The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 10

TEA FOR TWO by Sally Spedding

THE FUZZ AND me have never exactly been bosom pals, but for the last four months, I’ve been keeping my nose extra clean. Doing all right with my own space, some cash in the bank from knowing one end of a greyhound from the other, until I spotted an unmarked Escort hanging around my bedsit in Ennis Street by Bethnal Green Tube. Then this Suit got out – all six feet of him – and stared up at my fourth-floor window.

“I’ve not an earthly why we’re doing this,” I complained to him some five minutes later. “Waste of a good morning if you ask me.”

“Just need to sort a few things out,” he said, and not a lot since. So I reasoned with myself the sooner we got this over with, the sooner I could go to Walthamstow for the dogs, like I’d planned.

Now it’s just me and this too-tight Suit in “The Box” at the local lockup, staring at a grainy black-and-white photo that’s obviously been enlarged.

“Take me back to the beginning when you were a kid,” he says. “And no short-cuts.”

“Why?”

“Patience, Mr Dwyer. I’m the one asking the questions, remember?”

I swallow bile that’s crept up my throat. I’m trying to keep calm.

“There I am, in the distance, walking away from them others,” I say, pointing at the skinniest kid with the whitest legs. “See? D’you need a magnifying glass?”

“No, Mr Dwyer. Just some answers. Why were you walking away?”

“Fed up of being called Fatso, Big Ears and the rest. I remember thinking I’d better things to do than hang around taking shit like that.”

“Just you?”

“Yes.”

“Think again.”

“I don’t get it,” I say. “You had a tip-off?”

“What about?”

This is a trick…

“Nothing.”

I was brought here hot and sweaty, but not any more. Quite the opposite. I’m looking for my gloves to warm up my fingers, but they’ve gone missing.

“How about the evening of September the tenth 1950?” he goes on, and I can’t help sneaking a look at his shaved neck. His clean, shiny skin.

Like I’ve said, I’ve never trusted the Fuzz. Why should I, given my history? But this one, young enough to be my own son, seems kosher enough. Even the brew he’s brought in for me is drinkable. Although his smile is meant to crack my memory that’s hardened like cement, you try recalling stuff that happened that long ago. It’s no joke, ’specially since there’s been so much water under the bridge – Tower Bridge, to be precise – more my home then than the one I was supposed to go back to every night.

162, Rosehill Street, Rotherhithe, if you must know. With not a bloody rose or a hill in sight.

“It’s important you take me through exactly what happened.” The Suit. Slips a new tape into his recorder. Clicks it on. The sound makes me jump, and he notices. “Are you comfortable? Or would you prefer a softer chair?”

I don’t answer. His tone of voice has changed, making my pulse slow up and a growing shadow fill my mind. “You’re suspecting me of summat, right?” I say. I can’t help myself. It just comes out.

“And what might that be?” He smiles again; this time showing big white teeth. All his own. Lucky not to have had ’em out like I did as a kid, to save on dentists. Come to think of it, there’s something about his expression that rings a bell, but for the life of me, I can’t think why. He pushes the photo even closer towards me until it rests in a beam of sunlight from the one barred window. I need to be careful.

Then I remember that same sun beginning to drop in the late-afternoon sky, making our shadows longer than we were, and that rusty old barge – the May Queen – moored just off the stony beach, glow like the lippy my step-mum wore before her nights out.

“Freddie’s the one on the right, bending down. Am I correct?” says The Suit.

“Yessir. Freddie Miles. Smiley for short. He were a right bastard.”

My inquisitor’s Adam’s apple bobs up and down in his throat. I wonder if I’ve put a foot wrong. My warder in the Scrubs warned me to be deferential with the Fuzz at all times, to the point of actually browning my nose. So here I am, doing like he said.

“What’s he up to in this photo?”

“Picking up the biggest stones. Then we’d make a right huge pile…”

“Why?”

“Ammo, ’course. Even though the war was well over, he’d pretend the Boche were still about to come up river, and he’d be Churchill, seeing them off.”

“Are these other boys doing the same? The Thomas brothers – Geraint and Dafydd – and the Robinson triplets?” The Suit’s chewed forefinger points at the left-hand side of the photograph where the other five lads are busy obeying orders…

If there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s people who eat their own skin. I wonder if he’s been at it since he was a kid…He’s remembered all the names, mind. Even though I’ve only told him the once.

“They was his slaves too,” I explain. “His ‘Gatherers’. Nobody took offence at that, ’cept me and Dafydd. Funny you mention the Thomases. Never saw hide nor hair of them after Guy Fawkes Night. Like they’d never existed…”

He gets up. Goes over to the bare noticeboard. If this is a ploy to help me remember more, it doesn’t. “One of them vanished sometime before November the fifth. Did you know that, Mr Dwyer? It’s been a cold case since then.”

I’m trying not to blink. Nor show any emotions. Something else the Scrubs has taught me.

“Which one’s that?”

“Dafydd. There he is. The smallest. And after that Christmas, having given up the search for him, the rest of the family emigrated. So we discovered. ”

“Why pick on me? Where’s the rest of ’em lads?”

“I’m not at liberty to say. Besides most of the gang have either died or live outside our jurisdiction.” He sits down again and his nose catches the sun while the tape recorder makes a sudden hissing sound. He corrects it. Leans forward towards me with another question on his lips. But I beat him to it. Not to ask what jurisdiction means, but something far more important. “Who took this photo?”

“That’s not for you to worry about.”

“Has someone sent it you, after all these years?”

A nod.

“I’d like a lawyer to be present.”

“That’s not appropriate, Mr Dwyer. May I call you Carl? This is just an informal chat…”

With both chairs and the table between us welded to the floor? With another Fuzz hovering outside the door, and a large glass panel taking up most of the opposite wall? The kind you see on TV cop shows? Come on, mate, pull the other one…

“Another tea, Carl?” he asks.

“You’re taking the piss. If you think I had anything to do with… with…”

“Dafydd’s death?” He switches off his machine. Eyebrows raised. “When you were still in short trousers, but old enough to know better?”

Death? Jesus Christ…

“Then I’m using my right to silence.”

“Up to you.” He stands up for the second time and pockets the neat gadget with my answers still inside. I notice the carotid jumping in his neck. He’s not as calm as he pretends. While the sun goes in, he taps on the door to be let out, then turns towards me. “Remember, from now on we’ll be breathing down your neck, so no moving away, eh? No contacting any of the others, unless you want another sojourn in the Scrubs. Think about it, Carl.”

And I do. ’Specially the slopping out…

For seven whole days, I avoided anywhere with fucking CCTV, which didn’t leave me much choice, but now needs must. At Baba’s Internet café, the Somalian guy takes my three quid and shows me into a pre-fab extension at the back, where I can work. I’ve done two IT skills courses in the past four years, so the internet’s no problem. But Dafydd Thomas is. Nothing on him at all. Nor any of the others in the gang. More and more, I’m beginning to feel something’s amiss.

Instinct tells me to try and find where those Taffies, who’d come from Port Talbot, ended up. Then I remember the ‘death’ word. Each death needs a certificate which is open to public scrutiny.

Rotherhithe Register Office is just a ten-minute bus ride away.

There’s always someone happy to make you feel like a jerk, and the wanker in the reception area proves my point. For a start, he can barely be arsed to look up from his computer.

“It’s Kew you want,” he says at last, and I notice how his lips are cracked and dry. His skin like a map of red rivers. Quite different from that moisturized Suit who kept me on my own for a further half-hour to “have a rethink”.

Bollocks.

“You’ll need some ID. A driving licence, utility bill, etcetera,” the geek goes on. “And it costs…” He then looks up at me and my crap clothes as if to say, “don’t bother”. I have to admit, he’s right. There are too many obstacles. Time for that rethink, to get my memory up and running before it’s too late.

I don’t recognize the place at all. Hell, no. Tarted up with new shingle, and where us kids used to race each other on to it, is a bistro complete with red parasols fluttering in the hot breeze. I hesitate for a moment. It’s not just the temperature sealing my nylon shirt to my back, but being there again.

“You OK, sir?” A uniform has suddenly materialized alongside me. One of those Community Police Officers. Some jobless git in fluorescent yellow fancy dress. “I can fetch you a drink of water…”

“I’m pukka, ta very much. Too old for this heat, mind.”

He wanders off, ducking away from a gull about to dump on his peaked cap. Normally, I’d say “serve him right”, but I’m too busy staring at the May Queen, uglier than ever. Now painted black to match her cabin.

Yes, the cabin…

It’s cooler here under one of these parasols and, with a cold Stella in my hand, I feel those intervening years fold away from me like a collapsing pack of cards.

Night-time, and while the other lads have gone to the chippie, Smiley’s dragging me and Dafydd towards the barge, by a rope round our necks. Neither of us can swim, but Smiley can. He can do everything, and I mean everything. Sometimes the Thames’s tarry water fills my lungs, but does he care? Why should he? Me and Dafydd who’d stood up to him when he’d branded us “fucking snitchers” for telling our teacher at Gladebrook Primary how weird he was. Not that we went there much. But she wasn’t frightened of Smiley and his rubbish family…

Dafydd’s up on deck first. No screaming, not with that rag in his gob, while my heart’s drumming so hard it feels about to burst. No moon or stars. No lights either except those feeble pinpricks along by St Paul’s, and the pong of oil and damp and the shit dribbling down Dafydd’s short trouser legs. Him with the cheeky grin and his Robertson’s golly badge proudly pinned to his home-made jumper, lies tied to the rickety old table. His clothes chucked overboard.

“I want me mam,” he grunts. “I want to go home…”

But what can I do?

Smiley’s living up to his name all right. Smiling. He produces a knife he’s nicked from somewhere and makes the first, bloody cut. “Tastes just like pork, Carl.” He licks his lips as he lowers the fork and its pink morsel of shoulder over the lit stove. “Try some.”

That’s when I throw up, and as a punishment, I have to watch till he’s eaten his fill.

How could I get any kip after that? ’Specially after doing three years for breaking and entering and GBH, which I never meant to do. Two hours a night, if I was lucky. Just as well, given the pond life I shared with. And, no, don’t talk to me about ham…

I make myself a cuppa on my bedsit’s gas ring. Nice and sweet. But why’s my hand shaking? Why do I feel as if that same shite river water’s rolling over my head again, like it did when I made my escape from the May Queen, my numb feet paddling back and forth for Britain? Because I’d just dreamed of teeth with bits of Dafydd trapped between them. The very same smile I’d seen a week ago…

The Suit had changed his name, hadn’t he? Long before he and I first met. The coward. And been on leave from the can since midnight. There’s a young Polish cleaner, Jana so her name tag says. I’d spotted her while he’d led me into The Box under false pretences. Trying to pin things on me. This time she’s collecting her bike from the rack in the full staff car park. Once she’s out of the CCTV’s range, I make my move. Ask her where this Suit lives.

“54, Darcy Road. Near cricket ground. Something like that,” she hisses, stuffing my three crisp tenners down her bra. I’m not fussed what she does with ’em. Worth every penny when you think of it.

Ten minutes later, I’m in number 54’s whitewashed basement room, home to a half-full wine rack taking up most of one wall. Its owner a bon vivant no less. My, my, ain’t he done well?

From the room overhead, I can make out a cricket match in progress on the TV. Then comes a wheezy cough. And another. I wasn’t the best second-storey man in Catford for nothing, but if you’re hoping I’ll spill the tricks of my trade to you, you’ll be disappointed.

Here we go, Carl. Amazing what a credit card and a hairgrip can do…

Smiley Senior’s in a wheelchair now. One carpet-slippered foot in the grave already. His gob opens in surprise when he sees me come to join him in the lounge. Acrylic crowns, I notice. Not quite what I recall from way back, but easier to shift than the real thing. They look almost pretty, arranged on the rug like that, around his feet…

“Carl Dwyer,” I announce myself. “Remember me?”

He’s well hooked. “Can’t say I do.”

“I know why you took the fucking photo,” I shout over the cricket commentator’s gabble. “As a sick souvenir.”

“What photo? What souvenir?” His red spit sprays in my direction. The cripple tries to get up. No joy. Not with my boot in his crotch. I zap his flat-screen. I want him to listen only to me

“The one your dustbin lid showed me in the can last week. Trying to stitch me up, he was, so you’d go free.”

Smiley’s Adam’s Apple’s like a captive frog between my hands. Another feature he’s passed on. I smell his piss. Old, rank piss. You’ve no idea how long I’ve waited to hear him beg for mercy.

“Thomas’s twat of a brother took it, if you must know,” he glugs. “He wanted a souvenir of us Gatherers to take back with him to Wales…”

“You holy fucking friar. Only you could afford a Box Brownie.”

Then three’s suddenly a crowd with Junior himself pushing his way in. His police-issue Walther the added extra. But I’m tooled up too. Been busy practising.

“Put that down,” he snarls at me. “And get out. If you do, I’ll turn a blind eye. Pretend you’ve not been here.”

“No deal. I’m staying. Why? Your dad owes you an explanation.” I kick the nearside wheel of Smiley Senior’s wheelchair. He topples one way then the other.

“C’mon, Freddie. Tell him about those shoulder steaks, the fried liver, the cobbler’s awls… How you dealt with Dafydd’s beating heart. How I wasn’t allowed to breathe a word. ”

Junior’s turning green. Turning away from me to face the killer.

“You never… ”

“He bloody did.” And then, as if someone’s just pulled the plug from my mind, I relive the rest of that terrible night.

The cook covers his head with his fat, red hands and shuts his eyes. But there’s nowhere for him to hide. His kin, on the other hand, is all ears.

“As God’s my witness, I don’t know what he means,” croaks the psycho when I’ve finished my tale. “Give it to him, son. Or I’ll be wondering whose side you’re on.”

I recognize a saddo with in-built obedience when I see one. Junior’s off guard.

Down on the rug, both knees gone, making way too much din. His dad’s scattered teeth aren’t white any more, but red.

His pistol’s all mine now. Its full chamber giving it more weight than my Beretta, but I won’t finish him off. Not just yet, anyway. Why? you might ask. Because all this has given me a real appetite. As has stripping off his trackies and dragging him towards the generous worktop next to the hot, new Aga.

Setting the kitchen table for two doesn’t take a minute.

“Meals on wheels,” I tell Smiley Senior brightly, propelling him into the kitchen where his tea lies waiting “You must be bloody starving.”