‘It must take you a long time to clean all this.’ He was trying to make up his mind on how to handle him.
‘I enjoy doing it, no point in having things like this unless they’re looking their best.’
Adam was asking himself if there would be too much here for Walter Bristow. He picked out a selection he thought would most appeal to him. Then came the question of what price he’d have to pay. Leo Hardman knew exactly what everything was worth and haggled over each item. But Adam was well used to this and felt equal to it. He carried a notebook for transactions and listed each article he was buying and what he paid for it. At last they came to an agreement and he brought up boxes and blankets from the boot of his car to carry his purchases. Hardman produced a plentiful supply of old newspaper for wrapping.
Adam had gone to his bank yesterday to withdraw cash, because he knew that was what all sellers to the trade preferred, but he hadn’t withdrawn enough. Hardman was willing to take a cheque for the small shortfall. He also helped him carry the silver down and lock it in the boot of his car.
He was feeling rather light-headed at the over-abundance of his purchase, but thought he could unload it on other clients should Walter Bristow not want it all. He drove until he saw a telephone kiosk, then he pulled in to the kerb and gave ten minutes’ thought to the figures on his list. He needed to work out the selling price he’d ask; once he’d done that, he wrote it in against the figures he’d paid.
He couldn’t help thinking about Leo Hardman. The man had sparkled with interest and enthusiasm for his silver, but he’d hardly said a word about himself, except to confirm that he worked in one of the main city hotels. But through the night? Adam felt he knew virtually nothing about him.
He got out of his car then and rang Walter Bristow’s number, asking if he could come round immediately to show him what he had. He felt buoyed up, excited even by the dazzling quality of what he’d managed to get, and counted himself lucky to find both Joan and Walter at home. As he opened up his boxes in a room they called their snug, he could feel their excitement building up until it eclipsed his own.
They exclaimed over every piece as it was revealed. Joan was absolutely thrilled with the George Jensen bowl he’d bought earlier. Soon the room was littered with screwed-up paper. They bought most of the silver and Adam couldn’t believe his luck. In one morning he’d managed to earn himself a generous profit.
Not only that, but the Bristows seemed grateful to him. He knew he’d delayed their lunch, because he could hear Walter’s stomach rumbling and it was after two o’clock.
‘I’m sure you must be hungry too,’ Joan said. ‘Would you like to join us? It’s only salad and cold beef. I think there’ll be enough for you too.’
Adam was starving and thought it an excellent meal. They were up on cloud nine with the silver he’d found for them.
‘It’s all lovely,’ Joan told him, ‘and I know Walter’s thrilled with it, but we used to have a pair of candlesticks sitting one each end of the sideboard here, and I would have liked to replace them.’
‘Surely this is enough, Joan?’ Walter smiled.
‘It’s more than enough and I’m delighted, but candlesticks . . .’
To amuse them, Adam told them a little about the man he’d bought most of the silver from, and of course they talked about Chloe. After the meal he asked if he might use their phone to ring her and tell her what time he’d be home. After all, he had something to celebrate. He asked her to book a babysitter so they could have a night out on the town.
On the way back to Manchester, Adam stopped off and sold what remained of the silver he’d bought from Leo Hardman. He felt he’d had an excellent day and was in an expansive mood when he got home. It was only when he was facing Chloe across the tray of afternoon tea that he started to tell her what they were about to celebrate.
He saw her face change. ‘You sold a lot of silver to Uncle Walter? I thought you were having difficulty finding pieces to please him?’
‘I was.’ He told her then about finding Leo Hardman, his hoard of silver, and what a strange character he was. ‘They were thrilled with every piece, over the moon in fact. They even invited me to have a bite to eat with them at lunchtime. It was a jolly meal, they were really pleased.’
‘You didn’t overcharge them?’
‘No, of course not. It was top-of-the-market stuff, they’re very lucky to get it.’
Chloe groaned. ‘If you want to celebrate, you must have made a killing. I’m not sure I like you doing deals with Uncle Walter.’
‘They’re celebrating too,’ Adam said coldly.
Leo Hardman felt depressed watching Adam drive away. He hated having to part with so many pieces of his beloved silver; it was like parting with old friends. He’d been feeling very low anyway.
It was another of those bad times when he was urgently in need of money and could see no other way of raising it. He had to take care of Bernie Dennison’s wife and baby while he was in prison. Bernie had asked it of him and he owed him that. Whatever anybody said, there was honour amongst thieves.
The police had caught Bernie and charged him with robbing a jewellery shop in Dale Street. Leo had been with him, and it had given him nightmares to imagine the arms of the law tightening round him. Bernie had slipped up and left evidence behind, and though they knew he must have had an accomplice, he’d denied it and kept on denying it. He’d said he was working on his own and Leo’s name had never passed his lips. Bernie prided himself on being strong enough to withstand police questioning, and he’d kept mum. But Leo had sweated and worried for weeks that they’d break him down, and the fact that they had not left him eternally grateful.
Bernie had known Leo had been clean for two years and to be charged with another robbery now would be a disaster for him. So Leo had to pay his dues and look after Bernie’s wife; it was the only way he could thank him.
Leo reckoned that bad luck and lack of money had dogged him all his life. He’d still been at school when he first felt the need to earn money. A mile or so away from his home was a pub called the Cheshire Cat and he’d heard they were seeking bar workers for Friday and Saturday nights. He’d had to lie about his age when he presented himself to the publican, as he was only fifteen at the time. He’d expected to be asked to provide proof, so he’d borrowed his brother’s birth certificate without his knowing and took it with him.
His brother Jeffrey was nearly four years older than him and he’d got away with it. He’d answered to the name of Jeff for nearly nine months. The job suited him perfectly; he enjoyed it and found the pub a jolly place. His fear of being found out had long since gone when a friend of his brother, already well tanked up, came in for a drink. The publican overheard him calling Leo by his real name. He’d had plenty of time to work out a logical explanation and told his boss that it was his mother’s pet name for him, because he was a lion-hearted lad. But Jeff’s friend filled him in with the true facts and his boss didn’t believe him.
Leo had left school without qualifications and had taken jobs that kept him at the bottom of the feeding chain. He’d never earned much. He’d been a van driver, where he’d augmented his wages by fiddling free petrol for his father’s car until he’d been found out. They’d put him on probation for that.
He’d had a job in a shoe shop then but had been caught stealing shoes from his employer and selling them more cheaply on a market stall. That earned him three months in a youth detention centre, which he hated.
But he came out and managed to get taken on as a clerk by an insurance company, where he mostly did book-keeping. He felt he’d taken a step up in the world because he worked in an office. He kept that job for a couple of years, and he was even managing to divert a little of their cash for himself, but it ended in dismissal and three months in jug.
A social worker working with discharged prisoners helped him get training as a bus driver. He kept that job for several years, even after he’d managed to work out how to keep for himself some of the cash the public paid for their tickets. Eventually, though, that earned him another six months in prison, and it was bad enough to make him determined not to end up there again. Prison had provided some benefits: there were classes designed to equip him to hold down a job when he was released. He took English language, with particular emphasis on writing it, and also book-keeping. He learned even more from his fellow inmates.
By using his brother’s clean identity again, he managed to get a job as night desk attendant in the Exchange Hotel, a Victorian railway hotel of luxury standard in the centre of Liverpool. He had very little to do except talk to the night security guard. Occasionally late guests arrived and he acted as receptionist, then showed them to their booked room and acted as porter. He was also responsible for room service and took up sandwiches and other cold food. Quite a few guests came in late and he handed out their room keys, but his duties didn’t keep him busy.
He had many night hours to roam through the main office, but the desks and file cabinets were locked. He examined the hotel register at length and discovered that some guests gave details of their credit or debit cards so eventually the hotel could draw the cost of their stay directly through those. He studied them minutely, hoping to discover some way he could draw a little too.
Gary, the security guard, had the keys to the main areas and many of the storerooms. They both went regularly to the kitchen and helped themselves to the same luxury food as the guests.
‘This isn’t a bad life,’ Gary said with his mouth full of smoked salmon. Leo wasn’t so sure. Working here, he could measure what he had against the life of luxury enjoyed by the guests. What he could afford was not enough to keep a woman happy. His wife had called it poverty and left him for a better provider, and so had the woman he’d found to take her place.
‘You’ve got to look on the bright side, mate,’ Gary said. ‘You’ve got a place of your own?’
‘Well, a rented bedsit.’
‘A nice one?’
‘Not bad.’
‘It’s hard to rent anything these days, and in a bedsit you’ll have plenty of company round you. Friends, like.’
‘Too much company sometimes,’ Leo said. ‘Students banging about day and night.’
‘They’re not all young, though, are they?’
‘No, there’s a fellow who works on the trains, but he’s a bit dour, I don’t like him much.’
‘You can’t like everybody, Leo. There must be some you like.’
‘Well, the landlord’s all right.’ Most of the time Gary was all right too. They helped themselves to delicacies from the hotel’s freezers and storerooms to take home.
‘Helps us save on food bills,’ Gary said as he locked the door behind them. ‘I reckon we have a pretty good life here. It’s a question of making the best of it.’
Leo went home. As he let himself into the house, divided into flatlets, he met his landlord, Conor Kennedy, in the hall. Conor was in his sixties and had a bald and shiny head and a hale and hearty manner. He clapped Leo on the shoulder and said in his Irish accent, ‘My friend, is everybody here behaving themselves?’
‘You can see we are.’
Conor used to live in the bedsit Leo now rented on the first floor, number four out of eight, but he’d moved out round the corner into a two-up, two-down of his own. He came back to check on his tenants almost every day and Leo met him often in the nearby Irish pub. He played the occasional game of darts with him.
‘Aye, it’s all quiet contentment here this morning.’
‘It’s rarely quiet,’ Leo told him. ‘That student in the next room to me had a woman in with him all last weekend.’
‘Did he now? Well, that’s not illegal.’ Conor wanted to know what was going on in his property, but was fairly relaxed about what his tenants did. They had to get on with each other and there was to be strictly no fighting. No drugs either, and they had to pay the rent on time.
‘That kid on the ground floor was bawling its head off yesterday,’ Leo said. ‘It’s right below me, and when I asked its mother to keep it quiet so I could sleep, she gave me a right mouthful.’
‘The kid’s ill,’ Conor told him. ‘She’s taking it to the doctor this morning. Poor Maisie’s got a lot to put up with.’
Leo knew Conor Kennedy was sympathetic towards all his tenants, perhaps because he was living on the rents they paid him. But he was extra kind to Maisie. She had the bedsit next to the front door and it was her duty to make sure it was locked at night. They were a feckless lot here on the whole. Maisie also cleaned the shared bathrooms and the stairs. Leo thought she got something knocked off her rent for services like that.
But Conor was friendly enough. He’d occasionally buy Leo a glass of Guinness at the Irish pub, and that was a friendly place too. The landlord there, Tommy McWilliam, welcomed them all. He and Conor had this thing about how wonderful the Irish were: the songs, the food and, of course, the Guinness. Leo told them his mother came from Dublin; he wanted them to like him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
O
NE EVENING, LEO WENT to work to find four members of the day staff in a state of shocked agitation and in no hurry to go through the handing-over routine. They were chattering together behind the reception desk.
‘Our chief accountant’s been killed,’ one told him. ‘Isn’t it terrible?’
‘Francis Clitheroe, do you know him?’ asked another.
‘No,’ Leo said. He’d never heard of him. Gary, the security guard who usually worked with him, came in.
‘He’s really nice, very friendly. He was on holiday, we had this postcard from him yesterday.’ It was pushed into Leo’s hand. The picture was of a Majorcan beach resort.
‘What’s happened to him?’ Gary asked. The day staff all spoke at once.
‘He went on a jeep safari.’
‘It went off the track, rolled down the mountain and turned over.’
‘It killed both him and his wife.’
‘It’s awful, isn’t it? You never know the moment.’
‘They’re being flown home tomorrow.’