Mrs. Abbott
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.