Charlie

  ’The twins gave me a good kicking, then they tied me hands and feet. After that they just walked out and left me lying there in the dark. Not a bleedin’ word about what it was all about, or what they were going to do to me.

  ‘Now this room upstairs is like a loft and it goes right over the whole warehouse to the river at the back. In the old days goods used to be hauled up from the boats with an old pulley thing. Now the river’s too silted up for big boats, so all we used this floor for was storing lighter stuff we could carry up, and at that time there weren’t no more than a few boxes left there. But the floor is only old planks, and there’s cracks and holes everywhere. Lying there face down, I could see the light from below, and heard voices, so once I’d got me second wind, I wriggles over to a biggish one and looks down.

  ’I got the shock of me life when I see Jin down there. I thought he was still in Holland! He’s sitting there on the floor against a packing case, his ankles tied together and his hands behind him. I reckon he must have come back earlier in the evening, probably hoping I’d be there, because he was still wearing his dark business suit and his briefcase was a few feet away from him, spilled open, like they’d been going through it.

  ‘ “Leave Dave out of this,” I heard him say. “He’s done nothing to you and he’s got a family to support.”

  ‘I heard Daphne laugh at him, though I couldn’t see her because she was out of my line of vision. “A gentleman to the last,” she said, kind of sneering. “If you’d just forgotten your stupid principles for once in your life, it wouldn’t have come to this.”

  ‘ “My principles might be stupid to you,” he said in that cool way he had. “But to me a man has to live by a decent code of behaviour otherwise he is no different to an animal. I told you Daphne, right at the beginning that I loved Sylvia and I would never leave her. I never lied to you or promised anything I didn’t fulfil.”

  ’ “You could have had everything with me,” Daphne shouted back at him and she must have stepped forward because suddenly I could see her clearly. She was holding the gun with both hands, pointing it right at Jin. Her face was in shadow, but by the shake in her voice and the wavering of the gun, I could tell she was cracking. “Look at me! I’m beautiful, rich and desirable. Sylvia’s a pathetic mess unless you’re beside her to hold her up. How can she compare to me?”

  ‘ “There is no comparison,” Jin said. I couldn’t believe he could sound so calm, tied up with the gun waving in front of him. “She’s gentle, kind, and loving and she’s the only woman I’ve ever loved. All the happiest moments in my life have been spent with her and my daughter. She would have loved me even if I’d stayed a waiter for my entire life. You wouldn’t have looked at me twice unless I had a full wallet.”

  ‘ “Well, much good she did you,” Daphne screamed out like a hell cat. “How will she keep herself and that kid in that fine house by the sea when you’re gone? She’ll crumble, you poor fool, when she finds there’s no money left. And there won’t be any. I’ve seen to that.”

  ‘I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing,’ Dave said, turning to look at Charlie. ‘Me stomach was in knots. I knew Daphne had set him up and she was going to shoot him. Yet Jin just looked up at her as if he pitied her.’

  ‘ “What made you so vicious, Daphne?” Jin asked then, like he really hoped she’d tell him. “Sylvia was your friend, the only real one you’ve ever had in your entire life. She loved you like a sister.”

  ‘ “I hate her because she got you,” she roared at him. “And I hate you for still loving her even though she’s pathetic.”

  ‘Jin just shook his head sadly as she raised the gun again. “Just tell me before you shoot me,” he said, “will killing me make you happier? Have you finally got all you wanted?”

  ’I waited for her answer, but the gun rang out, and I pressed myself closer to the hole in the floorboards to see more clearly, hoping it was just a warning shot to make him beg. But I could see she’d already done for him. Jin was slumped over to one side, his white shirt already turning bright red. She shot again, and again. But I couldn’t look any more. I was struggling not to be sick. The smell of cordite was thick and strong, the smoke was coming up through the cracks in the floor.

  ‘I heard the twins shouting at one another, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying over thunderclaps. Lightning lit up the loft, and I was terrified they would come up and get me next. I knew I couldn’t be brave like Jin was. I was crying like a baby for his mother.’

  Charlie was crying too. She moved from the perch on the arm of Dave’s chair and knelt in front of him, sliding her arms round the man’s waist, and leaned her head against his chest.

  ‘I’m sorry, love,’ he said in a whisper a little later. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have told you the last bit?’

  Charlie lifted her head and found he had tears rolling down his cheeks. ‘I’m glad you did,’ she whispered back. ‘It was terrible, but I needed to hear it.’

  She made him more tea and helped him take his medicine. His pale face had a grey tinge now and she said she ought to call his doctor.

  ‘No,’ he said, taking her hand as she knelt by his chair. ‘I’ll be fine in a minute. Just let me have a couple of minutes to pull myself together.’

  He dropped off to sleep in his chair. Charlie sat watching him, her heart filling up with sympathy for him because he was so sick and alone. It occurred to her that had her father ever brought her to this flat to meet Dave, she would have been horrified that he mixed with such men. She’d been a heartless little snob then, valuing people only by how well they spoke and their material success. Judging by what Jin had divulged to Dave, this man had been of more importance to him than any of those so-called friends back in Dartmouth. She just wished her father had realized that for her to become a well-rounded human being like himself, she too needed to meet people from all walks of life.

  As Dave continued to sleep she considered quietly letting herself out and going home, but she couldn’t bring herself to. Instead, she found a duster and quietly went around the room using it. She looked at the photographs and saw his daughter Wendy in every stage of her development from a small baby to a glowing bride on her father’s arm. He had been a big, rugged man with thick fair hair and a wide, proud smile, then, and as she looked back to the sick ghost of the man in the chair, her heart filled with compassion for him. Maybe he had been a bit of a rogue, but he had been a good father, and friend, he deserved something a great deal better than a slow, painful death alone.

  By the time Dave woke again in the late afternoon, Charlie had stripped his bed and remade it with clean sheets, cleaned the bathroom, and then went on to iron a pile of shirts she found in the bedroom. She’d also found out a great deal more about the man’s character.

  He was domesticated, or he had been until illness had recently halted it. He had a modern automatic washing machine, the airing cupboard was full of clean linen and soft, fluffy towels, even the equipment in the kitchen bore out that he had once been in the habit of cooking proper meals. But it was his daughter’s old bedroom that affected her the most, for his love for her shone there. It was a pretty blue and white room, with a flounce round the dressing table, a Degas print of ballerinas on the wall, a few old dolls, all dressed properly, sitting on a shelf alongside some well-thumbed Enid Blyton books. Charlie guessed there had once been a cot there too, perhaps later replaced by another single bed for her little boy. Wendy must have taken away most of her possessions, but enough was left behind to see Dave liked to keep her here in his mind, the room ready for her.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Charlie asked as Dave stirred and rubbed his eyes. ‘Can I make you something to eat?’

  He seemed a bit confused for a moment. He frowned at the newly ironed shirts on a clothes-horse by the fire and looked at his watch. ‘You’re still here?’

  ‘I’m not that easy to get rid of,’ she said with a smile. ‘Even Daphne Dexter couldn’t manage that! Now, what about fo
od?’

  Later, after a cheese omelette and chips Charlie rustled up for them both, Dave seemed much better. ‘You’re so very like Jin,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Not just in looks, but that calm, inscrutable quality he had too. That’s good, Charlie, if you ever go into business you’ll be every bit as smart as he was.’

  She told him her idea of maybe going into antiques and he smiled. ‘You’ll be a real whiz at it, I know you will. So don’t let anyone put you off.’

  They talked about a great many things, of Charlie’s childhood in Dartmouth, of how she managed after Sylvia died and of Andrew. Dave told her about Wendy and her husband Martin and showed her photographs of their home in Sydney. ‘I went out there at Christmas,’ he said, his face glowing as he described her house. ‘Martin loves Grant as if he were his own kid, and they’re hoping to have a little sister for him too some day.’

  ‘Do they know how ill you are?’ Charlie asked.

  He shook his head. ‘If I was to tell them they’d come home. I don’t want that. I’d rather they remembered me as I was.’

  ‘You must write and explain that then,’ she said, not liking to use the phrase ‘before it’s too late’. ‘If you don’t, she’ll be riddled with guilt if anything happens to you. She might not have someone to go and see, like I found you, to tell her about you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want her talking to someone who told her such nasty things as I’ve had to tell you,’ he said with a grimace.

  ‘It might have been nasty, but I’m still glad I know about it,’ she said. ‘But getting back to that nastiness, can you just tell me the last part? Especially what happened to you.’

  ‘They left me up there,’ he said. ‘I was convinced they were going to come for me and shoot me at any minute. What with that, and the thunder and lightning, I was scared witless. Through the crack in the floor I watched the twins bundle Jin up in a tarpaulin. I heard them open the back door out on to the river, we had a rowing boat tied up out there, and they heaved him into it at high tide. I managed to wriggle over to the window and watched them. They rowed out and dumped him. I was flabbergasted at that. The river police have a station just four or five hundred yards away, but I suppose they took the risk because it was such a stormy night, and no one was likely to be out watching. When they got back, they hosed down the blood as cool as cucumbers.’

  A shiver went down Charlie’s spine. If they were that calm they’d probably disposed of others before who got in their way. ‘Then what?’

  ‘They came for me,’ he said. ‘It was first light by then. Daphne just stood there looking down at me for some time before she even spoke. I nearly shit meself! Her brothers were covered in blood, but she looked like a bloody beauty queen, even after what she’d done. Not a speck of blood on her dress, not a hair out of place. Then she gave me her ultimatum. Forget what I’d seen, or Wendy would get it. I was to go downstairs, and open up the warehouse and start unloading as if I’d just got back with the lorry. She said she would give me further orders in a day or two. I had no choice but to agree.’

  ‘Of course you didn’t,’ she reassured him; faced with that predicament she thought she’d have chosen the same path. ‘But what happened about Jin’s shipment of goods?’

  ‘She must have got that picked up,’ he said. ‘As I hadn’t spoken to Jin I didn’t know where it was arriving or when. I reckon he must have had all the documents in his briefcase that night. Maybe that’s what he came there for, to tell me about it, or they might have picked him up somewhere else. I never found that out. I never saw his car either, so they must’ve got that too and got rid of it. So you see no one but me ever knew Jin had come back, everyone thought he was still in Holland. My business plummeted then without the work I used to get from Jin. In a few months I was in trouble. Then I got an offer for the lease of the warehouse. I knew she was behind it, but I had no choice but to let it go. I couldn’t bear to be in it anyway, not after what I’d seen happen there.’

  ‘So she ruined you too then?’ Charlie sighed. She felt so much for him, it must have been a living hell.

  ‘Not quite, I still had me trucks. I got a bit of work with them and I still had a few thousand I’d got for the lease. But then I blew most of that on Wendy’s wedding which was in the spring of ’71. You can’t imagine how glad I was when she told me they were going to emigrate. I wouldn’t have put it past Daphne to do something to Wendy just to make sure I still kept me mouth shut. I started to feel ill soon after the wedding. I sold off the trucks, and packed it all in, then I went out to see Wendy before I got too bad. Please God she’ll never see me like I am now.’

  Charlie privately thought she ought to see him, but she kept that to herself.

  ‘Did the police ever come to see you about Jin?’ she asked instead.

  ‘Just once,’ he said. ‘It was just after your mum was hurt. I felt so sick about that, love. I never met her, but after knowing your dad stuck by her, right to the death, I knew she had to be pretty special. But what could I do?’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I just told them what I’d been instructed to say, which was the same all the blokes who worked here said too, that the last time I saw him was when he was off to Holland.’

  ‘Did anyone tell them Jin was expecting a shipment of goods?’ she asked. ‘It seems funny to me they never picked up on that.’ She mentioned that Hughes had found the stuff now.

  ‘I never said anything. The other blokes at the warehouse were just young lads who didn’t know about anything until the day it arrived. The Fuzz went through the place, but there was nothing there to see, Jin never left papers, not unless it was delivery notes for us. But that stuff was valuable, Charlie, really good stuff, jade mostly and carpets. Your dad was the main man dealing in it, so they wouldn’t have been able to sell it on easily without attracting attention. But I don’t reckon nicking his gear was her real purpose, ruining him was. If you hadn’t stuck your oar in, I expect she’d have sat on it for years, gloating over it.’

  ‘It was a fiendish plot,’ Charlie sighed. ‘It’s hard to believe anyone could be so ruthless.’

  ‘The only thing which keeps me going is the thought she’ll die in prison,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘She’ll fight everyone, she’ll get striped and worse. Soon she’ll go right off her rocker.’

  Charlie knew she must go now. It was nearly nine at night and she wanted to get back before Rita. She gave Dave her telephone number. ‘If you need anything, a meal cooked for you, the flat cleaned or just a chat, call me,’ she said. ‘I can’t thank you enough for all you’ve told me.’

  ‘Let’s just hope I make it to the trial,’ he said with a feeble grin. ‘The police have got my sworn testimony, but I want to be there to see that woman go down. I just wish they hadn’t abolished hanging.’

  ‘Me too,’ Charlie agreed. ‘I’d gladly put the noose around her neck myself.’

  She leaned over him to kiss him, and he caught her face in his two big hands and held it for a moment looking at her. ‘You’re your father’s daughter all right,’ he said. ‘He put me on the straight road, away from crime. Whatever comes up in that trial, you just hold your head up, love. He were a good man. One of the best. Keep that in your head, and follow the instinct he’s given you. He’ll be watching over you.’

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The Dexters’ trial began at the Old Bailey on 2 April 1973. Charlie’s nineteenth birthday had passed back in February, Andrew’s twenty-first just a week ago, but they hadn’t celebrated either occasion. They were waiting for the outcome of the trial.

  It had been six long, tense months, starting with Jin’s funeral down in Dartmouth. Charlie had imagined that burying her father alongside her mother in the town he had loved would ease the pain of losing him, and finalize everything, but instead it released a new deluge of grief for both her parents.

  Ivor comforted her by saying she’d bottled up her real feelings about them from the time when Sylvia was attacked and Jin didn’t return home: he
said it was good that she was allowing all that hurt and sorrow to come to the surface at last. Charlie thought he was probably right, but that cold, grey October day of the funeral was the start of a long, bleak winter. She coped with her sorrow by working long hours at Haagman’s and two nights a week at a business studies class. Keeping busy and avoiding looking back was Rita’s way of getting through bad times. Charlie found it worked for her too.

  Andrew had moved into the house in Sinclair Grove in Brent with his three friends, but Charlie had remained living with Rita. This was partly to appease Mr and Mrs Blake, who held the belief that unmarried couples sharing a house were ‘living in sin’, partly so that Andrew would have fewer distractions from his studies, but mostly for Rita’s sake. Back in November she had told her parents the full story about her part in the impending trial, and urged them to tell Paul she was his real mother. As she had half expected they showed no sympathy or understanding, but flew into a rage and demanded she get out of their house and never come back. Since then Rita had written them many pleading letters, but they returned them all unopened. Charlie felt compelled to stay with her then – Rita had been there for her when she needed support and Charlie wanted to help her now.

  She had been very touched when a letter arrived at Haagman’s from Meg, Beth and Anne. They had read about her father’s body being found and felt they had to write and offer their condolences. There was a paragraph from each of them – Anne and Beth urged her to get in touch, maybe meet up for a drink sometime; Meg said simply that she was very sorry for all the hurt she’d caused her; that she knew Charlie wouldn’t ever want to see her again, but just the same she wanted her to know how much she felt for her about her father.