in deep trouble.’
‘Heavy date, Freddy?’ Noreen needled.
The burden weighing upon him, Freddy thought to himself. ‘I guess you could say that.’
Loach understood that somewhere in his world Freddy was making a personal sacrifice. ‘Thanks, Freddy.’
Freddy’s Sierra purred to a perfect halt by the door of his terraced house. Grabbing his sample case as he got out, he happened to notice some flecks of grime on the panelling of the car, and wiped it clean with a handkerchief. Still looking for dirt and other invisible flaws, he moved to the back of the car and checked to make sure the boot was locked. After all, he and this baby had a long-running love affair – perhaps, more than he was willing to admit to anyone but himself, the only satisfying relationship of his entire 38 years.
Just as he cleared the car and reached the pavement, a little girl from down the block came walking by, dragged along by a small terrier. Freddy froze solid, panicked, then scrabbled to put the car between him and the animal.
‘What’s the matter, mister?’ the little girl asked him oh-too-cutely. ‘Don’t you like Rambo?’ Where were her parents? he wondered. And why weren’t they as mean disciplinarians to her as his mother had been to him?
When he entered the house and went into the sitting room, Hilda Calder was standing in front of a wall mirror checking her appearance. She was dressed in her Wednesday best, although the Birmingham Royal Ballet crowd might not consider her bargain-basement style quite the height of fashion. She appeared to be having a fit of impatience trying to determine just where to place her floral brooch when she saw Freddy’s reflection in the mirror.
‘What kind of face is that to bring in the house?’ she asked.
‘I’m sorry, Ma,’ he answered, meaning it this time.
She must have sensed something wrong. ‘Sorry for what?’
‘Tonight. There’s a crisis.’ He tried not to look into her eyes. ‘I’ve promised … to help out … down at the station.’
Either she wasn’t hearing, or heeding, what he said. ‘That’s as may be. I was under the impression that you had a previous engagement. With your mother. It is Wednesday, isn’t it? I haven’t gone and lost a day?’
‘No, Ma,’ he submitted. ‘It’s Wednesday. I’m really sorry. I know how you feel about us going out.’ He battened down the hatches and prepared for a nasty blow of stormy weather.
‘Keep your sympathy. You don’t give a tuppenny damn what I feel. When did you ever think of anyone but yourself, Freddy Calder? You’re just like your father …’
What seemed to gall her most was that, in spite of all his father’s foibles and indiscretions, Freddy should still remember him so fondly. For that paradox of loyalty and disloyalty, she would never forgive him.
‘The years I sacrificed for that man, working my fingers to the bone …’
His father had passed on rather suddenly back in ’69. While washing his own sporty automobile, he had somehow contrived to touch the battery terminals. What with standing in a puddle of soapy water and, as the inquest later reported, having a weak heart, he had suffered a quick demise. In the past few years Freddy had begun to wonder whether it had really been an accident at all, or rather, if perhaps Alex Calder had duly considered the prospect of eternity in hell with his wife, Hilda, and decided instead to go over the hill, to take one last ride with his first love. All this when Freddy was only 16 and just beginning to take a shine to cars himself.
‘And what do I have to show for it? You, Freddy Calder. Your father’s spitting image. And just as selfish. As long as you get what you want, like playing at being a policeman.’
In her eyes he was forever a child, locked in time, perhaps in a period of obedient youth before he had grown to disappoint her. So now she accused him of ‘playing’ policeman. Why should any of his acquaintances be surprised to find a grown man still playing with puppets then?
‘Do you ever think of me waiting for you to come home, not knowing if it’s going to be in a box?’
She was close to tears, Freddy noted, a sure sign that soon she would be tugging on his heartstrings.
‘I haven’t many pleasures in this life, but one of them is going out on Wednesday nights. You know how much I look forward to the boiled ham at the Royale Restaurant.’ Yes, but he didn’t know why: after all, it wasn’t Jonathan’s, or Days of the Raj, or New Hall, or Plough and Harrow! ‘I never thought I’d see the day you’d even take that away from me.’
In spite of his awareness of her usual routine, he had only managed to build up a limited immunity to her invective over all the years he had lived with his mother. Understanding what she was doing to him didn’t make the lamb any less vulnerable to the slaughter.
‘Wednesday night is a precious thing to me, Freddy Calder. It’s my only night out except for Friday down at the bingo with Irene next door.’ Irene was the only person left who would bother to listen to her.
‘And if this is how much I count, then I’d be better to put my head in the gas oven!’
She cast the floral brooch into the back of the desk drawer to dramatize her imprisonment. In anguish, she collapsed into the nearest easy chair, her bosom suddenly heaving as if she might be suffering palpitations.
Frightened, Freddy anxiously rushed to her side and knelt by the chair, fearing she might be having an attack of some kind. She resisted his frantic attempts to help and pushed him away.
‘Let me die in peace.’
It was going to be one of those nights. At Division ‘S’ the usual Specials were milling about the parade room as Loach was concluding his nightly sermon while dialling a telephone at the same time.
‘CID want you to keep your eyes peeled for a couple of plates –’ He read from the page: ‘– F311 YEP and E606 NWN – so add these to your list of stolen cars.’ That was the last item on the agenda, as he dialled the final digit in the ’phone number. ‘That’s the lot then, troops. Any problems?’ It was a rhetorical question, and there were no takers tonight. ‘No? Okay … let’s make it a good one.’
The telephone connection was made, and he lowered his voice, anxious to keep this conversation private.
‘… uh … hello. Detective Inspector Dutrow … He’s not in yet? Damn!’ Where was he? ‘Yeah! This is Section Officer Loach. I called a couple of times already.’ That was putting it mildly. ‘No. No message. I’ll try later.’
Dismayed, Loach was about to replace the telephone when he looked up and froze. In the open doorway was a man in the uniform of a Sub-Divisional Officer in the Special Constabulary: SDO Rob Barker.
What the hell’s he turned
