“I’ve got a living to make, haven’t I?”
“Right. How much do you want?” I started to reach for my back pocket where the emergency roll lives.
“It doesn’t matter just now,” he said, getting up from the bench. “I’ll get my assistant to send you an invoice.”
As he walked out, the old couple gave him a curled-up nose look. The air freshened considerably as the smell of motor oil and chips receded with him. I walked part of the way after Trevor to watch him as far as the car park. He got into the passenger side of a gleaming new Vauxhall Senator with a smart blonde woman in the driving seat. He immediately chucked his smelly jacket onto the back seat and started to change into a suit.
They don’t make private detectives like they used to, do they?
The mobile rang just as the old couple came out of the Rufford orangery behind me. When I answered it, they turned to look at me as if I was mad or a philistine or something.
“Business,” I mouthed at them. They shrugged at each other, convinced they were right the first time.
“Yeah, Ralph? Brilliant. And he’s not been charged? What was it all about then? Yeah, I heard it was drugs, but I didn’t believe it — not Slow Kid. Where is he now? Right, thanks, Ralph.”
Lawyers can be the biggest crooks out, even worse than accountants. Did you know that? You probably did, if you’ve ever sold a house or gone through a divorce. This is the only profession where a bloke can get away with having his secretary type a letter, than charge you a couple of hundred quid for his valuable time. If I could do that, I’d be printing my own money by now. Have you heard the story about the solicitor’s clerk? This poor bugger had to justify an account to a client that said: “For crossing the road to speak to you, £50. For finding it wasn’t you and having to cross back again, £50.” This is no joke.
But they do have their uses, lawyers. In this case, Ralph Catchlock does the nudging and levering for me that sorts things out, like when Slow Kid gets himself in a cell at Mansfield nick. I could do it personally, use my own influence, but why bother when you’ve got the paid? In any case, I know a thing or two about Ralph Catchlock that would give the Law Society a fit. That gets me a discount.
And so Ralph had come up with the goods. Slow Kid was free, and on his way back home.
The Thompsons’ house is at the far end of Top Forest. Away from the main road, there isn’t much traffic noise on the estate at the best of times. Just an occasional White Arrow van delivering something from Reader’s Digest, or the council dog warden cruising the streets looking for strays.
They hang around here in packs — the dogs, I mean, not the wardens. Folk get these appealing puppies, you know, for the kids to play with at Christmas. Then, blow me, the puppies grow into bloody great Wolfhounds and Dobermans that need feeding and looking after and taking to the vets, and all that sort of effort. Who’d have thought it? We can’t do with that, can we? So the mutts are turned loose on the streets to run wild with all the others.
Come Tuesday morning, when the binmen head round this way, the local dog pack does a tour of the wheelie bins to see if there’s anything worth getting to first. If your bin’s a bit open, or there’s a plastic bag left next to it, the dogs will get at it. Then your rubbish is all over the pavement, and the neighbours can see that you’ve been eating tins of Lo-Cost own brand baked beans every day this week and that you don’t throw your knickers out until they’re more hole than polyester. Not that your neighbours are any different, of course — but you don’t want people to see that.
And it’s not only the dogs. Kids are turned loose on the streets the same way, when they get a bit older and raising a family turns out to be too much effort as well. Sod employment training. It’s time somebody trained this lot to be parents.
Round the back of one of the houses, somebody was turning over a starter motor, desperately trying to kick life into an ancient car engine. The starter was whining in protest, and soon the battery would be flat. The dog pack was barking on the other side of the estate, its baying competing with the shouts and screams of the kids. Nearer at hand, a radio was playing Roxy Music, probably some housewife reminiscing while she did the ironing. There was a predominant smell of washing and dog crap. But somewhere down the street a redundant pit electrician was endlessly trying to make the world a better place by creosoting his garden fence.
Down there, behind the houses, is a canal. It always has a few multi-coloured umbrellas brightening the landscape where blokes are fishing. Round here, there’s fishing and there’s allotments. There aren’t many options for hanging about all day without spending any money. Time is the enemy of the unemployed man. It’s bad enough for the middle aged ones. But time bites so deep on the young lads who’ve never had a job that it’s no wonder they turn to crime.
Number 23 Beech Street is much like the other houses. The area in front has been concreted over and half a plank jammed against the kerb to make it easier to get a car across the pavement. But weeds are growing through the concrete, and a couple of elder saplings are quite well established. Soon they’ll be causing trouble with the drains and undermining the foundations, but it won’t be the council’s responsibility any more, because they sold the house to the Thompsons, cheap. What an opportunity.
I knew Slow’s mum would be in, so I dusted myself down and straightened my belt before I knocked on the door. I wanted her to think I was fit company for her son. Mums are sensitive about this, especially when their little boy has just come back from the cop shop. Has Lloyd been keeping the wrong company? Is it that nasty, working class Stones McClure leading him into bad ways, scrumping apples, then knocking on doors and running away?
“Oh, Stones,” she said when she opened the door. “I’m glad you’ve come. He’ll be pleased to see you.”
Actually, Angie Thompson isn’t so bad. I think she has a soft spot for me, like most women. If I decide to exercise a bit of charm, I can twist them round my finger, no problem. Angie might be a bit old for me, but she’s still susceptible to a bit of that McClure appeal.
She was staring at me right now. “You owe him something anyway, for all this time he’s spent down the police station. I know it’s all your fault, so don’t look so smug. He’s in the front room.”
Slow Kid looked tired more than anything. Shifty, yeah, as if he’d let me down somehow, but not guilty. He was in front of the telly with a bottle of beer when I walked in on him. His feet were up on a coffee table, and he pulled them off quick when the door opened, thinking it was his mum. There was a game show on the telly. Celebrity Balls, or some such. Housewives’ brain death.
“Have you gone dirty on me or what, Slow?”
“You know I ain’t into drugs, Stones,” he said, handing me a beer. “Me mum’d kill me.”
“Yeah, I know.” I sighed. “So what was it all about, then?”
“I honestly dunno. They kept asking whether I’d delivered a big load for someone recently. Shit, I just didn’t know what they were on about half the time.”
“Was this Moxon?”
“He was there, but there was some other guy as well. Big guy, not in a suit like the others, dressed in jeans. I didn’t know him at all.”
“Drugs squad probably.”
“Yeah, well. If you ask me, they must have known about some delivery and just pulled in a load of drivers. I think I saw Danny Cross in there too.”
“Not Mick Kelk?”
“I didn’t see him. But there could have been others about somewhere.”
“So they don’t really know anything. They’re just chancing their arm? The usual suspects, they call it.”