Crocodiles & Good Intentions

by Liza Cody

  As if the Devil was whispering my thoughts into Icy Pricey’s ear, she said to Pierre, ‘I always knew you were gay for him. Well, that’s another example of you deceiving me every day we were together. Just remember, when you’re picking sides, I know about your work permit – or lack of it… ’ She left her words hanging. ‘Don’t make me… ’ she added with a genteel smile.

  ‘Oy veh,’ said Ziggy’s mum, at last putting down her camcorder. ‘You know what, if you were found battered to death by a heavy bronze statuette in a library somewhere, there’d be a lot of competition for Suspect-of the-Year. Me included. What’s your damage? Didn’t Daddy love you enough?’ With that, she turned away and followed Smissy to the kitchen.

  Her place in the cramped hall was taken by Suzie Pang who stared with dismay at the mess I’d made of the oatmeal shag pile. She seemed to be shrinking to the size of a ten-year-old while her face was acquiring the pinched look of an anxious old woman.

  I shut the front door firmly behind me. Anyone who wanted to kick me and my lawnmower out now would find it very awkward indeed. I took off Billy’s coat turned it inside out and folded it into a thick pad for Electra to lie on. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘It’s good to get out of the wind and rain. But can you move me so I’m closer to a radiator?’

  ‘I’ll try,’ I said. ‘You’re chilled to the bone.’

  ‘So are you,’ she said.

  ‘But I didn’t spend all night in a shed.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Pang looked bewildered, but Pierre grinned. He helped me manoeuvre Electra into a warmer place. We both chose to ignore the torn-up carpet. And I pretended not to enjoy the expression of fury and frustration that flitted across Cherry’s formerly bland, bourgeois face. She’d obviously decided that Pang was a useless champion of her rights, so she flounced away to the living room to find more promising material. I settled with my back to the hall radiator next to Electra so that I could support her head and still be able to crane my neck round the living room door to see what was going on there.

  I was afraid Pang might’ve overheard Cherry threatening Pierre about his lack of a work permit. But she began with stronger stuff. ‘The child,’ she said, ‘Connor Cropper, what do you know about his abduction?’

  Electra said, ‘Be brave. You’ve just been reminded how vulnerable Pierre and Li’l Missy are.’

  ‘And I’m not?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Sorry, officer,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure where to start. See, I was in prison with a woman who asked me to look in on her little son when I got out. I had no idea why. So I went to Shoreditch, but I was so shocked I couldn’t think straight, and the Devil made me ask my two friends here for help and advice. I swear they only got involved because I couldn’t cope with what I found.’

  ‘You’re responsible?’

  ‘No – anyone will tell you – I’m irresponsible. Pricey Ice was right about that. That was Kerrilla Cropper’s mistake. She can’t read or write, you know. It gave her unreal expectations of me.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Slow down,’ said Pierre and Electra together.

  ‘You don’t have to do this,’ Pierre said.

  ‘You really do have to do this,’ Electra said. ‘You can’t go on blaming Cherry for cold-heartedly kicking that poor little puppy out of her house when you abandoned him as well. Three times.’

  ‘Yes, but Gamma Dora knew what she was doing and so did her daughter. He had the best night of his sorry life with them. He should’ve been safe in the hospital too, and, well, Fergus is way more responsible than I am. I never gave him back to Mrs Cropper and her boyfriend. Never. That was the point – getting him away from them.’

  ‘Excuse me? What’re you saying?’

  ‘Wait.’ Finally, Pierre dragged his phone out of his pocket, did some fancy thumb-work and showed Suzie Pang a photo. I couldn’t see it myself, but I could see her expression change from befuddled irritability to numbed revulsion.

  ‘When was this taken, and where?’

  ‘Coupla days ago,’ Pierre said.

  ‘Castle Cropper,’ I said.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Pang said. ‘See, Mrs Cropper’s saying that Connor was abducted ten days ago by nuns, and before that he was a perfectly healthy, happy little boy.’

  ‘She’s lying,’ Pierre said simply.

  ‘Great,’ I said. ‘I was still in chokey ten days ago so it couldn’t have been me.’

  Pang ignored me. ‘She said she and her partner went to Whitstable for a break, leaving her other daughter in charge. This daughter got sick and convinced herself that Conner had left with his father’s family. But neighbours reported seeing nuns carrying the child away. Mrs Cropper only learned the truth when she came home and found her front door hanging off its hinges.’

  ‘Where’s Connor now?’ Electra asked, waking up and looking urgently into my eyes.

  ‘Don’t make me ask.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Okay,’ I said reluctantly, ‘Where’s Connor now?’

  ‘He was treated for trauma and dehydration at a local hospital, and then released into his grandmother’s care pending a Social Services report and this police enquiry.’

  ‘You didn’t… ’ I cried.

  ‘Oh man!’ Pierre exclaimed in the same breath. ‘This ain’t happenin’. Say this ain’t happenin’?’

  ‘Are you blind?’ I said. ‘Some of his scars go back months if not years. He’s a famine-zone kid. You must’ve noticed that.’

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ Pang said. ‘A different shift dealt with it. I didn’t see him.’ She handed back Pierre’s phone. She didn’t want to see, even now. Pierre turned his phone off and stuffed it quickly back in his pocket. No one wanted to see.

  ‘Told you.’ The Devil laughed.

  ‘Get him out of there,’ I said. ‘They’re torturing him.’

  ‘You really must learn to serve me better,’ the Devil said. ‘You aren’t half as much fun when you try to do the right thing.’

  ‘And you can just shut up,’ I cried. ‘You’ve done nothing but spread chaos and malice. You’ve claimed Cherry Price as yours. Can’t you be satisfied with that? Leave me alone!’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Pang took a step back. I must’ve scared her.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Pierre said. ‘She’s talkin’ to Mr D again – Satan, know it?’ He placed a comforting hand on her arm. Which didn’t seem to help. He was huge and Pang was tiny.

  ‘So you’re saying that neither Miss Price nor any one of you could’ve hurt Connor Cropper. It was the nuns… ?’

  ‘Tea or coffee?’ Smissy sang out from the kitchen. ‘Milk, sugar or sweetener?’ She advanced towards us with a tray of matching pink spotted mugs, milk jug and sugar bowl. She was wearing a pink gingham apron and a winsome smile. I found myself smiling back even though he was a weak, cowardly, treacherous little toad.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Pang began, but Smissy forced a steaming cup into her hands and encouraged her to help herself to milk and sugar. Smissy was inhabiting the hostess role with such brio and conviction that Pang, with her cold hands and confusion, accepted the illusion. For now.

  Pierre and I exchanged a glance and wordlessly agreed to let her mistake about the ‘nuns’ slide. I don’t know about Pierre, but I think the more mistakes and confusion that can be brought to bear on any situation involving the police, the better. They like their straight lines to join A to B. They like to know with clarity where to point the finger. And it’s usually at someone like me. It’s never at themselves when they make a huge blunder about a tortured little boy. Or at a genteel bourgeois blonde with expensive boots and a heart of stone. No, no, let’s blame the deviants.

  I took a mug of tea from Smissy, adding five sugars for energy. Ziggy came and sat on the floor cuddling up beside Electra with his back to the radiator. H
e looked almost as sleepy as she did.

  From the living room I could hear Cherry negotiating with an emergency glass replacement firm. So could Pierre. ‘I’m not copping for that bill,’ he muttered to me.

  ‘That’s what he thinks,’ the Devil murmured.

  There seemed to be quite a crowd in the next room – apart from the other two cops, a handful of neighbours had climbed in through the broken window and were treating the occasion as a coffee morning. I loved them all. The ones who hated Cherry didn’t much like Billy either. And no one seemed to support the cops. They were the rabble, the witnesses who were keeping the cops caged and inhibited. And they were all having fun on a boring Sunday morning.

  ‘Don’t go to sleep yet,’ I said, nudging Ziggy with my foot. ‘Are you good at finding things? Somewhere in this house, that horrible woman has hidden the two keys that would let this lovely dog go free. Do you think you can find them for me?’

  ‘Can I, Mum?’

  ‘Course you can,’ Ziggy’s mum said. ‘I’ll help you.’ Before anyone could stop her, she led Ziggy upstairs. She would have a wonderful time examining all Cherry’s bits and pieces. Heaven save us all from the eyes of a nosey woman. It made me quite glad I had nothing. You can’t judge a person by her possessions when she has no possessions to judge. Oddly, seeing as I was so wet and cold, I was glad I lived rough and not on a street so bare and soulless that a Sunday morning spent prying into the small malicious affairs of a neighbour counted as entertainment. That’s the sort of thing my mother would have done. Hers was a discontented life and a disappointed death.

  ‘While you’re counting your blessings,’ sniggered Mr D, ‘who’ve you got to thank that you have no children to judge all your life’s achievements? What’ve you got to be so smug about?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, miserable again. ‘Absolutely bugger-all. You’ve seen to that.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ said Pang. Then her phone rang and everything changed.

  29

  A Bad Morning For The Cops

  ‘What?’ said PC Gregory, trying to elbow his way into the hall.

  ‘The kid,’ Pang said, keeping her voice low. ‘He was found on the stairs outside his home apparently having fallen. He has serious head injuries and is in hospital. His grandmother is accusing Ms Price and a bunch of nuns of child abuse, or at very least of the criminal damage to her front door which allowed the child to wander and put himself in danger.’

  ‘Okay,’ Gregory shouted, turning back into the living room. ‘Everybody not concerned with the Cropper case or not living on these premises, get out now.’

  ‘But we haven’t finished our hot drinks,’ one neighbour complained.

  ‘Switch off your phones, cameras and recording devices and leave now,’ Gregory bellowed. ‘We’ve let this farce go on long enough. It’s time for serious police work and you lot are interfering with our enquiries.’

  Should I speak or should I not? It really isn’t my policy to tell the cops anything at all. But some of the same people who Gregory was evicting now were witnesses and recorders of the very fine mess that occurred outside this same house where the cops brought Grandmother Cropper to identify and reclaim poor little Connor.

  I looked at Electra but she’d gone to sleep. Pierre couldn’t read minds. But the Devil could.

  ‘You?’ he chortled. ‘Help the police with their enquires? Catch up, moron – the police, these days, are as toothless as you. I’ve damaged the infrastructure to such a degree that anarchy is only one tiny step away.’

  ‘I’m beginning to agree with you about the cops,’ I replied. ‘They can’t even persuade one holier-than-thou troll to part with two keys to release a suffering dog.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Pang suddenly focussed. She stepped over me, Electra and the lawnmower, edging her way into the living room. She marched up to Ms Self-Righteous who was now leaving an urgent message on her solicitor’s service. Not waiting for the call to finish, Pang said forcefully, ‘Get those keys right now. Or I’ll contact the RSPCA myself, and an emergency builder to cut the poor animal loose. And you’ll have to pay for it. And you’ll be fined for cruelty to animals. It’ll be a hefty bill, believe me.’

  Calmly, Miss Iceberg Supreme rang off. ‘Don’t take that pompous tone with me,’ she said. ‘You aren’t even asking politely.’

  ‘Please,’ said Gregory, who seemed to have been drawn into Cherry’s cheesy world where a varnish of respectability was supposed to disguise cruel actions and dishonest intentions.

  ‘Your mother would’ve loved my darling Cherry,’ the Devil observed. ‘So feminine, so blandly pretty – like a glossy Pink Lady apple with a rotten core.’

  Once again, Darling Cherry pointed a cerise tipped talon at Li’l Missy. ‘I don’t know why you all keep asking me about padlocks,’ she said sweetly. ‘I had nothing to do with it. It was him. He did it.’

  Even the neighbour who was in the middle of climbing out of the broken window stopped to stare. Li’l Missy’s face crumpled. ‘But you ordered me to. You said if I didn’t… ’

  ‘The woman made me do it?’ Cherry asked. Her sarcasm was so veiled it nearly went unnoticed. ‘Test the padlocks, the mower, the shed, for fingerprints. You won’t find mine. You’ll find his. So before you all make complete fools of yourselves, put the blame where it really belongs. Not on me.’

  ‘Why are we talking about a bloody dog?’ Nidge asked.

  ‘Why are you still here?’ Pang countered irritably.

  ‘Because of a complaint about breaking and entering and the theft of a lawnmower.’

  ‘The lawnmower is still on the complainant’s property.’

  ‘So why can’t he deal with the French terrorists upstairs in my bedroom?’ Pricey Icy asked in her most reasonable tone of voice.

  ‘Yeah, settle the terrorist situation, why don’t you?’ Gregory now seemed to be extending his contempt to his own kind.

  ‘Or I could just take myself back to the station?’ Nidge said, offended. ‘I seem to be surplus to requirements here.’

  ‘Stop, all of you,’ Pang said. ‘One step at a time. Let’s just do one thing right. Ms Price, we want those keys.’

  ‘I don’t,’ muttered Gregory.

  I can’t tell you how delicious it was to witness three cops fighting amongst themselves.

  The Pink Lady was still attacking Li’l Missy: ‘It’s you who hurt the dog. It’s you who lied to the mad old sow you pretend to care about. Take some responsibly for your own actions. It wasn’t me who abducted that poor little boy – it was you and your so-called friends. Stop faking the girlie stuff. You aren’t young and innocent – you’re just dramatising the fact that you’re nothing but a disgusting little rent boy.’ Again, her tone of voice was so calm that, just listening, you’d be forgiven for missing the pure poison in the meaning – the mean, mean meaning.

  But Li’l Missy heard. She was crying now, fat tears leaving black horseshoes under her eyes. I was so sorry for her – public exposure is a gut-wrenching show to watch. But I couldn’t afford to care. I twisted and called through the door, ‘Give me the keys, Smissy. Now.’

  With genuine sweetness, Pierre said, ‘Do it, baby.’

  And at last Smissy swallowed the sobs enough to say, ‘They’re hanging behind the kitchen door. That’s where she told me to put them.’

  ‘Lies, lies, lies,’ said the Hard-hearted Horror gently.

  ‘I’ll go,’ Ziggy said eagerly. ‘Can I go, Mum?’

  ‘Come with me, kid,’ Pierre said. ‘Let’s do this thing together.’ Ziggy’s sticky little paw disappeared into Pierre’s huge fist and off they went.

  At last the talk died. One tiny act of humanity was about to take place. Everyone wanted and watched. I almost stopped breathing.

  Why do I believe in the Devil and all his minions but not in god and angels? Well, it’s an eviden
ce-based belief. But sometimes, just occasionally, a human being takes the form of an angel. Pierre spread his beautiful, glossy, black wings to forgive Li’l Missy and protect Electra and me. Sometimes, a woman or a man, for no reason at all, will bring me a cup of hot chocolate on a freezing day. Or maybe she’ll let her little Starman hand me a third of a bottle of Shiraz. Or donate an old blanket for Electra to lie on. Maybe, the very next day, this person will steal a child’s piggybank. But for a few minutes at a very specific time this person has an angel-heart beating in her chest.

  Pierre-angel unlocked one padlock and allowed Ziggy to unlock the other. We were free. Everyone craned their necks to see what we’d do by way of celebration. It wasn’t much. I let Electra slip down so that I was no longer supporting her weight on my arms and shoulders. She raised one sleepy eyelid, licked my hand and went back to sleep in her favourite position sprawled across my lap.

  Me? I wasn’t going anywhere yet. I had my back to a warm radiator. Have you any idea how long it takes for a homeless woman to get dry after she’s been soaked by rain and has no change of clothes, no towels and nowhere to hang wet coats or blankets? Well, I do.

  ‘Thank god for that,’ Pang said. She wasn’t having a good morning and the tiny victory seemed to console her.

  It certainly consoled me. Just for a moment I let my guard down and closed my eyes.

  I dreamed I was walking down Charing Cross Road with Electra. She was on a choke chain. I was perplexed by this, but the next time I looked down at her I saw, not Electra, but Connor, and I realised that it was me who was on the choke chain and Connor was leading me.

  ‘Wake up,’ Gregory said, kicking my foot. ‘We need your statement.’

  ‘I haven’t got one.’ I opened my eyes. Electra was so deeply asleep that she didn’t stir.