Marina Lewycka - The Lubetkin Legacy

‘She’s losing her mind,’ murmured Jenny to me, ‘as a result of your callousness, Bertie. You were such a lovely little boy. I never thought you would grow up to be so heartless.’

The pathetic state of the old ladies did prompt a twinge of conscience for the mean trick I had set out to play on them.

‘Look here, Jenny —’ I started.

Suddenly Monty stiffened, growled. Jenny gasped. Margaret screamed and dropped the rabbit.

Behind me, a deep gravelly voice said, ‘Put up hands!’

I spun around. A man was standing there — a short, heavy man with a balaclava pulled down over his head. But the main thing I noticed was the gun in his hands, a black blunt menacing piece of kit which was pointing straight at my face. I guessed it must be Lookerchunky, though he looked shorter than I remembered.

‘Look here, Lev, a joke’s a joke, but can you point that thing away?’

The gun did not waver.

‘Put up hands, Alfandari,’ the man growled, and reluctantly I raised my hands, letting go of Monty’s lead.

Immediately the little dog bounded forward and hurled himself at the man’s ankles. ‘Yah! Grrr!’

‘Monty, no!’ I yelled.

The man pointed his gun down at the dog which was clamped to his leg. I heard a shot, followed by a howl of pain. A fountain of blood spurted up. Monty rocketed across the room, his coat sprayed with red. The man dropped his gun and started hopping, screaming and cursing. Then I saw that the blood was not coming from Monty, but from the man’s foot.

Margaret had fainted, and Jenny was trying to drag her out through the door. Monty picked up her rabbit and started racing around the room, dragging it repeatedly through the pool of blood. The wounded man was inching towards his gun. I’m sure George Clooney would have made a dive and grabbed it, like in the movies, but my head was whirring uselessly with fragments of verse. Absent thee from felicity a while, and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, to …

Peeyow! A bullet whizzed across the room and lodged itself in the cupboard behind the balaclava man’s shoulder.

‘Put up arms!’ Lookerchunky appeared in the other doorway wearing his tight silver suit and pointing a chunky silver weapon at the man.

‘Lev!’ I yelled. ‘Who is this man?’

‘Oligarki gangster! Come for Alfandari!’

‘Alfandari’s already dead!’

‘I know. He is idiot!’

In the moment that Lookerchunky spoke, the oligarki gangster took advantage of the distraction to grab his gun from the floor and level it at me.

‘You no Alfandari?’

‘No, absolutely not.’

‘Who you are?’

‘I’m Berthold Sidebottom. I’m a well-known actor …’

‘And you?’ he addressed Lookerchunky.

‘Lev Lukashenko.’

‘ Oy, bozhe moy! ’ He slapped his forehead. ‘I make mistake! And this people?’

He gestured towards the street door where Jenny and Margaret were stumbling up the steps towards the road, shouting, ‘Stop! Stop!’ in pursuit of Monty, who was racing ahead with the limp bloody rabbit in his jaws.

‘Monty! Heel!’ I yelled and threw myself forward to grab his lead, but I tripped on the top step and landed on my chin. My mouth filled with blood. As I spat it out, I felt a piece of tooth go flying before I blacked out.

‘You okay, chep?’ The oligarki gangster was standing over me still holding his gun as I came round.

Suddenly there was a screech of brakes and a thud. I raised my head. A small white van had come to a halt in the middle of the road. Under its wheels, tangled in his lead, Monty was twitching and squealing horribly.

‘Oy-oy-oy!’ The gangster shook his head.

Lookerchunky stepped forward and dispatched poor Monty with a single shot from his chunky silver pistol.

Then another commotion of voices erupted from the other side of the van.

‘No! No! Let me go, you moron! It’s a mistake!’

I turned my head, to see Jenny pressed up against the wall of the van with Alec Prang, the fraud investigator, trying to get her in an armlock. Anthea Crossbow was already manhandling poor bewildered Margaret into the back of the van. The van reversed, turned, and sped back up the road. I picked up the dead dog and wrapped him in my jacket, wondering what the hell I was going to say to Stacey.

She would be heartbroken.

The gangster had found some TCP in the bathroom cabinet and was bandaging his foot up in a tea towel.

‘We go for drink?’

‘Good idea,’ said Lookerchunky.

I applied some TCP to my cut face. Fortunately, the pub was nearby.

Violet awakes to absolute darkness and a smell of something cool and antiseptic close to her face. Then she moves her head and a streak of light shows at the bottom of her vision. If she tilts her chin up she can see a low section of her surroundings. She realises the darkness is only from a bandage around her forehead which partly covers her eyes. One hand is immobile, encased in plaster and fixed across her chest with a strap. With the other hand, she gingerly adjusts the bandage a centimetre upwards, giving herself another metre of perspective. She is lying under a white sheet in a small white room. A bright patch of sunlight falls on the floor at the foot of the bed. She tries to remember … she remembers the three men, the sack over her head, the square window, the narrow room, the buckets, the pain, the thud of the chair falling over. Then … it’s as though her memory is on a loop that repeats those same images again and again but will not wind forward however hard she tries.

The sound of a door opening behind her makes her tense up. Are they coming back for her? Without moving her head, she watches two white shoes advance into the room. Two small white shoes on skinny brown legs, carrying with them a familiar voice.

‘ Mpenzi , my baby, who done this to you? I thought I would never see you again! I going crazy with worry.’ Her grandmother’s voice is strident with relief.

Behind the bandage she feels tears water her eyes and prick the back of her nose. She wants to surrender to the storm building up inside her, to be comforted in her grandmother’s arms, but the bandages immobilise her.

‘I’m all right, Nyanya. Shush. I’m all right now.’

The door creaks again, and this time a pair of pretty red high-heeled sandals trip across the floor to her bedside. Lynette sits on the edge of the bed, takes her good hand and gives it a squeeze.

‘Thank God, Violet. Thank God we got you out. I warned you to be careful.’

‘Thank God I called you for your lunch,’ Njoki adds. ‘When I heard you cry out, I phoned the police straight away. Then I phoned Lynette. Oh, mpenzi , I thought you was murdered!’

‘Ssh. Not so loud.’ A soft woman’s voice she doesn’t recognise, maybe the nurse. ‘She had a shock. She only just woken up. She need to stay calm.’

‘It was nothing to do with the police,’ Lynette says. ‘They said you was probably with your boyfriend and they couldn’t do nothing. Wait another day, they said.’

‘Another day and you been dead,’ adds Njoki in a dramatic voice.

‘On Monday morning after Njoki phoned me, I called up the anti-corruption bureau and I told them about those papers you showed me.’

‘You told me to be careful, Lynette.’

‘I was careful. I gave them a false name. At first they weren’t interested. The man I talked to said they investigated Nzangu before and he was clean. I wasn’t surprised they said that, but now they knew we were on his trail. So I put the phone down.’

‘Then …?’ She tries to raise her head, sending a shooting pain through her shoulder and arm.