A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [62]
‘That was very kind of her,’ Fifi said. She was feeling a bit better now that she’d spoken to the hospital, and it was so nice to know her neighbours cared. ‘I spoke to her last night when all that noise was going on over the road. Did you hear it?’
Frank nodded grimly. ‘If the whole street hadn’t heard them at it hammer and tongs I might have thought Alfie was behind this attack on your Dan. But as he was over there giving Molly a pasting it can’t have been him.’
Fifi remembered Yvette’s warning and frowned in consternation. ‘Why would you think he might be responsible?’
‘Alfie ain’t one to let anyone get the better of him,’ Frank said with a shrug. ‘Your Dan marked his card when he hurt Angela. That’s enough reason for Alfie to get some revenge, and walloping someone over the head in the dark is just his style.’
At the hospital the ward sister did soften and let Fifi in for ten minutes, just so she’d be reassured Dan was all right. But Fifi wasn’t reassured, not when she saw Dan with his head bandaged and his face unnaturally pale. He grinned as she came up the ward, but it was forced, so she knew he was in pain.
‘I’m as sound as a pound,’ he insisted. ‘They’re only keeping me here as a precaution, not cos I need to stay in bed. I’ve a good mind to get up and come home with you.’
‘You’ll do nothing of the sort,’ Fifi said sharply, sniffing back her tears. ‘They don’t put bandages that big on some-one for no reason.’
She asked him how it happened, and he explained that he couldn’t remember anything after Owen called out to him. ‘Whoever did it must have been in the alley already,’ he said. ‘There’s gates into backyards where he could hide.’
‘But why?’ Fifi asked. ‘Are you sure you haven’t got on the wrong side of someone?’
Dan sighed. ‘That’s what the police asked me when they came a while back. They wanted to know if I owed anyone money, or if someone had a grudge against me. They even asked if I’d been playing around with another woman! I told them to have a look at you, then they’d know I wouldn’t be messing with anyone else.’
Fifi liked that. Sometimes Dan could be so charming. ‘Frank thought it sounded like Alfie Muckle’s work,’ she said. ‘But it couldn’t have been him, he and Molly were in their house fighting, everyone heard them.’
‘The Dale Street Obsession,’ Dan exclaimed, rolling his eyes. ‘Everything that happens to anyone is always down to Alfie Muckle. If Martians landed in London that would be his fault too.’
‘They’ve had years of bitter experience with him,’ Fifi said indignantly. ‘You should have heard the row last night! He’s a monster.’
‘I agree he’s a wife and child beater, a slob and a lazy thieving bastard, but that still doesn’t make him responsible for every single crime committed in the neighbourhood.’
‘Maybe not, but Frank, Stan, Yvette and even Miss Diamond all say –’
‘He’s the son of Satan, I suppose.’ Dan cut in before she could finish. ‘You shouldn’t listen to them, Fifi. They’re all losers too.’
‘They aren’t,’ Fifi said incredulously. ‘What a horrible thing to say! I thought you saw them all as friends?’
Dan shrugged. ‘I do, but it doesn’t blind me to their faults. If they had anything about them at all they would’ve moved away years ago. But they stay, and moan about the Muckles. And you know why? Because that family make them feel better about themselves.’
‘Dan! That’s a wicked thing to say. Maybe they can’t afford to move, perhaps they’ve tried and can’t find anywhere. I don’t believe for one moment that they feel better about themselves just because they have ghastly neighbours.’
Dan gave her one of his looks that said he thought she was naive. ‘I know how it is for them, sweetheart, because I’m guilty of it myself. Your parents look down on the way I speak, the way I look, and my job, and let’s face it, I’ve justified their belief I’d bring you down to my level by taking you to live in Dale Street. But I feel at home there. I can look across to the Muckles and see the blankets across their windows and feel