Putting the Boot In

by Dan Kavanagh

  Duffy quite liked this Sunday chore. Partly it was the release from guilt; partly it was the quiet of the streets. Saturday night had gone home. Saturday night was still snoring away in bed waiting for Sunday morning’s hangover to come and wake it up. There was nobody about as Duffy turned in to the huddle of shops which contained the launderette. Light-heartedly he kicked at a few discarded styrofoam burger boxes. Some careful drunk had stacked up a pile of eight empty lager cans on the pavement outside the bookie’s. Some less careful drunk had decided that the recessed entrance to the bookie’s was well-suited for use as a urinal because, if it wasn’t to be the bookie’s it would have to be the next shop along anyway, and hadn’t he lost a tenner on some three-legged nag here only last week? Duffy wrinkled his nose, aware that the reek from his laundry-bag came in a close second to the pong from the doorway, losing only by a short head.

  Duffy consigned his clothes to the tender chomping of the wash, crossed the empty street and pushed open the door of Sam Widges. Sam was a middle-aged Chinese, who had always been called Sam and who had spent thirty years in the British catering business. After ten years in its lower echelons, he had acquired his own establishment, whereupon he changed his surname by deed poll to Widges. At the time Sam Widges had, not surprisingly, sold nothing but sandwiches. In the last ten years he had extended his cuisine, and was now proud of his skills with the microwave; but he remained stuck with the name.

  ‘The usual, please, Sam.’

  ‘Righty-ho-coming-up.’

  The usual was a British breakfast cooked in the British way. It had taken Sam some years to master — visits to rival eateries had even been necessary — but now he was able to handle the separate skills of undercooking the bacon while overcooking the egg, allowing the tomatoes to collapse while the sausages stayed al dente, and making sure that the baked beans, when they hit the plate in a sticky mass, retained the original shape of the serving spoon. As Duffy was a favoured customer — indeed, at that time of the morning he was the only customer — Sam threw in a slice of British fried bread: thick-cut, sopping in grease, not too crisp, not too brown.

  ‘Delicious,’ said Duffy, thinking a little about his pre-season training. Duffy played in goal for the Western Sunday Reliables and the first match was only five weeks away.

  ‘Thank-you-coming-up.’

  The fried bread slipped around the plate as he pursued it with his fork and left a broad snail-trail of grease. Duffy thought of young Karl French, lean as a whippet, who would be out pounding the road even now. Still, you didn’t need so much speed to be a goalkeeper, Duffy consoled himself. You needed … solidity. He trapped the delinquent sausage against the curve of his plate; with a mixture of cunning and brutal strength he succeeded in piercing its skin.

  On his way back up Goldsmith Avenue, with the yellow laundry-bag held rather more proudly beside him, Duffy pondered the eternal question posed to those who frequent launderettes: what happened to the other sock? You put twenty-four in, you got twenty-three back. You put thirty-six in, you got thirty-five back. You put two in, you got one back. At least the machines were fair: they stole equally from those rich in socks and those poor in socks. At first you merely assumed that you had left one stuck to the washer or the drier like a piece of chewing-gum, but this obviously wasn’t what happened. However scrupulous you were — you counted them all out and you counted them all in — you always lost one sock. Perhaps there was a little trap-door at the back of each machine, which opened for just long enough to snaffle it. Perhaps this was the owner’s way of increasing the profit-margin on these establishments. Duffy had long since given up trying to fight the extra tariff. Instead, he played along with it. He owned only two kinds of sock: the black cotton/nylon mix from Marks & Spencer, and the red cotton/nylon mix from Marks & Spencer. That way, if you lost one, you didn’t worry too much, and when you lost another you were laughing.

  ‘Telephone,’ said Carol sleepily as he shut the door of the flat.

  ‘Breakfast,’ Duffy replied to the mound of curly black hair on the pillow. He got the yoghurt, the muesli and the skimmed milk out of the fridge, fetched the granary bread, the brown sugar and the honey from the cupboard. You needed your health and strength, that’s what everyone said. The breakfast at Sam Widges’ was for his strength; this one was for his health. Besides, you should always give yourself a reward for going to the launderette.

  As water began to gurgle in the bathroom, Duffy switched on his answering-machine. The message was brief, and easily understood. ‘Duffy, this is Vic Crowther. If I pay four figures for a fucking alarm system I expect it to work. Now get your fat bottom down here.’

  Fat? What was Vic going on about? Vic Crowther hadn’t seen his bottom for three years, so how could he tell? Duffy thought of himself as short, admittedly, but muscular; his face was broad, sure, but jowl-free. He examined his hands: square-ended, a little stubby, but no sign of podge. Nervously, he took an extra spoonful of yoghurt, as if that would help the problem. Well, at least it might help the anxiety about the problem, which was a beginning.

  ‘I’m off to see Vic Crowther,’ he said as Carol poured her second cup.

  ‘So you’re not taking me out to Sunday lunch?’

  Duffy grunted. Of course he wasn’t. When had he ever taken her out to Sunday lunch? How long had they been together, or half-together? Seven years, something like that? Ten years? Eighty-four years? He’d never taken her out to Sunday lunch. Why was she suddenly expecting it? He looked across at her; she was grinning.

  ‘Well, at least you’ve got some clean shirts,’ she said. ‘Or is it black-tie country down there now? Iron your cummerbund, sir?’

  ‘It’s work,’ said Duffy. ‘The alarm’s buggered.’

  ‘Probably Vic trying to break into his own house for the insurance.’

  ‘Now, now,’ said Duffy, suddenly protective about his former client. ‘Vic’s never been sent down for anything.’

  ‘Nor was Pontius Pilate,’ said WPC Carol Lucas.

  ‘Really? You know, I never knew that. How did you know that?’

  ‘It’s on the police computer, Duffy, what do you think? Pilate, P., age, very old, distinguishing features, Roman nose, suspected attempting to pervert the course of justice, manslaughter and going equipped for crucifixion.’

  ‘No, how do you know that?’

  ‘I don’t know, Duffy. Telly, I expect. They said he killed himself in the end, but no one’s ever proved it.’

  ‘I don’t see Vic taking a handful of pills.’

  ‘Or falling on his sword.’

  ‘I didn’t know he had a sword.’

  ‘Duffy.’ Carol leaned across the table and rapped gently on the side of Duffy’s head, ‘Is there anyone in today?’

  ‘Oh, I get it.’ All that laundry had clearly taken it out of him.

  ‘By the way, how’s Miss Tits?’

  Duffy wondered briefly if he ought to feel guilty. He didn’t think he knew anyone who particularly answered to this description at the moment. ‘Eh?’

  ‘Little Miss Tits. Belinda Whatsit.’

  ‘Ah. Blessing.’

  ‘Blessing. What a terrible name. Belinda Blessing. You’d have to take your clothes off if you were called that, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘It’s not her original name. She had it altered.’

  ‘So that she could take her clothes off.’

  ‘Suppose so.’

  ‘I wonder what else she had altered at the same time.’

  ‘Carol. What’s got into you?’ He looked across at her pretty, morning Irish face with its frame of dark curls.

  ‘You?’ She grinned again.

  ‘Ca-rol.’ He got up. ‘There’s stuff in the freezer. Pizzas. And some fish bits with a low-calorie sauce.’

  ‘Terrific. Drive carefully. Kiss.’

  Duffy would have driven carefully even without Carol’s advice. For one thing, he wasn’t crazy about the M1: biggest unofficial race-track in the country, if you
asked him, full of mad lorries and flashing headlights; even your family saloons thought it the right place to have a crack at the world land-speed record. For another thing, he was driving his new Sherpa van, sitting high in the seat and worrying about getting sideswiped. It had been a relief to junk that rusting F-reg number and get something new. Well, ‘new’ in the sense of new to him, not absolutely new: he wasn’t doing as well as that. So, if it hadn’t been for the other traffic, he’d have enjoyed sitting up proud in his white Sherpa with DUFFY SECURITY painted on each side, heading up the middle lane at a steady fifty-five.

  There’d been that good scam up the M1 not long ago. Duffy, as an ex-copper, didn’t really approve of coppers being villains; but he couldn’t find it in him to do anything but laugh at this one. Some petrol company, instead of giving away wine-glasses or little koala bears to hang in your rear window, had come up with a different scheme for attracting customers. Every month they circulated their garages with a list of car numberplates, fifty or so. If you owned a car whose plate number was on the list, you could win anything from a hundred quid to a thousand. Of course, you had to buy some petrol at the garage first; the cashier wouldn’t let any old Tom, Dick or Jimmy Fiddler run his finger down the numbers.

  The scheme certainly brought in the customers, but it also set a few philosophers thinking. In particular, a group of coppers based near the M1 who liked a little challenge. All done in plain clothes, of course, and mostly out of hours. Two of them would drive to a garage, buy some petrol, all above board, and ask for the list of numbers. They might not find their own, but would come away having memorized a couple of others. Of course, if they’d only bought a gallon or two of petrol, they soon might need another garage, and be forced to squint at the numbers again. The next day, back in uniform, they might find themselves — in the course of duty, what else? — obliged to check the odd numberplate with the police computer. Owner’s name and address, please. And then, if it was in the area, they might drive over and ask the fellow if he knew how he could pick up a couple of hundred quid, quite legit, all for a short drive? Of course, there’d have to be a drink in it for them, let’s go halves, shall we, after all without us you wouldn’t be picking up a penny, would you? They didn’t even need to say they were policemen.

  Duffy supposed it was dishonest, but found it hard to get indignant. Who was losing? Not the petrol companies, who were risking that amount of money anyway. Not the motorist who couldn’t be bothered to check the numbers every month and was now getting a bonus: half of something was always more than nothing. Nor were the boys in blue exactly losing. They were merely showing the spirit of commercial enterprise which was supposed to be the making of the nation. Who was losing, who was actually losing? That was what crime was — one person gaining wrongfully from another. Here there were only winners. Until the day it had all come out, and a few bottoms had been smacked. Then the petrol company closed down the scheme for a bit, and everyone went back to collecting wine-glasses and miniature toy koala bears instead, which was a lot less fun to Duffy’s mind.

  Cruising the middle lane at fifty-five, he turned his mind to Belinda Blessing and Vic Crowther. Little Miss Tits, Carol had called her. Duffy smiled. The Little applied only to the Miss, not to the Tits. Very much not to the Tits. Belinda Blessing had been one of the earliest Page Three girls unleashed on the nation. At several million breakfast tables men would have a quick glance at the headlines, then turn the page to be coshed with delight and awe by Belinda’s … by Belinda’s … well, tits, you couldn’t call them anything else: Tits, in fact, with a capital letter. There would be throat-clearing at a million breakfast tables across the country, and sometimes there would be crossing of legs. Belinda had done her morning’s work again.

  She had long black hair, a neighbourly face, eyes of an indeterminate colour, which didn’t matter as Page Three was in black-and-white, plus what the caption-writer ingeniously referred to on her first appearance in the paper as BELINDA’S BLESSINGS. Not surprisingly, the invented surname allowed the roster of caption-writers full scope to demonstrate their inventiveness. BELINDA COUNTS HER BLESSINGS, followed — just in case the reader didn’t get it - by ONE! TWO! Then there was BLESS ME — IT’S BELINDA and a dozen others. Readers became fond of her and wrote in to complain if they hadn’t seen her Tits for a month or so. Cynical detractors, loosened by a couple of jars, maintained that Belinda without her Blessings would be just an ordinary-looking girl. But that, her passionate defenders across the beer-mat replied, was exactly what was special about her. She looked really friendly, you know, sort of girl who might have poured that pint for you, who you might have grown up with, who you could show off to your mum without worrying — that sort of girl. Except, except that she had these … Blessings.

  After six months or so of newspaper fame, Belinda’s Tits sacked their agent. They acquired instead a career promoter and personal publicist, who was only one person and still took the same twenty per cent. But he got her a celebrity spot at the Motor Show (she wouldn’t lounge about on any old car), he had her opening a few supermarkets, he stage-managed her front end for photographers outside night-clubs, he was thought to have been behind that incident when she threw champagne at a well-known actor who had tried to go snorkelling in her cleavage, and he got her on to a number of TV chat-shows. Here her effervescent homeliness and prepared jokes endeared her even to those who had expected to disapprove. She acquired a boyfriend, and soon after disacquired him. The boyfriend sold his memoirs the following month to a rival paper: ‘Why did I buy an MG? Well, I thought I needed a topless car to go with my topless bird.’ Readers of Belinda’s paper were loyally shocked at this vile piece of opportunism and applauded her magnanimity in not immediately taking revenge by telling the world what a tiny cock the fellow had.

  Belinda, flattered by crimpers and lensmen, enjoyed every minute of it. But she also remembered her mum and two sisters that she’d only just managed to move out of the council house, and she knew the time would come when fellers would no longer be quite so interested in seeing her without her bikini top. What would happen then? Would she be able to make the jump to being a proper celebrity? From somewhere inside her came a mutter of fear and doubt. She looked around the men she knew and saw only two kinds: the ones who were scared of her fame, and the ones who were turned on by it. The first type you had to lasso even if you only wanted to have tea with them; the second type were merely booking you for another notch on their bedstead.

  And then she met Vic. Oh, of course people said the obvious things; that Belinda had lost her dad when she was a teenager and was still looking for a father figure; they said she broke up Vic’s marriage; they said she deliberately got pregnant. But it wasn’t really like that. She and Vic just got on from the start; he made her laugh - that’s always important, isn’t it? He wasn’t scared of her because she was famous; he was a success in his own field, so he didn’t feel threatened; and when she said to him, ‘You know, Vic, sometimes I just want to throw it all up and live in the country and have a horse,’ he didn’t say, ‘Silly cow,’ but just nodded and patted what he called her other pair and answered, ‘That’d be nice.’

  Of course Vic’s marriage had been on the rocks for years, and she didn’t deliberately get pregnant: it was just one of those things that happen when people fall in love, wasn’t it? It had given her publicist a bit of a headache, too, but what in other circles might easily have been HUSBAND ABANDONS WIFE FOR PREGNANT GIRLFRIEND was transformed into BELINDA’S LOVE-CHILD, and that made it all more acceptable. Of course, the modelling dropped off a bit, though there was a patch of leotard work, showing young mums-to-be how to keep fit; but Belinda’s heart wasn’t really in it, and as she grew fatter with little Nikki she sometimes looked forward with dismay to getting the weight off and seeing if they still wanted to look at her without her top now she was a mum. She carried on doggedly for a year or two after Nikki’s birth, until one day, as she was uncapping the piña colada mix, s
he said, without really meaning it any more than usual, ‘You know, Vic, sometimes I just want to throw it all up and live in the country and have a horse.’ To which Vic gave a grin and said, ‘Well, I have seen this little place, you know.’

  Exit 13, that’s the one, Duffy thought, and cautiously edged his white Sherpa van into the slow lane. He hadn’t ever really gone for Belinda — not even when she’d come out at him from the newspaper like a police snatch-squad. And when he’d turned up to install the alarm system three years ago, she’d been a bit too Lady Muck about the place for his taste. I mean, Braunscombe Hall may not have been one of your top-drawer, ermine-and-pearls country houses, but it was still Braunscombe Hall. And Belinda Blessing and Vic Crowther were still very much Belinda Blessing and Vic Crowther, weren’t they? You had to laugh really, and in his quiet way Vic did have a chuckle about it; but it seemed to Duffy from his first visit that Belinda Blessing had solemn ambitions to become Belinda Braunscombe, Dowager Lady Muck.

  Vic wasn’t likely to change. For as long as Duffy had known him (and that was going back a dozen years), Vic had been the same. He’d played at being over fifty — one who’d examined a lot of life and wasn’t going to be impressed any more — when his birth certificate still insisted he was under forty. He coupled this with a cheery public manner of the kind that union negotiators affect when chummying up to the TV camera. Such stolid affability made those with ungenerous minds suspicious. Duffy had once tried to run Vic Crowther in, years ago. Vic, apparently uninsulted, had just laughed, then called in Laski & Lejeune, his favourite firm of bent solicitors, to explain how the watches in their client’s warehouse may very well have been quite by coincidence a perfect match to the ones in Duffy’s report, but they still weren’t stolen, oh dear me no, fat chance.

  This had been in the old days, when Duffy was a junior South London copper and Vic Crowther was … what, exactly? On his occasional appearances in the paper, he was always referred to as ‘local businessman Vic Crowther’; but when asked to specify what sort of business he would give his candid smile and answer, ‘Oh, a little bit of this and a little bit of that.’ He’d started in the building trade, and switched to installing fitted kitchens when he spotted that construction work was nicer if someone else did the hard part for you first. Then he began to reckon that it was always nicer if someone else did the hard part for you first. Franchises, sub-leases — this seemed to be Vic’s favourite area: get the other fellow to put up his life savings, take ten per cent and, if the operation folds, well mugs will be mugs, won’t they? At one stage Vic had owned a string of launderettes: hey, thought Duffy, I bet it was Vic who dreamed up the idea of the washing-machine that nicks one of your socks every time. There had also been a couple of Crowther-operated funeral parlours; he’d had a bite of the local fast-food business; and stepped into video hire pretty early on. Quite how legit he was had often been a matter of debate among the local CID, but no firm conclusion had been reached except the obvious one: that if Vic Crowther was clean, then the Queen of England peed standing up. A few coppers had tried to pin things on him, and Vic had always been friendly, then a bit less friendly, then called Laski & Lejeune, who were downright off-putting. If Vic did walk both sides of the street, it was probable he’d be just as canny when being wicked. And no doubt the principle remained the same: franchises, sub-leases and, if the operation folds, well mugs will be mugs, but I was down at the Duke of Clarence at the time, Officer, as most of the Rotary Club will confirm.