“What?”
“Aunt Ethel. Phoned, she did.”
“Aunt Ethel did? She never! She’s not on the phone, Ag. Never known her get on the blower.”
“Not Aunt Ethel. Why don’t you listen. District nurse in Windersett. Didn’t know, the nurse didn’t, Aunt Ethel had any next-of-kin. Not till now.”
Mr Blundy sat down in the big armchair, his head in a whirl what with one thing and another. He asked, “What’s this all about, Ag?”
“Aunt Ethel,” Ag said patiently, “has been in ’ospital. Come out six weeks ago and bin creating. All on her own, like. Except the nurse goes in.”
“What’s she been in hospital for?”
“Partial Gas-ter-rectumy.”
“Eh? Gas-ter-what? Gas-ter-rectumy did you say, Ag? Mean farting? She’s been farting too much?”
“No, I don’t mean farting, you —”
“Other way round, then. Gas-ter-rectumy.” It had a rolling sound to it, and Mr Blundy rolled it round his tongue. “Air up her bum, sort of air enema?”
“Don’t be daft, Ernest Blundy, nor vulgar neither. I asked Mrs Whale. Said the old lady’s had part of her stomach removed.”
“Don’t sound like it.” Mr Blundy shook his head in some perplexity. “Gas-ter-rectumy, eh. These quacks, they don’t half come up with some names, Ag. Sounds like that vet programme on telly, when the vet shoves his arm up —”
“That’s enough of that, thank you. Aunt Ethel isn’t a cow and never mind that you’ve called her that before now. This throws a spanner in the works, don’t it?” Ag said shrilly. “There’ll be quacks and nurses all over the show, won’t there? Fat chance of taking a kid up there and keeping him hidden!”
“Oh my God.” Mr Blundy put his head in his hands and made a moaning sound, almost a keening sound. The Loop positively could not be let down, put off till Aunt Ethel had no further need of medical care. The whole thing was set up and the timetable couldn’t be altered for a whatsit. Aunt Ethel, gas up the bum or not, was an integral part of the work-out. Mr Blundy reminded Ag about the duffers-up. He urged her, having just had a brilliant thought himself, to look on the bright side.
“Just the right excuse for us to go up there, Ag. Look after the old girl in her hour of need, like. Till her stomach’s back.”
“It won’t come back. Don’t be daft. Stomach doesn’t come back after you’ve had a — what Mrs Whale said.”
“All right, Ag, it won’t come back. We stay, like, till she’s better, that’s all. It gives the whole visit a reason, see?”
“And that kid stays silent right the way through? And Aunt Ethel doesn’t even know he’s there … screeching and bawling his head off ’stead of keeping quiet, I’ll be bound.”
Mr Blundy told her about the hypodermic.
Ag didn’t like it any more than Mr Blundy did.
“I don’t like that,” she said.
“Bernie said it’s perfectly safe.” Mr Blundy told her about pre-meds.
“Pre-meds is all very well, Ernest Blundy. Pre-meds my foot. In hospital you’re not usually bound and gagged after. Or held to ransom. Makes a difference.”
“Well, I don’t know. As a matter of fact you are sort of bound. Them surgeons, they pounce on you, hold you down so you can’t duff up the bloke with the knife. Reflexes, see.” Mr Blundy mopped at his face; he was terribly agitated. “Look, it’ll be all right. The Loop, he doesn’t want to harm the kid any more than we do, stands to reason, he’s got to collect the money, hasn’t he, and you don’t —”
“When does he do that? Collect the money?”
“He’ll let me know more later.” Mr Blundy mopped again at his face. “This hypodermic, now. Goes in the backside. Easy, the Loop said … but I dunno about easy. Not without practice, like.”
“Backside’s big enough,” Ag said briefly.
“Not a kid’s. Anyway, the instructions say, in a muscle.” Mr Blundy frowned and looked dubious. “Thing is, Ag …”
“What?”
“Ought to practise. You got to probe around for a muscle, shouldn’t wonder. Can’t have things go wrong, can we? Kill the poor little sod for want of practice. We can’t risk a balls-up, Ag.”
“Practice, eh.”
“That’s right. Like Aunt Ethel’s surgeon … before he give her that gas-ter-rectumy.”
“Oh, shut up, do.” Ag paused, glaring. “Practice on what?”
“Why, the yuman body, Ag.”
“Whose yuman body?”
“Well, now.” Mr Blundy pursed his lips.
Ag jumped on what she took as Mr Blundy’s unspoken suggestion. “Come off it. I’m not green. I know what you’re screwing yourself up to, or trying to, and you’re not practising on me and that’s flat. Anyway — wouldn’t help to knock me out for the count, would it?”
“No need to use actual dope, Ag.”
“No dope?” She paused, hands on hips. “Oh. You mean just probe, like?”
He nodded. “Just probe, Ag.”
Her big face suffused. She seemed about to have a stroke. “Then you can just probe off!” she shouted.
*
That night Mr Blundy lay sleepless in bed with a load of cotton-wool strapped to his backside with much plaster. Ag had announced that she would give the kid the needle and she too had a need of practice, not wishing to commit murder. Ag’s aim had not been good; Mr Blundy doubted if she had been cruel on purpose; she was just naturally ham-fisted. As she jabbed and withdrew, reread the instructions and jabbed again, Mr Blundy set his teeth and thought of the future. Thought of wealth. That big house, the gravelled drive, the sweep before the porticoed porch, the butler waiting with a silver salver, ready to open the door of the Rolls, silk swimming trunks borne by a footman for the master’s dip in the heated swimming pool, gold-bottomed. The birds who would be waiting for him when he emerged. (Ag didn’t seem to figure in these thoughts.) Lovely — but this was an undignified route to gracious living. He sweated. Phew! Why hadn’t he married a nurse? Probe, wrench. God, why couldn’t the silly cow get there?
It was murder.
Bum like a pin-cushion …
At least, since with any luck Ag’s skill might have improved by the time it was needed, that poor kid wouldn’t need to suffer like this.
But all things come to an end, of course.
At last, Ag gave a shout of triumph, leaving the needle, however, in situ. Mr Blundy felt a curious dragging sensation in his fleshy part, closely followed by slight pressure as the body of the water-filled hypodermic syringe drooped down upon his buttocks.
“Finished?” he asked shakily.
“Think so.”
“Pull the bloody needle out, then.”
“All right, all right, just checking what it says.”
“Oh, God.”
*
D-Day was the Sunday, and Sunday was nice and bright: sunshine, little white-flecked clouds streaking across a blue sky before a light wind. Fresh and invigorating, a lovely day for the visiting champions, parading before the admiring fans in the full splendour of their overalls, which were artistically daubed here and there with engine oil. Mr Blundy and Ag had got up very early. The morning before, there had been some last-minute heart-fluttering, not to say panic, because Ag’s Aunt Ethel had been a long time answering Ag’s letter, but come the answer did, at last, just after breakfast. All was well. The old lady in the Yorkshire Dales would be right glad of a visit and why hadn’t they suggested it before now. She revealed the news about her stomach and said Ag and her husband would be a very great help and she hoped they would stay until she was able to do for herself as she had always been accustomed to do. In the meantime the district nurse was doing wonders and would post the letter for her. A visit from the Blundys, she wrote, would give her a lift.
“Blow her up like a balloon,” Mr Blundy said, giving a coarse chuckle, still thinking of the gas-ter-rectumy. “Give her a real lift would that.”
“Shut up, do.”<
br />
On Sunday they locked up the flat for what might be a longish absence. Mrs Whale would provide the reason if anyone should enquire: doing their duty by Auntie. They drove away from Bass Street and reached Farningham at a little after 7 a.m. Mr Blundy parked the Granada. There were several other cars parked even this early.
Ag had a moan about that. “Look suspicious, we will.”
“There won’t be anybody around when we come out in the ambulance, Ag.”
“For God’s sake, They’re not all going to Brands.”
“It’ll be okay, Ag. No need to fret. Loop knows what he’s doing.”
“That Bernie Harris! Not all that confident yourself, you know you’re not.”
“Shut up and have a suck at this.” Mr Blundy produced a flask.
Ag sniffed. “Whisky?”
“Yes.”
“Not usually so thoughtful, what’s come over you?” Ag lifted the flask to her mouth. “Cheers, then.”
“Down the hatch,” Mr Blundy said, and giggled, having made a light-hearted joke to show that his nerves were okay. Just then a shadow, Old Bill-shaped, fell across the car. Just the Bill on a motorbike, all gloves and crash helmet, just having a look, that was all, but Mr Blundy didn’t much like it. He gave a little shiver: omens were omens. He snatched the flask from Ag and hid it. No sense in being breathalysed, but the Bill hadn’t noticed. How Mr Blundy loathed the Bill. He wouldn’t piss on them if they were on fire. Traffic police in particular always looked sort of angry and superior and out to get you, no excuses accepted. Mr Blundy had an idea this piece of fuzz might have spotted the whisky flask after all and was being cagey, making a note of it for his breathalyser later. If that was all, well, okay, he wouldn’t be taking any more sucks nor would Ag. Even so, Mr Blundy didn’t feel able to relax until the Bill had scooted off. And after that, after a long trudge had taken them into Brands, there was the Bill everywhere. Foot Bill, motorbike Bill, patrol-car Bill, Bill looking after a shack where mislaid kids were taken.
Of course there was always Bill at race meetings, Mr Blundy was well aware of that, couldn’t not be.
All the same, on this particular day of high endeavour and much danger, the Bill was making Mr Blundy go all funny inside. But he mustn’t even think about inside.
Five
You could hardly move for uniforms. As if the Bill wasn’t enough there were a couple of regiments of Securicor as well, roaming about inside Brands and watching the entrances and all. Making sure everyone had a stand or enclosure ticket dangling from their anoraks or T-shirts.
Mr Blundy sweated like a geyser. Place was stiff with the law, even chief inspectors were two a penny, just like on the real big days, now past, when the British Grand Prix had been held at Brands; and for a dead cert there would be any number of jacks, the plainclothes lot, mingling with the crowds, dressed in fashionable hair-dos of varying colours, fake racing overalls with reflective red stripes down arms and legs, or T-shirts covered with advertising gimmickry — Yardley’s Toiletries for Men, say: they sold some nice lines in T-shirts at Brands, very jack-obscuring. Mr Blundy felt a cold trickle run down his spine — cold sweat, too reminiscent, or prophetic, of November in the Moor. But he managed, as he and Ag pushed through the throngs of fans and birds with paper handouts and slow-moving official cars tooting, and Bill, to induce a more hopeful feeling: if there was anything at all to be learned from the past history of crime, it was that blatant daring, such as was manifested by the Loop, did tend to produce its own reward, that the bigger the bluff the better it paid off, that the more Bill there was around the greater the likelihood of striking the target while they all got in each other’s way and on each other’s walkie-talkies. And on each other’s tits.
At the paddock, no Loop.
“Now what?” Ag asked. “Your fault — being late.”
“I’m not late.”
Ag studied her wristwatch ostentatiously.
“Oh, leave it, Ag, do. He’ll show, don’t you fret.”
But he didn’t. Time passed. Mr Blundy’s optimism took a knock. The matey, disembodied voice of the tannoy went into its day-long spiel, welcoming the crowds and running through the programme. The erstwhile stars of the racing-circuit heaven paraded in all their glory — Emerson Fittipaldi rubbing shoulders with the fans; Jackie Stewart signing autographs; Mario Andretti, Stirling Moss, Jackie Ickx et al beaming at their admirers who swarmed around greatness …
Mr Blundy gnawed at his fingernails. He’d touched Emerson Fittipaldi’s overalls for luck but it didn’t seem to be working. “Oh God,” he said. “Something’s gone wrong after all, that’s for sure, Ag.”
“Told you it would. But don’t panic. I didn’t want to come, not into this, but now we’re here there’s no point in panicking. Anyway, Bernie Harris, he’s your friend, not mine. If he goes and lets us down, it’s your fault for trusting him, which I don’t, as you very well know. We’ll give him another half an hour.”
Mr Blundy gave her a look. “Oh, yes. Then what?”
“Then we scarper.”
“Bernie’ll never forgive that. Never.”
“Can’t help what he won’t forgive. It’s his —”
“Don’t forget the duffers-up, Ag. They’ll do us both.”
“Look,” she said witheringly, “if you’re right and something has gone wrong, he’ll expect us to scarper, won’t he? Not hang about to look suspicious and p’raps get him involved with the law. If he can’t get hold of the kid, say, just supposing like, then it’s all off till another time. Is that common sense or isn’t it, eh?”
Mr Blundy blew out his cheeks. “Well, maybe. I dunno, I don’t really. The Loop, he never said anything about scarpering, Ag, if he didn’t show up.”
“He’s not as bright as he thinks he is, that one.” Ag stood like a tank, glaring at a tide of stickers surging past — stickers on lunch baskets, haversacks and airline shoulder-bags, and Bermuda shorts even, stickers colourfully advertising Team McLaren, the Constructors’ Championship, Ford-Cosworth, Brabham-Yamaha and Walls Ice Cream. There was even the odd Yardley Team BRM, a hangover from former years borne proudly like old hotel or airline labels on a much-travelled man’s suitcase. “Over-confidence, that’s Bernie Harris’s trouble. In the absence of instructions like, we got to think for ourselves.”
“But what can have happened, Ag?”
She gave a short laugh, then rounded on a fan who had knocked her stomach with his elbow. “D’you mind? Talk about clumsy.”
“Sorry, love.” Racing fans were always polite and well behaved, not like the football hooligans.
She turned back to Mr Blundy. “Don’t ask me what’s gone wrong. Kid could have come up against one of them teachers. One that hadn’t taken any backhanders. I don’t s’pose they’re all bent. Or the head teacher, he could have put his foot down, like, arrested the kid.”
“They don’t arrest school kids,” Mr Blundy muttered. “They have another word for it. Gate them, I reckon.”
Ag made a sound of impatience. “No need to go on about it, you know what I mean, what difference does a word make?”
On and on they waited. Still no Loop at eleven-forty, at which time a sound like the bombing of London in the blitz swept Brands: the first of the Formula 3000 cars were coming out for the warm-up lap. A few more minutes and more tangible evidence of the first race reached Mr Blundy: the stench of the exhaust fumes, the characteristic stench of Brands and Silverstone, Watkins Glen and Magny-Cours, Hockenheim and Monza, to the enthusiast as nectar-like as hay and horse manure to the habitués of Newmarket and Epsom. Today this smell bore down unheeded, swept and curled around a Mr Blundy who was on the verge of doing his nut from disappointment and fear. Having screwed himself up, having screwed Ag up as well, this was too bad. Any moment the Bill might pounce, might ask them to step along, and turn nasty if they said no. Mr Blundy’s imagination blossomed: the nick, the charge room, the cells, the beak, over the bloody wall again and then maybe, i
f it had been them who’d somehow made the cock-up, the Loop waiting with his mates when they came out, all eager for the duffing up.
Mr Blundy’s bowels moved horribly each time he saw a uniform.
*
“Where you been, then?” Mr Blundy was shaking in every limb. “Oh God, I’ve been that worried!”
The Loop, jaunty as ever, bung-full of confidence, put a hand on Mr Blundy’s shoulder. It was now twelve-fifteen and the Formula 3000s were hard at it beyond the stands. “Little bugger. Picked him up, I did, coming out of the paddock —”
“We never saw you,” Ag said angrily.
“It was early on, before you got here, Mrs B. Well, like I said, I got on to him … then I went and lost him. Talk about a needle in a flippin’ haystack, pardon me, Mrs B. Not to worry, though, I found him again all right, a few minutes ago just. Where, you ask? In a caff, stuffing his guts. Greedy little so-and-so, but I dessay they’re all the same, kids.”
Mr Blundy was mopping at his face still. “Where’s he now, eh?”
“There.” The Loop pointed down towards the well-trodden path leading past Paddock Hill Bend. “Come on, keep close now. He’s going up to Druids, shouldn’t wonder.”
“Which is he?”
“Bright red T-shirt with inscription ‘Ayrton Senna is Magic’. Can’t miss him. Washed-out jeans, but that’s normal. Skinny frame, two piss-pots high, and again I ask your pardon, Mrs B.” The Loop paused. “Got him, have you, Ern?”
“Yes,” Mr Blundy said. “Can’t exactly read the Ayrton Senna bit, not from here, like, but I think I got him, yes.” He had. A boy smaller than his thirteen years looked back at that moment and Mr Blundy saw a sharp, peaky face, a cheeky look, and rather longer hair than Mr Blundy would have associated with a posh fee-paying school, but perhaps he was a bit old-fashioned. “Now what?”
“Follow. Keep with me till I say.”
Mr Blundy and Ag obeyed orders. Now the moment of action had come, Mr Blundy felt a good deal easier, more professional, just like any other professional engaged in the practice of his career. It wasn’t all that easy to keep track of the kid, he seemed to have a fair turn of speed, which Ag certainly had not, and at Brands everyone tended to look alike, apart from actual size and of course apart from “Ayrton Senna is Magic”. Trouble was, the smaller you were, like that unsuspecting kid, the more you disappeared from view. The Loop, however, was keeping up nicely and Mr Blundy simply used him as his lodestar or leading mark. So far luck was with them: the kid was making up past Druids right enough, heading for all those nice woody parts where the deed was to be done, skipping along agilely with his phiz turned towards the exciting antics of the Formula 3000s zooming at intervals along the track and splitting all eardrums present with their intermittent racket.
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