Running Scared Page 4

  ‘Perhaps he owes someone money,’ she suggested.

  But I said, not quite knowing why, ‘Or perhaps he’s got something to sell.’

  ‘Ah . . .’ said Daphne, reaching for the wine. ‘But what could it be?’

  ‘Something he ought to get rid of quick,’ I said. Not knowing, of course, that he’d done just that.

  Chapter Three

  Hitch’s Transit van rattled to a stop outside the shop three days later, at eight in the morning, minutes after I’d arrived for work. Along the side of the van was printed in tipsy capitals ‘PROPERTY MAINTENANCE COMPANY’. The van itself was no great advert for the firm’s skills, being distinctly unmaintained and showing evidence of rust and minor collisions. The rear doors were tied together with string.

  Ganesh and I stood in the doorway of the shop like a reception committee for royals as Hitch, with a bit of trouble, extricated himself from the front seat. There seemed to be something wrong with the door catch and several bits of pipe, tools, paintbrushes, etc. fell out with him.

  ‘Morning!’ he greeted us cheerily, adding for my benefit, ‘All right, darling?’ He picked up the things which had fallen out, slung them back inside and slammed the van door. Something in the interior fell down with a clatter.

  Hitch addresses all women as ‘darling’ and it doesn’t signify any affection or even recognition. It’s no use turning PC on him and asking him not to do it. He doesn’t even realise he has done it. Still, I tried.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘But I’m not your darling.’

  ‘Right you are, darling,’ he replied, walking past me into the shop. ‘Where’s this boghole you want tarting up, then?’

  ‘Oy!’ I called as he and Gan disappeared towards the back of the building. ‘You can’t leave the van there! You’ll get a ticket. Double yellow lines.’

  ‘That’s all right, darling!’ floated back to me. ‘You stay by it and tell anyone who asks I’m just dropping off some gear. I’ll be back in a tick.’

  I stood there in drizzling rain for one minute and decided that that was enough. It wasn’t my problem. I hoped they clamped the thing. I retreated inside and almost at once a customer came in, so I had an excuse.

  I listened as Ganesh and Hitch, unseen, shouted at one another in the washroom, their voices echoing off the walls. Hitch only has one voice pitch – loud. It’s infectious. After a few moments you find yourself yelling back.

  The thing about Hitch is that, until he opens his mouth, he’s Mr Anonymous. Not only would you not pick him out in a crowd, you wouldn’t notice him if he was the only person walking along the pavement. He’s of middle height and I couldn’t even guess his age. He’s slim, but wiry from all that heaving around of knocked-off building supplies, and going bald. Hitch refers to this last feature as a receding hairline. It’s receded to the back of his head, leaving the top domed and shiny. To compensate, he’s grown what’s left long so that it hangs round the bare patch like the fringe on an old-fashioned table-lamp. He always wears worn jeans and a washed-out navy-blue tee shirt. I’ve never seen him in anything else so he must have a wardrobe of these items. He’s always cheerful and always on the fiddle. He misses nothing.

  He came back as the customer left. ‘Gonna move the van, darling,’ he said. ‘You’ll be pleased to hear. And ah—’ He fished in his jeans back pocket and took out a grubby wallet. He opened it up, revealing a wodge of notes and some small white cards, one of which he peeled off and handed to me.

  ‘There you go, darling. Stick that up on your board, all right?’

  I looked at the card. On it was printed: ‘JEFFERSON HITCHENS. ALL PROPERTY MAINTENANCE AND HOME IMPROVEMENTS. PATIOS A SPECIALITY. ESTIMATES FREE. NO OBLIGATION. BEST TERMS.’

  I said, ‘Ha!’ loudly.

  Hari keeps a corkboard in the window and, for a pound a week, anyone can leave a notice up there. I added Hitch’s. Ganesh came back while I was doing this. I pointed out that Hitch hadn’t paid the required pound.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Ganesh. ‘I’ll knock it off his bill. Don’t go upsetting him, for goodness’ sake.’

  ‘Me?’ I protested.

  ‘Yes, you. You glare at him as if he’s just insulted you and that weird haircut of yours bristles even more. Can’t you do something about it?’ He frowned. ‘It looks like a mangy hedgehog.’

  ‘Join the club, why don’t you? Let’s all insult Fran. I don’t like being called darling. If he’s going to do it all the time he’s here, he’s going to get a flea in his ear.’

  ‘Oh, don’t make such a fuss,’ said Ganesh.

  For all he was acting in control, I guessed Ganesh was nervous. It was one thing plotting to go behind Hari’s back and get the washroom fixed up. The reality of Hitch on the premises had reminded him that he hadn’t Hari’s authority and if anything went wrong, the buck stopped there with Gan.

  I appreciated his fragile state of mind, but he’d got himself into this and he could get himself out of it. Likewise, he had no cause to be rude about my hair, although by the same token, I’d no right to be rude about Hitch’s baldness. A few weeks back, when the weather had still been mild, I’d decided to go for a new look. So I had my hair shaved off at the sides and kept a short brush top and a thin layer at the nape of the neck. I quickly decided I’d chosen the wrong time of year. In the summer, the shaved sides would’ve been all right. But now, at the onset of winter, it was a chilly style, so I was growing it all out. The result was a bit of a mess, the sides were fuzzy and the brush top was going all ways, some of it sticking up, some falling over. I’d done my best to tidy it up, using gel, and I didn’t need reminding I looked as if I’d just had an electric shock. It’d grow out. The sooner the better. Haven’t you ever made a mistake like that?

  Hitch came back, whistling happily. He was carrying a colour chart. ‘If you was to decide on the magnolia,’ he said, ‘I’ve got a few tins of that on special offer. Left over from a job.’

  I glared at Ganesh but he was refusing to look at me. He took Hitch through to the storeroom so that they could discuss colour schemes in private without my help.

  I leaned on the counter and leafed idly through one of the tabloids until my attention was taken by the ting of the bell above the door.

  The man who came in was short and Mediterranean-looking. His hair was dark and tightly curled, his features small, his skin olive. He stared at me and said, ‘Twenty Benson and Hedges.’

  I fetched them off the shelf behind me and turned back to find he’d moved. He’d wandered over to the magazine rack and was studying the titles. I put the cigarettes on the counter and waited. I didn’t have anything else to do so I watched him. Gan had told me to watch out for loiterers at the mag stand. They sometimes slipped one magazine inside another and tried to get away with paying for one only. Then there are the ones who’re coy about taking down the girlie mags from the top shelf. They spend ages looking through titles on woodwork and computer graphics and finally reach up for one of the dirty dozen with a start of surprise, as if they’d just noticed them and hadn’t a clue what they contained.

  Somehow, I felt this man wasn’t interested in any of the magazines. He was looking all round the shop and I started to get apprehensive. When he started back towards the counter, I glanced down to make sure I knew where the jemmy was in case I had to grab it.

  He sought through a handful of coins in his palm. ‘Business quiet,’ he observed.

  ‘Comes and goes,’ I replied. I took his money and rang up the till.

  He tucked the packet of cigarettes inside his blouson. ‘Nothing exciting ever happens, eh?’ He was smiling at me in a way he probably thought charming. He had small white pointed teeth.

  ‘Not since I’ve worked here,’ I said.

  ‘Friend of mine,’ he said, ‘came by here the other day.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘He said there was a bit of a dust-up outside. A chap got roughed up. He came in here.’ His English was good enough bu
t heavily accented, with a lisp and Rs which stuck in his throat.

  ‘No one came in here,’ I said coldly.

  ‘Perhaps you weren’t here, then.’ His eyes slid round the store again. ‘Anyone else work here?’

  ‘I’m always here mornings,’ I said just as icily, ‘and I saw nothing.’

  The little white teeth flashed. ‘That’s right, it happened during the morning.’

  Ouch. I’d slipped up there.

  He was smiling with his mouth but his eyes watched me like a vicious dog waiting for a chance to snap. ‘Sure you didn’t see anything?’ His hand slid into the jacket and came out holding a note. ‘Fact is, the man might’ve dropped something and my friend would like to give it back to him. He thinks he knows where to find him.’

  He was offering me twenty quid. Offering any money was clumsy, offering so much was plain stupid. If I’d not been interested before, I’d be fascinated now to know just what he was after. Actually, I was interested – but I wasn’t going to let him know it.

  ‘You’re wasting your time,’ I told him.

  There was movement at the back of the shop floor. Ganesh and Hitch emerged from the storeroom, causing me to glance their way. At the same time the doorbell tinged again. I looked round and found the customer had slipped out. I wondered whether to tell Ganesh and decided against it. No point in worrying him.

  ‘All right, darling?’ asked Hitch cheerfully. ‘No problems? I’ll come in tomorrow early, bring along a mate to give me a hand. We’ll carry on over the weekend, have it all finished by Monday afternoon.’

  ‘You owe a pound,’ I said, ‘for pinning up your card in the window.’

  ‘Wish I had you keeping my books,’ he said, fishing in his pocket and producing fifty pence. ‘Here you are, on account. Give you the other fifty tomorrow.’

  ‘What did you do that for?’ asked Gan when Hitch had left.

  ‘Because I don’t trust him.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’ve got against Hitch,’ Ganesh said. ‘You’ve never liked him.’

  ‘Instinct,’ I told him. But truth to tell I had other things on my mind than the washroom. Ganesh could tell Hitch to paint the place purple and put in gold taps for all I cared.

  ‘You haven’t found anything in the shop, have you, Gan? Dropped on the floor?’

  ‘What like?’

  ‘Like lost property. I don’t know.’

  ‘What’ve you lost?’

  ‘I haven’t lost anything. Oh, forget it.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Ganesh, ‘the way you ramble on, I wonder about you.’

  ‘That’s it!’ I said crossly. ‘I’m quitting for the day.’

  ‘It’s not eleven!’ he protested.

  ‘It’s quiet. You can manage. I’ll come in tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m only paying you for the hours you’ve worked, not for the whole morning.’ He sounded pompous and indignant in equal measure.

  ‘On what you pay me, that’s no great loss!’ I stormed out.

  I don’t like quarrelling with Ganesh but the row had been brewing up over the last few days and now it was out and by tomorrow the air would’ve cleared. I was still annoyed with him, though. To tell the truth, I was feeling annoyed with myself. I really didn’t need to get involved in anything. I hoped the little foreign guy asking the questions wouldn’t come back. Perhaps I should’ve told Ganesh about him.

  When you’re fending for yourself in the city, you develop all your senses like an animal. You get to smell danger and I smelled it now. Nevertheless, I must have been getting careless, because it wasn’t until I was almost home that I became aware of a tingle between the shoulder blades which told me someone was following me. Not walking behind me, following me.

  I wheeled round. People were surging along, faces set and purposeful, on many the strain of the approaching festive season already showing. I wondered which one it was. None of them looked a likely candidate. Perhaps my nerves were overstretched, firing my imagination. Or perhaps the tracker had been quicker than me and, a split second before I turned, had nipped into a doorway or wheeled round and started back away from me. I moved on, thoughtful.

  The rain had packed in during the previous night and a fitful sun had shone all morning, drying up the pavements and streets. Despite that, a puddle had formed in the road outside my flat. Water doesn’t usually collect there but the rains had been heavy. I didn’t pay it too much attention.

  I hadn’t seen anything of Daphne since our chat over the bottle of wine. As far as I knew the brothers Knowles hadn’t returned, but I was keeping an eye open. Daphne wasn’t the only person on my mind. There was Tig. I should let that situation alone; it wasn’t my business. But I decided to give it a try. The day was fairly bright, but it wouldn’t last long. By four darkness would’ve drawn in again. If I wanted to find Tig, I had to set out now. I had a quick cup of tea and went in search of her.

  I returned to the entrance near to the supermarket where I’d found her, but she wasn’t there. I widened out my hunt in slowly increasing circles because I thought it likely she and her partner were working this area. But they appeared to have moved on. Maybe they’d been warned off, either by the law or because they’d trespassed on someone else’s turf. At any rate, neither Tig nor the man in the plaid jacket were to be seen.

  I decided to give up and for something to do in the remaining short space of daylight, set off for Camden High Street.

  Trotting down the Chalk Farm Road, I felt my spirits rise. I like this patch. To my mind, it’s the nearest thing to Dickensian London, alive and kicking in all its variety and vulgarity. So, it’s getting a tad gentrified with middle-class stores and antiques shops setting up, but it is still reassuringly eccentric and clinging to its pleb roots.

  The recent rains had washed it clean. The black horses with glaring red eyes which leaped out from the façade of the Round House gleamed as if some infernal groom had buffed them up. I was lured by the promises of the Circus of Horrors and the Terrordome, but they were closed at the moment. So I went on, revelling in the used-car outlets, cheap clothes shops, the fast food dispensaries and street pedlars. I smiled up at the huge painted figures decorating the upper floor façades of the shops, the giant wooden boots, camouflaged tank, leather-jacketed rocker, silver skull and, why oh why, above the tattoo parlour, a sea of scarlet flames?

  I knew that the Stables and the canalside markets wouldn’t be open now, but remnants of Inverness Street market could still be in progress and I might pick up something cheap and cheerful there. As stallholders closed up, they were often happy to let you have something virtually at cost. But before I ever got there, I glimpsed a plaid jacket ahead of me and there he was, Tig’s boyfriend. I was just in time. Seconds later, he turned into The Man in The Moon pub.

  He wasn’t likely to be out in a hurry. Tig wasn’t with him, but ten to one, she wasn’t far away. I guessed they’d staked out a pitch and he’d left her begging while he spent the money on lager. I hunted in earnest now, casting about below the railway bridge and in the environs of the big drive-by supermarket which lay behind the main road, round by the bridge over the canal and at last ran her to earth in the entrance to Camden Town tube station.

  She wasn’t pleased to see me. ‘You again!’ she exclaimed, and her pinched face blenched with fury. It emphasised the greenish-black patch on one cheekbone. ‘You following me around or what?’

  ‘Time for a coffee-break, Tig,’ I said. ‘And don’t worry about him. He’s in the pub.’

  We took our polystyrene cups of coffee down by the dark olive-green canal and found a seat. Tig hunched on her end of the bench, sipping the coffee, eyes fixed on the water swirling sluggishly past, thick as treacle.

  ‘What’s his name?’ I asked.

  ‘Jo Jo.’

  ‘He the one who beat you up?’

  Despite herself, she took one hand from the cup to touch the bruise on her face. ‘No one beat me up,’ she said. ‘It was just a slap.
’ She straightened up and became belligerent, her eyes, through the rat’s tails of greasy fair hair, as cold as the canal’s waters. Since the Jubilee Street days, she’d acquired a ring through the outer edge of her left eyebrow. Speaking as one who wears a nose-stud, I’m not criticising, you understand. It was just one more detail about Tig different to the old days. ‘Anyway, it was your fault,’ she said.

  ‘Mine?’ I wanted to know how she’d worked that out.

  ‘The chocolate bar you gave me,’ she said. ‘He found it in my pocket. He said I’d been siphoning off the takings and spending them on stuff. I wasn’t.’

  ‘One lousy sweet?’ I gasped. ‘He thumped you because you’d bought one chocolate bar?’