Daily Routine Orders 13
You mustn’t think I’ve been idle, just because Link the Stink continues to evade me. A peek under the famous floorboards is all you’d need to convince you of my continuing determination to rid my country of the riff-raff that’s dragging it down.
My tally of recruits now stands at seven. Seven! Oh, I know I went on a bit when we reached three and three is a significant number, but seven – seven’s what you call a mystical number, the reason being one that need not detain us. All I know is, lots of things go in sevens, like the seven deadly sins and the seventh son of a seventh son, not to mention the days of the week and The Magnificent Seven.
I got a black one, which goes to show there’s no racial discrimination in the Camden Horizontals. It also helps break up the pattern – the deadly pattern I mentioned earlier. You can just imagine it, can’t you – some smart-ass Detective Constable looking for a pattern, saying, all his victims have been white – that could be significant. Well it ain’t, so there! There is no pattern, except that each operation has been a textbook example of brilliance, and they’ll never see that.
They’ve bags of swank, my lads. Shiny boots and nice short hair. And if you think the boots’ll give me away – if you’re thinking the feller I get ’em off must be starting to wonder – forget it. I don’t go to one feller, I go to three. So far. And there’ll be more yet, by golly there will. You don’t catch old Shelter that easily.
So the business continues. Volunteers swell the ranks. And they are volunteers, you know – nobody forces ’em to come. They come for what recruits have always come for – an end to hunger and a roof over their heads, and they get it. None of my lads is hungry, and they’ve got a roof over their heads and a floor as well. I sometimes think I spoil ’em.
Where was I? Oh, yes – spring, and the real world.
It was magic being with Gail. Like I said, I seemed to stop noticing the cold, and tapping became a sort of game for us – a contest to see who could score most. It wasn’t heavy – I don’t mean that. It was a light-hearted game – I never minded when Gail won, which she often did.
Mind you, the situation had its drawbacks. For a start I got jealous of Gail. Possessive, I suppose. I hated letting her out of my sight. She was so good-looking I was terrified some guy’d come along – someone with a job and a car and a place to live, maybe – and snatch her away. Well – it’d be no contest would it? And that was the other drawback. I started wanting work so I could offer her a home. I’d always wanted a job of course, but now it became a longing – almost an obsession. Worst thing was, I knew it was a non-starter – nobody was going to give me a chance the way I looked now – but it didn’t stop me wanting, or trying. I really did try too. I haunted the Job Centre, wrote letters on nicked paper, bought stamps I couldn’t afford – I even had a couple of interviews but I never got a result. They know, you see. If you have to give some job club as a return address, they know you’ve nowhere to live. They know you haven’t worked in a long time – maybe never, and they don’t want to know. They’ve so many applicants to choose from, why should they take on a dosser? I wouldn’t, if I was in their shoes.
It was torture too, because every time I went chasing after a prospect it meant leaving her behind, and all the time I was gone I’d be worrying. Maybe that’s one reason I never got anything – they could tell I hadn’t brought my brain with me. Anyway, April came along and my situation hadn’t changed and Gail was still with me, which astonished me when I allowed myself to think about it. She didn’t seem to mind that I had nothing to offer. I put it down to love.
One Saturday – it was a warm, sunny day – we were sitting on the towpath opposite Pullit, the local nightspot, enjoying the sunshine, when a middle-aged guy came up to us. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘I wonder if you can help me?’ I thought he must be lost or something, but then he said, ‘I’m trying to trace my daughter, and I wondered if you might have seen her. Her name’s Tanya. This is her.’ He held out a snapshot. Gail took it, shook her head and passed it to me. It was Toya. I nodded. ‘I’ve seen her a couple of times.’
‘Where?’ The guy practically jumped down my throat. ‘Where’d you see her? When?’
I nodded towards the Lock. ‘There. The market. Not for a while, though.’
‘Did you talk to her? Did she say where she was living or anything like that?’
I shook my head. ‘She was dossing, I think. I don’t know where she hangs out.’
‘Was she with anyone – an older man, perhaps?’
‘No. Once she was with two young guys, the other time she was alone.’ I looked at him. ‘Why would she be with an older man?’
He shook his head. When he spoke I could tell he was trying to keep from crying. ‘I don’t know. I spoke to a man last night – a man in a watchman’s hut. He told me he might have seen my daughter about a week ago, going into the ground-floor flat of the house he lives in, with the man who has the flat. A man in his forties.’
‘Did he give you the address? Have you tried there?’ I knew his informant must be Captain Hook. He nodded. ‘I went there last night. I rang the bell but there was nobody in.’
‘The guy in the watchman’s hut – does he know this man?’
‘No. He’s not been there long, apparently.’
‘Have you tried the police?’
‘No. I tried them months ago – when Tanya left home. They didn’t want to know. She’s seventeen, you see – free to go where she chooses.’ He stifled a sob. ‘It’s breaking her mother’s heart.’
Poor sods, I thought. They drive their kid out, probably without meaning to, then think tramping round London with a snapshot’ll get her back. It won’t, but I wish someone cared about me like that.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘We’ll look out for your daughter, and if we see her we’ll say we saw you – get her to phone home, okay?’
He was so grateful he practically hugged me. ‘Bless you,’ he says, shoving a fiver in my unresisting hand. ‘Bless you both.’
He shambled off, clutching his snapshot and his useless hope. Gail and I watched him go, each pretending not to notice how close the other was to tears.