A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [145]
And whatever Del said, Fifi was no tart. Then there was that story about the kid being murdered. He’d gone through some old newspapers at his gran’s last night, and there it was, just as she said.
Del even had an answer to the coincidence that the two women and John Bolton all lived in the same street. He said that the boss owned property there, and as Dan Reynolds, the Frenchwoman and John Bolton had all worked for him, they got the places as a perk. But Martin remembered that Bolton had owned his own house, and if Trueman did own any property in South London, it was the first he had heard of it.
As to the coincidence that the murdered kid lived in the same street as the others, Del said that was all it was, a coincidence and nothing to do with the boss. But to Martin, the whole thing stank to high heaven, and it seemed that Del had been around bad smells for so long he didn’t notice them any more.
Martin had known Del since they were six-year-olds living in the same tenement block in Rotherhithe. They played together, played truant from school, even got sent to the same village in Sussex when they were evacuated.
Martin’s gran always said that if he hadn’t palled up with Del he’d be working in a bank now instead of doing what she called ‘the donkey work for hoodlums’. It was certainly true Martin was far brighter than Del, and if he hadn’t become so involved with him, he probably could have gone to grammar school.
But the war years bound him and Del together, starting when they ran away together from Sussex, got on a train and hid under the seats to escape the ticket inspector. From then on they were always up to mischief, and they got away with most of it thanks to the blackout and lack of parental guidance. Del’s mum was always off somewhere with a fancy man while his dad was overseas, and Martin only had his gran. Martin often felt bad now that he’d worried his gran so much. She was a good sort, and she hadn’t thought twice about taking him on when his mum died and his dad scarpered.
She was close on eighty now, and rehoused in a nice place in Dagenham, but she still grumbled about Del’s influence on her grandson. She said Martin should come home at nights to her, rather than staying with Del and his missus Jackie in Hackney.
Martin always laughed when his gran said he would come to a sticky end. But deep down he thought she might be right. He wished he could make the break from his old pal and find a legitimate job, but he couldn’t. Jack Trueman didn’t like what he called defectors. That’s what John Bolton had been, and he’d ended up in the river.
‘What’s up?’ Del asked as they drove out towards Barnet. ‘You ain’t still worried about that bint, are yer?’
‘No,’ Martin lied. He knew Del had no tender feelings for women, not even Jackie. He would kill anyone who tried to take her from him, but he didn’t value her as a person, only as a possession. ‘Just a bit pissed off at having to go to Nottingham.’
‘Yeah, it’s a drag having to go on a Friday, but look on the bright side; you know what the birds are like up there, crazy about Londoners.’
Martin did know what the girls up there were like, still wearing their hair up in those huge stiff beehives and thick, pale makeup. He liked girls to look the way Fifi did, with clear, glowing skin, and long, loose silky hair.
Last Tuesday when they were sent to pick Fifi up they were told by Trueman she was a looker, but Martin hadn’t expected anything so classy. She looked all clean and neat, the prettiest face he’d seen in years, and when she got into the car he could smell perfume like flowers, not the strong stuff most girls wore that made him gag.
She was brave too, standing up