Gold Digger (28 page)

‘Wouldn’t matter to you either way, would it?’ she said.

He took her arm again and this time she let him. They strolled on. The caff looked shut. It always was when you wanted it to be open. It was too cold to sit around in the open for long, but neither of them had long.

‘Course it would, Mon love, and a lot of other people besides.’

‘A lot of little old ladies who need cheap perms. A couple of old men like you who like a drinking companion and an occasional lie down. This town’s bled me dry.’

He sat on a concrete bench and felt the cold on his thighs. She sat with him.

‘Never could get a man who’d take you away from it all, could you, Mon? The ones you loved were the ones who wanted to stay. But I’m not having this crap. Who’d miss you? Hundreds would, you know. You’ve never done a damn thing except make people happy, you don’t know how much I envy you that. Everyone who goes in your place comes out better, you know that? For a lot of your punters, you’re the difference between staying alive of a morning or not bothering. Even if it’s only for a day. Go into yours feeling like shit, come out feeling OK, that’s quite a fucking contribution.’

She laughed without any real mirth, slightly mollified.

‘Yeah, I daresay I cheer a few people up. Like that little tart you sent down for a fix up? Honestly, Jones you’ve got a nerve. You go fucking missing and then you send in the scrubber you’ve gone missing with, leaving a clear message about where you’ve holed yourself up. Couldn’t have been
clearer. She’s wearing Di’s clothes. You wanted me to know where you are. You’re rubbing my nose in shit.’

‘There’s no contest with Peg and you, love. She’s just a runaway kid. You know I don’t do kids. Stop messing about. Quig belted me.The kid was there. Di took us both in. Anyway, it was you phoned me earlier, remember? Are you going to tell me about Quig? Look, I know he’s here and you’ve been feeding him information.’

She leant into him to light a cigarette, a well-worn routine.

‘The man you really wanted to take you away, even though you knew what he was. Is he still here? He’d always come to you, because you were the only one fool enough to take him in. I’d have married you long since, Mon, but you were always stuck on Quig. Must be something about the glamour of muck. Come on, tell me. Where the fuck is he?’

She moved to the other side of the pier with her cigarette. It was a clear day: they could both see the ferry boats on the horizon, standing out like emblems; the tanker, the cruise ship, the ferry from Ramsgate going to France, the link that was more real than any tunnel. She laughed.

‘Remember them days out to France, Jones? Good old days of duty free and booze running? That was fun. Going over for the day, loading up a van, filling the cellar and coming back? Christ, that was the furthest I ever got from home. I loved those ferries.’

Jones nodded. ‘Quig did a lot of that, long time ago. It’s not the same now. You get penned down in the hold like a whole lot of cattle fit for nothing but eating and shopping for rubbish. You can’t even go on the top deck. We went last year, remember?’

‘Yes. The whole pub went for a day of getting drunk afloat.
I thought you were trying to romance me, and all the time you kept saying how easy it would be to jump off.’

He remembered, felt a little guilty, couldn’t stop thinking.

‘Jumping off them boats mid-channel must be the easiest way to disappear in the world. Pick a moment halfway across, the ferry can’t stop and most likely no one would notice. That’s why they close the top decks. Health and fucking safety.’

Christ, he was good with useless information

‘I wanted to jump, Jones. I really did. I still do. When you’re on that top deck on a nice day with a drink aboard, you think you can fly. Fly away and sink, before you hit the realities of coming home. It looks painless. Must have looked like that to Christina Porteous.’

‘Yes, that’s what they reckon. Her and a few others. Are you going to tell me about Quig? Is he helping the daughters to stiff Di?’

They watched the boats, miles out but as large as life. Closer in, the more recognisable craft, small vessels, plying for fish, maybe bringing in other kinds of contraband. Looking pretty. Different kinds of fishermen entirely from those who fished off the pier.

He put his arm around her, wanting to comfort her, short of time. She was one of those invaluable, blind, angry women who didn’t guess at her own worth, because she wasn’t what she wanted to be and life was passing so fast she had lost control of it. And all the time, anything he had ever told her about Di Quigly had been passed on to Di’s dad, wherever he was, near or far. That’s how it went; Jones told Monica, and Monica told Quig. The wonders of the mobile phone never ceased to amaze him. Poor old Monica, always hoping to lure him back.

‘Tell us about Quig,’ he urged. ‘You’ve got to tell me. Or warn him off. Those Porteous kids are bitches. They’ll screw him and they won’t pay. Tell him.’

‘He already knows.’

She threw away the cigarette. Christ, she hated this pier, where she had courted, been bored, loved and lost. Never even try to love a fisherman, you always came second. Never love a man with a passion for something else; you always lose.

‘He came back,’ she said. ‘He came round mine the night we had a drink and you went back to the pier. Just as well you weren’t there. He was raving. Talked in his sleep. I knew he’d hit you, he said so.’

Jones waited.
And you told him where I was.
She took out a handkerchief and dabbed her nose. He was losing pity for her. He loathed fucking informers.

‘Said he was homesick. Said he wanted to see Di, wants to make it up to her, but he knew she wouldn’t have it. He’s sad, Jones, sad and spiteful. Nor was she going to give him anything, so he’d only got together with Di’s stepkids, hadn’t he? He was going to help them. They reckon Di’s place is full of their mother’s stuff and they want it back.’

‘And he would have helped them, and helped himself as well? Leave off, Monica. There’s nothing there he could use, not even a gun.’

‘That was the plan, and he was going to help. Only they’ve fucked him over, told him they don’t need him no more. And once he knew you were staying up there, he thought he wouldn’t bother. He’s afraid of you. You hit him when he came back for Di’s wedding.’

‘Which you told him about, and that’s why he was there. You’ve never forgiven me that, have you? First I knew he was
afraid of me. It isn’t me he’s afraid of, it’s Di. And he only knows I’m up at the house because you told him.’

She hung her head.

‘He’d have found out anyway. He’s been watching the place.’

‘While bunking up with you. You’ve been his spy. Don’t you know Quig would bury you as soon as look at you? Or is that part of the appeal? Well, perhaps he wouldn’t unless someone paid him. That’s how Quig earns a living. He gets paid to hide the fucking bodies, and then he gets paid for blackmail and information. So, who’s going to die this time? Or what fucking body is he after?’

‘Don’t,’ she said, ‘Don’t. It’s not true. He wanted to help her, Jones, he really did. He thought there was something he could do for her; he said it in his sleep. And he knew what them kids really wanted to do, one of them anyway. He said one of them really wants to kill her. Only that man, Edward, he was never going to pay. Called him a cunt, and Quig doesn’t like insults.’

Monica got up and walked away. He followed her, stopped her and stood in front of her.

‘Where is he now?’

She put her hands in her pockets, feeling for the cigarettes, the tears coursing down her cheeks running furrows in the blusher.

‘He’s gone, Jones. Got an offer of a job somewhere, with a lot of dosh. Got an offer on his iPhone. Very technical he is these days. So he’s gone.’

He would not have believed her, except for her ugly grief and the feeling of a weight, lifting. Jones trusted his feelings. He looked out at the ferries crossing. Another world, so close. Why were they all so slow to move away and find opportunities somewhere else? Why fester here if you didn’t
love the place? All you had to do was go a few miles down the coast and get on a fucking boat.

‘He’s really gone, has he?’

‘Yes,’ she said, pointing towards the closest of the ferries. ‘He went off on one of them, this morning. And he didn’t take me.’

He wasn’t sure he could believe that, and decided he just would. Jones went indoors and whistled.
Fuck me, people had better level
.

D
i was unpacking the food the deli and the out of town supermarket delivered. Peg was out of sight. He came in through the back gates that led on the yard and the blankness of the defective steel shutters.

Midday. No sign of Saul and he was sorry about that, but he had been briefed by phone. He looked at the apples in the bowl.

‘Listen, Di. Do you hear me? Quig’s gone. Reliable information.’

She packed things away, quietly and efficiently, the sag of her shoulders showing relief.

‘Are you sure?’ she said.

He smothered hesitation and said, as sure as I can be.

‘I would so like to go shopping,’ she said. ‘I get some of the right things and a lot of the wrong ones this way. Next week, I’m going shopping.’

The sheer silliness of this took his breath away. Jones hated fucking shopping.

‘Did you hear me? Quig’s gone for a job with money. I’ve been talking to Monica,’ he said.

She dipped her head, bending from the waist to retrieve a paper bag from the floor. She was as supple as oiled rope.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I saw you. Sit down a minute. I can’t talk to you when you’re standing up, that’s not levelling. And you need something to eat.’

Jones sat.

‘OK, I’ll believe Quig’s gone for a while. Makes it easier to breathe. And thanks for being here. Thanks a
fucking
million.’

He felt ridiculously pleased.

‘Look, you’ve got the outline of what’s going to happen, and Saul’s got the details. It’s tomorrow. I don’t want anyone else to be in danger. Especially Peg, and you’ve got to talk to Peg.’

‘What date are we on?’ he asked, reaching forward for the bread she was offering.

‘The anniversary. Ten years ago tomorrow, when
I
came in through the shutters.’

‘You were good at stealing, you know,’ Jones said. ‘And I’m looking forward to tomorrow. Always wanted to be a thief.’

S
aul came back in the late afternoon, full of insouciance. He found Peg and Di sitting at the computer. Peg was learning how to use it. She was learning how to write. He saluted them and went away. They could hear him whisking round the house, checking every room, singing to himself, very light of foot. Peg and Di raised eyebrows and smiled at each other. He really was a nutcase, that Saul. A bit silly.
A Dreamer
, Peg said.
But a clever one,
Di said.

You won’t tell Jones, what I told you, promise you won’t tell Jones?

No, I never tell. You tell him yourself. And just you remember, no one gets arrested in my house.

Then it all lulled down, such peace and tranquillity, everything quiet, as if the castle keep had gone to sleep, quietly.

S
aul Blythe and Diana Porteous sat in the gallery room, admiring it. In the last week, they had re-hung the lot, revising the format, as if preparing for an exhibition. It was part of refining, it was what collectors did, a way of taking stock. Madame de Belleroche occupied the same place as always, a small creature, demanding a lot of wall space, as if she was alive. That’s what they all were to Saul; alive.

‘They’ll do it tomorrow. And when they’ve been and gone,’ he said, ‘we can really organise the cellar.’

‘Can’t keep you out of there,’ she said.

‘Fantastic space down there, wonderful ceiling. Look, darling, when we really expand, when this collection is bigger and better, well, that would be a great place. Early Victorian brickwork. Changing exhibitions in a wine cellar, under a great big arched ceiling.’

‘Perhaps,’ she said.

‘You seem so much more confident,’ Saul ventured. ‘But you’re always so diffident about the potential of that glorious cellar.’

She said nothing.

Another cigar; another log falling
thump
into the fire, a feeling of peace. She stirred.

‘Whatever happens, I don’t want them to be here for long. They need to take the pictures and go. I want it over. I want to be free to bury Thomas. With plumed horses and a gun carriage, he would have liked that.’

Her voice trailed away. Saul coughed as he looked at the text on his phone.

‘They’ll come in about eleven tomorrow evening. They have strict instructions. We leave the steel shutters part open, to make it easy. You and your horrible friends will be up here, either asleep or aggressively drunk. They know you’re
guarded and I’ve told them Jones is fierce. So you do the lights and the music, and they never enter the house. Lock the door to the cellar, and they can’t get in anyway. They come, they see, they conquer. Later they learn, so Thomas said.’

‘And where will you be?’

‘I don’t quite know. Guarding from a distance.’

‘Gayle and Edward,’ Di murmured. ‘I’d be more worried if it was Beatrice.’

Saul thought of the smashed-up flat he had not mentioned: said nothing.

‘It’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘As long as you aren’t alone. And there’s no question of that.’

The fire was dying. She got up and rebuilt it with a single log. They needed sleep; she would let it die out and begin again in the morning. Logs from the pile in the yard, more in the basement, firelighters, twigs to get it going, the same method for fifty years. No shortcuts.

‘Poor Gayle, poor Edward.’

Saul coughed.

‘You’re doing it again, Di,’ he said.

‘What is it I do?’

‘Defend people, even the indefensible.’

‘No one’s indefensible,’ she said. ‘Except me. Shall we go through it again?’

The echo, like the sea, was uncomfortable to his ears.