Playing Around (23 page)

‘So Nan said.’

‘Stay and have a cup of coffee, love. You and Jackie go in the front room. I’ll bring it in to you. I’ll make it with nice hot milk and put in plenty of sugar for the shock.’

Angie didn’t actually feel so much shocked as saddened. She had never heard her nan so upset before. She had always been strong. She blew out her cheeks and pushed open the front-room door.

Jackie plonked down on the sofa next to Martin, who was watching a television programme that featured a man’s not very impressive efforts to make his voice come from out of a suitcase.

‘Your nan all right, Squirt?’ asked Martin pleasantly, twisting round so he could see her.

‘Yes thanks.’ Angie gripped the back of the sofa and stared, unseeing, at the black-and-white images flickering on the screen. ‘Just a bit worried about something, that’s all.’

‘Never mind all that, Angela Knight,’ bossed Jackie, without looking round. ‘You tell Martin what you told me on the way to work this morning.’

‘About what?’

Jackie turned her head and opened her eyes wide in exasperation. ‘About what? About your job.’

‘He won’t be interested.’

He twisted round to face her again. ‘I will.’

‘I’m thinking of giving in my notice.’

‘What? Got something better?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Tell him,’ demanded Jackie.

‘Someone I was talking to said I could do a lot better for myself than working in an office for slave wages.’

‘Actually,’ said Jackie to her brother, ‘she’s just got a rise and is earning very good money.’ Then she turned her attention back to Angie. ‘And tell him who that someone is who’s giving you all this good advice.’

‘Jackie. You promised.’

Jackie shrugged and said nothing, knowing that, in almost mentioning David Fuller, she had very nearly gone too far. ‘You try and talk some sense into her, Martin,’ she said airily to her brother. ‘While I go and fetch the coffee. Mum’ll be fiddling about with biscuits on saucers for bloody hours if I leave it to her.’

Once Jackie was safely out of the room, Martin patted the now empty seat beside him on the sofa. ‘Everything all right, Squirt? I won’t say anything to anyone.’

Angie just shrugged. ‘It’s nothing. You know Jackie. Doesn’t like to think she’s not got me under her thumb any more.’

‘So long as you’re sure I can’t do anything.’

‘I’m sure.’

He touched her gently on the shoulder, and Angie felt the same flutter that could almost have had her giving away her virginity in a grotty bus shelter in Clacton.

She closed her eyes, half-wanting Martin to pull her hard towards him, and half-repulsed at herself for being such a tart. She was already seeing David, for goodness’ sake, and was actually going with him tomorrow to see this ‘friend’ of his. So, how many blokes did she want?

It wasn’t easy being this new, trendy person.

‘I’m glad you’re not in trouble,’ said Martin briskly, and patted her as if she were a puppy. ‘You’re like another little sister to me. Do you know that?’

Angie’s eyes flicked open. Little sister? That wasn’t the right reaction.

‘Sorry I can’t stop and chat, Squirt. I’m meant to be meeting someone and I’ve not even had my bath yet. But if you need to talk about anything some other time …’

Angie did her best to smile brightly. ‘Thanks, that’s kind. Enjoy yourself, won’t you? Have a good time.’

He waggled his eyebrows to try and make her laugh. ‘I will. But, if not, I’ll be careful, eh?’

Angie giggled dutifully, and Martin almost knocked into Jackie coming back into the room. She set down a tray of coffee and the inevitable biscuits on the low table in front of the sofa.

‘He’s off to meet some girl from college,’ said Jackie.

Angie helped herself to a biscuit but made no attempt to eat it. ‘Is he?’

‘Do you care?’

‘Why should I?’

‘You cared in that bus shelter.’

‘We were all drunk. And, anyway, I’ve got a boyfriend.’

Jackie spooned sugar into her coffee. ‘Don’t you think he’s a bit old to be called a boyfriend, Ange? And you’ve only seen him a couple of times. That’s hardly a boyfriend, is it?’

‘Jealous?’

Jackie dropped her teaspoon on to the tray with a metallic clatter. ‘Angie!’

Angie stood up. ‘I’m not going in to work tomorrow.’

‘If you take another day off, you won’t have to worry about leaving, they’ll sack you.’

‘I can’t help that.’

‘Sit down, Angie. Please.’

Angie did so. ‘I’ve got to go out somewhere.’

‘Where?’

‘Just somewhere.’

‘Why won’t you tell me?’

‘It’s private.’

Angie’s words deflated Jackie as surely as a pin bursting a toy balloon. ‘I didn’t mean to interfere.’

‘That’s OK.’ Angie stood up again. ‘Look, I’d better get back home. I want an early night.’

Jackie followed her to the front door. ‘Is it your nan’s you’re going to? I could go with you if you like.’

‘Thanks, but I’m not going there till later. I’ve got something to do first.’

‘Is it an interview?’ Jackie was scratching around for a clue. She was hurt.

‘Sort of.’

‘You can tell me.’

‘You wouldn’t approve.’

‘Why not? What sort of job is it?’

‘Look, Jack, I can’t tell you. Not now.’ Angie flicked a glance towards the kitchen where Tilly Murray was trilling away like a songbird as she cleared up. ‘I’ll tell you later.’ With that, she let herself out and shut the Murrays’ street door behind her.

‘I wouldn’t bet on it,’ said Jackie to the door.

‘Talking to yourself?’ asked Martin, brushing past her on his way from the bathroom to the stairs.

‘I might as well be,’ said Jackie.

‘So, what was the big emergency?’ asked Vi, jiggling one crossed leg up and down on the other. ‘Lost her false teeth?’

‘Nan doesn’t need false teeth.’ Angie was standing in the doorway to the front room, looking at her mother’s make-up-clogged face and stained, fag-burned housecoat. ‘You’d know, if you ever went to see her.’

Vi lit herself another cigarette after adding the remains of her last one to the pile of butts in the ashtray on the arm of her chair. ‘Why would I want to do that?’

‘Because she’s your mum?’

‘And I’m yours, but you care far more for her than you’ve ever done for me.’

‘Don’t be selfish, Mum. She’s really upset.’

‘She’s a manipulative old cow is what she is. If only you could …’ Vi’s words trailed away as the Tom Jones record she had been playing on the radiogram came to an end. ‘Put that on again, Ange.’

‘I’m going to bed.’

‘Bed? But it’s only nine o’clock. What am I meant to do for the rest of the evening?’

‘Phone one of your blokes to take you out. I’m sure one of them will oblige.’

‘You little—’

‘Save it, Mum.’

‘If that’s your attitude, I don’t know why you don’t just get out. Find somewhere else to live if I’m so terrible.’

Angie shook her head at her mother’s childishness. ‘You know you don’t mean that.’

‘Don’t I? Try me. Go on. Leave.’

‘Goodnight, Mum.’ She closed the front-room door quietly behind her and went upstairs to bed.

‘Sleep tight,’ Angie said to herself, as she climbed between the sheets. ‘See you in the morning.’

Detective Constable Jameson had parked his beaten-up, dull-grey Morris Minor opposite the staff entrance to the Canvas Club. Slumped as he was, low in his seat, he could get a clear view of the doorway without being seen.

He’d come straight from work and it was way past
midnight
, but he wasn’t tired, he was too revved up to be bothered about sleep, too angry with his boss, Detective Chief Inspector Gerald Marshall. Boss or not, Jameson couldn’t believe the man’s cheek. How could he have the bare-faced front to tell him, not even wrapped in some sort of nicety, but straight out, that he was releasing that raddled old tart from custody, and that he should leave David Fuller and his businesses, and all his associates, alone.
As a favour
. Jameson would show him favour. He was compiling a private file on every part of that thug’s enterprise he could trace, and he didn’t care how long it took. And he was going to show up the corruption in that station if it was the last thing he did.

Tonight, Jameson’s patience was rewarded. Within the hour, the man he knew to be Mikey Tilson had arrived. Jameson jotted down the time on his pad, and watched as the man first checked over his shoulder to see if he was being followed, then let himself in to the staff entrance of the club.

‘Hello, Jeff.’

Jeff, shocked at hearing a voice in the little office, spun round to find Mikey Tilson standing behind him. ‘How the hell did you get in here?’

‘Never you mind yourself about that, Jeffy boy.’ Tilson pointed at four thick piles of used notes and nodded approvingly. ‘Tonight’s takings? This place is doing well. And on a week night. With all them little pill-heads in buying gear of a Friday and Saturday, it must be like a bloody harvest.’

‘Don’t try anything stupid, Mikey.’ Jeff put down his glass of milk – he considered it a weakness to drink anything else when he was working: leave the booze and the pills to the punters – and scratched uneasily at
his
neck. He didn’t like Mikey Tilson, didn’t like him one bit, but he particularly didn’t like being surprised by the slimy, arrogant, little arsehole.

‘Who said I was trying anything?’

‘No one said anything about you collecting tonight. How did you get them keys?’

‘Never you mind that. That ain’t your business. I just come in to tell you that I’m going to be collecting every night over the next few weeks. A little tax. The five per cent you’ve been putting in your bin is going to stay in the safe till I turn up. And it’s going straight in my bin, not yours. Got it?’

‘Mikey. Don’t do this. It’ll lead to all sorts of trouble, mate.’

‘Mate? I’m not your mate, you black bastard.’ Mikey reached into his jacket and pulled out a Luger, one of the many souvenirs that were still to be bought all over London a full twenty years after the war had ended. ‘See this? This means you don’t start getting lairy. You just leave the five per cent in, and we’ll say no more about it.’ He held out his hand.

Reluctantly, Jeff counted out the minimum number of notes he thought he could get away with – he suspected, rightly, that Mikey wasn’t the brightest when it came to maths – and handed them over. He not only hated giving it to Tilson, he hated letting Dave down.

Mikey fanned out the money, waved it, sniffed at it, and smiled greedily. ‘Lovely. See you tomorrow.’ He put the notes away in his inside pocket, turned on his heel and walked over to the door. He took hold of the handle, then looked over his shoulder at Jeff. ‘Aw, and by the way, I’m also going to be collecting a nice big bagful or two of gear off you. French Blues and some Black Bombers’ll do for now. So, if you’ll have them ready bagged up for me.’ He smiled coldly. ‘See you.’

*

Bobby sat opposite David in the Greek Street office, with a glass of Scotch in his hand and a wide grin on his big, broad face. ‘No kidding, Dave? She’s really a virgin?’

David grinned back. ‘No kidding.’

‘Blimey, who’d have thought you’d have found one of them in a club nowadays?’

‘Not me, Bob, I’m telling you. And I nearly wasted the chance to savour it. If you know what I mean.’

Bobby’s grin wilted a little. He could talk about birds with the best of them, but nothing in too much detail.

‘All right, Bob, don’t go all shy on me. I’m getting her sorted out. Taking her to see that quack up Marylebone tomorrow morning.’

Bobby frowned. ‘What, the one who took the bullet out of Bill’s arm that time?’

‘That’s the feller. He’ll do anything for a few quid.’

Bobby really didn’t get it. ‘What’s she need to see him for?’

‘He’s gonna give her the once-over and stick her on the Pill for me.’

Bobby hid his embarrassment by taking a big swig of whisky. Too big. He started choking.

‘Calm down, Bob.’

‘I leave that sort of thing to my Maureen,’ he spluttered, his eyes streaming.

‘Good thing too, by the look of it.’

‘Why’re you getting involved with all this women’s lark?’

‘I’m not sure how old she is.’

‘So?’

‘Look, if she’s under age, I don’t want her getting up the duff and having her mother causing trouble for me, now do I? I know you can usually pay someone off, but
it’d
be my luck her old girl’s some sort of nutty churchgoer or something. I mean, why else would she be a virgin at her age?’

‘How old d’you reckon she is?’

‘Dunno. And I don’t much care, to tell you the truth. But I’m telling you, she’s got a body on her …’

They sat, finishing their drinks, each lost in his own thoughts.

Then David said: ‘Marshall did his job for Christina. She was back working tonight.’

Bob grimaced. ‘Don’t know for how much longer. She’s looking a right state.’

‘You’re right there, Bob. Still, as long as she pays her full whack every week. How’s Albert getting on in the caravan? All right?’

‘Sort of. But it’s making him a bit stir crazy. And all that countryside makes him nervous. I think we’re gonna have to move him.’

‘Time for a quick one?’ David stated, rather than asked, filling the other man’s glass almost to the brim.

‘Ta.’ Bobby sipped at the whisky – his fourth very large one in a row – and it began loosening his tongue. ‘Dave?’

‘Yeah?’

‘This Mikey Tilson business,’ he began, then added quickly, so that his boss would know he wasn’t talking about Tilson and Sonia. ‘What Jeff just said on the phone. About him binning that five per cent from the Canvas, I mean.’

‘What about it?’

‘No disrespect, Dave, and you know I’d never interfere, but, out of interest, why are you letting him do it?’

David’s face creased into a wide, handsome smile. ‘Bobby, my old son, it amuses me to see that idiot
thinking
he’s having me over, when all I’m doing is setting up the little prick for a really hard fall.’ He swallowed a drop more Scotch and winked. ‘Saves me from getting bored, you see, Bob. You know how much I hate getting bored.’