Free The City Trap by John Dalton Page B

snoopin after our Pauline, are yer? Fuckin private dick! We’ve had the soddin pigs round half a dozen times and I’ll be fucked if we want you!’
    ‘There is a mouth.’
    ‘Eh?’
    ‘Forget it. Look, I don’t want to speak to you –’
    ‘No one speaks to our Pauline without my say-so.’
    ‘Come on, chill out. This heavy macho thing, it’s movie stuff,’ Des quipped. It was one quip too many.
    ‘Fuckin smartarse!’ The man lifted up a slab hand and propped it on Des’s chest. ‘Well you just check this, dickface. No –’ and the guy began to push
‘– scumbag – little – snooper – comes knocking – on my – fuckin door – without good reason – or a fuckin invitation!’
    Des suddenly found himself on the pavement, pressed up against a car. Only then did he begin to get seriously concerned and to think of protecting himself. Too late.
    ‘An just in case the message hasn’t got home’ – the guy pulled back his arm – ‘fuckin this might make it so!’
    Des saw the fist coming but blocked to no avail. A solid thump hit him in the solar plexus. Des bent double, gasping for air. The steak sandwich in his stomach began to get ideas about
reincarnation. Des teetered away on wobbly legs, and found a tree to hold on to.
    ‘An don’t fuckin well come back!’ he heard as he sought to breathe without retching at the same time. After a while, when most of the nausea had gone, Des began to feel angry.
Not so much with the thug as with himself. ‘Slack,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Unprofessional. Five minutes on the job and I’m almost fucked!’ He picked himself up and
gingerly went on his way.
    * * *
    Even on the third floor there was no horizon to see. Houses, factories and blocks of flats. For many years, Bertha had barely given the view a second thought. It was just there,
ugly and to be ignored. But now she was looking, not seeing, and thinking that maybe one day she could be an observer of the sea instead. One day, the hidden horizon and those she knew with no
horizons could be left behind. There was hope. It sat in a pile on the sofa like an unexpected guest. Five thousand pounds. It wasn’t enough to get you to the sea, to allow you to stay, but
such a sum could well create more, and so hope was justified. Bertha left the window and sat down by the money. But how to make it grow? She had few financial skills; she didn’t know about
much other than typing and that job she’d done so long ago. But maybe there was opportunity. What she once did, so did her daughter, and whatever Claudette was involved with, so Bertha could
seek to exploit. But how? The phone quietly beeped its way into her thoughts.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Bertha, you didn’t give me any warning, did you?’
    ‘That you, Des?’
    ‘Yeh, a rather pissed off Des.’
    ‘What’s happened, sweetheart?’
    ‘You didn’t tell me about the walrus that minds Pauline.’
    ‘Have you got hurt or something?’
    ‘Nah, wounded pride mostly. But this git, he’s built like a tank and fires howitzers if you try to get past him.’
    ‘I thought you could handle yourself, Des.’
    ‘Yeh well . . . a bit out of practice, and softened up by you.’
    ‘We had a nice time, though.’
    ‘Something I’ll have to sort out, the pain and the pleasure of the job.’
    ‘Ha, don’t know if I like the sound of that.’
    ‘Don’t worry, but it would help if you could set up a meet with Pauline minus the bodyguard.’
    ‘I’ll fix that, but are you sure you’re OK? I wouldn’t like you to get hurt.’
    ‘Isn’t that what you’re paying me for?’
    As she put the phone down, Bertha smiled. That makes a change, paying the man. She picked up the money and wrapped it ready for hiding. The plan was on its way. Bertha smiled again. Quite
a coup for a secretary. A secret second life with a man to meet her every need. And, if the plan goes well, a way out to greater riches, an escape from the concrete sprawl to sensuous pleasures