland Hackney who’d be interested in his brother’s whereabouts, I thought as I made my way slowly back to the house. It struck me, though, that there were clearly some lawless places out there. Not exactly Al Capone land, but a shady, grey, wheeling-and-dealing area where people still got their legs broken, a place that most ordinary people didn’t even know existed. I pulled my cardigan around me with a little shiver. Well, I for one was far happier being blissfully ignorant.
As I wandered back through the French windows I closed them behind me, shooting the bolts up firmly. Now that the weather had broken there was a chill in the air and the wind was getting up. In fact, it occurred to me that the reason it was gushing through here like a raging monsoon was because the front door was wide open. God, no wonder there was such a gale. As I crossed the room to the hall and went to shut it, someone coughed behind me. I froze. Stood there, paralysed with fear, one hand on the doorknob. Then I swung around. Over the back of the sofa, the top of a man’s head was clearly visible. A dark head.
‘Who is it!’ I yelped, swinging the front door open again. ‘Christ! What d’you want!’
‘Peace and quiet and a large gin, since you ask.’ Hugh’s head popped up over the sofa.
‘Omigod!’ I clutched my thumping chest. ‘Oh my God, Hugh, don’t do that! I thought you were Trinidad and Tobago!’
‘Who?’
‘Trinidad and Tobago, the heavies, well versed in the art of subtle persuasion!’
He frowned. ‘What the hell are you talking about, Livvy?’
Still hanging on to the furniture, I told him all about Alf and his debts. He chuckled.
‘Blimey, I should think he’s scared witless. I’d rather be hounded by the police than those hoods. Can’t he raise the money?’
‘I think,’ I said, collapsing into a convenient armchair, still suffering from shock, ‘that if that had been an option he’d have explored it by now, don’t you?’ Suddenly I sat bolt upright. ‘Oh help – I’m not supposed to tell anyone!’ I clutched my mouth. ‘Oh God, Hugh, I swore I wouldn’t breathe a word to a living soul and I’ve just told you the whole story!’
‘Oh, don’t worry, my love, I’m not a living soul, just a grey, shambling wreck inhabiting a living soul’s body. Your secret’s safe with me. My lips are sealed.’
‘Well, they bloody better be or I’m in deep shit,’ I said reverting to gangland parlance. ‘And anyway, what the hell are you doing here, Hugh, frightening the life out of me? Why aren’t you at home changing nappies and rubbing cream into cracked nipples?’
‘Because – something terrible’s happened.’ I realised with a start his face was very grim.
I gasped. ‘Oh God, not the baby!’ I shot out of my chair.
‘No, no, not the baby,’ he said hastily. ‘Sorry, Livvy, didn’t mean to frighten you. No, Flora’s fine, that would be tragic, this is merely terrible. No, Millicent’s arrived,’ he informed me darkly.
‘Ah!’ I sank back down again. ‘God, don’t do that to me, Hugh. I’ve had more than enough shocks for one day!’
‘Sorry. Still, you must admit it’s fairly appalling. She breezed in this morning, totally unannounced, of course. She knows full well we’d go into hiding with Alf if she’d given us prior warning.’
‘Oh dear, poor you!’ I giggled. Millicent was Molly’s huge and formidable mother, truly a woman of substance, about fourteen stone in all, and still firmly entrenched somewhere in the 1950s, when being a housewife really stood for something. She couldn’t understand why Molly didn’t darn her husband’s socks, boil giblets for gravy and knit her children’s vests.
‘There I was, upstairs,’ Hugh went on tragically, ‘casting a dreamy, casual eye out of the bedroom window, minding my own business, quietly picking my nose and idly wondering whether Molly would like to be eased gently back into the sexual saddle tonight – albeit a few weeks before she goes up on the ramps for her six-week check-up – when suddenly, a horribly familiar white Fiesta draws up. The door opens, there’s a ghastly hiatus … and then Millicent’s unmistakable bulk is disgorged, a carrier bag in each hand – one, no doubt full of nourishing food (bits of dead sheep to you and me) and the other full of Pingouin knitting patterns – and all I could do was watch, petrified, as she cruised menacingly up the garden path like a battleship under full steam.’
‘Oh God! What did you do?’
‘Well, first I dropped my bogey –’
‘Hugh!’
‘Then my fantasy, and then I legged it downstairs and out of the back door, just as her humongous fist was hammering at the front. I tell you, Livvy, it was a close-run thing. I mean, normally I can spot her heaving into view at twenty paces and divert at nineteen, but this time she caught me on the hop.’ He shuddered. ‘Frankly I’d rather meet your brace of black boys in a dark alley than Millicent in the front hall. Now where’s that drink I ordered?’
‘Poor Molly,’ I sighed, getting up to pour it.
‘Ah yes, alas, poor Moll,’ he intoned sadly. ‘Trapped for hours, nay, days even, being permanently scolded about how she’s not looking after the baby properly, and being told how Alison – married to Moll’s brother, remember? Mousy little wifey thing? Wears an apron? Probably wears it in bed.’
‘Oh yes,’ I giggled.
‘How Alison – God, quite sexy actually. Naked but for an apron.’
‘Get on with it!’
‘Oh yes, well how Alison never gave baby Hannah the breast unless it was absolutely bang on four hours since she’d been offered it the last time, whilst my poor Moll sits there, being constantly milked by our demanding daughter and looking like some mad cow, all wild about the eyes, and now about to be driven even madder as Millicent subjects her to reams of photos of young Hannah – who looks like a cross between Boris Yeltsin and a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig incidentally – dressed in cutesy little smocky things, all of which the sainted Alison has made by hand, whilst the only thing poor Moll has ever made by hand is a mess.’
I giggled and passed him a large gin, sipping my own and sitting down beside him on the sofa, pulling my legs up under me. ‘Which is precisely why you should get back,’ I said, wagging a finger sternly. ‘It’s unfair to leave her on her own.’
‘I thought we’d do it in shifts,’ he said, resting his head back and gazing at the ceiling. ‘I thought I’d creep back when it’s dark, smuggle her and Flora out, and tell her that your front door is always open – which it was, by the way – and that even better, Johnny’s car isn’t even in the front drive.’ He turned his head, eyed me beadily
.
I swirled the ice in my glass. ‘Well spotted,’ I said levelly. ‘I’d noticed that too. But I had no idea,’ I went on brightly, ‘that you and Molly disliked him so much, Hugh.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that,’ he said lightly, ‘nothing so strong as dislike. No, no, we just thought he treated you like dog poo, that’s all. And I’m not just talking about the last six months, either.’
‘Ah, I see. So, therefore you thought I was pathetic, cringing and downtrodden?’
‘You can only be downtrodden, Liv, if someone bigger is doing the treading, but I’ll say no more, because I’ve learnt from past experience that it’s a mistake. Only the other day a mate of mine, Tom, confided to me that he’d left his wife and I yelled, “Terrific! I always thought Geraldine was a dog, and you wouldn’t believe the number of times I’ve had to wrestle her hand out of the front of my trousers!” Well, bugger me if two weeks later I’m not sitting next to “the dog” at a dinner party, and Tom’s shooting me homicidal looks over the salmon mousse. I think Johnny’s a wonderful, caring human being, Livvy, and I love him to bits. Now, moving smartly on, the other reason I came, aside from not meddling in your domestic set-up and aside from escaping Millicent, was to give you these.’ He lifted his bottom off the sofa, reached into his jeans pocket and flicked some pieces of paper at me.
‘What are they?’
‘Tickets for Sebastian’s concert tomorrow night. He very kindly sent them, together with some flowers – which was totally uncalled for – as a thank you for supper the other week.’ He sighed, wistfully. ‘Believe it or not we were actually thinking of going. Moll’s got terrible cabin fever – you know, four-walls-and-a-baby-not-to-mention-sodding-Henry – and she thought she could easily feed during the performance and meanwhile we could greedily observe other life forms, be reminded that there is a world out there.’ He sighed. ‘But now that HMS Splendid’s arrived our plans lie in tatters. We shall no doubt be sitting down to supper and sampling some of her famous desiccated lamb’s heart stew instead.’ He shuddered. ‘She brings the bits of sheep with her, you know. They’re the oldest ewes in Wales. I’m sure she sits on the hillside watching them, waiting for them to die – which they gladly do under her gaze – before smuggling them home and hanging them for six months prior to foisting them on to us.’
I smiled, but I wasn’t really listening to his habitual patter, I was gazing at the tickets, turning them over in my hand. ‘But – how very kind of him,’ I said slowly, as it also occurred to me that – God, he hadn’t sent me one, had he?
‘Wasn’t it?’ Hugh agreed. ‘I popped in to thank him just now, actually, en route here. Didn’t stay, though. He was having a bit of a pre-concert drinks do with the musical élite, and they all looked a bit scary and sophisticated to me.’
‘Oh yes,’ I sat up eagerly, ‘I saw Imo’s car. She and Hugo are over there, did you see them?’
‘I saw Imogen,’ he said carefully.
‘I wonder if she’ll pop over later,’ I mused, gazing somewhat wistfully in that direction.
‘I doubt it somehow,’ he said quietly.
I glanced back. ‘Why?’
‘Oh – just that it looked like it was going to go on a bit,’ he said quickly. ‘You know.’
‘Oh, right.’ I felt a brief pang of jealousy. A roaring pre-concert drinks party, eh, and if I’d played my cards right I could have been there too. Christ, been there – I might even have been the hostess. I chewed my lip ruefully for a moment, then smiled.
‘God, I’m so pleased about Imo, though, aren’t you, Hugh? She’s absolutely ecstatic about this guy. Honestly, you should hear her eulogising about him. Molly said she left a message on the answer machine the other day saying she was absolutely besotted, and that’s so unlike her, isn’t it? She’s keeping a hell of a low profile, though,’ I said, frowning. ‘She popped in briefly when Johnny came back, but I was just thinking, I haven’t really had a proper evening or lunch with her since that terrible concert in the Abbey. Does Moll see much of her?’
Hugh took a deep breath. ‘Um, Livvy, look. I wasn’t going to tell you this, but I think there’s something you should – Shit!’
We both jumped and I spilt my drink as a tremendous banging came at the front door.
‘Bloody hell!’ I squeaked, jumping up. ‘I do have a bell!’
The banging came again, only more of a hammering now. Hugh and I gazed at each other, stunned.
‘God, who the hell would do that?’ whispered Hugh, getting up and moving behind the sofa.
I went to answer it. ‘Well, I don’t know, but I’m bloody well going to –’ I stopped. Swung round. My hand flew to my mouth. ‘Trinidad and Tobago!’ I breathed.
‘Oh, good point,’ he muttered with relief. ‘For an awful moment I thought it might be Millicent.’
‘Quick, in here!’ I grabbed his arm and pulled him through into the study, which looked out on to the front drive. We scuttled to the window together and peered out round the red velvet curtain. A small, bald-headed man in a beige, belted raincoat was standing on the step, beside a middle-aged, peroxide-blonde woman in a well-worn, shiny C&A suit.
‘Oh. How very disappointing,’ observed Hugh flatly. ‘They look like insurance salesmen. Either that or Jehovah’s Witnesses.’
‘Well, thank goodness for that,’ I said with relief, going to answer the door. ‘They certainly don’t look like knuckle breakers, anyway.’
I opened it.
‘Mithith McFarllen?’ the man enquired softly. He had a lisp.
‘Yes?’
‘I believe a gentleman named Mithter Alfred Turner ith currently in your employ. May we thpeak with him, pleathe?’
My heart skipped. God, yes, of course, far more sinister. The quietly spoken gunman and his female accomplice, his moll, his femme fatale, brought along for cover. Nothing brutal and thuggish, mind, just a single bullet to the head, while the girl wiped the revolver clean with a white silk handkerchief.
‘Oh! Well, yes I –’
‘Police,’ the moll informed me helpfully, flicking out her ID card.
‘Oh!’ I gasped with relief. ‘Good, heavens, I thought you were –’
‘Yes?’
‘No, no, nothing. Um, yes, well do come in. In fact – no, no, don’t come in, there’s no point. We’ll go round the back. They’re down in a caravan, you see, in the garden. Such fun, you’ll see!’ I breezed nervously. I stepped outside and began to lead the way, when abruptly I stopped. ‘Oh – except I have to tell you, I have a feeling Alf won’t be there.’
‘Really? Why so?’ asked Raincoat.
‘Well, because they always go to the pub at about this time.’ I glanced at my watch. ‘Yes, they’ll be having a pint.’
‘Ah.’ He gave a thin smile. ‘Well, shall we go and thee, anyway, Mrs McFarllen? Jutht in case? Shall we go and find out?’ he gestured with his arm that I should lead on again.
‘Oh, yes, OK.’ God, he was a bit creepy, wasn’t he? A bit – you know – unnecessary? ‘Um, coming, Hugh?’ I glanced back over my shoulder.
But Hugh was recovering from shock and cowering in the porch, desperately trying to light a cigarette with an empty lighter. ‘No, no,’ he muttered faintly, ‘don’t worry about me. I’ll be off now. Might even go to the pub myself, have a large Scotch. Toodle-oo, my love, and thanks for the drink.’
‘Love to Molly,’ I called as he shuffled off down the drive.
Gosh, the police, I thought, my head spinning as I led them away down the garden. Now, that was an interesting development. Hadn’t Mac said that gambling debts weren’t enforceable by law? But then, perhaps they were here to protect Alf? Yes, that must be it, I decided. They’d probably heard that some unsavoury characters were after him and were here to warn him, offer him some protection, perhaps. Well, thank goodness for that. I wasn’t unhappy about a bit of police presence if there were going to be some undesirables knocking about. I banged on the caravan door.
&nb
sp; ‘Mac! Alf!’
Spiro answered. ‘Yes, Meesis McFarllen?’ with studied politeness.
‘Oh, Spiro, are the others in?’
‘No, Meesis McFarllen, they have gone out. They have gone to the public house.’
It was quite obvious Spiro had been well briefed. He was talking in an even more unnatural and stilted manner than usual, as if he’d rehearsed, and was now regurgitating the words.
‘Do you happen to know which public houthe?’ whispered the man in the raincoat.
Spiro smiled ruefully. ‘I am so very sorry. I am so very afraid that I do not know wheech public house.’
God, he sounded brain dead. Raincoat turned to me. ‘What’s the nearest local then, Mrs McFarllen, the Fighting Cocks?’ He paused. ‘Mrs McFarllen?’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Just behind Raincoat, I’d suddenly caught sight of Mac, hiding in the rhododendron bushes. I’d also spotted Lance, tucked away behind him. Lance put a finger to his lips. I turned wide eyes on Raincoat. ‘What … did you say?’
‘I thaid, is the Fighting Cocks the nearetht?’
‘Yes, yes, that’s it.’
‘But they go on a creep, I theenk,’ added Spiro, imaginatively. ‘They go creepy crawly.’
The policeman stared.
‘A pub crawl, he means,’ I put in quickly.
‘Ah.’ Raincoat nodded, then squinted at Spiro as if he’d never seen anything quite like him before. He pursed his lips. ‘Well, how very inconvenient, but I don’t believe I shall trouble to “creep” around the local hothtelries after them. Would you thimply inform Mr Turner that I would like a word with him on a matter of great importance, and will be returning forthwith, in other words, tomorrow morning, Mrs McFarllen?’
‘Of course!’
‘And meanwhile, thank you for your time.’ He inclined his head slightly, then with a sharp ‘Come!’ to his accomplice, they turned to go.
Spiro and I watched as they made their way up the garden, not quite goose-stepping but almost, up the lavender walk, and under the rose arbour. My eyes darted briefly to the rhododendron bushes, but then suddenly, on an impulse, I ran after them.
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