‘Thwaites. Dorothy – or Doll – Thwaites,’ Peg said.
The man frowned and stuck out his lower lip. The cracks and creases in his skin reminded Peg of badly tanned leather.
‘Or you might know Raymond, her son?’ Loz chipped in.
The man removed his hat and scratched his mostly bald head, as if encouraging blood to his brain. Peg noticed that, deep within his grizzled face, there was some warmth in his sharp grey eyes.
‘That rings a bell,’ he said at last. ‘Shortish bloke? Sharp dresser? White Jag? With the little old mum and the fat sister?’
‘That’s them!’
‘You’re not the pigs are you?’
Loz laughed. ‘Nah, Raymond’s her dad.’
‘You’re having a laugh. He never struck me as the dad type.’
‘Me neither,’ Peg said.
‘Ah.’ The man nodded at her. ‘Bit of a flash fucker, wasn’t he. Must’ve been the same age as what I was, but he had the suit, the Jag.’
‘He’s in Spain now,’ Peg said, as if this somehow explained why they might be wanting to nose around in his garage.
‘Lucky fucker. If there’s one place I’d be if I could – other than here, of course – it’d be Spain. Love it.
Y Viva España
and all that shit
.
’ He hinted at a matador pose by slightly raising his arms.
‘There’s Spain and there’s Spain,’ Peg said, thinking of the stifling acres of marble at her father’s house and the stench of the cesspit.
‘Can you show us which garage it is?’ Loz said. ‘I’m Loz, by the way. And this is Peg.’
‘Parker,’ the man said, holding out an oily hand. As he moved, he gave off the smell of diesel. ‘Arseholes, it’s fucking cold today, innit? Fancy a cuppa in a bit?’ He motioned to his garage.
‘That’d be lovely,’ Loz said.
‘I’ll get the kettle going, then, girls. Hold on a tick.’ He dipped inside.
‘I don’t want to do this,’ Peg whispered to Loz.
‘Course you do.’
‘I don’t. I—’
‘Well now. Let’s see if I can remember.’ Parker hobbled back out and led them down the row of garages. He had a pronounced limp, and it seemed to be an effort for him to walk. Talking, however, came quite easily to him.
‘Most of these units are empty now. There’s only a few come down here these days. Mind you, not that it was ever Piccadilly Circus. Most people originally got the garages with their flats – well, mine came with my old mum’s, God rest her – and used them to store the tat they couldn’t fit indoors. Cars was beyond most of them. But your dad was separate. He never lived in the block. Not really the council type, was he? Now then.’ He stopped in front of the very last garage, tucked away almost right against a wall that marked a dead end. ‘This is the one.’
Peg and Loz looked at the garage door. Once white, like all the others it was now almost entirely rust and graffiti.
‘I don’t think we should do this,’ Peg said to Loz. She turned to Parker. ‘Do you know what he kept in there?’
Parker shrugged. ‘I didn’t used to be down here quite so much back then. He never kept his Jag in it, though, mind. Nor would I leave a nice motor like that down here. Didn’t he have some club somewhere?’
‘Flamingos,’ Loz said.
‘Something like that. Well, I think he used this place for storage, if you know what I mean. Goods that needed to be out of the way?’
‘Stolen?’ Peg said.
Parker shrugged. ‘Me, I never ask too many questions.’
‘When did you last see him down here?’
Parker frowned and rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Years back. I was away on tour mostly, but I saw him around from time to time back in the day when I was on leave. Till about the nineties, I suppose. I just saw the mum and the sister after that.’
A kettle whistled from inside his unit. ‘Got a pot of tea to make,’ he said. ‘That’s the one though.’ He banged the garage door.
‘You ready?’ Loz said, after he had shuffled away.
‘It’s just storage,’ Peg said. ‘If Aunty Jean and Nan used it, it’s probably just more of the same old stuff we’ve been clearing out of the bungalow.’
‘Yeah,’ Loz said, not altogether convinced. ‘It’ll only be some old pop socks and bags of sweet wrappers.’
‘Shall we not bother?’
Loz rolled her eyes. ‘I can’t let this lie, Peg. Not until I’ve got to the bottom of it.’
Peg kicked a can that was lying on the ground, skittering it across the crumbled tarmac. It was pointless to object.
‘Better get it over with, then,’ she said.
Loz fitted the key into the central lock of the up-and-over door.
‘It’s the right one,’ she said, looking at Peg excitedly. She turned it, then grasped the handle and tried to twist it open, but the door didn’t move.
‘Can you give it a go?’ She stood aside for Peg, who took the handle in both hands and tried with all her strength to turn it.
It wasn’t moving.
‘Mr Parker! Mr Parker?’ Loz called, running back to the open garage.
He came back outside with a large, grimy tray of tea things. ‘It’s just Parker, love. What is it?’
‘We can’t get the garage open.’
‘They can be a bit tricky.’
He put the tray down on top of a big tyre, turning it into a sort of table, and limped over to where Peg was still battling with the door. Leaning on it with one hip he lifted the handle and twisted it at the same time.
‘It’s not going anywhere, girls.’
‘Have you got any oil?’ Loz said.
‘Oil won’t do the trick.’ He was squatting down, feeling along the bottom edge of the door. ‘Look.’
He held aside a tuft of grass to reveal another lock. Then he stood and pointed up under the lintel.
‘Some kind of rack bolt top and bottom. You’ll need at least one other key to get into here.’
Loz and Peg stood and looked at the door. A giant Airbus passed by overhead, its booming engine so close it made the metal garage doors rumble.
‘Have you got any tools we could use to get it open?’ Loz asked.
‘Nah, mate,’ Parker said, putting his hands up. ‘I’ve got the council watching my every move so they can get me. I’m not doing no breaking and entering.’
‘But it’s her nan’s garage,’ Loz said. ‘Or her dad’s, at any rate.’
‘And so it’s not hers. You bring down her nan or her dad and, right as rain, I’ll help you get in there, but until I see them, and paperwork proves they own it, I’m not doing nothing. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll go and pour out that tea. Don’t want it to get stewed.’
‘Fuck.’ Loz moved into the alley that led between the garage and the end of the driveway, testing its walls with her fingers as if they might somehow give way.
‘Let’s just have a cuppa with Parker, then we’ll go and get something to eat,’ Peg said as Loz disappeared round the back of the row of buildings. She pulled the key out of the garage door and put it in her back pocket.
Alone for a moment, she was suddenly aware of the fact she had been there before, on that very spot. A dull nausea filled her belly, and sharp prickles ran down her spine.
She really wanted to run away.
‘Peg! Come and see!’ Loz called.
Keen not to be on her own for a second longer, Peg picked her way through the mud and weeds to join her in the alley.
‘Look,’ Loz said.
Each of the garages had a small window at the back. Not big enough to climb through, they were presumably designed to let in a little light and air. Loz was leaning on the one at the back of the family garage, prising apart a makeshift fence of barbed wire, trying to see through the filthy, wired glass.
‘Is that some sort of table?’ she said, stepping back to let Peg have a look.
Peg pressed her face to the window, cupping her eyes with her hands. All she could see was a murky collection of shadowy shapes. ‘Could be. Or a bed or something.’
She shuddered.
‘Shit. I wish we could get in.’ Loz kicked the concrete garage wall.
‘Well we can’t.’ Peg said. Then she saw the gash in Loz’s palm. ‘What’s that?’
‘Oh bollocks,’ Loz said. ‘It’s so cold I didn’t notice.’
‘Must’ve been on that barbed wire. Looks nasty,’ Peg said, bending to examine it. ‘And there could be all sorts of bugs in it, with all that rust.’
‘Girls!’ Parker shouted. ‘Tea’s mashed.’
‘D’you think he’s all right?’ Peg asked Loz.
‘Yeah,’ Loz said. ‘Harmless.’
The blood was running down Loz’s arm, dripping onto the icy ground. ‘We need to get that seen to. Perhaps he’s got a first-aid kit,’ Peg said, trying to disguise the fact that, despite all the medical training she had received from Doll, something about the sight of that wound in this place made her feel as if her knees were about to give way.
Loz raised an eyebrow at Peg.
They squeezed along the alley and returned to Parker’s garage, where he had placed three variously dilapidated folding chairs round the dustbin, which was newly blazing with wood from a pile of broken-down pallets.
‘Casualty?’ he said, pointing to Loz’s hand.
‘You haven’t got a plaster?’ Peg said.
Parker took Loz’s hand and examined it. ‘Sit down girl,’ he said. Then, handing out the tea and biscuits, he disappeared inside his garage. A few minutes later he emerged with a camouflaged canvas shoulder bag emblazoned with a red cross. He knelt at Loz’s side, opened the bag and, after pulling on a pair of disposable gloves identical to those Peg and Doll used when caring for Jean, he cleaned Loz’s wound with a sterile wipe.
‘It could do with a stitch,’ he said, once he could see the extent of the cut. ‘But my suturing material’s expired and I’m not taking any risks. I’ll give it a couple of paper stitches and bandage it instead. Should be fine. Have you had a tetanus jab recently?’
Loz nodded.
‘Good. I could’ve helped you out there, but no need then.’
Peg watched as he worked on Loz’s hand. He was good. As good as Doll, she thought. Professional. She felt safer over here, away from the other garage.
‘How do you know all this?’ she said.
‘Army medical corps,’ he said. ‘Nineteen eighty to 1995. Active service in Falklands, Gulf and Bosnia. Retired with knackered leg, fucked-up lungs and buggered sense of smell due to gas inhalation. I done my fucking time all right.’
‘Your old man’s sister got fat, though, didn’t she?’ Parker said, once Loz was bandaged and they were settled in front of the flaming dustbin with cups of tea.
Peg looked at him. ‘You mean Aunty Jean?’
‘Yeah. I suppose she’s your aunt then.’ Parker nodded, cradling his mug between oily fingers. ‘She used to be not such a bad looker when she come down here back in the days when there was the flats and that. She used to boss your dad about something rotten. But when she come down a couple of years ago, I couldn’t believe the size of her.’
‘A couple of years ago?’ Peg said. ‘But Aunty Jean’s not been out of bed for over ten years.’
‘Is that so? Let me think now, I still had the flat then, so it must’ve been before 2002. Not a couple of years, then. Oh yes. I remember her not taking kindly to my dog, and he went in 2001, God bless him. So it must’ve been around 2000. More like twelve or thirteen years, in fact. Time flies when you get old like me, girls.’
Peg frowned. ‘What was she doing down here?’
‘It’s all coming back now,’ Parker said, rubbing his nose between his thumb and fingers. ‘Here, give us that key again.’
Peg reached into her back pocket and handed the key to Parker.
‘Where’d you say you found it?’ he asked her.
‘On top of a wardrobe at my nan’s. Under some boxes.’
‘She was trying to get into the garage. That’s right. She’d lost a key. Must’ve been this one, then. Quite upset about it, she was. She’d heard about the plans for the flats and was worried they was going to knock down the garages as well. Said she had some stuff in there she wanted. She was quite aerated about it. He must’ve hidden it on top of the wardrobe, then.’ Parker nodded to himself and handed the key back to Peg.
‘What do you mean? Who must’ve hidden it?’
‘Her dad. She kept on going on how her dad had hidden the key and wasn’t letting her have it. Memorable, that: all that temper in someone so large. Fucking scary.’
Loz had not said a word through all this, but Peg could see that she was working on something as she drank her tea and stared into the flames, nursing her hand, listening to their conversation. At last she looked up at Parker.
‘Are you here a lot?’ she asked him.
Parker leaned forward and cupped his hand to his mouth. ‘Don’t let on, girls, but . . .’ and he got even closer to them and whispered, ‘I’m here all the time. I live here. I grew up in them flats, and when they pulled them down I didn’t want to go nowhere else. Didn’t want to be rehoused somewhere out in fucking Medway or something. So I just sort of moved in here. Keep an eye on the place, like a sort of unofficial security guard I suppose.’
‘Don’t you get scared?’ Peg asked. ‘Down here on your own at night?’
Parker laughed. ‘I can take care of myself, girl. I’ve been in a lot worse situations.’
‘Will you do us a favour?’ Loz said. ‘If you see anyone come down to look at the garage, will you let me know?’
‘Leave it, Loz,’ Peg said. ‘Who’s going to come down here out of the blue?’
Loz shrugged. ‘It’s just a hunch. With all the mud being stirred up. You never know. Will you, Parker? We might find out who’s got that other key.’
‘Course, girl. Give me your number.’
Loz scribbled her phone number on a blank page at the back of a gory crime book she had in her bag, tore it out and handed it to Parker, who received it with great seriousness.
Later, they found Mary Perkins’s bedsit and Doll and Frank’s old house, but they were just anonymous Victorian terraces on unremarkable South London streets.
‘Shall we knock on the door?’ Loz asked as they stood outside the old family home. ‘Ask if we can take a look around?’
‘Do you want to be taken for a complete lunatic?’ Peg said.
Loz shook her head. ‘S’pose you’ve got a point.’
They headed back to London Bridge, Peg quietly wondering what it had been about the locked garage that had made her whole body reel.
If only she could put her finger on it . . .
But she didn’t mention a word of this to Loz.