Running Scared Page 3

  ‘It was a good place!’ I said crossly.

  ‘Look,’ Tig said, ‘you’re really in my way here, you know? How’m I supposed to ask people for bloody change with you standing there nattering about sod all?’ Her voice was aggressive but her eyes were flickering nervously past me again. She hissed, ‘For Chrissake, get lost, Fran!’

  I got the message. ‘Here,’ I said, and handed her my Mars bar. She needed it more than me.

  She snatched it away and I walked on without looking back. I was too busy looking elsewhere and sure enough, I spotted him almost at once. He was a big bearded bloke, in his twenties, wearing a plaid wool jacket, jeans and a woolly hat. He was loafing in the angle formed by a building which jutted out on to the pavement and under the shelter of an overhanging first-floor balcony. It kept him nice and dry and out of the draught. That dark little comer would be a mugger’s haven in the evening and I wouldn’t have seen him if I hadn’t been looking for him. He wasn’t a mugger, of course. He was Tig’s protection, amongst other things.

  I’d come across these street partnerships before and as far as I was concerned, the woman was scarcely better off in them than out of them. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve known some really good partnerships which have started out there on the street, but it’s rare for them to last, even the good ones. The fact is, you can’t let yourself become dependent on anyone out there. You’ve got to stand alone, be able to take care of yourself, sort out your own problems. The street’s a family of sorts, but it’s a family of loners. Once you can’t hack it any more on your own, you’re lost.

  Still, couples form, split, make new partners, just as they do in the world of the nine-to-fivers. There’s the old man/woman thing, of course. But there’s also a practical side to it. Tig’s man might be an idle lout who hung around in warm corners while she stood out in the cold wind. But he was on hand if things got rough, either while she was begging, or at any other time. Mind you, he probably also took most of the money, if not all. He’d see she had enough to keep the drug habit going because as long as she was on that, she’d have to beg, steal, sell her body, do whatever was necessary to get the money to feed it. He might even have got her on to it in the first place. He’d look on it as a business investment. People were far less likely to give him money had he been standing in that doorway with his hand out. From the brief glimpse I’d had of him, he didn’t look as if he’d been going hungry lately. Unlike Tig, who looked as if she hadn’t had a square meal in days. But the worse she looked, the more she earned. He couldn’t lose, really.

  I felt a spurt of hatred for him, whoever he was. I’d never let myself be used like that, but then perhaps Tig’s situation had got so bad that whoever he was he’d seemed like a good idea at the time.

  I was feeling pretty angry by now. One morning can only hold so much hassle. I stomped on homewards, ready to take on the next person to cross my path. Fortunately, no one did, at least not until I got there and then the encounter made me more inclined to laugh than spit fire.

  At that time I was living in a basement flat in a house owned by a retired lady librarian called Daphne Knowles. I’d come by the flat through the intervention of an old gent called Alastair Monkton, whom I’d helped once. The flat had given me more security than I’d had in years. I’ve been on my own since I was sixteen and I’m twenty-one now. The trouble with security, when you’re not used to having it, is that you don’t really believe in it. I somehow knew that flat wasn’t going to be permanent, but I meant to make it last as long as possible. I was never going to get so lucky again, that was for sure.

  It had stopped drizzling by the time I got to the street where I lived, and a feeble sun had crept out. The pavements looked clean and washed. As I passed the basement railings of the house next door, I saw coming towards me a sight which made me grin.

  There were two of them, alike as peas in a pod, walking side by side, in step. Both were short, tubby, middle-aged and smug-looking. The one on the left wore a green tweed jacket and the one on the right a brown tweed jacket. Both had pale fawn trousers and polished brogue shoes. The green jacket carried a bunch of flowers and the brown jacket a bottle wrapped in paper. Tweedledee and Tweedledum, I thought, and wondered who they were, where they were going and what on earth they were going to do when they got there. They looked, with their gifts, as if they were going courting according to some out-dated ritual. I hadn’t seen them around before.

  Perhaps they were wondering the same thing about me, because they inclined their heads together, keeping their eyes on me, and whispered. We reached the steps to Daphne’s front door at the same time and stopped by mutual consent.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Green Jacket. ‘What have we here, eh?’ He gave me a jovial smile which was so fake I could have ripped it off his face like a piece of Elastoplast.

  I could have made a number of pithy replies but instinct told me to avoid this encounter.

  ‘Excuse me!’ I said, and made to pass them and run down the steps to my basement door.

  I wasn’t to get away so easily. Brown Jacket chimed in with his pennyworth. ‘Now, let’s see, eh? I believe you must be the young woman who lives in Aunt Daphne’s basement flat.’ He shook a podgy forefinger at me and looked pleased with himself.

  Aunt Daphne? Were these two fat creeps Daphne’s family? I felt sorry for her and glad, not for the first time, I didn’t have anyone. I suppose my mother might be alive somewhere, probably is, but since she walked out on Dad and me when I was seven, I’d long since cut her out of the picture. I was brought up perfectly well by Dad and my Hungarian Grandma Varady but they’re both dead now. No one could replace them.

  ‘Yes,’ I said bleakly, eyeing the pair. I’d never seen them call on Daphne but that didn’t mean they hadn’t been to the house. The basement flat was totally independent. There was no reason why Daphne should know who visited me, nor I who visited her, unless – as now – we met on the pavement.

  ‘Our young friend is a trifle farouche, Bertie,’ said Brown Jacket. ‘A product of our unsettled society.’

  That was asking for a punch on the nose and he might have got one if there hadn’t been an interruption.

  Daphne must have been watching out for their arrival from a window, because now the front door opened and she stood at the top of the steps, peering down at our small group. She wore, as usual, jogging trousers and hand-knitted Fair Isle socks with leather soles attached. But she sported a new sweater and had been to the hairdresser. Her grey hair was waved and primped, and from beneath two sausage curls over her ears dangled long earrings. Daphne had dressed up.

  My landlady is in her seventies but is twice as alert as many younger people. I’d got to know her quite well and felt rather protective towards her. Not that she normally needed protecting. She could look after herself. But she appeared anything but sure of herself just now, unhappy and perplexed, as if she didn’t know what to do about the situation.

  ‘Oh, Bertie – Charlie . . .’ she said unenthusiastically. ‘How nice. Oh, hullo, Fran dear.’ She brightened when she saw me.

  Bertie and Charlie climbed the steps as if they were joined at the hip, and threw out their free (outer edge) arms in a sort of token joint embrace, Bertie (the green jacket) his left, Charlie his right. At the same time they clasped their gifts to their chests with their other hands. ‘Aunt Daphne!’ they cried. Bertie thrust out his flowers and Charlie, at the exact same moment, his bottle of wine. You’d have thought they’d rehearsed it.

  ‘How kind,’ said Daphne without enthusiasm. ‘Do come in, boys.’

  Boys? But perhaps it wasn’t so unsuitable a term. There was something about them which suggested a bad double case of arrested development. I suppose it’s cute to dress twin babies alike. It’s just about permissible to dress toddlers so. But middle-aged men ought to have outgrown the desire to look exactly like someone else. If you couldn’t help it – i.e. you were identical twins – you could at least develop an individual clothes st
yle. But there’s no accounting for the way people behave. I went downstairs and let myself into the flat.

  I still hadn’t got used to coming home and knowing that this was my place and it was private, I hadn’t to share it with anyone and I hadn’t to defend it against intruders who wanted to take it from me or the council who wanted to throw everyone out. It was early afternoon and I hadn’t had any lunch. I put on a pan of water for the pasta and when it boiled, and before I put the salt in, poured off enough to make coffee.

  I took my coffee into the living area and sat down on my old blue rep sofa. I started thinking again about the man who’d come into the shop. I don’t like puzzles I can’t solve and this time I had a strange feeling we hadn’t seen the last of him. The pasta was ready. I strained it, stirred in the jar of pesto, and sat eating it before my aged, flickering TV set. The ghosted picture, as wasn’t unusual, gave the viewer a sense of double vision and I couldn’t help being reminded of Daphne’s ‘boys’.

  There wasn’t much to watch, no old film this afternoon, always my favourite viewing. I must have dozed off. I was awoken suddenly by the sound of voices and the clatter of feet on the front steps above my head. It was already dark on this wintry evening and the blue light from the screen was the only thing illuminating the room.

  I ran to the window and peered out and upwards. I was just in time. A taxi had parked outside and the footsteps which had awoken me had been those of the driver, running up to the front door. Now he came back and in his wake came two pairs of pale trousers and some very thin female legs beneath a drooping skirt, all lit by the yellow lamplight. I’d never seen Daphne in anything but jogging pants, but obviously, wherever they were going, it was the sort of place you dressed up for. I wished I could have felt pleased for Daphne, having a night out. But I didn’t. Wherever it was to be, I was sure she didn’t want to go – at least not in that company.

  I returned to my sofa and wished I knew where they’d taken her. I recalled the unhappy look on her face as she’d greeted them earlier. It made me feel uneasy and fuelled my misgivings about the tweeded pair. No decent restaurant would admit me nor could I have afforded its prices, but I could’ve lurked outside and kept an eye on things. I looked out of the window and saw that rain pattered down again on the pavement up there. I’d done enough hanging around in bad weather today. Daphne was with her family and if you can’t trust your family . . . Let’s face it, I thought. You can’t. You can’t trust anyone, it’s a fact.

  The taxi came back at about nine thirty. The headlights strafed the front of the house; there was a slam of a car door. I was still watching TV in the dark. It was the film version of Death on the Nile with Peter Ustinov. I liked the scenes of hot sands and sun-baked temples, a contrast to the cold dank outdoors. I hoped Daphne had taken her coat. Voices called out ‘Good night!’ One set of lightweight footsteps began to climb the front steps, hesitated, turned and came back down again. They began to make a tentative descent of my basement steps. I hurried to switch on the light and open my door, letting the glow flood out into the basement well. I didn’t want Daphne crashing head first down the rain-wet steps.

  But she’d already negotiated her way safely to the bottom and was standing outside, clutching her coat lapels together against the chill air and peering at me.

  ‘Oh, Fran,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry to bother you, but I thought there was a chance you might be in. I thought I could see the TV screen flickering. I wondered, if you’re not doing anything, whether you’d like to come upstairs and join me in a glass of wine?’

  ‘My nephews brought this,’ she said a little later in her kitchen. She was wrestling with the corkscrew and eventually surrendered the task to me. The cork came out with a satisfying pop.

  ‘The one good thing you can say for Charlie,’ said Daphne, ‘is that he brings a decent bottle when he comes. He fancies himself as a bit of a wine buff, you know.’

  Wine bore, more likely. ‘I haven’t seen them before,’ I said, pouring us out a glass.

  Daphne rooted about in a cupboard and produced some savoury biscuits which she shook out on to a dish on the table. ‘Help yourself.’ She raised her glass. ‘Cheers!’ She was beginning to look much happier than she had when her visitors had arrived. A couple of curls in the brand-new hairdo had come adrift and her lipstick was smudged. She’d kicked off her smart shoes and donned her Fair Isle sock-slippers and looked much more the old Daphne.

  ‘I don’t encourage them,’ she said, sounding rather as though she was talking of stray cats. ‘They mean well, you know. I don’t want to be unkind. But I don’t like being bothered by people who know better than I do what I want. They think I need looking after.’ An indignant note entered her voice and her long purple glass earrings bobbed in sympathy. ‘Me! Do I look as if I need looking after?’

  ‘You’re fine,’ I said robustly. ‘And if you need anything, I’m here.’

  ‘Yes, dear, I know. But Bertie and Charlie don’t see it like that. They’re my brother, Arnold’s, sons. Arnold was older than me and he’s been dead twenty years. He was a solicitor. The boys joined the firm as soon as they were able and took over when Arnold retired. Neither of them is married.’

  That didn’t surprise me. ‘Are they retired now?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh no, dear. They’re only fifty-one. I think they look older and they’ve always been quaint. I mustn’t be nasty about them. They took me out for a slap-up dinner. Of course,’ she sighed, ‘they really wanted to talk business. They always do.’

  She took off the purple earrings and laid them neatly side by side on the table, next to her wine glass. ‘My mother’s,’ she said. ‘Amethyst.’

  I should have known they wouldn’t be purple glass. But then, Daphne was probably fairly well-off and it sparked an unpleasant notion.

  I asked, rather alarmed, whether Bertie and Charlie handled her business, i.e. financial affairs, because I wouldn’t have liked that idea at all. But fortunately it seemed not.

  ‘Oh no, because they’re my principal heirs, you see. It wouldn’t be proper. But naturally, they have an interest. They’re worried about death duties.’

  It was unlikely I’d ever have anything to leave but the clothes on my back and who’d want those? However, the thought that the duo stood to gain by her death made me, if possible, even more uneasy than the idea they might handle her money during her life. I knew I wasn’t being fanciful because Sergeant Parry, my old CID foe, once told me that a person’s still most likely to be murdered by a relative or close acquaintance. ‘And it’s pretty always sex or money,’ he’d added. I didn’t want to pry into Daphne’s affairs but perhaps some outsider without an axe to grind ought to know more about what was going on. Besides, she obviously wanted to talk to someone.

  She leaned forward. ‘It makes sense, you see, for me to give money or even things away now. To avoid the tax when I drop off the twig. I mean, the house is left to the boys already. But if I, well, made it over to them now . . .’

  ‘They want you to give them this house?’ I cried tactlessly.

  ‘I’d go on living here,’ she assured me. ‘It’d be a formality, that’s all, to avoid the tax.’

  She might trust them, I certainly didn’t. They might or might not let her go on living there. It was more likely they’d try and bundle her into some sort of home. As for me, they’d certainly have me off the premises p.d.q. Really, there was no difference between those two and Tig’s boyfriend. Both were after the woman’s hard-earned cash.

  ‘You aren’t going to do it, Daphne?’ I couldn’t but sound appalled.

  She took a long deep swig of Charlie’s wine. ‘I don’t want to, but when I’m with them, they do seem to make such good sense.’

  ‘You ought to talk to your own solicitor,’ I said firmly.

  ‘Yes, I shall do so. I won’t be pushed, don’t worry.’

  ‘Look,’ I said, leaning over the table. ‘You know how you value your independence. That’s what they want y
ou to give up. You’ll be their tenant, Daphne! I mean, even if you’re not paying, you’ll be living here on sufferance. You don’t know how the future will pan out. You might change your mind.’

  She was nodding but sighing. ‘It’s so difficult when it’s family. One ought to like one’s relations.’

  Not if they were like Bertie and Charlie Knowles, I thought, but managed by biting my tongue not to say it. I was fast forming the idea that the Knowles twins were very bad news.

  Daphne was looking downhearted so, to divert her, I told her about the man who’d burst into the shop that morning.

  ‘Dear me,’ she said, and brightened up. Daphne likes a mystery. I’d seen plenty of them on her bookshelves and she sometimes lent me one, usually an Agatha Christie or a Ngaio Marsh. I liked best the Ngaio Marsh books about the theatre. Ever since I’d first met her, Daphne had been tapping away at a great lumbering old manual typewriter, piling up sheets and sheets of densely typed manuscript. I’d never plucked up the courage to ask her what it represented, but it wouldn’t have surprised me if it had been a great novel, something on the model of The Woman in White. That’s a book she likes very much, she told me.