Dead No More E-Book

Pete Adams

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Operation Rhubarb was an MI5 and Scotland Yard joint undercover investigation of Brockeln Belland, a City of London Bank of impenetrable pedigree, that was brought to a violent close ten ago.

One survivor of the blast, now 16-year-old Juliet, is seeking the truth about her parents' death. As the old case notes land on a Scotland Yard Detective Inspector's desk, Juliet's back door inquiry opens a deadly can of worms that the Establishment presumed buried.

Soon, secrets about the 200-year-old institution begin to come to light. But can they take down whoever is behind the crimes, and find out the truth about Juliet's family?

Leseprobe

DEAD NO MORE

RHUBARB PAPERS BOOK 1

PETE ADAMS

CONTENTS

Books by Pete Adams:

Acknowledgments

Prologue

I. Operation Rhubarb

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

II. Rhubarb, Custard…and Crumble…

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

III. Rahbarber Brockeln und Vanille Sor

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Epilogue

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About the Author

Copyright (C) 2021 Pete Adams

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2022 by Next Chapter

Published 2022 by Next Chapter

Edited by Elizabeth N. Love

Cover art by CoverMint

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author’s permission.

“Pete Adams has a brilliant mind and an extremely vivid imagination… I would say there is no other writer like him out there.”

SONYA ALFORD – BOOK BLOGGER

“In our infinite ignorance, we are all equal”

KARL POPPER

BOOKS BY PETE ADAMS:

The Kind Hearts and Martinets Series:

Book 1: Cause and Effect – Vice plagues the City

Book 2: Irony in the Soul – Nobody Listens like the Dying

Book 3: A Barrow Boy’s Cadenza – In Dead Flat Major

Book 4: Ghost and Ragman Roll – Spectre or Spook

Book 5: Merde and Mandarins – Divine Breath

The DaDa Detective Agency - Sequel series to Kind Hearts and Martinets:

Transitional novels

Book 1: Road Kill – The Duchess of Frisian Tun

Book 2: Rite Judgement – Heads roll, Corpses Dance

The Larkin’s Barkin’ series – East End of London, gangster family, saga:

Book 1: Black Rose – A Midsummer Night’s Chutzpah - 1966

The Rhubarb Papers:

Book 1: Dead No More – Rhubarb in the Mammon

Dedication – To my extended family, from the East End of London and those from South London and now spread far and wide. My memories of such a large family, parties and gatherings, the humour especially, feed my writing.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This is my eighth book to be published and it is high time I acknowledged the support of Miika Hannila and all the team at Next Chapter Publishers (Creativia). I have so many more books written and to write, it eases my mind that I have a good publisher and editing team behind me.

PROLOGUE

Oh Gerdad, how I wish things had been different, but the desire for the truth burned a hole in my soul and you knew that. You said revenge could only hurt me, and in a way you were right, even more so if you are reading this letter, because it means I am likely dead. I needed answers, I needed to be at rest, one way or the other, and so I’m sorry for this additional hurt.

You have been my world since that awful day, and I know you still grieve for Mum, Dad and Nan. I have given my life my all, but it could never be enough, and bless you, because you saw this. Why did you never say? You knew, you saw; the brain damage was not severe, and concealing this knowledge likely prolonged my life, at least long enough to make sense of what was left of my world, and I believe I now have.

People laughed at us, especially at me, and at first this was so upsetting and cruel; you showed me they were just shallow. “Muddle-headed” you would say, and that always made me laugh as I pictured their heads full of tangled string, like a Mr Man cartoon.

I knew the risks, though I had hoped for a better outcome, and I am grateful to Sam, please don’t blame him. You always believed in me, a girl with half her head done in, but what was left worked okay, if a little awkward. I have been able to fathom some of the mystery, but for the real answers you must look into your heart; please look, Gerdad, my dearest wish is you will find peace yourself, as I believe I now have.

I love you so much

Juliet X

Kerr Nakka would look and, in the process, he would unpack his suitcase of hurt. But would he have the strength and, more importantly, the ability? He never was the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he will look, even if it is the last thing he does, and it just may be.

PARTI

OPERATION RHUBARB

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.”

THOMAS JEFFERSON

1

10 YEARS AGO

The burnt-out wreck of a car was on the front page of all the papers, and beside the picture of abject horror, portraits of the victims: DCI Dawn Nakka, Serious Crime Squad (retired); her daughter, Carol Johnson, Special Branch; and her husband, Jim Johnson, Something in the City; DEAD. A six-year-old daughter, Juliet Johnson, survived though seriously injured.

Shortly after, a matter of weeks, the devastated family were swept under the carpet. Talk only of the New IRA, Al Qaeda? One paper, derided by the Establishment, talked of organised crime, London Gangs, but the spin won; it was terrorists, and the police closed the case, an enquiry wrapped up in double quick time. The only criticism, the speed of solving the crime, the intimation being any ordinary person, not a copper, would not get this efficient service. Not one commentary suggested it could have been a whitewash.

Juliet did recover. She was closely cared for by her grandfather, Kerr Nakka, and Dawn Nakka’s sister, Lisa. The story was buried and the Nakka family buried themselves soon after the funerals, hidden away, Juliet because she was so grotesquely scarred, and Nakka because he was so scared.

Now they have been found.

Two days ago

Gravesend, the tip, as the Thames bends back on itself at Broadness Lighthouse Island. It was here the body of Jack Styles was grounded, it bobbed in the tiny laminar wave action across the broad mud flats as the water ebbed. Where the body lay was a still part of the river and so it had stuck, rising and sinking with the in and out, high and low tides, waiting to be discovered. Would a flood tide take it away to be lost forever? Not likely. Would this be an error in judgement? Absolutely.

Yesterday

‘Lilac, how insipid is that? Who wears a lilac coat these days?’ a worrying dialogue, left right, right left, an incessant nagging in her head as she looked on.

‘The mist off the harbour makes the lilac coat strangely evocative though, don’t you think?’ left voice said.

Right replied, ‘Yes, hmmm, you mean like a black and white film where a single colour is picked out, but only just, a pastel and subtle hue. What does this say about the woman wearing the coat, lack of confidence?’

‘Why do you think that? Why do you think you have to wear something strong in colour in order to display confidence and strength?’

And so the dialogue continued in Lisa’s head, back and forth, questioning and providing answers to her own questions. Lisa wore strident clothes, colours that shouted at you, not that she needed to. She had an abundance of strength, confidence, and ability, and was pretty good at shouting should the occasion call for it.

‘Maybe you just hate pastel colours, have you ever thought about that?’ Left.

Right, ‘Yeah, and lilac would be right up there. Shite fucking colour.’

At eight in the morning, the early autumn mist off the Harbour was beginning to shift, but was still dense and vaporous, monochromatic images of a familiar place, indistinct. A film of moisture on the black cobbles, glinting, a reflection of the halo orb from the one street lamp – orange, and the lilac coat, the only colour, both liquid and insipid.

‘How much of the image is memory recall? Do you think it looks like that place…?’ and Right dung-der-dunged a theme tune.

Left, ‘I like that Harry Lime film, where was that?’ Left was the romantic side of Lisa’s head.

‘Vienna, Portsmouth Harbour, I think not! What’s the matter with you?’ Right replied, being the more pragmatic, unsentimental of her voices, although Right had to admit there was something magical about a sea mist shrouding the harbour.

Lisa liked autumn mornings at the Camber of Portsmouth Harbour; it reminded her of the Thames in the East End of London, Shadwell Basin, where she grew up, especially when the day had started with a dense river mist. It made the bad and the ugly appear good, a romantic tableau that would disperse soon enough, a bit like the first snow covered up the old shite strewn streets, and for a while it was magical, soon to be churned into a brown mess.

But who was this petite woman standing at Nakka’s warehouse? The lilac lady dwarfed by the tall and wide timber gates that desperately needed another coat of paint. She knew them to be bottle green in the days when the paint was fresh, though it conveyed a worker-day image, an image suitable for a functioning dock area. However, the pretty houses and the pretty people had moved in and were beginning to encroach, to squeeze Nakka, and assert their not so pretty and exceedingly petty and pompous opinions.

‘Toffee-nosed twats,’ Right.

‘They want Nakka’s home, his property,’ Left.

Nakka’s property wasan old boatyard and warehouse, lovingly, if amateurishly, restored and converted.

‘Home? It’s just a fucking shed and yard, you dipstick, and that’s falling apart, he’s bloody useless with tools. Well, most things really.’ Right saw it how it was, and ironically, was right; Nakka was no handyman, and certainly no craftsman.

The shed was not falling apart, though you could be forgiven for thinking so, and that suited Nakka. Least this is what he told those people he acquiesced to converse with, that he liked this image of Dickensian decrepitude, and most agreed the image matched his skills. And so, unless he employed a builder, which would not suit his desire for obscurity, or to dip into his pocket, or indeed his nature, then he had no choice. But it sufficed, and in its arcane and impenetrable, dilapidated way, it was an eccentrically, cosy, hideaway home. It did need a fresh coat of paint; the gates, made of a variety of salvaged timber, which defended the yard, were almost back to the various bare and weathered woods. The finish on the timber sidings to the old warehouse peeled like sun-burned skin in sympathy with the gates.

Nakka didn’t care, he liked it. Liked his converted home and his inventive creations. He liked this derelict image. He liked shutting himself away, not through any romantic notion to seek the past or Dickens, heaven forbid Victorian values, he had no desire for abject poverty, and he was not an eccentric, least not in his own view, but others thought this. No, he sought peace and solace, and most of all, separation; he desperately desired separation, isolation, which translated to him as, security.

Now, in the bleakness, the only just creeping morning light, the gates, the shed that fronted the wharf, and the old brick perimeter walls that dipped their crumbling toes out into the harbour waters to be almost submerged at high tide, looked black, though fragments of that diluted light seemed to highlight the paint as it peeled, slowly, oh so slowly, but inexorably, inevitably, to reveal the wood beneath. “Life-force”, Nakka would say, explaining that death and decay was a form of life, and so it was. And so it had so painfully been for Nakka. And this he resolutely turned his back on.

‘He looks for signs of life in everything, even inanimate objects,’ Left voice.

‘Yeah, or death, the dipstick.’

‘Oh, don’t say that, he’s lovely.’

‘He’s a bleedin’ nutcase, and well past his loony sell by date.’

On this the voices had to agree with a sigh.

‘Especially inanimate objects,’ the voices conceded and laughed together, and Lisa’s head involuntarily nodded to itself, in understanding.

‘And who could blame him?’ Right.

‘He is lovely though,’ and at this, both voices pictured Nakka and sighed; he was lovely. A lovely, tortured soul.

‘You can sort him.’

‘Me?’

‘I mean both of us.’

And Lisa’s head again nodded.

She looked at the gates, wide, at least eight foot, and equally high, inaccessible, though there was a wicket door, locked. The gates were also locked and barred, and all set into the yard’s brick enclosing wall, equally eight-foot tall and topped with razor-sharp glass shards set in mortar. The hand-painted signs, looking like they were done by the local infant’s school, said PRIVATE – Do Not Enter, as if you were dumb enough not to realise, and if you were equally foolish and got into the yard, there were devices. Least this is what Nakka called them. And then there was Carol.

The lilac lady was conspicuously a stranger to the doors. She rattled them, pushed at the wicket, pushed the buttons of the combination lock as if by divine intervention she would strike upon the correct code. Looked up, looked around her, was she embarrassed? Difficult to tell. She stared up into the mist off the harbour for what seemed like an age, and the orange glow on her pasty, china-white face made the woman look glamorous like an old fashioned screen goddess.

‘What’s she doing?’

‘Reading.’

‘What, the sign?’

‘Yeah, probably.’

‘Well, good luck with that, sweet’art.’

Spanning across the top of the gates was a wrought-iron sculpture of crude fabrication; Nakka of course; no sculptor or a blacksmith, but that inability never deterred him.

‘Crude, because Nakka made it himself,’ the voices chuckled quietly, and the head looked on affectionately, maintaining surveillance of the lilac lady, who continued to stare at the spidery wrought iron that said, if you looked at it for a couple of hours with a cryptologist, or a specialist in Egyptian writing, Nakka’s Yard. That would have been easy to read, even as it was, written in metal as if by a four-year-old smithy, but it was the defensive contraptions that Nakka called his inventions, that obscured the chicken-scratched calligraphy; his first line of defence.

Lilac, after giving up on the sign, rubbed her neck and knocked her introduction on the gate in a genteel, pastel-coloured manner, feminine knuckles, unsure, nervous, was she embarrassed? Lisa watched as the pastel lady tipped her toes in a pointless gesture to unsuccessfully reach, even with an extended arm and open hand, the porthole in the gate that was generally out of reach for all but the tallest of callers, even with the calling step deployed. Lisa knew Nakka discouraged visits, and social calls were right out. To get in, you had to know how, and only a few knew this. To announce your calling successfully, you also had to know how, or spend an age working it out. Lisa knew, but she was defensive; she considered it her role to protect this vulnerable man and his granddaughter.

‘Is lilac lady on a social call?’ Left voice enquired.

‘She looks all business, even if the coat defies anyone to take her seriously.’

‘What could she want?’ the first voice replied, reinforcing the conundrum, causing Lisa’s defensive hackles to rise even further.

Encouraged by the relative obscurity offered by the now eddying mist, as the gentlest of breezes threaded into this enclosed street, Lisa leaned out from behind her brick corner. She imagined herself in a trilby, at a rakish angle, and again dung-der-dunged the Harry Lime theme in her head. It was strange, her vision of the familiar courtyard so blurred, and as if to compensate for this blindness, she became intensely aware of the detail of the brick corner that was her cover. Yellowy with black splotches, these bricks reminded her of London, in particular, the East End houses, her home, that bore the smog stained smuts from the sixties, her era, before the Clean Air Act. Lisa laughed at that, the Clean Air Act, putting the onus onto the people, typical, even though it was the Government who bore the responsibility for the bad chests, coughs and deleterious effects of the smogs on the people; selling the good coal abroad for funds to replenish the empty war coffers, and leaving only the inferior fuel, the smoky, dusty coal and coke, for the people to choke on. Lisa remembered the demonstrations, her dad joined them; he liked a punch up did her dad.

Lilac lady turned; sixth sense, someone was behind her? Who knew, but Lisa ducked behind her smog smutted brick quoin, just in case. Squashed, nose flat against the brick, it was as if the masonry gave off the familiar smell of the London smogs. The smell of the coalman, manly sweat and coal dust, and she recalled going to school wearing surgeons’ masks that were handed out by the hypocritical authorities, black with coal dust particulates by the time they had walked to school. Oh, how they had laughed at each other. Oh, how mums and dads worried for the lungs of their vulnerable children. "They had come through the war only to have their kids slowly poisoned by their own government", that’s what her dad had said, looking around for someone to hit; his solution to everything, and it seemed to get him by until someone had tipped him in the Thames. It had been low tide, and he suffocated, head first in the mud; such was life, or not, in the East End of London.

Lilac lady, presumably comfortable with her perceived solitary safety, content she was not being observed, returned to the door and this time leant more strength to her fist, her knocks thudding, tiny paint flecks fluttered to the ground. The thumping sound, though dull, echoed strangely in the enclosed space of the cul-de-sac, especially where the walls closed in to form an entrance to the court. Lisa thought noises would be muffled by the mist; odd. Foghorns sounded from Portsmouth Harbour; she loved that sound and recalled similar, unusually harmonious, tones from the Thames when she was a child. The knocks became more urgent, thumping louder, and Lisa became aware of the combined cacophony in the mist. She reminisced, momentarily conjuring childhood memories, the almost disconcertingly comforting, reverberating thrum of a diesel engine from an oncoming bus that would appear suddenly out of the effluvium as she walked to school. They drove too fast, her mum would say. It was dangerous in the smog, and Lisa’s mum would regale the driver and conductor with ‘X’-rated abuse that became even more foul-mouthed as the conductor swung on the rear platform pole, waved and jeered in response.

And then there was the smell of this familiar courtyard. The smell of the harbour streets. Diesel off the fishing boats, fish guts from the fish market and gutting sheds, brine and ozone – beautiful. Childhood memories swirled like the mist, the heady historic aroma, like she was still a child, smog-bound beside the Thames. The smell tantalised her nostrils, she liked that. Not the smoke and coal dust, because that irritated her throat, but smells like the horse as it pulled along the milk cart; the horse knew his way around even if it was a real pea souper. The associated discordant chinking of the milk bottles, and the accompanying joyous, though tuneless, whistle of Milk’O. It had been Lisa’s job as a child to follow the horses and collect the dung for the roses. Jesus, the smell! Her dad hated gardening and hated roses, but Mum, she who must be obeyed, made him dig the garden and made Lisa collect the dung, ironically, with the coal shovel and bucket. In the summer there was always a good display that dad took pride in; mum would clump him, which Lisa thought was in a loving way? Dad never clumped Mum, he was not like that. He saved all his clumping for the Prime Minister if he ever met him, he said, and the other blokes in the pub. Now, he enjoyed clumping them, or so it seemed to Lisa.

Lilac lady looked around again. Even though she was to all intents, alone, Lisa could see she was not so much embarrassed as irritated.

‘Good,’ the voices agreed.

‘One more bang on the door should do it and she will leave,’ Right voice said, and the head watched on, but the woman didn’t leave, and Lisa’s head and voices reciprocated the lilac irritation.

The woman muttered to herself, and Lisa strained her ears to listen in.

‘What’s she saying?’

‘…She had an appointment?’

‘Shush.’

Lisa knew Nakka would expediently agree to meet with people just to be rid, and when they called, he would ignore them; served them right, he would say, and it probably did.

‘Serves them right,’ the voices agreed and Lisa’s head nodded; a rare accord.

He was a private man, was Nakka, which was a nice way of putting it, and who could blame him. He lived in a world of his own, a world of relative obscurity. Him and his granddaughter, Juliet, just turned sixteen, a young woman and quite a beauty if you could ignore the obvious. Lisa saw beyond the facial image. She knew Juliet took after her mum in looks, or would have, and most certainly in the brains department, despite the damage, because her mum had been Lisa’s sister, and the voices recalled and talked about family photos of happier times in the East End of London. Nakka was a simple man, and people questioned her sister’s judgement, though Lisa thought her sister, Dawn, married the better man. Lisa’s own husband had been a spiv, into this and that, ducking and diving, and although he had provided for her and enabled her to buy the shop, you had better not ask where the money came from.

‘Oh, and he was a piss-head, don’t forget that.’

‘How can you forget that, dipstick, the fights, the arguments, the wasted spondulics?’

‘He was a bully.’

‘Yeah, happy days,’

…and the voices chuckled, but the head stayed steady. They actually were not always nice times, and passing time had only made it appear as though they were happy days. How the mind deceives when it wants to ease painful memories, and there was no better expert at that than Nakka as he hid from life behind his jury-rigged barricade. Away from London. Hiding in Portsmouth.

Nakka was solid, not terribly good looking, dependable, but not bright. Lisa’s late husband had been rakishly handsome, and people thought she had made a good catch, and so did she at the time. Happy days, not. Though Nakka had been just about passing attractive, in the past, he was not what you would call a handsome man then, and especially not now; he had not aged well. Lisa knew only too well the sorrow that had dogged the man. The sadness ingrained on his face, except when he looked at Juliet when his face would light up, transformed and radiating grand paternal love. He saw his daughter in Juliet’s face, saw his wife, and saw what could have, should have been. A cruel world. Nakka’s was a powerful familial love, and one that might make a casual onlooker afraid, for it was intense. Too intense? Some thought so. Well, you had to know the story, for it was a protective love beyond normal grandparental boundaries, and, as it transpired, it needed to be.

2

‘Ning, Gerdad.’

Nakka looked up as his granddaughter entered the kitchen, appearing to him, through his granddad goggles, a beautiful young blossoming woman in her school uniform. However, to anyone else, the gangly teenager was like a walking dead, a marionette. A girl who had recently miraculously walked away from an explosion suffering devastating injuries. She wore a kempt, though poorly pressed, school uniform; Nakka was not that good at pressing, ironing, well, anything really.

‘Ning, sweet’art,’ Nakka replied, accustomed to an abbreviated dialogue with Juliet who had difficulty sometimes in getting full words out. It was getting better, but it took a lot of her reserved energy to speak normally, so at home they relaxed, communicated in a distorted and clipped manner. She still slurred, and together they had worked out this easier form of conversing, which occasionally he mimicked. It worked for them and Lisa, but Nakka knew it troubled others when they first met Juliet, and she was mercilessly ribbed by her school friends, not that she had many of those; scarred people were convenient pariahs, still, even in these politically correct times. Juliet had developed a strength that was her armour; a thick skin would be too cruel a description. Beneath the damaged facade, she was mush. She still grieved for the loss of her parents, Nan, and her good looks, but her superior intelligence defied the appearance of the crushed and repaired skull; there was strength in this girl, and all of it inherited from her dead mother. Maybe a bit from her dad, but Nakka mainly gave over compassion. That was his gift to his granddaughter? Nakka was a lovely man.

Juliet had no girl friends. No girl at school had befriended her; it was as if they would be tainted. Her only friend was Sam, a boy in her class, and Nakka liked him, except of course he had marked the lad’s card where the privations of his granddaughter were concerned. At a recent parents' evening at the school, Sam’s dad had asked if Nakka could persuade Juliet to stay away from his son as some of his school friends were talking about him behind his back. Uncharacteristically, Nakka hit the man full in the face, and Sam’s father’s blood spurted from his nose over the assembly hall polished wood floor. The police had been called, but after a short while, and especially after the intervention of Sam with his parents, no action was taken, except Juliet and Nakka were asked to leave, and Juliet was bullied a little less. It was a rare occasion where Nakka had stepped beyond his naturally cowardy custard persona, but that is what love will do to a man, even an inveterate chicken, as Dawn, his late wife, would say to him, in a loving way. Sam defended Juliet in school, they struck up a fast friendship, and Nakka was proud of the boy; here was someone who saw beyond the superficial damage. Saw what he saw, the inner beauty of his granddaughter, so long as that was as far as he went.

Nakka slid a plate to Juliet as she sat at the table draped with a yellow and white, gingham check, plastic table cloth. It was easily wiped clean when Juliet spilled things, which she did, though she was managing better as time passed, and the physiotherapy was showing benefits. Nakka called it the oil clorfe, and he told Juliet, every time, this is what his Nan in Stepney would call it; Juliet never tired of her Gerdad’s stories, which he repeated, ad infinitum. The clorfe was yellow and white, not red and white, as sometimes too strident a colour clash would set off an attack for his granddaughter. Nakka was always careful to balance any degree of visual stimulation. The warehouse home had been amateurishly decorated in all pale colours, calming blues, dulled and fading paintwork to the side of the house and gates; nothing jarred or irritated the eye.

‘Scrambly egg, eh toate, cuppa char,’ he announced as he passed the scrambled eggs, toast and a mug of tea, and lifting up a Postman Pat lunch box, ‘your fave sarnies, peanut but, bee-root eh mayo for lunch.’

Juliet looked back at Nakka in affectionate exasperation. ‘Gerdad, Post Pat?’ and giggled as she looked at her granddad’s beaming smile in response to her reaction to her old infant school lunch box.

Nakka leaned over, and with his ever-present clean handkerchief, he dabbed at the side of Juliet’s mouth, the side that drooped and seemed to forever display white foaming spittle. ‘Yer left all the 'uvvers at school,’ he said, and made like he was going to smash her head in, not that Juliet reacted in any way, as one, her head was already smashed in, and two, Gerdad would never harm a hair on her head, a lot of which was thankfully growing back.

Nakka took the sandwiches out of the joke lunch box and put them in a supermarket carrier bag, along with a bottle of water, an apple and a Kit Kat, her favourite, though he wagged his finger as he warned about giving Carol any. He knew his granddaughter was a softy around Carol, (pots and kettles) and he walked back around the table, plonked the bag down, and brushing aside some of the wisps of red hair Juliet deliberately draped over her temples, Nakka planted a gentle and loving kiss on the concave section of his granddaughters' forehead. This completed his morning ritual that Juliet so loved. He would run his fingers through her silky red hair and tell her how this reminded him of her Nan’s hair, and especially of Juliet’s mum’s hair. He would say how much he loved it, invariably trying to disguise a tear in the corner of his eye.

‘Och, eh, Gerdad!’ Juliet said, the ritual, to tell her granddad off for messing up her hair, and she sipped some tea and dabbed her mouth herself, a habit, self-conscious of her dribbling. The kids at school taunted her all the time, “Niagara Falls gob”, “Alka Seltzer mouth”, a few of the hurtful jibes, on top of being a ginger nut. She had not told Nakka about the bad time the kids gave her in case he hit all the dads. She tried never to think about it but sensed he knew of her pain, at school anyway, and she preferred it if he did not hit everyone, just in case one did hit back; the sight of her Gerdad running away would not be a pleasant one, and the kids would be sure to take the piss about that.

They settled eating their breakfasts.

‘Di’ I ‘ear Carol come in ‘ast nigh?’ Juliet asked.

‘It was cold… sea mist,’ Nakka replied, and he looked to Juliet across the oil clorfe, knowing he was about to be scolded. He didn’t mind in the least, because she looked like his wife had looked every time she cautioned that his love of horses should not stretch to them staying indoors. All of his arguments fell on deaf, if doting, ears as he recalled the beautiful smile from his now dead wife; she could melt his heart could Dawn, so much so that whatever horse he had at the time, only ever came in when she was out, and when she returned, she would sniff the air and scold him, at the same time hugging and kissing him; this was her Nakka, the big “jelly baby”. His answer, if Dawn wasn’t around, he had nobody to watch telly with, and so, in his logic, he brought the horse in, and they watched together, especially if it was Horse of the Year show.

‘Still ‘ere is she?’ Juliet asked, but already knew as she could hear the telly from the living room.

‘Black Beauty, just finishing. She likes that film, that and the Lone Ranger,’ as if Juliet didn’t know this. ‘Hi Ho bleedin’ Silver,’ he said, making like he was a horse going up on his back legs, waving his arms around like a loony, and she giggled as best she could.

‘I’ll take err out in minute…’ she replied. ‘‘As she ‘ad brekkas?’

‘I made a bucket of oats and put it on the coffee table...’ and just then they heard a crash from the living room.

‘Oh, Gerdad, coffee tabe,’ and Juliet laughed, and Nakka watched her disfigured mouth as it stretched against the still raw, shiny, tight, scarred skin; a semblance of a grin, it went as far as it could and allowed the chuckles to squeeze by. Nakka was warmed and more tears welled. He would clear up the mess later and change Carol’s nappy, he said in reply. Juliet had insisted that if Carol stayed in the house, especially in the evening when they watched the telly together, or when Carol watched the horse racing on a Saturday afternoon, she wear a nappy. Carol was house trained, but did have the occasional accident as the horses neared the finishing post, especially after a dodgy Hay Jalfrezi; she loved a curry did Carol.

None of this bothered Nakka as he had been, much to the chagrin of his largely criminal East End of London family, a copper. This was bad enough for the dodgy clan, but Nakka had been a member of the mounted police, hence his love of horses, which embarrassed the hell out of the villainous Nakka tribe. Nakka had an extraordinary love for horses, passing strange when you think that not until he was in his late teens had he been outside of London to the countryside. But he had grown up with horses, the milkman, the coalman, the rag and bone man, and they had all let Nakka care for their horses.

It was in the Metropolitan Police, at a dance run by the local Port of London Authority Police, that Nakka met Dawn, a Scotland Yard Detective Inspector at the time, who some said was the most beautiful filf in the Met. Even some of the villains she put behind bars melted and confessed under her gaze. It, therefore, came as a shock to many that Dawn took an immediate shine to the equine police constable of lowly rank, even lower because he was up on a horse, and it was considered by absolutely everyone that Nakka would never rise beyond that rank, not just because he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but mainly because he didn’t want to. He just wanted to be with his horses, and this did not seem to bother Dawn at all.

Nakka and Dawn married quite soon after their first meeting; they had a powerful love for each other, and this lasted, him a mounted constable, and she, a serious copper in Scotland Yard. It was a strange affair the nuptials, the reception especially, made up of two halves: villainy one side and brainy detectives the other. Dawn and Nakka danced their first marital dance together, Nakka oblivious, joyous in his love for Dawn. She aware of the palpable tension between the guests, especially on the villainy side, some of whom she had in mind nicking soon after the honeymoon, which she did, and even stood her ground when the family called round complaining; water off a horse’s back to Nakka.

Dawn and Nakka, as wife and husband, were eventually accepted by the local villains, even if this was at a distance. They settled in the East End of London, principally because the Rag and Bone man had died and Nakka wanted to look after Nelly. So they bought the Rag and Bone man’s house and yard, a substantial, if chaotically ruined temple. Dawn set Nakka to tidying everything up, and the house was refurbished over time, everything was in good shape, if a little strange, and the yard, well, was okay if a little quirky in a Heath Robinson way. Nelly was kept away from the little garden Dawn had nurtured; Nelly’s fertilizer being made good use of.

People who knew the contradictory couple said they were amazed at how happy they were together. Children came along, all girls, three, and by and by, all but the middle child, Carol, moved away from London. Alice, the youngest, went inexplicably to live in the countryside and Cecelia to Australia, all of which disappointed Nakka as he wanted his girls around him. Dawn had encouraged the children to spread their wings, and Nakka accepted everything his wife said as the wisest of counsel; sensible man. Carol became a copper too, and was even more successful than her mum, Special Branch. Everyone was more successful than Dad, not that he saw this, and if he did, he clearly did not care. He was in seventh heaven, a perfect world for him surrounded by love and horses.

They always had a horse because Dawn loved Nakka and Nakka loved Dawn, his kids, and then horses, though Dawn would sometimes question this Nakka hierarchy. She did, however, draw the line when he brought home a camel, and she made him take it to the Zoo. Nakka was upset for weeks, his case that it only had one hump demonstrating to those who knew the couple, that Nakka was a dozy, soppy man, knew nothing of women, and likely knew nothing of camels either, except they spit, and Jeff had spat in Dawn’s eye, so the next day Nakka rode Jeff to London Zoo. The Zoo people seemed pleased to get their camel back; pinched from the docks apparently.

Nakka still had friends who were Dockers, and he never nicked them because he was not Port Authority police, and he believed it was a part of their job, stevedoring, stealing things, and they had given him a camel, so he let them off. He was not really a good copper, but he did look after the police horses well, and he patently loved the work, though he was disappointed that the superintendent had got the hump at his suggestion the Met use camels. “They could spit at criminals…” he’d said, “didn’t need frequent watering” and, like a woman, which she was, the superintendent had put her foot down, folded her arms, and said, “No.”

Juliet finished her breakfast, and subconsciously granddad and granddaughter agreed the allotted chores. Nakka washed up and cleared away, folded the table cloth and wiped down the bare wood tabletop. Juliet took Carol out into the yard and cleared up the mess in the living room, raising her one working eyebrow when she noticed Gerdad had put bananas in the oats, and they were difficult to get out of the carpet where Carol’s hooves had trodden on them. He had forgotten Carol liked carrots, not bananas, but curiously liked Banoffee pie – Nakka always got carrots and bananas confused, probably the colour, and hence his difficulty seeing in the dark, but he was brilliant swinging through trees in the daytime.

Eventually Carol was out in the yard, and Juliet returned indoors and upstairs to her room to collect her school things; Lisa was expected. She liked Lisa, the sister of her Nan, who’d had a pie and mash shop in the East End of London, and Juliet had loved helping out there on a Saturday. Juliet still loved pie and mash with green parsley liquor, and Lisa made it often for the pair of them. Lisa had sold up and followed Nakka, her brother-in-law, down to Portsmouth to help him with his granddaughter after his wife (Dawn, her sister), his daughter and her husband, had all been killed in the car bomb. An event that had also seriously injured Juliet, though she was on the mend, as much as could reasonably be expected that is.

3

Lisa stepped from the corner and allowed her heels to clack on the shiny cobbles, announcing her arrival to lilac lady. She walked as if she had just arrived, not wishing the pastel clad woman to think she had been snooping, though Lilac, when she turned to see who approached, responded with a distrustful eye. Nothing was said, the foghorns sounded, and both ladies smelled the essence of brine, diesel and fish guts as they snorted their confrontation. Lilac lady flicked her eyes and turned her nose up in a very precise and demonstrative demeanour, as if she sought a shared sense of aromatic disgust with the stranger, albeit she remained on her guard.

‘You have an appointment?’ Lisa asked, politely, her head tilting to the gates, demonstrably breathing in through her nose and sighing appreciatively, aware her contrary response would get up Lilac’s nose; ‘ha ha ha’ – both head voices laughed at that one.