Petrella at 'Q' (12 page)

A hand smacked him between the shoulder blades and he spun round. Two boys were standing behind him, both a bit older and a lot bigger all round than Timothy. The taller one said, “It’s a stick-up, rose-bud. Turn out your pockets.”

Timothy gaped at him.

“Come on, come on,” said the other one. “Do you want to be duffed up?”

“Are you mugging me?”

“You’ve cottoned on quick, boyo. Shell out.”

“I’m terribly sorry,” said Timothy. “But I’ve actually only got about tenpence on me. It’s Thursday, you see. I get my pocket money on Friday.”

He was feeling in his trouser pocket as he spoke and now fetched out a fivepenny piece, two twopenny pieces and a penny and held them out.

The taller boy stared at the money, but made no move to touch it. He said, “How much pocket money do you get every week?”

“A pound.”

“So if we’d stuck you up tomorrow, we’d have got a quid?”

“That’s right,” said Timothy. “I’m terribly sorry. If you’re short tonight I could show you how to make a bit perhaps.”

The two boys looked at each other and then burst out laughing.

“Cool,” said the tall one. “That’s very cool.”

“What’s the gimmick?” said the second one.

“It’s the amusement arcade, in the High Street. There’s a big fruit machine, tucked away in the corner, no one uses it much.”

“Why no one uses that machine is because no one ever makes any money out of it.”

“That’s right,” said Timothy. “It’s a set-safe machine. I read about this in a magazine. It’s a machine that’s organised so that the winning combinations never come up. A man comes and clears the machines on Friday. By this time it must be stuffed with money.”

“So what are you suggesting we do? Break it open with a hammer?”

“What I thought was, it’s plugged into a wall socket. If you pulled out the plug and broke the electric circuit
whilst it’s going
the safety mechanism wouldn’t work. It’d stop at some place it wasn’t meant to stop. You’d have a good chance.”

The two boys looked at each other, and then at Timothy.

He said, “It’d need three people. One to distract the attention of the attendant. You could do that by asking him for change for a pound. The second to work the machine and the third to get down behind and jerk out the plug. I could do that, I’m the smallest.”

The tall boy said, “If it’s as easy as that why haven’t you done it before?”

“Because I haven’t got—” said Timothy and stopped. He realised that what he had nearly said was, “Because I haven’t got two friends.”

“We’d better go somewhere and count it,” said Len. Their jacket pockets were bursting with twopenny bits.

“That bouncer,” said Geoff. He could hardly get the words out for laughing. “Poor old sod. He just
knew
something was wrong, didn’t he?”

“He was on the spot,” agreed Len. “He couldn’t very well say that machine’s not meant to pay out. He’d have been lynched. Come on.”

Since the “come on” seemed to include Timothy, he followed them. They led the way down a complex of side streets and alleyways, each smaller and dingier than the last, until they came out almost on the foreshore of the Thames. Since the dock had been shut, two years before, it had become an area of desolation, of gaunt buildings with shuttered windows and boarded doorways. Len stopped at one of these and stooped down. Timothy saw that he had shifted a board, leaving plenty of room for a boy to wriggle under. When they were inside and the board had been replaced Geoff clicked on a torch. Stone stairs, deep in fallen plaster and less pleasant litter.

“Our home from home,” said Len, “is on the first floor. Mind where you’re treading. Here we are. Wait whilst I light the lamp.”

It was a small room. The windows were blanked by iron shutters. The walls, as Timothy saw when the pressure lamp had been lit, were covered with posters. There was a table made of planks laid on trestles, and there were three old wicker chairs. Timothy thought he had never seen anything so snug in the whole of his life.

Len said, “You can use the third chair if you like.”

It was a formal invitation into brotherhood.

“It used to be Ronnie’s chair,” said Geoff with a grin. “He won’t be using it for a bit. Not for twelve months or so. He got nicked for lifting fags. They sent him up the river.”

“Your folks going to start wondering where you are?”

“No, that’s all right,” said Timothy. “I can say I went on to the club after choir practice. It’s a church club. The Vicar runs it.”

“Old Amberline? That fat poof.”

Timothy considered the Reverend Patrick Amberline carefully and said, “No. He’s all right in that way. You have to keep an eye on one of the vergers though.”

Mr. Grant said, “Timmy seems very busy these days. It’s the third night running he’s been late.”

“He was telling me about it at breakfast this morning,” said Mrs. Grant. “It’s not only the choir and the boys’ club. It’s this Voluntary Service Organisation he’s joined. They’re a sort of modern version of the Boy Scouts. They arrange to help people who need help. When he leaves school he might even get a job abroad. In one of those depressed countries.”

“Well, I suppose it’s all right,” said Mr. Grant. “I used to be a Boy Scout myself once. I got a badge for cookery too.”

They were busy weeks. For Timothy, weeks of simple delight. Never having had any real friends before, he found the friendship of Len and Geoff intoxicating. It was friendship offered, as it is at that age, without reserve. He knew now that Len was Leonard Rhodes and Geoff was Geoffrey Cowell and that Len’s father was a market porter and Geoff’s worked on the railway. He had enough imagination to visualise a life in which you had to fight for anything you wanted, a life which could be full of surprising adventures.

The first thing he learned about was borrowing cars. This was an exercise carried out with two bits of wire. A strong piece, with a loop at the end, which could be slipped through a gap, forced at the top of the window, and used to jerk up the retaining catch which locked the door. Timothy, who had small hands and was neat and precise in his movements, became particularly skilful at this. The second piece of wire was used by Len, who had once spent some time working in a garage, to start the engine. After that, if no irate owner had appeared, the car could be driven off and would serve as transport for the evening. Timothy was taught to drive. He picked it up very quickly.

“Let her rip,” said Geoff. “It’s not like you were driving your own car, and got to be careful you don’t scratch the paint. With this one a few bumps don’t signify.”

This was on the occasion when they had borrowed Mr. Knowlson’s new Ford Capri. Timothy had suggested it. “He’s stuck to the television from eight o’clock onwards,” he said. “He wouldn’t come out if a bomb went off.”

The evening runs were not solely pleasure trips. There was a business side to them as well. Len and Geoff had a lot of contacts, friends of Geoff’s father, who seemed to have a knack of picking up unwanted packages. A carton containing two dozen new transistor wireless sets might have proved tricky to dispose of. But offered separately to buyers in public houses and cafés and dance halls, they seemed to go like hot cakes. Len and Geoff were adept at this.

The first time they took Timothy into a public house the girl behind the bar looked at him and said, “How old’s your kid brother?”

“You wouldn’t think it,” said Geoff, “but he’s twenty-eight. He’s a midget. He does a turn on the halls. Don’t say anything to him about it. He’s sensitive.”

The girl said, “You’re a bloody liar,” but served them with half pints of beer. Mr. Grant was a teetotaller and Timothy had never seen beer before at close quarters. He took a sip of it. It tasted indescribable. Like medicine, only worse. Geoff said, “You don’t have to pretend to like it. After a bit you’ll sort of get used to it.”

Some nights they were engaged in darker work. They would drive the car to a rendezvous, which was usually a garage in the docks area. Men would be there, shadowy figures who hardly showed their faces. Crates which seemed to weigh heavily would be loaded on to the back seat of the car. The boys then drove out into the Kent countryside. The men never came with them. When they arrived at their destination, sometimes another garage, sometimes a small workshop or factory, the cargo was unloaded with equal speed and silence and a wad of notes was pushed into Len’s hands.

The only real difference of opinion the boys ever had was over the money. Len and Geoff wanted to share everything equally. Timothy agreed to keep some of it, but refused any idea of equal sharing. First, because he wouldn’t have known what to do with so much cash. More important, because he knew what it was being saved up for. One of the pictures on the wall of their den was a blown-up photograph of a motor-bicycle. A Norton Interstate 850 Road Racer.

“Do a ton easy,” said Len. “Hundred and thirty on the track. Old Edelman at that garage we go to down the docks says he can get me one at trade prices. How much are we up to?”

As he said this he was prising up a board in the corner. Under the board was a biscuit tin, the edges sealed with insulating tape. In the tin was the pirates’ hoard of notes and coins.

“Another tenner and we’re there,” said Geoff.

Timothy still went to choir practice. If he had missed it, his absence would have been noticed, and enquiries would have followed. The Reverend Amberline usually put in an appearance, to preserve law and order and on this occasion he happened to notice Timothy. They were practising the hymn from the Yattenden hymnal,
O quam juvat fratres.
“Happy are they, they that love God.” The Rector thought that Timothy, normally a reserved and rather silent boy, really did look happy. He was bubbling over, bursting with happiness. “Remember now thy Creator,” said the Reverend Amberline sadly to himself, “in the days of thy youth.” How splendid to be young and happy.

That evening, Detective Chief Inspector Patrick Petrella paid a visit to Mr. Grant’s house in Dodman Street. He said, “We’ve had a number of reports of cars being taken away without their owner’s consent.”

“That’s right,” said Mr. Grant. “And I’m glad you’re going to do something about it at last. My neighbour, Mr. Knowlson, lost his a few weeks ago. He got it back, but it was in a shocking state.”

“Yesterday evening,” said Petrella, “the boys who seem to have been responsible for a number of these cases were observed. If the person who observed them had been a bit quicker, they’d have been apprehended. But she did give us a positive identification of one lad she recognised. It was your son, Timothy.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Mr. Grant, as soon as he had got his breath back. “Timothy would never do anything like that. He’s a thoroughly nice boy.”

“Can you tell me where he was yesterday evening?”

“Certainly I can. He was with the Voluntary Service Organisation.”

“The people at Craythorne Hall?”

“That’s right.”

“May I use your telephone?’

“Yes. And then I hope you’ll apologise.”

Three minutes later, Petrella said, “Not only was he not at Craythorne Hall on Wednesday evening, but he’s never been there. They know nothing about him. They say they only take on boys of seventeen and over.”

Mr. Grant stared at him, white-faced.

“Where is he now?”

“At choir practice.”

“Choir practice would have been over by half past eight.”

“He goes on afterwards to the youth club.”

Petrella knew the missioner at the youth club and used the telephone again. By this time Mrs. Grant had joined them. Petrella faced a badly-shaken couple. He said, “I’d like to have a word with Timothy when he does get back. It doesn’t matter how late it is. I’ve got something on at the station which is going to keep me there anyway.”

He gave them his number at Patton Street.

The matter which Petrella referred to was a report of goods, stolen from the railway yard, being run to a certain garage in the docks area. It was out of this garage, at the moment that Petrella left Dodman Street, that the brand new, shining monster was being wheeled.

“She’s licenced and we’ve filled her up for you,” said Mr. Edelman, who was the jovial proprietor of the garage. “You can have that on the house.” He could afford to be generous. The courier service which the boys had run for him had enriched him at minimal risk to himself.

“Well, thanks,” said Geoff. He was almost speechless with pride and excitement.

“If you want to try her out, the best way is over Blackheath and out on to the M2. You can let her rip there.”

Geoff and Len were both wearing new white helmets, white silk scarves wrapped round the lower parts of their faces, black leather coats and leather gauntlets. The gloves, helmets and scarves had been lifted the day before from an outfitters in Southwark High Street. The coats had been bought for them by Timothy out of his share of the money. Len was the driver. Geoff was to ride pillion.

“Your turn tomorrow,” said Geoff.

“Fine,” said Timothy. “I’ll wait for you at our place.”

“Keep the home fires burning,” said Len. “This is just a trial run. We’ll be back in an hour.”

“And watch it,” said Mr. Edelman. “There’s a lot of horsepower inside that little beauty. So don’t go doing anything bloody stupid.”

His words were drowned in the roar of the Road Racer starting up. Timothy stood listening until he could hear it no longer, and then turned and walked away.

Petrella got the news at eleven o’clock that night.

“We’ve identified the boys,” said the voice on the telephone. “They both lived in your area. Cowell and Rhodes. I can give you the addresses.”

“Both dead?”

“They could hardly be deader. They went off the road and smashed into the back of a parked lorry. An A.A. patrol saw it happen. Said they must have been doing over ninety. Stupid young buggers.”

The speaker sounded angry. But he had seen the bodies and had sons of his own.

The Cowell’s house was the nearest and Petrella called there first. He found Mr. and Mrs. Cowell in the kitchen, with the television blaring. They toned it off when they understood what Petrella was telling them.