Lemonade and Lies (23 page)

The coffee was boiling hot, enough to lift the skin off your soft palate. I guess my mother had read too many American thrillers where the coffee came black, thick, and in sixteen ounce measures. It also had a liberal dash of whisky in there. I could smell it.

The icy wind tugged the back door from my grasp as I opened it. And I felt sorry for the man who was stuck with the surveillance. But I was glad he was there, watching over us. But where was he? Not where I’d spotted him from the bedroom window. Maybe that was just where he went for cigarette breaks – in the lee of the hedge, protected from the wind.

I walked slowly. Easy to break an ankle in the dark. Well, not totally dark, for the light from the scullery filtered weakly through. Not that it helped much, other than to make ghostly shadows on the garden. I started to feel weird, stumbling around out here just so the detective could have his coffee. The humanitarian in me momentarily took a tea-break. I made my way to the hedge, groping along it with my fingertips. Its bulk made me feel safe.

This was stupid. Where had the bloody man gone? He was getting paid for this. Probably on double time too.

“Hello,” I whispered. I didn’t know the man’s name. And I don’t know why I whispered. I suppose at the back of my mind I was worried about waking the kids up. “Anyone out here?” I tried it a bit louder and heard a rustling sound. “That you?” I asked. And a voice answered. “Yes.”

I didn’t speak. Just registered the direction of the man and kept up my slow, steady progress along the perimeter of the garden, still hugging the hedge. The cold bit into my jacket. The ski jacket I’d bought in Norway.

Norway, Scotland; they were similar places. At least the climate seemed to be. I hunched my shoulders against the wind, thought about going back to the comforting warmth of the Aga. But something made me go on.

I turned the corner and the hedge stopped suddenly, something that gave me a clue I’d made it to the front of the property. I could just make out the porch security light, off to one side of me. But no policeman. What the hell was the man playing at? Having a quick cigarette was one thing. Or maybe he’d gone off to take a leak. Have a pee, or a waz or whatever guys called it. Now that really would be a hoot, if I crept up on the bloke while he was pointing Percy at the porcelain.

“Hello?” The voice seemed to come out of the hedge somewhere behind me. And there was something about it.

“You okay?” I asked. And the reply came back ‘yes’.

I was sure about it now. The voice. So I kept on walking slowly, steadily; heading for the front of the house. Away from where the voice had come from, not towards it. It was psychological. Walking into light instead of heading back into darkness.

I was almost at the front porch when I sensed the man directly behind me. I’d come to deliver the coffee. So I spun around and gave it to him. It was still hot. Hot enough to scald him when I threw it in his face, and he fell backwards onto the path clutching at his neck and jaw. I’d aimed for his eyes, but I’d forgotten exactly how tall he was. I remembered he was wide. And I recalled the voice particularly. It was high-pitched. Effeminate.

His scream was shrill and terrifying in the quiet night. It pinpointed our position for the dazed policeman who stumbled out of the darkness, and my father who came bursting into the front garden like an angry bull into a ring. Between the two of them, they kept him pinned down, and I was sent off to get the electrical tape from the workshop to truss the bastard up.

When they finished with him he looked like a Christmas turkey. But with a lot more blubber on board.

“A good night’s work,” the policeman said and smiled. His name was Detective Constable Jimmy Wilson. And he seemed pleased with himself. Maybe it was the first real criminal he’d caught.

But he hadn’t done it alone.
My
mother had made the coffee. I’d thrown it. My father had sat on the guy. It had been a team effort.
But then I guess we had to give the young D.C. his due. He’d been injured in the line of duty, had gone into battle dazed. The reason I couldn’t find him was that he’d been knocked out by the assailant. That’s what he insisted on calling the bloke who hit him, and no doubt that was how he’d refer to his attacker when the report went in. Police-speak.

None of us knew what the man was called. I’d met him twice before. And I figured now I’d evened up the score from when he put me in hospital. Two injured feet, a scalded face and two ruined pairs of cowboy boots. Reasonable payback for what he’d done to me.

*

“Thought you said you’d never do that again.”

“What?” he asked, but didn’t take his eyes off the road. My father was a careful driver.

“Once bitten – ring any bells?” I said. “You promised you wouldn’t do the gung-ho bit again. You sat on the man for God’s sake.”

“What was I supposed to do? Stand back and watch him attack you?”

“I guess not. But he might have hurt you.”

“Time was that wouldn’t have bothered you,” he said. “Me getting hurt.”

“That’s not fair.”

He had to do it, didn’t he? Go and spoil stuff. He knew he’d blown it, for he went quiet. Inspected a piece of loose thread on his driving glove. But he was the sort of man that apologies didn’t come easily to.

I made it simple for him. Low key chat. Nothing threatening. “Wonder what David’s got up his sleeve?”

“An arm, I shouldn’t wonder.” He smiled, pleased with himself. He’d made a joke.

At times the man took me by surprise.

And so did David Ovenden when he made his way towards us through the arrivals hall. He’d undergone a transformation and I couldn’t make up my mind whether it was a positive one. Sure, he still looked tanned and tall (he always looked tall of course) and striking. But his outward appearance spoke of some kind of philosophical adjustment. From surf-bum to establishment.

Gone were the trainers. He wore real shoes. Grown-up shoes; the proper deal, maybe even Italian leather, and the pants were tailored. I preferred his scruffy old jeans. The outfit made an effort to say success, but in a casual laid back way. It was a formula I’d seen before. A Yuppie formula that on David looked studied and self conscious. And the hair had been cut and moulded into some kind of style with what they called
product
nowadays, and cost the same as a week’s groceries. Bits of hair stuck out raggedly at right angles. The cut probably cost a fortune in some fancy salon. I could have done it for him for nothing with a pair of blunt scissors. It looked ridiculous and I had to force myself not to laugh.

We brought him up to speed on the journey home.

“So, the bad guys are still at it,” he said.

It seemed an over-simplification, but we didn’t argue with him.

“They must be running out of personnel by now,” said my father.

I’d been thinking the same thing.

Kabak had been out on a limb, according to Jamie anyway. The rest of the cartel was pissed off with him for some reason. Maybe it had something to do with his creative bookkeeping, and holding back their proper percentage. It made sense that even people in his own organisation wouldn’t want to align themselves with him. Wouldn’t want to go down with a sinking ship. Other than Kabak, we’d only met one man. The big mountain of lard who kept on popping into our lives. Maybe now the only person we had to worry about was Viktor Kabak himself.

“The kids and your wife? They’re not alone in the house are they?”

“You think we’d do that?” My father gave David a look that would have frozen anyone else in their tracks. But David Ovenden was used to taking on the Atlantic at its own game, head-butting doors. He didn’t flinch.

“Police are out there then?”

I smiled. “Sure,” I said. “We wouldn’t have come to pick you up otherwise.”

Two detectives were parked down the road in an unmarked car, and Sergeant Patterson was in my mother’s scullery drinking tea and eating breakfast along with Detective Constable Jimmy Wilson. He’d told us to call him Jim (probably figured it made him a more serious prospect) but Andy Patterson kept on calling him Jimmy anyway, as if the guy was still in short pants. Compared to Sergeant Patterson he was. But they appeared to have everything covered between them all. If Kabak was the only one left with any interest in me or my family, then four to one were odds I could live with.

*

David and I were in the scullery. He’d only called it the kitchen once, before my mother had corrected him. They’d all gone into Ayr now: Millie and Tom, my mother and father plus a police car following in their wake (at a discreet distance behind, but they still looked like a wagon-train). Hush-hush Christmas shopping it seemed. So I suppose my present was somewhere on the list. I guessed there was a list, for unlike me, lists were things my mother specialised in.

I was feeling relaxed. The heat from the Aga I guess, and the glass of wine. It was early in the day for wine, but David was happy about something and said he had a surprise for me. So I figured, what the hell, if this was to be some sort of celebration then we might as well start on the wine. He hadn’t complained either. Said Merlot was Alice’s favourite. She wouldn’t have been knocked out by this one, though. It was cheap and cheerful, not up to her usual standard.

There were things I didn’t know. (According to Millie there was a lot I didn’t know). Like why David had come on early, ahead of my friend, for starters. Why he was currently producing a full face grin that showed his massive set of sparkling white teeth. He’d always been an advert for good dental hygiene. Or if we’d now be able to enjoy the holidays without having to worry about people lurking in the back garden. Or if Jamie McDonald had put in a UCAS application to study Veterinary Medicine. I didn’t much care about the latter. He didn’t give a shit about any of the rest of us. That was the last thought that had taken root in my mind when Jamie McDonald rang the front door bell.

*

I couldn’t have been more pissed off. I blamed Jamie for that, because I’d been in an altogether different frame of mind before he’d turned up. Not ecstatic exactly, but certainly mellow, looking forward to whatever surprise David had up his sleeve. Now it seemed my father had been right – he only had an arm up there. For his idea of a surprise was different from mine. Although David still seemed unaccountably happy about it, the unexpected arrival of ex-detective Jamie McDonald introduced a sour note into my day.

Still, I wasn’t going to let him chase me out of the house. So I stayed in the scullery with the two of them, while David busied himself making coffee for us all. I guess David was the forgiving type, because I wouldn’t have wasted a single coffee bean on the man. He’d squandered my trust and let me down when I needed him most.

I was determined not to speak, not because I was being bloody minded or stubborn, but because I refused to let him reduce me to the level of sarcasm. And after some initial attempts to involve me, he took the hint. So the conversation was a two-hander, mostly male small talk.

Even though I knew I was in the right, the moral high-ground wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. The sense of injustice rankled. For here I was feeling miserable, while they were both grinning away.

“I’ve got something to tell you, Jill,” Jamie said. He didn’t look in the least concerned or apologetic. He even appeared relaxed, at ease; his eyes were bright, not dull and they held excitement. And the infuriating smile was still plastered across his face.

“Well, I’ve got nothing to say to you. Nothing you’d want to hear.”

Why did that surprise him? The way he’d disappeared so suddenly reeked of abandonment, for he’d left me to face the threat of Viktor Kabak alone. It was gratifying to see the smile slip and a hurt look replace it.

“I understand how you feel. Would it help if I showed you this?” He carefully took a folded up newspaper cutting from his jacket pocket and handed it to me as if it were a precious family heirloom.

The story from the Telegraph was a few days old. It must have been a slow news day because the editor had upgraded it to the second page and included a library picture to beef it up. The image showed a shot of an underground train approaching a station and the caption underneath it read ‘Tragedy on the Northern Line’.

The strapline wasn’t flashy. It simply said ‘Passenger Dies’. And below it there weren’t that many facts in the sparse two column story, mostly speculation. But it was enough to make my brain whirl with activity, and the acid in my stomach remind me that one day I might have to deal with an ulcer.

I read it twice to make sure I wasn’t writing my own version of the story, but it was right, at least as far as the reporter was concerned. A man holding a Russian passport and described as an entrepreneur had been involved in an incident whilst waiting for a tube train on a crowded London underground platform.

The words leapt out of the page ‘tragically fallen under a train’, ‘well-respected foreign businessman’. If he was well respected then my arse could play the Haydn violin concerto in C.

But perhaps the most significant part of the story was that an eye witness, standing close to the man at the time of the incident, said the deceased apparently lost his balance. The article went on to say that, according to police investigators, foul play was not suspected. The piece failed to name the unfortunate Russian but by the look on Jamie McDonald’s face – an expression resembling a Cheshire cat thrilled by a recent spot of good luck – it wouldn’t be difficult to put a name to the deceased.