Читать книгу Specials: Based on the BBC TV Drama Series: The complete novels in one volume - Brian Degas - Страница 28

The panda was parked on a well-to-do suburban street in front of a posh house where Toby and Loach waited at the door. Toby decided to ring the doorbell again, but before he could the door was flung open by a diminutive gentleman, apparently the houseowner, a short barrel of spleen.

‘Well, about high bloody time!’ The houseowner jerked his thumb toward the equally posh residence next door. ‘It’s been like World War Three in there.’

‘Can we come in, sir?’ Toby asked politely.

‘What for? It’s next door you want to sort out.’

‘I appreciate that, sir, but I’ll need to get some particulars down. What is the nature of the complaint? And I’d rather we did that inside, and not out here on the doorstep.’

The houseowner appeared to debate the suggestion mentally, although he gave in with ill grace. ‘Oh, all right. Bloody red tape. Come in.’ As they passed him, he called to someone inside. ‘It’s the police, luvvy. They want to come in.’ Closing the door behind them, he added in a muffled voice: ‘But we’re only wasting time …’

When Toby and Loach reached the doorway of the sitting room, they were met by the houseowner’s short barrel of a wife, obstructing further progress. Bringing up the rear was the houseowner, pinning the Specials between them. There was no way they were going to be allowed to sit down.

‘It’s been two hours … isn’t that right, luvvy?’ His wife agreed, though in stone-faced silence. ‘Two hours of continual din … smashing and crashing … It’s like living next door to Beirut.’

‘Seems quiet enough now, sir,’ Toby suggested.

‘That’s probably because someone’s had their head bashed in. I’m telling you it wasn’t somebody just making noise. This was frightening. Wasn’t it, luvvy?’ The stone-face didn’t move an eyelash. ‘’Course, we’ve been expecting something like this …’

‘Why’s that, sir?’ Toby inquired.

The houseowner was exasperated, perhaps as much by the question as by the answer. ‘It’s the kind of people they are. Young couple … you never know if they’re married these days … he’s some kind of dealer … but I think he was a market trader … acts like one, anyway … I mean, what kind of person cuts down trees? Turns his back garden into concrete? The view from our bedroom is a disgrace, isn’t it, luvvy?’

A gaping maw opened in the great stone-face, as if she were going to be ill. Taking no notice, her husband continued on down the concrete garden path. ‘They had a plum tree … juiciest fruit you ever ate … chopped it down … I mean chopped it down!’ he fairly shouted at them before cooling to a simmer. ‘There really ought to be a law.’

Good grief! Loach brooded, cursing SDO Barker for putting him out on the street: he should be stuck here and have to put up with such nonsense.

This early in the evening, Rob Barker was the only person in the Pub on 4th besides Briggsy the barman. The way he was checking his watch every few minutes, it was obvious he was waiting for someone, impatiently.

‘Another drink, Mr Barker?’

Shaken loose from his thoughts, Barker tried to focus on the barman’s query, but abruptly he was distracted by that someone. Sandra Gibson came in, saw him, and crossed to the bar.

She appeared to be expecting a kiss, but he held back, taking her hand instead. A frown of doubt flickered across her brow for an instant, before her familiar, if somewhat uncertain smile returned.

‘A drink?’ he suggested.

‘Sure. The usual, Briggsy.’

‘One gin and tonic coming up.’

‘I’ll have the same.’ He led Sandra to a table away from the bar and out of earshot for Briggsy. Still, when they were seated next to each other, he spoke to her in a low voice.

‘I’m sorry I wasn’t able to keep our date night before last.’ He looked at her with his little boy eyes and lashes.

‘The last three dates, Rob.’ Already she was having trouble hiding her bitterness. She didn’t know if she could calm down and stay afloat before getting in over her head. Of course, that had always been her problem.

‘Well … yes, I know,’ he conceded. ‘I tried to explain on the phone. That’s why I thought it better we meet.’

Sandra surveyed the empty pub. ‘Isn’t this a bit public for you?’

His nerves belied his words. ‘No. People wouldn’t read anything into it. They know you’re the Admin Secretary for the Specials. It would be natural for you and me to have a get-together here.’

At the bar, Briggsy arranged the drinks on a tray, trying not to listen, or at least not to hear anything specific that could become the next hot gossip if he were, even in a moment of weakness, other than the soul of discretion. Nevertheless, he had their relationship well and truly pegged.

‘Maybe we should come right out and tell them,’ she said in a much too loud voice. ‘Rob Barker and Sandra Gibson are doing it! Isn’t it wonderful?’

He was not amused. ‘For pity’s sake, Sandra …’

Quickly he alerted her with his eyes that Briggsy was coming with the drinks. At least she held her tongue for the time being, so he could cover for them. ‘Thank you, Briggsy. All work and no play, I’ve been telling Sandra.’

‘Oh yes?’ Briggsy asked rhetorically, not waiting for an answer before leaving them alone.

He waited until Briggsy was out of sight, then became serious again. ‘That isn’t the way we planned it.’

‘Oh, that’s right, we had a “plan”, didn’t we?’ So gullible in the past, her cynicism now betrayed her. All she could see behind her was two wasted years of her life waiting for this sorry man to sort himself out. That had been the ‘plan’, hadn’t it? To offload a wife who thought more of herself and her infirmities and less of Rob’s career as a draughtsman and his happiness? What was any different now, other than Sandra’s unhappiness as well?

‘And here we are – two years down the M6 – and I’m still waiting to hear what’s changed in all that time. You had a wife you didn’t love. And she couldn’t care less what you did.’ His eyes didn’t contradict her, but he was helpless to escape her conclusion. ‘Well, you still have the same wife, don’t you, Rob?’

His expression begged her not to burn their bridges behind them. ‘She’s the reason I couldn’t get to see you. She’s ill, Sandra,’ he implored her for the hundredth time. ‘Wants to go back to Scotland.’ By this he seemed to be holding out a ray of hope, despite appearing to withdraw from the spotlight. ‘It’s been very difficult for me.’

‘What do you want, Rob? My sympathy? It’s in short supply right now.’ Her, of all people – known far and wide as the Mother of all Midland Specials, whose entire life had become consumed by a job that demanded sympathy and concern and attention for many, many people – drained of her capacity for loving or caring for anyone by one man. ‘I get the feeling this is some kind of risky adventure for you. A bit on the side that got serious, and you don’t know how to handle it.’ He winced. Touché. ‘Well, I’m sorry. I’ve had enough of backstreet affairs.’

To her their love had been a series of meetings, arranging their future on maps endlessly sketched, redrawn and reconstructed. Alone, he made love to her openly; yet when they were not alone intrigue seemed the compelling force in their relationship, at least on his part.

‘I just need time,’ he sighed, his standard refrain. ‘To sort out the whole mess. It’s bloody hard telling an invalid you want a divorce.’

The same old story, the story of her life, only different. But a sick feeling of impending separation reminiscent of the other one … other ones … who got away. She blew the air out of her cheeks, giving up the ghost.

‘I need your help,’ he pleaded. ‘What do you want me to do?’

She felt weak in the stomach. ‘To grow up.’

Toby and Loach weren’t getting anywhere with the houseowner or his stone-face wife. ‘Unless we know for sure, we just can’t barge in next door,’ Toby was telling them. ‘We’ll need a warrant.’

In the meantime, the vehemence of the houseowner’s neighbourly animosity has not diminished one iota on the tantrum gauge. ‘I don’t believe it! Are you saying you have to wait for the blood to leak out under the front door before you’ll do anything?’

Suddenly a series of horrendous crashes exploded in their ears, coming from next door. Loach and Toby exchanged startled glances, then raced for the door. The houseowner mocked them with a told-you-so smile: ‘I could do with a nice cup of tea …’

Toby pounded on the door of the next house, Loach backing him up. After a few moments, the door opened slowly.

Alert to any possibility, Toby was shocked into alarm by the young man standing in the doorway. Appearing exhausted, his shirt and pants in disarray, the young man was leaning on a long-handled axe, as if he’d been chopping wood for a long winter or impersonating Lizzie Borden.

Instantly Toby rushed the man and disarmed him, taking possession of the weapon. The young man frowned, but didn’t block or resist his move in any way. ‘Can we come in and have a chat, sir?’

Though confused, the young man shrugged. ‘Sure. Why not?’

When Toby and Loach reached the main room inside the house, they discovered a scene of cataclysmic devastation. The place was a total shambles: furniture all smashed, pictures and knick-knacks shattered to smithereens, the carpet mottled with shards of vapourized porcelain and pottery. Simultaneously apprehensive and baffled, they viewed the scene like virgin soldiers sickened at their first sight of mass destruction.

‘Is your wife here, sir?’ Loach asked him.

The young man gave him a cool nod.

‘Then we’d like to see her,’ Loach informed him warily.

For the first time, the young husband was truculent. ‘You’d better find out if she wants to see you.’

Toby tried to correct the young husband’s apparent misconception. ‘You don’t seen to understand, sir. We want to see your wife … now.’

‘Listen. What my wife does is her choice. Okay?’

‘No, it isn’t okay,’ Toby admonished him. ‘You’re going to be in serious trouble if we don’t see your wife pretty sharpish.’

‘What for?’ said a woman’s voice behind them, and as they turned around, a young woman – obviously the husband’s wife – walked between them into the room. In her hands was a sublime blue vase, and on her face a look of blue thunder not the least sublime.

‘What the hell so you want?’ she inquired, pitching the vase past them. Instinctively they ducked, as a blue streak disintegrated against the wall behind them.

Loach looked at Toby, and Toby looked at Loach, silently asking each other what the hell was going on here. Had they somehow wandered into the psychiatric ward?

An unlit cigarette dangling from his lips, the young husband searched his pockets for a match. The young wife happened to notice him, looked through the debris and unearthed a small jade object. Retrieving it from the rubble, she flipped it at her husband.

By now a bit gun-shy, again Loach and Toby ducked. The young husband caught the lighter easily and lit his cigarette.

‘It’s them next door, isn’t it?’ griped the young wife.

Their failure to answer confirmed she was right.

‘Well, you can tell Mr and Mrs Snoopy that we’re having a divorce, and we don’t particularly care who hears it!’

The young husband picked up a cuckoo clock, the cuckoo bird hanging from a spring like a strangled chicken. He turned something and made the clock ‘point’ forlornly before he dropped it back into the rubbish all over the floor. He sighed.

‘We can’t agree on anything … politics … my job … her job … sex … not even this lot …’ He gestured to the remains littering the room beneath their feet. ‘So we thought … sod it … if we can’t agree who owns what, then neither of us is going to get anything.’ On this, and perhaps on this alone, his young wife seemed to agree.

Loach thought he’d heard it all, but this one had to take the cake. Stunned by their lunatic display, he leaned back against the only object left standing in this universe – an antique table. It crumbled under his weight, taking him with it. After hitting the floor hard, he struggled to climb back up while looking at the young couple with what he was sure appeared to be a sheepish and apologetic grin. ‘Oh well. I’ve saved you doing this one.’

Yet they did not seem to be sharing his amusement, their mood having suddenly changed. Once again, they agreed. And in fact, they were appalled.

‘You bloody barbarian!’ the young wife spat at him.

‘You know what you’ve done?’ her husband demanded.

‘What?’ Loach asked rather innocently, though with considerable apprehension at this point.

‘That was a Georgian table, you cretin!’ the young wife informed him.

There was cold anger in the husband’s intonation. ‘I hope you’ve got good insurance cover, guy. Because you’ll need it before I’m through. And right up front, I’ll have both your numbers.’ He looked down, aiming his gaze at Loach. ‘And I want your name most of all, Sunny Jim …’

Helpless and hopeless, Loach exchanged glances with a grim-faced Toby. Another fine mess he’d gotten them into.