A Barrow Boy's Cadenza: In Dead Flat Major

PROLOGUE

London, just off Pall Mall, one of the classical white stucco, terrace buildings, appearing from the outside as it had done since Georgian times, but inside, stripped out and modern.

Silence, just after midnight. the House rarely sat late these days, so the MP could be there, along with the PM’s Cabinet Secretary, Head of Armed Forces, and a man known only as Pomerol, as in the ruby red wine he brought to these meetings. As tradition dictated, they sipped the robust wine from crystal goblets, sat around the large conference table, a single central, powerful light, punching a glare onto the highly polished surface, distant walls lost in the peripheral darkness.

The light on the table surface flared and reflected to the faces of men, silent, driven politically and idealistically, their course set, wine savoured, waiting. The appearance of severed heads of Olympian Gods, suspended in the heavens. Not Gods, though not far off how they viewed themselves. Faces did not respond to the delicate tapping on the distant door. Opened, the room flooded with light for the briefest of moments, plunged back into halo and gloom, a whirring and gentle snap as the electronic closer did its job.

A harsher tapping of footsteps on the polished hardwood floor, blakeys, metal corners on shoe heels; click, click, eight steps, a chair drawn back, only the hint of a scrape; hallowed halls. Len took his place at the table, part filled his goblet that sparkled refracted light, swirled the ruby liquid, looked at it through the light, sniffed, sipped, and made the obligatory mmmm of approval. He put his glass down, his hands flat on the table in front of him; he was ready.

The dog was dead when they took it from the harbour; a savage beast who had in turn been savaged. They chucked it back, ‘Strewth, what’s that, the seventh this month?’ He was just a crane operator, so why should he care; the Ministry of Defence Police Inspector did.

Colonel Horrocks insisted they accept his resignation, ‘The Chief Constable position is not for me. The job is not what I thought it would be. I suggest we get the previous Chief back,’ he told the committee.

‘Colonel Horrocks, you are our man and I suggest you think long and hard before you say no.’ The ramrod Colonel of the Marines was making himself clear to Horrocks, his body language portraying a pointed aggression.

This was not what retirement was meant to be like Colonel Horrocks, nicknamed the General, thought to himself as he clanked out of the Board Room on his tin legs, out of the Royal Naval Officer's Club, onto the street. The salty mist off the nearby sea did little to settle his stomach; what should he do? His options were clear, the consequences of saying no, certain; this was not a game. He could think of only two people who could help him, but would they?

Jack settled the banker into the palatial safe house, a jewel in this part of leafy and posh Southsea. ‘I’m not sure I can do this Inspector. You have my affidavit, can that not be enough?’

‘Enuff to bang the bastards away, not to save the economy, stupid,’ Jack said, striking a presidential pose, wishing he had a mirror. He did, however, feel a tad guilty, this would be dangerous, took balls, and he thought merchant bankers had none. Just goes to show, he thought, ‘The ‘ouse is nice…’ he said to reassure the uncomfortably plump, clammy banker, ‘bit ‘Ansel and Gretel for me, all that flinty stuff, but nice garden for you to stay out of,’ he chuckled. Aware of the gun running, Jack Austin didn’t want this banker popping his clogs, just yet.

A message on DCI Jack Austin's phone, which he studiously ignored, read;

Well done BatBat and Dobbin

I’m in Jack

List of those involved on its way

Those bankers need to be on the naughty step.

Shall we go gunning for them?

Mor.

ONE

‘I’m dying.’

‘Again?’ She sighed, it would not be the first time he had died on her. A little over two months ago he had been shot rescuing children held by a paedophile ring on a Solent fort. He had died and been brought back. She carried on.

The voice from the bed stirred, a suggestion of delirium, she could not miss it; he had a forceful voice even in his weakened condition. ‘I see a fairy at the bottom of our garden, sunlit water, dappled pixels of sunlight, it speaks to me…’ he said, in an ephemeral, cotton candy voice, ‘…don’t go to work. Take Amanda off to a world of tranquillity, beauty, and seafood…escape as two lovers. You’ve done your bit.’

This did make her stop, and she looked over his prone form in the bed, beads of sweat on the raised wrinkles of the puckered skin that sank into the void of his right eye socket, refracting the early morning summer sun that penetrated to the back of the bedroom: strong, blinding, punching through the crack in the curtains. The vertical scar that ran from his forehead to an inch or so onto his right cheek, was raised a brilliant white, an iridescent reminder of a most horrific historic injury. Mumbling incoherent frontier gibberish, his good eye closed, he was unaware she looked at him. Sometimes, it was as if she had never before seen the disfigurement. She returned to her work.

‘Retirement is like dying…listen, like only the dying can,’ he called out like a poncy Larry Olivier, and Mandy stopped her flurry of housework, this fragmented sentence catching her attention. They’d spoken about retirement and whether they could hack it? She had this romantic notion of just taking the ferry, he called a fairy, out of Portsmouth and going on the missing list in France.

Jack became aware of the sudden inactivity and opened his good eye. His vision was blurred. He saw not a ferry but a more traditional fairy, in a knee length silk nightdress gently lowering herself onto the bed and sitting beside him, he gave up an involuntary gulp. She stroked his brow, picking up sweat, and leaving a residue of fairy dust and microscopic household mites as she looked into his one, unfocused, good eye. He responded with a throaty, rumbling groan to her soothing and gentle touch, a death-rattle? He sensed her breath in his ear, shuddered, and despite his failing health, was excited by the proximity of her radiant beauty.

‘Shut the feck up Jack, you are not dying, you have a hangover. Getting pissed with Alexander Petrov and Milk’O. Now, get up and give me a hand.’

Oh, the savage cruelty of the fairy world. He was awake now and any thoughts of a day off in bed were gone, uncomfortably reminding him of his own childhood, his Mum would say if he was ill, Ask the teacher if you can rest yer ‘ead on the desk. Other kids had days off. Groaning and expelling his sour breath into the dusty atmosphere, he replied to her clenched nose, ‘Ooooh Amanda, you can be so insensitive. What’re you doing anyway?’ He propped himself and twisted his aching body, so his good eye could face her without having to turn his painful head. His neck hurt, could be menintitearse, and he had a mild panic attack; how can he ask Mandy to put a glass on his skin and check?

Familiar with his hypochondriac hysteria, his getting words wrong, and speaking of his thoughts, she replied, ‘I’m picking up my clothes, where you threw them last night, and your tutu, which is covered in mud and grass stains, it's meningitis, get your own glass, and help me get the flat ready for Liz and Carly who are coming to stay for a week while they look for somewhere to live.’

‘God, I thought that was next week,’ he said, his vision clearing. Was this the clarity you sense before death?

She stood, grasping a bundle of clothes to her chest, predominantly stiff pink netting, ‘I appreciate you have your head full of the important things like Millwall feckin’ football club, Bernie having a cheese sandwich when you asked him what he wanted to drink, and the overthrow of the Government, but I thought there may have been a little room for a modicum of domestic information.’

He thought that was it and began to relax, but it wasn’t, she stayed, and appeared to be looking for an answer. What could it be she wanted to hear? What was the question? ‘What are you doing with my tutu?’ Nice save he thought.

‘Putting it in the wash,’ she replied, standing up, and sitting immediately back down as he tugged her hand. She fell across him and he planted a kiss, she noticed his eye was better focused and the Stratford upon Avon moment appeared to be over. ‘That’s nice,’ she said, and he kissed her brow. ‘Come on, let’s have coffee, they’ll be here soon.’ Mandy offered a token struggle, enjoying the warmth of this irritating man, raised her head just in time to see a cheeky thought make the tortured journey across his ravaged face.

‘Have I got any clothes here?’ he asked.

It made her think, a hint of a chuckle at his imminent embarrassment. ‘Crikey,’ she said, ‘there’s your old shirt I wore that time, when I had nothing at your house.’ She was thinking of clothes but Jack was recalling how beautiful she was in his shirt, reminiscing how in the sixties, as a young man, the screen sirens were often seen in just a man’s shirt and it affected him as much now as it did in his non-spotty youth. In fact, this woman had ignited a desire in him he thought may have been totally extinguished, and not just because he would be sixty in a few days. He had lost his lust for life and the lust for anything else after Kate, his wife, had been killed in a car crash a little over three years ago.

‘Just need some round the houses then?’ he said in his spiky, cockney accent. People didn’t really know what Jack’s accent truly was as he bounced from estuarine, cockney, Jane Austen English, and anything else that entered his mind at any prescribed time, especially Cod Irish.

Mandy went to the wardrobe, grabbed the shirt, and tossed it to him, ‘Let me think on the trousers, as revolting a thought as that is, get up and we'll have breakfast, and please, not too much Stratford upon Avon, eh?’

‘What?’ Jack said, mainly through force of habit, although he was a tad deaf, as he raised himself from the pillow, and with only a modicum of groaning, a token really, he got out of bed. He found his boxer shorts on his face, and as he lifted them off, Mandy was smiling. He acknowledged the accuracy of her throw and she held the shirt open for him. One arm in, he spun into her arms and embraced her, ‘Amanda Bruce, I love you.’ She was about to reciprocate when the phone went. ‘Leave it, it’s bound to be the Nick.’

You see, she thought to herself, he can be so irritating, so why do you love him? She had no answer; it was a mystery to her and everyone else. ‘Jack, you are a DCI, and I am a detective superintendent. Half of Portsmouth was blown up last night; you were there. We stopped a battle between Crusading Knights Templars and Saracens; you were there as well, and both times dressed as Angelina Baller-fucking-rina, so I think our colleagues may want us in today?’ To mollify the strength of her rebuke she applied her syrupy southern belle smile that he saw as a special treat for him. It made him think of the porridge his Mum used to make, and sometimes, for a treat, she used Golden Syrup, not that he thought Mandy looked Scottish; a ginger beard would not suit her. She leaned over to pick up the phone, not taking her eye off him, and again it appeared as if she looked to him for an answer, he sensed as he always did, a feeling of mild anxiety. What to say? Twice this morning, not good for his apolloxy which he was convinced he had, along with Oldtimers and Florets, and now, menintitearse.

‘You were going to say something?’ she asked.

The cavalry came over the hill and something occurred to him, ‘What about Connie, dressed in her Yoga stuff?’ and Mandy roared a laugh into the telephone receiver.

On the other end of the phone, Detective Inspector Josephine Wild, known as Jo Jums or Mumsey which had become Ma’amsie since being promoted to DI, reacted, ‘Mandy, you have just deafened me.’

Mandy walked with the portable phone, her eyes following Jack who had taken advantage of the distraction to beat a strategic retreat to the loo, a pit-stop, before the kitchen. She watched him getting his mocha pot ready. ‘Sorry Jo, Jack was remarking on Connie’s part last night, saying she was dressed in her Yoga kit.’ She stopped talking to Jo Jums and turned, reacting to Jack’s cry having dropped his pot. The coffee strainer and metal pot had fallen onto his bare feet, and she watched the pot explode, the shattered black handle, skitter within a cloud of coffee grounds, across her formerly clean floor. Shaking her head, she still managed a smile at his reaction to the pain and described the picture to Jack Austin’s long-standing and long-suffering colleague, who just derred.

‘What?’ he said, as he scrambled around the floor, mentioning he may have a broken foot, as he used the toe of that broken foot to push the coffee grounds to God knows where, hoping they would miraculously disappear, Mandy supposed.

‘Ninja, she was dressed as a Ninja.’ He’d not heard, often didn’t when he didn’t understand something. He did have poor hearing, but Mandy thought some was selective.

‘The ‘andles broke, and who’s ginger, are we having Golden Syrup?’ he called from the floor.

Mandy returned to the phone, not understanding a word of what he said, ‘He’s okay, thanks for the call, we’ll be in for the not the nine o’clock briefing, about ten. We want to call into the hospital to see Father Mike; they kept him in the Assessment Ward last night.’ She carried on listening on the phone whilst looking at her man scrabbling on the floor, trying to pick up the coffee grounds with his hands and looking to see if the handle would magically reaffix itself. ‘Jo, get the commander to sit in, save time. I will handle the press conference later, set it for five, I have a feeling lover boy will need an early night, and me too if I’m honest - see you later.’

TWO

Still hopelessly bumbling on the floor, looking to see if he could push the debris somewhere, anywhere, rather than get a dustpan and brush, Mandy sashayed to Jack, a welcome distraction, and he dipped his head under her nightdress; she knew her dipstick and had positioned herself deliberately - Detective Chief Inspector Jack (Jane) Austin, a self-confessed, fully paid up member of the dirty old man brigade.

While he played ging-gang-gooley, camping under her nightdress, she brought to mind he would be sixty in a few days and she would be fifty-four not long after, and they hadn’t discussed how to mark the occasions. The investigation had been preoccupying, but he was in denial about his age, well, about most things if she was honest, and this was how he managed to keep going, denial being his core faith; C of E, Church of Egypt; De-Nile.

She lifted her nightdress, ‘Close your mouth we are not a codfish,’ she said, accompanied with her best coquette smile, and dropped the nightdress onto his open mouth. It was a thing with Jack, he quoted films, adverts, TV programmes (especially Father Ted – Cod Irish being his specialty, or so he thought), a lot of Pride and Prejudice, of course, his nickname being Jane Austin, and all generally wrong and more often than not, inappropriately applied and out of context, but she liked it. He liked the film Mary Poppins, except for the penguins, Nobody liked the penguins he would say, and he anguished because he liked A jolly ‘oliday with Mary. How many men worried about Mary Poppins; were there any at all?

People thought Mandy to be as equally mad to fall in love with him, but their relationship gave her life a frisson that had been missing for a long time. That is, when she was feeling benign and loving towards the feckin’ eejit (even she quoted Father Ted). Other times it was a source of agitation, particularly at work in the police as he dug ever deeper holes for himself from which, Teflon Jack, another of his many epithets, miraculously escaped.

‘What were we talking about?’ Akela called from beneath the nightie.

‘Ninjas, not gingers. You could get the dustpan and brush,’ Mandy said, and headed to the kettle, the trim of her nightdress receiving an emergency sniff as it dragged across his face. ‘I’ll make my own tea shall I,’ she said, always pleased when managing to catch him with one of his own idioms. It was a game, and she thoroughly enjoyed it, enjoyed her relationship with Jack and shared his rejuvenation. She flicked the kettle switch and swivelled her eyes to the floor to see Jack on all fours, spare tyre over his boxer shorts, shirt riding up his back, exposing giant love handles like a spare set of buttocks; not your classic fantasy image. She often categorised him as a Jack Nicholson type, a boyish charm in an aging and not lean body, and promised herself a trip to Specsavers, just after she got her brains tested.

‘What’s a feckin’ Ninja when it’s at 'ome?’ he said, still on his knees, still resisting the dustpan and brush, still trusting the floor would clean itself.

There were frustrating times with this man, but he made her laugh, and sometimes deliberately so, ‘It’s a Chinese, or maybe Japanese, Martial Arts expert, silent and deadly, never seen a Ninja film Jack?’ Mandy saw where he was about to go and put up her hand, ‘I forgot, you only like Rom-Coms, and before you say it, it’s not a fart.’ She chuckled, starting to feel nice, despite the carnage and mayhem of the night before, and despite the fact her kitchen floor was covered in bits of mocha pot and coffee grounds that he would not clean up properly. Liz and Carly will likely be treading on debris for days as Mandy would live with Jack in his house while her pregnant daughter Liz, and her partner Carly, stay in her flat, and look for a new home. ‘You don’t have any water at the bottom of your garden anyway,’ she said to the ungainly walrus.

‘What?’ He was getting up now and making a song and dance about that as well. She thought he’s looking for me to pitch in and help him clean up his mess. She got the dustpan and brush, I had better do this or Carly will think I’m a slut, and Mandy thought, was this my role in life now, cleaning up after this bloke? Kate, Jack’s late wife, used to say, He’s like a big ugly ship ploughing through the waters and we all live in his bow wave. Kate died three years ago; he had been devastated.

Mandy, a single mum with two children, had been friends with Jack and Kate and their two kids for more than eight years, and Mandy thought Jack might never get over the loss. Still, here they were, slowly growing together, on her part, for Jack never did anything with baby steps, or grow-up for that matter. Nevertheless, she thought they had a good foundation, certainly they loved each other, but she was not so foolish, not to realise for Jack this was an energetic flush after a prolonged period of deep mourning. It was exciting for her too, but she’d been in love with this eejit for a while, waiting, to see if his one eye would ever open again, and in her direction. ‘I said you do not have any water at the bottom of your garden for any ferry, or fairy for that matter, to be dancing upon.’

‘I was using dramatic irony,’ he said with a smug-ugly grin on a face only a mother, or Mandy, would love.

He was doing her tea whilst she returned the floor to a semblance of a shine. She liked this about him, he did her tea, cooked, cleaned, a little, except she was always first to see the dirt before it ever came onto his radar. He never saw dust at all and claimed he was hypoallergenic, meaning allergic, but in a manic way. However, he did so many things that came from his heart and it made her feel cared for, loved. ‘Dramatic irony? You twat, what’s that got to do with the price of fish?’

‘Be nice to have fish this evening, eh?’

She shook her head, his ability to change direction never failed to amaze her, as did his love of fish and seafood. ‘We always have fish,’ she would not let him off, ‘Jack, dramatic irony?’

‘We don’t always have fish, the other day you said you had chicken breasts?’ Mandy recalled speaking this into the fridge whilst hunting for something for dinner. She decided it might be prudent to let him off, he was after all, a modern-day Mrs Malapropism, known in the police station as Mr Malacopperism. He brought her tea over and kissed her neck; the toast was in, she could smell it burning.

‘I like mine lightly toasted?’ she shouted into his ear.

‘Shite…’ and Jack reached the toaster, not in the nick of time. He inserted more bread as the jerry-rigged mocha pot began bubbling, increasing Jack’s sense of panic. Mandy relaxed and sipped her tea, alert to Jack’s ooooh’s, fecks, and shites, as he dispensed his robust coffee with just a bundle of tea-towels to grip the pot. He succeeded with only two or three tea-towels becoming doused in black tar that masqueraded as coffee; he hid them behind the bread bin.

‘Not having muesli, Jack?’ she teased. Kate had introduced Jack to muesli, and after some time of whistling, which he did all the time anyway, and sitting like a bird with its legs hanging out of a nest, he began to like his bird seed. In fact, his muesli had become an art form, making it himself with his own gathered ingredients and a formula people ran miles from if he threatened to tell them about it, which happened often.

‘I’m having toast today sweet'art, I need to soak the oats and then put the coconut in…’

She flagged him with her eyebrows, ‘Stop, or we can talk about dramatic irony.’

He knew when to stop, in fact Jack knew women, leastways this is what he told himself, whereas the whole of womankind knew different. Mandy sat, sublimely relaxed with her tea and now lightly toasted toast, looking at her eejit of a bloke sitting opposite her, agitated, burnt toast breaking as he buttered it and squashed it into his mouth. She had swapped her burnt stuff, which he’d nonchalantly tried to pass to her, with his immaculately toasted bread. Still, he was happy with his demitasse of bitter-black coffee; all he really needed.

‘You could have made more toast.’ He ignored her, committed to the black bread and black tar and she saw the patent relaxing of his ugly face as he took his first sips. Jack erroneously considered his face handsome, with character. Mandy thought it was more like a cross between Geoffrey Rush, the actor, and a slapped arse; she giggled.

‘What you laughing at, babes?’

‘Nothing, just thinking,’ she replied, taking pleasure in a warm glow as he looked at her with a loving, though dodgy, eye. Approaching fifty-four, she did not think herself a beauty, but Jack did. He considered her a real woman, and said it all the time, and she liked it. He would say she was his Sophia Loren of Portsea Island, which was the Naval and Commercial port of Portsmouth. Nice, but not Capri.

‘Okay, lover?’

‘Fine, I’m thinking about the nice things you say about me.’

He stopped crunching, slurping, and mmmming, and moved his chair to hers and sat so their legs squashed together; he tried to do this wherever they were. The intensity of his coffee and charcoal breath grew as he leaned in and his hand stroked her cheek, ‘I love your face Amanda. You have hazel eyes that flare to green when you are energised.’ This could mean when she was angry or sexually aroused. It was one of his favourite Pride and Prejudice rejoinders, all completely out of context, but it made her feel good, so who gave a toss.

‘You have perfect Olive Oil skin, (he liked Popeye) and I love your thick, black, arching eyebrows,’ and she shuddered as his index finger traced the eyebrows and brushed her closing eyelids, ‘and your raving hair, how it shines, blue and green in the sunlight as it swings and touches your shoulders,’ he was touching her shoulders now and she mmm’d. ‘I love to kiss your full and lush lips, but most of all Amanda, I love your nose.’ He kissed it, blowing the essence of toast and coffee up her nostrils. Always his final sentiment. Mandy had a large roman nose that had been the bane of her life, but he loved it.

Jack’s hand dropped from her shoulder, caressing her breasts en-route to encircle her waist. Mandy rose from the chair and sat facing him on his lap. They kissed and he held her tight. Her breath was lost. Father Mike will have to forgo their hospital visit she thought, as he fumbled lifting her up, tripped, felt his back for an injury, but eventually guided her to the bedroom. Fortunately, she knew the way.

THREE

Mandy had come to relish her post coital reverie after making love with Jack; he slept, and she savoured the subsequent quiet. The buzzer intruded and she continued to drift but did respond to Coooeeeh Mr Shifter from the hallway. Mandy registered her daughter’s attempt at Jack’s, PG Tips tea, TV monkey adverts, and the rejoinder from Carly, Light refreshments ensured she was truly alert. Jack startled her when he shouted, Don’t give up the day job, Curly. Jack rarely called anyone by their given name, he created nicknames, and people were noticeably fed-up if they didn’t get one. He called Carly, Curly, and Liz and Carly, infuriatingly, liked it.

‘Are you decent?’ Liz called as she poked her head into the bedroom. Jack and Mandy scrambled the quilt around them. Liz giggled, and Jack could see the likeness of her mother and knew if he had met a younger Mandy, he would have been equally as attracted.

‘Thank you, Jack, that’s a lovely thing to say,’ daughter and mother said in unison.

‘Did I say that out loud…?’ Mandy and Liz smiled, in unison.

Jack spoke his thoughts. Mandy thought it was endearing, though often wondered where she would put him when Alzheimer’s had really got a hold. Still the Tourette’s was under control. Jack, Liz, and Carly sniggered, ‘Please don’t tell me I said that out loud?’

‘You did, Mum, and tolerably well.’ Both young women now true proficients in bastardised Pride and Prejudice.

‘We will meet you in the kitchen directly,’ Mandy replied, and the girls left, to noises of frenetic action that suggested running around the bedroom, picking up clothes with the occasional bit of slap and tickle. Mandy excused herself to take a shower whilst Jack entertained in his boxer shorts and shirt. This was not just making