--
I let myself into the club and the sound of the Hoover whirrs away. The ventilation system is not doing a good enough job of draining away the smell of last night’s bodies. But up in the penthouse everything is fresh and full of the smell of talcum powder and soap.
Gerald is sitting behind the Swedish desk. In front of him there is a tray and on it there are bacon and eggs and sausages and tomatoes and a pint mug full of steaming tea. Gerald has on a clean shirt and new slacks and he is wearing slippers but no socks. His face is rosy and glowing as if he’s just come off a five-mile jog, like somebody in a cornflakes ad.
“Jack,” he says, oozing his phony bonhomie, “Jack. Come and have some breakfast.”
“No, thanks,” I say.
“If you’d had a night like mine you wouldn’t say no thanks. Got to restore the blood sugar. Jesus, we sweated pounds off us last night.”
Les appears through the door that leads into the bathroom, letting another gust of soapy air into the room. Les is wearing his silk flowery dressing gown.
“Didn’t we, my rotten brother,” Gerald says. “Didn’t we have a bloody time last night, eh?”
“Not half,” says Les, going over to the drinks and pouring himself a tomato juice. “Fucking favourite. And what sort of a night did you have, my old son? Fetched Jimmy Swann round for breakfast have you?”
Incredible. They’re bleeding incredible. Facing twenty-five apiece and they’re more concerned with their aftershave.
“Yes,” I say. “Only he said he wanted some fags so he’s just popped out to get them. Said he’d only be five minutes.”
Les drinks some of his tomato juice and says, “All right, forget the jokes. Let’s be having you.”
“Hang on for a minute,” Gerald says, picking up the Express and unfolding it and propping it up against the sauce bottle. “I just want to see how the Spurs went on.”
The front page of the Express is facing me and myself and Gerald and Les and Finbow are grinning at the camera in the front-page photograph.
I sit down.
“Better give the sports page a miss this morning,” I say.
“Jesus,” Gerald says. “I don’t believe it. Two nil at home to bleeding Stoke. What a sodding shower.”
“What are you talking about?” Les asks me.
“Two nil, that’s what I’m talking about,” Gerald says.
“Not you, you berk,” Les says.
“The front page,” I tell him. “Have a look at it.” Les goes over to the desk and picks up the paper.
“Here . . . ” Gerald says, but he doesn’t carry on on the same tack when he sees the expression on Les’s face. “What’s up?”
Les just keeps staring at the picture.
“Eh?” says Gerald.
Les lets the paper fall onto the desk and Gerald immediately picks it up. Les turns his gaze on me.
“What do you know about it?” he says quietly.
“What Finbow told me last night.”
“Jesus Christ,” Gerald says. “Jesus Christ.”
“You knew this last night?”
“That’s right. So would you have done if you hadn’t been out tonking.”
Les just keeps looking at me.
“And don’t come any rubbish,” I tell him. “There’s no time for any of that.”
Eventually Les resets his face and says, “What did he tell you?”
“Nothing, because there’s nothing to tell. He knows as much as we do.”
“Christ, Les,” Gerald says.
“Shut up.”
“But, I mean . . . ”
“I know what you fucking mean.” Les goes back to the cocktail cabinet only this time he adds vodka to the tomato juice.
“Well, that’s it then,” he says. “With Finbow off the force we’re right in the crap. We can’t just stay and get hold of Jimmy our way in case we don’t get hold of him.”
“So . . . ”
“So we get right out of it, don’t we? We pick up our safety deposit boxes and we get out right quick and stay out of it until Jimmy Swann’s put down. And if he isn’t we move somewhere where they can’t serve warrants.”
“But Les, what about the business? We can’t just leave it for the first person who hears we’ve gone.”
“Audrey can run it. The filth’s got nothing on her.”
“No, but they’ll enjoy giving her a hard time.”
“She takes a third of the profits so she can take a third of the aggro.”
I get up and go over to the drinks and pour myself a vodka as an alternative to sticking one on Les’s face.
“She won’t like it,” Gerald says.
“I don’t care what that slag likes or doesn’t like,” Les tells him. “She’d like it even less if we all went down the chute.”
Oh, yes, I think, Audrey would be really broken up by the thought of you two doing twenty-fives. All the sunshine would go out of her life.
“Where is she, anyway?” Les asks Gerald.
“She slept at the flat. She said she was going down to the house this morning.”
“You’d better get hold of her, then. She’s got to be told.”
I go back to the chair and sit down and I say, “There’s one thing worth considering. I picked up Charlie Abbott last night.”
Les puts his drink down on the desk top and says, “What did he tell you?”
“Nothing, because he knows nothing.”
“Then, what?”
“There may be some way we can use him to draw out Jimmy.”
“You expect Jimmy to come out for that rubbish?”
“His sister might.”
“No. Jimmy’d never let her. He’d see her off first.”
“In any case,” Gerald says, “how do we know Charlie’s sister would want to bail him out at her old man’s expense?”
“I’ve told you, we don’t. But Charlie is all we have. We can put a price out but that might not be a good idea right away.”
“If we don’t get to Jimmy Swann, we won’t have any fucking time for second thoughts,” Les tells me.
“Yes, that’s right, Les,” I say.
“Well, you’d better get on with whatever you’re going to do and let us know what’s happening.”
“Where shall I send the postcard?”
“Listen, cunt. Just get on with it. You stand a good stretch as well.”
“Thanks for putting me wise, Les.”
Les downs his drink and tops himself up again.
“So why are you still sitting here?” he says.
“I was just wondering the same thing,” I say, standing up. “Perhaps it’s the fragrance of the aftershave. Or perhaps it’s because I want to know what’s all this crap about Peter the Dutchman and some tickle? Don’t I get to know things like that anymore?”
“Well, about that,” Gerald says, “I was like meaning to tell you. I was just choosing the right moment.”
“There’d never be a right moment to tell me anything about Peter the Dutchman,” I tell Gerald.
And he says, “Look, sit down and listen to what I’ve got to tell you before you start hardening up.”
So we sit down and Gerald tells me about these four security van jobs Peter’s come to him with, all detailed out, all spread over the next eighteen months, worth in the region of £300,000, and that Peter has got a good team sorted and with me on the jobs and Gerald and Les taking care of the money what could be sweeter?
After he’s finished I say, “Now look, I can do my bird but I don’t like the idea of doing it on behalf of Peter the Dutchman. Christ, you know what he’s like, he shoots when he doesn’t have to.”
“Look,” Gerald says, “it won’t be like that. If you’re worried about that we’ll make sure he isn’t carrying.”
“Oh yes,” says Les, “and since when does he tell us our business?”
“Since I fucking run it for you,” I tell him.
Gerald says, “Now calm down, calm down—”
But I get up again and go over to the door and let myself into the hall. The morning change of guard is just settling itself in.
I cross the hall and think to myself that if I hadn’t been stupid enough to let myself get involved with Audrey I’d have been out of it all long, long ago and left those two cunts to go under in their own sweet way. I swear to myself but there’s no getting away from it; I could never risk ditching Audrey, not now. There’d be no telling how she’d react. Audrey’s just barmy enough to get her face taken off her just to drop me in it and I don’t fancy the rest of my life hiding from telescope artists. So the only thing I can do is to carry on until Audrey and me have salted enough away to clear off where we’ll never be found.
Today’s guard is Dave Cox, a hardish case from Manchester. Set against Dave’s, Joe Bugner’s nose would seem petite and tip-tilted.
“Morning, Mr. Carter,” he says.
“Have you eaten yet?”
“No, not yet.”
“Because there’s a couple of big breakfasts going spare in there. I’d hate to see them wasted.”
I go down in the lift and out of the club and buy a paper and then I go into the Wimpy and order a cup of tea and while I’m waiting I have a closer look at the front page. It’s pretty much as Finbow suggested it was going to be. Nothing direct, almost an air of regret at having to publish the picture, only publishing, in fact, something that could obviously easily be explained in due course. Finbow himself has been quite clever and told the reporter that if he’d had his picture taken with every rogue he’d mixed with in the course of his duty he’d be able to provide the press with an album a foot thick. But Finbow’s remark isn’t going to do him any good. It’ll take more than a clever remark to ease him out of this one.
I drink up my tea and walk back to the flat. This time when I open the door there’s no doubt in my mind as to what might be going on. There is the smell of frying bacon and I walk through the main room and find them both in the kitchen. Con is pouring boiling water into the teapot and Charlie is bent double, peering into the fridge.
“No,” he says, “there’s no fucking eggs in here.”
“Why not try looking in the mirror?” I say. Charlie straightens up sharpish and nearly has Con pouring boiling water all over himself.
“Oh, hello, Jack,” says Charlie. “We thought we’d do ourselves some breakfast.”
“Sorry I didn’t stock up in advance.”
“Oh, that’s all right, don’t worry about that, Jack,” Charlie says. “I can manage without an egg. I’ll have a bacon waddy instead.”
“You’ll have your bacon waddy when you’ve earned it,” I tell him. “It’s time to ring your dear old mother.”
Charlie’s face manages to turn even pastier than it usually is and he says, “What, right now?”
I don’t answer him but I walk through the lounge and into the bedroom and pick up the extension from the bedside table and take it as far to the doorway as the lead will allow. Then I go back to the main room. Charlie is hovering by the kitchen doorway.
“Right,” I say to him, pointing to the other telephone on the coffee table. “There it is. Dial your mother’s number and all I want you to say is have you seen Jean and if she asks why, say you got something for her then your dear old mother will know you’re on the elbow and she won’t think any more of it. I’ll be listening on the extension so I’ll be able to hear what she says as well. All right, Charlie?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Sure, but supposing she hasn’t seen her. What’ll I say then?”
“What you’d normally say. Just tell her to get Jean to give you a ring if she shows up.”
Charlie takes his handkerchief out of his trouser pocket and blows his nose, then folds the handkerchief to a clean bit and takes off his glasses and begins to clean them.
“Come on, Charlie,” I say to him. “The quicker you do this the sooner you’ll be out of it.”
Con appears in the doorway holding a mug of tea.
“Well, can I have my tea, then?” Charlie says. “My mouth’s all dried out. You know.”
“Give him his tea,” I say to Con.
“You want yours?” he says to me.
“Yes, give me my fucking tea,” I tell him. “Let’s all have our tea so we’ll all feel nice and fresh and ready to face the day.”
Con puts his mug down and goes into the kitchen and comes back and hands out a mug each to Charlie and me. Charlie takes a sip of his tea and his glasses begin to mist up with the steam from the mug. He starts to search for his handkerchief again but I reach out and take his glasses off his face.
“The telephone, eh, Charlie?”
Charlie nods and picks up the receiver and I go to the extension and watch him dial and when he’s finished I pick up my receiver and wait.
The ringing tone goes on for three or four minutes and Charlie begins to look relieved. He turns in my direction and starts to make “gone out” gestures but while he’s doing that the receiver is lifted at the other end.
“Yes?”
The voice is hard and high-pitched. Charlie freezes in the middle of one of his gestures. The voice crackles down the line again.
“Yes?”
I close the fingers of my free hand and make a fist and Charlie manages to snap out of it.
“Hello?” he says. “Mum?”
There is a silence at the other end.
“Hello?” he says again. “It’s Charlie.”
“Yes, I know it’s Charlie,” says Mrs. Abbott.
“I thought you couldn’t hear me.”
“I can hear you. What you want?”
“How are you? Keeping your pecker up?”
“I said what you want?”
“Well, I was wondering if you’d seen Jean lately. Wondered if she’d been in touch.”
“Why?”
“I been trying to get hold of her all week only when I phoned I never seem to be able to catch her in, so I thought maybe she and Jimmy had some kind of Domestic or something and she was staying round yours.”
“No, she isn’t staying round mine.”
“Oh.”
“What you want her for?”
“I got something for her. Something she wanted me to get for her.”
“What?”
“One of those cassettes. Asked me to look out for one about a tenner but this geezer let me have it at a fiver.”
Mrs. Abbott doesn’t answer.
“So that’s why I want to get in touch,” Charlie says. “So could you put me on to her?”
“You’ll just have to keep ringing her,” she says. “I haven’t seen her in weeks. Never brings the kids round these days, she don’t.”
“Well, can you tell her to get in touch if you see her first?”
“If I do. But I doubt it.”
“Well, thanks anyway. Tell you what, why don’t I pop round Sunday? Have a bit of Sunday dinner with me old mum?”
“Suit yourself. I’m always here.”
“Great. I’ll see you Sunday, then. Goodbye, Mum.”
Charlie puts his receiver down and I put my receiver down. Charlie stands there looking at me. I walk through into the main room.
“Was it all right?” Charlie says.
I don’t answer him.
“What happened?” Con says.
“Charlie,” I say, “would you say that your mother was the same as she always is just then?”
“Mum? Yeah, she was all right.”
I have a sip of my tea. “Because I got the feeling that she knows that your Jean and her Jimmy’s gone away.”
“No she don’t,” says Charlie. “Hell, if Mum knew that she’d tell me, wouldn’t she?”
“Yes, that’s right, Charlie.”
I stand up and put my coat on.
“So what happens now?” Charlie asks.
“We’re going down to see your old mother, Charlie,” I tell him. “I reckon she’ll be able to put us right.”
“Here, listen,” Charlie says. “That ain’t right. You said all I had to do was to phone her. You said all—”
“Oh, fuck off, Charlie. We know you’re stupid but not that fucking stupid. You think we’re going to let you walk away until we’ve found your brother-in-law? You think we’re going to say, ‘Now look, Charlie, you can clear off but don’t you breathe a word of this to anybody’? ”
“But I wouldn’t, Jack. Honest, I wouldn’t.”
Con laughs and picks up his coat off the divan.
“Come on, Charlie. Let’s go and see Mum.”
Outside, when we get to the Scimitar, Con gets in the driving seat and I pull the passenger seat forward to allow Charlie to get in the back.
When I’ve closed the door I say to Charlie, “Right, my old son. Where to?”
“Fourness Road. Just off the North Circular. But Jack—”
“Fourness Road,” I say to Con. “Just off the North Circular.”
Con pulls away and makes for Oxford Street. The shops are bright with Christmas lights and as I look at the gawpers staring in the windows I wonder where they all come from at this time in the morning, why they’re not all at work or looking after the kids.
“What you getting me for Christmas, Jack?” Con says.
“Jimmy Swann’s bollocks.”
“That’s nice. I’ll have them made up into cuff links.”
“Here, Jack,” says Charlie. “Leave it out, will you?”
“Would you rather I gave him yours?”
Charlie doesn’t say anything.
“Well, then.”
Con goes round Marble Arch and up the Edgware Road. The gray sky seems to get grayer the closer we get to
Kilburn. Then eventually we reach the North Circular and drive past the unlovely changing face of London until we get to Charlie’s mother’s district. It’s all petrol stations and light-engineering and cut-price furniture shops and mean tarted-up boozers. The daylight seems to be the same colour as the surface of the road. A Wimpy sign or a Tesco’s occasionally stabs out into the different shades of dirty gray but their colours only emphasise the flatness of the depressing streets.
“You want to turn left into Fourness Road,” Charlie tells Con. “It’s past the Blue Star, just before the fly-over.”
Con goes past the garage and turns in to the road that Charlie’s pointed out. One side of the road is a row of small bay-windowed Edwardian houses, the other side is a flat waste ground of grass supposed to be some kind of leisure area that stretches away to the fly-over and the factories beyond. Directly opposite the houses there are some swings and roundabouts, right on the edge of the wasteland, but there are no kids playing on them.
“She lives at the end house,” Charlie says. “Next to the stocking factory.”
“Stop a few houses away,” I tell Con.
Con does as he’s told. We all sit there in silence for a minute or two staring through the windscreen at the house where Charlie’s mother lives.
“I’m going to talk to Charlie’s mother now,” I say to Con. “When I get out drive down to the corner and get Charlie to show you the way round the block and then drive past here every five minutes. All right?”
Con nods.
Charlie says, “Jack, my old lady . . . ”
“Don’t worry, Charlie. I’ve got a mother myself, you know.”
Con grins and I get out of the car and the car slides away.
I walk down to the corner house. It has a narrow front garden bounded by a low brick wall and a gate with peeling green paint and only half the house number on it. There is a small recessed porch and in the porch there is a dustbin so full that the lid is at forty-five degrees to the bin. At the side of the house there is a high trelliswork gate.
I stand in the porch and peer through the coloured diamonds of glass in the front door but there are no signs of life. I push open the front gate and go to the trelliswork and lift the latch and walk round to the back of the house. The garden is completely flag-stoned over and is covered with old cardboard boxes full of rubbish and there are a couple of rotting carry-cots and a rusty bicycle frame just to set everything off. At the end of all this garbage there is a six-foot-high slatted fence and beyond the fence an extension of the stocking factory cuts out any light that might illuminate the beauty of the back yard.
I take hold of the back-door handle and turn it very slowly. I push inwards and I find that the door opens into a small kitchen. The kitchen is empty so I slip inside and close the door as quietly as I opened it.
The kitchen sink is full of last week’s teacups. There is an alloy kitchen cabinet with the cupboard doors wide open revealing shelves that are empty except for half of a sliced loaf. The kitchen table is about three foot square and littered with crumbs. I squeeze between the table and the sink. The door that leads out of the kitchen is slightly ajar and I push it gently and find I am looking into the hall, and in the hall, bathed in the dusty light that is falling from the frosted panel in the front door, there are a couple of suitcases, all packed and ready to go.
To the left of the hall there is another open door and from behind this door are coming the faint sounds of Radio 1. I cross the hall and stand outside the door and listen but I can still only hear the sounds of Radio 1. So very slowly and very carefully I maneuver myself into a position where I can look into the room. The angle of my view takes in a pale green fireplace with a mirror above it and standing in front of the fireplace, putting on her make-up, is who I take to be Mrs. Abbott. With one hand she is wielding her lipstick, with the other she is holding a cigarette. She has bright red hair and her lips are redder and brighter and she is wearing a chiffon polka-dot head scarf over her rollers and the head scarf doesn’t exactly go with her leopard-skin patterned coat. Altogether quite a bright little ensemble for someone in her early sixties. I can see from the reflection in the mirror that there is no one else in the room so I give the door a gentle shove and make my entrance.
Mrs. Abbott drops her lipstick and shrieks and whirls round and begins to back away from me but there is only so far she can go and when she reaches the sofa that is pushed up against the wall beneath the window the seat causes her legs to buckle and she sits down with a thump that makes the dust fly up into the gray light that is filtering through the window.
In a cage in the corner a myna bird says, “Suit your bleeding self, then.”
“Morning, Mrs. Abbott,” I say.
Mrs. Abbott sits there with her mouth open. She’s still holding her cigarette and a piece of ash falls to the carpet.
“I was wondering if you could help me?” I say to her, but she still doesn’t move and she still doesn’t say anything, so I walk over to the settee. She has a mild convulsion and this time she drops the whole of her cigarette. I bend down and pick it up and sit down beside her on the settee and stick the cigarette back between her fingers. She keeps her eyes on my face all the time.
“I noticed your suitcases as I came in,” I tell her. “Off on your holidays are you?”
She still doesn’t answer.
“Look, you know why I’m here,” I say. “What I want to tell you is this. If you let me know where you were about to go with those suitcases then I promise you, I promise, understand, that nothing’ll happen to you or to Jean or the kids or even to Charlie. I can guarantee that because it makes no odds to us what happens to the rest of the family because there’d be nothing in it for you to talk to the law in Jimmy’s place. Your family’d know better than to do that twice, wouldn’t they?”
She nods.
“So,” I say. “What about it? What about telling me where Jimmy is?”
She just keeps on staring at me. The cigarette is about to burn her fingers so I take it out of her hand and stand up and throw the filter tip into the fireplace, then I turn to face her again. The radio on the mantelpiece is beginning to get to my nerves so I reach out and switch it off. The room buzzes with silence and gradually the sound of a jet passing overhead burbles its way into the room.
“Now look, Mrs. Abbott,” I say, about to tell her that I’ve got Charlie outside, but a voice behind me stops me
doing that.
The voice behind me says, “No, you look, you mug.”
I close my eyes. I don’t have to look. I know by the tone that the voice is carrying the kind of reason I’m not prepared to argue with.
Mrs. Abbott is still frozen to the settee.
Another voice says, “Get down on your knees, mug.”
As I’m in the process of getting down to my knees the irrelevant thought enters my mind that both voices have Geordie accents. Then there are a couple of soft footsteps and I feel the icy touch of double barrels at the base of my skull and my mind no longer has any room for irrelevant thoughts.
There is a low laugh and the second voice says, “Jack Carter. Fucking great. Just fucking great.”
“Bleedin’ marvelous,” says the myna bird.
For the first time Mrs. Abbott speaks and at first it’s hard to tell the difference between her and the fucking bird.
“What are you going to do?” she says.
There is still no answer from behind me.
“You can’t do it here,” says Mrs. Abbott. “Not in my house.”
“Don’t worry, Ma,” says the second voice. “Keep your bloomers on.”
Whatever they’re going to do they’re taking their sodding time because there are a couple more minutes of silence before Number Two speaks again.
“Ma,” he says, “lean forward and feel in his pockets and take out what he’s carrying.”
Mrs. Abbott leans forward and dives her hand into my inside pocket and I can smell her dry smoky breath mixed in with her face powder. Her fingers close round the shooter and she yanks it out and throws it to the far end of the settee. Then she spits in my face.
“Filth,” she says. “Shit. Bleeding shit.”
There is more low laughter from behind me. I shake my head but it doesn’t speed up the passage of the spit as it slides down my face. And I know better than to feel for my handkerchief.
Whoever isn’t holding the shotgun steps past me and picks up my shooter and holds it in his hands and looks at it.
“Jack Carter’s shooter,” he says. “Beautiful. Something to tell the kids about. That is, if I ever have any.”
“You won’t,” I tell him.
He sits down on the edge of the settee, next to Mrs. Abbott, and for the first time I got a proper look at him.
He has a blond crew cut and the skin around his mouth is covered in eczema. He is wearing a white Shetland polo-neck sweater and a pale gray gabardine suit that is as out of fashion as his haircut. He smiles at me and the colour of his teeth does nothing to brighten up the dimness of the room. Then he balances my shooter in the palm of his hand and with it he smacks me on the side of my face so that I have to roll with the blow and to steady myself I find I have put my hand among the cigarette ends that are littering the grate. I straighten up again and dust my hand on the lapel of my coat and then the shotgun is digging into the skin of my neck again.
“Like it always turns out,” says the yob on the settee. “You’re nothing. All you clever bastards. You always turn out to be nothing.”
Mrs. Abbott stands up and squeezes by me.
“Well, come on,” she says. “We’ve got to get moving. You were late as it is. Any bleeding later and you needn’t have bothered coming at all.”
“Shut it,” says the yob, and Mrs. Abbott does as she’s told. The yob looks up at his partner and the pressure of the shotgun is relieved. The yob points my shooter at me.
“Get up,” he says.
I get up.
“Go and wait by the front door,” the yob says to his partner. I watch the partner go out of the room. He’s about twenty-five and wearing a Levi denim suit. He carries the beautiful short-barreled brand-new shotgun as though it’s his favourite childhood toy.
“You go and get in the car,” the yob with the crew cut says to Mrs. Abbott, “but before you go you can pass me that little instrument that lies there by the wall.”
Charlie’s mother picks up a second shotgun and hands it over to the yob, but instead of putting my shooter in his pocket he still continues to point it at me, just crooking the shotgun in his other arm. Mrs. Abbott goes out into the hall.
The yob smiles at me and says, “Move it, you poor mug.”
I go out into the hall. The denim yob is standing by the front door, pointing his shotgun at me. Mrs. Abbott has a suitcase in one hand and she is turning the front-door handle. She opens the door, revealing a beautifully framed composition with the fly-over in the background, the swings in the middle distance, and in the immediate foreground Con in the process of opening the front gate, his dark leather coat standing out sharply against the yellowness of the Scimitar and the grayness of the background.
Mrs. Abbott shrieks and tries to close the front door but the denim yob pushes her out of the way, causing her to trip over her suitcase and fall to the floor. Beyond this activity I see Con start to drop down behind the gate and Charlie open the nearside door of the Scimitar. At the same time I take into account that I am clear from the yob behind me because although his shotgun is poking through the door he has yet to emerge into the hall. I also take into account that the denim yob is moving his elbow to prime the shotgun.
All these events take place at the same time but the events that follow seem to happen even faster, like speeded-up concurrent images on a split screen.
Con produces his shooter and fires from between the decorative rails of the top half of the gate. The yob pumps his shotgun at the gate but before the shotgun goes off two of Con’s bullets have taken him in the stomach, causing the shotgun barrels to be lifted slightly so that they’re pointing in the general direction of the Scimitar and Charlie. Charlie, who sees what is about to come his way, screams and can’t make up his mind whether to throw himself to the ground or scramble back into the Scimitar and ends up doing a fair impression of a seven-man acrobatic troupe who’ve just all run into each other. The shotgun blasts off and Charlie is taken in the chest and is spun round so that he falls face down on the bonnet. Mrs. Abbott begins a series of long shrieks and tries to get up off her back but her progress is impeded by the slow sliding fall of the denim yob who now, instead of clutching his shotgun, is clutching his stomach and asking Christ to help him in his moment of need. And in my part of the hall, I have nowhere to go and no choice but to turn and try to change my own situation without suffering some permanent alteration. But I am fortunate in that the yob at my back has decided to back out of range of anything that might be flying in his direction and he’s slammed the door just to make doubly certain. So now my choice is easy and I rush down the hall and shout to Con to go round the back and then bend over the dying yob and find some more shells in his denim pockets and restock the shotgun and while I’m doing that I catch a view of Charlie levering himself up off the bonnet like an unfit man doing push-ups for the first time, and Charlie’s mother, now on her feet, running towards the gate as if she’s trying to catch the last bus. Then I go down the hall and open the kitchen door and then the back door so that I have a clear view of the yard, then I go back to the door that the yob slammed behind him and I shout through it, “You’re going nowhere. Come out and at least you’ll stay alive.”
There is silence for a minute or two. I see Con as he appears in the back yard and I indicate to him that there is the heavy in the room and so Con moves back out of sight to take up a position. Then I hear the small sound of the window catch being lifted. I wait a moment and then I hear the springs of the settee as the yob prepares to make his exit so I barge through the door and brace myself, the shotgun pointing at the window. The yob has one foot on the settee and one foot on the windowsill.
“Don’t go outside,” I say to him. “It’s raining.” But he’s no intention of taking any notice of me and immediately I speak, his rabbit panic sets him scrambling to get the shotgun into a firing position. I give him as long as I possibly can before the point is reached where it is either me that fires or it is him and in the end, of course, it has to be me. The yob and the window explode outwards into the damp air and I swear and drop the shotgun and go over to the window and look out to see the yob draped over the now overturned carry-cot with Con appearing from behind the corner to inspect the damage. I tell Con to pick up my shooter and I run back through the house to try and at least salvage something from the whole bloody mess.
By the time I get to the front door Charlie is no longer hanging on the bonnet of the Scimitar. His mother has draped his arm round her neck and she is supporting him as they stagger across the wasteland towards the swings and the roundabouts. The street is no longer deserted. Mrs. Abbott’s neighbors are filling the front gardens. I run down the garden and through the gate and as I pass the Scimitar I notice that Charlie’s glasses are still on the bonnet of the car, face down, having slid off Charlie’s bowed head. I run across the road and call for them to stop but they continue struggling on but by the time they get to the swings the effort is finally too great and Mrs. Abbott staggers under Charlie’s weight but manages to avoid a complete collapse by grasping a chain on one of the swings and swaying the seat underneath Charlie so that it stops his progress to the floor. When I get up to them I realise the damage to Charlie isn’t as bad as it might have been. It’s his shoulder and chest on his right-hand side. He must have missed copping the main body of the blast and while his right arm won’t be much good for darts any more at least he’ll live. So I lift Charlie off the swing but as I begin to lift him I get Mrs. Abbott swiping and kicking and hanging on to me while I’m trying to get Charlie across my shoulders in a fireman’s lift. My arms aren’t free for me either to give her one or to steady myself so I find myself overbalancing back on to the swing. But matters are helped by the fact that Con has made his way to the scene and he pulls Mrs. Abbott away from Charlie and me and the four of us make our way back to the cars, me carrying Charlie and Con dragging Mrs. Abbott behind him. The audience is still filling the front gardens although no one is prepared to become part of the cast, but in the background there is the sound of the law about to crash the scene.
The yobs’ car is parked in front of Con’s and as we get to both cars I say, “You take yours and I’ll take these two in the other. And get well rid.”
“Don’t macaroni,” says Con. “You don’t think the fucking registration’s straight, do you?”
I don’t answer because the way the last twenty-four hours has gone a straight registration would almost be a matter of course.
Instead I say, “I’ll see you at the Garage.”
Con nods and pushes Mrs. Abbott in the back of the yobs’ car and I unload Charlie into the seat alongside her. Con waits while I get the car started so that Mrs. Abbott doesn’t try to get out again and as I move off he dives for the Scimitar as the sound of the law gets nearer.