Billy Rags (25 page)

I took off again and filtered through a few back streets stopping and starting like this. Finally I came to the last row of terraced houses and when I stuck my head round this last corner I could see the allotments and playing fields straight in front of me.

I could also see a patrol car.

The car was parked almost exactly where I'd come out of the allotments. There was only one of them in the car. That probably meant that at least one other rozzer was wandering about doing a bit of casing. And there was no way of telling where the casing was being done, whether in the allotments or in the streets around me. But that didn't matter as much as the problem I had of getting across the road. The only thing in my favour was that the car was facing away from me so that if I moved the only way the driver could see me crossing was in his driving mirror. But it was still too risky. The slightest movement on an empty road would be enough to make him flick his eyes up to the mirror. The other alternative would be for me to backtrack into the streets and finally come out at the far end of the road, far enough away from the car to chance making the crossing. But this meant travelling through streets I hadn't travelled through before, and there was no way of knowing what I'd find in them. For all I knew there could be a patrol car in every one of them.

I leant against the wall and swore. Then I heard the bells of the ice-cream van again. I chanced another look round the corner. The van was coming down the road where the police car was, travelling slowly along in the same direction that the police car was facing. Only the van wasn't an ice-cream van. It was a fish and chip van. A fish and chip van with an ice-cream sound. It swished slowly past the end of my road and the smell drifted across to me in the van's slipstream and my stomach turned over. The smell of the fish and chips was stronger than my thoughts on how to get over the road. The sickness of my hunger churned around in my stomach.

Then I heard the van begin to slow down. It was stopping. I chanced another look round the corner. The van was stopping. Pulling in behind the police car. Pulling in between me and the rozzer.

It must have been one of the van's regular pitches. I heard the doors being opened and then I saw women drifting over to where the van was standing. But I waited a while because now more than at any other time the rozzer would be looking in his mirror and I'd no way of telling how much his view had been obscured by the chippie.

Then the door of the police car opened. The rozzer slowly got out and dawdled over to the van and stood by the group of women clustered round the serving window. As the women were served they hurried back to their houses with the warm newspapers pressed to their bosoms. And then they'd all gone and there was just the rozzer. He stepped up to the window and gave his order and stood back with his hands on his hips and looked up into the night sky. Then the chippie handed the parcel through the window and the rozzer sorted out his money and gave it to the chippie and took the parcel and turned away and strolled back to his car, unwrapping the parcel as he went.

It was then that I crossed the road. As I reached the curb on the other side I heard the clunk of the police car door as the rozzer closed it behind him. Now there was no way that he could see me in his mirror. The chip van was completely obscuring his view. The van's engine started up and I straddled the allotment fence and dropped down the other side.

I moved carefully away from the fence, into the darkness of the allotments. After I'd gone a little way in, I looked back to the row of terrace houses, unearthly bright under the sodium street lights. The rozzer was still in his car, feeding. There was no sign of anyone else.

This time I avoided the school and hit the playing fields at a different spot. I began to walk across to the lights of the dual-carriageway.

Then, outlined against the bright lights, I saw six or seven rozzers walking towards me, all strung out on a sweep operation. They had no lights; at least if they had they weren't using them yet. They'd use the lights when they got to the school and the allotments. No point in using them on the playing field. Cracken wouldn't be hiding out in the middle of a playing field.

They hadn't seen me yet. I wasn't silhouetted the way they were. But if I moved, if I tried to get back to the allotments, they'd be on to me. And the same if I tried any other direction.

My heart felt like concrete. Tears welled up in my eyes. After everything, this. I'd been too cocky. I'd been too sure.

The rozzers got closer. Still no one spotted me. Then I realized something. They'd just come out of the bright sodium of the dual-carriageway; I'd been flitting about in darkness for the last couple of days. My eyes were adjusted to the blackness: theirs weren't. There was a chance.

Very slowly, I let myself sink to the ground. I didn't make a sound, but I moved in ultra-slow motion. Then, when I was on the ground, I curled myself up into a ball and pressed myself into the wet earth. Then I waited.

I could hear their footsteps now. Then the rustle of their clothes, the sound of their breathing. I lay there wound up like a spring, waiting for a boot to stumble into my back and burst me open.

But they passed. There was no boot, no sudden cry of surprise. The rozzers passed me by.

I didn't move until I heard them hit the allotment fence. Then I chanced turning my head to see what they were up to. I saw the lights go on and the legs swing over. Now I could move. But I didn't get up. I crawled. I crawled until I got close to the dual-carriageway, but not so close that if I stood up I'd be picked out by the sodium. Which was what I had to do. I had to get to my feet so that I could sec over the perimeter fence and suss out what the Filth had fixed up on the other side.

There was a van and a couple of cars. Complete with drivers. Three of them, standing together, braving a natter.

I dropped down again. I could do nothing but go parallel with the perimeter until I got far enough away to go over the fence without being seen.

But this time I didn't crawl. I ran, bent double, like Quasimodo. I covered about two hundred yards like this but I had to keep stopping for a rest: doubling myself up had brought back the pain in my chest.

I reached the end of the playing field. The perimeter fence made a right-angled turn in front of me. Beyond this there was no sodium lighting. Just suburban houses that faced on to the dual-carriageway. But the houses formed a curve, not a straight line. So in front of them the dual-carriageway must follow the same curve. Enough of a curve to make my crossing invisible from the crowd of rozzers way down below me.

I climbed the fence and dropped down into the back garden of the first house. There were no lights on in the house. I walked round to the front garden. Cars flashed by but there were no pedestrians. I went through the garden gate and began to walk along the pavement until there was a long gap in the traffic. Then I took off across the road and into the nearest side street. When I came to the first house without any lights showing I got off the road and worked my way back to the telephone box via a route of back gardens. This way I only had two streets to cross. Finally I came out into a front garden about twenty yards away from the kiosk. I dropped down and made my way to the privet hedge and pushed myself into the leaves and looked over the low brick wall towards the kiosk on the other side of the road.

The street was empty. All the chopping and changing I'd been doing made me lose track of the time. It could have been eight or it could have been nine. I'd no idea. As far as I knew the Morris could be just half a mile away, on its way back to the Smoke. It might even have passed me on the dual-carriageway. No, I thought, it couldn't have done that. They'd have spotted me for sure. Surely they would. The feeling of desperation began to creep back into me again, like the awareness of my physical condition now that I was stationary again. The pain in my chest, the damp, the hunger. All spreading through me...

The sound of a car. A car had turned into the street. Slowing down as it approached the phone box. Then it stopped, but the engine didn't cut out. A door opened. I pushed my face through the leaves and looked towards the phone box. It was a police car. A rozzer got out and walked over to the box. He glanced round as if he didn't really expect to cop for anything. I just stayed how I was, staring through the leaves at the rozzer and the car and the phone box. I daren't move in case the leaves rustled and I was spotted for. But in my gut there was enough movement for me to be going on with. All that I needed now was for the Morris to show while the rozzer was still glancing round.

But eventually the rozzer got back in the car and the car pulled away and then the street was silent again. So that's what they call a stake-out up here, I thought. A periodic visit to the phone box. If I'd have been in any other condition I'd have had to smile. That and the fact that their visit might coincide with the Morris's visit.

Then about three minutes after the police car had taken off there was the sound of another car engine approaching the box. I peered through the leaves again. A Morris Oxford. And it was stopping. My heart jumped but then it began to fall on a sickening downward curve. The Morris wasn't maroon. It was black. Sheila wouldn't have made a mistake: telling me the wrong colour could have had me back inside, no trouble. She'd said maroon and that was what she'd meant.

The Morris pulled up next to the box. No one got out. I couldn't see into the car because a strip of sodium was reflecting off the windscreen.

Then the offside door opened. A man got out and walked towards the telephone box. The man was about twenty-five years old. He had close-cropped fair hair. And he was wearing a sheepskin coat. Sheila had told me to look out for a man in a sheepskin coat.

The man in the sheepskin coat looked around the area where the box was in much the same way that the rozzer had done. In my mind I was trying to decide which was wrong, the car or the coat. Suppose Sheila had been told the wrong colour, and this was their last circuit? The man began to walk back to the car. He shook his head once as he went. I stood up and swung my leg over the wall. The man carried on walking but whoever else was in the car must have said something because the man stopped and turned and looked straight at me.

“Billy?” he said.

I nodded my head.

“Billy?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Billy.”

I began to move towards the car, slowly at first, then my movements got quicker and quicker until I was almost falling headlong over the bonnet. The man in the sheepskin coat was holding open the rear door. Everybody was talking at once.

“Christ, what took you so long?” said the sheepskin.

“We've been here waiting for nearly five minutes,” the driver said. “We've already been here once before.”

“The car. It should have been maroon,” I said.

“It is maroon,” said Sheepskin.

“Maybe it looks black in this light,” said the driver. “Sodium does that.”

“That's what it must have been,” I said. “The sodium.”

The car U-turned and made for the dual-carriageway.

“You hungry?” said Sheepskin. “You must be. How does fish and chips grab you? Got 'em from a van in between circuits.”

I smiled, a weak, silly smile. Fish and chips. From the van I'd seen earlier. Me and the rozzer. The same fish and chips.

“Yeah,” I said. “Great.”

Sheepskin twisted round in the passenger seat and handed me the warm parcel.

“What about a drink? Scotch, beer or tea?”

“Tea,” I said. “With a drop in it.” A thought struck me. “You don't have any lemonade, do you?”

“Lemonade?”

“Doesn't matter. Tea'll do nicely.”

Sheepskin began unscrewing a flask. The driver said:

“There's fresh clothes under the back seat. You'll have to lift it. I should change once we get out of this place.”

“Thanks.”

“There weren't any road blocks on the way up,” Sheepskin said, handing me the flask cup.

“They still think I'm in the area,” I said.

“Shouldn't have any trouble, then.”

I took the tea and drank. The car turned on to the dual-carriageway and began to pick up speed. On my right were the playing fields.

“Plenty of Filth about at any rate,” Sheepskin said, twisting round in his seat and looking through the rear window at the police cars and van still parked by the playing fields.

The tea spread through my body and I began to feel a wonderful weak helplessness. No more decisions, no more risks. They were being taken for me. I felt like a child again. Protected and cared for. The town disappeared behind us and we were in the limbo of the night motor-way, unrelated to the real world. I emptied the cup and sank back in the warm upholstery.

Sheepskin turned round again.

“Want some more?” he said.

I shook my head.

“How are you feeling now?”

“Fine,” I said. “Fine.”

“Wait till you see the papers,” he said. “You'll feel even better. Christ, you're the biggest thing since Hiroshima. I mean . . .”

The driver cut in on Sheepskin.

“Later,” he said. “Leave it till later. All he wants to do now is to sleep. Don't you, Billy?”

Part Three

I awoke.

The first thing was the perfume. That was the first thing I noticed. The soft sweet smell of Sheila's body drifting into my senses.

I opened my eyes and turned my head. Sheila was in a deep sleep. Dark auburn hair tumbled over the pillow and over her bare shoulders. Her breath was soft and slow. I could feel the light warmth of it on my neck. I looked at her a long time before I turned away. Then I just lay there and enjoyed the luxury of the traffic sounds in the high street beyond the bedroom window. Rumbling lorries and swishing cars and blaring motorhorns. It was music.

After a while I slipped from the bed and walked quickly over to the door of the adjoining bedroom and opened it without making a sound. Timmy was still asleep in his cot. I moved across the room and knelt down and looked through the bars. Timmy was lying on his back, his arms stretched out above his head, palms turned upwards, his face blank with innocence.

I knelt there, waiting for him to wake up.

After a time, I felt a shadow behind me. I turned my head. Sheila was standing in the doorway. I saw from her face that she'd been watching me for some time. She didn't say anything. She didn't even look a certain way. But almost as soon as I saw her I got up and walked towards the door. Then she moved too, away from the door, back towards the bed in our room. As she lay down and I lay down on top of her she whispered in my ear:

“You can wake Timmy up later. Only otherwise we'd have to have waited till tonight again, wouldn't we?”

Breakfast. The transistor's tiny burble. The all-embracing smell of fried bacon. Timmy chattering in his high chair. Sheila talking as she prodded along the breakfast in the frying pan.

“ . . . so there was no bother. He never thought anything of it. Just accepted that you were on nights and that was it. In any case, you don't actually have to go through the shop to get in and out. Well, you probably saw last night. You go down the stairs and along the passage and out through the other door. It's perfect.”

“Did you tell your ma?”

She shook her head.

“She knows I'm with you. But she doesn't know where.”

“And?”

“What do you think?”

“Yeah.”

I poured another cup of tea.

“And nobody else knows where we are.”

“Only Ronnie.”

I drank some tea.

“It doesn't matter, does it?” Sheila said. “Only I thought . . .”

“No, it doesn't matter,” I said. “Ronnie's all right.”

“I mean I played it safe. I only came here the once, to take the place. And I came in the wig and all . . .”

“It's all right, love. Don't worry about it. You've done fine.”

I mopped my plate with a piece of bread and crumpled up the bread and ate it. Sheila poured me another cup of tea. I drained the cup and leant back in my chair and gave Sheila a cigarette and lit us both up.

As Sheila blew out the smoke she said:

“Do you feel like talking yet?”

I grinned at her.

“Do me a favour,” I said. “You didn't exactly give me much chance last night. Or this morning.”

“You know what I mean, Billy, and don't be so bleeding saucy. I mean about the future.”

“Yeah, all right,” I said. “I don't mind talking about the future.”

She put her elbows on the table and looked into my face.

“Well,” I said, “this is how I see it: we're all right for money. We've no immediate worries on that score. In fact if we were going to stay put we'd be all right for well over eighteen months. It was lucky for me that Ronnie was on the job with me. Some of them wouldn't have handed over if they didn't have to.”

“He let me have it the day after you went down.”

I nodded.

“But anyway. We'd be all right if we were going to stay put. But we can't stay put, can we?”

Sheila looked down at the table.

“If we want a future it's got to be bought. Somewhere other than this country. And that'll take care of most of the money, the way we'd have to go.”

I stubbed my cigarette out in the ashtray.

“But it's a vicious circle. We can't move yet. Not for six months. Maybe not for even a year. And by that time we'll be well into our money and there wouldn't be enough left in the kitty to pay for the kind of passage we'll need. So where does that get us?”

She waited for me to tell her.

“For a start,” I said, “you don't have to worry about me. Whatever happens, I'm not going out on any more jobs. That's out. I'm here now and I'm not going back. I wouldn't have gone on the last one if it hadn't been because of that commitment to Ronnie.”

She didn't say anything and I knew what she was thinking from the way she wasn't saying it.

“Anyway, there's no point going into all that. It's what I do from now on that matters. And I'm doing no more jobs. So where does that leave us? Maybe a year lying low and at the end of it not enough readies to get us out.”

She looked up at me again. I leant across the table and took hold of her hand.

“There's only one person I can trust to do me a favour and that's Ronnie. We know that. Ronnie and I are real mates. Now the only way I'm ever going to get the kind of readies we need is to get Ronnie to place some of the money for me. To buy it. There's The Stable Club and there's Little Egypt and he could maybe even fix something up in the Chesterfield. He'd do that for me, I know. I mean, if he'd gone down with me then he wouldn't be in those places either. So in his position all he has to do is every now and again stake a tame punter on a good red number, nothing greedy, say twenty back at a time, give his punter a percentage, take his own percentage, funnel the rest back to me. In a year or so I can double what we have now.”

For a while Sheila didn't say anything. Then eventually she said:

“Only this, Billy. Maybe Ronnie will do it for you. On the other hand he might reckon on having done it all already. But the main thing is who he works for now. I mean, those clubs are Walter's.”

I smiled.

“Sure they're Walter's. That's one of the lovely things about the idea. Wally's boiling his nuts up in the nick while I'm sitting down here in the bosom of my family playing the stock market on his tables.”

There was another silence. Then she said:

“Don't do anything that'll send you back, Billy.”

I looked at her.

“Like what?” I said.

I sank back in the bath. The third bath in twelve hours. It was the quickest way of getting rid of the stiffness. But that apart, the novelty of the locked bathroom door and the smell of Sheila's toiletries mixing in with the steam, and the flowered wallpaper and the pink bath, they were all equally necessary.

I stretched an arm out and swivelled the dial round on the transistor. I stopped when I got to the news. The newsreader was talking about Billy Cracken. About how the search had moved to London. About how the Yard had moved in on the scene.

I listened until the item finished then I switched off the radio.

Then I leant forward and ran some more hot water into the bath.

I pulled the polythene wrapper off the shirt and held the shirt out in front of me. It was soft and woolly with a button down collar, one of those casual sportshirts with just the three buttons at the neck. Two more shirts of the same kind in different colours lay on the bed.

Sheila said: “I like the brown best. Brown suits you.”

The one I was holding was red. Bright red.

“Oh, I don't know,” I said. “I think I like this one best.”

I took all the newspapers that Sheila had saved and spread them out over the dining table and read each of the reports about the escape. The only fact that was consistent throughout was the description of Tommy's capture. And that was only because he'd never got down off the roof. They couldn't very well get that wrong.

Most of the papers carried pictures of the outside of the prison, pictures littered with speculative arrows describing my progress over the wall. Only one of the papers came near to the truth, and then for the wrong reasons.

I even rated an editorial in one of them. One of those civic-minded hands-up-in-horror ones, bleating on about the safety of citizens in their beds while Public Enemies found it easy to get out of maximum security. Tightening of restrictions, tougher conditions, all that kind of cobblers.

Only one of the photographs made me look at all human. A picture she'd taken of me herself, at Brighton, on our honeymoon. The rest were police stuff, in some cases specially retouched under the eyes and round the cheekbones.

Just so nobody got the wrong idea, like.

“Now then,” I said, “this one's all about Peter Rabbit. See Peter Rabbit? And that's his mummy and all his brothers and sisters. Now Peter's a very naughty bunny rabbit. Because he's always getting into trouble. Never out of it. See, here he's in the vegetable garden and he shouldn't be there, should he. No, he shouldn't. Because his daddy was once in the vegetable garden and Mr. McGregor shot him with his shotgun, didn't he? And he put him in a rabbit pie and ate him all up, didn't he? Yes he did. So Peter ought never to be in that old vegetable patch, ought he. He ought to keep well out of it if he doesn't want to finish up in a pie, shouldn't he?”

I lowered Timmy down into the cot and slid him under the sheets but he wasn't having any of it. Immediately he pushed the sheets back and squirmed round and sat up and stretched his arms out to me. I picked him up again and held him tight to me. His arms went round my neck and small fingers gripped the hair at the back of my head. We stood like that in the semi-darkness for a while. Then I dislodged his arms and put him down again. This time there was no squirming, no sitting up. This time he was content to lie there, just looking up into my face. Slowly the eyelids began to droop, but I stayed where I was, looking down, because every now and again his eyes would snap open, as if to reassure him that I was still standing there. Each time that happened he would smile and his eyes would flicker and close, and the smile would gradually drift away until the next time his eyes opened. After a while, when he was finally asleep, I left the bedroom and went back to Sheila.

“Look,” I said, “Ronnie's all right. You don't have to worry.”

“I know he is. But it just worries me. I mean, even me mam doesn't know we're here.”

“You're only talking about the bloke that had me fetched from Aston.”

“I know. But I didn't know he was working for Walter. I just didn't cotton on about the clubs.”

“He's been there for ages. Besides, Ronnie isn't Walter's man. He's got his own operations. He just uses Walter. Screws him to pay the rent. Ronnie's my mate.”

“And Walter knows that.”

“All right, what's Walter going to do? Get Ronnie to grass me? You don't know Ronnie.”

“But I know Walter.”

“And I know Ronnie. Ronnie'd never let Walter get a lock on him.”

Sheila showed Ronnie into the living room. He was as sharp as ever. Beige mohair, black shoes, dark shiny tie, his black hair cut immaculately. He smiled his wide smile.

“Well now,” he said. “What do we call you now? Blondie? Or is it Danny La Rue?”

I smoothed a hand over my hair.

“What do you think?” I said, smiling back.

“Great. Bobby Moore'll want to know the name of the salon.”

“That's one address nobody's having.”

“Right.”

We shook hands.

“Thanks for the lift,” I said. “I appreciate what you did.”

Ronnie sat down.

“Forget it.”

“Sheila,” I said. “Do the drinks for us. What is it these days, Ronnie? Still rum and black?”

“Vodka tonic. Lemon if you've got it.”

“That the In Drink now, Ronnie?” Sheila said.

“With me it is. You stay fresh as a daisy next morning.”

“I'll have a scotch, Sheila.”

Sheila began to make the drinks. Ronnie lit a cigarette.

“No, I mean it,” I said to Ronnie. “Well, anyway I don't have to say it. You know what I mean.”

“Sure.”

Sheila gave us the drinks. I raised my glass.

“Absent friends,” I said. “Even Walter.”

“Absent friends.”

We drained our glasses and Sheila filled them up for us. We drank again, but this time not all the way down. I looked at my glass.

“You might not believe this,” I said, “but this is the first one. Well, the second. It is, isn't it, Sheil?”

“That's right.”

“First one. I waited until you came.”

Ronnie drank a little more and said cheers. Then Sheila got up and took her coat off the hook and began putting it on. Ronnie said:

“You off, Sheil?”

“Going round to see my mother.”

Ronnie tried not to show anything but he couldn't help it. I grinned and said: “Forget it, Ronnie. Sheila'll never get copped for. She's too sharp for them.”

“Won't they be covering her ma's place?” Ronnie said, but he didn't say it like a question.

“Sure,” I said. “Only she isn't going to her Ma's place. Her Ma's meeting her in the Barley Mow off Upper Street. Her brother and her sister-in-law are going as well. Sheil wants to let them know things are fine.”

“What about her Ma? Won't they have someone on her?”

I shook my head.

“Her Ma went shopping up West this morning. She's been dodging about all day.”

Sheila leant down and kissed me on the forehead.

“Don't tie too big a one on, Billy,” she said. “Remember, you can't run round the Green tomorrow to get rid of it.”

“No, all right,” I said. “I'll take it easy.”

Sheila said goodbye to Ronnie and went out.