Jack by the Hedge (Jack of All Trades Book 4)

JACK BY THE HEDGE

A Jack of All Trades novel

DH Smith

Earlham Books

Contents

Part One: The Cast & Setting

Part Two: The Murder

Part Three: The Investigation

Part Four: The Big Day

Published 2016 by Earlham Books

Book design & cover art by Lia at
Free Your Words

Text copyright © 2016 DH Smith

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

All Rights Reserved

ISBN:
978-1-909804-18-0

Part One:

The Cast & Setting

Chapter 1

Jack extricated the wheelbarrow from his gear in the back of the van. Into it, he placed his tool box and sledgehammer. He put the long, yellow spirit level aside. Unlikely he’d get around to using that today. But he would need his goggles and hard hat, and he’d take the gloves in case.

Anything else?

It was a chore to keep coming and going, unlocking and locking the van for the odd tool you’d forgotten. He looked over the contents of the wheelbarrow, and could think of nothing else he’d require. Though he knew there’d be something. But not the greatest problem with the van parked near the park gates.

The streetlights suddenly went off. Officially day. In the sky were slow moving white clouds in large patches of blue. To the east, the orange-yellow wash of dawn, a low sun hidden behind the roof tops. There was a slight breeze, not a bad working temperature. With luck, it wouldn’t rain today and he could get well into the job. With all that clear sky, maybe tonight he could get out with his telescope.

Jack looked at his watch. Seven thirty the man had said, and seven thirty it was now. And there he was unlocking the gate from the inside. An early start, and here they both were. Jack lifted the wheelbarrow handles and pushed the barrow the twenty metres to the gate.

The man was swinging back the wide ironwork gate. It was wide enough to take a lorry, with ornate scrolling above the vertical bars, almost gothic in grandeur, as if there were a stately home behind it and not a public park in Plaistow. The man was locking the gate in its open position and, it seemed to Jack, he was deliberately ignoring him, waiting with his wheelbarrow.

Jack knew his sort.

He was sure this was the same person he’d spoken to on the phone on Friday. An officious sod, dressed to kill any doubt, in a brown suit with a matching waistcoat, brown leather shoes, highly polished, and brown hair, too brown. A man with so well-used a face would have grey in his hair. The nose was flattened, as if for the first few years someone had sat on it.

He was making a meal of keeping the gate open, and muttered something under his breath, perhaps irritated that Jack was there watching him. Jack knew better than to be helpful, though he could see the chain was twisted. And then the man had succeeded. Jack stepped away from his wheelbarrow and held out his hand.

‘I’m Jack Bell, the builder.’

The man barely glanced at him and took his hand in a cursory shake. ‘Swift, park manager. Come this way.’

Jack took up his wheelbarrow and followed the manager who walked several paces ahead. The man wasn’t going to chat with him. One of those. A foreman really, who called himself a manager. The suit, a Berlin Wall between him and the workers under him; a curious phenomenon, as if overalls were verminous now that he’d reached the first rank of entitlement. Some foremen he’d come across were matey, but others, offered the merest whiff of the ticket to white collardom, lorded it to the hilt.

A friend of his had gone that way. Still lived in East Ham, or had last time Jack had seen him a couple of years back. One day joshing with Jack on the job, the next with the suit and tie, friendship in the bin like a banana skin. Much as he’d hated it, Jack understood why. It was a long time coming, the foreman’s job, you’d been bossed about by too many jumped up jackasses in your time, so, when it was your turn, you gloried in the uniform, and did as you were done by. Doing what you’d seen, treading on your mates, to make up for past resentments.

Jack was glad to be self employed. No gaffer to boss him about, no underlings to strut before. The disadvantage was insecurity and making sure he got paid. Though he’d get the money for this job; local councils always paid up in the end, but you never quite knew when. They didn’t care you were hard up; their timetable couldn’t be shifted.

Jack stopped at the collapsed wall. He’d seen it on Friday morning when he’d come in to size up the job, and, following that, had dropped in his estimate at the council office on the Barking Road. A few hours later he’d been phoned by this man, Swift. He wanted Jack in for an early start Monday.

So far so good. Jack was early.

‘What hit that?’ he said, indicating the wall. There’d been no one to question on Friday.

‘A tractor,’ said Swift sucking in his cheeks. ‘The driver was out boozing at lunchtime, came back, pissed as a fart, and smashed into the wall.’ He smacked his hands dismissively. ‘I sacked him on the spot.’

Jack, seeing the wall, couldn’t argue with that. Stupid bugger, lost his job and who knows what else? Though it could have been him. His own drinking days, his own smash ups. Job, friends, marriage, car. But not a drop had passed his lips in two years. And it had better stay that way.

The manager was staring at him, awaiting some response; Jack wasn’t sure to what, as he hadn’t been listening. A question, was it? So he nodded thoughtfully, bent down to run his hand along the portion of badly bowed wall, the top bricks fallen behind.

‘The tractor must have been damaged too,’ he said.

‘A written-off radiator, bumper and mudguard. Just a year old it was. A pleasure to get rid of the bastard. Lunchtime drinking. A driver!’ He waved a hand and blew dismissively. ‘But no time to chitchat. Too much on.’ He looked Jack in the eye. ‘Can you finish the work in two days?’

‘Probably.’

‘What do you mean, probably?’ he bellowed, arms waving as if Jack had insulted his mother. ‘We insisted on two days.’

‘Suppose it rains all day tomorrow?’

‘Two days,’ said the manager, indicating the gate, ‘or piss off.’

That was telling him with no lack of clarity. He swallowed his doubts. ‘Two days it’ll be,’ he said, hoping he could deliver.

He hadn’t done bricklaying for a while. Windows, laying paths, fitting kitchens, decorating, but his last bricklaying was a chimney breast over a year ago. Still, this was a small job, nothing complicated. He should be up to it. It was more public than he’d have liked on this thoroughfare through the park, but beggars can’t be choosers. Self employment had its penalties.

‘Materials supplied?’ he asked, making sure.

The manager pointed out the yard. ‘All there. I’ll show you what and where. Bricks, sand and cement.’

‘Where do I leave the debris?’

‘In the yard, by the dump. We’ll take it away. Don’t you bother about that. Your job is to make the wall good. And nothing else.’

‘Fair enough,’ he said, though he was within a sliver of snapping back. What was with the man? Had his old woman run off with the milkman? Jack squeezed his nails into his palms. No fights. Sort out the job and get the man off his back.

He hated starts like this. Like some sort of serf, head bowed, holding his cap. Work, the job, concentrate. Swift would be gone soon. He turned to the wall.

‘This collapsed section has to be taken out. Right?’ he queried. And took a piece of chalk from his pocket and marked a line. ‘To here?’

‘Let me have it,’ the manager barked, taking the chalk. ‘From here.’ He marked his own line across the top of the wall, and down to the ground. And walked to the other end where damage ceased. ‘To here.’ He drew another line. ‘Remove all that. Got it?’

‘Clear enough.’

‘When that’s all gone, replace it. Got it?’

‘Yep.’

‘Now I’ll show you where the materials are, and you can do what we’re paying you for. Two days.’

‘Two days.’

The manager led Jack into the yard.

Chapter 2

In 2 Balaam Cottages, one of the two park houses, Liz was at the table in the kitchen spooning muesli and banana. The weekend had been a good one. She’d seen her parents on Saturday, then yesterday been out with her painting group over Hampstead Heath. She’d had a number of goes at capturing leaves floating on a pond in watercolours, and one had worked well, caught the bronze and yellows, the reflections of cloud and trees and the tinges of death. The others she’d torn up.

She gazed out of the window, at the sky and trees. There was still an orange edge to the day. Difficult to catch in paint, the sun up and unsure, shadows longish, dawn oozing away through the half bare, autumn trees.

Or should she photograph it and work from that? But that always felt a cheat, second hand. If you are going to photograph then photograph – and leave it there. Paint from the original. She could surprise herself in her puritanism.

Friday, she’d found some death stalk mushrooms in the shrubbery. She’d like to paint them growing out of the leaf mould. So ordinary looking, the white stalk, the umbrella top with a touch of yellow-green. So delicate, so deadly, surrounded by the empty husks of beech nuts. She’d picked a couple and had them in a display on her sideboard on a sheet of pale yellow card amid leaves of red, yellow and crinkled brown, with purple sloes, chestnuts, ash twigs with their black, match-head buds.

Liz wasn’t sentimental about nature. Everything died in the end. That didn’t kill the beauty of the season. Maybe added to it, the temporariness of things. Everything has its day. She couldn’t but glance in the mirror. No grey hairs yet in her red hair, her freckles were fading again. She looked her years, mid 30s. Her sister though looked maybe five years younger than her actual age.

And so what?

Except she didn’t believe the so what. Looks mattered. It’s the way we are. We look, we size up, make snap judgements. Petty it may be, but we don’t live long and maybe don’t learn much.

She shook her head, all these thoughts of ageing. Autumn always did this, the falling leaves, the shrivelling plants, the desperate squirrels gathering before the hard frosts. Though she loved the season. A good one to go out and paint, if it didn’t get too chilly.

There were three of Liz’s pictures in the room, framed landscapes, one of the park at the height of summer, a seascape, and a woodland with bluebells. They’d been up too long; change and change about. The Hampstead pond could go up. And maybe a couple more autumn ones. A park project she could do, perhaps, the four seasons. Display them outside when she’d done them. Go over Ian’s head, he’d simply say no art, and speak to the Parks’ Superintendent.

Annoying Ian was a game of hers. He’d snap at her, she at him. Childish really. But she couldn’t let him win all the time. A pity to have him, the park’s manager, living next door. It lessened the perfection of this place.

But at least Rose was gone. Two days now.

Her sister had left most of her stuff here, having gone on Saturday when Liz had been at their parents’. To return to a note. And to her own space again. Rose had been an invasion. She had completely taken over the bathroom with her clubbing gels and face paints, the stink of them; Liz was still cleaning them away. Rose would come in at god knows what hour in the morning with another stranger and leave the kitchen a mess for Liz to find in the morning, after she’d done the battle of the bathroom. Friday was the last straw. Four in the morning, she’d had to yell at Rose and her spaced-out lover to tone down their love making. What on earth were they doing to each other?

Liz, herself, had been a year at art school – and had her share of substances and lovers, but fifteen years on she could not live with Rose’s wildness. She’d hoped she could calm Rose down. And thought maybe the company would be good for herself. Their mother had asked her to help Rose six months ago, to give her some stability as plainly their parents couldn’t. Her depression, her strange choice of company. So Liz had leaned on Ian to give her sister a job, when he and she were still an item. And then, when her sister had lost her flat, she’d offered her a room.

It’d been heartless to turf her out. But she had to, for sanity’s sake. She never knew what she was coming home to. Who was there, doing what to whom. This was Liz’s haven. She needed her quiet space. Fine, keep an eye on Rose, lend her money, help her stay in the job – but she could not live with her.

That had to be her boundary.

Rose would plead to come back; she knew that. Would promise anything in terms of behaviour. But Rose was Rose. Scatty, dragging the detritus of the club scene behind like Marley’s cashboxes. No. Liz must paint the word on her forehead, on the front door. It had been hell getting her out. She was not letting her back in again.