Rattling the Bones (7 page)

I occasionally work for Susie on odd jobs but generally the sort of thing she does isn’t my cup of tea. Checking people’s credit and delivering summonses or lurking about trying to catch husbands/wives/partners and others who are two-timing their better halves isn’t for me. Besides, Susie had found an ‘operative’, as she liked to call him, who was more suited to that kind of thing: Les Hooper.

I was hoping Les would be out on the trail when I got there and I’d find Susie alone. She is usually in the office at the end of the day to check the answerphone, put away sensitive material in the lockable file cabinet and catch up on any paperwork. I wasn’t keen on Les, for no really good reason other than instinct and a desire to protect Susie from landing herself with a problem. Susie is a nice woman who has a tendency to take up with unattractive men. Her late husband, Rennie Duke, had been one such and Les Hooper was another. Not that, as far as I knew, her relationship with Les was anything other than professional, but ‘mighty oaks from little acorns grow’, as Sister Mary Joseph used to tell us. This was to explain how our childish fibs would lead us down the slippery path to becoming wastrels and criminals in adult life. Being a child of imagination and always ready to be sidetracked from the subject by some observation of my own, I always associated the acorns of the saying with the bunions which distorted Sister Mary Joseph’s lace-up brogues. Perhaps I was just easily confused at the age of six.

My instinct about Les was equally tenuously connected with a distant memory of Eddie Kelly. Eddie lived at the end of our street when I was about ten years old. He was a big fellow, running to seed and untidy, and without any known means of earning a living. He and his wife (whose name no one knew) ‘kept themselves to themselves’ as people then said. If you met Eddie in the street he’d give you a broad nicotine-yellow smile and greet you but then quickly pass on. Few people returned his smile. He wasn’t liked.

Mrs Kelly, of the unknown first name, was a thin nervous woman with unkempt blond hair dragged back into a ponytail secured with an elastic band. She never spoke to anyone. We’d see her scurrying from her house to the shops and back again. Sometimes no one saw her for a week or more but we knew she was there because washing appeared on the line in the overgrown back garden. Eddie wasn’t the sort of man who washed out his own smalls. Mrs Eddie must have put the wash out after dark because we never saw her do it. She often wore large sunglasses, even in winter, and inappropriately large amounts of colourful make-up at other times. It never did quite disguise the purplish areas beneath.

Susie is an attractive woman. Perhaps Mrs Kelly had looked like Susie when she was younger and hadn’t yet taken up with Eddie. Susie runs her own little business. She would be a bit of a catch for someone like Les whom I had marked down as a perennial loser, quite apart from his reminding me of Kelly. So I hoped that Susie would eventually wake up to his deficiencies and give him the boot. I wouldn’t like to think of Susie hiding away and putting on sunglasses on rainy days to go to the shops.

I was out of luck. Business must be slow. Susie and Les were sitting in the two rickety chairs drinking tea and chatting like a couple of old biddies on a park bench. This intimacy boded ill.

‘Hullo, Fran, love!’ cried Susie, jumping up to give me a welcoming hug.

Les raised his tea mug in salute and growled, ‘Hello, darling.’

He called everyone ‘darling’ so it didn’t signify affection, as Susie’s greeting had. I didn’t want affection from Les and I never like being called ‘darling’.

‘Hullo, Les,’ I said. ‘Nothing happening?’ Meaning, isn’t there something you could be doing somewhere else?

‘Very quiet,’ said Susie, answering for him. ‘Real dead. Where are all the clients?’

‘The Patels have the same problem at the newsagent’s,’ I told her.

‘Yeah, well,’ said Susie philosophically. ‘Want a cuppa?’

Les rose ponderously to his feet and offered me his chair while Susie re-boiled the electric kettle. This unexpected gallantry made me suspicious. He knew I had little time for him. He’d have to do more than offer me a seat to change my mind.

In lieu of his chair, he propped himself against the desk. He was a big man, like Eddie, and in the small room he loomed even larger. He wore a scuffed leather jacket and he needed a shave. His shoes were dirty. My grandma told me to avoid young men who didn’t clean their shoes. This omission denoted sloppy thinking and a grubby lifestyle generally. It was certain they would never ‘get on’.

Les was middle-aged, still didn’t know what shoe polish was, and had obviously never ‘got on’, so my grandma was right. To me he looked like an ex-con and I had a horrible suspicion that’s what he was. I asked Susie once but she avoided the question though she did say something about poachers turning gamekeepers.

‘He knows people,’ she had added mysteriously. ‘He’s got contacts. He’s useful.’

‘Just make sure he or one of his crooked mates doesn’t try and use you!’ I’d warned her.

‘I wasn’t born yesterday!’ Susie had replied chippily.

She had on her business suit today, snug-fitting, black, very short skirt. With it she wore black tights and high heels. This generally meant she had been calling on some client or someone else she wanted to impress. Her blond hair frothed in a cloud round her head and her white blouse revealed plenty of cleavage. If the client was a man, he’d be impressed, all right.

‘Had you come to see if I had any work for you, Fran?’ she asked. ‘Or is this social? I hope it’s social, ’cos I’ve got no work for you. I had to go to the bank this morning and explain about my cash-flow problem. Clients are as rare as hen’s teeth, aren’t they, Les? I mean, I haven’t even got any work for Les here. That’s why we’re sitting here chewing the fat.’

Les uttered a gargling sound through the bottom of his tea mug.

So the business suit had been to impress the bank. I hoped it had done the trick. I debated whether to tell Susie about Edna. I’d rather Les hadn’t been there because he wouldn’t understand my interest in an old bag lady. But, as I’d come, I thought I might as well tell them of my adventures.

They listened politely. I couldn’t tell what Les was thinking but he appeared to pay close attention. Susie hung on every word.

‘Weird,’ she said, when I stopped speaking. ‘You are absolutely sure the man you saw opposite the hostel was the same as the one you saw on the corner of Parkway and Camden High Street?’

‘I am absolutely certain. Ganesh reckons I saw a house-painter in white overalls but white overalls look nothing like a T-shirt, baseball cap and long shorts. This man, whoever he is, isn’t the sort you forget. He looks as though he’s been in the dark for ages and just come out into the light. It’s made him long and pale like a stick of celery.’

Les put his mug to his lips although he must have long finished his tea. He seemed to realise it was empty and put it down on the desk.

‘What about the old lady?’ he asked hoarsely. ‘Any use asking her?’

‘None at all,’ I said firmly. ‘You can’t have a normal conversation with Edna.’

‘Give it a miss!’ advised Les. ‘Waste of time. Well, I gotta be going. Gimme a bell when you need me, Suze.’

He slouched out and the atmosphere changed.

‘Right!’ said Susie brightly. ‘You free? Let me get cleared up here and we’ll go out and eat. Give us a chance to have a natter and catch up.’

After some debate we settled for a steak house and when we had ourselves nicely parked in a corner and had ordered, I opened the conversation with the question I always asked her these days.

‘When are you going to get rid of him?’

‘You mean Les, don’t you?’ mumbled Susie, playing for time.

‘Of course I mean Les! I mean, just look at him. I’m not surprised you haven’t got any clients. One look at him would put off anyone.’

‘Oh, he doesn’t deal with the clients,’ she assured me earnestly. ‘I do all of that. I want to know exactly what they want and ask them for information I need to have and settle the fee, all that kind of thing. I couldn’t leave it to Les. He’s not got an office sort of brain.’

‘Agreed. I imagine he has the brain of a not particularly gifted orang-utan.’

‘Just ’cos you don’t like the poor bloke,’ said Susie reproachfully.

The waiter brought our wine and hung about eyeing Susie’s cleavage, tilting the bottle and leaning over the table for a better look. We thanked him, removed the bottle from his grasp and sent him on his way.

‘Too right I don’t like him,’ I said when we were alone again. ‘Don’t trust him; wouldn’t walk down a dark street with him; wouldn’t lend him money; wouldn’t introduce him to anyone I knew.’

‘Les is all right,’ she insisted, ‘and he’s brilliant at tailing anyone. He blends in with the surroundings.’

I opened my mouth to ask what kind of surroundings these might be. But I gave up the subject for the time being, anyway. She knew my opinion.

She realised I was willing to change the topic of conversation and cheered up. ‘I went round old man Patel’s shop the other day, as it happened. I needed to get a look at the day’s papers so I thought I’d take him my business. I bought six of them, all different, you know. I was looking for a trial report I’ve got an interest in. Hari, he’s called, isn’t he? Ganesh’s uncle?’

I nodded. ‘Did he recognise you?’

‘Oh yes, he knew I was your friend. He was very nice to me. I thought he looked a bit glum, though. Ganesh wasn’t there. I think his uncle had sent him off somewhere on some business.’

‘Ganesh is being a bit awkward at the moment,’ I told her. ‘Hari gets at him so Ganesh nags at me. He doesn’t want me trying to find out what’s behind this business with Edna.’

‘
If
anything’s behind it.You’ve got to admit it, Fran, the old lady doesn’t sound the sort anyone would want to spend time following about.’

The steaks arrived and put an end to conversation for a few minutes. ‘I believe someone is following her, even so. What do you think I should do next, Susie?’ I asked at last. ‘You’re the expert.’

She put down her knife and fork. ‘How are
you
at tailing someone?’

‘Reasonable, I think.’

‘Then you do what your bloke in white is doing. That way, you find out what his game is. You follow your old lady round the town for a day; see where she goes and what she does. See if this man in white shows up again, or anyone else.You know where she lives.You know she goes out all day. So if you’re waiting nearby early in the morning, you should see her leave and off you go. Nothing to it.’ She stared at me thoughtfully. ‘You need a wig. That bright red hair is a dead giveaway. But I’ve got a whole lot of wigs. Come home with me after we finish here and pick one out.’

She did have a selection of wigs, a whole shelf of them in the top of her wardrobe. I tried them all on and settled for a black bob which I fancied made me look like a twenties flapper.

‘Wear different clothes. Don’t wear anything the bloke in white has seen before. Don’t make the same mistake he made. He’s got a fashion hang-up for white and it meant you recognised him second time around. Wear something neutral, jeans and a dark top.’

‘Will do,’ I promised as we walked to her front door.

‘And wear trainers,’ was her parting advice, called after me. ‘Don’t wear those clumping great boots you like so much. You can’t run in those. Wear trainers in case you have to make a fast getaway.’

I stopped in the doorway to turn back and say, ‘Thanks, Susie. Thanks for taking me seriously. You don’t think I’m imagining all this, do you?’

She hesitated. ‘Look, Fran, in the end it doesn’t matter what I think, does it? I wasn’t there and didn’t see what you saw. I don’t know the old bag lady like you do. What matters is that you believe you saw something fishy and you want to sort it out.’ She grinned. ‘I keep telling you, Fran. When it comes to detective work, you’re a natural. You’ve got the instinct, see? And you’ve got the bug.You can’t leave it alone. You’ve gotta know.’

Susie understood. Ganesh, for all his loyal support over a long friendship, didn’t. Yet neither of them could fathom my yearning to act.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to know.’

Chapter Four

‘What have you got on your head?’ asked Ganesh in gloomy resignation as if my appearance was the outward sign of a long-anticipated deterioration in my mental state, a step on the road to becoming Edna.

If I was to be out most of the day I couldn’t take Bonnie with me. I particularly couldn’t take her with me if I wanted to be inconspicuous. Hari and Ganesh open the shop at crack of dawn to take in the newspaper deliveries, so I’d taken her round there and asked if she could stay in their storeroom until I came to pick her up. Dogs aren’t normally allowed in the shop but Hari imagines Bonnie is a good watchdog and he doesn’t mind her in the storeroom. She has a little bed in there and even Ganesh doesn’t grumble too much. Ganesh isn’t a dog person, and he isn’t a dog’s favourite either. They all bark or growl at him. Bonnie puts up with him; they have an agreement to ignore one another. But someone had to feed her.