A Lesser Evil

  ‘The man you work for is an animal that screws children and then kills them,’ she said. ‘If you do his dirty work for him, then you’re as bad as he is.’

  ‘You’re round the bend,’ Del exclaimed. He looked at Martin. ‘She tell you that too?’

  Martin nodded grimly, moving from foot to foot as if very uncomfortable.

  ‘The boss said she were a lying bitch.’ Del gave a humourless laugh. ‘He could have told us she were mad as well!’

  ‘I’m not mad, or a liar,’ Fifi said evenly. ‘I’m sane enough to see you two are being made a right pair of patsies. Can’t you read? Angela Muckle’s murder was in all the papers. I’m a witness because I found her. But don’t take my word for it, check it out.’

  ‘Listen, darlin’,’ Del said contemptuously, moving nearer to the bars. ‘Shut yer gob if you know what’s good for you.’

  It was impossible to tell whether he knew the truth or not, as his face gave nothing away. But Fifi could see by his gorilla-like stance that he wanted to hit her; his hands were clenching into fists, and she was glad the cage bars were between them.

  ‘Okay, but don’t say you weren’t warned,’ she shrugged. ‘I just hope you’re being well paid, because you’ll have to leave the country if you kill us. You see, we aren’t like John Bolton, a villain no one cares about. You’ll have every policeman in England on your tail, and you won’t have any mates left once they find out you keep company with nonces.’

  Del turned away, catching Martin by the arm. ‘That’s it, we’re off,’ he said. ‘Fuckin’ mad bitch.’

  As they reached the barn door, Martin looked back over his shoulder. She couldn’t see his face clearly enough to know whether she’d worried him or not, but the slight hesitation suggested she had.

  The light went off, the door shut with a dull metallic thud, and she could hear the chain which secured it being clanked as they put the padlock on. Their car headlights beamed through the cracks around the door for a few seconds, then Fifi heard it roar away.

  Her bravado vanished as soon as she was enveloped in darkness again. She sat down and shuffled on her bottom, her hands groping out in front of her for Yvette, and tears ran down her cheeks unchecked.

  Dan had pointed out men like Del and Martin in the Rifleman, jokingly calling them ‘London’s wartime byproducts’. He said that as boys of nine or ten during the war, they often weren’t evacuated, and with absent fathers and often uncaring mothers they rarely went to school, spending their time marauding around London in gangs instead. These gangs became a substitute for a family as they looted bombed shops and houses or broke into homes while the owners were in the shelters. Their only code was ‘Never grass, and stand by your mates’.

  A couple of years of National Service honed their bullyboy tendencies still further. On their demob, with no education or qualifications, they chose a criminal life rather than manual labour. As Dan had pointed out, the fifties were a boom time for villains. The ones with sharp minds went into acquiring land and building shoddy new estates. Others opened clubs and pubs, or supplied hard-to-get luxuries. But for every entrepreneur, dozens of foot soldiers were needed to put the frighteners on, supply muscle and collect debts. The men at the top didn’t dirty their hands.

  Martin and Del were clearly two of those foot soldiers, and as such Fifi couldn’t hold out much hope that Martin would help her. When it came to a showdown, men like him followed the pack.

  As Fifi’s eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, she finally saw the small mound that was Yvette and crawled over to her.

  ‘Yvette!’ she called out as she shook her, but the only sound in response was a little snore. Fifi realized she must get her on to the mattress so they could share the one blanket, for Yvette’s skin felt cold and by morning she would be like a block of ice.

  She found the mattress, hauled it over and rolled Yvette on to it. Then, lying down beside her, she pulled the blanket over them both.

  ‘Fifi! Ees it really you?’

  Fifi half opened her eyes at the familiar French accent. ‘Yes, it’s me, but I wish it wasn’t,’ she said sleepily.

  She saw it was dawn, a weak grey light coming through the narrow windows at the top of the barn.

  ‘But ’ow did we get here together?’ Yvette asked. ‘Did you rescue me from ze men? Why are we in a cage?’

  Fifi might only have been here less than twenty-four hours, but it seemed like an eternity, and Yvette’s accent, which Dan loved to mimic, was such a strong reminder of him and home. ‘Can’t we sleep a little longer?’ she asked. ‘Then we talk.’

  ‘Non, we must talk now,’ Yvette said. ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘Well, get back in here with me, it’s freezing,’ Fifi said.

  Once Yvette was under the blanket with her again, cuddled up tightly to keep warm, Fifi explained how she got here, and how Yvette was brought later in the evening.

  ‘What day is it?’ Yvette asked.

  ‘Wednesday,’ Fifi replied. ‘Now, tell me how they got you.’

  ‘The man came on Monday evening,’ Yvette said, her dark eyes very frightened. ‘I was in the hall going to my kitchen when ze knock came on ze front door. If I had been sewing I would have looked out ze window first. But I opened ze door, and the man said he was a policeman and he wanted to take me to the police station. I say I have to get my bag and my coat first. I believe him; he looked like a policeman, wizout the uniform.’

  She went on to say it was only as she got outside in the dark that she became nervous, for the car wasn’t a police one. But the man caught hold of her hand and wouldn’t let her go. When she struggled he put his arms around her and pushed her into the back of the car, then drove off.

  ‘It was a long way,’ she said. ‘I think we go south because we didn’t go over ze Thames. They take me to a house; it was small and very dirty. I cry and scream and the man hit me.’

  ‘What did the man look like?’ Fifi asked.

  ‘He was big, more than six feet, with dark hair; ze other man was smaller, he ’ave a funny mouth.’ She held up the side of her lip to show her teeth. ‘Like this,’ she said.

  ‘They weren’t the men who brought you here,’ Fifi said thoughtfully. ‘So did you hear them talking? Did they say why they wanted you?’

  ‘They think I ’ave gone to the police and they ask what I tell them,’ she said. ‘I keep saying I never go to police, only answered questions when Angela die. But they do not believe me. All night they keep on. I ’ave to sit on a hard chair. I want to go to sleep, but they don’t let me. So many questions, all the time.’

  ‘What sort of questions?’

  ‘About what I see. I tell them I was not there the day Angela die. They ask if I know John Bolton. If I talk to him. I say yes I talk to him if I see him in the street, but not about Angela. I talk to nobody about this.’

  ‘Did you know John was found dead in the river?’

  Yvette inhaled sharply, and stiffened beside Fifi. ‘No! This cannot be!’

  ‘He was,’ Fifi said. ‘I was told on Monday when I got home from work. It frightened me because I sensed it had something to do with Angela. You were right in telling me I shouldn’t have gone to the police because I recognized that man in the red Jaguar as having been with John.’

  Yvette didn’t answer, and all at once Fifi understood why she had been captured.

  ‘You had to tell them it was me who went to the police? Didn’t you?’

  ‘Oui,’ Yvette said in a sad little whisper. ‘They say they will cut off my fingers if I don’t tell them. Wizout my fingers I cannot sew. I think you ’ave Dan to look after you, you will be safe.’

  While Fifi still didn’t know how the men discovered that someone in Dale Street had been to the police, they obviously assumed it was Yvette because she lived right next door to the Muckles.

  Fifi couldn’t feel angry that Yvette had told on her. She knew she’d sing like a canary herself if someone was threatening to cut her fingers off
. All she felt was deep, deep sorrow that through her, Yvette would have to be killed too.

  ‘You are angry wiz me,’ Yvette whispered brokenly.

  ‘No I’m not,’ Fifi said, putting her arm around the older woman. ‘It’s you who should be angry with me, you warned me to mind my own business enough times. This is my fault.’

  ‘It will be okay,’ Yvette said, kissing Fifi’s forehead comfortingly. ‘Your Dan, he will get ’elp for us.’

  Fifi had to admit then that Dan had walked out, and that she hadn’t told him about the man in the Jaguar anyway. ‘It might be days before anyone misses us,’ she finished up. She almost added that they might be dead by then, but she managed to stop herself in time.

  ‘We mustn’t panic,’ Fifi said after a couple of minutes’ silence. ‘I haven’t given up on Martin yet. He might help us.’

  The day passed very slowly. The sun came out around eleven in the morning, slanting down through the narrow windows and making them feel warm enough to divide the pork pie in two and eat it. They decided to leave the cake, a large currant bun, until dusk, just in case the men didn’t come back with more food. They dozed on the mattress, Fifi climbed the bars again and again for some exercise, and they talked a little, but although Yvette seemed to appreciate Fifi telling her about her childhood and her friends back in Bristol she was mostly silent, perhaps dwelling on what their end might be.

  As it began to get dark, they tore the bun in half and ate it, then just sat on the mattress watching the patch of sky visible in the window grow gradually darker and darker.

  ‘I was so scared when it got dark yesterday,’ Fifi admitted. ‘I don’t think I could have stood a whole night alone.’

  ‘The dark will not hurt you,’ Yvette said, taking Fifi’s hand in hers and squeezing it. ‘It is people who hurt you.’

  ‘But the mice and rats, I can’t bear the thought of them,’ Fifi admitted.

  ‘They will not come near us,’ Yvette said firmly. ‘We ’ave not left one crumb of food for them. In ze rest of the barn there is bits of wheat, that is all they want. I would rather spend the night with a rat than a man who wishes to do me harm.’

  They waited and waited, but Martin and Del didn’t come and both women’s stomachs were growling with hunger. Eventually they gave up hoping for food and lay down on the mattress. They were cold too. Yvette put her coat over the blanket, but it made little difference.

  Fifi wondered if killing someone by starvation could be classified as murder, or would it be called ‘misadventure’ or some such thing if their captors claimed they’d been unable to get back? How long would it take? Two weeks, three? Or longer still? But she didn’t voice her anxiety as she felt entirely responsible for their plight.

  Fifi had a dream that she was lying on a beach sunbathing. She woke to find it was sunshine on her face, coming from the high window.

  Yvette was standing up stretching; she turned and smiled down at Fifi. ‘It does not seem so bad when the sun shines,’ she said. ‘But I weesh for a cup of coffee.’

  Fifi looked at her watch and saw it was nearly ten. She was astounded she had managed to sleep so long, and remarked on it.

  ‘I think ze body knows when there is nothing to get up for,’ Yvette said. ‘When I first came to England I used to sleep from Saturday right to Monday morning. It was cold; I had little money and no friends then. Sleep was good.’

  Fifi got up and used the bucket while Yvette tactfully turned away.

  ‘Why did you come to England?’ Fifi asked after she’d had a couple of mouthfuls of water. ‘Don’t you have any family in France?’

  ‘My mother died in the war,’ Yvette said. ‘I did not wish to have sad reminders.’

  The crisp way she spoke suggested she did not want to talk about it, so Fifi took her comb from her handbag and began combing her hair.

  ‘You have such pretty hair,’ Yvette said, sitting down on the mattress beside Fifi. ‘I always weesh I was a blonde. When the Germans came to Paris, some mothers bleached their girls’ dark hair.’

  ‘Why?’ Fifi asked.

  ‘To try and pass them for gentile,’ Yvette said with a grimace. ‘It did not work too well, many ended up with orange hair.’

  Fifi was suddenly taken back to an event in her early childhood when she must have been six or so. She woke to hear her mother crying and went downstairs. Her parents were in the kitchen, and her father was holding her mother in his arms while she sobbed.

  ‘You shouldn’t have gone to see it,’ her father was saying. ‘I told you it would be too upsetting.’

  Fifi had always been a great one for lurking in the hallway or outside rooms while grown-ups were talking. Her parents used to get very cross with her about it. But however much they said things like eavesdroppers never hear anything good about themselves, she could never resist it. But that night she ran back to bed, frightened by what she’d seen and heard.

  That evening her mother had gone out to the cinema with her sister. They went out nearly every week together, and always before her mother would be laughing when she came in. Sometimes she’d hear her telling Daddy the whole story of the film.

  The following morning her mother still had red, swollen eyes from crying and Fifi asked her why.

  ‘Because I saw the most dreadful, terrible film,’ she said.

  A trip to the cinema was a huge treat for Fifi. She’d seen Snow White, Dumbo and Bambi, and she couldn’t imagine how a film could be anything but wonderful.

  ‘Was it sad like when Bambi’s mummy died?’ she asked.

  ‘Much, much worse, because that wasn’t real. This was a film about how a bad man killed thousands of mummies, daddies and little children.’ Her mother’s eyes filled up with tears again.

  ‘Why did he kill them?’

  ‘Just because they were Jewish.’

  Fifi had no idea then what Jewish meant and it was years later before she learned about the Holocaust at school. It was only then that she realized her mother was upset that night years earlier because she’d seen the film which was made at the time the British and American troops liberated the concentration camps.

  Fifi became almost morbidly fascinated by the whole subject. She used to go into the library and look for books about it. But whenever she asked about it at home she always got the same response. ‘That was all over years ago. It should be forgotten about now.’

  It had often baffled her why kind, decent people like her parents could brush aside something as terrible as six million people being exterminated. She had wanted to know why no one seemed to be aware it was going on, how they reacted when they first found out, if they wanted to do something to help, or if they were just too stunned. She wanted to know, too, what happened to the surviving Jews and if they could ever forgive or forget.

  She hadn’t thought much about this in the last eight or nine years, but something about the way Yvette had spoken suggested she was Jewish, and that brought back all those questions she’d never had satisfactory answers to.

  Turning to face her friend, she had to ask. ‘Are you Jewish, Yvette?’

  Yvette sighed deeply. ‘Yes, Fifi, I am.’ The way she said it made it quite clear it wasn’t something she intended to discuss further.

  Fifi had to let it go. She finished combing her hair, then offered to do Yvette’s. Fifi had only ever seen her hair scraped back into a tight bun, until yesterday when the pins began to fall out, and it was quite a surprise to see that it was very long and thick, though sprinkled with grey.

  Yvette had lost most of the pins, so Fifi suggested plaiting it, as she had a couple of rubber bands in her handbag. Fifi had always liked doing other women’s hair, and Yvette seemed to relax as it was combed and plaited. They talked about how much they’d like to wash, clean their teeth, and have a cup of tea or coffee.

  ‘You look like a schoolgirl now,’ Fifi laughed when she had finished. She was about to say that Yvette should dye over the grey hair and have it cut into a bob, but
she stopped herself just in time, and found her handbag mirror to show the older woman how she looked.

  Yvette smiled at her reflection. ‘This is how I wore it as a leetle girl,’ she said. ‘Mama would plait it as I ate my breakfast. Before I left for school she would tie ribbons on the end, but every day I lose one.’

  ‘Me too,’ Fifi smiled. ‘My mother used to get really cross. She said once it was a waste of time trying to make me look pretty. I always thought that meant I was really ugly.’

  Yvette patted her cheek. ‘Mothers do not weesh to say their leetle girls are beautiful in case it make them vain.’

  ‘Did your mother tell you that you have lovely eyes?’ Fifi asked. ‘They are like liquid dark chocolate, and your figure is so good too. Why didn’t you ever marry?’

  Yvette smiled. ‘I never knew anyone ask so many questions! To get married it is not enough just to ’ave lovely eyes or a good figure.’

  ‘But you are so nice,’ Fifi said. ‘A bit mysterious perhaps. I would think lots of men would fall for you.’

  Yvette chuckled. ‘So you theenk I am mysterious.’

  Fifi grinned. ‘Yes, but then men are supposed to like that.’

  ‘I do not care what men like,’ Yvette said a little sharply. ‘I would rather be alone for ever than ’ave to live with a man. Look at ’ow these men treat us! No food, only one blanket. Another woman could not do that.’

  The day passed even more slowly than the previous one, and with nothing to do but think how hungry they were, they grew snappy with each other. When Fifi began climbing up the bars for some exercise, Yvette complained. When Yvette rocked herself back and forward as she sat on the mattress, that got on Fifi’s nerves.

  ‘Stop it,’ Fifi shouted. ‘You look like you’re going mad.’

  ‘Stop what?’ Yvette asked.

  ‘Rocking!’

  ‘I do not know what you mean,’ Yvette retorted.

  They ignored each other after that. Yvette lay down, curled up in a foetal position, and Fifi did exercises she remembered from ballet class, pretending to herself that the bars were the barre.