Trilogy: The First Three Books in the Amber For Go Series

by Paul Harris

  “Very profound, Rodney. So?”

  “So, what?”

  “Well, you’ve obviously got something to say. You wouldn’t come out with a statement like that if there wasn’t something on your mind. What are your hopes and aspirations?”

  I faltered. There was something on my mind, but it was right at the back of my mind and I couldn’t quite get a handle on it. Sol was interrogating me with his eyes. I decided to throw him off the scent. “I aspire to, one day, being able to walk into the boozer and not have to listen to shit like this.”

  “There was a deep growl from behind us. “Cheating frog bastards!” and I left, crashing through the door on my way out.

  Chapter Ten

  Le Touquet

  Peter had proposed and he hadn’t even been drunk. Monique was delighted. She was the happiest girl in all of France. He was going to take her to meet his family somewhere in the North of London and then they would return to Amiens and be married. There would be bouquets of flowers and dresses of silk. There would be music and dancing and unbounded joy. She and Peter would follow life’s path together and, one day, there would be two small children playing on the hearth. They would sit at Peter’s knee as he read them bedtime stories and Monique would listen at the door and would always be filled with such happiness.

  They hired a car at the station and set out on their journey to England. The journey, although long, passed quickly. On their way to Calais, they stopped, as they had planned, in Le Touquet for something to eat and a quick walk along the beach. It was a beautiful day and by the time they had found a vacant parking bay near to the seafront, the sun was high in the sky.

  “The sea is so beautiful,” remarked Monique, breathing in the air and gazing out to the horizon, still wrapped up in a world of romance.

  “Let’s eat first, I’m starving,” was Peter’s less than romantic response.

  “Wait,” she said as he grabbed her hand to lead her into the town, “I can see England.”

  Peter paused and looked out to sea. He could not see anything. He raised his hand to his brow to block out the sun. “That’s just a buoy.”

  “A boy, so far out to sea?”

  “No, a buoy, it’s spelled differently, it’s a… it’s not England.”

  “I can see the white cliffs of Dover.”

  “No, you can’t,” he said with firm but gentle exasperation, “Dover’s the other way. Come on or we’ll miss the ferry and you’ll never see the white cliffs of Dover.”

  Monique followed him, muttering to herself about the poor state of Peter’s eyesight and his pig-headed reluctance to visit the opticians as she had recommended he do on many such occasions.

  Peter had elected to follow the Boulevard de la Plage until the next right turn and then head into the town where they were sure to find a small restaurant where they could get an inexpensive snack that would tide them over until they boarded the ferry. As he crossed the main road, with Monique still in tow, a cyclist in bright blue Lycra cycling shorts and an equally gaudy shirt appeared as if from nowhere. Peter froze, rooted to the spot, and didn’t know which way to jump. The cyclist was still heading straight for him, his head bowed low over his handlebars, barely looking where he was going, always minimising wind resistance and drag. When he raised his head ever so slightly, Peter could see right into his spectacles all splattered with mud and sweat. But, the cyclist never stopped pumping his pedals with his long gangly legs. Peter’s life began to flash in front of him. He could feel Monique tightening her grip on his hand. She screamed. The cyclist veered to the left at the last moment and missed Peter by little more than inches.

  He ran to the footpath and Monique clung to him. He bent over with his hands on his knees and tried to catch his breath. “I thought he was going to kill me!”

  “He swore at you as he went past,” Monique rather unnecessarily informed him.

  “He swore at me? Damned cheek!”

  “You should look where you’re going. I told you, you should get some glasses.” Peter narrowed his eyes at her and she elected to say no more on the subject.

  In Rue de Metz, which ran parallel with the beach, the pavements were alive with people eating and drinking. The street was full of tables and chairs and young waitresses skipping hither and thither with their pencils and notebooks, and all this beneath the shade of canvas awnings. Monique stopped outside one such establishment. “This looks okay.”

  “Fine,” said Peter who really wasn’t at all bothered so long as they served food and it wasn’t too expensive.

  “What about that table,” and she pointed to the only vacant table.

  “Looks like the one.” Then he noticed a couple who were seated at a neighbouring table, and hesitated.

  “What now?” Monique pulled him along by his fingers. “Come on.”

  He resisted. “Wait,” he whispered. “Hold on.”

  “What is it?” she whispered back at him.

  He was curious. There was a man and a woman sitting at the table, both had plates of food in front of them. There was, of course, nothing unusual in that. The man had blonde hair and a ring in his ear. That is all that Peter could deduce of his appearance because the man’s face was resting in a plate of pasta. In fact, he seemed to be fast asleep in a plate of pasta. The woman seemed completely unconcerned by the man’s far from customary table manners. She was shovelling great forkfuls of garden peas into her mouth and with every delivery, several peas managed to escape their fate, and having done so would happily roll around on the table until she recaptured them, stabbing them to death with her fork.

  Wiping her mouth with the palm of her left hand, and, in turn, wiping the palm of her hand down her denim jeans, she took up a chicken drumstick in her right hand and began to gnaw at it with her huge pointed teeth, tearing huge chunks of meat off it and swallowing them whole. Peter watched with a mixture of awe and disgust, and felt his stomach turn just a little. Then she spat a mouthful of gristle out onto the table and suddenly Peter didn’t feel quite so hungry anymore.

  Monique’s attention had also been drawn to the woman’s assault on the chicken and she could do nothing but stare at her in silence, until the woman caught her eye and Monique turned away. “I don’t feel hungry,” she muttered.

  “Me neither. Let’s try that place over there.” They hopped across the road and straight through the door of an Irish bar, Peter almost banging his head on a Guinness sign which was hanging just inside the entrance

  “Did you recognise that girl?” asked Monique.

  “No. Why?”

  “Really? The woman at the table?”

  “I don’t think I’ve seen her before.” He leant on the bar and attempted to attract the attention of a barman who was busy polishing the dust off bottles of wine with his back to him.

  “I just thought she looked familiar, that’s all. Maybe not.”

  Peter began to tap a one euro coin on the bar as he ran out of patience with the lack of service. “Why was that guy asleep in his pasta?”

  Monique shrugged theatrically. “You tell me. It’s not a French custom.”

  Eventually, Peter caught the barman’s attention and they did get served. Monique, meanwhile found a table, from where they could absorb their surroundings once their eyes had become accustomed to the poor lighting. It was one of those places that are always relatively dark in the daytime and far too bright at night. When your eyes have adjusted to the darkness inside, you are blinded every time you look through a window into the sunlight.

  They watched the waitresses coming and going through the swinging doors in their smart black aprons, their flat shoes pitter-pattering on the rough wooden flooring. Their trays were full of drinks along with the occasional bowl of cashew nuts or black olives, but no plates of food. Monique scanned the nearby tables. “There are no menus.”

  Peter withdrew his gaze from one of the waitresses and, he too, examined the surrounding tables. He looked at Monique but said nothing. She s
ummoned a waitress in French and was informed by that young lady that Le Globe Trotter does not serve food. Monique glanced at Peter, almost accusatorily. “That is the problem with these places!”

  “What places?” asked Peter, his mind elsewhere, once more watching the waitresses skipping from darkness into light and vice-versa, as they ferried drinks, and only drinks, to the busy tables out on the street.

  “These places! Trying to make these English pubs, so now they have English customs like no food. So, you can drink all day, but they won’t let you eat.”

  “It’s more of an Irish pub, really,” commented Peter, “but if you must blame the English as usual…” As Monique caught his eye, he could see how irked she was regarding the lack of food, so decided to lay his flippancy to one side for the moment. “Shall we try somewhere else?”

  “No, I’m not hungry now!” She hunched her shoulders together and scowled at him. He tried not to notice the coolness of her scowl and knew that if he left her alone for long enough, she would thaw out all by herself, and would rapidly warm to a more ambient temperature. Whilst he waited for these events to run their natural and familiar course, he began to watch what was happening on the numerous television screens that were littered throughout the bar.

  The coverage was of the U.S. Masters golf tournament and was being broadcast live from some place called Augusta, which Peter, making an educated guess, assumed was in America. Although not a great fan of the sport itself, he enjoyed watching the players strutting around the greens in their bright yellow checked trousers and lilac tank tops, attire more suited to a circus clown, he suspected, than a professional sportsman. The TV camera zoomed in as a ball dropped into a hole, resulting in the sound of polite applause. A hand followed it into the hole and retrieved it, and the camera panned out again.

  The second player was practising his swing in the background. The commentator was, in barely whispered tones, enthusiastically reporting on these intense preparations. The player approached his ball, adjusted his lemon-coloured baseball cap, took another practise swing, stared at the hole, loosened his shoulders, took another practise swing, readjusted his cap, and gently chipped his ball beyond the hole.

  Peter watched as it landed, dead, on the neatly trimmed green. There was a collective sigh from the American spectators. Seconds seemed to pass by, and then the ball began to move. It rolled, incredibly slowly, following the contours of the slope across the unnaturally green grass, and dropped into the hole.

  “And Watson Birdies the fourth!” the commentator ecstatically exclaimed, making absolutely no sense to Peter whatsoever.

  “Shall we take a walk down to the seafront and get some ice cream?” interrupted Monique, now fully thawed and almost beginning to cook.

  They walked along the beach hand-in-hand and Peter wiped ice cream from Monique’s lips. She laughed, and hugged him, holding him closely as if she would never let him go again.

  The tide was coming in and bathers were gradually being pushed further up the beach where the dunes were laced with wooden cycle tracks that ran to the horizon and on to Etaples. A game of beach volleyball was in progress; the teams were of mixed gender, and the players were all heavily tanned and far too healthy looking for Peter’s comfort. As they ran for the ball, their feet sprayed fine white sand over people lying in the sun with paper-back detective novels open over their faces. A woman squeezed suntan lotion from a tube onto the already lobster-pink back of her partner. He winced slightly and then she began to spread it across his skin with her fingers. “I warned you,” she said in English, “I knew you’d burn. You always do. Why don’t you ever listen?”

  Monique and Peter sidestepped them as they began to quarrel, and as the young couple headed back towards the town, Peter noticed a man sitting on a bench on the promenade. Although still at some distance away, he thought that the man seemed to be staring at them as they strolled towards him.

  “You see that man?” whispered Peter.

  Monique was oblivious; she was singing gaily to herself and dragging her feet in the sand. “No.”

  “There on the bench.”

  “He’s just a man on a bench. Stop staring.”

  “But he’s staring at us.”

  “No, he isn’t. You’re just being paranoid.” She laughed and kissed Peter on the cheek.

  The man was dressed roughly in a well-worn camouflaged jacket and loose fitting trousers that were frayed at the cuffs. His shoes were scuffed and ill-fitting and didn’t seem to belong to him. But, his demeanour was strong and proud and was unlike that of a beggar or a street bum. He may have been a drifter or a traveller. He watched them from beneath thick dark eyebrows.

  As they approached him, even Monique became aware that he was showing far too much interest in their progress. Peter thought that he vaguely recognised him; that perhaps he had seen his face in the street or in a bar or down by the river where he had been working on a construction site in Amiens. As they reached the promenade and passed the bench, Peter nodded an acknowledgement just in case he was indeed an acquaintance. The man stared back blankly and made no expression of recognition. They crossed the road and headed back into the town.

  They turned into a side-street and Peter could sense that the man had risen from the bench and was following them. He thought he could hear him striding across the road behind them but he could not bring himself to turn around and confront the man. Their pursuer moved unlike any beggar, with purpose and determination. Peter’s heart began to race and Monique squeezed his hand. They passed the back door of a restaurant where there were rubbish bags piled high, spilling their contents out onto the street. A dark fluid that looked like blood was seeping from one of the bags.

  The man called out and Peter’s heart leapt. “Hey!”

  Still, Peter could not turn around and, instead, the couple increased their pace.

  “Hey, you!” called the man. “Don’t make me chase you.”

  Peter stopped walking but still didn’t turn around. Monique let go of his hand and she turned to face the man. He had his hands in his pockets and a deep scar ran down his face. He was marching towards them. “I know you! You stole my boat!” The man removed one of his hands from his jacket pocket and Monique briefly saw a glint of steel in the sunlight as it flashed through the air. Peter felt the intense pain in his back instantly, long before he could comprehend what was befalling him. He fell to his knees beside Monique who began to scream hysterically. The man punched her in the face and she plunged into the pile of rubbish bags, sobbing and kicking out ineffectually with her feet.

  Peter lay on the ground bleeding to death as Lazlo removed everything he could from his pockets before kicking him in the stomach in a final demonstration of his unabated fury. As he walked away from the scene, the killer almost broke into a grin. He gripped the keys to the couple’s hire car in one of his pockets. In his other pocket were tickets for Dover and four hundred pounds sterling in what had once been Peter’s wallet.

  Grass Don’t Smell

  It cost them a bottle of Jack Daniels and a cringing apology to recover their bicycles. Lenny had correctly predicted that the shopkeeper would make them suffer and indeed he did. Mr Singh stood before them, a tower of virtue and toil, explaining to the boys how nothing but hard work and good sense would find its reward; that petty thievery and idly loitering outside the station all day was the road to perdition.

  Finn was feeling impatient and just wanted Mr Singh to get it over with, unlock the padlocks on the bikes, and set them free. Lenny appeared rather more contrite and was paying full attention to Mr Singh, and even nodding in agreement from time to time. He handed the shopkeeper the bottle that they’d lately stolen from him and, as he turned around to return it to its rightful place on the top shelf behind the counter, Lenny pilfered a handful of disposable cigarette lighters from next to the till.

  Mr Singh seemed happy enough as Lenny warmly assured him of their shared repentance. Finn thanked him rather indolently for
his sound advice and, as he led them through the back of the shop to the passage where their bicycles were under lock and key, couldn’t help noticing a bunch of keys hanging from a hook below the wall safe in Mr Singh‘s store room. Needless to say, a lively mind such as Finn’s is sure to have its curiosity aroused in such circumstances, and the keys soon found themselves nestling in the pocket of his pale grey jogging bottoms. He kept his hand on them to stop them jangling and alerting Mr Singh to his loss.

  Once outside in the familiar passageway that ran along the side of the convenience store, Mr Singh handed Lenny the keys to the padlocks. He and Finn unchained their bikes with great humility and returned the keys to Mr Singh’s open palm, along with the heavy chains and the large padlocks.

  “Remember what I said, boys,” smiled Mr Singh with an air of patronage as they mounted their bicycles, “You take care now.”

  “Fuck you!” Finn screamed right into the shopkeepers face and they sped along the path and out into the main road without pausing to look to see if anyone was walking along the pavement in front of them. In the event, somebody was. A man in a suit and sporting, at the centre of his face, a staggeringly large nose had just disembarked the rear passenger seat of a white Volkswagen Golf GTI. He was on his way to the Trumpet to have a read of the morning newspaper but was come upon by Lenny and Finn with such velocity that he dropped the rolled-up copy of the Daily Telegraph that had been neatly tucked beneath his arm, into a puddle. It had not rained for a couple of days. It was a pool of urine at the foot of the passageway. He abandoned his newspaper and went into the shop for another, the provision of which, Mr Singh was only too happy to oblige with.

  Lenny and Finn hopped down the kerb and into the road. The white GTI had to swerve to avoid them, almost ploughing headlong into a bus. The driver gave a blast of his horn and a young man in the passenger seat, wearing a Burberry baseball cap, leant out of the window to offer the brothers some salient advice with regard to what they should do to their own mother. Of course, had the young man known that the lady in question was indeed deceased, he may well have tempered his rather unnatural recommendations.