Patchwork Man (9 page)

‘What happened then?’

‘The little kids were all crying but Gazz found his torch and I found the switch thing Mum usually fiddles with when we’ve had a power cut and then the lights all came back on. It still stunk and Sukie were out cold, with her hand all red and black and the fingers stuck together. It looked foul. I thought she were dead but she were breathing so we put her on the settee and she woke up a bit later. Moll wrapped her hand in a wet tea towel ’cos that’s what you’re s’posed to do with burns. Moll wants to be a nurse, see, so she knows them things – but Sukie wouldn’t stop crying and her hand started to swell up. By the morning it was like a balloon, and all gunky-like, then it started to go brown. Moll said she needed the hospital but we couldn’t get her there and Mum still wasn’t home so in the end I knocked on Frankie’s door and asked his Mum what to do. I could have spit when I saw Mrs Nosy Parker there.’

‘Mrs Nosy Parker?’ In spite of myself, I wanted to laugh.

‘Oh she ain’t called Mrs
Nosy
Parker, she’s Mrs Parker, but she ain’t half nosy. Mum says if she’d been Pinocchio someone would‘ve taken a circular saw to her long before now.’ It was the kind of thing my mother would have said if there had been circular saws and Mrs Nosy Parkers around in my childhood. I felt a surge of loss for the mother I’d not seen for so long – and whose remembered face was now so shadowy I couldn’t say for certain whether she’d had blue or brown eyes, dark or light hair. Probably she was already dead and I would never be able to answer that question for myself. By comparison, I felt nothing for Margaret other than an unsettled irritation that my pattern of life was so irrevocably changed by her death and I had yet to establish how – or what – the new pattern would be. Anger also, of course – for her interference.

What was wrong with me? I didn’t mourn my wife, yet I felt overwhelming grief for the mother who’d abandoned me nearly forty years ago. Added to that was the inclination to alternately spar with and lust over a black woman almost half my age – whose first name I didn’t even know – so intense that I could barely maintain basic concentration on the case in hand?

I managed a weak ‘Oh,’ and a smile, but it didn’t seem to matter. Danny carried on unbidden whilst I watched the bowed brown head of the siren opposite, half-listening to the story, and the rest of my mind alert to the slightest movement from her that would give me a clue as to how I should respond.

‘Her fingers looked like burnt sausages, all stuck together. Frankie’s mum said we ought to take her to hospital too, and Mrs Nosy said Frankie’s mum should take her and she would sit with us. I didn’t want her in our house but there weren’t much choice. Frankie came in with us so it weren’t so bad. We played with the meccano Dad brought home last time he were away, so we stayed out of Mrs Nosy’s way, but she wanted to know where Mum was. I didn’t tell her. Said she’d gone to the shops, but she looked at me like I were lying and when she called us back downstairs at lunchtime, the pigs were there and so was some snotty man from the social – not her then, though.’ He jerked his thumb at Miss Roumelia. ‘Her name’s Kat.’ She opened her mouth to protest but closed it again without saying anything, like a fish gulping in water. ‘I don’t mind her. She’s OK. If I were you I’d think it were OK that she fancied me.’ He winked at her as her face changed from embarrassment to shock and then back to embarrassment. Suddenly I liked him.

‘I expect if I were me, I would think so too,’ I replied, stealing a glance at Miss Roumelia – Kat – whilst wondering what the hell I was doing. I found myself saying, ‘I thought it would be something more exotic like Jasmine,’ before I could stop the words tumbling out. The boy sniggered and I was tempted to see how it had been received, but I kept my eyes firmly on him and urged the story on. The boy glanced once at her, a twisted smile hovering round one side of his mouth, and then shrugged.

‘The pigs wanted to know where Dad were but I remembered Nobby’s phone call and you don’t cross Nobby so I said he were down the boozer. Mum still weren’t back so it were down to me to be in charge, whatever that nosy cow Mrs Parker said, but the pigs said they couldn’t wait there for ever for Dad or Mum to come home and we would have to go with the snotty man. ‘He called in someone he called a colly-something.’

‘Colleague?’

‘Yeah, that’s it – and he said I had to go somewhere different to the little kids ’cos I said I was fourteen when I was trying to get them to leave us home until Mum or Dad turned up. They said ’cos I was a teenager I couldn’t go to the little kids’ home, I had to go to the big kids’ one. I’d heard of it before ’cos Nobby told Dad he was waiting for his Josh to get out of there at sixteen so he could help him out on the jobs, but until then Dad had to – and he give him that look that them other tallymen do and you know you ain’t going to like it, whatever it is they’re going to do.’

‘So they were all taken into care then?’ I asked Miss Roumelia – Kat. I savoured the name. Yes, it was better than Jasmine – far less stereotypical, but amusingly appropriate. Kit-Kat. I wondered what chocolate she would taste like. She seemed to have recovered her poise during the last section of Danny’s tale. The polite professional was back in place, covering her embarrassment with efficiency and red tape.

‘Temporarily, but Danny’s mum turned up almost immediately afterwards, and the youngest ones were allowed back home then. She said she’d been attacked the evening before and spent the night and part of the next morning in A&E with suspected concussion. She was going to press charges but the attacker counter-accused her of prostitution and all charges were dropped on both sides eventually.’

‘It were him,’ Danny interjected. ‘Mean bastard!’

‘Who?’

‘The other tallyman – he beat her up, I bet. ’Cos she didn’t have the money for him. It’s all his fault, this.’

‘Well, Danny, he may have been part of the reason you ended up in care, whoever this tallyman is, but he wasn’t the cause of you beating up an old lady, was he?’

‘No, he weren’t the cause, but ...’ the pause was intentionally dramatic, and Kat and I both registered it – the implied revelation hanging tantalisingly from the silent gap between the words.

‘But?’ I asked for both of us.

‘But,’ he hesitated, picking at a scabby finger, and watching the blood start to well up alarmingly from the tiny scratch. Miss Roumelia – Kat – gave him a paper hanky and they wrapped it tightly round his finger. It blossomed red through the folds and she gave him another. The second tissue seemed to stem the flow.

‘But?’ I prompted again.

He reverted to his song-sing defence. ‘I weren’t there and it weren’t me.’

‘Danny...’ Kat started on the persuasion routine, but I shook my head at her. This wasn’t the time. We’d done some scene-setting and perhaps more, even though we hadn’t yet tackled the main event, but Danny had also unintentionally gone too far towards telling all the story before back-tracking to his safe place. Kat thought he was acting as scapegoat for the boys in the gang, or a little more. I wondered now if he was scapegoat for something
far more
sophisticated than young delinquents. I leafed through the papers until I found the page I wanted.

‘This tallyman – how much do you know about him?’

‘Which one? They’re mainly bastards – take your TV and stuff if you don’t pay up – or rough your place up a bit until you do.’

‘I gathered that, but do they use violence on people to get money out of them?’

‘I dunno.’ I sensed him tensing up.

‘Mrs Harris – did you know her beforehand?’

‘Why?’ he hedged.

‘You did know her then?’

‘Why do you think I did?’

‘Mrs Harris – the old lady who was beaten up.’

‘One old lady looks like any other, don’t they?’

‘Why did you choose her?’

‘I didn’t.’ The inflection was wrong. Heavy on the ‘I’ and not on the ‘didn’t’.

‘Who did then?’

‘I dunno.’

‘
Someone
chose her and told you what to do?’

‘I ain’t saying no more.’

‘What do we know about her?’ I asked Kat.

She looked blank. ‘Just that she was the victim of the attack.’

‘What has happened to her estate? Her home, possessions and so on?’

‘I don’t know. I think it’s being wound up and there are some creditors.’

‘Who?’

‘I don’t know. I could find out, if it’s important.’

‘Is it?’ I looked across at Danny. ‘Might it be important for us to know who her creditors are?’ He looked blank. ‘Who she owed money to?’ His mouth went back to the grim line and the mutinous expression returned to his face.

‘What are these tallymen’s names?’ Danny didn’t answer. ‘We can find out quite easily, Danny – and if you want me to help you, remember you need to help me, otherwise I might decide not to bother if you waste my time.’

‘Mr Juste has an awful lot of other things to see to at the moment, Danny – his wife died a couple of weeks ago ...’ her voice tailed off as she realised the inappropriateness of the comment. She cast an apologetic look at me. I swallowed my irritation with her inept attempt at helping, but it was Danny who really deflected my annoyance.

‘Yeah I know. Sorry about your missus. She were nice ...’ Then almost as an after-thought as I reeled, ‘Win.’ It was so unexpected I had to hide my shock by clearing my throat.

‘Win?’ The beast in my gut rumbled uneasily. ‘Win what?’ He looked at me thoughtfully, obviously weighing up whether to wind me up or let me down gently. He suddenly laughed explosively.

‘Dunno. Just Win – big fat bloke with a funny scar under his ear – like a vee.’ I didn’t hear the words in the order he said them. The beast took over. Kat looked at me timidly. My face must have been the same as the beast’s.

‘Do you know him?’ she asked.

I remembered the day my Win had got his scar – missing his footing when he’d been scrambling up a tree after a spat with Jonno, and crashing down onto the sharp pointed bean cane abandoned by the roots – probably one of our earlier abortive attempts at making bows and arrows. The amount of blood that had gushed out and covered us had been inordinate compared to the size of the wound, but a sliver of the frayed end of the cane had been forced sideways, almost slicing through his jugular. The scar it left had been his claim to fame from that point onwards – an inverted V – just under his ear. V for victory he’d said – just like his namesake had managed.

Could it be the same Win? How many Wins were there around with a scar like a ‘V’ under their ear? I didn’t remember him as a thug or a bully then, but he’d been my big brother. Maybe the boys from Jonno’s gang that he’d beaten up would have said differently. Later on I would have debated how to assess him, but still stopped short of thug or bully. Maybe the way life had moved on for him after the children’s home and my betrayal had finally soured him to one. Maybe the teenage and adult worlds I’d not known him in had forged him differently from the last time I’d seen him? Maybe many things, not least of which was the question of how he would react if we were to meet again, and what it would mean to my career and my life. I didn’t answer, but I knew it was one question I couldn’t now avoid if I carried on with the case.

I
’d thought of myself as alone before, but never as alone as I was with Win gone and Georgie lost in his own world. At least school was one place I could escape. I always had a quick brain and a thirst for knowledge and I filled evey gap and crevice with information in the hope that one day, I would have a plan for what to do with it. I anticipated school for me would probably end at sixteen, when I would be jettisoned from the slipstream of the children’s home into the flotsam of society to find my way, family-less and homeless and rudderless. Tony with the knife in his guts, the entrapment of Win, and Georgie with his lost soul convinced me that I had to do more than let the system discard me. Ironically, Jaggers found me my plan, even though he didn’t know it at the time.

When they took Win away, I worried how Jaggers would treat me afterwards. I’d hoped to be of no further use to him. I was wrong about that. The way he’d initially persuaded me to co-operate was apparently more than a method of coercion, it was a fully-fledged business. Borstal had educated him well in the finer points of pimping as well as priming. As I suspected, he wasn’t gay – far from it if the stories of his antics with some of the local girls were to be believed. He looked much older than fourteen and he had a cocky self-assurance that seemed to open doors even despite his circumstances. However, there again I was wrong. I’d assumed he was an orphan or a lost boy like Win, Georgie and myself. No: Jaggers background was as far from lost as you could imagine. It was, in fact, immensely privileged, but since his mother’s death when he was five, his father had completely lost interest in him – rejected him in other words. An extreme form of grief, in my view – turning your back on the living simply because of the dead – but Jaggers suffered from its effects as much as his father.

His response was to turn juvenile delinquent and by seven had already been caught shoplifting, smoking and drinking underage. At eight he took his father’s car joyriding and wrote it off, at nine he was up on a charge that would have been GBH, apart from his age, and by ten it was said he’d killed a man. I doubted the last claim. I was sure the children’s home wouldn’t be welcoming a murderer with open arms, no matter how generous the financial patronage his father offered as a sweetener, but certainly he was out of control. His father always bailed him out, paying for the most expensive lawyers when necessary, or simply paying off witnesses if not. His way out of trouble always seemed to be charmed, even if his childhood wasn’t. The only requirement of Jaggers was that he stayed away from home and all the while he did, his father was benefactor and patron of the port currently harbouring him.

I found it all out piecemeal until I had a picture of the threat that was considering me for further use; bribing a confidence here and overhearing a useful snippet here. I was smart. I could do the dumb ones’ homework. I was strong, even if I looked puny. I could do the weak or lazy ones’ chores. I was fearless. I would even take on the frightened ones’ initiations for a good enough reward, but not in the cellar. The only other thing that fazed me was finding myself alone in the dorm at lights out and fearing who would come through the door to join me. My reward was information. Whilst I gathered it Jaggers and I circled each other like a pair of pugilists – he testing and considering, me probing and wondering. He had eighteen more months at the home when he finally made his move, but I was ready. I had successfully taken the eleven plus and was in my penultimate year at the local grammar school. For the time being it had earned me yellow dots on the chart and I was basking in the sun, but it had to fade soon as the seasons changed. Winter arrived with Jaggers’ next approach – much like the first had been – but this time I saw the chance of spring beyond it because information and knowledge give you power.