Get Carter (7 page)

“Hell,” said Keith. “No wonder he never said owt about her.”

“Do you know what she did?” I said. “After?”

“What?” said Keith.

“A few days after she left she sent Frank a letter. He got it the day of our dad’s funeral. I was up for it. In the letter she called Frank everything she could think of. She finished up saying that Doreen wasn’t Frank’s kid. She said that I was Doreen’s father. She said it because she knew how much Frank thought about Doreen.”

“Christ,” said Keith.

“Frank showed me the letter,” I said. “He was very calm about it. He stood there while I read it and then he just said, ‘Jack, I don’t ever want to see you in this house again.’ I mean, he’d had the letter from the day before. He’d had time to do all sorts of things. Get drunk, go for me, anything. But he held it all back. He just told me he didn’t want anything else to do with me and that was that.”

“So he believed her then?”

I nodded.

“It wasn’t true though?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

Keith looked at me.

“What I mean is, I had Muriel, ugly as she bloody was, shortly before they were married. I was only twenty-two. Doreen came on the scene eight months after they were wed. So I don’t know, do I? I saw her today for the first time in eight years. The time before that she was a baby.”

Keith looked into his beer. I remembered how it had happened. I’d been on my way home from the pub and I’d bumped into Muriel and two of her mates. They’d
been pissed as farts. They’d had a hen party on the strength of Muriel’s coming wedding. When I’d bumped into them they’d been full of it. Talking dirty, swearing, having me on. There’s nobody muckier minded than a pissed-up bird. One of them had lived nearby. She’d said why didn’t we all go back to her place for a cup of tea? I’d said all right. I hadn’t been sober and I’d quite fancied my chances with one of the birds. When we’d got back there the bird had brought the drinks out and the talk’d got filthier. It’d made me very horny. I’d been sitting in an easy chair and Muriel’d been sitting in one facing me and the other two birds were on the settee. Muriel hadn’t been particular about the way she’d been sitting and I’d been able to see right up her legs. Not that I’d been pretending not to. I’d been too far gone for that. One of the birds on the settee had made a joke about it to Muriel and Muriel’d leant across and lifted the skirt of the other bird and’d said something like now we can all see what you’ve got too. The other bird had done the same back to Muriel and then the two of them had started mucking about trying to shove each other’s skirts up to their waists. They’d kept looking at me and screeching and laughing all the time it’d gone on. They’d been so pissed they hadn’t even tried to keep the noise down. The third bird’d joined in and between them they’d pinned Muriel down on the settee and whipped her drawers off. One of the birds’d danced round the room waving them in the air while Muriel’d tried to get them back off her. Eventually the third bird’d looked at me and said to the others something like why should he be getting to see everything? Why should he have all the fun? Let’s have a look at his. The two other birds had jumped on me and started unbuttoning my flies. Muriel’d staggered over and joined in. I hadn’t actually tried to put up a lot of resistance. Anyway, at that point, somebody knocked on the front door and the bird who’d lived there had gone to see who it was. I’d fastened up just in case. I’d thought it might have been
the bird’s folks coming home. It’d been some neighbour on about the noise. The bird and the neighbour’d started having a ding-dong on the steps. While that’d been going on the third bird’d started feeling sick and she’d cleared off to the lav. That’d left me and Muriel. She’d come and sat on the arm of the chair and started unbuttoning me again, making sure I was seeing everything she’d got. The front door’d slammed but the bird hadn’t come back in the room because the third bird’d started puking all up the stair carpet.

It’d been all over in five minutes. We’d laid down on the carpet and the minute I’d put it in her I’d come. And the minute I’d come I’d started to feel fucking awful. I’d wanted to cry and beat my fists on the floor and be sick but all Muriel had been doing was bloody cursing because it was all over. I remember I’d got up off her and I’d started cursing her at the top of my voice. The knocking had started again on the front door and the bird whose place it was had come in to see what I was on about. Finally I’d just run out past her, out of the front door past the old bugger who’d been doing the complaining.

I’d known I wouldn’t be able to face Frank, not when the wedding was only a week off. I’d been living at Albert’s at the time because our dad wouldn’t have me in the house. Neither Frank nor our dad had known where I was so it was easy for me not to turn up at the wedding. I only saw Muriel once after that. The night I half killed our dad. Frank and her had lived at Jackson Street and when I saw her I couldn’t believe it had happened. She’d never looked anything at all but seeing her there with her hair in curlers and her fag on and no make-up made me almost think I’d dreamt it. But I hadn’t.

When I found out Frank’d got a daughter it never clicked that it could have been mine. Maybe I’d brainwashed myself about that night to the point where I couldn’t let any thought like that into my mind. Even when Frank showed me the letter at our dad’s funeral I wouldn’t admit
it to myself. I never had done. Not even now. Doreen was Frank’s. What had happened between me and Muriel had happened. But Doreen was Frank’s. She had to be Frank’s. He had to have that.

The thing I’d always wondered, though, was whether Frank’d believed Muriel. He believed that me and Muriel had been together. He knew that we were both capable of that. But whether or not he’d believed that Doreen might not be his was another matter. I don’t think he allowed himself to believe it. That’s the way Frank was. Anything he didn’t like he shut out. Like me.

“So, like I was saying,” I said to Keith, “the one time Frank had a good reason to either kill me or kill Muriel or go crazy one way or another, he just turned himself inside out and asked me if I wouldn’t mind leaving the room. If he did drive himself off top road then whatever made him do it was even worse than what he found out about me and Muriel.”

“And Doreen,” said Keith.

I didn’t pass any remark at what Keith said.

“But,” I said, “I doubt if he did it on purpose.”

“So do I,” said Keith. “As you say, Frank wasn’t the type.”

“At the same time … Frank wouldn’t have got blind pissed on scotch instead of turning up for work, would he?”

“Well, no,” said Keith.

I stubbed out my cigarette.

“Keith,” I said, “how much do you know about what goes on?”

“How do you mean?”

“Around here. Among the big boys. The governors.”

“I don’t know nowt, I suppose.”

“But you know that there are governors?”

“I suppose so, yes.”

“Ever met any of them?”

“No.”

“Do you know any of their names?”

“Well, I know there’s a bloke called Thorpe.”

“And what does he do?”

“He does loans around steelworks. He has a few blokes who do his collecting for him. They come in here sometimes.”

“And he’s a governor, is he?”

Keith didn’t say anything. I smiled.

“Do you know who your boss is?”

“Mr. Gardner.”

“Who’s he?”

“The manager.”

“And who does he work for?”

“Well, this isn’t a brewery house, so he works for the company who owns it.”

“Cotel Limited?”

“That’s right.”

“They own motels and hotels together with one or two pubs, don’t they?”

“That’s right.”

“And who owns Cotel Limited?”

“I don’t know.”

“No,” I said, “and you never will. Except that he’s a governor. Do you know who Thorpe works for?”

“No.”

“The owner of Cotel Limited. Do you know who runs Greenley’s Betting Shops?”

Keith didn’t answer.

“Right,” I said. “You’ve heard of Wold Haulage Limited?”

He nodded.

“Chap called Marsh runs it, doesn’t he?”

Keith nodded again.

“Well, he doesn’t. Guess who does? And who owns the wog houses in Jackson Street and Voltaire Road and Linden Street? And the gambling clubs and the brothels and Greaves’ Country Pies and Sausages Ltd?”

Keith’s cigarette had burned down to the tip. He put it out and got another one from his packet.

“Do you remember a couple of years ago when five Pakistanis got carved up outside of here? On the pavement?”

“I wasn’t here then but I heard about it.”

“It said in the papers there were about eighteen of them, all Pakistanis. Fighting among themselves.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, what happened, you see, was that some of our coloured friends had started a cheap whorehouse down Clarendon Street. The novelty attracted a lot of customers. Too many. They decided to open up additional premises. That was just before the party on the pavement. Everybody thought it was just what it looked like; too much ale. But what happened was that there was half a dozen Pakistanis from the whorehouse against half a dozen Pakistanis from various properties in Jackson Street and Voltaire Road and Linden Street. Properties owned by a certain person. They were helped by half a dozen gents of the strictly British persuasion. Lots of people saw it but there were no witnesses. The police only arrested the ones who’d been hospitalised. For some reason or other they were satisfied with the ones they’d got. Anyway, you’ll gather that after that nobody else bothered to try and open up in competition.”

Keith was watching me, wondering how I knew about it all.

“It was in all the papers. I guessed that something of this sort was going on, so I rang Frank up. Just to see if he was all right, in one way or another. Frank had a good idea that it wasn’t the way it looked, but he wasn’t saying anything. Frank wouldn’t get involved in owt like that for all the tea in China. He always played safe. But he knew. He always knew what was going on.”

I looked at Keith.

“You see, the only way Frank could get into trouble was if he’d heard something and told somebody else about it. But he wouldn’t do that, would he?”

“Well, no,” said Keith.

“So he wasn’t the kind of bloke to get pissed and accidentally drive himself off top road. He wasn’t the kind of bloke
to do it on purpose. And he wasn’t the kind of bloke to get into trouble with some people that might matter. So what?”

The doors were pushed open and three steel workers came in, carrying their knapsacks. They all looked clean, so that meant they were coming in for a morning session before they went on two to ten.

Keith said: “I dunno. What?”

“There’s only one way Frank’d get mixed up in anything; that’s if he saw something he didn’t want to see. If that happened, then whatever he saw would have to be pretty dicey. Wouldn’t you say?”

“I would. But …”

“But what?”

“Well, what you’re saying is that Frank … Frank was knocked off. I mean definitely.”

“He was.”

“But how can you say that?”

“Because I know it.”

“But how?”

“Because of the line of business I’m in.”

I watched him while that sank in.

“That’s why I’m sure, matey,” I said. “That’s why I’m sure.” I drained my glass. “Shall we have another?”

When he came back from the bar he’d had time to think about everything I’d said, which was the idea. I’d had time to think too. Now was the time to see if I was right or not.

He put the drinks down.

“Cheers,” I said.

“Cheers,” he said.

I drank the scotch off.

“So believing that, Keith,” I said, “what do you think I should do? Go to the scullers?”

I smiled as I said it. He didn’t say anything.

I stopped smiling.

“I want you to do something for me,” I said.

He still didn’t say anything.

“I want you to keep your eyes and ears open. I want to know anything you hear at the bar. I want to know who says what. About business, about Frank, me, anything. And if anybody asks where I’m staying I want to know that most of all. As soon as you hear that, you put your coat on and walk out of the pub and you come over to seventeen Holden Street and tell me. There’s money in it to take care of you till you get another job.”

“Yeah,” he said, “but …”

“But what?”

“It’s a bit dicey, isn’t it? I mean, what if they know I’ve been to the funeral and met you?”

“Oh, they’ll know that,” I said. “You can count on it.”

“Well, there you are. I mean, if I tell on them to you, I’ll be in for it, won’t I?”

“No,” I lied, “ ’course not. It’s me they’ll want. They’ll leave you alone. If they touched you it’d be more trouble for them than it’s worth.”

“Well …”

“And anyway,” I said, “I shall be around, in here, so they don’t
have
to know where I live. It’s just important to me to know who it’s important to. You probably won’t have to come to where I am. Just tip us the wink when I come in. You know.”

“Well, I suppose so. I mean, if you’re in, they don’t have to know what we’re up to, do they?”