Jack Carter's Law (16 page)

“Like it always turns out,” says the yob on the settee. “You’re nothing. All you clever bastards. You always turn out to be nothing.”

Mrs. Abbott stands up and squeezes by me.

“Well, come on,” she says. “We’ve got to get moving. You were late as it is. Any bleeding later and you needn’t have bothered coming at all.”

“Shut it,” says the yob, and Mrs. Abbott does as she’s told. The yob looks up at his partner and the pressure of the shotgun is relieved. The yob points my shooter at me.

“Get up,” he says.

I get up.

“Go and wait by the front door,” the yob says to his partner. I watch the partner go out of the room. He’s about twenty-five and wearing a Levi denim suit. He carries the beautiful short-barreled brand-new shotgun as though it’s his favourite childhood toy.

“You go and get in the car,” the yob with the crew cut says to Mrs. Abbott, “but before you go you can pass me that little instrument that lies there by the wall.”

Charlie’s mother picks up a second shotgun and hands it over to the yob, but instead of putting my shooter in his pocket he still continues to point it at me, just crooking the shotgun in his other arm. Mrs. Abbott goes out into the hall.

The yob smiles at me and says, “Move it, you poor mug.”

I go out into the hall. The denim yob is standing by the front door, pointing his shotgun at me. Mrs. Abbott has a suitcase in one hand and she is turning the front-door handle. She opens the door, revealing a beautifully framed composition with the fly-over in the background, the swings in the middle distance, and in the immediate foreground Con in the process of opening the front gate, his dark leather coat standing out sharply against the yellowness of the Scimitar and the grayness of the background.

Mrs. Abbott shrieks and tries to close the front door but the denim yob pushes her out of the way, causing her to trip over her suitcase and fall to the floor. Beyond this activity I see Con start to drop down behind the gate and Charlie open the nearside door of the Scimitar. At the same time I take into account that I am clear from the yob behind me because although his shotgun is poking through the door he has yet to emerge into the hall. I also take into account that the denim yob is moving his elbow to prime the shotgun.

All these events take place at the same time but the events that follow seem to happen even faster, like speeded-up concurrent images on a split screen.

Con produces his shooter and fires from between the decorative rails of the top half of the gate. The yob pumps his shotgun at the gate but before the shotgun goes off two of Con’s bullets have taken him in the stomach, causing the shotgun barrels to be lifted slightly so that they’re pointing in the general direction of the Scimitar and Charlie. Charlie, who sees what is about to come his way, screams and can’t make up his mind whether to throw himself to the ground or scramble back into the Scimitar and ends up doing a fair impression of a seven-man acrobatic troupe who’ve just all run into each other. The shotgun blasts off and Charlie is taken in the chest and is spun round so that he falls face down on the bonnet. Mrs. Abbott begins a series of long shrieks and tries to get up off her back but her progress is impeded by the slow sliding fall of the denim yob who now, instead of clutching his shotgun, is clutching his stomach and asking Christ to help him in his moment of need. And in my part of the hall, I have nowhere to go and no choice but to turn and try to change my own situation without suffering some permanent alteration. But I am fortunate in that the yob at my back has decided to back out of range of anything that might be flying in his direction and he’s slammed the door just to make doubly certain. So now my choice is easy and I rush down the hall and shout to Con to go round the back and then bend over the dying yob and find some more shells in his denim pockets and restock the shotgun and while I’m doing that I catch a view of Charlie levering himself up off the bonnet like an unfit man doing push-ups for the first time, and Charlie’s mother, now on her feet, running towards the gate as if she’s trying to catch the last bus. Then I go down the hall and open the kitchen door and then the back door so that I have a clear view of the yard, then I go back to the door that the yob slammed behind him and I shout through it, “You’re going nowhere. Come out and at least you’ll stay alive.”

There is silence for a minute or two. I see Con as he appears in the back yard and I indicate to him that there is the heavy in the room and so Con moves back out of sight to take up a position. Then I hear the small sound of the window catch being lifted. I wait a moment and then I hear the springs of the settee as the yob prepares to make his exit so I barge through the door and brace myself, the shotgun pointing at the window. The yob has one foot on the settee and one foot on the windowsill.

“Don’t go outside,” I say to him. “It’s raining.” But he’s no intention of taking any notice of me and immediately I speak, his rabbit panic sets him scrambling to get the shotgun into a firing position. I give him as long as I possibly can before the point is reached where it is either me that fires or it is him and in the end, of course, it has to be me. The yob and the window explode outwards into the damp air and I swear and drop the shotgun and go over to the window and look out to see the yob draped over the now overturned carry-cot with Con appearing from behind the corner to inspect the damage. I tell Con to pick up my shooter and I run back through the house to try and at least salvage something from the whole bloody mess.

By the time I get to the front door Charlie is no longer hanging on the bonnet of the Scimitar. His mother has draped his arm round her neck and she is supporting him as they stagger across the wasteland towards the swings and the roundabouts. The street is no longer deserted. Mrs. Abbott’s neighbors are filling the front gardens. I run down the garden and through the gate and as I pass the Scimitar I notice that Charlie’s glasses are still on the bonnet of the car, face down, having slid off Charlie’s bowed head. I run across the road and call for them to stop but they continue struggling on but by the time they get to the swings the effort is finally too great and Mrs. Abbott staggers under Charlie’s weight but manages to avoid a complete collapse by grasping a chain on one of the swings and swaying the seat underneath Charlie so that it stops his progress to the floor. When I get up to them I realise the damage to Charlie isn’t as bad as it might have been. It’s his shoulder and chest on his right-hand side. He must have missed copping the main body of the blast and while his right arm won’t be much good for darts any more at least he’ll live. So I lift Charlie off the swing but as I begin to lift him I get Mrs. Abbott swiping and kicking and hanging on to me while I’m trying to get Charlie across my shoulders in a fireman’s lift. My arms aren’t free for me either to give her one or to steady myself so I find myself overbalancing back on to the swing. But matters are helped by the fact that Con has made his way to the scene and he pulls Mrs. Abbott away from Charlie and me and the four of us make our way back to the cars, me carrying Charlie and Con dragging Mrs. Abbott behind him. The audience is still filling the front gardens although no one is prepared to become part of the cast, but in the background there is the sound of the law about to crash the scene.

The yobs’ car is parked in front of Con’s and as we get to both cars I say, “You take yours and I’ll take these two in the other. And get well rid.”

“Don’t macaroni,” says Con. “You don’t think the fucking registration’s straight, do you?”

I don’t answer because the way the last twenty-four hours has gone a straight registration would almost be a matter of course.

Instead I say, “I’ll see you at the Garage.”

Con nods and pushes Mrs. Abbott in the back of the yobs’ car and I unload Charlie into the seat alongside her. Con waits while I get the car started so that Mrs. Abbott doesn’t try to get out again and as I move off he dives for the Scimitar as the sound of the law gets nearer.

--

The Garage

I
PICK UP THE
phone and dial Gerald and Les’s number, and while I’m waiting for them to answer I take out a cigarette and light up and look at Charlie and Mrs. Abbott and try not to get too angry. Mrs. Abbott is looking round the room as if she’s paying a visit to her least favourite relative and totting up the dust particles to pass the time. Charlie is half conscious and has no interest whatsoever in his immediate surroundings.

The Garage is a little haven that Gerald and Les have set at one side where they can go to avoid any strife that might come their way. So far they’ve never had to use it themselves but it’s come in handy as a halfway house for one or two of their American friends. Downstairs it’s just a garage in a row of garages at the back of a row of big Victorian houses, but upstairs it’s been kitted out like a nuclear shelter only more comfortable.

Only Gerald and Les won’t be too pleased about Charlie’s addition to the pattern on the settee.

Mrs. Abbott is sitting next to him, her arm round his
shoulder, holding an unlit cigarette in her free hand. The ringing tone carries on ringing and in the end I put the receiver down and stand up and walk over to the settee and flick my lighter at Mrs. Abbott. She gives me her long look but she accepts the light anyway. Then I go back to the telephone and try Gerald and Les again. Still there’s no answer so I press the tit down and dial the club’s other number.

Billy answers and I say, “It’s Jack Carter here. Are Gerald and Les downstairs?”

“Hang on, Mr. Carter,” Billy says. “I’ll check up for you.”

The receiver rattles down and Billy goes away and checks up and while he’s doing that rain begins to rattle against the broad skylight. Mrs. Abbott’s ash falls from the end of her cigarette and I have that feeling that I’ve lived through all this before, even down to the answer that Billy gives me when he comes back to the phone.

“No, Mr. Carter,” he says. “They’re not downstairs.”

“Mrs. Fletcher about?”

“No, not at the moment.”

I thank him and put the phone down and swear. Then I get up and go over to where the drinks are kept and for the twentieth time since I left Fourness Road I think about
the two heavies and why it was them who arrived instead
of the law involved in protecting Jimmy’s family. It had been known in the past for Old Bill to offer tenders for something he didn’t want to do himself but this wasn’t that kind of area. This was a grass and his family, all legal and above board.

So I pour my drink and I turn to Mrs. Abbott and I say, “Who did you phone, Mrs. Abbott?”

She looks at me and she says nothing.

“It wasn’t the law, was it?”

She shrugs. “You’re so bleeding clever, you bleeding well find out.”

I walk over to her. “Why should you get in touch with mugs like that to bail you out?”

“Why not?” she says. “I don’t want any more to do with the law than I can help.”

“Yes, but they weren’t friends of yours. They weren’t even friends of Jimmy’s. And you didn’t meet them at Bingo. So who were they?”

“Ask them.”

I sit down again and pick up the receiver. “There’s a lot of things I want you to tell me, Mrs. Abbott,” I say to her. “And when I’ve finished on this telephone I’m going to start asking the questions. So while you’re waiting I should think about that, and about how I might go about getting the answers.”

Some more ash drops from her cigarette but her expression doesn’t change. I dial the number of the flat in St. John’s Wood and this time somebody answers the phone.

“Yes?” says Audrey.

“It’s me,” I tell her. “Don’t settle back for a nice chat. Either of those two flossies with you?”

“No. Why?”

“Any idea where they might be? And don’t say at the club.”

“They were there earlier. I spoke to Les.”

“So did I.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Never mind. Could they have gone down to the house?”

“What for?”

I don’t answer that one.

“If you hear from them tell them to call me at the Garage, sharp.”

“The Garage? What you doing at the Garage?”

“I haven’t time to tell you all about that. Just try and get hold of those two fairies, will you?”

I put the phone down and get up and go over to Mrs. Abbott again. There’s no more time left for fucking about.