Maxim Jakubowski: The Best British Mysteries III

‘Citizen Sabot of the local committee is a good man.’

His voice shook, and he despised himself for his words. ‘I would like him to have an opportunity to be rewarded for his service to the people by receiving one of the cheeses.’

Robespierre stood motionless for several seconds. He drew in his breath with a slight hiss. ‘Indeed.’

‘He works long hours.’ Carton felt the blood thundering in his head. ‘I must report to him tonight, to show my honesty in this matter, or…’ he faltered and fell silent.

‘He does his duty,’ Robespierre replied.

Carton’s heart sank.

‘But you may be rewarded,’ Robespierre added. ‘You may have one of the cheeses.’

Carton was giddy with relief. ‘Thank you, Citizen.’ He hated the gratitude in his voice, and he could do nothing about it. ‘You are…’ he said the one word he knew Robespierre longed to hear, ‘…incorruptible.’

He took the cheese and went to the local committee prison. Sabot was waiting for him. He saw the cheese even before Carton spoke.

Carton placed it on the table before him, hating to let go of it, and knowing it was the only way to save his life.

‘I found them,’ he said. ‘Citizen Robespierre will arrest the hoarder. You would be well advised to take this home, tonight – now! And say nothing.’

Sabot nodded with profound understanding and a good deal of respect. He picked up the cheese, caressing it with his fingers. ‘I will leave now,’ he agreed. ‘I will walk along the street with you, Citizen.’

Philippe protested of course, but it availed him nothing. Fleuriot would never have dared retract his testimony, and apart from that, there was a sweetness in having his revenge on Philippe for having stolen his hoard, and then terrified him into guarding it for him, adding insult to injury.

Reluctantly Sabot was allowed his one cheese in reward. It was all over very swiftly. Robespierre was not yet a member of the Committee of Public Safety, but it was only a matter of time. His star was ascending. Already someone whispered of him as ‘The Sea-Green Incorruptible’. Philippe Duclos was found guilty and sentenced to the guillotine.

Robespierre never personally witnessed such a disgusting act as an execution. The only time he ever saw the machine of death at all was at the end of the High Terror still a year in the future, when he mounted the blood-spattered steps himself.

Carton had not intended to go, but the memory of Marie-Claire was suddenly very sharp in his mind. He could see her bright face under its tumbled hair, hear her voice with its laughter and enthusiasm, as if she had gone out of the door only minutes ago. Half against his will, despising himself for it, he nevertheless was waiting in the Place de la Revolution, watching with revulsion Citizeness Defarge and her friends who sat with their knitting needles clicking beside the guillotine when the tumbrels came rattling in with their cargo of the condemned.

As usual they were all manner of people, but not many of them wore the red bandanna of the Citizen’s power, and Philippe was easy to see.

Carton felt a joggle at his elbow, and turning for an instant, he thought it was Marie-Claire. It was the same wide, brown eyes, the tangle of hair, but it was Jean-Jacques, his face still haggard with grief. He looked at Carton and his cheeks were wet.

Carton put out his hand to touch him gently. ‘I’m glad you didn’t try your plan,’ he said with intense gratitude. He liked this odd little man profoundly. It was stupid to have such a hostage to fate, but he could not help it. Afterward they would go and drink together in quiet remembrance and companionship. ‘It would never have worked,’ he added.

Jean-Jacques smiled through his tears. ‘Yeah, it did,’ he answered.

You want to know why what happened last Wednesday night at the Roxette happened at all. You have to go back twenty years. To the miners’ strike. They teach it to the bairns now as history, but I lived through it and it’s as sharp in my memory as yesterday. After she beat the Argies in the Falklands, Thatcher fell in love with the taste of victory, and the miners were her number one target. She was determined to break us, and she didn’t care what it took. Arthur Scargill, the miners’ leader, was as bloody-minded as she was, and when he called his men out on strike, my Alan walked out along with every other miner in his pit.

We all thought it would be over in a matter of weeks at the most. But no bugger would give an inch. Weeks turned into months, the seasons slipped from spring through summer and autumn into winter. We had four bairns to feed and not a penny coming in. Our savings went; then our insurance policies; and finally, my jewellery. We’d go to bed hungry and wake up the same way, our bellies rumbling like the slow grumble of the armoured police vans that regularly rolled round the streets of our town to remind us who we were fighting. Sometimes they’d taunt us by sitting in their vans flaunting their takeaways, even throwing half-eaten fish suppers out on the pavements as they drove by. Anything to rub our noses in the overtime they were coining by keeping us in our places.

We were desperate. I heard tell that some of the wives even went on the game, taking a bus down to the big cities for the day. But nobody from round our way sank that low. Or not that I know of. But lives changed forever during that long hellish year, mine among them.

It’s a measure of how low we all sank that when I heard Mattie Barnard had taken a heart attack and died, my first thought wasn’t for his widow. It was for his job. I think I got down the Roxette faster than the Co-op Funeral Service got to Mattie’s. Tyson Herbert, the manager, hadn’t even heard the news. But I didn’t let that stop me. ‘I want Mattie’s job,’ I told him straight out, while he was still reeling from the shock.

‘Now hang on a minute, Noreen,’ he said warily. He was always cautious, was Tyson Herbert. You could lose the will to live waiting for him to turn right at a junction. ‘You know as well as I do that bingo calling is a man’s job. It’s always been that way. A touch of authority. Dicky bow and dinner jacket. The BBC might have let their standards slip, but here at the Roxette, we do things the right way.’ Ponderous as a bloody elephant.

‘That’s against the law nowadays, Tyson,’ I said. ‘You cannot have rules like that any more. Only if you’re a lavatory cleaner or something. And as far as I’m aware, cleaning the Gents wasn’t part of Mattie’s job.’

Well, we did a bit of a to and fro, but in the end, Tyson Herbert gave in. He didn’t have a lot of choice. The first session of the day was due to start in half an hour, and he needed somebody up there doing two fat ladies and Maggie’s den. Even if the person in question was wearing a blue nylon overall instead of a tuxedo.

And that was the start of it all. Now, nobody’s ever accused me of being greedy, and besides, I still had a house to run as well as doing my share on the picket line with the other miners’ wives. So within a couple of weeks, I’d persuaded Tyson Herbert that he needed to move with the times and make mine a jobshare. By the end of the month, I was splitting my shifts with Kathy, Liz and Jackie. The four calling birds, my Alan christened us. Morning, afternoon and evening, one or other of us would be up on the stage, mike in one hand, plucking balls out of the air with the other and keeping the flow of patter going. More importantly, we kept our four families going. We kept our kids on the straight and narrow.

It made a bit of a splash locally. There had never been women bingo callers in the North-East before. It had been as much a man’s job as cutting coal. The local paper wrote an article abut us, then the BBC turned up and did an interview with us for Woman’s Hour. I suppose they were desperate for a story from up our way that wasn’t all doom, gloom and picket line. You should have seen Tyson Herbert preening himself, like he’d single-handedly burned every bra in the North-East.