Читать книгу Specials: Based on the BBC TV Drama Series: The complete novels in one volume - Brian Degas - Страница 33

Freddy Calder drove his ‘classic’ blue Sierra into the Cougar Coaches yard and parked next to Noreen’s Renault 25 in the spot usually reserved for her husband’s white Jag. Before heading for the office, he picked a few of the pulverized bugs off the body of his beloved Sierra, spat on his finger and rubbed the hardened insect entrails from the smooth polished surface.

Sure enough, when Freddy entered Noreen was the only one in the office. She didn’t bother looking up from her work to see who it was. ‘Must be four o’clock. I’ll give you one thing, Freddy, I can set my watch by you.’

He went to the coffee dispenser and poured himself a cup. ‘Part of my charm.’

‘Really? Why haven’t I noticed the rest of it?’

Freddy rewarded her with a thin laugh. ‘Where’s Bob? Didn’t see his feet poking out under a bus out there?’

This time she did look up at him. ‘With a woman. Where else?’ Then, looking straight at Freddy, she suddenly remembered something, and started hunting through her bag.

‘Really! Anyone I know?… intimately?’

‘Sandra Gibson.’

‘Ah! The Mother of all Specials. She who clasps us Hobby Bobbies to her warm bosom.’

‘Hmm?’ She looked up again. ‘Is that why Bob was in such a hurry?’

Noreen seemed so hypersensitive lately. ‘Figuratively, Noreen. I was talking figuratively.’

She had apparently found what she had been searching for in her bag, and proffered what seemed to be a tissue to Freddy. ‘I knew I had it somewhere.’

He swallowed the rest of his coffee and put the cup down. Gently and humbly accepting the tissue from her hand, still he had absolutely no idea what he was supposed to do with it, other than blow his nose or clean his ears or something else perhaps.

‘You asked me if I knew of any flats going. Somewhere that would suit you … Somewhere cheap?’

He clapped a hand to his forehead, unable to fathom the depths of his sudden good fortune. ‘Sorry. Wasn’t thinking. A flat? Right.’

The public sleuth brought the object up to his private eye for closer investigation. There, bleeding through the tissue because it was written in eyebrow pencil, was a barely discernible address. Straining to focus, he tried to read the number.

‘“Forty-Three Gladstone Way.” Right.’

Turning the tissue over, he found the red-imprinted cultural icon of a pair of woman’s lips. Noreen noticed, and blushed, as they exchanged glances. Suddenly hearing someone coming, she spoke to Freddy in a lower voice. ‘Sorry. It was the only thing I had.’

Freddy stuffed the tissue into his breast pocket just as Loach entered the office and caught him in the act.

‘What’s this then? Love notes?’

‘My lips are sealed,’ Freddy smirked. He kissed the back of Noreen’s hand, then flicked MacFoxy the glove puppet from an inside pocket to bid her farewell.

‘See you at the compost convention, dear lady,’ waved Foxy on his way out, leading Freddy by the hand.

Satisfied he had gone, Loach turned his attention to his wife.

‘What was that all about?’

‘Freddy being Freddy,’ she quipped.

‘No … The piece of paper.’

Noreen studied her husband through veiled eyes. What was he really saying? ‘It can’t be jealousy. And you can’t be worried I’m giving Freddy the trade secrets of the company.’

He pulled a face, the one he usually used on these occasions. ‘Just for once … Why can’t you give a simple answer to a simple question instead of going round the houses? It’s like pulling teeth.’ He was getting nowhere. ‘Aw, forget it. Who’s interested?’

‘Well, you are for a start.’ She considered whether he even deserved her honesty any more. What difference did it make whether she were true or false, or whether he believed and trusted her or not? ‘If you must know, he’s looking for a flat, and I happened to hear of one coming on the market.’

Loach started laughing so hard he couldn’t stop. ‘You found a flat for Freddy?’

She wrinkled her nose at his antics. ‘Yes, I found a flat for Freddy. What’s so all-fired funny about that?’

‘Listen,’ he confided between chuckles, ‘there are three kinds of liars: liars, bloody liars and Freddy Calder.’ It took him a while to get his funny bone back in the socket. ‘For as long as I’ve known the bloke, he’s been going on about looking for a flat.’ He pressed his advantage for once, sensing her discomfort and naiveté. ‘He wants one like you need a hole in the head.’

Though sceptical, her curiosity was aroused. ‘All right. What do you know that I obviously don’t know?’

His ironic smile scarcely warped the shape of his mouth, as he shared the inside joke with her. ‘I know his mother, Mrs Hilda Calder, for a start …’

Clearing the tea things from the table, she saw Freddy hovering in the doorway wearing his dark coat, obviously coming to inform her that she was going to be home all alone for hours again tonight while he ran out to play. Just like his father.

‘Got to be going, Ma. Duty calls.’

Parade duty perhaps. Or maybe something else entirely that had nothing to do with duty, and his cover story was just a ruse to escape from home to play some other game every night. ‘You’re hardly in the door when you’re going out again. You’d think you were in charge of every investigation in Birmingham.’ Her son, like his father before him, often exaggerated his own status and prestige.

‘If only we were that important. No,’ he protested. ‘We’re the ones who wipe noses and help old ladies across the street.’

She knew exactly what he was insinuating with that kind of talk, and he might as well be disabused of that notion right that minute. ‘You’ll never need to do that for me, Freddy Calder.’

Palpably impatient to leave, and leave her behind, he seemed happy, for some unknown reason. ‘Humph … Sometimes I wonder if it is the police station you’re off to in such a rush?’

As if to prove his adolescent manhood, as well as paramilitary pedigree, Freddy began to unbutton his coat so that, once again, he could show off his uniform underneath.

‘That’s supposed to make it gospel, is it? Huh!’ Anybody could wear a mail order uniform. He had a guilty conscience, she could see it written all over his face.

‘I’ve got to go, Ma.’

She swept him away with an imaginary broom. ‘Go, go. Who’s stopping you?’

He hesitated before leaving. Now, she thought, now he remembered what he had said to hurt his mother’s feelings, now that it was too late. She couldn’t wait for the day he would come to her for love and protection, begging to stay rather than leave, and she would remember each and every one of these petty humiliations.

In the end, he did leave, abandoning her again to this shabby prison. Slowly she crossed to the window and pulled back the curtain. She saw Freddy reach his precious car, then turn and notice her in the window. He gave her a small wave. She sniffed indifferently, dropping the curtain back in place.