A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [109]
She lay on the bed reading a magazine, and Dan didn’t come in for over an hour. When he did, he was grinning from ear to ear.
‘Who’s a sulky girl then?’ he taunted her.
‘I’m not sulking,’ she said airily, even though she was.
He caught hold of one of her bare feet and tickled the sole, making her giggle. ‘You aren’t allowed to sulk,’ he said. ‘Come on, let’s go down the pub and celebrate the last night of the plaster.’
‘What’s to celebrate about that?’ she asked.
‘There isn’t much, but you’ve had your hair done and you look pretty, so I’m looking for an excuse to show you off. Besides, we haven’t tuned into the grapevine lately.’
Fifi found it impossible to be cross with Dan for long. One look at his handsome grinning face, those dark eyes and angular cheekbones and she was putty in his hands.
‘Okay then.’ She got up and put on her shoes and some lipstick. ‘But don’t say anything more about my mum or I’ll come straight home.’
Fifi was laughing as she walked into the pub. Dan had been doing an impersonation of Stan as they walked up the road. He had caught his hangdog expression, the stiff-backed walk and the accent perfectly.
‘Nice to see a pretty girl laughing,’ Johnny Milkins said, turning on his bar stool to look at Fifi. ‘Tell us the joke, I could do with a laugh.’
The pub was very quiet, no more than fifteen or sixteen people in all. But then it was often that way on a Wednesday night.
‘Dan was doing an impression of Stan,’ Fifi said. She tugged at Dan’s arm. ‘Go on, do it for Johnny!’
Dan arranged his face appropriately. ‘I may not go to the Rifleman until all theese bad feelings are gone,’ he said, getting the Polish accent perfectly. Then he walked up to the bar with Stan’s special walk.
Johnny roared with laughter, his huge belly which slouched over his trousers wobbling like a jelly. ‘You’ve got him to a T,’ he said through his laughter. ‘Can you do anyone else?’
‘I could do you, mate, if I had a big enough pillow to stick under my shirt,’ Dan replied.
Johnny roared again, slapped Dan on the back and insisted on buying him and Fifi a drink.
Fifi liked Johnny. He was a huge man in every way, well over six feet tall, weighing around twenty stone, and with a personality to match. His hair was going grey but he had masses of it, standing up on end like a thick brush. With his deep, dark tan from working outside, and vivid blue eyes, he was attractive despite his immense bulk.
He was the man who claimed to have a close friend in the police force and had related the information about the clean sheet covering Angela.
Dan liked Johnny too, but said a man who wore half of England’s gold reserves around his neck and wrist yet lived in a council flat had to be a bit thick.
‘You don’t normally come in here midweek,’ Johnny said, giving Fifi one of his lecherous winks. ‘Special occasion?’
‘My plaster’s coming off tomorrow,’ Fifi replied. ‘I can’t wait, it itches underneath. I have to poke a knitting needle up it to scratch it.’
‘You’re gonna have to hang that arm out yer window to brown it up,’ Johnny said. ‘My missis broke ’er arm once and I nearly pissed meself when the plaster come off. I said she ought to audition for the Black and White Minstrels.’
‘I’ll wear long sleeves,’ Fifi said. ‘Or put gravy browning on it like they did in the war.’
Over the first drink Johnny entertained them with various funny stories connected with his scaffolding business, including an hilarious one about a man who fell asleep sunbathing in his lunch hour, three floors up, turned over in his sleep and fell off.
‘Luckiest man alive,’ Johnny chortled. ‘Fell into a heap of sand. Not a scratch on him.’
They were on a third drink when Fifi asked Johnny if Frank or Stan had started to come back to the pub yet.
Both men had stopped coming in after they were hauled in for police questioning. They were not the only ones who’d absented themselves. Mike Skinner from number 7, Ralph Jackson who lived on the top floor of Yvette’s house, and John Bolton at