Blood Sympathy

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 you go about setting up as a private detective?’ that she had started looking at him with more than professional interest.

‘First thing is, you’ve got to be able to wisecrack and to whistle. You know how to whistle, do you, Sixsmith?’

‘Pardon?’ said Joe, bewildered.

‘There’s a lot of work to do,’ said Butcher and had started the crash course in how to wisecrack like a real Private Eye which was still going on.

Now she said, ‘Don’t sit down, you’re not staying.’

‘Look, I was going anyway when I saw how busy things were,’ said Joe slightly offended.

‘Highty-tighty,’ said Butcher. ‘I meant you’ve got business.’

‘Sorry?’

‘That Bannerjee you put me on to last night, I was able to help. At least I sat with him till they got it into their thick heads he wasn’t going to say any more. Then I got his wife and kids into an hotel.’

Joe looked at her with admiration. She must have been up half the night and still managed to look bright as a glass of lager, while a couple of bad dreams left his mind cloudy as homemade ale.

‘Did he do it, then?’

‘Do what? They’re not saying he did anything. The game they’re playing now is that this is an immigration case, his papers aren’t in order. This is clearly bollocks. He’s been living here for nearly fifteen years. He’s the sales manager for Herringshaw’s, a Midlands rag trade firm. All they’re trying to do is put the squeeze on him so that if he does know anything, he’ll get so scared about possible deportation he’ll cough.’

‘And what do you think?’ asked Joe. ‘Is he straight?’

‘I’d say so,’ she said. ‘He’s certainly won golden opinions from his employers. At his request I rang Herringshaw’s and his boss, Charles Herringshaw no less, got very indignant and said he’d come down himself to see what he could do. He told me to stay on the case, he’d pick up all the tabs, so I’m in gainful employment at last. I owe you, Sixsmith.’

‘My pleasure,’ said Joe, who knew that Butcher was forever jammed in a cleft stick of needing well-paid private work to subsidize the Centre without having the time to go out and find it.

She glanced at her watch and said, ‘Christ, look at the time. You’re late.’

‘Me? I wish I had something to be late for. Or is this a not so subtle hint you want shot of me?’

‘No, it’s tit for tat. That’s why I wanted a word with you. I’ve sent you a client. She wants a good PI so I told her to be at your office at ten-thirty. I meant to ring, but things got hectic, and I didn’t realize you kept upper-class hours.’

‘Can’t afford to keep anything else,’ said Joe. ‘What’s her name? What’s she want? Can she afford me? Can I afford her?’

But Butcher only cried, ‘Go, go, go!’ and opened the door to admit what looked like a tribe of gypsies.

Joe fought his way through them, checked his watch and wallet (the first step to integration is a shared prejudice) and headed back to the car where he found Whitey had unwrapped and eaten the rest of the sausages.

It was dead on ten-thirty as he parked the car outside the office. There was a BMW in front of him. A woman got out. She was elegantly dressed in black culottes and a jacket of pearly grey silk, a severe white blouse relieved by a large pink brooch at the neck. Her short bronze hair looked as if it had been sculpted, an effect heightened by the classic regularity of her face, which however bore a badge of mortality in the shape of a black eye beyond the scope of cosmetic disguise.

‘Mr Sixsmith, I presume?’ she said.

‘Well, I’m not Dr Livingstone,’ said Joe, still under Butcher’s cinematic influence.

‘Yes, that’s right,’ he hastily added, seeing from her face that this lady was not for joking with.

Her eyes were running over his clothes, his car and his cat like a VAT man’s over a ledger. They then turned to the building which belonged to the nineteen-sixties Prince-Charles-hates-it school of architecture.

‘Cherry said I shouldn’t judge by appearances,’ she murmured half to herself, but only half.

‘Cherry?’ said Joe.

‘Cheryl Butcher,’ she said.

‘Oh, that Cherry. Would you like to come inside?’ said Joe.

In the tiny dark foyer, he automatically checked his mailbox. As he opened it he felt those assessing eyes watching him and prayed it wouldn’t be revealingly empty. He was in luck. There was a Security Trade Fair opening at the National Exhibition Centre the following week and various electronic firms were bombarding him with invitations to come along and check out their bugs.