Nicola Barker - The Yips

‘Have you given any thought to going public?’ Jen wonders, meanwhile.

‘Sorry?’ Gene’s still five paces behind.

‘It’d be a fab story for the tabs, don’t you reckon?’ she muses. ‘Bad-boy golfer feeds under-age kid muscle relaxants then takes him for “joyride” in stolen military jeep?’

‘Bloody hell!’ Gene’s horrified.

‘We’d naturally do our best to keep Stan’s personal details out of the mix,’ she concedes, ‘but if the Tuckers can make a mint out of this stuff …’

‘The Tuckers?’

Gene stares at her, blankly, then suddenly — unexpectedly — everything just falls into place.

‘The Tuckers!’ he exclaims, knocking the side of his head with his palm, infuriated by his own idiocy. ‘ Ann Tucker — Noel Tucker. I knew the face was familiar!’

Jen raises a single, inquisitive brow.

‘I bumped into him again yesterday on my rounds,’ Gene explains. ‘Stratton Street. There’s a girl with red hair …’

‘That’ll be Vee,’ Jen affirms. ‘Really pretty. Party organizer. Into all the forties stuff. I never met the mum. She worked as a housekeeper at the Thistle. Before our time, I guess. A real sweetheart by all accounts — bred cats — wouldn’t say boo to a goose. Patty Marsh from the laundry was her best bud …’

‘Hang on a second’ — Gene’s frowning — ‘I’m certain the name was Wickers on the electoral roll. I checked it against my details before I made the visit.’

‘Tucker was Reggie’s business name,’ Jen elucidates, ‘the name he tattooed under: Reggie T. You must remember Tucker’s tattoo parlour on Kildare Road?’

‘Of course.’ Gene nods. ‘Next to the old Bingo Hall.’

‘Well he always went by Tucker, but his real name was Wickers. Tucker was his mother’s maiden name. The dad buggered off when he was a kid. I’m not sure of all the whys and the wherefores, but while he always insisted on going by Tucker, the family went with Wickers, purely for legal reasons, I guess. Both his kids still go by it. Can’t say I blame them, either’ — she shrugs — ‘given the dodgy nature of their dad’s public persona — the Tucker legacy. All the BNP malarkey …’

‘And it was Stuart Ransom who put Ann Tucker into a coma with that stray ball of his …’

‘ Duh! ’ Jen delivers him a pitying look. ‘I found out all the gory details last night on Google,’ she happily fills him in. ‘Transpires that Mrs Tucker did a bit of fetching and carrying for an elderly neighbour — a widower — whose son’d bought him a couple of tickets for this big charity golf gala in Milton Keynes. The day of the actual tournament an ash tree falls on to his son’s conservatory — it’s chaos — and he can’t actually make it, so Mrs Tucker kindly steps into the breach. Fast forward to a few hours later: Ransom’s on the third hole teeing this massive shot. Mrs Tucker is sitting on a blanket enjoying a picnic — chowing down on a scotch egg or a sausage roll; history fails to record which it was, exactly — when, whack! Ransom’s ball hits her square between the shoulders. She slams, face-forward, into the rough, a piece of pork meat jammed in her throat. Everyone thinks she’s concussed from the blow — which she is — but they don’t realize that there’s a secondary problem till it’s way too late. She’s starved of oxygen for about five minutes. Suffers serious brain damage.’

‘It was just a fluke, though, an accident, surely?’ Gene rallies to Ransom’s defence. ‘I mean not to diminish the obvious tragedy of the whole thing,’ he qualifies.

‘Oh yeah. Completely,’ Jen concurs. ‘But someone still had to take the rap for it. And like I said, her husband, Reggie Tucker, was Luton’s premier local Nazi. He was madly litigious by all accounts. You might remember him as the public face of that long-running battle with the local Trades and Standards Commission — when the EU forced us to go metric a few years back? Reggie ran under the banner of “The Upholder of the Sanctity of the Great British Pint” …’

Jen rolls her eyes. ‘The pathetic old troglodyte.’

‘Spoken with all the patriotic ardour of a girl who subsists entirely on root beer and Big Macs,’ Gene mutters.

‘The bottom line,’ Jen continues (ignoring this cruel — if utterly accurate — assault), ‘was that he was determined to get some kind of compensation for his family …’

‘I guess you can see his point,’ Gene concedes.

‘And naturally Ransom’s the first person he tries to finger for it’ — Jen nods — ‘but it turns out Ransom isn’t insured. Worse still, he’s stony broke. In fact he’s recently declared himself bankrupt after the collapse of his clothing line — although rumour had it at the time that he’d secretly squirrelled most of his cash abroad, to one of the Caribbean Islands. Barbados? Bermuda?’

Gene shrugs.

‘So next he tries to finger the course itself — who it turns out are actually part of this massive, American-based conglomerate — and it doesn’t take him long to realize that with the meagre resources at his disposal he hasn’t a hope in hell of beating them in court. He even chances his arm with the St John’s ambulance people …’

Gene winces.

‘Not a good look,’ Jen agrees.

‘But what about his wife, meanwhile?’ Gene interjects. ‘Ann, was it?’

‘Well Ann is now out of the coma and slowly recovering in hospital under the tender ministrations of a Haitian nurse. Takes almost a year before she’s ready to sit up, another three months before she can be fed orally, another six till she can start talking again, and then, when she finally does, it’s in pidgin French! Won’t utter a single syllable of English! Refuses to! It’s Mr Tucker’s worst nightmare: he finds himself married to the enemy!’

‘A rich irony.’ Gene grins, tickled by the idea.

‘And then some!’ Jen concurs. ‘He promptly starts legal proceedings against the hospital …’

‘Oh dear.’

‘… and then six, short months later, he kicks the bucket.’

‘Ouch.’ Gene winces.

‘Heart attack brought on by all the stress.’ Jen shrugs. ‘Noel promptly takes over where his dad left off. But Noel’s a total flake — has a dope addict girlfriend who’s up the duff. The whole thing implodes, basically. Gets really nasty. Really complicated. Really personal.’

‘Is the mother fully recovered now?’ Gene wonders.

‘Not sure.’ Jen pulls her T-shirt askew and shows Gene a small star on her collar bone.

‘The collar bone,’ she informs him, ‘is one of the most painful places to get a tattoo …’

She shows him a second star on the other side. ‘So muggins here gets two.’

‘And that’s Reggie’s work?’ (Gene tries not to inspect the stars too closely.)

‘Nope. They’re Vee’s. She worked as her dad’s Saturday girl for a while — trained as his apprentice. Did these babies illegally, obviously.’ Jen curtseys, proudly. ‘She was pretty good even back then. Although after he died she got into all this weird, ultra-realist stuff …’

Jen grimaces.

‘Hang on …’ Gene’s confused. ‘I thought you said she was a party organizer?’

‘Yeah. Yeah, she was. And she didn’t just organize, either — she was a real party girl’ — Jen gives him a significant look — ‘but after the accident she became her mum’s main carer. Needs must. They’d sold the dad’s business premises to settle their legal fees, so she set up this little studio at home, quit partying and started concentrating on the tattooing side of things again.’

‘Is she any good?’ Gene wonders.

‘Oh yeah. She’s a genius at it’ — Jen nods, emphatically — ‘turns down way more commissions than she accepts. Her dad was a real traditionalist — roses, swallows, pin-ups, that kinda stuff, but Vee’s completely left that scene behind her, now. She’s like ultra-ultra real. Some people love what she does, others think she’s completely whacko. I dunno — I guess it just depends on what you’re into …’