found he’d run out of provisions for the fried breakfast and had to make do with plum jam on high bake water biscuits which Whitey loathed.
Also he felt very tired. After his third mug of tea, he recalled he’d been woken at least twice in the night by the strident strains of the Casa Mia quartet.
Still, the way business was he didn’t anticipate much difficulty catching up on sleep at the office.
As usual, he stopped to pick up his papers at Mr Nayyar’s shop on Canal Street which linked Rasselas and Hermsprong. Mr Nayyar claimed to run a speciality store, which meant he sold everything.
‘And I’ve run out of food,’ said Joe after he collected the Sun and The Times, the former to keep him abreast of current events, the latter for his crossword ploy.
Mr Nayyar’s real speciality was knowing his customers’ requirements better than they did. As he busied himself assembling the rich and varied ingredients of the fried breakfast, Joe browsed through his tabloid, careful to avoid the page with the boobs as he knew these caused Mr Nayyar a problem. Banned from his shelves were any magazines which flaunted flesh, but this principle if extended to papers would drastically limit his trade. So regulars like Joe kept the curves at a low profile till well clear.
The front page headline and three lines of text were still concerned with the horse-loving politician, and the back page concentrated on the A505 plane crash. The pilot, Arthur Bragg, had been taken ill not long after leaving Luton Airport to ferry Mr Simon Verity, a business executive, and his secretary, Miss Gwendoline Baker, to a conference in Manchester. He’d managed to keep control just long enough to flop the plane down on the roadway. None of the three was seriously injured, but they’d all been kept in hospital for observation and the Press concentrated on the woman who’d taken the video, ‘Raven-haired beauty, Meg Merchison (29)’.
She said: ‘I was trying out my new camcorder on a flock of rooks when I suddenly spotted this light plane diving out of the sky. It was terrifying. I thought at first it was going to hit me, but it levelled off, just missing some trees, and I was able to follow it all the way down on to the road. I never dreamt when I bought the camera it would give me a thrill like this.’ There was a photo of the raven-haired beauty astride a gate, caressing her camera sensuously and showing enough leg to give Mr Nayyar moral palpitations.
Lucky lass, thought Joe. Wonder how much she got for the video?
He turned to the inside pages and found that here the Casa Mia killings got a double-page splash. There was a lot of sensational speculation, but nothing new and they were still using the same blurred picture of Rocca that had been shown on telly. There was no mention of Joe. He didn’t know whether to be disappointed at missing the publicity or glad at missing the Press.
The shop door opened and two teenagers came in. Dressed identically in T-shirts, jeans and trendy trainers, with hair razored to a crowning crest, they were sexually distinguished only by a faint smear of moustache on the larger one’s lip and a bubbling of breast on the smaller one’s chest.
Sixsmith recognized the design on their T-shirts, a Union Jack with Maggie Thatcher’s face at the crux. This meant they belonged to the True Brits, the leading white gang on the Hermsprong Estate. Joe doubted if they’d enter a Pakistani-run shop looking for anything but trouble, so he kept a close eye on them as Mr Nayyar busied himself with the order.
As the shopkeeper turned his back to weigh some tomatoes, the girl thrust a handful of chocolate bars under her T-shirt. She felt Joe’s eyes on her, grinned at him and nudged the boy. He looked towards Joe, bared his teeth in an animal snarl, picked up a music cassette from a display rack and slipped it into his pocket. The girl meanwhile was pushing a couple of packs of panti-hose down the back of her jeans.
‘I think that is everything, Mr Sixsmith,’ said Mr Nayyar. ‘Now let me see, how much will that come to?’
‘Serve these young folk first,’ said Joe. ‘I’m in no hurry.’
‘Nah,’ said the boy. ‘Nothing here we want. Load of Pakky junk. Come on, Suzie.’
They made for the door. Joe moved quickly and blocked their way.
‘Hey, man,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you forgetting something? Even junk costs money.’
‘What you on about, Sambo?’ said the boy. ‘You best keep your black nose out, you don’t want it even flatter.’
The girl laughed shrilly and said, ‘You tell ’im, Glen.’
Mr Nayyar said, ‘Please, Mr Sixsmith, it is all right. Let me deal with this.’
Joe looked at him in surprise, then doubled up as the boy, seeing his chance, hit him in the belly and dived through the door. The girl went after him, Joe flung out an arm to grab her but all he managed was to push her shoulder. Unbalanced she staggered over the threshold and fell forward on to the pavement. The boy grabbed her hand and dragged her to her feet. Her forearm was badly grazed and there was a new tear in her jeans through which blood was oozing.
‘Come on, Suzie,’ screamed the boy, dragging her away. ‘You black bastards, I’ll get you for this!’
A moment later they heard the roar of a motorcycle engine rapidly fading.
‘Mr Sixsmith, you OK?’ demanded Mr Nayyar.
‘I will be,’ gasped Joe. ‘Hadn’t you better ring the police?’
Nayyar shrugged.
‘Why bother?’ he said. ‘They have other things to do than trouble with petty pilfering from a shop like this.’
‘It’s still crime,’ said Joe. Then as his breath came easier, he looked sharply at the shopkeeper and said, ‘You knew they were nicking stuff, didn’t you?’
Nayyar looked as if he was going to play at indignation for a moment, then he shrugged and said, ‘Mr Sixsmith, people like you and me, we know there are pressures that other people, white people, do not know. Sometimes if we give a little with the little pressures which irritate us, we may hope to avoid the big pressures which can burst us.’
‘You mean you don’t want to antagonize these kids who come here thieving in case they gang up on you?’ said Joe. He shook his head and went on, ‘Suit yourself, Mr Nayyar. Just give me my shopping. How much do I owe you?’
‘Please, Mr Sixsmith, you have tried to be helpful. No charge today.’
Joe took out his wallet and said firmly, ‘You’ve got me wrong, Mr Nayyar. I’m not a pressure, I’m just a customer. How much?’
Back at the car, he gave Whitey a raw sausage and some radical ideas on the reform of the young to chew over. Then he said, ‘Shan’t be long. Watch out for joyriders, now.’
Five minutes’ walk took him into Bullpat Square. It was a market day and the traders’ vans and stalls made it quite impossible to park here. The market customers also tended to overspill into the Law Centre and when he opened the door and saw how crowded it was, he began to turn away. But a voice called, ‘Sixsmith! I want you.’ And he turned back to see a small bird-like woman of about thirty ushering an elderly couple out of the inner office.
He went inside and said, ‘Hi, Butcher. You’ve gone blonde. What are you up to? Trying to get out of paying your husband alimony?’
‘I was always blonde. I’ve just gone back to my roots.’
She was not much over five two, and skinny as a well-picked chicken wing. She had an initial, C, which presumably stood for something but Joe had never called her anything other than Butcher. She pushed work his way when she could, though there was rarely much money in it.
They’d met when Joe went to the Centre looking for help in the aftermath of his redundancy. There’d been none forthcoming. Robco had done everything according to law and what Joe got was what he had coming, no more, no less. It was when Butcher asked, ‘So what will you do now?’ and Joe replied, ‘How do