Peter Robinson - Not Safe After Dark

‘I’ll do you for this!’ the man yelled. ‘I’ll see you bloody locked up, copper or no. You’ve got no right going around destroying a man’s private property.’

‘Oh, give it a rest, Fred,’ said Banks. ‘It was probably nicked, anyway.’

‘My name’s Lenny. You’ve got the wrong bloke.’

‘My mistake. Sorry, Lenny. Are you listening?’

‘I’m still not scared of-’

Banks gave a little twist and Lenny screamed. Banks let him relax a moment and then repeated his question.

‘All right,’ said Lenny. ‘All right, I’m listening. Let go.’

Banks didn’t. ‘I’m sorry about your CD player,’ he said. ‘I’m a music lover, myself, so it hurt me almost as it hurt you. I’m sure it’ll be OK; it’s just had rather a nasty shock, that’s all. If it’s not, then I’m sure you’ll have no problem lifting another. But first I’d like a promise out of you.’

‘What promise?’

Banks gave another little twist. Lenny screamed, his face red with pain. The woman Banks assumed was his wife lit a cigarette and contemplated the scene before her with great interest, as if she was watching a television programme. The girl started buffing her nails. Banks listened in the silence after the CD player’s sudden demise, but he could hear no other sounds coming from anywhere in the house. A good sign. No ambush imminent.

‘I’d like you to promise me that you won’t ever, ever, play your music so loud again that it disturbs my mum and dad next door. Do you think you can do that, Lenny?’

‘It’s my house. I’ll do what I like in my own fucking house.’

Twist. Scream.

‘Lenny, you’re not listening. If you really mean what you just said, you ought to consider moving to a detached house, you know, miles away from your nearest neighbours. Besides, it’s not your house. It’s the council’s house. You just rent it.’

‘You’re a bastard, you are,’ Lenny said, gasping. ‘You’re worse than the fucking criminals you put away. Filth!’ He spat on the floor.

‘Yeah, yeah. It’s all been said before. But we’re not talking about me, we’re talking about your promise.’

‘What promise? I haven’t made any fucking promise.’

‘But you’re going to, aren’t you?’

Lenny said nothing. The woman frowned as she looked at him. Banks could tell the suspense was killing her. Will he or won’t he? The young girl got up and made to leave the room.

‘Where are you going?’ Banks asked her.

‘Bog,’ she said, making a squatting gesture.

Banks was a little concerned that she might reappear with a weapon. ‘Hold on a minute, love,’ he said. ‘Wait till I’m finished here.’

‘I’ll piss myself.’

‘I said hold on. You’ll live with it.’

‘These are me new jeans.’

Banks turned back to Lenny. The girl slumped against the doorpost, legs crossed. Banks kept a close eye on her. She chewed on her lower lip and looked sulky.

‘Right, Lenny, the quicker you give me your promise, the quicker your lass here will get to go to the toilet.’

‘She’s not my lass. Let her piss herself. I don’t care. Won’t be the first time.’

Banks gave a harder twist and Lenny cursed. ‘What I want you to promise,’ Banks said slowly, ‘is that you won’t play your music so loud that it upsets my mum and dad, remember?’

‘I remember.’

‘And if you do,’ Banks said, ‘I’ll have the local drugs squad over here before you can flush a tab of E down the toilet. Is that clear?’

‘It’s clear.’

‘Is it a promise?’

‘I-’

Banks twisted again. ‘Is it a promise?’

‘All right, all right! Jesus Christ, yes, it’s a fucking promise!’

‘And if you do anything – anything at all – to harm or intimidate them in any way, I’ll consider that promise broken. And I deal with broken promises myself. North Yorkshire’s not that far away. Got it?’

‘Got it. Let me go.’

Banks let go and Lenny squirmed on the floor for a while, rubbing his arm and his shoulder before subsiding into his armchair and lighting a cigarette with shaking hands.

‘You’re a nutter, you are,’ he said. ‘You ought to be locked up.’

‘You’ve got that right.’

‘Is it over?’ the girl by the door asked. ‘Are you done? Are you? ’Cos I’m bleeding bursting here.’

‘It’s over, love,’ said Banks. ‘Off you go.’

‘About fucking time.’ She dashed upstairs. The woman on the sofa looked at Lenny with contempt, but still said nothing.

‘You in charge here, Lenny?’ Banks asked, catching her look. ‘Because there’s no point my talking to the monkey, if you catch my drift.’

‘I’m in fucking charge,’ he said, glaring at the woman. ‘They know that.’

She sniffed, but Banks could see fear in her eyes, the first emotion he had noticed in her. Lenny was in charge all right, and he probably used the same tactics Banks had just used to rule his roost. That didn’t make Banks feel particularly good, but needs must. He wondered what other sorts of abuse went on in this house, in addition to drugs. The young girl, for example, or the other kids, wherever they were. Nothing would have surprised him. Maybe he’d call in the drugs squad, anyway, and the social. Someone ought to keep a close eye on this lot, that was for certain.

He heard the toilet flush as he left.

Roy’s arrival at about four o’clock broke the tension for Banks. Until then he had been helping Geoff set up the bar and buffet on tables in the kitchen, keeping a tight rein on his temper for his parents’ sake, even though Geoff treated him like an employee. ‘Now, Alan, if you wouldn’t mind just moving that over there… That’s a good lad… If you could nip over to the shops and pick up…’ And so on. He had also been wanting to get Geoff alone and have another go at him in the light of Win-some’s information, but his mother was always around issuing instructions too. Wisely, his father had gone upstairs to ‘rest’.

When the doorbell rang, Ida Banks practically ran to the front door, and Banks heard her shouts of glee as she greeted Roy. After divesting himself of his raincoat, the man himself came through to the living room, clutching a bottle-shaped bag, and with a young woman in tow. She looked about twenty, Banks thought, with short, shaggy hair, black streaked with blonde, a pale, pretty face, with beautiful eyes the colour and gleam of chestnuts in September. She also had a silver stud just below her lower lip. She was wearing jeans and a short woolly jumper, exposing a couple of inches of bare, flat midriff and a navel with a ring in it.

‘This is Corinne,’ said Roy. ‘Say hello to my brother, Alan, Corinne.’

Corinne shook Banks’s hand and said hello. She gave him a shy smile and averted her eyes.

Roy looked at Geoff, free hand stretched out, smiling like a salesman. ‘And you are-?’

‘Geoff. Geoff Salisbury.’

‘Geoff. Of course! Pleased to meet you, Geoff. I’ve heard a lot about you. Mum and Dad say they’d be lost without you.’

Geoff beamed and shifted from foot to foot. ‘Well… that’s probably a bit of an exaggeration.’

Very ’umble , Banks thought.

‘Not at all,’ said Roy. ‘Not at all.’ He gave Geoff a firm handshake and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Good to meet you at last.’

Geoff basked in the glow of Roy’s charm like a child in his mother’s embrace.

All this time, Ida Banks had stood by, smiling on. Roy turned to her again and gave her a hug. Then he handed over the package he’d been carrying. Ida Banks opened it. It was a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne. Vintage.