Midnight on Lime Street (5 page)

Angela spoke. ‘Oh? Why will it be just for a few months?’

‘Because he’s dying,’ Babs answered without emotion.

Even the sound of cutlery against plates suddenly stopped. Sally’s jaw dropped. ‘If you’re the only person there, Babs, you’ll find his body.’ She shivered in spite
of the heat. ‘I’ve never seen a dead body,’ she added lamely.

The girls stared hard at the one who was about to get away from Ma Eve’s. Yes, they were safe here, but it was so isolated, so bleak. Shops selling clothes were things of the past; there
was no joy in this area.

Babs exploded, though this time she was laughing. ‘Listen, girls, he has a cleaner who comes in every day, even at weekends. And if I have anything to do with it, he’ll slip away in
hospital after Christmas.’ She wouldn’t mention the bet. ‘I hope he lives till then, because he’ll buy me something lovely, and I’ll make him a good dinner.’ She
giggled. ‘The condemned man ate a hearty meal.’

The rest of the brunch was eaten in silence except for requests for the cruet or the water jug. Babs began to feel smug, especially when one of the envious ones scowled in her direction. But she
pitied sweet little Sally. For the first time in her adult life, Babs wanted to help someone. Yes. She would have a word with the poor kid this afternoon.

The day dragged towards evening. Babs pulled on frilly knickers and the school uniform, painted freckles on her nose, and did her hair in plaits with pipe-cleaners in the braids so that they
would bend outwards in a cute, silly way. After tying pale blue ribbons to the plaits, she wandered next door to Sally’s room. ‘Can I come in?’ she called after tapping on the
door.

‘Yes. I’d like to talk to you if you don’t mind.’

Babs entered. ‘Aw, Sally, you do look pretty.’

‘Thank you. Eve says she thinks I’ll have three tonight.’ She was dressed in baby doll pyjamas. ‘This is me turned into the next Baby Girl, I suppose. She gave me these
clothes and said to expect slightly older men tonight. When they’re young, they live in hope of getting the real thing, you see.’ She stared through the window. ‘My stepfather got
the real thing – me. I feel sick.’

Babs shook her head in sympathy. ‘I know, love. Listen to me, Sal. I’ll have to be quick, cos she’s already took the van down to town for the straight-after-work lot. I’m
not promising, but I might come into some money – don’t ask how or when, because I can’t say. If I do, I’ll get you out of here and we’ll have a life. I’m fed up
with all this. A working girl got strangled the other night – did you hear about it?’

Sally nodded. It had been the biggest story in the papers and on television.

‘We need to find a way of knocking this lark on the head,’ Babs muttered. ‘Proper jobs and a decent place to live. We can do it, girl.’

‘Can we?’

‘I’ll try my damnedest, Sal. Be sweet and kind to the men who use you, and save as much as you can.’ Babs’s ambitions had reached new heights. She wanted a good house, a
semi-detached with a garden and a decent kitchen. She wanted a proper job in a shop or an office . . . no, she would have her own business. ‘Whatever happens, I’ll not forget you, girl.
You and I are going places, and one of them places will not be bloody Southport.’

‘Thank you, Babs.’

‘Don’t thank me, Baby Girl. Just hang on in here. I’ll try to visit Meadowbank, but first I’ve got some acting of my own to do. And don’t forget, we’ve the
doc coming in the morning, so try to get rid of your last client as fast as you can, because we’ll be woke up early.’ She smiled and left Sal’s room.

Back in her own domain, Babs embroidered a brand new plan, one that seemed to have developed of its own accord only today. She was going for the bull’s eye, and she was good at darts. Her
latest brainwave had arrived at its destination during brunch, and it would involve stamina, tenacity and a strong stomach, but it was the only way to be certain of a decent future. Five hundred
pounds? No, she was going for the jackpot. She spoke to Baby Babs in the mirror. ‘Sally and me deserve a chance, and a chance, no matter how small, is worth fighting for.’

Could she force him to marry her?

Mr Sherwood sent for me after the shift ended yesterday morning. He reckoned that lads on the section were fed up with my mistakes. ‘Your concentration’s
slipping,’ he said, ‘so keep your mind on the job. You’ve mixed up Tithebarn Road with Tithebarn Place in Crosby, and two packages for Halewood were on their way to Bootle and
Formby. Fortunately, some of the others work with their eyes open and their brains switched on, which is more than can be said for you these days. Are you sickening for something, Neil?’

I told him I was sorry, but he gave me a peculiar look. Am I behaving differently? Am I giving myself away by acting or talking in a new way? I don’t think so. Things are still the same as
they were – we all go for a pint together unless we’re on night shift.

Perhaps it’s because I know that in the eyes of ordinary humans, I’m doing wrong. I was hoping for another visit from Jesus, but I suppose He’s testing me. So anyway, I rode my
bike home at dawn yesterday morning, and the sky was beautiful. The sun comes up over Yorkshire, but sometimes it seems to throw an echo on all the pretty white clouds over the Mersey. I wish Laura
could be with me at times like that. But she has her own schedule, kids’ breakfasts, get them off to school, clean the house, washing, ironing, shopping and cooking. I make my own breakfast
after a night shift, because my Laura works hard enough as things are. She has to be quiet, too, when I sleep in the day. It’s not easy. She can’t use the Hoover till I wake up and
spend time eating and playing with the kids before getting ready to go on shift.

And there I was at sunrise, just riding home, and I saw the old woman again, that one who stumbles about on her high heels – did I tell you about her? She must have been up to no good all
night, but I didn’t bother stopping. I see milkmen early in the mornings, and folk like me who work turnabouts, so it’s not worth the risk. Two in the afternoon till ten at
night’s the best shift when it comes to street-cleaning. That will be me come Monday.

I stood for a while and gazed at God’s sky. It looked as if He’d been busy with a paintbrush, so stunning was the picture. It’s an amazing world. The police aren’t here
any more; I used a route further inland when the cops were sniffing, went home through Bootle.

I still had the cross and chain at home, but I’d hidden it. I would get rid of it soon enough, I hoped. She’s going to be the next one, that stumbling woman old enough to know
better; she will wear it, because they all have to be linked so that the message will be clear. That was my thinking yesterday morning, anyway.

But when I got home, Laura wasn’t in bed; she usually sleeps till turned seven, which is when the kids wake her. She stood in the hall, arms folded and with a frown on her face. ‘I
found this in your sock drawer,’ she said, and she looked angry. It was the cross and chain I took from Number One. My feet felt stuck to the floor. Number One’s mother had identified
the body and had said that her girl had always worn her gold cross and chain. Did Laura know that? Had she read it in the paper or seen it on the news? She doesn’t often take notice of
current affairs.

‘Where did you get it?’ she asked, and she didn’t sound like herself; her voice was cold, and she separated all her words as if talking to a two-year-old.

My brain kicked in – all my extremities had felt frozen stiff until that moment.

‘Second-hand shop,’ I said. ‘I was trying to find a nice box so I could give it to you for your birthday.’

She held it up high and looked at it. ‘It isn’t a crucifix,’ she said. ‘It’s just a cross with no Christ on it.’

‘I know, Laura, but it’s real gold and very pretty.’

She didn’t seem angry any more. Perhaps she’d been wondering whether I had a girlfriend, and worrying that this thing might have belonged to the other woman. There’s never been
anyone but Laura for me. I hated seeing that thing in my sweet wife’s hardworking hands, because the object is contaminated by a whore.

‘It’s a lovely thought, Neil. Here, put it away till you find a box, and I’ll forget I ever saw it. You’d better get the first owner’s initials taken off,
though.’

I felt my pores opening. Every hair on my body stood to full attention as if on guard. Initials? Jesus, help me. I never noticed them.

So I took it from Laura. Yes, there the initials were on the plain side where there was no diamond cutting,
JD 21 today.
Number One was Jean Davenport – her name was in the
Echo
.

What must I do now? I wondered. If I took it to a jeweller to have the initials removed, he and others in the trade might have been warned by police to look out for it. Perhaps I could rub the
initials off in the shed. Maybe I should pretend to lose this one and buy another. If I kept it, my wife, my lovely wife, would be wearing the embellishment of a street walker.

After breakfast, I went up to bed. My mind was all over the place. I could buy her a gold crucifix with a Christ figure and say I’d sold the ‘second-hand’ one, but if I put it
on the next body, Laura might read the paper for once; she could well find out that Number One’s jewellery had been left on Number Two. My plan’s going wrong. Jesus gave me a clue by
bringing Judas and his joined-up thirty pieces, didn’t He? What should I do? Does anyone have the answer? Because my brain seems to be going on strike.

I prayed. I asked for Jesus to intercede and guide me through this . . . this mess. And He did! Well, He tried. From nowhere on the earthly plane, a scene entered my head. The cross was there on
a desk or a table, and I saw myself prising Jesus off another cross, maybe one attached to a rosary, and fastening the figure over the initials on Number One’s cross. But that isn’t the
pretty side, is it? The engraving’s on the flat side.

And I heard a voice saying a name. It mentioned Jimmy Nuttall. Jimmy has a high-class repository in town, all mother-of-pearl-backed prayer books and New Testaments, leather-bound hymnals and
missals, expensive rosaries. He sells First Communion clothes for girls and boys, Extreme Unction sets with everything a priest might need aside from the oils. It’s a posh place, and not
cheap. Yes, I would go there.

‘Thank you, Jesus,’ I told Him. If you pray, He never lets you down. Jimmy might have a gold rosary, and all rosaries bear Christ figures . . . But Laura would still be wearing the
whore’s cross with the figure from the rosary on the plain side. I was getting confused. If I bought a new chain – no. Jesus, thanks for trying to help, but I’m going to stick
with the plan. But no again. If Jean Davenport’s cross turns up on the old biddy’s corpse, it will all blow up once more, and Laura might notice and remember Jean Davenport’s
initials. I have to get rid of this one and buy Laura another, a proper crucifix this time.

Right, that’s it – it’s going in the river and Laura will have a new one, a proper one. I’m walking on sand now towards the pretty echo of a rising sun, and it’s
almost as magnificent as it was yesterday. I’m throwing the thing in the river wrapped round a big, flat pebble – anyone watching will think I’m stone-skimming. When the
water’s still and glassy like it is today, I sometimes bring the kids down to play this game. We count the bounces. Everybody says I’m a very good dad.

When the Lord left them, His apostles had to make decisions. I’ve been co-opted. I’m a new disciple, a secret one, and I have to follow the path prescribed by the Son of God.

Oh, and if your mail’s been a bit dodgy lately, I’ll do my best to get it right in the future. God bless you. Neil Carson, servant of the Lord.

In Ian Foster’s limited experience, things never worked out according to plan. Nobody went in the cellar the night following the attack on Healey. After all the trouble
the lads had gone to while in prison, digging at cement and brickwork, loosening bars so that they might escape, nothing happened. No, that wasn’t true, because Brothers Healey, Ellis and
Moorhead disappeared from the face of the school. At morning assembly the following day, pupils were advised by Brother Bennet that the three had gone on retreat and that new teachers would arrive
within days. On retreat? Ian’s fury continued white-hot. Oh yes, they were on retreat, all right, but from their evil doings. They were a cowardly army, and they’d fled to regroup far
from the front line of battle, that was all. Ian still needed to get away to tell the Queen and all the rest what had happened here. The flight of the three yellow-bellies served only to verify
allegations. ‘I’m still going,’ he told John-the-Stammer Lucas, who nodded his agreement. Phil Sharples announced his intention to flee with them, but the rest of the escape
committee withdrew. The abusers had gone, and that was case closed as far as they were concerned.

Ian was angry with them, too, though after some thought he began to understand why they weren’t coming. It was fear. Like concentration camp prisoners, they were too terrified to take
risks, and Ian certainly understood terror.

So just three boys wandered from the route during cross-country running. They picked up envelopes, paper and stamps from behind an empty milk crate, turned right, and legged it to the top field
where their stash, including outdoor shoes, was kept. They kept on their running shoes, though flight wouldn’t be easy with all the baggage. John knew where they were going, so the other two
simply trudged behind him, weighed down by spoils and tired after a shorter than normal supposedly character-building cross-country run.

‘What if Brother Jerrold notices we aren’t with the rest?’ Phil Sharples asked. ‘He’ll throw a blue fit .’

‘Don’t waste your worrying on that,’ Ian suggested. ‘And if he does throw a blue fit, let him do it in Bluebell Wood, cos nobody’ll notice with all the flowers
being blue.’

‘And what if the rest of the escape group tell where we are?’ Phil mumbled. ‘What if they get questioned and beaten till they talk?’

‘They won’t, because they don’t know where we’re going.’ Ian adjusted his burden in an attempt to make carrying easier. ‘Only Stammer knows that.’