Charlie by Lesley Pearse
He sighed deeply, and ran his hand over his bald head. ‘Okay, love,’ he said. ‘You’ve got a right to know, but you’ll have to excuse me if I seem a bit slow. It’s the medicine I’m taking.’ He paused as if trying to think where to start. ‘I did know your dad well. We weren’t mates exactly, but we liked and respected each other. Jin was never a rogue, not like I was, but he was a dark horse, not a man you’d take for a ride, you know what I mean?’
Charlie nodded. If the man had claimed they were real friends she wouldn’t have believed him. Jin had never been the chummy sort, not with anyone. ‘So when did you meet?’
‘Must have been sixteen years since,’ he said thoughtfully. ’I went in his club a few times and we got chatting about Hong Kong. See, I’d been there for two years when I was in the navy. Anyway, I got in a bit of bother up in the West End one night, there was a crowd of us blokes, all tanked up, someone got knifed and the filth nicked me for it and banged me up. Next thing I know, they say I can go. Seems Jin had seen what had happened, knew they’d got the wrong man and he come down to the nick and said so. Well, I owed him one then, didn’t I? I fully expected him to call in his card before long, that’s the way most of those blokes work it. But he never did.
‘A couple of years passed. I went up to his club one night and found he’d gone, packed up and left the place to Miss Dexter. I asked around, heard a few tales about her blackmailing him and the like, and because I knew all the Dexters from way back, and knew what they were, I kind of wanted to help him, know what I mean?’
Charlie was already warming to this odd-looking man. On closer inspection she’d become aware that once he must have been quite a giant, but his illness was slowly eating away at him. She could see folds of loose skin on his neck and hands. It saddened her.
‘Well, to cut a long story short,’ he went on. ‘I asked around and heard Jin had gone into the import business with foreign goods. I got a whisper he used a shipping company down in Tilbury and I left a message for him there to say I might be able to help him out sometimes. We got together. I had a couple of trucks in them days and an old warehouse down at Wapping. We started to do business. He bought the stuff out East, got it shipped back here, then I stored it for him and delivered it to his buyers.
‘Everything was hunky-dory then. Jin was pleased because he could concentrate on the buying and selling. I was more than happy to do the donkey work because it was regular and clean. The shipments were getting bigger and bigger, and we were both making a lot of money. But unknown to me, and maybe yer dad too, at that time, the f-ing Dexters were out to get him.’
‘Did you know that Dad had an affair with Daphne Dexter, Mr Kent?’ Charlie interrupted.
‘The name’s Dave, love,’ he said. ‘Yeah, I knew about the affair, leastways I heard it on the grapevine. But I didn’t really believe it until he told me himself some years later. It must have been early in ’65, because I remember we were hanging around waiting for a delayed shipment of stuff from Hong Kong and it was brass-monkey weather. Jin had booked into a flash hotel because you and yer mum were coming up to London to join him. He’d bought tickets for a pantomime and all sorts. See, he weren’t one for staying in posh places, not on his own. Usually he got a room in a local guest-house. Anyway, he come in this particular morning with a face on him. I asked what was wrong, as you do, and he said he’d had a bit of bother the night before.’
‘I think I remember that night,’ Charlie interrupted again, remembering how her father had rushed out of the hotel leaving her mother crying. ‘He had a phone call from someone. I’ve worked out since it must have been Daphne.’
Dave looked at her sharply, perhaps surprised she’d dug that deeply. ‘Your dad never talked about himself, or his problems, he were a very private man, but he was really rattled that day, and I guess he had to confide in someone. He said Daphne had insisted on seeing him, otherwise she was going to cause a scene in front of you and yer mum. We had a bit of a heart-to-heart. He told me how it all came about.’
‘Tell me what he said, Mr Kent.’ Charlie was on the edge of her seat now. She felt she was finally going to get the truth.
‘He said it was the thing he most regretted in his life. How it came about was that he’d left Daphne to run his club a great deal after you were born. Partly because he wanted to be with you and yer mum, but also because yer mum weren’t too well. Daphne increased his profits quite a bit and he was grateful. Anyway, he took her out one night for dinner as a kind of thank-you, and one thing led to another.’ He broke off, Charlie could see he was embarrassed.
‘I can understand that,’ Charlie said, wishing to put him at ease again. ‘She’s still a good-looking woman, she must have been gorgeous when she was younger.’
Dave half smiled in agreement. ‘She put me in mind of Elizabeth Taylor, just one look at her was enough to make any man lust after her. But for all her beauty, you could sense she was an evil bitch. I’d met her first when she was about sixteen, she were as hard as nails even then, ready to do anything to make a few bob. One of her tricks was to lure men into back alleys where her brothers were waiting to rob them. That’s why it was so surprising she was capable of falling in love.’
‘She loved Dad?’ Charlie gasped.
Dave gave a rueful weak grin. ‘Yeah, she did. Mind you, from what yer dad said, Daphne’s idea of love weren’t quite like other people’s. Once she got her claws into poor Jin she weren’t going to let him go, she wanted to possess and control him, for him to leave Sylvia and marry her.’
‘Did he love her?’ Charlie asked. ‘Don’t give me any bullshit, Dave. I need to know the whole truth.’
Dave shook his head. ‘No, he never did, not even briefly from what he told me. He might have liked her, admired her strength and stuff, but he was sucked into a situation he couldn’t get out of. As I see it, he soon found out how dangerous and jealous the woman was, her brothers were loonies. She had only to snap her fingers and they’d be off to hurt Sylvia, burn Jin’s club down, or anything. So he just tried to keep the peace.’
Charlie sighed in understanding. She’d already seen plenty of evidence of what the woman was capable of when she was crossed.
‘So in the end, Jin did a deal with her. He gave her the Lotus Club. It were a right little gold-mine, and on the strength of that she borrowed enough money to buy the other two clubs off him too. He went off to Devon. He thought that would be the end of it.’
‘But it wasn’t?’ Charlie said.
Dave shook his big bald head. ‘No, it weren’t. He had a few years of peace, got his show on the road, and forgot her. But she must’ve been keeping tabs on him all along, and I suppose when she got the wire he was making big money again, she decided that by fair means or foul she was going to get him back in her clutches. That night you remember was the time she surfaced again. She blackmailed him into meeting her by saying she was going to spill the beans to Sylvia.’
‘Poor Dad,’ Charlie sighed. ‘Why didn’t he just tell Mum outright? Mum had always known anyway.’
‘Your dad was no coward, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ Dave said quickly. ‘If he handled things badly that night it was only to spare Sylvia and you public humiliation. When he went out to meet Daphne later it was purely to keep her well away from the hotel, and to tell her to get lost, once and for all. And that’s exactly what he did. But Daphne ain’t human, she had not only made up her mind that Jin would leave Sylvia and marry her, but she had big plans to run drugs through his import business. He was furious with her about the drugs, and warned her that if she found some other patsy to do it with, he’d grass her up. Jin despised anyone who dealt in drugs more than anything. He’d seen what opium does to people back in China.’
‘But he always seemed quite cool about drugs to me,’ Charlie said. She didn’t want this man to make out her dad was a saint just for her benefit.
‘He was a cool man in every respect,’ Dave said sternly. ‘I expect he took that
Charlie smiled. She was so glad she’d come now. She suggested she made them both some tea and Dave smiled back at her with real warmth.
‘You’re a lovely girl,’ he said. ‘Your dad always said you were. Only time I ever heard him boast was about you. He’d be right proud of you now.’
The cleanliness in Dave’s tiny kitchen left a lot to be desired. While Charlie waited for the kettle to boil she washed up a few plates and wiped over the surfaces. She wondered what was the matter with him, and if he ever had any help from anyone.
Dave heard the noises coming from the kitchen and guessed what she was doing. It touched him more than anything had in a long time, and all at once he knew for certain he’d done the right thing in grassing up the Dexters, even if it was against everything he’d been brought up to believe in.
He looked around his living room and saw what little he had for a lifetime of ducking and diving. Even during his time in the navy he’d been a thief and a con-man. When he came out he’d progressed to burglary, extortion, ringing motors and just about any crime that didn’t involve violence. Sometimes he thought now that was his only saving grace, at least he could go to his death knowing he’d never intentionally hurt anyone.
It had been Jin who straightened him out and showed him a way to make an honest living. Those years they’d done business together had been some of the happiest times he’d known. Ten quid earned straight was better than a bent hundred, he found. He could remember golden days down in the warehouse at Wapping, sitting with a bottle of beer and his sandwiches looking at the sun on the river, content in knowing that even if the police were to storm in and check the contents of the hundreds of packing cases, they’d find nothing but exotic artefacts, all bought legitimately and paid for.
Jin taught him to appreciate the beauty of Chinese lacquerwork, jade and the patience and artistry those Oriental rugs had been woven with. Dave didn’t even mind that those items would end up in the kind of snooty people’s houses he’d once envied and earmarked to rob. Or that for the first time in his life he had to work hard for twelve hours a day. He had peace of mind and self-respect.
Dave winced with the pain in his stomach, the cancer was eating away at him, but it was too early yet for his next dose of medicine. Besides, it made him too woozy and he had a great deal more yet to tell the girl.
Charlie came back from the kitchen with two mugs of tea. She could see Dave was in pain and she asked if she could get him anything.
‘No, love,’ he said. ‘I’m fine. We’d better get back to business.’
‘Can I just ask what Daphne had over you that you couldn’t speak out before?’ she asked.
‘My daughter, love,’ he said with a deep sigh. ‘See, me wife left me, years ago. I brought Wendy up on me own since she was five. The apple of me eye as they say. She’d got a little one too, got herself in trouble when she was sixteen. My grandson Grant is seven now, and they’re both safely in Australia with Wendy’s new husband. But back at the time Jin was killed, they were still living here with me. Daphne put me straight. One word from me and Wendy would cop it. What could I do? I knew she’d get someone to do it, even if she was in a prison cell herself. I couldn’t take the risk, not with my own kid.’
‘I think the Dexter twins must have threatened my mother with something like that too, because she wouldn’t tell the police anything after they crushed her knees,’ Charlie said.
‘I think with hindsight that she’d been their victim for a very long time before that,’ he said thoughtfully. ’You see, that night we were speaking of earlier, Daphne was savage. She warned Jin that if he didn’t play ball she’d make him sorry in more ways than one. I’m a good bit older than the Dexters but I come from the same manor, and I’d watched them all grow up. I knew they wasn’t the type for loose talk, especially her, she got where she is by pulling evil strokes.
‘A couple of years before Jin died, he told me that Sylvia was acting strange. She didn’t like him going away, and when he had to, she hardly went out of the house. He said she wouldn’t tell him what was wrong, and he thought she was suffering from depression. I reckon one of them Dexters was dripping poison in yer poor mum’s ear all along, hoping to unhinge her. Sylvia and Daphne had been good mates once, so she’d have known her weak points. You can bet the evil cow used them.’
Charlie had a sudden mental picture of her mother lying in bed at the nursing home, telling her about those letters she steamed open and the phone calls for Jin. She told Dave about it, and how in that period before her father went away for good, she took the brunt of her mother’s misery.
‘So that bitch was chipping away at her all the time, knowing full well Sylvia was too weak and too afraid of losing Jin to speak out,’ Charlie said angrily. ‘No wonder she gave up entirely once Dad was gone! She’d got nothing left to hang on to.’
‘Only you,’ he said sadly. ‘And I know just how that bloody well feels. See, I kinda took it out on my Wendy, after Jin was killed. I was so scared for her I didn’t want her out of my sight, but when she was with me, I was brooding and uptight about everything. She used to ask me all the time what was wrong, what had she done? But I couldn’t tell her anything. I reckon that’s what started my cancer. See, that’s what’s wrong with me now, Charlie. I used to be seventeen stone of pure muscle. Look at me now! Your body can’t fight back when your mind is sick.’
Suddenly everything about her mother’s moods fell into place for Charlie and she was sickened to think that she’d put it all down to selfishness. Because of those Dexters and their terrible threats, Dave had succumbed to cancer, her mother to mental illness. She didn’t know which was worse.
‘I’m so sorry, Dave,’ she said, reaching out and touching his arm tentatively. ‘I think if Dad had known what would happen to you and Sylvia because of him, he would have done what she wanted.’
‘But he didn’t know,’ Dave shook his head. ‘That’s the whole point, Charlie. He was innocently going about his business, totally unaware Daphne was still on his case.
‘Jin told me he’d done a huge deal when he came back from Hong Kong in the autumn of 1969,’ he went on. ‘He confided in me that he’d have to pull out all the stops to raise the money for it. He said if everything went to plan he was going to sell up in Dartmouth, and take you and yer mum out to South Africa to live. He wanted a new start for all of you.
‘As God is my witness, I never said a word to anyone, but I reckon one of the three young lads in the warehouse must have been a Dexter plant and he heard, and passed it on to them. It had to be something like that because the way it all came about Daphne must have had inside information to plot Jin’s downfall to the last detail.
‘Anyway, towards the middle of May the following year, Jin was getting very edgy. He had sent off the dosh for these goods, but the shipment was delayed en route, and he was getting frantic for cash. He went over to Holland to do some other small deal which would give him a quick turn-around.’
‘That’s where he was when he last phoned us at home,’ Charlie said.
‘Right,’ Dave said. ‘Well, I didn’t speak to him, or see him from the time he left for Holland until the night he was killed. Like I said, I had a couple of lorries, and I did work for people other than him too. I was coming back from Leeds on June the 19th and I broke down on the way – by the time I got back to London it was two in the morning, but I had to go and unload and lock the stuff up in the Wapping warehouse because someone would have thieved it otherwise. I let myself in with me key and found the Dexters were all in there with Jin.’
Dave suddenly slumped back in his armchair and closed his eyes. ‘Are you all right?’ Charlie asked, moving out of her chair to go over to him. She sat on the arm of the chair and put her hand on his forehea
He didn’t answer, but took her hand in his and pressed it to his lips for a moment. ‘So help me, sweetheart. If there was anything I could have done to save Jin, I would’ve done it, but I was trapped too,’ he said in a hoarse whisper.
To Charlie’s surprise he began to speak as if he was mentally reliving the events of that night. ‘It had been stifling hot all day. As I drove through the city, it suddenly started to rain real heavy, with thunder and lightning. I left the lorry a bit further up the road from the warehouse, and ran like the clappers through the rain to get the doors open, so I could then back up to the unloading bay and get the stuff out. The main doors were locked from the inside, so I had to go in the small door on the side, then down the dark passageway which led to another door in the warehouse.
‘I wasn’t alarmed when I saw a chink of light shining around this second door, all of us was always forgetting to turn it off when we locked up at night. I just shut the door to the street behind me and went on down the passageway.
’I was just fishing around in the darkness for the right key when I heard footsteps. Suddenly the door was flung open and I found myself face to face with Baz Dexter.
‘ “What the fuck are you doing here?” I said, mad as hell. He had no business there at any time and I hated the geezer anyway. But before I could say anything more, he kneed me in the groin.
’I doubled up with pain, and before I could shout or even blink, the bastard’s brother Mike came through the door too and the pair of them forced me back against the passageway wall. I’m pretty handy with me fists, but these two had me too tight to fight them, and I was winded. Then all of a sudden bloody Daphne appeared in the doorway, and she had a gun in her bleedin’ hands.
‘My first thought was that they was after the stuff in me truck, and under the circumstances, with a gun pointed at me, they was welcome to it. It were only a sodding load of spices anyway. I even tried to make a bit of a joke about it, but all of a sudden I cottoned on that they was up to something else, and I’d interrupted them. I tried to say I’d go and make out I’d never seen them there, but they was having none of that. Next thing I know they’re hauling me up the stairs to the floor above and slung me down on the floor.