Free Jack by the Hedge (Jack of All Trades Book 4) by DH Smith

He’d be away in the next few days. Let them say what they liked about him. She was racy, no doubt about that. But a manipulator too. Who was calling the kettle black? Working out his chances with either of the two women. But he’d seen Leafy on the phone a little while back, her machine switched off, in animated chat. Either fixing up something for this evening or teasing some other berk.
    How can you trust anyone?
    Commonsense told him Liz was the better of the two. They’d talked, not sparred. She was attractive and listened. Arty too. She’d hinted at a telescope session in the park. Could be arranged, she’d said. More than a hint. But the other, the leaf woman, was up front and asking for it. Or a hot tease.
    Between musings, he’d kept half an eye on the paramedics. The ambulance had pulled into the park a few minutes ago. The vehicle had parked maybe thirty yards beyond Jack, by the side of the tennis courts. A man and a woman had jumped out of the cab, he would’ve shown them where to go, but Ian had come out of the yard and immediately taken over. He directed them across the grass with their stretcher, one or the other coming back every so often to get bits and pieces out of the ambulance. He couldn’t see what was going on with the invalid because of the marquee in the way.
    An old man was coming towards him, walking slowly with a briar cane. He was wearing a greyish suit and what they called a pork pie hat. Jack hadn’t seen one of them for years. An odd item to perch on your head. It didn’t seem very stable. The man had passed the ambulance and stopped for a little while by the tennis courts to watch what the paramedics were up to before continuing his stroll.
    Jack thought about having a bite. He was peckish. Maybe half his sandwiches now with a second cup, save the other for lunch.
    ‘Good morning,’ said the old man when he reached Jack.
    ‘Morning,’ said Jack. ‘What they doing down there?’
    ‘Couldn’t see much.’ The old man shrugged. ‘An injection maybe and getting him on the stretcher… I live over there you know. That house. My son’s the manager here. He said it’s another of those Eastern Europeans.’
    Jack could see the man’s false teeth slipping. The old man pushed them in.
    ‘We get a lot of them sleeping in here. They climb over the fence at night. We should have Alsatians wandering about. That’d keep ‘em out.’
    ‘He’s English,’ said Jack. ‘From Hertfordshire.’
    The man was disappointed, not knowing what to say about natives of Hertfordshire.
    ‘Makes a change,’ he said at last.
    ‘How long you lived over there?’ said Jack, hoping to change the subject.
    ‘Five years. Since I retired. I was a foreman myself, sort of like my son. I got another son, he’s a teacher, his marriage blown to bits. Lives up in Manchester.’ He sniffed, looking at the wall Jack was working on. ‘You’re doing a good job cleaning them bricks.’
    ‘Thank you,’ he said, grateful to have got the man off his diatribe. ‘I’m going to reuse them.’
    ‘I was a brickie myself, before I got made up to foreman.’ He wagged his finger, reminiscent of his son, ‘I could hump twenty bricks on a hod, and run up three ladders with ‘em.’
    Jack didn’t believe him, having heard this too many times on sites. A stupid boast anyway, with too many old builders ending up with back trouble.
    ‘One in each hand is enough for me,’ said Jack with a smile.
    The man blew a raspberry. ‘I’d’ve sacked you in five minutes.’
    ‘I’d get the union on you.’
    ‘Bleeding unions!’ His stick was waving fiercely to battle off union tigers. ‘Rainy day payments. Health and safety, this, that and the other. All a way of skiving off.’
    ‘People die on building sites,’ said Jack.
    ‘People die everywhere. I’m going to die. You’re going to die.’
    ‘I don’t have to die because scaffolding falls on me.’
    ‘Codswallop. A load of softy tosh. You and your lot cause