Kind Hearts And Martinets Collection

Chapter 4

‘Cod and Chips twice please, Sid.’ Jack thought Sid, behind his counter, looked like he was serving in a fish and chip shop.

‘Heard you the first time,’ Sid’s conforming response.

Pondering the universe like a space chicken, and based upon the grating quotient of his blossoming headache, Jack faced the most significant noise source. ‘Oi, I want my pand,’ a circumspect, Little shoe Big shoe said. Not a nickname, but a quote from the street corner salesman for the Big Issue, a paper sold by people who need a hand up from life’s misfortunes. For the newspaper vendor’s style, Jack would forgo his pound and buy a magazine off Little Shoe, who would hold up a baby’s shoe saying, “little-shoe,” then the magazine, “Big-Issue.” Jack ordinarily would avoid these salespeople and then feel guilty; “The price you pay for being a socialist,” he would say, “wouldn’t see a Tory-boy worrying.” Jack never saw any reason why he shouldn’t generalise. ‘My pand?’ a quieter, questioning look on the down and out man.

Little shoe Big shoeBig IssueJack gave him an old-fashioned look, and at nearly 60, most of his looks were old fashioned. He tried as often as possible to create new ones, but when pressed for time, he rolled out the old ones. “A bit like his jokes,” Mandy would say, but just now, Jack’s headache was biting at his good humour, and pointing to Little Shoe, ‘Right, you, what’s a pand?’

‘It’s wot you owe me, Guvna,’ Little Shoe’s snapped reply.

‘First of all, my dear old chap, I’m not your Governor, and the inclination I am indebted to you to the tune of one of our Majesty’s sovereigns leaves me somewhat perplexed.’

Martin looked at Dickey, who looked at Sid, who looked at Alice, nobody looked at the gentleman of the street or the suit from Sainsbury’s, but between them all, you could see them thinking, “Oh no, it’s Mr Darcy,” and tittered.

In an Eliza Doolittle moment, Little Shoe said, ‘You "ad one of me Big Issues this morning and scarpered wivout payin’, and I wants me spondulics.’

Eliza DoolittleBig IssuesJack recalled, he’d taken a Big Issue that morning having stopped on his bike at traffic lights, meaning to pay of course, when the cyclist he’d been racing passed him looking back and smiling as the lights changed. Naturally, Jack engaged in hot pursuit, regardless the runaway was thirty years younger, had a Claude Butler supersonic ten thousand-gear, mega bike, and wore tart cycling clothes. ‘Sod, I forgot,’ Jack said, rattling loose change in his pocket as a pretence or prelude to paying, but largely buying time. ‘Pay the man, Sid,’ Jack said, disappearing to find an interview room, calling Dickey, Keanu, and Mickey Splif to follow.

Big IssueMartin was comfortably seated in the smallest interview room in the police station, oppressive, no window, no ventilation, painted institutional green base and cream upper walls, reminding Jack of school corridors of the 1950s, he reminisced, enjoyed reminiscing. He shoved Martin off his chair, and ignoring the canine sulk, they settled around the old wooden table covered in an imperfect fablon covering, a sort of sticky back plastic from the seventies, meant to protect the table and brighten the place up, but only gave suspects something to do, picking at it. The chairs were also old, wooden, and specially designed with varying leg lengths so they wobbled.

fablonThere was a timid tapping at the door, ‘Yoh,’ Jack’s American cop, nobody was impressed, reinforcing his view American police only look good on telly.

American copThe door opened and the suit from Sainsbury’s, a beanpole youth with greasy, jet black, lank hair that draped over his forehead causing a major eruption of spots, popped his pimply head around the door and nervously spluttered, ‘As duty solicitor, I should be present.’

Mickey Splif said it for everyone, ‘f**k-off before I get Rin-Tin-Tin to give your bollocks a seeing to.’

Rin-Tin-TinMartin assumed an air of indignation. Jack made a mental note to tell Martin, Rin-Tin-Tin was a famous dog in the fifties; how come he got a sensitive dog, and a guilt-ridden Catholic to boot, Jack thought as the pimply solicitor withdrew, relieved. Putting his head in his hands, causing blood to ooze into the toilet paper, Jack mumbled, ‘Constabule Dixon, what’s got your goat this morning?’

Rin-Tin-TinMickey Splif looked hesitant, ‘Mr. Dixon, you got a goat?’

Keanu and Dickey tittered.

Mickey was a likeable, weaselly rascal, slight and short, the complete opposite of his wife, Gail. He was known as Mickey Splif as his phizog appeared always vacant, but he just had a lugubrious style about him that was the vogue in the seventies, presumably what the long-suffering Mrs Splif saw in him. Well, she must have seen something because they had ten kids, and if the nicking of the Mumbai Mix to go with pineapple chunks for Keanu’s Mum was any measure, likely another was on the way.

The Splifs, like many on the council estate where they lived, were interrelated with the criminal underbelly of Portsmouth, but this family had not a criminal bone in their collective body, which was why Jack had excluded Hissing Sid and his charge book. Keanu, looking like a dozy, lanky, skinny alien, but with no aerial on his head, was a good lad.

‘Shall we get on?’ Jack said, distracted, looking at the blood on the palm of his hand and feeling faint.

Dickey, in his Welsh modulating tones that Jack found hypnotic, related the story of how Mr Ali, affectionately known as Osama by locals and even Mrs Ali, caught Keanu nicking a bag of Bombay Mix. Jack once had to explain to the Chief Constable, “Osama, it’s not about political correctness but being able to laugh at yourself; quintessential Englishness, see? A bit like I’m known as Jane and you, Chief, as Sitting Bull.” Jack often thought he should have been a Dimplemat.

JaneSitting Bull.Melodic Dickey asserted himself into Jack’s outspoken thoughts, explaining Keanu was not denying the offence but begged extenuating circumstances. Mickey put his hand up like he was in class, an effect Jack noticed he had on people, which he ignored, of course, also like he did with most people.

Jack turned to Keanu, ‘D’you do this, son?’

‘Yes, Mr Austin, me mum wanted Bombay Mix with her pineapple chunks, there was nobody there to pay, so I legged it,’ Keanu answered, looking every bit the child just turning fifteen.

‘That’s fievery, you dipstick!’ Jack startled himself, wondering where his aggression came from. Tears appeared in Keanu’s eyes, in Dickey’s as well, romantic and soft-hearted, the Welsh, Jack thought, staving a tear himself. Thinking a hard-man image suited him, he slapped his hand onto the fablon, everyone jumped, and Martin did two circuits of the table at breakneck speed, barking, which brought in Sid.

fablon‘What’s up?’ Martin slowed, looked up.

‘Sid, Keanu and me are going to see Osama,’ Jack answered.

‘We not charging him then?’

‘Feck-off, Sid.’

Sid slithered from the room, a defeated look on his skeletal face, and as his bony bum disappeared around the door, he murmured, ‘My name’s not Sid.’

Jack phoned Jo-Jums, ‘I’m off to Osama’s, what’s going down, apart from Pumps on the towpath. What’s that about?’

‘Mandy, not a clue, theft of bikes, riveting, why I followed you to Community Policing. Alice Springs had some ideas, shall I talk to her?’ Jo knew he would say yes and had already got the ball rolling, knowing Jack encouraged initiative if he couldn’t give a toss.

‘Yeah,’ Jack said, realising he was encouraging initiative, not that he gave a toss.

‘D’you need some help at Osama’s?’ Jo added, knowing also Jack would want to do this himself.

‘Nah, but tag Spanner, got potential that girl. In fact, get her on our team; despite the baggage of her family, she’s made it clear she’s her own gal, diplomanic as well.’ Jack sometimes called Alice Springs Herring Spanner, said her lips made his nuts tighten.

SpringsSpannerJo-Jums disapproved, knew resistance was futile, but was intrigued. ‘I agree about Alice, but what makes you say this, and do you mean diplomatic, and tag?’

‘That’s what I said, diddli?’ Jack replied, explaining further, ‘She just got a butcher’s hook up me shorts and didn’t laugh, and I know she’ll not say anything, good girl that.’ He hung up, and turning to the Splifs, ‘Keanu, go with Dickey in his car, I’ll cycle and meet you at Osama’s.’ Jack was issuing orders on the move, sort of multitasking.

Jo enjoyed a laugh; Alice was sitting beside her having shared the shorts moment.

‘What about me?’ Mickey Splif asked, his Eeh-haw face on, to a disappearing Jack, schlepping with Martin through reception, Dickey complaining about the room in his car, a distant and ignored voice.

‘Oi, my pand?’

‘Sort this bloke, Sid.’

Sid’s rejoinder faded into the car park ether as Jack unlocked his bike whilst reading an attached note from Bad. Commander Manners was known as either Good or Bad. The note, threatening dire consequences if he locked his bike up beside his car again, was from Bad. Jack scribbled a repost, stuck it on the Commander’s windscreen, and cycled off. Martin, in the front gunner’s seat, an orange box that Jack had secured to the pannier frame with a combination of rusty brackets and duct tape, sat proud on Jack’s son’s old Noddy and Big Ears baby quilt, which, to Jack’s continued amusement, had PC Plod facing out. The wind in his face, whistling, Martin’s face nudging the breeze, Jo-Jums and Alice Springs leaning out of the first floor window jeering, “Dinah, Dinah, show us your leg,” Jack thought, it doesn’t get much better than this, gestured two fingers behind his back, unaware his euphoria was about to be shattered. His life changed forever.

Dinah, Dinah, show us your leg,”