Playing Around (31 page)

Despite her predicament and the befuddling effect of the booze, Angie managed a smile. ‘Jackie told me you didn’t like it down there.’

‘Understatement,’ he said flatly. ‘So, what’s your story?’

Angie gave him a censored version of events, that left him with the correct impression that she had left home and had moved into a flat, but which made no mention of the champagne, David, or his unceremonious exit almost immediately after she had made love for the very first time.

‘Chelsea, eh? You must be earning plenty.’

She shrugged non-committally. She was feeling a bit sick.

Martin thought about the two more years he had at university before he would even begin earning proper wages. ‘How did you get locked out?’

‘Went down to the milk machine on the corner,’ she lied. ‘So I could make some coffee. Must have left my keys on the table.’

‘I’m not thinking. Fancy a cup now?’

‘Martin,’ she put her head in her hands. ‘I could murder one.’

He stood up. ‘Want me to take your coat?’

Angie looked up at him through her tear-dampened lashes. ‘Better not, Mart. Me coat and shoes are all I’m wearing.’

The thought of Angie travelling on the tube all the way from Chelsea, surrounded by other passengers, with nothing on but a short oilskin coat, made Martin gulp. No wonder she hadn’t wanted his mum to know she was there.

He was still staring at Angie, and was seriously considering whether she would respond as favourably as, according to Jackie, she had apparently done in the bus shelter at Clacton, when there was a knock at the door.

‘Must be Jackie,’ he said, dry-mouthed.

‘You’d better let her in.’

He nodded dumbly.

While Martin went in to the kitchen to pull himself together and to make the coffee, Jackie and Angie sat in the front room, whispering so that they didn’t disturb Tilly who, now her daughter was safely home, had allowed herself to go to sleep and was snoring loudly above them.

‘So, this Andrew you’ve been out with.’ Angie’s head felt as if it had been stuffed with cotton wool, and she was having a bit of trouble concentrating. ‘He’s the bloke you met at the Lotus on your birthday?’

‘Yes and he’s very nice, but never mind him. I’m worried about you, Angie.’

Angie, who had been rather more explicit with Jackie than she had with Martin, shrugged. ‘Not heard of free love?’ She hoped she looked and sounded more
casual
than she felt about the situation. With everything that had happened, she’d not been able to stop worrying about whether it was true what they said: that once you let a bloke have his way with you, he lost interest and cleared off, dumping you like used goods.

‘Angie—’

‘It’s all right, I’m on the Pill.’

‘
The Pill
?’

‘So? I said I’m on the Pill, not that I’m an axe murderer.’ She took her cigarettes from her bag and held them up. ‘Mind if I have one?’

Jackie shook her head. ‘Since when have you been smoking?’

‘A while.’

‘Put them away and don’t be so stupid. Mum’d be down here faster than a fire engine if she smells smoke. And you’ve been drinking.’

Angie snorted. ‘Like you never have.’

‘Angie, I’m serious. Travelling all that way by yourself in that state. Anything could have happened to you.’

‘Don’t look at me like that, Jack. I’m too knackered for a row. Let’s just go to bed, eh?’ Angie smiled self-pityingly, undid her coat, and flashed her naked body at her friend. ‘Lend us a nightie?’

Jameson sat in his Morris Minor watching Sonia, David Fuller’s wife, who was sitting in the driver’s seat of her scarlet Mini Cooper, kissing Mikey Tilson as if she were a kid in the back row of the pictures, in the full glare of the street lights.

The detective constable was always amazed when a man let himself be driven by his prick rather than his brains – not that Tilson gave any evidence of being in
possession
of much in the way of grey matter – but to be so blatant about carrying on with David Fuller’s wife. That took a particularly spectacular brand of stupidity.

After five minutes or so of passion, Sonia got out of the car, and Tilson clambered over into the driver’s seat. She stood and waved and blew kisses as he drove away, then crossed the road and let herself into the mansion block where she lived with her husband. The mansion block where all the lights in her flat had been burning for the past couple of hours, and where the back-lit silhouette of a large man, who looked very like David Fuller, could be seen standing by one of the windows.

From what Jameson knew about Fuller, his wife was either as stupid as Mikey Tilson, or she had a very advanced case of death wish.

As Sonia opened the flat door, David was waiting for her in the hall.

‘What do you think you’re up to?’

‘Me? How about you and your little scrubber?’

David grabbed her by the wrist. ‘I asked you a question.’

She looked contemptuously at him. ‘Grow up, David. You don’t own me. I do what I want.’

‘No, you don’t.’

‘Yes I do. And, I’m afraid, that includes falling in love.’

‘You what?’

‘Mikey and I are going away together. I’m going to have his baby.’

David let go of her wrist and raised his hand above his head.

‘Go on, big shot, hit me. Show me what a pathetic
creature
you really are. No wonder you have to go with little girls. That’s all you’re fit for.’

David shoved her out of the way and stormed out of the door. ‘I’ll show you, you bitch.’

IT WAS THREE
hours since David had driven away from the flat, oblivious of having abandoned Angie on the pavement in the rain, and less than twenty minutes since he had stormed out on Sonia. He was now parking his Jaguar behind a dark-blue Ford Zodiac, close to the staff entrance of the Canvas Club. It was a spot which suited David’s purposes very well, as it was outside the patisserie, one of the few local shops which was never open at this early hour, and one which would stay locked and silent until the bakers arrived to begin their day in about an hour’s time.

He scanned the rain-slicked street in his rear-view mirror. The few people he saw seemed to be paying more attention to keeping dry and getting home before daybreak than in bothering with the bloke in the expensive motor. Of the two who did afford him more than a passing glance, one had him down as a worried father, probably up from the Surrey stockbroker belt, waiting for his spoiled, drug-using child to eventually condescend to leave some club or discothèque, and the other dismissed him as one of the upper-crust types who came slumming in Soho, looking for a bit of sleazy action in the small hours.

If the latter had been the case, David wouldn’t have had much luck, the toms were all indoors, either too lazy or too averse to getting a soaking to be working the almost empty streets.

David turned off the engine, and the wipers
shwooped
to
a stop; the windscreen was immediately pitted with rain drops the size of shilling bits.

He took a pair of tan leather gloves from his briefcase on the passenger seat and eased them on, unhurriedly, checking each finger for a perfect fit, then leaned forward and felt around under his seat. Pulling out two heavy, empty cola bottles and a copy of the final edition of the
London Evening News
, David smiled to himself. That bastard Mikey Tilson would be in the papers himself before too long.

He wrapped one of the bottles in a few sheets of the newspaper and slipped the other into the pocket of his rain coat. Checking that no one was watching, he opened the car door, stepped out on to the pavement, walked up to the bonnet of the Zodiac, and placed the paper-wrapped parcel in the gutter by the front wheel. With another brief glimpse along the almost deserted street, he brought down his heel in a swift, hard movement, smashing the glass in the now soggy paper, then placed the jagged shards around each of the front tyres, just so, making sure each shattered piece was clearly visible.

David then melted into the shadows of the cake-shop doorway, wrapped the other empty bottle in the rest of the newspaper, took out a cigarette, shielded it behind his hand and lit it. He figured he had ten minutes or so to wait.

In fact, he had to wait just five.

As Mikey came out of the staff entrance to the Canvas, head well down against the sheeting rain, he was grinning like a prize candidate for the Happy Olympics. He had plenty to be happy about.

He had laid Fuller’s old woman for the very last time – thank Christ – he was well shot of that one, she had
gone
bloody baby bonkers these past few weeks and had been getting right up his pipe; he had enough dough stashed away not to have to worry, as he stretched out on a Spanish beach, thinking about which of the bars he fancied buying; and, the icing on the cake, the tasty, young blonde from Coffee Bongo had turned out to be a genuinely hard-nosed and very experienced little pill-pusher. She would come in more than handy on the Costas, if Mikey ever ran short of a few quid.

He patted the pocket that contained his final instalment from the club and his grin broadened. He had more than had one over on David fucking Fuller.

But Mikey’s happiness was as short-lived as a pint of cold lager on a hot summer’s day. When he saw the jagged chunks of broken glass that had obviously been placed deliberately by his front wheels, his expression hardened into a thin-lipped, angry scowl.

‘What rotten little bastard’s done that?’ He bent down and, gingerly, began picking up the thick, transparent remains of the soft-drink bottle from the slick of unidentifiable muck in the wet gutter. ‘Fucking kids.’

He never had time to straighten up again.

David stepped forward, brought the paper-wrapped bottle up over his head, then brought it down –
thwack!
– in a single blow to the back of Mikey’s skull.

As Mikey crumpled like a deflated balloon, David dropped the empty bottle and paper into the gutter, alongside the broken glass and other old news stories – just a bit more litter for the bin-men to smash and crash into their truck in the pre-dawn hours – hooked the unconscious Mikey neatly under the arms, and dragged him back to his car like some mug-punter who had overindulged in overpriced mock champagne in one of David’s clip joints.

He would finish off the job somewhere a little more private.

All the while this was going on, Christina, the tom who was increasingly too drink-raddled to be doing much business – regardless of the weather – except with the likes of Mad Albert Roper, sat in her dingy, unpleasant-smelling, fire-scorched and blackened room, looking down at the scene from behind the safety of her incongruously new net curtains.

David Fuller. What was he up to?

He might have got her out of trouble with the law, but that still didn’t mean she was very happy with him. Bringing all these kids into the area, with these new discothèques of his; it was completely ruining her pitch. A Friday night and what had she earned? Bugger all, that’s what. Her sort of punters weren’t interested in dance halls, they wanted strip joints and dirty book shops. Something to get them going. The proper trade of Soho.

And he had the cheek to complain if she didn’t get his bloody rent together on time. Threatened to throw her out on her arse.

It was a right bloody liberty, the way he was treating the working girls round here. They’d brought him a good living over the years, a right good living, but now he had no respect for any of them. It wasn’t good enough.

She took a swig of whisky straight from the bottle.

Hang on. Whatever was he up to now?

When Tilly Murray took her daughter’s usual morning cup of tea and biscuits into her bedroom – at ten o’clock rather than seven thirty, it being a Saturday – she had been pleased, if a bit surprised, to find that Angie was in there too. She was, after all, another customer for
breakfast
. And even if Jackie had claimed she was going out with Andrew, a very nice young man by all accounts, and Tilly’s hopes of her daughter maybe settling down and thus ceasing to be a worry to her had been falsely raised, she still liked the idea of Jackie going out with her friend and having a good time. There was still a year or two for engagements of the non-desperate kind to be announced, when all was said and done.

But when Angie had sat up, claiming that she wasn’t hungry and couldn’t possibly face a fry-up, Tilly had seen the state of the child, and had changed her mind. She looked terrible. Maybe some of the rumours she had been hearing about Angie – and, up until now, always loyally refuting – were actually true. And maybe she didn’t want her Jackie mixing with the likes of Violet Knight’s daughter. Not if she really was following in her tramp of a mother’s footsteps.

She would have a quiet word with Jackie later, when Angie had gone home. Get a few things straight.

It was a good job Tilly was patient. It was nearly midday by the time Angie eventually managed to drag herself out of Jackie’s bed and then to make her way unsteadily down the stairs to the bathroom.

She was now sitting at Jackie’s white melamine dressing unit staring at herself in the mirror. She looked as miserable as she felt.

‘Can I borrow some make-up, Jack?’

Jackie was still flat out, staring up at the ceiling. ‘Help yourself.’

‘Thanks. I look like a real freak.’ Angie sorted through the drawer full of cosmetics, selected a few tubes and bottles and set about her face.

Jackie propped herself up against the headboard and
mouthed
and squinted along with her friend as she shaded a grey banana shape into the crease of her lid and then drew a deft, subtle line along her lashes and topped it off with two layers of mascara.

‘You’ve been practising. That looks good.’

‘I went up to Selfridges. Had a make-up lesson.’

‘Why didn’t you ask me?’

‘You were at work.’

‘Course.’ Jackie dropped back down on to the pillows. ‘Want to borrow a dress?’

‘Please.’

‘Don’t know if I’ve got any good enough for you.’