Gold Digger (16 page)

She looked at him closely in the bright light. His face was gaunt with bright blue eyes and a large mouth. His body was thin, his legs like sticks and the voice was exaggeratedly well bred. Saul was Saul, the chameleon, and it was a relief to see him, the relief tempered with acute suspicion until she remembered the sobbing. Saul had been sobbing for Thomas.

‘Ah well, let’s get it over with,’ he said. ‘Just call them.’

‘As if.’

She shook her head, hiding the beginnings of a smile. Then she tucked the blanket round him so tightly he could not move.

‘I’ve seen you looking better, Saul,’ she said. ‘So why didn’t you knock on the door?’

‘Insatiable curiosity,’ he said. ‘Absolutely insatiable, demanding instant gratification. I had to see for myself that you were keeping faith. That you hadn’t removed anything. Besides, old habits die hard. I hate to be announced. Anyway, you were out, gone to London, taken that case.’

‘Saul,’ she said, ‘You insult me any more and I am very likely to disfigure you. I have a knife.’

She placed a hand on his groin. Colour flooded his face; he struggled to free his arms and began to cough again.

‘Leave my gonads alone, Di. They might be useful. In case I need to sleep with the enemy, which is, in a manner of speaking, exactly what I have been doing. And believe me, it isn’t comfortable. And if I’d spoken to you, I wouldn’t have been able to keep up the act. Oh, screw you, Thomas, you old darling, why did you have to die?’

The weeping began again.

J
ones woke in the third shelter on the left on the north side of the pier. The back of his head hurt like hell and he raised his hand to feel it. No blood, a lump the size of an egg. He held his forefinger in front of his face and touched the tip of his nose, like he was testing a drunk. The next test was to see if he could walk in a straight line and he got up to try. Not so good. He could stand. The binoculars were still round his neck. He leaned against the concrete balustrade of the pier and put them to his eyes but they were too heavy to hold. Dawn was waiting somewhere, but not near enough. Di’s house still blazed with light. Someone was dragging at his arm. He turned, focused on a kid with a badge round her neck so big he could read it,
Peg,
looking at him with big anxious eyes.

‘You all right?’ she asked. ‘You’ve been asleep.’

He looked at her blankly.

‘Don’t remember, do you? You gave me some chocolate, earlier on. I came on here to sleep. Then you went away and came back. I looked after your rod … Then someone hit you and you fell on me.’

‘Christ,’ Jones said. ‘And you fucking stayed around? You mad or what?’

She shrugged. ‘Someone had to. Nobody else noticed. They wouldn’t, would they?’

‘No, not on here they wouldn’t. They mind their own business on here.’

The lights of Di’s house twinkled in the distance, like a welcoming beacon in the lightening sky.

‘Fucking nightmare, this place,’ the girl said. ‘Nowhere to get a cup of tea.’

The deserted pier was no longer a friendly place. Jones started to walk, unsteadily, but purposefully towards the open gates of the exit. The door to the watchman’s bunker was firmly shut. His memory was fitful; came on the pier, set up rod, talked to someone, what time? Went for drink, came back. Perhaps someone thought he was coming on to this kid, no, no one would ever think that, because whatever else he was, Jones would never do that, he was passionate about kids, but not that way. People saw stuff that wasn’t there to be seen, anything would do if you wanted an excuse to hit him and Jesus H Christ, he was weary and hungry, and this kid seemed to be going the same way. They wavered out of there together. He didn’t like the way she held on to his arm, which was humiliating, but he needed it and he let her. He felt as if he smelled, probably did. Booze and sweat and an exploding head. He was fucking rank and he did not want to go home. How long between leaving the pub and being hit? Fifteen minutes? Long enough for someone to tell someone where he was going.

Ten minutes’ brisk walk to Di’s house on a good day, longer now, with both of them blathering. Her name was Peg, she said, and she had a map. Showed where the pier
was, she said; thought she would kip there and save the money, pretended to be looking after his rod, giggle, giggle. You look like my dad. Do you know someone called Di? No I don’t, he said, no one knows her, not really. We should be going the opposite way, he said, I live down the other end, only you can’t come in. Have you got a wife? she asked. No, not now, I never want to go home, that’s my trouble. Mine too, Peg said. Dear God, she chatted on like she trusted him. A London child, she was, and didn’t she know that this place was all about fish and feathered birds and the sea, all of that far more important than human beings.

Jones stopped and gestured expansively towards the waves, pointing back towards the pier. ‘Innit marvellous,’ he said, stumbling. ‘I saw Thomas there at twelve, he said he was going home. I spoke to him, he said he was fine but he always said that. She didn’t call the ambulance until hours after. What did she do?’

Peg looked at the map. ‘Who are you talking about?’

‘Di. Who lives up there.’

‘Oh,’ said Peg, ‘That Di. She’s a really kind woman, that one.’

Jones stopped, as if struck by lightning.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Do you know what? You’re fucking right. That’s what she is. Kind. Too fucking kind by half. That’s Di alright and that’s all we need to know. It’s as simple as that.’

There was nowhere else to go.

‘I
don’t care if you’re sick and tired, Saul. You have to go on talking to me. Say it again.’

Saul sprawled in Thomas’s winter chair. It was upholstered in brilliant, faded blue, with scuffed arms and like most objects in this house, seemed to have an independent life of its own.

‘I’ve been halfway party to this plan,’ she said. ‘But not all the way.’

‘You couldn’t be,’ Saul said. ‘Because you kept on thinking that one day Gayle and Beatrice were bound to inherit the finer qualities of their father and understand his passions. Can’t imagine why you did.’

‘Because I wanted to.’

‘Because you think you inherited your own saving graces?’

‘Some. A talent for concealing things. And I’m handy with a knife.’

‘We stray from the point,’ Saul said, carefully. ‘Thomas and I hatched a plan to save this collection from the threat
posed by his children, who are led by Edward, who in turn clones his own bitterness. He’s a failure in life who’s wrecked his career by serial dishonesty and he has something to prove. Inherited qualities? If you had known Christina, you’d be better placed to judge them. But you didn’t know Christina.’

Yes, I did, in a manner of speaking
, Di thought.
I knew what she could do
, but it was an unspoken thought.

‘At least I know
them
better now,’ Di said. ‘I hate them: Gayle, Edward, Beatrice. Although I don’t know which I hate most.’

‘Good. You’re going to need that, although I’m sorry you found out in the way you did. That was no one’s intention, although I must say, Edward’s pre-emptive raid on the London flat was entirely in character and certainly endorses the rightness of the plan.’

‘And the plan is … ?’

‘To entrap them. To compromise them. To
give
them something, but make them work for it. To make
them
take a risk. To show themselves to themselves. Turn them into thieves, and soon. Otherwise, they will hound you into the ground. And it must be sooner rather than later, because they’re going to look foolish when the Coroner exonerates you, and they’ll think of something more extreme than putting you in prison. They’ll get really vicious, and they won’t stop. And it’s urgent, because although Edward is my new best friend, I fear he has sources of information he doesn’t share with me. Contacts, also. He’ll go off on a dangerous tangent, like he already has.’

‘We compromise them,’ Di said slowly. ‘We make
them
the thieves. Yes, I like that.’

She got up. They had been talking too long. The sky was growing light.

‘Whatever the plan,’ Di said. ‘We need allies. Thomas always said the allies would arrive.’

Saul yawned, unable to decide between hunger and an acute desire for sleep. A loud banging on the back door brought him to his feet. It was a confident
rat, tat, tat
, nothing surreptitious about it. The first light was in the sky.

‘Perhaps that’s them, now,’ he said.

D
awn had merged into morning by the time Di sat at the computer.

The small picture on the desk was one she had found upstairs and moved to the place so that she could look at it and record it in words.
A bowl full of old necklaces, odd earrings and beads.

She wrote to him.

This is not my story, Thomas is it? It will never be mine, it will always be the story of someone else in which I play a part. I’d like it if there was someone else who knew me, but there’s isn’t.

Been talking half the night, Thomas, to a sick and weary man, too. You knew that Saul has been cosying up to your children since whenever. You always reckon that he had as fine an eye for personality as he does for a painting.

I think my father’s back, Thomas, I think he’s there, although I don’t want to believe it. You thought of that possibility, but not what might happen if, by any chance, he should collaborate with your children. Saul says he’ll put paid to that, but I don’t know what else he might do. It’s rich, isn’t it, that he’s afraid of me, because of what I know of him, and I am only afraid of him for the knowledge he may have. And because he never acts alone, he only ever carries out the intentions of others. Saul says, discount him, but then neither of us explained everything to Saul,
did we? My father might indeed want to help in the way he knows best.

It was too soon to go to London, Thomas, wasn’t it? But it gave me the anger I need. Saul’s right: a little hatred goes a long way and I’d better hang on to it.

All I want right now is the sea and the sky and the bay, but the allies have arrived. You said they would and I think I know what they can do. Man the fortress. I mustn’t be alone here. The house is under siege.

So, here they are. Saul has the master plan you devised together; Jones is obstinate and little Peg can read a map. And they’ve all been to prison. A bond of sorts.

Can I tell Saul everything? No, not yet.

I’ll tell you more about the allies another time. For now, I’m going to the Bay. I wish you were with me. And Patrick.

I miss you so much.

The Allies. Di counted them up. The smell of bacon had driven them dizzy and, now replete, they were floundering round in the kitchen like so many soft toys. Peg, with the bruise on her forehead worn like a flower, full of pride for rescuing Jones, and him full of shame for being rescued. Peg, a girl on the run, not so much damaged that she could not believe in the kindness of strangers, a person of undiscovered resources. Then there was Jones, with whom Di had unfinished business and mutual, exasperated affection. Jones and Thomas, another story, friends of a sort. Thomas and Saul Blythe, another story, too. These were what she had to trust.

Skinny Saul, propped up in the corner in recovery mode, was the possessor of the kind of voice she could mimic, but never own. He was the one with the glib tongue and the
charm; articulate even in delirium and sitting like an invalid acting a part. The one who now knew every painting in the house, reclining in Thomas’s chair and looking at the nude with fond but objective appreciation, his eyes straying to the tiny painting up on the wall next to it as if measuring it. The house was always ready for guests, because Thomas wanted it ready for the army who never came. Thomas and Diana, wanting it ready for what it might become.

They gobbled breakfast of bacon and eggs with a variation of smoked salmon and chives for Saul, the burglar, if you please. The lump on the back of Jones’s head was spitefully sore, would have been worse had he been entirely sober when receiving it, but the application of ice dulled the pain, if not the indignity of the event.
I didn’t see it coming
, he kept saying.
What am I like? I should have seen it coming.
The vocal sympathy of Saul, with his exaggerated cries of
Oh no, of course you couldn’t
, created an immediate empathy. Saul fussed and bothered and found remedies from the hypo chondriac’s arsenal in his bag: tiger balm, lavender and paracetamol, praising Jones meantime for his hardiness. It was rather well done, Di thought. Otherwise Saul, who managed a degree of elegance even when exhausted, would have been anathema to burly, homophobic Jones, even allowing for Jones’s innate appreciation of style.

All Di required of her allies at this point was not loyalty or affection, but the ability to keep watch – and if they wanted to stay, which they did, because none of them had anywhere else to go for now, they had to come clean about who they were, if only so they understood one another. Di craved the sea and the sky and the keyboard, but she was in charge.

‘I want each of you say why you’re here and why you aren’t in a hurry to move,’ Di said.

She pointed at Peg. Peg was at the end of the line, shrugged, pulled her hair over her forehead, sat up straight and spoke fast.

‘I’m Peg, eighteen, born in Borough, not that that’ll mean anything to you. Tried everything, shoplifter, shop worker, tried everything I’m not good at, like stealing and being a tart. I was running away, anywhere, picked up the wrong ticket, got on a train and ended up on a fucking pier. I’m good at cleaning, love it and you’ve got a lotta house and I owe you fifty quid. And I like him.’ She pointed at Jones.

‘Fuck’s sake,’ said Jones. ‘Why me?’

‘’Cos you were nice to me. Same for her,’ pointing at Di. ‘Goes a long way, that does.’

‘You kept me warm,’ Jones said.

‘Always the best thing,’ Peg quipped. ‘Don’t like being cold.’