‘I’ll drop by – for a tin of beans.’ Skelgill mutters this as she brushes past him, for her ears only – and she gives a faint nod. Then more loudly, he declares, ‘Better get uncle Roger’s ale in before he dies of thirst.’
He turns to the counter where a sultry brunette seems to have been waiting reflectively, leaning with her hands behind her hips against the back bar; she propels herself forward, blinking as if to escape her reverie. Skelgill places his order: three pints, one of which to be conveyed to the lounge. When he next glances their way, the ‘couple’ are sitting side by side on a wall-seat that faces back into the room. The youth is yawning, thumbing disinterestedly at his mobile phone, while the girl has her gaze lowered pensively, staring at her drink cradled between long delicate fingers. The collie has taken to her side of the table, beneath the bench. It seems to be eyeing Skelgill mournfully.
*
‘Yon lass is a bit young for thee, Skelgill.’
‘Give over, Mouse – I’m her uncle – at least, I reckon so.’
‘First cousin, once removed.’
‘Come again?’
‘That’s what an uncle is – first cousin, once removed. I doubt you’re that, though. More likely second or third cousin, once removed. Possibly twice removed.’
The man makes a self-questioning face and then compresses some of his lower features into the pint tankard that Skelgill has provided. Grey-green eyes like Skelgill’s own regale him from across the small table, but Skelgill might reflect that, there, any familial resemblance ends. ‘Mouse’ is something of a misnomer – to Skelgill’s mind a classification between rhino and warthog would be closer to the mark. Of medium height and stocky, the man’s broad countenance bristles with angry moustaches and unkempt beard. His prominent cheekbones and buckled nose are sunburned – although not his heavy brows, which are pale, a feature that has its explanation in the inverted pudding basin crash helmet stuffed with gauntlets and goggles on the windowsill behind him. He sports what looks at first sight to be a skullcap – but on closer examination it is a kind of bandana, a neck tube pulled up to draw his long straggly greying hair into a pony tail of sorts.
Mouse is a biker of longstanding – and some renown – not least that his nickname reputedly has its origins in a Hell’s Angels type initiation ceremony, its fidelity perhaps warped by time. That he has arrived for the funeral on two wheels has enabled him to appear in biker garb – although perhaps he considered it suitable, being mainly black. He has shed his leather jacket to reveal a rather less appropriate heavy metal t-shirt (emblazoned with skull and crossbones), a denim waistcoat studded with embroidered badges, and jeans that are perhaps navy beneath a patina of axle grease. A self-employed mechanic, he runs an unaffiliated motorcycle workshop from a converted field barn on the outskirts of Penrith. For this reason Skelgill – a Triumph owner, albeit only occasional rider – has cause, at least for the purposes of his annual MOT, to cross paths with his kinsman. Now he queries the relationship.
‘So – what are we, then?’
‘Third cousins.’
‘Third – how come?’
‘Same great-great-grandfather – Gabriel Skelgill. Born at Nether Wasdale, 1869.’
Skelgill takes a drink of his beer while he absorbs this information.
‘Since when have you been an expert on the family tree?’
‘Had us DNA done – not what you think!’ He glowers. ‘It were a birthday present from Maria. Company analyses a cheek swab. They connect you with any relatives they’ve got on their database. Plus they tell you your genetic origins.’
Skelgill is looking sceptical.
‘I thought your origins would be pretty obvious.’
Mouse shakes his head belligerently.
‘What do I look like?’
‘Sure you want me to answer that?’
Skelgill has Neanderthal ready on the tip of his tongue and Mouse seems to detect this.
‘Aye – very funny. I’m talking nationality-wise.’
‘You’re English.’ Skelgill casts about the room. ‘We all are.’
Mouse folds his arms; it seems to be a gesture of vindication.
‘Except – I’m only 18% English.’
‘How do you work that out?’
‘I’m 72% British.’
Skelgill looks nonplussed.
‘So – you’re British and English.’
Mouse shakes his head defiantly.
‘The English weren’t the British. The British were Celts – the original inhabitants when the Romans invaded. The English came later – the Anglo-Saxons – 500 A.D. thereabouts. They brought the English language – but they didn’t replace the population. Why would you kill off your workforce?’
Skelgill ponders, drinking occasionally. Mouse might look like a ruffian – and he is not short of tangles with the law down the years – but more accurate would be rough diamond; certainly he is not lacking in the brains department. And at a family gathering such as this, it cannot be said that the subject is not apposite.
‘What about your other 10%?’
Mouse acknowledges, jabbing in mid air an oil-ingrained index finger, that Skelgill is paying sufficient attention to have noted the numerical discrepancy.
‘Scandinavian. You’d be more – that’s the Skelgill connection. Name like that coming down your paternal line – obviously Norse y-chromosome.’ Mouse takes another plunge into his mug. ‘You should get yourn done.’
Skelgill makes a disparaging scoffing sound in his throat.
‘I’ve got enough dodgy relatives that I know about.’
‘I take it you don’t include us in that?’ Mouse’s tone sounds vaguely threatening – although it does not appear to faze Skelgill.
‘I had in mind the likes of Marty Graham.’
Mouse twists his head to one side to make a spitting gesture, a mime thankfully free of actual expectoration.
‘Parasite.’
He glares at Skelgill, challenging him to disagree. By appearance alone, Mouse is not a character the average person (or even the average nightclub bouncer) would sensibly confront. Skelgill has seen him hauling quarter-ton motorbikes around his workshop. He can’t really imagine that the unfit and bloated figure he knows Marty Graham to be would have started a fight. He wonders if there is some festering feud.
‘What makes you say that?’
‘You know he runs that rip-off second hand motors business – used to be at Pereth – moved it to Wukiton?’ (Skelgill gives a vague nod – he knows the fact but professional etiquette deters him from becoming party to the slander.) ‘He were trying to wangle old Ernie’s car off your aunt Renie – I heard him tell her he could get her a top price – said why didn’t she let him have the keys – get someone to pick it up next week – cash in hand.’
Skelgill makes a half-hearted attempt to play devil’s advocate.
‘She wouldn’t have any use for it, right enough. Ernie should have been made to pack in driving years ago. Jud Hope reckons he had to put his Defender in a ditch last winter – to avoid Ernie – he came flying over the top of the Honister in the dark with no lights on.’
But Mouse looks unconvinced.
‘What would you pay for an eight-year-old Fiesta – decent spec, nobbut a few mile on the clock?’
Skelgill pulls a face.
‘You tell me, Mouse – it’s more in your line – I dunno – couple of grand?’
‘And the rest, Skelgill – thick end o’ four on a forecourt.’
Skelgill shrugs – perhaps rather too doubtingly. Mouse bangs his tankard hard on the table, causing eyes to look their way – alert to the possibility of another contretemps.
‘Seven or eight hundred is what he told her.’
Now Skelgill raises his eyebrows. His expression becomes one of a confederate.
‘How come you heard all this?’
‘I were stood by her chair, at the back of a scrum when the bar were still free. Marty was all over her
like a rash. I couldn’t help earwigging. Just as well, eh, marra?’
Skelgill looks hard at his third cousin and nods slowly.
‘Aye – right enough. Can’t have that going on. She’ll be on a single pension now.’
Mouse seems to relax – but immediately begins to look aggrieved.
‘See – there I am – doing your Graham lot a favour – and all I do is get a load of grief off’ve half of them.’
‘Blood’s thicker than water.’ Skelgill grins wryly. ‘Happen the bar stool created the wrong impression.’
Now Mouse makes a somewhat amateurish show of taking offence.
‘It were one of them plastic chairs in the smoking shelter. I waited until he went out for a fag. Sometimes you have to dramatise your point.’
Skelgill nods equably.
‘I’ll put the word about – whose interest you were acting in.’ He glances over his shoulder. ‘In fact I’ll just tell Roger – that’ll do the trick.’ He resettles himself in his seat and drinks more thirstily now he has got to the bottom of the matter. ‘Truth be told – I was a bit surprised to see you here. I mean – good that you came, like.’
Skelgill adds the proviso before Mouse might decide to take the observation as a slight. The man lifts his pint, but then hesitates. He waggles the glass, its handle clamped in his bearlike paw.
‘In case you’re wondering – I’m riding shotgun. Maria dropped us off. She’s coming back later. She’s doing a RAT run – ‘The Six Passes’ they call it. Finish with a pie and a pint up at the Kirkstone Inn.’
Skelgill nods – a little contritely, it seems. However, this is not because Mouse may have felt it necessary to pre-empt a reprimand. RAT is the Riders’ Association of Triumph. He pictures the route; it seems to light up on the map of the Lake District that is never far below the surface of his consciousness. It is appealing – the idea of ticking off Whinlatter-Newlands-Honister-Hardknott-Wrynose-Kirkstone all in one ride. The Hardknott Pass is the steepest road in England. For a second time today he is reminded of something he doesn’t do enough of. But then he doesn’t do enough fishing – what chance motorcycling, or fell running, come to that?
3. MARTY’S MOTOR MART
Monday, morning
Skelgill is watching a jackdaw. A bird he thinks of as uniform in colour, he now realises – at close range – that its plumage is actually an intricate combination of shades; for instance an ashy grey hood, ebony face and cap, and reptilian sky blue eyes with pupils of jet. And though he associates it with human habitations – rambling country piles where it haunts crumbling chimney stacks – its presence seems incongruous on this commercial strip, plumbing supplies, auto parts, foam cut to size, tool hire and the like, low utilitarian industrial units of limited aesthetic appeal. He is parked beside a garden supplies outlet, where a patch of artificial grass has been laid for demonstration purposes and various wares displayed – garden furniture, ride-on mowers, hot tubs. From a section of trellis dangle hanging baskets and bird nest-boxes (their price tickets suggesting rents), and on a timber shelf on top of one of the fence posts there is what Skelgill recognises as a squirrel-proof bird feeder. Unlike others that are for sale this one is filled with grain and sunflower seeds. A clear plastic cylinder with an aperture at its base is enclosed in a green wire cage. Small birds can slip between the bars to peck from the hopper. Squirrels and greedy large birds are thus excluded. The exception being greedy large smart birds. The feeder is nailed at its base with white plastic cable-clips. Engineered for quarter-inch coaxial cable, these allow for a little play in its position. The jackdaw has worked this out. It grasps the cage with its beak, vigorously flaps its wings as if to take off, and – hey presto – grains spill from the hopper. It gobbles them up and repeats the process. On the ground beneath Skelgill notices a piebald homing pigeon, strutting anxiously amidst dust and litter to scavenge the windfalls. Nature eschews few opportunities to profit.
On a more intermittent basis Skelgill is also watching some premises further along the road, at a diagonal. Although ‘watching’ is putting it a bit strongly – given in his line of work it could suggest formal surveillance. Rather, he is waiting – necessarily delaying his mission by a few minutes while he munches a generously filled bacon roll and slurps scalding hot tea from a half-pint polystyrene cup, having been unable to resist the inevitable mobile snack bar that is reason in itself to patronise quasi industrial estates, which position themselves as ‘trade’ but nonetheless rely upon DIYers and the wider populous to supplement their sales. No exception is ‘Marty’s Motor Mart’ – a window banner proclaiming, “Top Prices Paid – Best Deals In Town!” – an unresolvable equation that surely cannot be lost on Joe Public. And yet to Skelgill’s eye it appears to be a going concern – if not actually thronged with customers at 11.30 on a Monday morning. Some two dozen cars are arranged in four ranks, all facing the same way, like a flock of gulls at low tide, tilting their streamlined bodies into the wind. Most of the vehicles are small family saloons – five years old or more – although the front row includes a couple of boy-racer hatchbacks with fins and spoilers and go-faster stripes, and – a rose between thorns – a classic MGB Roadster with wire wheels, liveried in British racing green. Skelgill is not a bucket-list kind of person – he inwardly bridles at the notion – but, if he were, this is a car that would be on it.
As he is pondering how much the MG is on sale for, a big low-slung BMW in matt black speeds past him and swerves to a near-stop outside the dealership, the driver now more circumspectly bumping its two nearside wheels with their low-profile tyres up onto the kerb. The car is in good condition for its plate. Skelgill observes two men climb out and head purposefully into the showroom without a glance at the wares on offer outside. He does not get a clear view of their faces – but he would guess one is in his twenties and the other his thirties, both have closely cropped fair hair, and wear tight t-shirts over gym-toned torsos, bafflingly fashionable skinny joggers and designer brand trainers. They have the common demeanour of brothers. One consults a mobile while the other – if Skelgill is not mistaken – seems to check a clip of notes and slip it into his hip pocket. When most customers in this economically challenged town are likely hard-up family men – for whom the window banner advertising “Cheap Finance” is just as important as the vehicle – this pair do not strike Skelgill as representative of Marty’s Motor Mart’s typical target audience.
It is a minute or two more before he has disposed of his snack. He wipes his fingers – ineffectually – with the greaseproof wrapper, and consigns it and the plastic cup to the passenger footwell. He does not move immediately. He stares ahead – at the black coupé – and then he slides his mobile phone from its dock. Rather ponderously, and frowning, he types and transmits a short text message. As he exits the car the jackdaw takes to a nearby roof; the pigeon carries on pecking, a jerky automaton. Skelgill casually ambles along and stops beside the MG. Then, with the habit that is engrained in every man since boyhood, he squats and shades his eyes to peer in at the dashboard to see what the clock goes up to.
‘She’s a sexy little number, sir.’
Skelgill is caught unawares. He looks up, squinting into the sun that has emerged from behind a cloud and is only partly obscured by the person close to him. More of a surprise is the voice, however – for it is female. He rises, a little awkwardly – she is standing close and has him pinned against the car. She must be in her late thirties, medium height, brown eyes, bottle blonde (surely? – though Skelgill is no expert), with features that seem painted on, although a pleasing physiognomy and physique; the latter clad in a tight-fitting pencil skirt, black stockings and patent leather shoes with a three-inch heel, and pale blue button-up shirt with “MMM” embroidered on the curve of the breast pocket.
Skelgill has his left hand resting on the raised canvas hood. He notices the woman glance briefly at his ringless fingers, as if she is appraising him in order to sharpen her sales pitch. His hypothesis is
now proved correct.
‘And quite a lady-pleaser.’
Her tone is a little throaty – almost suggestive – and Skelgill has to check himself – in his mind the phrase seems to verge on the salacious.
‘Not a lot of room in there.’
‘Isn’t that the idea?’
She smiles coyly, and he sees that though her lips are covered by a broad swathe of freshly applied lipstick, the margins are accurate, and the pout natural. She looks him up and down.
‘You’d be surprised how comfortable it is, sir. Shall I fetch the keys?’
Thus far Skelgill has played along – not that he has had much to say – but now he is obliged to show his hand.
‘I’m just here for a quick word with Marty.’
If he is not mistaken the woman stiffens, and a flicker of alarm causes her eyes to narrow.
‘He’s busy just now.’
Skelgill grins amiably, and detaches himself from the MG and steps past the woman and begins to stride towards the showroom entrance. Her high heels impede her movement, and she can only follow – when it looks like she would wish to get ahead of him.
‘Do you have an appointment, sir?’
Skelgill answers nonchalantly over his shoulder.
‘No need – I’m his cousin.’
‘But, wait – why don’t we go for a spin – a test drive?’
Skelgill has reached the open sliding glass door and crossed the threshold – by necessity he has to pause to get his bearings and she reaches his side. He feels her hand on his upper arm.
‘You might regret it later, sir.’
Skelgill is sure that a few seconds ago he could not see the edges of the lacy black bra that is revealed by her partially unbuttoned blouse, and the cleavage that it cradles.
‘I’m a bit tight on time.’
Murder on the Run Page 3