A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [138]
‘She’ll sleep it off,’ Del replied nonchalantly. ‘Come on, mate, we’re off,’ he said to Martin.
Fifi sensed Martin was the weak link in this duo, so she looked straight at him. ‘You ought to sleep on what you’re doing,’ she said warningly. ‘Be a gangster if you like, but don’t be the muscle for a murdering child molester.’
‘What are you on about?’ Del asked scornfully.
Fifi got to her feet and put her hands on her hips, staring impudently at the two men. She felt Del was a man who prided himself on being a hard bastard, she doubted he had a conscience. But she knew from things Dan had said that even the most cold-hearted of thugs didn’t approve of child molesters.
‘The man you work for is an animal that screws children and then kills them,’ she said. ‘If you do his dirty work for him, then you’re as bad as he is.’
‘You’re round the bend,’ Del exclaimed. He looked at Martin. ‘She tell you that too?’
Martin nodded grimly, moving from foot to foot as if very uncomfortable.
‘The boss said she were a lying bitch.’ Del gave a humourless laugh. ‘He could have told us she were mad as well!’
‘I’m not mad, or a liar,’ Fifi said evenly. ‘I’m sane enough to see you two are being made a right pair of patsies. Can’t you read? Angela Muckle’s murder was in all the papers. I’m a witness because I found her. But don’t take my word for it, check it out.’
‘Listen, darlin’,’ Del said contemptuously, moving nearer to the bars. ‘Shut yer gob if you know what’s good for you.’
It was impossible to tell whether he knew the truth or not, as his face gave nothing away. But Fifi could see by his gorilla-like stance that he wanted to hit her; his hands were clenching into fists, and she was glad the cage bars were between them.
‘Okay, but don’t say you weren’t warned,’ she shrugged. ‘I just hope you’re being well paid, because you’ll have to leave the country if you kill us. You see, we aren’t like John Bolton, a villain no one cares about. You’ll have every policeman in England on your tail, and you won’t have any mates left once they find out you keep company with nonces.’
Del turned away, catching Martin by the arm. ‘That’s it, we’re off,’ he said. ‘Fuckin’ mad bitch.’
As they reached the barn door, Martin looked back over his shoulder. She couldn’t see his face clearly enough to know whether she’d worried him or not, but the slight hesitation suggested she had.
The light went off, the door shut with a dull metallic thud, and she could hear the chain which secured it being clanked as they put the padlock on. Their car headlights beamed through the cracks around the door for a few seconds, then Fifi heard it roar away.
Her bravado vanished as soon as she was enveloped in darkness again. She sat down and shuffled on her bottom, her hands groping out in front of her for Yvette, and tears ran down her cheeks unchecked.
Dan had pointed out men like Del and Martin in the Rifleman, jokingly calling them ‘London’s wartime byproducts’. He said that as boys of nine or ten during the war, they often weren’t evacuated, and with absent fathers and often uncaring mothers they rarely went to school, spending their time marauding around London in gangs instead. These gangs became a substitute for a family as they looted bombed shops and houses or broke into homes while the owners were in the shelters. Their only code was ‘Never grass, and stand by your mates’.
A couple of years of National Service honed their bullyboy tendencies still further. On their demob, with no education or qualifications, they chose a criminal life rather than manual labour. As Dan had pointed out, the fifties were a boom time for villains. The ones with sharp minds went into acquiring land and building shoddy new estates. Others opened clubs and pubs, or supplied hard-to-get luxuries. But for