Verdict Unsafe (23 page)

Drummond seemed to be controlling Carole’s entire life. She wanted to go somewhere. Tonight. And she was regarding it as
practically impossible, because the buses were so slow and infrequent in the evening as to be virtually unusable. But she had a car. It was a ten-, fifteen-minute drive. The bus took in every village, and three-quarters of an hour.

Except that even before she could make herself get into the car, she had to make herself get into the garage, and she didn’t think she could do that. Her knees grew
weak
at the very thought. She could ask Rob to bring the car around to the front, she thought briefly. But no. That would involve explanations— she wouldn’t even let him leave it where she might see it, so the request would hardly go unnoticed. And besides, she couldn’t involve Rob, not in this. That really wouldn’t be right. She had to do this on her own.

If she was going to go through with it, she would just have to go and get the car out when she needed it like she would have done before. Exactly like she had done before.

And she would do it, she thought, actually putting her hands on her knees to stop them shaking. She would.

“It’s still short. I said it had to be paid back today.”

They were parked outside the opulent house.

Lennie played his last card. “You … you wouldn’t be interested in payment in kind, would you?”

“What sort of payment in kind?”

Lennie explained what sort. “She’d give you a good time,” he said. “We could come to some arrangement.”

“No, thanks.” He opened the door.

“Come on, mate, give me a break,” said Lennie.

He got out. “All right,” he said. “You have until eight-thirty tonight. Come straight here. Wait in your cab until I come out. I might be delayed—don’t come to the door. And I want the money this time. No excuses—no deals. The money, or I make an example of you—I don’t mind much which.”

Lennie couldn’t believe he had wriggled off the hook. “Right,” he said, before his passenger changed his mind. “But I won’t be in the cab. It’ll be a Transit.”

“Whatever.” He got out. “Be here,” he said, “I don’t give second chances.”

Lennie drove back into Stansfield, without the faintest idea of how he was to get hold of the rest of the money.

“ABC Cabs?”
crackled the radio.

Lennie picked up the mike, grateful for anything. He had to pick up someone with an unpronounceable name at an address in Stansfield he knew to be a gambling club of which the law was unaware, which had some hefty wins and losses. It was usually the winners who took taxis home, he thought philosophically. Maybe home was a long way away. You could do good deals on long trips.

Home was indeed a long way away, obviously, but his destination was predictably and disappointingly the conference hotel, a two-quid run away. His passenger, a small, olive-skinned man with a mustache, spoke little English; Lennie wondered if they had simultaneous translations, or did he just sit there and wonder what they were all conferring about?

He pulled up on the concourse, and made to switch off the meter, at which his passenger was peering. “All right?” he asked, his hand hovering.

“Is twenty—yes?” he said, and handed Lennie a twenty-pound note, which he peeled off a role of twenties, then fished in his pocket for a fiver, and gave him that, too. “For you— yes?” he said. “Tip, right?”

Lennie stared at the money, at the misread meter, and at the man. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Tip. Thanks.” He switched off the meter, and went into his routine for visiting businessmen, in an effort to find out if he was a likely punter. “Is there some sort of do tonight?” he asked. “Last night and all that?”

The man frowned in concentration, and shook his head. “Say again, please?”

“Have you got a conference function tonight?” They nearly always spoke jargon.

“Ah. No. Finished. I go home tomorrow.”

Lennie felt his mouth go dry. He had in the back of his cab a man with money to burn, nothing to do, and the belief that a four-minute taxi ride cost twenty quid. That’s what happened when all you did was sign your name and room number on bar
bills. You didn’t use the currency, get to know it. He wondered what the jargon for at a loose end was. “Are you going to be spending some of that?” he asked, speaking clearly and slowly and loudly.

“This?” The man shrugged. “Only in bar,” he said. “There is no …” He shrugged again. “Disco, or … fun,” he said eventually.

“You looking for fun?”

“Fun? Yes.”

“Do you like girls?” Lennie asked.

The man laughed. “I like,” he said. “But no girls. All businessmen.”

Lennie could hardly speak now, but he managed. “I could get you a girl,” he said.

The man shook his head, and a little bit of Lennie died.

“Is not …” He shook his head again. “I have colleague. Here. Knows my … er … wife, yes?”

Lennie smiled broadly. “I can take you to a girl,” he said. “Now. Your colleague would never know.”

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

At last, the jargon that he also spoke. All he had to do was multiply by ten. Could it work? Could it honestly work? His lips could hardly form the words, but he had given him twenty pounds for the taxi, so … “Three hundred,” he said.

“Yes?” he pulled out another roll, this time of fifties. “Is young girl?”

“Yes, young.” Lennie watched him count out six fifties, and fold them in two. He didn’t know if he dared, but it was worth a try, surely. “You like them young?” he asked.

“Young.”

“How young?”

“Not child,” he said.

“Fourteen too young?”

“No. Fourteen. That’s OK.”

“It’ll cost you more. She’s under age.”

“How much?”

“Another hundred.” Lennie watched as he extracted two more fifties, and folded them with the six…“All right?” he said.

“I see girl first,” he said, holding back the money.

“Yeah, mate. Sure.” Lennie turned the cab. “Pinch me, someone,” he said, as he roared off into the early evening traffic. “I’m dreaming.”

“Say again, please?”

“Get you there in no time,” said Lennie. Four hundred quid. Four hundred—over twice as much as he needed. He had died and gone to heaven. He had won the pools. Oh, he wished his passenger wasn’t going home tomorrow. This was better than the lottery.

He pulled up in the alley outside the lit, curtained house, hitting the horn twice in positive triumph. The cavalry was here. He didn’t release the back doors for a moment, to give Ginny time to go up.

“Right,” he said, getting out, opening the back door. “Come with me. I’ll take you up, you can see Ginny—that’s her name. Then you give me the money, and she’s yours for half an hour, and I’ll take you back to your hotel.”

“Yes.”

Lennie’s heart was pounding as he put the key in the lock, and opened the door. His face fell when he saw Ginny still downstairs, still wearing the old sweater of his which swamped her, and a pair of jogging pants. And then, coming out of the sitting room, the cop. Plain clothes, but Lennie could smell them. He froze in the doorway.

“Lennie Fredericks, is it?” said the cop, coming toward him, showing him his ID card. “DC Marshall, Stansfield CID. We have a search warrant—your wife has seen it.”

“I go,” said the punter, heading back out.

Lennie watched, dismayed, as his four hundred pounds disappeared down the road. He stood, blinking a little, watching it leave. It took him.a moment to comprehend his loss. Then he came in, stared at Marshall. “You could have shown her a takeaway menu for all she’d know!” he yelled at him. “She can’t
Woody read!” He turned on Ginny. “What the hell’s going on?” he roared, slapping her. “What have you done now, you stupid bitch?” He raised his hand again.

“You can cut that out!” said Marshall.

Lennie turned, and saw DI Hill at the top of the stairs. “What are you doing up there?” he demanded.

“Looking for stolen goods,” she said, as she came down.

“Have you found any?”

“No.”

“Then get out,” he said, striding to the open door.

She and Marshall went out into the alley, and she turned back to him. “I read Ginny the warrant,” she said. “And don’t blame her. It’s got nothing to do with her.”

Lennie slammed the door shut, and Ginny started gabbling at him as soon as he turned around.

“I’m sorry, Lennie,” she said. “But it’s all right, they didn’t find it. Rob must have taken it. Maybe he told them—I’m sorry. It must have been stolen— Do you think that’s why she gave me it? They must have thought there were more.”

Lennie stared at her. He didn’t have the energy to unravel what she was saying. He didn’t care what she was saying. He didn’t give a stuff anymore. He didn’t know anyone who could lend him two hundred quid, and he didn’t know anyone who could buy anything for two hundred quid. He sank down on the sofa. There was sod all he could do about it, and he was no worse off than he’d been before he picked the dream punter up. He wouldn’t be meeting his newfound friend at eight-thirty; he would just have to watch his back. But they’d get him. Sooner rather than later, they’d get him. One night, he’d leave the snooker club and walk into a couple of heavies.

“Put the kettle on, doll,” he said.

“Well, now you know why he’s driving a taxi,” said Marshall, as he drove back to Stansfield.

Judy smiled at his tone of voice, despite the day she was having. “Do I gather you disapprove of Lennie?” she asked.

“Don’t you, ma’am?”

She thought about that. “No,” she said. “I don’t think I do.”

“I never thought I’d hear you stick up for someone like him.”

She frowned. “Why not?”

“He knocks her about, for one thing,” said Marshall. “You saw him.”

“Oh, that. Ginny’s used to that—I doubt if she even noticed.”

“We should do him for living off immoral earnings.”

“Mm. The problem is that he’s living
beyond
his immoral earnings,” said Judy. “And I want to know how.”

“How can you joke about it? He’s a parasite. He hires his wife out. He brings men home to her.”

“I know. But he’s probably the best thing that ever happened to Ginny, all the same,” she said.

“Oh, yes?”

“Yes. She was a drifter. She would hang about motorway service stations and go with the truck drivers for a meal and a lift to the next one. Somehow, she fetched up in Malworth. She was virtually vagrant—some people in a squat took her in when the weather turned cold, like a stray cat. She let anyone do what they wanted with her for a bag of chips.”

“And being exploited is better?”

“Of course it’s better! Lennie got her to charge a reasonable amount—gave her three meals a day and a bed to sleep in. He stopped her having unprotected sex with the customers. He makes her go to the clinic for regular checkups. I know he looks as though he couldn’t give a damn, but he does.”

“He just doesn’t want to catch anything.”

“Maybe, but the result’s the same. Ginny’s clean. And he kept her off drugs. Left to her own devices, she would have been shooting up with used needles and been dead in a ditch by now. He knew she was going that way, so he didn’t let her keep any money, and clouted her if she tried to, so she never got the chance to graduate to that.”

“Well, that’s the charitable point of view,” said Alan. “Other people might say he’s just greedy.”

“Most pimps like their girls to be dependent on drugs,” said Judy.

“But he’s never taught her to read, has he? That might mean
she’d find out she could manage without him. That’s as good as drags, without the drawbacks.”

Judy smiled. “True,” she said. “But I don’t think teaching people to read would be Lennie’s forte. This is. Thanks to an arrangement with the allocation manager, and, I imagine, the rent officer, she’s got a house to live in and a room to work in, and she doesn’t even have to walk the streets, because Lennie gets her clients for her. She adores him.”

Marshall snorted.

“Oh, Lennie’s all right,” said Judy. “If he’s burgling houses, I’ll nick him, but we’d never prove immoral earnings. I’m not even convinced it is immoral—he’s done a lot more good than harm with Ginny.”

“I’m sure he speaks very highly of you,” said Marshall.

“I’ve met so many people this last two days who hate the sight of me that I practically regard Lennie as an old and valued friend,” said Judy.

Marshall smiled at last. “I suppose he’s not so bad,” he said. “I didn’t know her background. It makes more sense of that business with Drummond. I mean—if she was living the way you say, you can understand her taking money to set him up, can’t you?”

Yes. She could.

Ginny wasn’t sure how she had escaped a hiding, but she had, and she was grateful for that, as she made Lennie’s tea.

“Four hundred quid,” he said, the first words he’d spoken since he’d asked her to put the kettle on.

“What?”

“Four hundred quid,” he repeated. “That’s what these cops cost me. Four hundred quid.”

Ginny frowned. “How do you make that out?” she said.

He looked up at her. “He had it in his hand,” he said, making a fist of his own. “He was going to give it to me, Ginny. He just wanted to check that you weren’t an old boiler. Four hundred quid.” He shook his head. “It’s almost funny.”

Ginny’s eyes grew wide. “What the fuck was I supposed to do for four hundred quid?” she asked.

“Nothing!” He got up to get himself a mug. “He didn’t understand English money. I just multiplied by ten.”

“What does that make?”

Lennie smiled. He looked tired, Ginny thought. “He thought it was forty quid,” he explained.

“But I don’t get forty quid, either,” Ginny pointed out. “I told him you were fourteen.”

“Aw, Lennie! You can’t get away with that for much longer.”

“I don’t know,” said Lennie. He caught hold of her, and ran his hands up inside the sweater, feeling her breasts. “You’ve still got no tits to speak of,” he said.

“It’s not just tits! You’ll have to stop sooner or later, Lennie.” She put her arms around his neck. “They’ll guess when I get wrinkles.”

He laughed, then looked at her seriously, his hands still holding her sides, his thumbs brushing her nipples. It was a nice feeling. “Don’t stop,” she said, when his hands fell still, and she felt the gentle brushing start again. She smiled.