Putting the Boot In

by Dan Kavanagh

  Duffy stopped his van at the turn-off to Braunscombe Hall. Those entrance pillars are new, he thought. Two square redbrick jobs, each topped off by a flaking stone globe; the right-hand one had a stone animal, also flaking, clamped to its curving side. A weathered ferret, as far as Duffy could see. There was something odd about the mixture of bright, new brick and old, pitted stone. Duffy stared at the fat orbs until they brought back the days when he used to open his paper and get a double-barrelled blast of Belinda between the eyes. Hey, perhaps that was it. The family arms of Belinda Blessing and Vic Crowther. Two Tits Rampant with an old ferret crawling over them.

  Duffy was still grinning at this as he stomped on the brake and scattered the gravel in front of Braunscombe Hall. Vic Crowther came out to greet him.

  ‘Do you want me to go round the back, boss?’ asked Duffy cheerfully.

  ‘This isn’t the bloody British Grand Prix,’ said Vic. ‘Look what you’ve done to my gravel. I’ll have to get that raked.’

  At this moment a small woman in glasses, who Duffy thought must be Japanese, came round the side of the house in a half-run. ‘Mr Crowther,’ she said as she got up to them, then stopped and assessed Duffy before continuing. ‘Mr Crowther, sir. Someone just stole Ricky.’

  3. Kitchen/Dining-Room

  THE EYE-LEVEL CUPBOARDS IN the kitchen were much posher than any Vic Crowther had ever fitted in the old days. They were made of polished German oak, and their price implied that the polishing had been done by little men in lederhosen rubbing their bottoms around on them for thirty days or so. Beneath the cupboards lay a smart bank of domestic machinery which might have been nicked from Mission Control at Houston. What could they all be for, wondered Duffy, whose own kitchen leaned towards the spartan. A plump middle-aged woman, evidently not from the East, whom Vic identified as Mrs Hardcastle, pirouetted from one machine to another, occasionally springing open some hatch and plucking from it another glistening pie, another bubbling quiche. With a kitchen like this, you could start a hotel.

  ‘Planning a big family?’ asked Duffy.

  ‘There’s only Nikki,’ said Vic. He was a bit heavier and a bit ruddier than Duffy remembered; perhaps he was getting to like his booze. ‘I think Nikki’s the lot. I think any more might interfere with the riding.’ He sighed, and looked as if he were going to say more, but the various permanent and temporary inhabitants of the house began drifting into the dining area. If the kitchen was Mission Control, the dining-room was tourist/rustic. There was a long refectory table, oak beams which Duffy reckoned must have been at least two years old, an open fireplace whose surroundings were emblazoned with horse brasses, a cast-iron chandelier which had either been converted to electricity or most likely had started off like that anyway, a set of wheelback chairs and a pair of petit-point footstools. In the corner stood an oak spinning-wheel, just in case Vic and Belinda wanted to start making their own clothes or something.

  The ex-Page-Three girl shook Duffy’s hand and gave him a distant, chatelaine’s smile, as if completely puzzled why Vic had asked him to eat with them: surely he had a pickled onion and a slice of cheese wrapped up in a red spotted handkerchief which he could take out and eat on the back steps while the farm dogs chewed his boots? My my, thought Duffy, she has come up in the world; mind you, those jodhpurs didn’t exactly do wonders for her bum.

  ‘This is Duffy,’ said Vic to those already seated round the table. ‘Old mate. Come to fix the alarm system.’ The five guests all seemed to be in their thirties, and you could be sure they hadn’t yet in their lives touched kitchen installation or the franchising of launderettes. Duffy was presented to Angela, who seemed rather puffy about the eyes and whose red hair had a strange gild to it that might have come from a large bottle; Jimmy, balding and slightly short of chin, who stood up and shouted, ‘How d’ye do, officer’; Damian, in a velvet suit, who didn’t rise, but turned instead to the blonde Lucretia, who nodded briefly at this tradesman who’d come to share their lunch; plus Sally, a cascade of giggles and black curls, who said, ‘Is that your van?’ As Duffy was about to sit down, Nikki skipped in, came across to him and looked up at his face. ‘Shall I do my dance for you?’

  ‘Later, sweetheart,’ said Vic quietly.

  ‘But I want to do my dance. He hasn’t seen my dance.’

  ‘Lunch,’ Belinda insisted. Nikki sat down grumpily, and when Mrs Colin tried to adjust the napkin round her neck, stabbed the Filipino woman in the arm with a fork. Mrs Colin didn’t complain; nobody rebuked the girl, or seemed to notice. Duffy noticed.

  ‘Where’s Taff?’ Vic asked. ‘Where’s Henry?’

  ‘Taffy took a sandwich to the woods,’ said Damian, as if it were the quaintest piece of behaviour he’d ever heard, ‘where he is attempting to slaughter the local wildlife with the help of a carbine. Though why he doesn’t simply pick up the poor little furry things and bite their heads off with his metal teeth, I’m sure I don’t know.’

  ‘And bloody Henry’s bloody not here,’ added Angela.

  Every so often through lunch Duffy had to stop himself from nearly choking — a reaction which would not have been caused by Mrs Hardcastle’s pies. Damian did most of the talking. He had long lashes and wavy brown hair, and the tip of his nose waggled very slightly from side to side as he spoke. His chubby face seemed to shine with the simple pleasure of being Damian. He held forth about topics and people unfamiliar to Duffy, occasionally breaking off to wave aloft an empty bottle of wine as if he were in a restaurant; whereupon Mrs Hardcastle would come and replace it. Jimmy listened to him with his mouth hanging agape, and laughing just a little after the others. Vic didn’t speak; Belinda spoke, but not to Duffy. Well, if they wanted him to play the tradesman, that was fine by him. Fix the alarm after lunch and join the madmen back on the race-track. He wondered if Carol was having the pizza or the fish in low-calorie sauce for her lunch.

  ‘Is that your van?’ It was Sally, from across the table. She had lots of black curls down to her neck and large black eyes which didn’t seem to be focusing exactly on Duffy. Maybe she needed glasses; or maybe it wasn’t that at all. In either case, it was the second time she asked him that question.

  ‘Mmm,’ he replied.

  ‘Duffy Security,’ she continued, drawing out the syllables and giggling when she reached the end of the phrase. ‘Are you secure? I like a man that’s secure.’ She giggled again. ‘Are you secure?’

  Duffy didn’t know what to answer. What did she mean? Did he have any break-ins at his place? Did he have a mortgage? Did he have a steady girlfriend? Cautiously, he answered, ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘I always assume,’ said Damian in a voice that addressed the whole table while somehow ignoring Duffy, ‘that policemen and all those people who deliver one’s money to the bank in crash helmets, all that Wells Fargo crew, must have very peculiar sex lives. I mean, truncheons for a start.’ Sally giggled. ‘And handcuffs. What one could do with handcuffs … And those lovely big dogs …’

  Angela, who had been silent for most of the meal, stood up suddenly and ran to the door. There was a silence.

  ‘Berk,’ said Lucretia.

  ‘Oh, whoopsie,’ said Damian. ‘A bit tactless. But it just slipped out, as the actress said to the bishop. Oh God, I’ll have to eat humble pie now. By the way, Mrs Hardcastle,’ he raised his voice towards the kitchen area, ‘the pies are magnificent.’ Mrs Hardcastle smiled. ‘My felicitations to the chefette.’ She smiled once more; she looked quite fond of Damian.

  ‘Have you got a dog?’ It was Sally again.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I mean, for the business. You must have a dog for the business.’

  ‘No.’

  Sally took a while to assimilate this response. She was seen thinking it over carefully. ‘I suppose the fact of the matter is that your dogs have been taken over by technology. Technological advances have eliminated …’ She paused; these long words were taking it out of her. ‘… your use … for … the dog.’

&nb
sp; ‘No, I just don’t like dogs.’

  Sally thought this the funniest thing she’d heard in ages; she yelped, she whinnied, she yodelled with laughter. ‘He doesn’t like dogs,’ she repeated, and her eyes seemed to diverge even more from the parallel. Duffy squinted down the table. Lucretia was watching him impassively; she didn’t blink when he caught her eye, merely continued to examine him. With her flowing blonde hair and firm, neatly cut features, she looked the sort of girl you only came across half-way through a fashion spread in one of the posh magazines. The models there had spent months being coached in the art of the frank, disdainful, fuck-you glance; this girl had it in real life. She looked way out of his league.

  ‘Given that you don’t like dogs …’ It was Damian, addressing Duffy for the first time. ‘… then perhaps you’re the fellow we’re looking for. Can you explain your whereabouts on the night of…’

  ‘Knock it off,’ said Vic rather sharply. ‘Ricky’s gone. I mean, Ricky’s body’s gone. Mrs Colin put it in a laundry-bag and hung it in the back cloaks and someone nicked it.’

  ‘Well, you do make a lot of meat pies around here,’ said Damian brightly. ‘Perhaps the moving finger of suspicion points at Mrs Hardcastle.’ He pretended to examine a large home-made chicken-and-ham pie, then acted a bout of nausea.

  ‘Leave it, Damian, old son,’ said Vic. ‘I suppose someone had better go and fetch Angela.’

  Belinda went to look for her, and after a few minutes they returned together. There was trifle, plus fried-up Christmas pudding which must have been in the deep freeze for eight months or so. As coffee was being served, the door opened and a large, red-faced, square-headed man of about forty came in. He was wearing a bright hound’s-tooth check suit, a moleskin waistcoat of ancient cut, a check Viyella shirt and a red spotted bow-tie. He looked enthusiastically across the table at his fiancée.

  ‘Henry darling, where have you been?’ said Angela, with a sweetness Duffy hadn’t thought anyone at the table capable of. ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you for hours.’

  ‘Sorry, old girl,’ Henry replied. ‘You know how it is. Had to see a man about a dog.’

  Angela screamed. The room fell silent. Henry shifted awkwardly from one fat brown brogue to the other. ‘What have I said?’

  After lunch, Vic took Duffy along to the video library. A large sheet of brown paper had been taped over the hole in the french windows.

  ‘That’s where they threw Ricky through,’ Vic explained.

  ‘Cor.’ In a curious, distant way, Duffy was rather impressed. Coppers, and ex-coppers, get so familiar with crime that any minor innovations are almost to be welcomed. Duffy had certainly never seen this before. ‘Big dog, was he?’

  ‘Mmm, well,’ said Vic. He looked a bit vague and helpless. ‘He was, sort of, you know, dog-sized.’

  ‘Gotcha,’ said Duffy. ‘Was he any particular make?’

  ‘They’re not called makes, Duffy, they’re called breeds. Even I know that. No, well I expect he was, he was just a sort of standard … dog. Curly hair, tail.’

  ‘Four legs?’ asked Duffy.

  ‘Yeah. One of those ones with four legs. I can’t say I’m a great student of dogs.’ This was one of Vic’s less necessary remarks.

  ‘Was he dead when he came through the window?’

  ‘Well, he was certainly dead by the time Mrs Colin found him.’ He paused a moment. ‘I suppose you don’t get fingerprints on a dog?’

  Duffy considered the question briefly. ‘Not if it’s disappeared.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So, when do the coppers arrive?’

  ‘Coppers? I’m none too keen on coppers.’

  ‘So I remember.’ Duffy smiled. He wondered how much of a villain Vic had been in the old days, how much of a villain he still might be. Did the launderettes and the funeral parlours and the video-hire shops pay for a place as big as this? Or had there been the odd source of income on the side?

  ‘And in any case, now that Ricky’s disappeared, it’d just be a waste of their time coming, especially at the weekend. I thought, I just thought I’d …’

  ‘… let sleeping dogs lie?’

  ‘That sort of thing,’ said Vic, and chuckled. ‘You know, it’s always nice to talk to someone who speaks the same language.’

  ‘Not many of them were born in Catford,’ said Duffy, nodding back in the direction of the dining-room.

  ‘Yeah, well, they’re mainly Belinda’s friends. Anyway, you have a big house, you meet the other people from big houses. They’re not as bad as you think,’ said Vic. ‘They’re a bit loud sometimes, but they’re young.’

  ‘Well, I guess I just don’t like posh people.’

  ‘They’re not all that posh.’

  ‘They’re all posher than me,’ Duffy insisted rather grimly.

  ‘That’s usually a fair enough starting-point with everybody, I’d say.’ It was Duffy’s turn to chuckle. ‘I mean, that Damian, for instance. He’s just a vicar’s son, clever boy, went to college somewhere, got in with a smarter crowd. Damian’s not a posh name.’

  ‘It’s posher than Vic.’

  ‘Right, but that’s your England nowadays, isn’t it, Duffy? Your Vics can mix with your Damians, and your Damians can get to know your Hugos. All this class stuff, it’s out the window now. It’s what you are, not who you are. I mean, Belinda and me, look at us. When I grew up — you remember, no, you’d be too young to remember, but when I grew up there used to be silver threepenny pieces.’

  ‘Heard of them,’ said Duffy.

  ‘People used to put them in the Christmas pudding. You know, hide them and make a little mark on the side of the pudding so they knew where they were and the kids got them. Well, we didn’t have threepenny bits like that in our house. My Dad used to wrap farthings in silver paper. That’s what we got. Probably got a dose of metal poisoning as well. And now here I am in a big house. That’s England,’ said Vic, coming out of what was clearly a set speech with a slurp of grateful patriotism. ‘That’s England. And look at Belinda. It wouldn’t have happened in the old days. You know I dote on her, but she couldn’t have done it in the old days. People would have looked down their noses because she took her clothes off for the papers. Now people don’t mind that. She goes hunting with people who fifty, no, twenty years ago wouldn’t have let her hold their horse. That’s England, and bloody good too, I say.’

  ‘Well, maybe I’d like posh people more if I had a big house like this,’ said Duffy.

  ‘No need to be chippy, old son. I mean, the house is a good example. Know who I bought it off? Do you remember the Filth?’ Duffy nodded. The Filth had been briefly famous in the early sixties: three or four top-ten hits, never quite made Number One, but picked up a good following, who stayed with them for some years. Not as good as the Hollies or the Tremoloes in Duffy’s book, but still … ‘Remember the one who played keyboard?’ Duffy vaguely recalled a velveteen elf with a doggy grin, who always performed with a large feather protruding from the back of his trousers. ‘Izzy Dunn? Remember? That’s who I bought it off. Point is, houses like this are being owned by people like us’ — Vic paused, and slightly adjusted his phrase — ‘by people like me, anyway, into your second generation. I mean, the house got a bit knocked around when Izzy was here, he was paranoid about people watching him eat, so he boarded up the minstrels’ gallery, and he turned the squash court into a recording studio and he put in quite a few picture windows and he even tried out piranha fish in the lake, but it’s still a nice piece of house. I get tourists coming past looking at me like I’m the lord of the manor. Have the Crowthers been in this part of the world for many centuries? I can hear them asking it.’ Vic chuckled.

  ‘By the way,’ said Duffy. ‘Those stone balls you’ve got on your entrance. What’s that ferret doing climbing over one of them?’

  ‘Duffy, you don’t deserve to live in a big house like this. It’s not a ferret, you wally, it’s a salamander.’

  ‘Is that a
sort of ferret? Anyway, it’s got bits missing.’

  ‘It’s a fully weathered salamander, Duffy. Looks like it’s been there for ages, doesn’t it? I’ll let you into a little secret. There’s a place you can go where you get them pre-weathered. Like pre-shrunk jeans, you know. Well, saves you the bother, doesn’t it? They’ve got all sorts, bears, pelicans, you can take your pick.’

  ‘Why did you choose a salamander?’