REGINALD HILL
BORN GUILTY

A Joe Sixsmith novel

Copyright

Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 1995 by Collins Crime

© Reginald Hill 1995

Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007334810

Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2015 ISBN: 9780007391905

Version: 2015-07-27

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

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28

Keep Reading

About Reginald Hill

By Reginald Hill

About the Publisher

1

This all started when Joe Sixsmith came sneaking out of a small side door at St Monkey’s.

The reason he was in St Monkey’s was to rehearse Haydn’s Creation.

The reason he was sneaking out was that on arrival his Aunt Mirabelle had seized his arm in a grip like a council bailiff’s and said, ‘What’s this I’ve been hearing, Joseph?’

Only the impatient rattatooing of Mr Perfect’s baton saved him from immediate grilling.

Joe had no problem guessing what it was Mirabelle had been hearing. Galina Hacker, that’s what. Normally his aunt, a firm believer that any bachelor butting forty and not an alto needed a wife, would have been delighted to hear her baritone nephew was keeping company. But in this case, as well as being an affront to her own preferred candidate, Beryl Boddington (who gave Joe a little wave from the sopranos as they took their place), rumours about Galina must have hit the Rasselas Estate like word of Mrs Simpson reaching Lambeth Palace.

Joe, a reasonable though not always a rational man, could see how it might be a shock to the auntly system to learn he’d taken up with a spiky-haired seventeen-year-old with a stud in her nose, no bra, and a skirt like a pelmet. But he saw no reason to explain himself. On the other hand, he saw every reason to avoid interrogation.

If the Boyling Corner Concert Choir had been on its home ground, he wouldn’t have stood a chance. Mirabelle had the few exits from the square-built chapel more tightly covered than a nun’s nipples. But the choir’s growing reputation had led to an invitation to join with the South Bedfordshire Sinfonia and St Monkey’s Chorale in a performance of the oratorio to mark the five hundredth anniversary of the granting of Luton’s Royal Charter. After token resistance from some of the older members, Boyling Corner had agreed that it made sense for the performance to take place in St Monica’s (known to impious Lutonians everywhere as St Monkey’s). Its advantages were obvious. Better acoustics, central situation, more seating space. And, less obvious, but best of all to a desperate man, a much greater variety of escape routes.

Joe waited for the final Amen. He glanced towards the contraltos. Mirabelle’s eyes were fixed firmly on Mr Perfect’s – that is to say, the conductor, Geoffrey Parfitt’s – raised baton. As it came down, he took a step backwards into the taller men behind him. His heel came down on someone’s toe and a voice shot up an anguished octave.

‘Sor-ry!’ sang Joe.

Then he was off like a whippet. He’d spotted an outer door in a small side chapel. He’d no idea if it would be open, but if you couldn’t trust God in a place like this, what’s a heaven for? As he reached the door he heard the conductor saying, ‘Not bad, but still a way to go. Wrap up well. It’s a raw night and we don’t want any sore throats, do we?’

He grasped the handle, turned it, felt resistance, said a prayer, and next moment he was safe in the darkness of the night.

Mr Perfect was right. The air was cold and dank, but Joe sucked it in like draught Guinness. His first instinct was to turn left and head for the bright lights of St Monkey’s Square from which it was only a short step to the real Guinness at the Glit. But that could be a fatal error. For a woman of her age and bulk, Mirabelle was no slouch over fifty yards. Better safe than sorry. He turned right and headed into the gloomy hinterland of the churchyard.

Though it had a Charter, Luton didn’t have a cathedral. The rich burghers of the last century had set about compensating for this oversight by commissioning the erection of the largest parish church in the country. The money ran out before it quite reached that stature, but it was big, and The Lost Traveller’s Guide, the famous series devoted to places you were unlikely to visit on purpose, described St Monkey’s as ‘a splendid example of the controlled exuberance of late Victorian Gothic’.

Joe, like most Lutonian kids, had found its cypressed grounds and the dark nooks formed by its many buttresses very convenient for the controlled exuberance of early sexual adventure. But that had been a good twenty years ago, before the sand got in the social machine and civilization started grinding to a halt.

First the druggies had taken over till nightly sweeps by the police had driven them to further, fouler venues, like the infamous Scratchings. Then the new homeless, expelled by commercial indignation from the comparatively warm doorways of the shopping centres, had moved their boxes here. The police had started their sweeps again, leaving the Reverend Timothy Cannister teetering uneasily between his duty of Christian charity and the demands of the uncharitable Christians who made up most of his congregation. Vincent, his Visigothic verger, had no such doubts. Set your cardboard box up in St Monkey’s and you could be rudely awoken by a bucket of dirty water.

But still they came. Create a society which didn’t offer help to the helpless or hope to the hopeless, and where did you expect them to go?

So mused Joe as he made his way cautiously along the dark flagstones between the church wall and the graveyard. A gust of wind tore a hole in the seething clouds to permit a welcome glimpse of the moon. In its chill bone-light he glimpsed a little way ahead, in the angle of the great corner buttress which marked the far end of the building, one of these pathetic boxes. Over it stooped a figure.

Joe hesitated, unwilling to risk disturbing the poor devil. Anyone desperate enough to brave the verger’s wrath deserved as much peace as he could find. Except that this figure didn’t look like it was preparing to kip down. More like it was leaning into the box to …

Suddenly light stabbed into his eyes, cutting off further speculation. And a woman’s voice cried, ‘You there! What do you think you’re doing?’

Joe threw up his hand to catch the glare. The torch beam swung away to the box just in time to catch the figure taking off, dodging away between the headstones to the high boundary wall and going over it with the ease of fear.

Then the light came drilling back into his eyes.

‘All right. Who are you? What are you doing here?’ demanded the woman. But there was a note of uncertainty there too. She sounded like what Aunt Mirabelle designated a real lady, and Joe guessed that the first thing real ladies learnt at their real ladies’ seminaries was, you meet a black man in a black churchyard, you run like hell!

‘My name’s Joe Sixsmith,’ he said, pulling a battered business card out of his pocket and holding it up in the beam.

‘Good Lord. A detective. You here on business?’

‘No, ma’am. I’ve been in the church rehearsing, and I was just taking a short cut …’

‘Me too,’ she said. ‘Listening, I mean, not singing. I just crept in and sat quietly. Lovely music, isn’t it?’

‘It surely is,’ said Joe, a long admirer of the English upper-class ability to indulge in small talk in any circumstances. ‘Listen, that guy who ran off …’

‘Yes. Who was he, do you think? Did you get a good look at him?’

‘Not really. Could be he’s one of those derelicts who sleep in cardboard boxes …’

‘Ah yes. Dreadful, isn’t it?’

He couldn’t make out from her tone what precisely she found dreadful. He went on, ‘Only he moved a bit nimble for a down-and-out. And he looked more like he was looking into the box than getting into it.’

‘You think so? Perhaps we’d better take a look.’

She began to move forward, the torch beam running over the flags and up the side of the box. It had once contained an Alfredo fridge freezer. Joe wondered about warning her that if there was anything in it now, it was unlikely to be white goods. But he didn’t fancy trying to take a torch off a real lady so he could have first look.

She reached the box and peered in.

‘Oh Lord,’ she said.

And Joe, coming to stand beside her, saw that it had been white goods after all.

‘You all right, mate?’ said Joe.

It was a redundant question but at least it showed you didn’t need to attend a seminary to pick up the vernacular. If a Brit tourist had stumbled on the Crucifixion, first thing he’d probably have said was, ‘You all right, mate?’

There was no reply. He didn’t expect one. The figure curled at the bottom of the box was male, blond, hazel-eyed, young – fifteen to twenty maybe – and not going to get any older.

Gingerly he reached in to confirm his diagnosis. The boy’s left hand was folded palm up against his shoulder, as though in greeting. Or farewell. Something was written on the ball of his thumb … a long number faded almost to invisibility except for the central three digits … 292 … at least it wasn’t tattooed like in the death camps … The association of ideas made Joe shudder.

‘Is he dead?’ demanded the woman impatiently.

I’m just putting off touching him, thought Joe. Boldly, he grasped the wrist. Temperature alone told him what he’d already known. Waste of time looking for a pulse. His time, not the boy’s. He had no more to waste.

‘I’m afraid so,’ he said.

The torch beam jerked out of the box and she cradled it against her chest, letting him glimpse her face for the first time. Fortyish, fine boned, slightly hook nosed, with her skin more weather-beaten than an English sun was likely to cause. Lit from beneath, the face looked rather more cadaverous than the boy’s in the box, except that her narrow blue eyes had the bright light of intelligence in them.

‘Listen, we ought to get help, the police, an ambulance …’

‘Yes. You go. You know the ropes and you’ll move faster …’

‘We’ll both go.’

‘No. You’ll move faster without me. To tell the truth, I feel a bit wobbly. It’s just beginning to hit home … that boy in there … he is no more than a boy, is he? … I’ve a son of my own … What is the world coming to?’

‘An end, maybe,’ said Joe. ‘OK, I’ll go. You sit down over here. I won’t be a minute.’

Leaving her perched on a plinth of monumental masonry under a weeping angel, he hurried away.

Naturally, because even in a churchyard, God’s Law and Sod’s Law are only a letter apart, he was just in time to meet Mirabelle coming out of the main entrance arm in arm with Rev. Pot of Boyling Corner Chapel, and the Reverend Timothy Cannister of St Monica’s.

‘Where’ve you been, Joe?’ she cried, hurling aside the pastoral pair and seizing him with both hands. ‘I said I wanted a word with you.’

‘Not now,’ said Joe. ‘I’ve got to go.’

‘What’s so urgent you can’t talk to your old auntie?’ she demanded with the indignation of one who knows there is no possible answer.

Except one.

‘Death,’ said Joe. ‘Excuse me, Vicar. You got a phone in the vicarage I could use?’

2

It must have been a quiet night on the mean streets of Luton because by the time Joe finished his phoning and came out of the vicarage, a police car was already belling its way into the square.

Out of it leapt a fresh-faced young constable he didn’t know followed by a fat-faced one he did.

His name was Dean Forton and he rated the Sixsmith Detective Agency lower than Wimbledon FC.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he said ungraciously as Joe approached.

‘I found the body.’

‘Must have tripped over it then,’ said Forton. ‘OK, let’s take a look at it.’

He seemed quite pleased at the prospect. First on the murder scene can get a chance to shine. But when he realized it was just a dosser, his enthusiasm faded.

‘More bother than they’re worth,’ he said to his younger colleague. ‘Here, Sandy, seeing we’ve got him in a box in a boneyard, why don’t you whip back to the car, get a shovel, and we’ll save everyone a bit of time and trouble.’

‘You’re a real riot, Dean,’ said the youngster, his Scottish roll of the r’s exaggerated by a slight tremor as he looked down at what Joe guessed was his first corpse.

‘All right then,’ said Forton. ‘At least keep the ghouls off till the girls get here.’

The ghouls were a growing group of spectators led by Mirabelle. The girls, Joe guessed, were CID. Forton hung his emergency lantern on the outstretched arm of the weeping angel under which the real lady was no longer sitting. In fact, she was nowhere in sight. Joe wasn’t too surprised. Not getting involved was a kneejerk reaction of the English upper classes, particularly when what you weren’t getting involved with was a dead dosser, a black PI and Luton’s finest in a cold and gloomy churchyard.

The girls arrived led by DS Chivers, another old acquaintance and even less of a fan than Forton. Joe gave him a bare outline of his discovery of the body, not bothering at this juncture to complicate matters with reference to the woman. He was immediately punished for this economy by her reappearance.

‘Ah,’ she said, cutting across Chivers’s questioning. ‘You came back then.’

Joe felt she was stealing his lines. Chivers felt she was undermining his authority.

‘Who the hell are you?’ he asked irritably.

She gave him a look which would have stopped an assegai in full flight. The image popped into Joe’s mind fully formed and he realized it came from a certainty that this was a good old-fashioned English colonial lady. Her dun-coloured skirt and shirt derived from the practical rather than the fashionable side of safari, but it was her complexion which was the real giveaway. That could only come from long exposure to the sun which used never to set.

She said to Chivers, ‘Kindly don’t interrupt. Mr Sixsmith, after you left, it struck me the quickest way to summon help would be to use my car phone, therefore I made my way round to the Cloisters and phoned Emergency.’

This told Joe a lot.

First, it explained the speed of the police response.

Second, it confirmed the woman’s status. The Cloisters was a paved area at the back of the church. Folklore claimed it was all that remained of the original medieval abbey. Archaeology proved it was merely a pavement laid down by the Victorian contractors to stop their material and machines from sinking into the Lutonian bog. Now it provided space to park a few cars, a convenience in the gift of the Reverend Timothy Cannister and only doled out to top people. Joe didn’t anticipate being invited to park his Morris Oxford there.

Third, he recognized the explanation as apology. Perhaps her houseboys hadn’t been big on civic responsibility. Whatever, she’d doubted if he’d go near a phone and this was her way of saying sorry without admitting there was anything to be sorry about.

He said, ‘That was good thinking. Sometimes they need a couple of calls to get them out of the canteen.’

She rewarded him with a not unattractive smile, then overpaid him by turning to Chivers and saying, ‘Now, Constable, why don’t you trot off and fetch one of your superiors?’

Chivers went red as a radish, but before he could explode into real trouble, a voice cried, ‘Mrs Calverley, I thought it was you. I do hope you haven’t been inconvenienced.’

The Reverend Timothy Cannister had broken past the young Scots constable. Known to the compulsive punsters of Luton as Tin Can because of his fondness for rattling one in your face, his reaction to the woman confirmed she belonged to the cheque-in-the-post set rather than the coin-in-the-slot class.

Also the name meant something to Chivers whose indignant response withered on his lip.

‘No inconvenience, Tim,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I’m just helping this constable with his enquiries.’

‘It’s sergeant, ma’am, and at the moment I’m senior officer present. So if you could just spare a moment …?’

‘Why on earth didn’t you say so? Let me tell you all I know about this dreadful business.’

It took less than a minute of admirably terse narrative. Chivers didn’t interrupt or ask any questions, and then Mrs Calverley accepted Tin Can’s invitation to step into the vicarage for a warming potation, though she winced visibly at his preciosity.

‘All right for me to go and get one of them too?’ asked Joe.

‘Not before you answer a few questions, Sixsmith,’ snarled Chivers.

‘Nothing I can add to what the lady says.’

‘You’re supposed to be a detective, aren’t you? How about trying to give me a description of the perpetrator?’

‘What perpetrator?’ asked Joe. ‘Perpetrator of what?’

‘Don’t get clever with me, sunshine. There’s a body in that box, remember?’

‘I know. And I think you’ll find he’s been dead an hour or so.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I felt for a pulse and he was cold enough not to have died just that minute,’ said Joe.

‘So what was this guy you spotted doing then?’

‘Maybe the same as me, checking the kid’s pulse to see if he needed help.’

Chivers snarled a laugh and said, ‘Do you think Immigration knows about all these Good Samaritans flooding into the country? More likely he was one of those weirdos who get their kicks beating dossers up. So, a description.’

Joe gave him what he could. Finally Chivers said, ‘All right. Sod off. We’ll be in touch.’

‘And thank you too, Sergeant, for your courtesy. I’ll be sure to mention it to Mr Woodbine. I was real pleased to hear he’s been made up to superintendent.’

It was a low blow. Willie Woodbine disliked Chivers almost as much as Joe did, plus the new detective superintendent hadn’t been hindered in his elevation by the help Joe had somewhat fortuitously supplied in solving a recent big murder case.

Chivers was a nifty counter puncher and now he said, ‘You’ll be going to the celebration party at his house next Sunday then?’

He knows I’ve as much chance of being invited there as I have of being invited to stand for the Cheltenham Tories, thought Joe.

‘Hope I can make it,’ he said. ‘If I do, I’ll see you there, shall I?’

He saw the dart draw blood. Chivers and the CID girls might get a drink down the pub, but no way was Willie Woodbine going to take them home!

He took a last glance at the cardboard box before he walked away. No one should end up in a thing like that, especially not someone so young.

His musing on death’s indignities made him forget life’s perils.

‘There you are, Joseph Sixsmith. Now what you been up to?’

It was Aunt Mirabelle, lurking in the portico. At least her eagerness to be brought up to date made her forget Galina. But she showed more pertinacity than Chivers by suddenly asking, ‘What you doing sneaking out of that side door anyway?’

Time to go. He glanced at his watch which had stopped and said, ‘Auntie, we’ll talk tomorrow, OK? I got an appointment. Business.’

‘At this time of night.’

‘Crime doesn’t keep office hours,’ he tossed over his shoulder.

He’d seen that on the letterhead of a security firm he’d failed to do business with. He’d thought at the time it was a pretty crappy slogan. Now he got Mirabelle’s vote.

‘Don’t give me that clever dick crossword stuff,’ she yelled after him. ‘You never went to no college. Joseph Sixsmith, you get yourself back here!’

Joe had made it to the square. Freedom was at hand but old habits die hard and he’d been obeying Aunt Mirabelle’s commands as long as he could remember. He hesitated on the edge of the pavement. He who hesitates is sometimes saved. A dusty blue Range Rover came shooting out of the narrow lane that led to the Cloisters car park and swept by him at a speed that would probably have exploded his vital organs if he’d taken another step.

He glimpsed Mrs Calverley’s angular profile above the wheel. She gave no sign that she’d noticed him. Well, he supposed she’d had a nasty shock. And so had he.

There were two ways of taking this near miss. One was that God had used Aunt Mirabelle’s voice to save his life. The other was, a man who’s just been so close to death needs a drink.

He weighed the alternatives judiciously. On the whole, he reckoned that after all the eighteenth-century praise and thanksgiving God had been getting tonight, He wouldn’t be averse to a bit of modern secular music for a change.

Deafening his ears to Mirabelle’s unceasing commands, he set off for the Glit.

3

From time to time, Dick Hull, who runs the Gary Glitter public house in Luton, gets an acute attack of conscience. It seems to him that despite all he has done by way of decor, music and memorabilia, he is failing in his priestlike task of celebrating the one and only supernova of the British pop firmament.

Whenever this black mood comes upon him, he seeks solace in The Tape.

This is a recording he made at one of Gary’s legendary Gangshows by hurling a cassette recorder on to the stage and reclaiming it later under a savage assault by three stewards. Miraculously, the tape had kept on recording. The resulting sound in Hull’s ears was more than hi-fidelity. It was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Played full belt on the Glit’s PA system, it took him back to that glorious night in Glasgow, and all his self-doubt faded away.

It was playing tonight. Joe heard it several streets away. Legend had it that when fog blanketed Britain so bad that most airports were packing up and going home, at Luton planes still landed, homing in on the Glit.

Joe didn’t altogether believe this. But he did wonder how a God accustomed to the gentle murmurings of Hallelujah choruses might feel about this level of decibels.

Happily, he was able from long experience to detect that it was approaching its climax. This was not, great though it was, Gary’s valedictory rendition of ‘I’m the Leader of the Gang (I am)’ but the voice of a steward shouting ‘Awafokyerselyerweedickheed!’ and Hull’s respondent scream as a size eleven army surplus boot came down on his hand.

The scream peaked as Joe entered. No one was talking. Even the new generation of kids brought up in a sound environment which made the machine room Joe had worked in most of his adult life seem like a forest glade, couldn’t compete with this combination of frantic fans, stroppy stewards, and personal pain.

Then it was over. For a second there was a fragment of that rarest of things at the Glit, perfect silence.

In that moment Joe’s gaze met Galina Hacker’s across the crowded bar, and his heart sank. She’d been at the Oxfam shop again. At least the seventies flared trousersuit she wore covered those provocative legs (how could anything so skinny be so sexy?) but she’d given the tunic a bit of pazazz by cutting off the sleeves, and even from this distance Joe could see she was wearing nothing beneath it. The flesh missing off her legs had been redistributed up there with equally disturbing results.

First things first. He gestured to the bar and shouldered his way through, giving and returning greetings. Next best thing to anonymity for a PI was a place where everyone knew you, especially when it meant your pint of Guinness was already waiting, neat and welcoming as a vicar at a wedding.

‘Thanks, Eric,’ he said.

Eric, a young man whose habitually worried expression clashed strangely with the brash assertiveness of his diamanté-studded waistcoat, watched in respectful silence as Joe downed five inches, then said, ‘No Whitey?’

‘No. I’ve been rehearsing. He doesn’t care for Haydn.’

Whitey was his cat. No way you could get him into the chapel. Rev. Pot reckoned he’d got enough on his plate dealing with human crap. But St Monkey’s larger spaces had tempted Joe to bed Whitey down on a hassock in a remote pew at the first united rehearsal. He’d been all right through the introductory Chaos and the piano entry of the choir. But when they reached let there be light, and there was LIGHT, and the voices and instruments exploded in that most glorious of musical exultations, Whitey had shot upright and started a howling which had persisted long after the music had died away.

Most people had been amused. Aunt Mirabelle was not most people. According to her, Joe had let down himself, his family, Boyling Corner Chapel, and every decent Christian soul who’d ever had the misfortune to come in contact with him.

Memory of Mirabelle was so strong that when a hand grasped his arm he jumped guiltily and almost spilt some stout.

‘Thought you wasn’t coming,’ said Galina accusingly.

He turned and looked at her. Despite apparently being assaulted by a mad sheep-shearer and a myopic action painter, she was still a beautiful girl. But why not? Blacked out teeth and a raggedy suit hadn’t stopped Judy Garland of immortal memory from being the loveliest swell walking down the avenue.

‘Hello, Gal,’ he said. ‘Got a drink?’

For answer she held up a bottle. Joe winced. It wasn’t just the contents, winceable though they were, being something called Luger which the ads claimed ‘blows you away’. It was the way these young girls drank straight from the bottle that offended something deep down. When he’d mentioned this to his friend, Merv Golightly, his distaste had been submitted to a long and deeply unflattering sexual analysis. But so were most things that tugged at Merv’s consciousness, from Luton’s performance in the FA Cup to the way that John Major walked. As a taxi driver, Merv was used to a captive audience. An American visitor had once hired him to drive her to Leeds and back twice a week for a month. ‘It’s cheaper than my analyst,’ she said. ‘And it does me more good.’

‘Let’s sit down,’ said Galina.

She led him to a table where a bunch of her mates were protecting a couple of empty chairs by smashing their bottles down on any hand foolish enough to grasp them. They greeted Joe with their customary silent incredulity that one of his advanced years could still be moving with no apparent mechanical aid, then went back to their conversation which consisted of an interchange of staccato screams. The only alternative was to lean forward so that your lips were almost touching your interlocutor’s ear. This was the mode preferred by Joe and Galina, and if Aunt Mirabelle could have seen them in this position, the worst case scenarios hypothesized by her spies would have been positively confirmed.

A tape of the conversation would have been more puzzling.

‘You got anywhere yet?’ said Galina.

‘Give me time,’ said Joe.

‘It’s been a week.’

‘Six days,’ said Joe firmly. ‘I said it would need to be slow else you could end up getting what you’re trying to avoid.’

‘Yeah? Maybe publicity’s what we need, get it out in the open, make them show their hand.’

‘We’ve been through all this,’ said Joe gently. ‘If they’ve nothing to show, all you’re doing is giving the loonies a feast. There’s no such thing as good publicity. You see a headline saying: BISHOP NOT BONKING CURATE’S WIFE, it doesn’t stop rumours, it starts them. Get a hint of this in the papers, makes no matter how innocent they say your granddad is, there are enough loonies out there to give him and you and the whole family a really lousy time. Is that what you want?’

‘Of course it’s not,’ said the girl. ‘Only I hoped …’

Her voice tailed off, though he could still feel her breath warm on his ear lobe. He knew what she hoped. That in bringing her worries to him, she’d be told in no time flat that she had nothing to worry about. That’s what people often wanted, and they had a nasty habit of blaming him when he couldn’t give it to them.

She said, ‘He’s been round at the club again, asking questions. I got a proper description this time.’

She took a piece of paper from an inner pocket. It was warm from her breast. On it she’d scribbled: 5’8"–5’10" (bigger than me but not too much) reddish hair. Blue eyes. Swollen nose. Big feet. Olive-green jacket.

Joe said, ‘This sound the same as the one who got talking to your mum?’

‘Yeah, except she didn’t say anything about his nose. Maybe someone’s hit him since then. Gets in my range, it’ll be more than a swollen nose he ends up with!’

Joe regarded her gravely and said, ‘You’re not stupid enough to do that, are you, Gal?’

In fact, he knew she wasn’t stupid at all. And the more he talked to her, the brighter she seemed. He’d known her for a long time without really knowing her. She was a cashier at the Luton and Biggleswade Building Society where Joe stashed what little money he managed to save from his erratic income. She was pleasant and personable and always greeted him by name and passed the time of day as she updated his book.

He’d never seen her outside the building society except for one night he’d been invited to the Uke, the local Ukrainian Club, by a client and he’d spotted her sitting with a middle-aged couple and an older white-haired man. She’d given him a wave and he’d gone over and been introduced to her parents, George and Galina Hacker, and her grandfather, Taras Kovalko. Joe’s client had filled him in later. Taras was one of the numerous displaced persons who found refuge in the UK after the war. He’d settled in Manchester, married an English girl, had one daughter he called Galina after his own mother. She had married George Hacker, a salesman, and they’d gone to live in Luton. Widowed and retired, Taras had come to live with them a couple of years ago.

Joe, who’d hitherto guessed that the girl’s unusual name was merely one of those Anglo-Saxon flights of fancy which filled the classified ‘Births’ with Clints and Garths and Meryls and Kylies, was pleased to know it had a real meaning. He believed in families. Blood was thicker than water, though he wasn’t so sure about Guinness.

Then about a week ago, when he visited the building society to draw out a little of the little that was left, the girl had asked in a low voice if she could see him professionally.

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘When?’

‘It’s my half day today,’ she said.

‘Fine,’ said Joe, smiling at her. In her M & S cardie with minimal make up and straight brushed hair, she looked about fourteen. He didn’t fancy making her walk down the rather seedy street which housed his rather scruffy office, so he said, ‘How about four o’clock in the Sugar ’n’ Tongs?’

The Sugar ’n’ Tongs was the kind of place people took their grannies, very safe, very central.

‘OK,’ she said.

He’d got there early so she wouldn’t feel uncomfortable arriving by herself. He realized he stuck out like a sore thumb among the mainly formidable female clientele. But he’d been united with them in conversation-stopping surprise when a spiky-topped alien in a skirt like a guardrail above a dizzying drop, and a halter straining like a tops’l in a Force Ten gale, had come through the door. The unity had been shortlived. From being a spectator he became part of the spectacle as the newcomer headed straight for his table and from that vermilion mouth came the words, ‘Hello, Mr Sixsmith. Good of you to see me.’

Though the noise level here was decibels below the Glit, they set the pattern for future conversations by leaning close together to thwart the straining ears.

What was said would probably have disappointed the would-be eavesdroppers, but Joe it deeply dismayed.

‘I was down at the Uke last week helping with the refreshments. It was a ladies’ social night, Mum’s really keen, it was her actually that got Grandda started going, he’s never been a one for living in the past, but since he joined he’s been really enjoying it. And I got talking to Mrs Vansovich, you may remember seeing her, little old lady, about the size of a garden gnome and she looks a bit like one too. The men make a joke about her, Vansovich always a witch, very funny ha ha, but she is a bit of a gossip, no denying. She started telling me about this man who’d been asking questions, said he was trying to contact someone called Taras something beginning with a K. He said his grandmother had got to know this Taras after the war when she was a driver for some colonel in charge of dealing with displaced persons in southern Germany. He said his grandmother was bedridden now and would like to see this Taras again, but she couldn’t remember his second name except that it began with a K, and she thought he came from Vinnitsa which is where Grandda was born, and Mrs Vansovich knows this because she was born there too and is always wanting to talk about it.’

Tea arrived and she paused for breath. When the waitress had gone, Joe said, ‘Galina …’

‘Gal. My friends call me Gal. Or Gallie.’

Joe, conscious of the presence of some of the sharpest observers in Luton, didn’t think this was a good time to offer her the familiarity of calling him Joe.

He said, ‘Gallie, if you could get to the point …’

‘Sorry. It’s not easy, not without telling you all this. The upshot was that old Vansovich must have told this man everything she knew about Grandda, and he said it might be the same one but he wasn’t sure, and could she please keep quiet about it till he was, as he didn’t want to embarrass anyone with talk of an old flame. He went off then, leaving Vansovich convinced there’s been some great romance. She’s a bit frightened of mentioning it to Mum, I think, but me being young, she thought I’d be interested.’

‘And were you?’

‘Yeah, it sounded a bit of a giggle really, Grandda and the colonel’s lady driver! I dropped a few hints to him, taking the mickey like I often do. Usually we have a good laugh but he got quite ratty. So I thought, hello, Vansovich has said something and it’s something he doesn’t want to talk about, so I let it drop. I did begin to wonder if maybe this thing had gone all the way and that maybe this jerk-off asking the questions was some sort of cousin of mine. Then Mum brought Grandda back from the club a couple of days later and I could see he was upset. I asked Mum about it and she said she’d called in at the supermarket on the way home, and when she came out to the car park, there was this guy talking to Grandda through the car window. Mum said he was holding the glass down with his fingers while Grandda was trying to wind it up inside. Mum heard him say, where’s the harm in a few facts, Mr Kovalko, if you’ve got nothing to hide? Then Mum asked him what the hell he was playing at? And he said sorry, he was just asking for directions, and took off. Since then, Grandda’s hardly been out of the house.’

She paused, picked up a teacake, examined it, put it back on the plate.

Joe said, ‘So what do you want me to do, Gallie?’

‘I should have thought that was obvious,’ she said. ‘I want you to find out who this guy is, what he’s after.’

Joe said gently, ‘But it sounds like your grandfather’s got some idea who he is and what he wants. Why not just ask him?’

‘Because … because he won’t say anything! He doesn’t want to tell me.’

‘In that case …’ said Joe.

He was beginning to have a suspicion what this might be all about, but he’d learned the hard way about looking before he leapt. If the girl didn’t tell him what was on her mind, no way he was going to play guess-guess.

‘I think he’s frightened, and I don’t like people going around frightening my grandda,’ she said fiercely. ‘I want him stopped!’

‘So have a word with the police,’ he said.

‘You’re joking!’ she said with a dismissive scorn. ‘Listen, Mr Sixsmith …’

She put a hand on his, and looked him straight in the eye. It probably looked like uncontrollable passion to the lynx-eyed tea drinkers, but Joe could see she was bringing herself to the point of telling him the truth. He found himself hoping she wouldn’t make it.

But she was there.

In a flat, rapid voice she said, ‘I know it sounds stupid but I was reading in one of the supplements about this debate whether they should prosecute old war criminals. And the article said there were half a dozen they were pretty certain of living in this country, and several more they suspected, and a lot of them were eastern Europeans, Ukrainians and others, who’d served in those concentration camps and came here as displaced persons after the war …’

Her voice dried up as though articulation had made her fully aware for the first time of the enormity of what she was saying.

He said, ‘Hey, look, I don’t know much about it, but there must be thousands of people like your grandda came here to settle after the war. They were victims, they needed help. Why should anyone suddenly start thinking … I mean, there must be a hundred other explanations …’

‘That’s what I want you to do. Find one,’ she said. ‘But if there’s someone out there trying to pin something like this on Grandda, I want the bastard sorted out!’

She spoke with a fierce intensity that took him aback. This was mainly why he said he’d help. He had the feeling that if he didn’t, she might look elsewhere for assistance in taking more direct action against the inquisitive stranger.

He’d got a description. Young, red-haired, nice smile, really charming (the last two were Mrs Vansovich’s), medium build, big feet, blue check jacket, black trousers, lime-green windcheater (he’d had this on in the car park), some kind of accent (Irish/Scottish?). And now a swollen nose.

He’d changed their meeting place to the Glit after that first encounter. The friends she sat with confirmed Joe’s suspicions that she mightn’t be short of assistance if she decided to have a pop at this guy herself, though every time he saw her in the building society, he couldn’t believe what he was believing!

But he had no difficulty in believing after that first all too public encounter in the Sugar ’n’ Tongs that, as sure as the fall of a sparrow is known to the living God, not even the protective cover of the Glit could hide their further meetings from Mirabelle.

‘So how are things going?’ she now breathed in his ear. ‘Any progress?’

He said, ‘I’ve got one of my operatives working on a lead in London. I’m expecting a report any time. Can you call round my office lunchtime tomorrow and I’ll let you know if anything comes up.’

Anyone who dared go out dressed like Gallie had nothing to fear from his mean street, and it was as far out of the public eye as he could hope to get.

‘OK,’ she said.

She leaned away from him, tipped her head back, stuck the bottle in her mouth and drank. It was the kind of shot TV advertisers sold their souls for.

Won’t wean me off Guinness, thought Joe, but I get the subliminal!

On the other hand, by the time he left the pub an hour later, he’d completely forgotten the name of the drink.

4

The following morning as Joe pushed open the door of the Bullpat Square Law Centre, he recalled his phrase ‘one of my operatives’ with a certain unease.

Truth was, Joe had operatives like politicians have principles – he latched on to whatever was free, useful, and handy. It wasn’t guilt that caused the unease, just fear that somehow the woman he was going to see might discover how she’d been categorized.

It was only eight o’clock but the Centre didn’t keep social hours.

‘Morning, Joe,’ said the young man at the reception counter.

‘Morning, Harry,’ said Joe cautiously. He had difficulty differentiating the tribe of young helpers.

This one seemed happy with ‘Harry’ so Joe went on, ‘Butcher in?’

‘Here when I arrived,’ said Harry proudly. ‘Got her first punter too.’ The helpers, drawn in roughly equal numbers from idealistic law students and the unemployed, adored Butcher. The Centre’s motto was: Law helps not hurts which drew the odd wry grimace from those who’d had their legs chopped off by Butcher in full flight, but she didn’t draw blood except when necessary. A Social Security snoop who’d been foolish enough to hack into the Centre’s accounts in an effort to prove ‘unemployed’ helpers were getting paid more than out-of-pocket expenses had found himself teetering on the edge of a career-ending court case. The cheers as his head dropped into the basket would have been heard in Hertfordshire. But Butcher had held back, and now the man came in on his day off to give advice on knotty benefit cases.

It was this capacity for making friends in unlikely places that had got her elected as ‘one of Joe’s operatives’. Casting around for ways of discovering whether in fact there was any official interest in Galina Hacker’s granddad, he’d recalled Butcher’s wet Wykehamist. This was a Tory MP who’d been damp enough to be sacked from a junior ministerial post under Thatcher and too intelligent to be offered another under Major. Even with these pluses, it was still difficult to see the common ground on which he and Butcher (who dated the new Dark Ages from 1979) might meet. But meet they did from time to time, and out of Government didn’t mean that Piers (Piers!) was out of touch.

Joe had mentioned his problem. Butcher had said she would be going to town in a couple of days and might bump into Piers and if so she might mention Joe’s problem too. For a consideration.

‘What consideration?’ Joe had asked.

‘We’ll consider that when we see what I get from Piers,’ Butcher had replied.

Now Joe sat down to wait till Butcher was free, but the door to her office opened almost immediately.

‘Thought I recognized that grainy grunt,’ said the woman who appeared in the doorway. ‘For once your timing’s perfect. Step inside. Someone I want you to meet.’

‘Oh yes. Who’s that?’

‘Your consideration,’ said Butcher with a wicked grin.

Joe didn’t like the sound of this. He’d been hoping Piers would have drawn a blank, which would have been good news for Gallie and also kept him out of Butcher’s debt. Nevertheless he rose, trying to look like a man without a care in the world. One good thing (one of many good things) about Butcher was she was small enough for even a short man to loom over, a rare pleasure in a country which free antenatal care seemed to have peopled with giantesses. Perhaps this was the secret agenda of the Tories’ anti-health service policies – no woman allowed to be taller than Queen Victoria. It would certainly get the short PI vote!

In the office, piled high with the files which resulted from working a twenty-hour day and brumous from the strong cheroots Butcher used as a substitute for sleep, sat a girl, fourteen or fifteen, shoulder-length dark brown hair, tall (another giantess in the making!) with a sallow complexion and dark suspicious eyes. She was wearing the combination of grey skirt and blue blouse which was as close as they got to uniform at Grandison Comp, and a book-stuffed sports bag at her feet suggested she was on her way there now. Or rather out of her way, as Grandison lay on the far side of town.

‘Mavis, this is Joe Sixsmith I was telling you about,’ said Butcher.

‘Hello,’ said Joe.

The girl didn’t reply but looked him up and down dubiously.

‘Doesn’t look much like a private detective to me,’ she said.

‘Would he be much good if he did?’ wondered Butcher.

The girl considered Butcher’s logic then said, ‘Sorry. I’m dead stupid till morning break.’

‘So what do you reckon?’

‘What?’

‘Do you think he’ll do?’

‘Well, if you recommend him and there’s nothing else on offer …’

Joe said, ‘Hey, wasn’t there some guy you told me about called Wilberforce or something got slavery off the statutes a few years back?’

‘Sorry, Joe, but you put yourself in the marketplace, you’ve got to expect punters want to handle the goods. OK, Mavis, why don’t you tell Mr Sixsmith your problem?’

Joe looked expectantly at the girl who said, ‘Well, it’s not really my problem, it’s this friend of mine, well, she was a friend, Sally Eaglesfield … look, this is really embarrassing.’

‘I’m not embarrassed,’ said Butcher kindly. ‘You embarrassed, Joe?’

‘Not yet,’ he said.

‘Well, I am,’ said the girl spiritedly. ‘Can’t you tell him? He’ll probably pay more attention to you. Besides, I’ve got to scoot else I’ll miss assembly. See you.’

She was gone, moving with the awkward grace of a young deer.

‘So what is her problem?’ asked Joe.

‘You heard her. Not her’s. Her best friend’s.’

‘In my experience, when folk come to me weighed down with their friends’ problems, it’s usually just a way of telling me their own.’

‘That’s quite sharp for you, Sixsmith,’ said Butcher. ‘But in this case, you’re wrong. Only problem Mavis has got is she’s fallen out with her best friend.’

‘Happens all the time, tell her to get a new best friend.’

‘Suddenly you’re an expert on adolescence too,’ mocked Butcher.

‘When I was a kid, we were too poor to have adolescence,’ retorted Joe who found Butcher’s company provoked him to PI wise-crackery. ‘So who’s she blaming?’

‘Sharp,’ complimented Butcher. ‘There’s a teacher at Grandison, invites kids home to little soirees, you know, listen to a few discs, drink coffee, talk about the world. An elite little group.’

‘To which the friend got invited, Mavis didn’t, so she’s crying foul?’ guessed Joe.

‘Mavis, despite her name, is not musical. Sally plays the clarinet. She’s good enough to play in the South Beds Sinfonia, as does the teacher. Another bond.’

Joe tried to conjure up a picture of the Sinfonia’s clarinettists without luck. Choristers didn’t pay much heed to instrumentalists so long as they didn’t get above themselves and drown the singing. Not much chance of that with the Boyling Corner Choir. Even the famous Glitterband would have found it hard to compete.

‘So what’s Mavis saying?’

‘She reckons there’s something going on at these soirees.’

‘Sex, you mean?’

‘Je-sus! The man with the tumescent mind. Yes, possibly, but not uniquely. Not even necessarily physically, though we should never discount that possibility. There’s all kinds of corruption, Sixsmith …’

‘No, hold on!’ said Joe. ‘These are allegations from one teenage girl about something that may be happening to another …’

‘I’m no teenage girl,’ said Butcher sharply. ‘And I think there may be cause for concern here.’

‘Yes, OK,’ said Joe, unhappily acknowledging that if Butcher was worried, there might be something in it. ‘How come you got in the act anyway? Who is this kid?’

‘Glad to see you show some curiosity about your client at last,’ said Butcher. ‘Mavis Dalgety, younger child of Maude and Andrew Dalgety of 25 Sumpter Row, Luton. Her brother Chris is doing law in London. During the vac he helps out sometimes in the Centre, and Mavis would tag along, so we got acquainted. She was hanging around here this morning when I arrived. Said it was an accident, just passing, but I could see there was something wrong. Besides, you don’t just pass Bullpat Square on your way to Grandison.’

‘Still don’t sound the kind of thing you go running to a lawyer with,’ said Joe.

‘I think all she wanted was a sympathetic female ear,’ said Butcher. ‘Look at the alternatives. Parents? Teenage kids do not confide in their parents. The school? They’d close ranks faster than the Brigade of Guards. So what does that leave?’

‘The police?’ suggested Joe.

Butcher gave a savage laugh.

‘Oh no. Definitely not the police. No way!’

Even for Butcher, who thought of the police as funnel-web spiders to keep down the flies, this was a bit vehement.

‘So where do I come in?’ he asked.

‘Through that door with perfect timing. I can’t help this kid, Sixsmith. I can give her advice, but the practical side of investigating this thing I don’t have the training for and I don’t have the time for. I tell her this. And I’m also telling her that I do happen to know this PI who owes me a big favour. And at that very moment I heard your dulcet tones on the morning air. Bit like St Joan hearing the bells.’

‘She the one got barbecued?’ said Joe hopefully. ‘Listen, Butcher, before we go any further, let’s just establish how big this favour is. Do I gather you got something from good old Piers? I mean something more than a very good time. Looks to me like you’ve come straight from the station.’

His detective sensors might not be state-of-the-art, but he’d registered that instead of her normal working uniform of jeans and T-shirt, Butcher was wearing a nifty green and orange dress which clung above, and stopped not much short of Gallie Hacker’s plimsoll line below. Just the job for a cosy supper with a wet Wykehamist.

She lit one of her foul cheroots, perhaps to hide a blush, and said, ‘Sixsmith, with those attitudes, I’ll get Piers to put you up for the Carlton.’

‘As a target, you mean,’ said Joe. ‘OK. So let’s have the pillow talk.’

‘You be careful,’ she said. ‘OK. Here it is. This war criminals in Britain thing has been rumbling on for years now. Since way back when, a combined task force from the Home Office who’ve got the records and the Yard who’ve got the investigatory know-how, has been digging deep to see if in fact there is anyone living here it would be safe to prosecute. Opinion both in and outside the House is divided between those who think that no prosecution could be safe, either legally or ethnically, and those who think the bastards should be pursued to the ends of the earth or their lives, whichever comes first.’

‘How do you feel?’ asked Joe.

‘Let’s save that for sometime when I’ve got some time,’ she said. ‘For the moment, as one of your great predecessors said, just the facts, Joe, just the facts. Of course, as this is an official government enquiry and highly classified, it’s got more leaks than a Liberian tanker. It seems they’ve got it down to three main groups. First is a handful of highly probables. Second is a larger number of pretty possibles, and the third is a still larger group of could-be-worth-a-closer-looks.’

‘And Taras Kovalko’s on one of these lists?’ said Joe unhappily. ‘Which one?’

‘Just the third,’ said Butcher. It should have sounded more reassuring than it did.

‘And it’s definitely him?’

‘Piers’s informant says there’s a Manchester address crossed out with a note, moved to Luton area.’

‘Can’t be very important if they don’t have the exact address,’ said Joe.

‘Don’t fool yourself. There’ll be a file with the Hackers’ address in it somewhere.’

‘A file? Hey, that makes it sound real heavy. Surely no one’s that bothered about this third list?’

‘You’re right, that’s what Piers says. But he also says if someone official has decided to take a closer look at your Mr Kovalko, that bumps him right up out of list three into list two at the least. Sorry, Joe. And that’s all Piers was able to get with a couple of phone calls. Any more will be word of mouth in the Turkish baths stuff. So, have we got a deal?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Joe in a depressed voice. ‘I mean, yes, of course we have. I make a bargain, I stick to it. Don’t know how I’m going to set about it but I’ll try to take a look at this randy schoolmaster of yours.’

‘Ah,’ said Butcher. ‘Didn’t I say? Not a schoolmaster exactly.’

It took Joe a moment to register this.

‘You mean, a lady teacher?’ he said aghast. ‘But women don’t do things like that!’

Butcher sighed and said, ‘I’d need notice of that remark to decide if it’s sexist or not. Listen, Joe. Don’t be deceived. Anything a man can do, a woman can be cleverer at, and this Georgina Woodbine is a real operator. Couple of years back there was a Grandison girl, Eileen Montgomery, fell off an edge during a school expedition to the Peak District. There were rumours of emotional upset, suicide attempt, and so on, but the teacher in charge, deputy head Georgie Woodbine, came out squeaky clean. So take care. It’s the same in a comp as in any business. You don’t get to the top without knowing how to cover your tracks with other people’s careers.’

But only one word of all this was really registering with Joe.

‘Woodbine?’ he said. ‘You keep on saying Woodbine. Nothing to do with …’

He didn’t even like to voice the idea. But Butcher had no such qualms.

‘Oh yes,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Georgina Woodbine, dearly beloved wife of Detective Chief Inspector, no, I beg his pardon, Superintendent Willie Woodbine. Didn’t I mention it? Sorry, Joe. It must have slipped my mind.’

5

Luton on a bright autumn morning, with the impartial sun gilding the tower of St Monkey’s, the dome of the Sikh temple, and the Clint Eastwood inflatable above Dirty Harry’s, was not a bad place to be, but Joe felt little of his customary filial pride as he drove to the office.

‘Whitey,’ he said, ‘there has to be something better than investigating things I don’t want to investigate for clients who ain’t going to pay. What say we run away to sea?’

The cat sleeping on the passenger seat opened the eye in the white eye patch which, luckily or unluckily depending where you got your hangups, stopped him from being completely black, and fixed Joe with a gaze which said, you’re on your own, sailor!

Maybe I set my sights too high, thought Joe. Maybe if I devoted myself to begging packets of cheese and onion crisps and ashtrays full of beer down the Glit, I’d be happy too.

Whitey yawned widely. The message was clear. You don’t have the talent for it. Stick to what you know.

A little while later they arrived at the office which was housed in the kind of building where small businesses went to die.

Joe picked up his mail. It was junk except for Pius Thoughts, the journal of PIU, the Private Investigators’ Union. Ignoring the tiny lift which Whitey, who valued his skin above rubies, refused to enter, he laboured upstairs after the cat. In the office, he went through the ritual of checking his answerphone and his desk diary. No calls, no appointments. He wrote Galina Hacker 12.30 in the diary. It looked better, but he preferred the blank page.

Next he filled his kettle in the tiny washroom, plugged it into the skirting board socket and nudged it on with his foot. While it boiled he improved the shining hour by cleaning out Whitey’s litter tray, a job too long postponed. The cat watched with the idle interest of a man in a bus queue watching a navvy dig a hole. Then, when Joe had finished, he stepped daintily on to the pristine litter and crapped copiously.

‘Why do you always do that?’ demanded Joe. ‘Time for that is before I clean things up.’

Whitey gave him a look which wondered how an intelligent being, or even a human, could imagine he was going to use a soiled tray, jumped into the bottom desk drawer and went to sleep. Joe flung the windows open, cleaned the tray again, made a pot of tea, and settled down in his chair with Pius Thoughts. There was an article on ‘Combating Stake-Out Fatigue Syndrome’ which looked interesting. He got through two paragraphs and fell asleep.

He was awoken by Aunt Mirabelle’s voice and looked around for her in disorientated panic till he realized he’d forgotten to turn off his answerphone.

‘I know you’re there, Joseph. I can feel it,’ she was declaiming. ‘So you come out from behind this ungodly machine and speak to me plain.’

There was no point in pretending. He picked up the phone.

‘Morning, Auntie,’ he said.

‘Good morning to you, Joseph. How long is it since you seen Beryl?’

‘Saw her last night at the rehearsal, remember?’

‘Not likely to forget, the things you got up to, am I?’ retorted Mirabelle. ‘I mean, seen to talk to, take out? You’ve been neglecting that girl.’

‘Auntie, what’s to neglect? Beryl and me’s just friends, not a couple, courting or anything like that …’

‘Courting? You don’t know the meaning of the word! But that’s no reason not to be polite and pass the time of day instead of sneaking off to that sin-hole of yours to meet that trollop you’re making a fool of yourself with!’

He’d been right. Even in the Glit, Mirabelle’s agents kept their eternal vigil.

‘Auntie, the Glit’s a pub, the girl’s a client …’

‘You her client, more likely! Joseph, you stick with Beryl. If it’s little Desmond who bothers you, he’s a nice kid and once you get two, three more of your own, you’ll hardly notice him!’

‘Auntie, I’ve got to go out. On business …’

‘Business? What business? Only business you and that cat have got is lying around all day seeing who can sleep the longest. Tell you what. You can pick me up, drive me to rehearsal tonight. Give me a chance to have a good close talk without you running off somewhere.’

Joe desperately tried to think of an acceptable excuse.

‘Auntie, I’m not sure I can make it tonight …’

He was saved the agony of invention by Mirabelle’s outrage.

‘You not thinking of missing rehearsal, I hope, Joseph? That voice of yours gets so rough from all that profane singing you do down that hellhole, it needs all the rehearsing it can get!’

‘Yes, Auntie,’ said Joe meekly. ‘I’ll pick you up. Bye.’

He put the phone down and cleared his throat and tried a couple of notes. That wasn’t so bad, he thought. What did she mean, rough? He had a tape of The Creation in his radio cassette and he switched it on now. At first he only joined in the baritone line of the choruses, then he thought, guy who’s modest when he’s by himself must be really stuck up! And he started joining in the male solos too. When he got to Uriel’s words – with beauty, courage, strength adorned, to heaven he stands erect and tall, a man – an inbuilt sense of irony made him break into the little soft shoe shuffle which had them beating the tables at the Glit on Karaoke Nite.

He wondered which would offend Mirabelle more – the outrage to religion or to music. Himself, he felt they were both big enough to take anything he could throw at them. But when he reached the partner for him formed, a woman fair and graceful spouse, his thoughts turned to Mirabelle’s attempts to marry him off, and to Beryl Boddington.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like her. In fact, of all Mirabelle’s candidates for his hand, she was way ahead of the field. Not that this meant much when you considered many of the others didn’t even make it out of the starting gate!

Thing was that Mirabelle’s hopes for his happiness, plus her real affection for him, plus her family pride, didn’t combine to dull her sense of reality.

‘Joe’s the kind of catch a one-armed woman might be glad to get a hold of,’ she opined to her coven of confidantes.

And whenever a woman came her way who seemed in need of a man and not well placed to be choosy, Mirabelle pounced.

Beryl’s ‘disability’ in Mirabelle’s eyes was the existence of a young son, Desmond, without benefit of clergy. In Joe’s eyes her only ‘disability’ was being elected by Mirabelle which, coupled with his own ‘disability’ of having got pretty near forty without getting caught, made him naturally wary.

‘Getting caught’ was, he knew, a deplorably politically incorrect way of looking at marriage, but it had been the received wisdom at Robco Engineering where he’d spent the first twenty years of his working life, and that was an indoctrination harder to throw off than a Jesuit education.

To be fair, Beryl had shown little sign that she was interested in getting caught either, and so far their occasional dates had ended with nothing more than the swooning softness of a good night kiss, leaving him to soothe his frustration with the thought that once more he’d pulled back from the brink. Except of course there was no escaping the fact that it was her push rather than his pull which kept him from falling!

Nevertheless, a relationship undoubtedly existed. He tried to imagine how he’d feel if Beryl took up with some other fellow, found he didn’t care for the feeling, so switched it off.

Sometimes it wasn’t such a bad thing not having one of those creative minds.

Galina was dead on time. As soon as he saw her Joe felt guilty. Last night he’d had no compunction about asking her to come to the office. But back in her building society mode she was a very different kettle of fish from the exotic alien of the Glit, and he came over all avuncular.

Gallie wasn’t having any of that, however.

She refused a cup of tea, settled down with the apple and low fat yoghurt she’d brought with her for lunch, and said, ‘OK, I’ve not got much time. This operative of yours find out anything?’

‘Something,’ said Joe.

Omitting any reference to Piers or Butcher, he told her about the lists.

She listened intently, her yoghurt ignored. Her face gave nothing away but Joe could feel the pain inside. She must have been hoping even more than him for an official blank.

‘So what’s it all mean, Mr Sixsmith?’ she asked.

‘My operative reckons the third list’s just there to make the numbers up,’ said Joe.

‘Why should anyone want to do that?’

‘It’s the civil service mind,’ he said. ‘Everything by threes.’

‘So there’s nothing to worry about?’

He was desperate to give her reassurance but knew he mustn’t go further than the facts warranted. He’d fallen into that trap before.

‘We can’t get away from the fact someone’s asking questions,’ he said. ‘But there’s still nothing to say for sure it’s got anything to do with these lists.’

It was the best he could do but he could see it was far from enough.

‘Just coincidence, you mean?’ she said doubtfully.

‘It happens,’ he said. ‘And even if it is connected, well, if there’s nothing to find out, then this guy will just give up and go back and say so.’

‘If?’

Building society mode or exotic alien, the look she was fixing him with was cold enough to kill.

You stupid git! Joe accused himself. Putting up the possibility that all her certainties are calculated to hide.

He played dumb. It wasn’t difficult.

‘Yeah, you know, there’s no mileage in these guys making something up. He probably found out day one there was nothing to find and he’s been spinning it out a bit for expenses. He could be back in Whitehall now wondering who to bother next.’

She shook her head.

‘I don’t think so, Mr Sixsmith,’ she said. ‘I think he’s still around and he’ll keep on digging and digging till something shows up. I’ve read about these people. They don’t ever give up.’

Joe looked at her with a heart-squeezing pity he didn’t dare show. It was herself she was talking about as much as the nosey stranger. Apart from lying in permanent ambush, Joe didn’t have a clue how he might get a line on him or what he could do if he did. But that didn’t matter. The real focal point of all this trouble was old Taras and the way he was reacting. That was where the doubt whose existence was too terrible to admit had started.

He said, ‘It might help if I could get into the club, socially, I mean. Chat to Mrs Vansovich without making her curious.’

‘That friend who brought you there last time …’

‘A client, rewarding me with a drink,’ said Joe. ‘If I ask him to invite me back, that would really make him suspicious.’

She frowned, then her face cleared.

‘There’s a family night day after tomorrow. Mum’s told Grandda he may not feel like going out, but he’s jolly well going to that! People often bring friends. I can invite you.’

‘As a friend?’ said Joe, thinking how most parents he knew would react to their little girl bringing home a ‘friend’ who was black, balding, and twice her age.

‘Why not? You are, aren’t you? Besides, people do turns. You’re a singer. Everyone down the Glit thinks you’re great. There you are. A performer, an important customer from the society, and a friend! Dead natural I should invite you, isn’t it?’

She spoke with utter conviction. Oh the youth of the heart, thought Joe. All that innocence which loving parents think is at risk when their daughters go out into the world and start painting their faces and flashing their flesh. But guilt, like charity, begins at home. It’s in the genes. It’s an hereditary disease.

‘Yeah, dead natural,’ smiled Joe.

6

Aunt Mirabelle’s favourite reading in the Good Book was the Lamentations of the prophet Jeremiah, and she had his style off to a ‘t’. On their way to St Monkey’s that night, Joe could not but admire the way in which his lousy job, his squalid lifestyle, and his terrible driving, were woven into a seamless whole.

The flow didn’t halt till the car did in St Monkey’s Square.

‘What you doing?’ demanded Mirabelle.

‘I’m going to drop you here then go find somewhere to park,’ he explained.

‘What’s wrong with that parking place back of the church?’

‘The Cloisters? I think that’s reserved for special permits.’

‘And I’m not special? You drive round there, Joseph. Good Baptist’s more special than a good Anglican any day!’

There was one space left. As Joe backed in, the Visigothic verger appeared, wearing an expression that fell a furlong or so short of Christian welcome. But when Mirabelle eased her bulk out of the car and greeted him with a hearty ‘Good evening, brother!’ he remembered urgent business elsewhere.

Pity he hadn’t been so conscientious the previous night, thought Joe. If the boy in the box had been found a couple of hours earlier, there might have been time to save him.

No sign of Mrs Calverley’s Range Rover tonight. Maybe her peep over the edge had dulled her appetite for eavesdropping on The Creation. He guessed she might have a reputation for toughness, but last night’s experience had visibly upset her.

The rehearsal went fairly well. As he sang, Joe studied the clarinettists and tried to guess which of the two young women was Mavis Dalgety’s ex-friend, Sally Eaglesfield. He settled for the smaller, darker girl who studied her music with unblinking intensity as though fearful it might blow away. He didn’t know what instrument Willie Woodbine’s wife played and as the Sinfonia was an equal opportunities orchestra with women puffing and banging and scraping everywhere, there wasn’t much hope of picking her out. Maybe the girl he thought was Sally would identify her by making a beeline for her after the rehearsal was over.

He was distracted from this bit of great detectivery by Mirabelle, who materialized at his side while the last Amen was still trembling on the air. He guessed the little side door was probably nailed up too.

‘Now look who’s there,’ she exclaimed in a tone of surprise that rang as false as a cracked bell. ‘Beryl. We were just talking about you.’

‘Hi, Mirabelle. Hi, Joe. Sorry, can’t stop to talk. I’m on my way to work.’

She was a nurse at the Royal Infirmary and, cap apart, was already kitted out in her uniform.

Mirabelle said, ‘Joseph was just saying he’d run you there, weren’t you, Joseph? All them attacks, you don’t want to be walking round there by yourself.’

There’d been a couple of recent incidents with a flasher in the hospital grounds and the police were advising extra caution till the intruder was caught.

‘Well, that’s very kind of you, Joe …’

‘No trouble at all,’ assured Mirabelle. ‘Now excuse me, I want a word with Rev. Pot.’

She moved off and Joe found Beryl regarding him quizzically. He returned the look with pleasure. She was … he sought for the right word and all he could come up with was sturdy. This was why he had to invent answers for crossword puzzles and make up his own clues to fit them. On the other hand, what was wrong with sturdy when it expressed not just a physical but a spiritual characteristic? Strong, self-reliant, dependable, trustworthy …

‘What are you staring at, Joe?’ she asked.

‘You. You look great,’ he said. Smooth talker he might not be, but he knew better than to offer sturdy as a compliment. Not that sturdiness meant lack of shape. And those wide brown eyes and full red lips …

The full red lips opened to show strong white teeth in a moist pink mouth as she yawned.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Nothing to do with you.’

He looked even more closely at her and saw that as well as sturdy and great she looked tired.

‘You getting any sleep?’ he asked.

‘Surely. Between getting home in the morning, doing the chores, and picking Desmond up from school at three, I usually manage to snatch a couple of minutes,’ she laughed. ‘Are you serious about this lift?’

He led her out to the Cloisters.

‘Going up in the world, aren’t we?’ she mocked. ‘I thought only the nobs got to park here?’

‘I’m Tin Can’s token PI,’ said Joe.

She laughed. He liked making her laugh.

In the car he said, ‘You so tired, why don’t you let your sister pick Desmond up?’

‘Already she gives him his breakfast, drops him off at school. If I’m not there to pick him up, he’s going to start thinking I’m his auntie, Lucy’s his ma.’

‘At least you could duck the odd rehearsal till you’re off nights.’

She let out a gasp of mock horror.

‘You want Rev. Pot to nail me to his penitent stool? No, the singing’s no sweat. In fact, when I hear that music and open my mouth, it’s about the only time I stop feeling tired. Gives you a bigger hit than ganja, don’t you feel that, Joe?’

‘You wouldn’t expect a clean-living boy to know anything about that, would you?’ said Joe.

‘This the same clean-living boy who’s running around with the Mutant from Planet X?’

‘Beryl, let me tell you about Galina …’

‘Joe, it’s OK,’ she said. ‘I’m only joking. It’s none of my business. Just like what’s mine is none of yours, OK? This’ll do.’

Obediently he stopped the car and she was out of the door before he realized they weren’t at the Infirmary’s main gate but at a side entrance which ran between the path labs and research blocks. Beyond these buildings she could either follow the service road to the main block or take a tree-shaded pathway which curved through the grounds to the nursing wards, cutting off several miles of corridor.

He didn’t doubt which way she’d go, and he didn’t doubt which way Mirabelle would go if she heard he’d let Beryl loose unaccompanied.

‘Hold on!’ cried Joe.

From beneath his seat he took a heavy steel spanner about a foot long, with tape bound around the handle to provide a firmer grip. This had been a present from Merv Golightly whose constant companion in his taxi was a monstrous lug wrench called Percy. The mere sight of Merv’s lanky figure twirling Percy like a conductor’s baton was usually enough to subdue most troublemakers. In Joe’s line of business, a similar aid was very necessary, opined Merv, and Little Perce had been the result. Joe, who found violence either coming from him or aimed at him very scary, had never found occasion to use it. But there wasn’t much point offering himself as Beryl’s defender if all his defence consisted of was warding off blows with his head.

Fearful of the woman’s ridicule, however, he took the precaution of slipping Little Perce up his jacket sleeve before pursuing her.

‘Joe, what are you doing here?’ she demanded as he caught up with her.

‘I promised Mirabelle I’d see you safe,’ he panted, thinking maybe he should take up Merv’s invitation to start working out with him at the Hoplite Health Club.

‘Now look, Joe,’ she said, beginning to sound angry, ‘I can look after myself …’

‘You can, maybe,’ he interrupted. ‘What about me? You want I should be more afraid of you than of Mirabelle?’

She shook her head, laughing.

‘Joe, sometimes you’re so down to earth, I can’t see how you can bear to keep on playing this PI game. You must be able to see you’re not cut out for it. Most of the time you make no money, so all you’re doing being so-called self-employed is stopping your entitlement to benefit.’

‘You think I’d be better sitting on my butt, waiting for my giro?’ he said fiercely.

‘Could be. In any case, things are getting better, or so they keep telling us. There’ll be jobs to go for …’

‘You taken a good look at me lately, girl? Jobs will come slow and I’ll be way, way down the queue. Also, what do I want with another job so I can punch a clock for a few more years always wondering when it’ll punch back and tell me I’m surplus to requirements again? Leastways, being my own boss, my so-called friends can tell me I’m useless, but they can’t dump me for it!’

They strode on, each so deep in a confusion of feeling that they could probably have run a whole gauntlet of flashers without noticing. When they reached the buildings, Joe stopped and said, ‘I’ll be on my way now.’

‘You still here, Joe?’ she said with a good affectation of surprise. ‘Well, thanks for the lift.’

‘Yeah, well, that’s OK,’ said Joe, feeling both wretched and indignant. He turned to go but had only taken a few steps when she caught his arm.

‘Hey, don’t I get a farewell kiss?’

He aimed at her cheek. She gave him her lips, briefly but fully.

As she stepped away she said, ‘Friends don’t think you’re useless, Joe. They just worry about you. That’s what friends are for. You fall out, then you kiss and make up.’

‘Don’t think I’m quite made up yet,’ he said, moving towards her again.

She turned away, laughing.

‘Only way to get another kiss here is have a heart attack, Joe,’ she tossed over her shoulder.

Could be that’s what I’m doing, thought Joe, watching her go. The way her body moved beneath the blue and white skirt, sturdy was no longer the word that came to mind.

He wandered back beneath the arching trees, letting his fancy drift at will. No harm in thinking, was there? But he was no sadist, so why was his fancy making Beryl scream as he unbuttoned her uniform?

Suddenly he was out of his imagined embrace and back in the real black autumn night with a chill wind rustling the dead leaves at his feet and somewhere to the left of him where the darkness was deepest the tail end of a long scream fading away into the night.

‘Oh shoot!’ said Joe.

Then he was off running, he had no idea where. He just hoped that the sound of his approach might scare any attacker off. Ahead loomed a clump of trees, blacker lines against the blackness. He swerved to skirt them, then one of the black lines moved and hit him so hard in the stomach he collapsed on the grass retching.

A moment later he was dragged to his feet by his collar and a torch beam shone in his face.

‘Gotcha!’ said a voice. ‘Hey, don’t I know you?’

There was something familiar about the voice … an accent … and in the light spilling back from his own face to his captor’s he made out just enough to trigger his memory.

‘You’re Forton’s mate,’ he croaked. ‘Sandy … last night … St Monkey’s … Joe Sixsmith …’

‘That’s right. Deano warned me about you but he didn’t say you were into this!’

‘Into what?’ gasped Joe. ‘I’ve just been up to the hospital … one of the nurses …’

He made the mistake of gesturing with his arm in the direction of the hospital. There was a dull thud as Little Perce shot out of his sleeve and hit the ground.

‘And what’s this? A prescription?’ demanded the constable, scooping it up. ‘Sixsmith, you’re nicked!’

7

In The Lost Traveller’s Guide, a page and a half of Luton’s ten-page entry is deservedly set aside for the Central Police Station. Designed by the same hand that conjured up St Monkey’s, it is as much a monument to secular law as the church is to divine. No citizen can pass by that imposing façade without feeling the safer for it. No criminal can pass beneath that blue-lamped portico without feeling the sorrier for it.

Lutonians are proud of their police station, but it must be admitted it wouldn’t have survived the bulldozing sixties if some foresighted councillor hadn’t got it registered as a listed building. From time to time plans are still put forward to build a glass and concrete blockhouse on a few acres of green belt and turn the old building into a heritage centre or DIY supermarket or something. But the City Fathers, aware that cold, draughty and damp conditions produce a certain desirable cast of mind in crooks and cops alike, wisely refuse to be moved.

Joe Sixsmith, as a good citizen, approved their wisdom. Seated in a barred-windowed, cracked-panelled, flaking-painted, musty-smelling interview room which not even the presence of a piece of hi-tech recording equipment could drag out of the Middle Ages, he felt ready to confess to anything.

What PC Sandy Mackay wanted him to confess to was being the Infirmary flasher. Joe was the young man’s first significant collar and he was reluctant to let him go without a result. In this he was actively encouraged by Detective Sergeant Chivers who, though less deeply persuaded of Joe’s guilt in this particular instance, had a somewhat démodé belief that all things evened themselves out before the Great Chief Constable in the sky, and low lifes like Joe got away with so much that sending them down for anything was a kind of wild justice.

An hour’s hard questioning had reduced even Chivers’s hoped for options.

‘Whatever happens, we’ll do you for carrying an offensive weapon,’ he assured Joe.

‘Defensive,’ said Joe.

‘Offensive,’ said Chivers grimly. ‘That’s what I reckon you are, Sixsmith. And that’s what I reckon anything to do with you is.’

The door opened. Willie Woodbine’s head appeared. He said, ‘Sergeant, a word.’

Chivers noted the suspension of the interview and the time on the tape and switched it off. Then he followed Woodbine out into the corridor.

The door which looked like it had been used as an interrogation aid in the unreconstructed past didn’t fit properly and eased back open an inch. This was enough to permit Joe and PC Sandy to overhear what was being said.

‘What the chuff’s going on in there?’ demanded Woodbine.

Chivers explained, or tried to.

Woodbine interrupted, ‘This nurse who was flashed at tonight, the one who screamed, you’ve talked to her, I presume?’

‘Yes, of course …’

‘And did she say it was a black man or a white man who did the flashing?’

‘Well, it was pretty gloomy …’

‘Come on, Sergeant, she’s a nurse. First thing they learn is to tell the difference between a black dick and a white dick. Which did she say it was?’

‘White, she thought, but …’

‘And this nurse Sixsmith claims he was escorting to the wards, she confirms his story?’

‘Yes, but she’s his fancy woman, isn’t she? Say anything to get him off the hook …’

‘That’s right. And do anything too, you’d say? Well, I’ll tell you what she’s done, Sergeant. She’s rung that bitch Butcher, and that bitch Butcher’s rung me and demanded to know if we’re holding her client Joseph Sixsmith, and has he been arrested, and on what charge? And she says this isn’t the first time her client has been harassed by my officers and this time she’s going to see he sues the arse off us. And she’s on her way now, Sergeant, and what am I going to tell her?’

‘Well, there’s always the offensive weapon, sir …’

‘Offensive weapon? That’s Joe Sixsmith you’ve got in there. You may not like the man, and maybe you ought to ask yourself why you don’t like him, but please reassure me, you’re not so far gone you don’t know he’s not violent! Offensive weapon? If you gave him a sub-machine gun, he’d probably try to get Radio 2 on it! No, you want violence, you ought to listen to that bitch Butcher! Get out of my way!’

The door swung fully open. Joe and Sandy who’d been sitting looking at each other expressionlessly turned their heads to see Woodbine smiling down at them.

‘Joe, how’ve you been? It’s good of you to help us out like this again. Sorry we had to put you in here while I was on my way, but I don’t leave Chivers the key to the executive washroom, you with me? Come on upstairs now. Sergeant, rustle us up some coffee, will you? And I daresay I can find a drop of the Caledonian Cream to keep the cold out.’

Two minutes later Joe found himself in a deep armchair in Woodbine’s office. Here the oak panelling shone with a deep sheen, the broad windows were covered with rich brocaded curtains, and the paintwork was as smooth and perfect as a model’s make-up.

‘Now, take me through it again,’ said Woodbine, putting on an expression of fascinated interest.

‘Er, through what, exactly?’ said Joe.

‘Through your very brave attempt to apprehend this weirdo who’s been terrorizing those poor nurses,’ said Woodbine.

So Joe took him through it again. When he reached the point of his arrest, the superintendent sucked in his breath and said, ‘Silly lad. But he’s young, Joe. And Scottish. You’ve got to make allowances. I’ll see he apologizes. Some more Scotch? No? So how’s life treating you, Joe? Anything I can help with, you’ve only got to ask.’

Well, you could tell me about your wife’s sex life, thought Joe. No, perhaps not. His eye ran over Woodbine’s untidy desk. There was a file open on it, and some photographs.

Joe said, ‘That boy in the box at St Monkey’s. Anything on him yet?’

‘What’s your interest?’ said Woodbine sharply.

‘Well, I found him, didn’t I?’ said Joe defensively.

The smile which had vanished from Woodbine’s face returned and he said, ‘So you did. Can’t stop running into trouble, can you, Joe?’

‘Thought I wasn’t in trouble,’ said Joe.

‘Of course you’re not. As for the boy, can’t tell you anything, sorry. Not my department really, not unless it turned out to be murder, which I doubt.’

As he spoke, he swept the papers on his desk together and closed the file.

And Joe, though he couldn’t be absolutely sure upside down, wondered why, if it wasn’t Woodbine’s department, the super happened to have what looked very much like a photo of the dead boy’s face in front of him?

There was a tap at the door and Chivers’s head appeared.

‘Miss Butcher to see you, sir,’ he said.

Butcher was only five-two and built like a Third World waif, but she came in like the Queen’s Champion at a trial by combat.

‘You OK, Joe?’ she asked. ‘Superintendent, I’d like a word alone with my client.’

‘By all means,’ said Woodbine. ‘We’re finished here anyway. Thanks again for your help, Joe. By the way, I’m having a little do Sunday lunchtime to celebrate my promotion, say thanks to everyone who’s helped and encouraged me. It wouldn’t be complete without you. Do try to make it, midday, very informal, bubbles and a bit of a buffet is what my good lady’s got in mind. Do try to come.’

He put his arm across Joe’s shoulders and urged him gently to the door.

‘Yeah, well, thanks a lot, Superintendent …’

‘Make it Willie on Sunday, eh?’ breathed Woodbine in his ear. ‘Keep the formality for in front of the troops!’

‘Yeah sure,’ said Joe. ‘Willie on Sunday it is. Goodbye now.’

As they walked down the ornate Victorian staircase, he said, ‘Hey, thanks for coming.’

‘Don’t know why I bother; Woodbine’s obviously got you all dusted down and gift wrapped. So fill me in. Just what happened to put you into bed with that smarmy fascist?’

‘He’s OK, really,’ said Joe. He described the evening’s events which Butcher listened to with much shaking of her head.

‘Sixsmith,’ she said, ‘you’ve got such a talent for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, I bet you were born in a different hospital from the one they took your mother to.’

This was a touch too subtle for Joe so he let it go.

Outside, he found his car parked in front of the station with Little Perce on the passenger seat. Butcher headed for hers which was parked in a space marked Chief Constable.

‘Hey, I’m sorry you got dragged out like this,’ he called after her.

‘That’s OK. It was worth it. Sight of me made him ladle on the old pals act so much, you got an invite to his party. Now you’ll be able to take a real close-up look at Mrs Georgie, won’t you?’

‘Hey, no,’ said Joe in alarm. ‘I’m going to no party …’

‘You don’t, I’ll go and I’ll say you sent me,’ she retorted. Then she began to laugh.

‘What?’ said Joe.

‘Willie on Sunday it is!’ she gurgled. ‘Sixsmith, one way or another, you may yet be the death of me!’

8

Saturday night came and Joe found he was greeted at the Uke with much less hostility from Gallie’s parents than he’d expected.

As he helped the girl carry a round of drinks from the bar, she whispered in his ear, ‘By the way, I told Mum you were gay. You know how they worry.’

‘You what?’ said Joe, but she just laughed and then they were back at the table. So much for innocence. Now he’d have to find a way of disabusing the Hackers. Not because he felt demeaned or anything. Nothing wrong with being gay. If you were, that is. But if you weren’t, and the Hackers found out he wasn’t, they might start thinking he’d told their daughter he was to lull her into a false sense of security before he pounced. Or was he being paranoid?

Whatever, here and now wasn’t the time, not till they’d got to know him a bit better. But he was dismayed to find himself checking his speech and gestures for anything camp!

A native Lutonian, George Hacker was easy to get on with once he discovered in Joe a shared interest in the ups and downs of the town’s football club. Galina, his wife, eyed Joe much more warily at first. She was a broader, less angular version of her daughter and still retained the strong Manchester accent of her youth. She hit Joe with a volley of probing questions which he answered with an openness as natural as her curiosity till Gallie said, ‘What’s up, Mum? Think Joe’s an illegal immigrant or something.’

‘Don’t be daft!’ said her mother flushing. ‘I just like to know about folk. I’m sure Mr Sixsmith is just as interested in knowing about us.’

‘Course I am,’ said Joe, seizing this heaven-sent opportunity. ‘You from the Ukraine yourself then, Mrs Hacker?’

‘Not me,’ she laughed. ‘Manchester born and bred. My dad settled there after the war, isn’t that right, Father?’

Taras Kovalko took enough time to give the impression this was a question needing serious consideration before he nodded his head. It was a fine head with a strong-featured, deep-lined face beneath a crown of unruly white hair. His daughter had inherited his shrewd watchful eyes, but while her gaze had the unselfish wariness of a mother concerned for her daughter, the old man’s had more of the suspicious cornered animal in it …

Steady, boy, thought Joe, uneasy at this sudden flight of imagination. You’ll be writing poetry next.

‘Must’ve been hard, settling down in a new country like that, Mr Kovalko,’ he said.

‘You say so? How did you find it?’

The overlay of Lancashire on his native accent gave a rather comic effect, but it would have taken a braver as well as a ruder man than Joe to show amusement.

‘I was born here in Luton,’ explained Joe. He’d already told the daughter this and the old man had been listening keenly. So was his reply an attempt at diversion?

He said, ‘You ever go back home? To the Ukraine, I mean? Vinnitsa, isn’t it?’

The mention of the city brought the eyes into direct contact with his for a moment, then they dropped to the half empty spirit glass before him.

‘No,’ he said. ‘There is nothing for me there. No family, no friends. My life is here now. Has been here for nearly fifty years. I am an Englishman now. Like you.’

He tossed back the rest of his drink and put the glass on the table with an emphatic bang.

‘English he might be but he still likes the old firewater, isn’t that right, Taras?’ laughed George Hacker. He picked up the glass and headed for the bar.

Joe said, ‘You still come here though, to the Uke.’

Kovalko shrugged.

‘Old parents need a place to go so they are not always under their children’s feet. This is as good as any other place.’

‘Must bring back memories, all the same,’ said Joe. ‘Just hearing the old language for instance.’

Kovalko said, ‘Look around, Mr Sixsmith. How many here speak the old language, do you think?’

‘How many’s it take to have a conversation?’ said Joe. ‘In any case, aren’t there more people coming now from the old country, especially since it got its independence back?’

‘Independence? From what? They lose one yoke, they will rush to put on another,’ said Kovalko cynically. ‘Pray to God they can do it without finding an excuse to fight each other.’

‘I didn’t know there was any chance of that in the Ukraine,’ said Joe.

‘We are talking about human beings. Violence is always a possibility. All that the good society can do is minimize opportunity, either to perform it or provoke it. But absolute control is impossible. There must be streets and pubs even in Luton that you will not visit alone after dark, Mr Sixsmith.’

‘Because I’m black, you mean?’ said Joe. ‘Yeah, well, maybe …’

I’m being diverted again, he thought.

He said, ‘I don’t say I wouldn’t run for cover if the Nazis ever took over here. But doesn’t history show that in the end they always get beaten because there’s more inside most people that wants to live in peace with other people than wants to fight them? Shoot, you must know this better than anybody. Must have been times when the Nazis took over your country and started shipping off the Jews to the extermination camps and folk like yourself to the forced labour camps that you felt this was it, the end, nowhere else for the human race to go. But we won, and you’re here, and you’ve got your family, so the best is always possible as well as the worst. Nothing for you to feel guilty about.’

‘Guilty? What do you mean, guilty?’ demanded Kovalko, the hand on the table clenching into a fist.

‘Hey, it’s all right. All I meant was, people can get to feel guilty ’cos they made it through bad times while a lot of other folk didn’t. But it’s OK. What you’ve got here, you got for all those others too. They didn’t make it, sure, but the Nazis didn’t make it either. You’re here. The guys who ran the death camps aren’t. They’re long gone.’

This was pushing it, but there might not be another chance to push so hard and test a reaction. There was none, unless absolute stillness, almost to the point of catalepsy, counted. Then George came back with the drink which he put down in front of his father-in-law with a cheery, ‘There you go, Taras.’

The clenched fingers uncoiled, seized the glass and tossed the drink down in a single movement.

‘Hey, you must really have needed that,’ said George. ‘You in one of them moods, we’d better buy you a bottle!’

A sudden explosion of microphone static removed the need for Taras to reply. A small man in a plum-coloured jacket had appeared on a dais alongside the door to the kitchen. When finally he got the relationship between his mouth and the mike right, he said, ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, nice to see so many of our members here with their families and friends. As you know, tonight’s the night when we entertain ourselves and hopefully each other. Everyone will get a chance, but to start with we have a very old favourite of us all with a song from the old country, your friend and mine, Yulia Vansovich!’

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