“Nurse,” I tried calling, but it came out as a squeak. “Nurse!”
“What’s the matter, Mr Arkonnen?” The matron poked her head through the curtain.
“Johnny Ray,” I panted.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Danger. Terrible danger . .”
“Now, now, what’s all this?” She bustled in and picked up the chart at the end of my bed. “Doctor must have overdone the morphine. Try to control yourself, Mr Arkonnen.”
“No!!” I cried, shocking myself with the vehement way it shot out of my mouth. “You don’t understand! Rosa’s in mortal danger . .”
I was rocking about in the bed, trying to get the hurt parts of me to work, so I could get up and out and warn Rosa Stone about something. I hadn’t the faintest what it was that I’d got to warn her about, but that didn’t matter. I just knew that I’d got to get out of that hospital.
“Dear, dear, what a fuss!” Matron grasped my shoulders and held me down with washer-woman arms. “You’re not leaving St Thomas’ hospital and that’s all there is to it. You’ve got two broken arms and two broken legs and you need to hold still, or you’ll do more damage. Do you hear me?”
I stopped writhing about on learning this. Two broken arms and two broken legs? I’d got a full deck. It took some adjusting to, but, then again . . . at least I hadn’t broken my neck.
“There, now that’s better. The painkillers have got you hallucinating, Mr Arkonnen, but there’s no need to worry. You just lie still and get some rest and we’ll lower the dose to make you more comfortable.”
I stopped panting and closed my eyes, while she re-positioned my sheet and blanket over the metal contraption that arched over my bandaged arms and legs. There’s no need to worry, I repeated to myself. I just needed to lie still and get some rest and banish all thoughts of Acker Bilk, or Johnny Ray, or - more disturbingly - Rosa Stone.
——
After I’d waved a couple of pound notes under his nose, the tattooed landlord proved most helpful. Reg was a regular jazz nut and had been haunting the Black Box during the whole of the two years that it had been open for business. He came in after work and drank pints of best - the local Anchor bitter, usually - and was often on his own, which was how the landlord knew a bit about him. Reg liked a natter and he’d hang about at the bar. Like most northerners, he was a friendly enough feller, was Reg, and he’d told the landlord that he was in the warehousing business and owned a big warehouse down by the river, right by that new Bankside Power Station[39]. He’d mentioned a wharf, too and the landlord reckoned he shipped some of his goods up and down river, himself. Had he said what it was he traded in? If he had, he’d forgotten. All he knew was that Reg’s route home of an evening took him down The Cut, and that’s when he’d stop in for a pint and to catch whatever was on. The landlord scratched at his tattoos, thoughtfully: an amorphous mess of dark blue, a chain of blurred anchors suggesting the Merchant Navy.
Reg had introduced his nephew to the landlord the first time they’d come in together, but the lad had been in before with a crowd of mates. The nephew was a big, fair-haired lad who looked like he hadn’t two pennies to rub together. A be-bopper. Probably chuffed to be stood a beer or two by his uncle. Night before last, the lad had come in with a bit of stuff with long black hair, hard to miss because she looked like she’d raided the fancy dress box. Quite a stunner, in her own way; he’d wondered whether she might be an actress because they got a few of those every now and again, being so close to the Vic.
“Ahem,” I interrupted. “That’s my niece you’re talking about.”
“Is it?” His canny eyes narrowed. “Well, you asked, squire.”
“I don’t suppose you ever overheard any conversations between Reg Arkonnen and his nephew? Anything you’ve got might help.”
The landlord stopped scratching his tattoos and folded his arms.
“Here . .” he said. “Who did you say you was working for?”
“For the Government. Civil Service.”
He glanced at Jay Tamang.
“Chink Civil Service, is it?”
“Her Majesty’s Civil Service,” Tamang replied, evenly.
“Take anybody nowadays. This country’s going to the dogs.”
“Right . .” I said, replacing the pound notes in my wallet and slipping it back into my jacket pocket. “Time we were off.”
“Here . . where’s my money?”
I ignored him and ushered Tamang out of the door.
“Now, where did I put the car?” I scanned the street; a desolate, broken-down slum of a street.
“Do you think he will come after us, Mr Upshott?”
“I rather hope the villain does, Tamang. I don’t know about you, but I’m all for a fight every now and again. It clears the air and I could certainly do with that today. Besides . .” I located the car and beckoned him over, “ . . I’m with a Gurkha.”
Tamang laughed:
“I think I shall enjoy working in the field with you, Mr Upshott.”
“Really?” We got into the car. “I shouldn’t speak too soon, if I were you.”
Bankside Power Station was only half-finished, although the half that was up and running was busy manufacturing electricity for the nation. Almost everything around it, however, was much more than half dead. There were rotting bits of wharf and derelict warehouses lining the river and the narrow streets that had somehow escaped Jerry’s attention had dilapidated iron walkways and covered bridges running above them, obliterating any sense of sky. Some post-war housing had been plonked among the desolation, arbitrarily, so that children ran between the neat playgrounds behind the Estates - with their large notices forbidding ball-playing - and straight onto bombed-out wastelands, littered with broken glass. Down by the Thames, the old Anchor brewery sat foursquare between Southwark and London Bridges, belching out smoke and the air was rank with the stink of filthy river-water, stewed hops and malt.
“No post-war miracles here,” I observed.
“How will we find Mr Arkonnen’s warehouse?”
Tamang had his head stuck out of the window and was taking note of everywhere we passed. I could see that he was taking his duties extremely seriously.
“I’m not exactly sure. Let me find somewhere to park and we can do a recce.”
“Why don’t we ask there?” He pointed to the Anchor pub.
“You haven’t had enough of talking to publicans?”
“If Reg Arkonnen drinks Anchor beer, then, surely, he must drink there sometimes, too. So near to his place of work. So convenient. He cannot always be listening to jazz.”
“Do you know, that’s not a half-bad idea, Tamang!” I secured the hand brake. “You sit there and wait for me. I won’t be a tick.”
——
I’d just finished a tasty square of pink sponge pudding with pink custard and was going to ask the pretty nurse if she’d fetch my tobacco tin out for me. I didn’t see how I’d get into the corridor to smoke, but just sniffing the stuff would be better than nothing. Better than a slap in the face with a wet fish, as my Gran used to say! As Rosa Stone probably still said . . . Damn, I’d got to stop thinking about that girl. Even with the pain that I’d begun to feel now they’d taken my drip away, I couldn’t stop thinking about her; worrying about her, for no good reason I could come up with.
I tried to block her out by going over the A-Z of Conspiracy Theories that I was compiling for the mag, and considering candidates for H. British Honduras seemed a definite possibility; all those old colonial outposts that we hung onto for dear life were fertile ground for conspiracy theories . . oh, good, here was a nurse. An even younger nurse than the other one. It looked like they were recruiting them straight from the first forms of the secondary moderns these days.
“Afternoon, Mr Arkonnen. Stretcher here for you.”
“Stretcher? Am I going somewhere, then?”
“Yeah,” she smiled and I caught a glimpse of chewing gum, “you’re of
f to another ward ‘cos they need the bed.”
This was news to me . . still, I might be able to get a sneaky smoke out of it.
“Hey, don’t suppose we could stop off in the corridor for a quick smoke, could we?”
“’Spect so,” she said, laughing.
“Only you’d have to roll it and stick it in my mouth. What with my broken arms and all.”
“No skin off my nose. Here,” she motioned to one of the hospital porters who’d followed her in through my curtains, “you take one side and ‘e can take the other. One, two, three and up!”
It hurt like hell, but they man-handled me onto the stretcher, and hoisted me onto a hospital trolley. The pain didn’t subside once I was lying down, but carried on, gathering momentum like it had a lot more to give. I felt like a crab turned on its back, arms and legs rigid in the air and vulnerable underbelly exposed. I can tell you, I went right off the idea of a cigarette; it was much more important that I got straight back into bed.
“Let’s split,” said the nurse and they swung me through the curtains and into the sunny ward and ran with me through the door.
“Can we slow down a bit, please?” I gasped, feeling like I might be about to pass out.
Nobody answered me; they were too busy flinging me down the corridors like I was a sack of potatoes at Covent Garden.
“Please!” I shouted, as hard as I could make it, and faces turned to see what was up.
But we carried on, barging through a group of somebody’s relations, so that they had to leap out of our way and clamp themselves against the hospital walls.
“Stop!” I shouted. “Help! Somebody hel . .”
I just had time to see the young nurse smile down at me, her fair pony-tail swinging forward as she leant over and clamped a wodge of cotton wool over my mouth, before I lost consciousness.
——
I knocked on the driver’s window and Tamang rolled it down.
“Caribbea Wharf,” I announced. “Off beginning of Southwark Bridge, concealed steps down to Bear Gardens. We’re practically there. Chop, chop!”
We found the steps and climbed down, arriving on the shore of the Thames. Patches of oil stained the ground and broken groynes poked up, haphazardly, here and there. It was low tide and the brackish river had duly delivered assorted oddments to dry land: a rusting doorknob, a mouldy hat, a variety of shoes and many fragments of green glass. A pigeon picked over them like a connoisseur in an art gallery.
“Is this a wharf, Mr Upshott? I am not familiar with them.”
“I suppose so. Long past its heyday, but . . you see that barge moored over there?”
I pointed out a long, steel-hulled London barge, flat-bottomed enough to allow it to navigate in shallow water, moored up to an ancient wooden construction. Dilapidated, weed-encrusted poles protruded from the brown river, none standing true, all on their last legs.
“I daresay that’s Caribbea Wharf.”
There was a ramshackle effort of a bridge protruding thirty feet from a flat-faced building and leading down to the barge. A length of corrugated iron had been bent and nailed over the top of the bridge to protect it from the rain . . or to provide some privacy. We walked over to investigate.
The warehouse had impenetrable, fortress-like walls of soot-blackened brick with not a window to be seen. I gazed up at it, studying the surface. There had been windows at one time, high up on the walls, but they’d been bricked over - and not so very long ago, at that - for the shape of them was clearly visible in paler, cleaner brick. Reg Arkonnen wasn’t risking the chance that anybody might get a glimpse of his wares. I put an ear to the wall, but heard nothing.
I gave the warehouse up for a bad job and turned back to the river, just in time to see Jay Tamang spring from the shore like an acrobat, grasping the underneath of the bridge with both hands. Passing hand over hand, he swung himself along the underside of the bridge, out over the water and all the way down to the barge. He jumped on-board and waved at me, grinning. He made it look like a piece of cake. I didn’t believe it had been, not for a minute, but I thought I’d better give it a go and just about managed to save face (with a rather more ungainly landing, it had to be said).
The barge was approximately ninety feet long, with a big rudder on the stern, a low wheelhouse, or brig, before that, and a couple of masts - not too tall, so that she could pass beneath the Thames bridges. Despite the masts, I was prepared to bet that she’d been fitted with a motor in recent times. Her sails were furled and bound tight to the unusual rigging those London barges have and were the colour of dried-blood, as the sails of the older style of sailing barge had always been. She was in pretty good condition for her age and unusually clean, but, then, I was guessing that she didn’t carry bricks or coal as her sisters so often did. There wasn’t much to be learnt from the wide deck, save that I noticed that she’d been named ‘The Humber’, presumably in homage to the Arkonnen family’s background. The large hatch in the stern was bolted shut, with an expensive lock attached. However, a low whistle from Jay Tamang called my attention to a smaller hatch in the bow. He’d already slipped the bolt, slid the hatch open and was halfway down the ladder before I got there.
Below deck was utterly different. To begin with, the tiny berth was lined with steel, like a submarine, and the entrance to the rest of the hold was sealed off; what had once been a door was now welded shut. But, of more interest than this, was that somebody had been at home until very, very recently. A pair of metal bunks took up most of the available space, and the lower had been neatly made up with clean sheets and blankets, with a copy of that day’s Daily Mail lying on the pillow. A quick snoop revealed that the kettle on the hob was still warm, that there was fresh bread in the bin and - lifting a fancy glass lid - a fruitcake on the table. There was a bowl of apples, too and a small fridge which proved to contain milk, a strawberry blancmange and a Tupperware box filled up with a great deal of what looked like chopped chicken livers. I sniffed at it, reluctantly. One certainly hoped it was chopped chicken livers.
Tamang and I glanced at one another and turned to leave, but not before I’d inadvertently banged my shins on a square, metal chest that had been shoved underneath the ladder, wedged against a narrow door to a rudimentary lavatory. I swore, under my breath and bent to take a look inside. It was a well-stocked first aid box. I closed the lid and put a foot on the bottom rung . . and that’s when I clocked that others had come on board.
A great thump heralded their arrival, followed by several lesser thumps.
“Feet first!” Came a young, female voice. “I said feet first, you deaf or somethin’?”
There was no time for anything smarter than rolling under the bottom bunk and cowering against the wall. It was a tight squeeze, but I thanked our lucky stars that Tamang was so small. The thumping and bumping carried on, gaining momentum.
“There! Get ‘im on the bed and cover ‘im with that blanket and that’s us done,” said the girl. “What a blast, eh?”
The mattress above our heads sagged, dramatically, with the weight of the new occupant, bashing us on both our skulls. At which, my elbows gave way and I fell flat on the floor, breathing hard against the dust. Tamang was so silent, I’d never have known he was there. Had I given us away?
“Get your hands off!” The girl exclaimed, abruptly.
Did she mean me? I stayed where I was, peeking at her scuffed sneakers from beneath the bunk.
“She won’t mind us havin’ a bit of cake, Gloria,” a boy protested. “Not after all we’ve done.”
“She didn’t say nothin’ about cake, so best not.”
The boy sighed, aggrieved.
“’E was that ‘eavy,” he sighed. “What about a cuppa, then?”
“No,” said Gloria, clearly top dog. “We’ve gotta split. Terry’ll be waiting at the Dissenters, remember, to divvy up the takings. She said we’ve gotta leave the car here and get the tube.”
“The chube?!” The boy whined.
“Do I look old enough to get my licence, blockhead?”
“Ha, ha . . bloody good driving, then!”
The sneakers took themselves off and the laughter dissipated. We waited. Not a murmur came from the heavy being weighing down the mattress above our heads. Whoever it was made no sound and never stirred.
“Come on,” I whispered, eventually, bored to tears with waiting.
We slid out from beneath the bunk and shook ourselves down, Tamang tut-tutting as he picked dust balls from his new duffle coat. Then we took a good, long look at the new arrival.
The Commie traitor, Magnus Arkonnen, was out for the count and wrapped up in bandages. What on earth had happened to him? Another alarming thump at the top of the hatch made us jump, but we hadn’t a second to hide ourselves before a blur of marmalade fur threw itself down the ladder and belly-flopped onto the bottom bunk. It was the journalist’s cat.
16. On Board the Humber
Nobody could sleep through an animal the size of Pablo purring and flexing his claws on their chest. Pablo’s purrs sounded like his vocal chords had got rusted and he was about to vomit them up. And his breath stank of hot rubbish bins. It was that great to see him.
“Hey, boy! What’re you doing here?”
He rubbed his broad, orange face against mine, turned round and flopped down, right at the point where my ribs ended and my intestines began.
“Oomph!”
“Looks painful,” said a voice. “In fact, it all looks exceedingly painful.”
The Yellow Glass Page 16