The Street (22 page)

‘No!
You
tell
me
what yer done.’ He viciously mimicked her whining accent. ‘I’d like to know where my Dresden pieces are, Connie.’

‘Eh?’ Connie frowned and raked her fingers against her forehead as though it might help unscramble her befuddled thoughts. ‘What you on about?’

‘I’m on about my figurines, my dear.’

Realisation dawned on Connie, making her jaw unattractively slacken as she ferreted for some excuse. ‘Got broke . . . they got broke,’ she spluttered. ‘I know what you mean now. The little shepherds . . . they got broke. Sorry.’

‘Got broke, did they?’ he parodied. ‘So why are they listed as entries in an auction catalogue?’ Gilbert didn’t know that for sure but he guessed that was where they would end up. Any pawnbroker or dealer worth his salt would know to put them up for the highest bidder. The idea of buying back his own property infuriated him. ‘You’ve sold my Dresden, haven’t you?’ he hissed through his teeth. ‘One thing I won’t tolerate is a thieving whore.’

‘I ain’t lied or fieved!’ Connie lied, her cheeks reddening and her bottom lip trembling. She struggled to sit up straight and concentrate.

‘You can tell the police that.’

‘No!’ Connie screamed and shot to her feet. ‘Alright . . . I gave them to me sister to pawn,’ she rattled off. ‘She wanted money for me mum ’cos she’s poorly, ‘n’ as you never let me have none,’ she slung at him a blaming look before continuing, ‘I give her them ornaments.’ She hung her head. ‘I didn’t know you was so attached to them.’ Her lids fluttered up and she peeped at him appealingly. ‘I’ll make it up to you . . .’

Gilbert barked a laugh. ‘If you understood their value, my dear, you’d know just how stupid you sound.’

‘I’ll get her to bring ’em back.’ Connie nervously twisted together her fingers. ‘I’ll go and see her and fetch ’em back for you.’

‘That’s my good girl.’ Gilbert smiled and approached her. He patted his thin fingers on her cheek and momentarily allowed Connie to playfully catch one between her lips. A moment later five fingers had pinched on her chin and jerked it up. ‘Get dressed and go and tell her now,’ he ordered silkily.

‘Can’t I go tomorrow?’ Desperately Connie slid a hand to the puny bump between his legs. She sensed that, whether she got the china back or not, unless she was very careful her good times might be over. She sagged to her knees and unbuttoned his fly.

As her head bounced and bobbed and her teeth and tongue worked determinedly a ferocious hatred for her sister Sarah welled in her mind. It would be Sarah’s fault if she lost all she’d gained. If she hadn’t come here whining for cash the blasted figures would still be on the mantelpiece. It would never have occurred to Connie to risk all she had by stealing from Mr Lucas. Her rising anger made her unusually energetic and the hot spurt hit the back of her throat early, making her gag. Quickly she swallowed, choked and swallowed again, her face lowered and screwed up against the sour muck in her mouth. As she retched he strolled off, buttoning himself up.

‘Fetch them back, Connie, or I’ll fetch the police.’ He was already in the hallway when he called out to her, ‘Go and get them now, my dear. I’ll be back for them tomorrow. Oh . . . and if you fail, make sure you’re packed and ready to leave. I’ll have Jenkins downstairs assist you, if necessary.’

‘Is Saul Bateman here?’

‘No, he ain’t; what d’you want?’ Nellie balefully eyed the copper. He was out of uniform but she recognised him from walking the beat in Campbell Road. She’d never seen him nosing around here before. Certainly Saul hadn’t mentioned him. ‘What are you after him for?’ she repeated, trying to close the door to her flat and keep him out.

Ralph Franks wedged his large leather boot on the threshold. ‘It’s urgent business, so if he’s in there you’d best fetch him.’

‘He’s not here, I tell you,’ Nellie protested, banging the bottom of the door against his foot.

‘When you see him tell him Franks needs to speak to him.’ Ralph removed his boot, allowing Nellie to slam the door in his face. He stomped back down the flight of stairs and into the dusk. His heart was hammering with anxiety and frustration. He’d taken a chance coming here and it looked to have been in vain.

It was damnable bad luck that the fellow reported to have been involved in a fight with Jimmy Wild just before he went missing was the petty villain who’d given him backhanders. In the past Ralph had tipped Bateman off if the police were starting to show too much interest in his activities. He’d got twenty pounds per nod. But Ralph hadn’t known about Bateman’s association with Nellie or a prostitution ring. It had been suspected down at the station for some time that Bateman was fencing stolen goods and running a small-time drinking and gambling club. No firm proof had turned up. The war had depleted personnel and there were no resources to pursue petty criminals. But a murder investigation was a different kettle of fish.

Ralph knew that if Saul were arrested, possibly charged with Jimmy Wild’s murder, the weasel would have no hesitation in dropping him in it if he thought it might help his cause. He could lose his career and get a prison sentence. The thought of spending time behind bars with some of the vicious scum he’d helped to convict made his mouth dry and his temples throb. He ground his teeth in rage. He’d landed himself in a minefield for a poxy hundred quid. And practically all of it had been squandered on Connie.

He turned the corner and spied just the man he wanted to see, jauntily bowling along in the direction of Nellie’s flat. Saul might be a second-rate rogue but he was a first-rate swank. He was tall, flashily dressed in an expensive overcoat, his blonde hair sleeked down under a natty hat. Ralph relished knowing he was about to deflate the jumped-up prick.

As soon as Saul saw Ralph cross the road and deliberately disappear up an alley between two shops he knew the copper had something to say to him. He wasn’t happy to be waylaid out in the open. Even out of uniform it was obvious Franks was a flatfoot. Saul believed himself to have a fearsome reputation and he didn’t want it ruined by being spotted hobnobbing with the likes of Constable Franks.

‘What are you doing round here? What’s up?’ Saul snarled before he’d properly caught Ralph up.

‘Big trouble,’ Ralph bit out on swinging around. ‘That’s what’s up. And it’s coming your way.’ Ralph glanced right and left but nobody seemed to be about. ‘Jimmy Wild’s gone missing. A body believed to be his has been recovered from the river.’

A sly, closed expression began tautening Saul’s features and Ralph knew that Bickerstaff had done his homework. The two men had had a violent run-in over Nellie’s earnings. Possibly he was talking to Jimmy’s murderer. He felt his insides turning stone cold.
If you lie down with dogs
. . . ran through his mind. It was a favourite expression of his mother’s. The last time she’d spouted that at him had been when they’d found out he’d got engaged to a common scrubber.

‘Nothing to do with me. I’ve not seen Jimmy Wild in a while.’

‘Nobody’s seen him in a while . . . probably because he’s been floating down the Thames minus his head,’ Ralph drawled sarcastically.

Saul nervously licked his lips and thrust his hands deep into his overcoat pockets. ‘Now look . . . I’m telling you . . .’

‘No, you look, and let me tell you. You’re in the shit. Wild separated from his wife ages ago to move in with Nellie Tucker. It’s also on record that you and him had a fight and you were overheard threatening to kill him next time you saw him. He was seen running out of Nellie’s place covered in blood. You were seen coming out of there a short time later. Don’t need to be a genius to put two and two together and come up with a prime suspect for this case.’

Saul Bateman’s lips disappeared into a thin white line as the significance of what Franks had said penetrated his mind.

‘I just thought you might appreciate knowing that you and Nellie are about to get a visit. You would have got a knock on the door sooner but the body’s not yet formally identified.’ Ralph felt more at ease now Bateman was chalk-faced and visibly agitated. ‘Whatever Nellie says in your defence won’t count for much. You’ve been on borrowed time for a while. There are people who’ll gladly pin this on you and see you swing.’ Franks could tell he had him on the run now. ‘If I were you I’d disappear where I won’t get followed. I hear France is the place to be.’

Saul drove a hand into a pocket and brought out some bank notes. He thrust them at Franks in quivering fingers.

‘As it’s serious, have this one on me,’ Ralph said and brushed past him feeling quite perky. He casually emerged from the alley and started off at a brisk pace along the road.

When he got older, wiser, he’d notice those subtle clues that needed looking into. As it was he’d missed them and Twitch was glad Franks was still an inexperienced tosspot with his brains lodged in his trousers.

The nervous, speaking look that had passed between Jimmy’s wife and her sister; the scrubbed spot on otherwise filthy floorboards . . . Bickerstaff had noticed them, but not so obviously that his colleague might too.

He watched Ralph stride away into the distance and glanced at Saul Bateman as he hurried off, puffing on a cigarette, in the opposite direction. Bickerstaff could have shopped Franks to their superiors a while ago, for he’d been stupidly lax. If you were going to be a bent copper you should at least do it with a semblance of style, so he thought. But Bickerstaff felt a bit sorry for Ralph. He knew he wasn’t inherently rotten. He’d glimpsed the misery that haunted the back of the boy’s eyes. It was just that the poor sap couldn’t think straight, he was so eaten up with bitterness over Connie.

A few years back Sidney Bickerstaff wouldn’t have hesitated in blowing the whistle. But he’d mellowed recently. Another fifteen months and he was for the pipe and slippers. So he’d decided he didn’t want to see Ralph get into deep shit because he’d fallen for a girl who’d grown up hungry for the good things in life. Connie Whitton had seen a way to improve her lot and Sidney didn’t blame her for grabbing as much as she could while she could. He’d watched all those Bunk kids growing up in squalor and deprivation. He’d seen some of them barefoot and begging for farthings for the shop when their parents were too pissed to stay on their feet, let alone put a meal on the table. Connie might be riding high at the moment but he knew it wouldn’t last. At some time she’d be joining the likes of Nellie Tucker, open to all comers and plying her trade from a tatty room with a pimp on her back.

All in all Sidney was content, untroubled by conscience at having wound Ralph up and pointed him in the right direction. Jimmy had been a sadistic brute and if he was dead . . . good riddance. Mrs Wild and Mrs Keiver would be left in peace to battle on with life in The Bunk. Bateman would remove himself from the manor. In that respect he’d done them all a favour back at the station. Nellie would be questioned. Once she knew there were witnesses who’d seen Jimmy scarper with blood on his face she’d lose her nerve to deny the fight had taken place, or that Bateman had threatened to kill Wild next time he saw him. So . . . he’d tidy the loose ends and put in his report that, if the body was ever identified as that of Jimmy Wild, he’d reason to suspect Saul Bateman guilty of killing him.

Sidney ground out his half-finished cigarette beneath the tip of a shoe while his ear swept his shoulder. He started to stroll, smiling at twilight. They’d get him a mantel clock when he went. Everyone got a bloody mantel clock. After thirty-three years in the force he reckoned he’d rather bow out smug in the knowledge he had a sweet reminiscence to while away the time.

‘That’s us.’

Geoff looked up. He strained to catch what one of his comrades, closer to the exit, had heard. A faint rumble of sound separated into two words. ‘Stretcher-bearers!’ The call had been passed along the trench from tommy to tommy until the urgent message finally reached the post where the stretcher-bearers waited for just such a summons.

The two men opposite who had been playing an idle game of rummy threw in their cards and scrambled upright. Geoff and his pal, Vinnie Cartwright, had been sharing a smoke, now they too shot to their feet and darted for the exit. Outside their post rested the stretchers: lengths of canvas slung between two poles. Having grabbed an end each of one of these they started to splash along the trench in the direction indicated by pointing fingers, jerking thumbs, nodding tin helmets. All soldiers were keen to help in getting aid to the casualty. Every man knew there but for the grace of God . . .

The stretcher-bearers’ stampede along the trench was hampered as the rough duckboard underfoot petered out into sucking sludge. Geoff, in common with every fellow around him, had at some time lost his boots to the greedy grip of the yellow mud. He’d seen men struggling to recover stockings and puttees too from the bog that had become a detested dwelling place.

During the slither and splosh onwards over clay hummocks and through fetid water, a foot deep in places, Geoff’s thoughts turned to home. An acute longing always swamped him whenever he was on the way to help a wounded comrade. Was the fellow’s injury severe enough to get him his ticket home? Would he be a lucky bastard?

As the infernal fighting continued, and bodies stiffened and stank on miles of no-man’s land, the same thought cluttered so many minds. Which of them would return to see their families? Few begrudged those that did escape. It gave hope and encouragement to those who remained that soon it might be their turn.

It certainly gnawed ceaselessly at Geoff.

He’d thought Campbell Road was hell. Now he knew what hell was he’d call The Bunk heaven.

‘To the right.’

The bellowed instruction came from a corporal in the Royal Army Medical Corps who’d been waiting for them. He started to jog alongside them. They changed direction and hurtled on over some welcome even ground before abruptly again plunging onto perilously slippery clay that forced them to a stumbling walk. Abruptly they came upon the invalid.

Geoff had undergone some training when he was plucked from the rank and file of his regiment to become a stretcher-bearer. He’d been in France now for several months. He was the youngest and the least experienced of the group of men whose duty it was to get the wounded to the regimental aid post, with as much care as was humanly possible given the environment. On learning he’d been selected for the duty by his sergeant he’d tried to refuse the position. He’d sooner stay on the front line and fight with his comrades, he’d nobly said. That patriotic stance got short shrift from Sergeant Jones who’d swiftly disabused him of the notion that an easy ride was in the offing. Strong, courageous young fellows were needed to get fallen men to aid posts, sometimes under the very noses of the enemy, he’d been told.

Geoff had learned very quickly that what the sergeant had said was only mildly true. Attempting to negotiate quaggy, uneven terrain while carrying a thirteen-stone groaning man – sometimes on your back if it was the only way to negotiate the ground – was harrowing and exhausting beyond belief. At such times all a stretcher-bearer might pray for was dusk and luck to be with him.

Sinking to his haunches Geoff lit a smoke while the corporal from the RAMC took a look at Private Matthew Ratcliffe. He’d taken a sniper’s bullet in his calf and blood had oozed from the wound to turn his filthy puttees into a crusty bandage.

‘Saw ’im just as ’e clocked me,’ he earnestly explained to them. ‘Bugger were on ’is belly ready whereas I ’adn’t got properly into position. I come down headfirst, bleedin’ sharpish, I can tell yers. Still copped one in the leg. Saved me bonce though.’ He grimaced and fell silent, closing his eyes against a wave of pain.

Geoff removed his cigarette from his lips and gave it to the injured man. Private Ratcliffe sucked on it energetically, spluttering, ‘Ta, mate,’ in between drags.

The corporal was searching in the rifleman’s tunic for his field dressing. He found it in the wrong pocket and shaking his head, in mock exasperation, whipped it out. ‘Just hold still and we’ll have you quickly out of it,’ he soothed in his calm, paternal tone while running his hands over the injured lad for any other damage he might have sustained while diving down the trench to escape a bullet in the brain.

Matthew Ratcliffe looked to have passed out so the corporal set to speedily patching him up and Geoff regained the cigarette that now hung limply between Ratcliffe’s slack lips.

‘Right. Let’s get him lifted and get going, before he comes to,’ the corporal instructed the stretcher-bearers after a few minutes of deft handiwork. If they could get the worst of the journey behind them before the patient regained consciousness it was best for everyone. Nobody – not stretcher-bearer, not tommy in the trench – relished hearing a wounded man’s anguish. Certainly the poor fellow himself should be spared the ordeal of knowing about his bone-shaking ride if at all possible.

They reached the aid post in good time even though at one point they’d had to leave the trench because the mud-holes were unpassable. Two by two they had scrambled to the ridge. They’d tried to protect Private Ratcliffe from as much bumping and jerking as possible despite at times he seemed to have been perpendicular, held against the stretcher by able, grimy hands. Thankfully he just mumbled in delirium and for the most part slumbered blissfully on.