Free Faces by Martina Cole

appearance, was hard for Louie to understand. He didn’t know what to do for the best, tell the boy, forewarned and all that, or keep schtum and wait to see what happened. Maybe, just maybe, Big Dan Cadogan would go on the trot once more and a major calamity might be averted.
    He sighed and, winking at Cedric, he waved to Danny, indicating that he wanted him in the office. Danny shut down the crusher quickly and made his way over to the dilapidated shed that served as their sanctuary from Old Bill, errant totters and, more often than not, the outside world in general.
    Scrap metal was not a business that encouraged friendliness with rivals in the same game, or had any kind of glamour that might attract the opposite sex. Scrap was an earner, but only to people who knew how to offload it, respected it, and were willing to put in the time and the effort that would then warrant some kind of trust. A scrapyard had to be up and running for a good few years before it was designated a walking trust fund for the criminally minded. It had to be around long enough for people to see and accept it as an established business. A scrapyard owner needed the knack of being able to talk to all walks of society and, more importantly, Lily Law, without arousing suspicions from anyone they might be involved with. It was a fine line that needed to be drawn, and it was also a difficult position for someone who, for whatever reason, was not a people person.
    Scrap was serious bunce, scrap was a serious earner, and scrap was a cash business that left a lot of room for creative accounting and afforded the time and effort that was often needed to ensure a long and happy partnership with a variety of different businessmen. In short, scrap was a fucking earner, but that earning potential could only be fully utilised by someone with the brains and the acumen to know a good deal within a nanosecond, and who would offer a decent scotch a nanosecond after that. Young Danny was a natural, he looked at home in the yard, and could spot a good deal a mile away. And, most important of all, he wanted the wedge.
    Now Louie had to decide whether to keep his trap shut, or steer the boy onto a course that was even more crooked than the man, and he used that term lightly, who had sired him. It was a melon scratcher all right, and Louie wasn’t sure what the best course of action might be.
     
    Angelica Cadogan was sitting at her kitchen table, the new table, provided by her son, who took great pains to remind her of that fact at every given opportunity. She wished her daughter was still at home, wasn’t at that school where all she seemed to be learning was rudeness, and a knack for annoying the life out of everyone she came into contact with. Angelica was fingering her rosary, she often asked for a small Intention during the course of the day, convinced that a minor request would not be ignored. She had never trusted the power of prayer enough to ask for her husband’s return or, before that, his fidelity. She knew that a miracle of those proportions would be about as likely as a win on the pools. But she was unsettled in herself, couldn’t seem to relax at all. It was a feeling like no other in her life to date. As if she was waiting for something, but she didn’t know what that something might be.
    The knock on the front door was almost welcome, it gave her something to do, and she launched herself out of the chair and into the tiny hallway within seconds. Opening the door she was struck dumb at the realisation of who was standing there. Wilfred Murray grinned at her, displaying his large, yellowing teeth, and an almost indecent amount of gum. The health service in this country was free, and that included dentists, and yet she had never seen so many sets of harrowing choppers in her life until she had got off the boat at Fishguard.
    Wilfred was inside the flat before she had time to wish him a good day, a feck off, or to even scratch her arse.
     
    Michael Miles