things he asked wouldn’t have taken in a kid of two, and what else could I say to the last one except: ‘Has the aerial fell down? Or would you like to come in and see it?’
He was liking me even less for saying that. ‘We know you weren’t listening to the television set last Friday, and so do you, don’t you?’
‘P’raps not, but I was looking at it, because sometimes we turn the sound down for a bit of fun.’ I could hear mam laughing from the kitchen, and I hoped Mike’s mam was doing the same if the cops had gone to him as well.
‘We know you weren’t in the house,’ he said, starting up again, cranking himself with the handle. They always say ‘We’ ‘We’, never ‘I’ ‘I’ – as if they feel braver and righter knowing there’s a lot of them against only one.
‘I’ve got witnesses,’ I said to him. ‘Mam for one. Her fancy-man, for two. Ain’t that enough? I can get you a dozen more, or thirteen altogether, if it was a baker’s that got robbed.’
‘I don’t want no lies,’ he said, not catching on about the baker’s dozen. Where do they scrape cops up from anyway? ‘All I want is to get from you where you put that money.’
Don’t get mad, I kept saying to myself, don’t get mad – hearing mam setting out cups and saucers and putting the pan on the stove for bacon. I stood back and waved him inside like I was the butler. ‘Come and search the house. If you’ve got a warrant.’
‘Listen, my lad,’ he said, like the dirty bullying jumped-up bastard he was, ‘I don’t want too much of your lip, because if we get you down to the Guildhall you’ll get a few bruises and black-eyes for your trouble.’ And I knew he wasn’t kidding either, because I’d heard about all them sort of tricks. I hoped one day though that him and all his pals would be the ones to get the black-eyes and kicks, you never knew. It might come sooner than anybody thinks, like in Hungary. ‘Tell me where the money is, and I’ll get you off with probation.’
‘What money?’ I asked him, because I’d heard that one before as well.
‘You know what money.’
‘Do I look as though I’d know owt about money?’ I said pushing my fist through a hole in my shirt.
‘The money that was pinched, that you know all about,’ he said. ‘You can’t trick me, so it’s no use trying.’
‘Was it three-and-eightpence ha’penny?’ I asked.
‘You thieving young bastard. We’ll teach you to steal money that doesn’t belong to you.’
I turned my head around: ‘Mam,’ I called out, ‘get my lawyer on the blower, will you?’
‘Clever, aren’t you?’ he said in an unfriendly way, ‘but we won’t rest until we clear all this up.’
‘Look,’ I pleaded, as if about to sob my socks off because he’d got me wrong, ‘it’s all very well us talking like this, it’s like a game almost, but I wish you’d tell me what it’s all about, because honest-to-God I’ve just got out of bed and here you are at the door talking about me having pinched a lot of money, money that I don’t know anything about.’
He swung around now as if he’d trapped me, though I couldn’t see why he might think so. ‘Who said anything about money? I didn’t. What made you bring money into this little talk we’re having?’
‘It’s you,’ I answered, thinking he was going barmy, and about to start foaming at the chops, ‘you’ve got money on the brain, like all policemen. Baker’s shops as well.’
He screwed his face up. ‘I want an answer from you: where’s that money?’
But I was getting fed-up with all this. ‘I’ll do a deal.’
Judging by his flash-bulb face he thought he was suddenly onto a good thing. ‘What sort of a deal?’
So I told him: ‘I’ll give you all the money I’ve got, one and fourpence ha’penny, if you stop this third-degree and let me go in and get my breakfast. Honest, I’m clambed to death. I ain’t had a bite since yesterday. Can’t you hear my guts rollin’?’
His jaw dropped, but on he went, pumping me for another half hour. A routine check-up they say on the pictures. But I knew I was winning on points.
Then he left, but came back in the afternoon to search the house. He didn’t find a thing, not a French farthing. He asked me questions again and I didn’t tell him anything except lies, lies, lies, because I can go on doing that forever without batting an eyelid. He’d got nothing on me and we both of us knew it, otherwise I’d have been down the Guildhall in no time, but he kept on keeping on because I’d been in a Remand Home for a high-wall job before; and Mike was put through the same mill because all the local cops knew he was my best pal.
When it got dark me and Mike were in our parlour with a low light on and the telly off, Mike taking it easy in the rocking chair and me slouched out on the settee, both of us puffing a packet of Woods. With the door bolted and curtains drawn we talked about the dough we’d crammed up the drainpipe. Mike thought we should take it out and both of us do a bunk to Skegness or Cleethorpes for a good time in the arcades, living like lords in a boarding house near the pier, then at least we’d both have had a big beano before getting sent down.
‘Listen, you daft bleeder,’ I said, ‘we aren’t going to get caught at all, and we’ll have a good time, later.’ We were so clever we didn’t even go out to the pictures, though we wanted to.
In the morning old Hitler-face questioned me again, with one of his pals this time, and the next day they came, trying as hard as they could to get something out of me, but I didn’t budge an inch. I know I’m showing off when I say this, but in me he’d met his match, and I’d never give in to questions no matter how long it was kept up. They searched the house a couple of times as well, which made me think they thought they really had something to go by, but I know now that they hadn’t, and that it was all buckshee speculation. They turned the house upside down and inside out like an old sock, went from top to bottom and front to back but naturally didn’t find a thing. The copper even poked his face up the front-room chimney (that hadn’t been used or swept for years) and came down looking like Al Jolson so that he had to swill himself clean at the scullery sink. They kept tapping and pottering around the big aspidistra plant that grandma had left to mam, lifting it up from the table to look under the cloth, putting it aside so’s they could move the table and get at the boards under the rug – but the big headed stupid ignorant bastards never once thought of emptying the soil out of the plant pot, where they’d have found the crumpled-up money-box that we’d buried the night we did the job. I suppose it’s still there now I think about it, and I suppose mam wonders now and again why the plant don’t prosper like it used to – as if it could with a fistful of thick black tin lapped around its guts.
The last time he knocked at our door was one wet morning at five minutes to nine and I was sleep-logged in my crumby bed as usual. Mam had gone to work for the day so I shouted for him to hold on a bit, and then went down to see who it was. There he stood, six-feet tall and sopping wet, and for the first time in my life I did a spiteful thing I’ll never forgive myself for: I didn’t ask him to come in out of the rain, because I wanted him to get double pneumonia and die. I suppose he could have pushed by me and come in if he’d wanted, but maybe he’d got used to asking questions on the
