Charlie (64 page)

‘I think with hindsight that she’d been their victim for a very long time before that,’ he said thoughtfully. ’You see, that night we were speaking of earlier, Daphne was savage. She warned Jin that if he didn’t play ball she’d make him sorry in more ways than one. I’m a good bit older than the Dexters but I come from the same manor, and I’d watched them all grow up. I knew they wasn’t the type for loose talk, especially her, she got where she is by pulling evil strokes.

‘A couple of years before Jin died, he told me that Sylvia was acting strange. She didn’t like him going away, and when he had to, she hardly went out of the house. He said she wouldn’t tell him what was wrong, and he thought she was suffering from depression. I reckon one of them Dexters was dripping poison in yer poor mum’s ear all along, hoping to unhinge her. Sylvia and Daphne had been good mates once, so she’d have known her weak points. You can bet the evil cow used them.’

Charlie had a sudden mental picture of her mother lying in bed at the nursing home, telling her about those letters she steamed open and the phone calls for Jin. She told Dave about it, and how in that period before her father went away for good, she took the brunt of her mother’s misery.

‘So that bitch was chipping away at her all the time, knowing full well Sylvia was too weak and too afraid of losing Jin to speak out,’ Charlie said angrily. ‘No wonder she gave up entirely once Dad was gone! She’d got nothing left to hang on to.’

‘Only you,’ he said sadly. ‘And I know just how that bloody well feels. See, I kinda took it out on my Wendy, after Jin was killed. I was so scared for her I didn’t want her out of my sight, but when she was with me, I was brooding and uptight about everything. She used to ask me all the time what was wrong, what had she done? But I couldn’t tell her anything. I reckon that’s what started my cancer. See, that’s what’s wrong with me now, Charlie. I used to be seventeen stone of pure muscle. Look at me now! Your body can’t fight back when your mind is sick.’

Suddenly everything about her mother’s moods fell into place for Charlie and she was sickened to think that she’d put it all down to selfishness. Because of those Dexters and their terrible threats, Dave had succumbed to cancer, her mother to mental illness. She didn’t know which was worse.

‘I’m so sorry, Dave,’ she said, reaching out and touching his arm tentatively. ‘I think if Dad had known what would happen to you and Sylvia because of him, he would have done what she wanted.’

‘But he didn’t know,’ Dave shook his head. ‘That’s the whole point, Charlie. He was innocently going about his business, totally unaware Daphne was still on his case.

‘Jin told me he’d done a huge deal when he came back from Hong Kong in the autumn of 1969,’ he went on. ‘He confided in me that he’d have to pull out all the stops to raise the money for it. He said if everything went to plan he was going to sell up in Dartmouth, and take you and yer mum out to South Africa to live. He wanted a new start for all of you.

‘As God is my witness, I never said a word to anyone, but I reckon one of the three young lads in the warehouse must have been a Dexter plant and he heard, and passed it on to them. It had to be something like that because the way it all came about Daphne must have had inside information to plot Jin’s downfall to the last detail.

‘Anyway, towards the middle of May the following year, Jin was getting very edgy. He had sent off the dosh for these goods, but the shipment was delayed en route, and he was getting frantic for cash. He went over to Holland to do some other small deal which would give him a quick turn-around.’

‘That’s where he was when he last phoned us at home,’ Charlie said.

‘Right,’ Dave said. ‘Well, I didn’t speak to him, or see him from the time he left for Holland until the night he was killed. Like I said, I had a couple of lorries, and I did work for people other than him too. I was coming back from Leeds on June the 19th and I broke down on the way – by the time I got back to London it was two in the morning, but I had to go and unload and lock the stuff up in the Wapping warehouse because someone would have thieved it otherwise. I let myself in with me key and found the Dexters were all in there with Jin.’

Dave suddenly slumped back in his armchair and closed his eyes. ‘Are you all right?’ Charlie asked, moving out of her chair to go over to him. She sat on the arm of the chair and put her hand on his forehead. It was hot and sweaty. ‘Don’t go on if you’re feeling ill.’

He didn’t answer, but took her hand in his and pressed it to his lips for a moment. ‘So help me, sweetheart. If there was anything I could have done to save Jin, I would’ve done it, but I was trapped too,’ he said in a hoarse whisper.

To Charlie’s surprise he began to speak as if he was mentally reliving the events of that night. ‘It had been stifling hot all day. As I drove through the city, it suddenly started to rain real heavy, with thunder and lightning. I left the lorry a bit further up the road from the warehouse, and ran like the clappers through the rain to get the doors open, so I could then back up to the unloading bay and get the stuff out. The main doors were locked from the inside, so I had to go in the small door on the side, then down the dark passageway which led to another door in the warehouse.

‘I wasn’t alarmed when I saw a chink of light shining around this second door, all of us was always forgetting to turn it off when we locked up at night. I just shut the door to the street behind me and went on down the passageway.

’I was just fishing around in the darkness for the right key when I heard footsteps. Suddenly the door was flung open and I found myself face to face with Baz Dexter.

‘ “What the fuck are you doing here?” I said, mad as hell. He had no business there at any time and I hated the geezer anyway. But before I could say anything more, he kneed me in the groin.

’I doubled up with pain, and before I could shout or even blink, the bastard’s brother Mike came through the door too and the pair of them forced me back against the passageway wall. I’m pretty handy with me fists, but these two had me too tight to fight them, and I was winded. Then all of a sudden bloody Daphne appeared in the doorway, and she had a gun in her bleedin’ hands.

‘My first thought was that they was after the stuff in me truck, and under the circumstances, with a gun pointed at me, they was welcome to it. It were only a sodding load of spices anyway. I even tried to make a bit of a joke about it, but all of a sudden I cottoned on that they was up to something else, and I’d interrupted them. I tried to say I’d go and make out I’d never seen them there, but they was having none of that. Next thing I know they’re hauling me up the stairs to the floor above and slung me down on the floor.

’The twins gave me a good kicking, then they tied me hands and feet. After that they just walked out and left me lying there in the dark. Not a bleedin’ word about what it was all about, or what they were going to do to me.

‘Now this room upstairs is like a loft and it goes right over the whole warehouse to the river at the back. In the old days goods used to be hauled up from the boats with an old pulley thing. Now the river’s too silted up for big boats, so all we used this floor for was storing lighter stuff we could carry up, and at that time there weren’t no more than a few boxes left there. But the floor is only old planks, and there’s cracks and holes everywhere. Lying there face down, I could see the light from below, and heard voices, so once I’d got me second wind, I wriggles over to a biggish one and looks down.

’I got the shock of me life when I see Jin down there. I thought he was still in Holland! He’s sitting there on the floor against a packing case, his ankles tied together and his hands behind him. I reckon he must have come back earlier in the evening, probably hoping I’d be there, because he was still wearing his dark business suit and his briefcase was a few feet away from him, spilled open, like they’d been going through it.

‘ “Leave Dave out of this,” I heard him say. “He’s done nothing to you and he’s got a family to support.”

‘I heard Daphne laugh at him, though I couldn’t see her because she was out of my line of vision. “A gentleman to the last,” she said, kind of sneering. “If you’d just forgotten your stupid principles for once in your life, it wouldn’t have come to this.”

‘ “My principles might be stupid to you,” he said in that cool way he had. “But to me a man has to live by a decent code of behaviour otherwise he is no different to an animal. I told you Daphne, right at the beginning that I loved Sylvia and I would never leave her. I never lied to you or promised anything I didn’t fulfil.”

’ “You could have had everything with me,” Daphne shouted back at him and she must have stepped forward because suddenly I could see her clearly. She was holding the gun with both hands, pointing it right at Jin. Her face was in shadow, but by the shake in her voice and the wavering of the gun, I could tell she was cracking. “Look at me! I’m beautiful, rich and desirable. Sylvia’s a pathetic mess unless you’re beside her to hold her up. How can she compare to me?”

‘ “There is no comparison,” Jin said. I couldn’t believe he could sound so calm, tied up with the gun waving in front of him. “She’s gentle, kind, and loving and she’s the only woman I’ve ever loved. All the happiest moments in my life have been spent with her and my daughter. She would have loved me even if I’d stayed a waiter for my entire life. You wouldn’t have looked at me twice unless I had a full wallet.”

‘ “Well, much good she did you,” Daphne screamed out like a hell cat. “How will she keep herself and that kid in that fine house by the sea when you’re gone? She’ll crumble, you poor fool, when she finds there’s no money left. And there won’t be any. I’ve seen to that.”

‘I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing,’ Dave said, turning to look at Charlie. ‘Me stomach was in knots. I knew Daphne had set him up and she was going to shoot him. Yet Jin just looked up at her as if he pitied her.’

‘ “What made you so vicious, Daphne?” Jin asked then, like he really hoped she’d tell him. “Sylvia was your friend, the only real one you’ve ever had in your entire life. She loved you like a sister.”

‘ “I hate her because she got you,” she roared at him. “And I hate you for still loving her even though she’s pathetic.”

‘Jin just shook his head sadly as she raised the gun again. “Just tell me before you shoot me,” he said, “will killing me make you happier? Have you finally got all you wanted?”

’I waited for her answer, but the gun rang out, and I pressed myself closer to the hole in the floorboards to see more clearly, hoping it was just a warning shot to make him beg. But I could see she’d already done for him. Jin was slumped over to one side, his white shirt already turning bright red. She shot again, and again. But I couldn’t look any more. I was struggling not to be sick. The smell of cordite was thick and strong, the smoke was coming up through the cracks in the floor.

‘I heard the twins shouting at one another, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying over thunderclaps. Lightning lit up the loft, and I was terrified they would come up and get me next. I knew I couldn’t be brave like Jin was. I was crying like a baby for his mother.’

Charlie was crying too. She moved from the perch on the arm of Dave’s chair and knelt in front of him, sliding her arms round the man’s waist, and leaned her head against his chest.

‘I’m sorry, love,’ he said in a whisper a little later. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have told you the last bit?’

Charlie lifted her head and found he had tears rolling down his cheeks. ‘I’m glad you did,’ she whispered back. ‘It was terrible, but I needed to hear it.’

She made him more tea and helped him take his medicine. His pale face had a grey tinge now and she said she ought to call his doctor.

‘No,’ he said, taking her hand as she knelt by his chair. ‘I’ll be fine in a minute. Just let me have a couple of minutes to pull myself together.’

He dropped off to sleep in his chair. Charlie sat watching him, her heart filling up with sympathy for him because he was so sick and alone. It occurred to her that had her father ever brought her to this flat to meet Dave, she would have been horrified that he mixed with such men. She’d been a heartless little snob then, valuing people only by how well they spoke and their material success. Judging by what Jin had divulged to Dave, this man had been of more importance to him than any of those so-called friends back in Dartmouth. She just wished her father had realized that for her to become a well-rounded human being like himself, she too needed to meet people from all walks of life.

As Dave continued to sleep she considered quietly letting herself out and going home, but she couldn’t bring herself to. Instead, she found a duster and quietly went around the room using it. She looked at the photographs and saw his daughter Wendy in every stage of her development from a small baby to a glowing bride on her father’s arm. He had been a big, rugged man with thick fair hair and a wide, proud smile, then, and as she looked back to the sick ghost of the man in the chair, her heart filled with compassion for him. Maybe he had been a bit of a rogue, but he had been a good father, and friend, he deserved something a great deal better than a slow, painful death alone.

By the time Dave woke again in the late afternoon, Charlie had stripped his bed and remade it with clean sheets, cleaned the bathroom, and then went on to iron a pile of shirts she found in the bedroom. She’d also found out a great deal more about the man’s character.

He was domesticated, or he had been until illness had recently halted it. He had a modern automatic washing machine, the airing cupboard was full of clean linen and soft, fluffy towels, even the equipment in the kitchen bore out that he had once been in the habit of cooking proper meals. But it was his daughter’s old bedroom that affected her the most, for his love for her shone there. It was a pretty blue and white room, with a flounce round the dressing table, a Degas print of ballerinas on the wall, a few old dolls, all dressed properly, sitting on a shelf alongside some well-thumbed Enid Blyton books. Charlie guessed there had once been a cot there too, perhaps later replaced by another single bed for her little boy. Wendy must have taken away most of her possessions, but enough was left behind to see Dave liked to keep her here in his mind, the room ready for her.