Cause And Effect Read online

  Mandy interrupted him, not relishing the view or the smell. ‘Yes, I know, fried mussels and bacon and you sat down with him before the other kids got up, and close your mouth we are not a codfish,’ punched the air and said, ‘Mary Poppins, Yes,’ before she realised it.

  ‘Well done, Amanda,’ the Commander added, blushing, thinking he’d better get this meeting over lest he took some banter home; what would Dorothy think?

  ‘If, Commander, I may be allowed to continue,’ Jack said, none too pleased with the smug look on Mandy’s face as she mouthed, “535 nil.” The Commander nodded to Jack and smiled at Mandy. ‘Commander, will you tell Paolo why Martin and I are here, why you’ve waited through my lunch and not even mentioned I’ve locked my bike next to your car?’

  Mandy stifled a giggle, and an exasperated Commander asked, ‘And why have you been invited to this meeting?’ It was Bad Manners, the wind must have changed, and Jack wet his finger, put it in the air, and gave Mandy a knowing musselly grin.

  ‘Simples,’ Jack said, and Mandy’s audible intake of breath was noticeable, as she thought, in response to her success in Mary Poppins. Jack was about to launch into Alexander the Meerkat; Jack could not get anywhere near that voice.

  Paolo blew, ‘What’s so fucking simples.’ Nope, Mandy thought, Paolo can’t do Alexander either.

  ‘Now, now,’ the Commander said in a platonic tone; wind veering, ‘Jane, stop winding Paolo, I mean Paul, up, and tell us, please.’

  ‘Simples,’ this time it was Alexander, ‘you want me to solve this for you.’ Jack, satisfied with the response, went back to his lunch, and Martin put a paw onto his hand as if to say Atta boy. Paolo fumed, Cyrano smiled inscrutably, and the Commander put a hand on Paolo’s shoulder. Not the kindly gesture of Martin’s paw, it was a firm grip. Mandy inadvertently relaxed, but Jack had not finished. She tensed, starting to feel sick; nerves, or was it the mackerel, mussels, mango, red onion, Martin’s fart, or the acidic aroma of salad cream?

  The Commander commanded, ‘If we can all calm down,’ looking at Paolo, aware everyone else was quite calm. ‘Paolo, what strategy you propose, please,’ Manners stressed the please, a firm intonation that could not be confused, but Paolo would not be Paolo, and Jack would not be Jane, and the Commander would have to be incredibly naive if he thought that would be it.

  Paolo could not resist a dig, ‘Will you be taking notes, Jane? I see you’ve plenty of toilet paper, but no pencil.’

  ‘Are you going to be saying anything relevant?' Jack reacted, and with hardly a pause, 'this is what we’ll do...’

  Paolo banged the table, leapt, and in a whiney schoolboy tone, ‘This is my show, tell him, Commander,’ a stiff arm and index finger pointing at Jack.

  ‘Sit the fuck down, Paul, Paolo, or whatever your bloody name is, and let Jane have his say. He has at least done some solid police work today,’ the Commander asserted, metaphorically blowing smoke from his two-fingered pistol.

  Dumbfounded at the Commander’s reaction, Paolo lowered himself into his chair, hissing indignation as, simultaneously, his ego deflated, a stony look through his joined-up eyebrows. Jack looked equally mystified, and Mandy, sensing a looming disaster, shifted her seat back just a little. Even Martin shrank into his chair, a known cowardy custard dog.

  ‘My guys are already on this,’ Jack opened up, casually.

  ‘They are, why haven’t you briefed me?’ Mandy responded indignantly, straightening in her seat.

  ‘I would have this morning, sweet’art, but you were too busy peeking up me round the houses.’

  Mandy blushed, it was more than a glance up his shorts, and smiling sweetly in a radioactive, syrupy, Southern Belle voice, she replied, ‘Impress us, please.’

  So Jack continued, assuming it was now 535 all, ‘I’ve got Jo-Jums and Nobby following up leads; Spanner’s a go-between the local rogues. I want to open up the back part of the CP room that’s been closed since the bloody cutbacks,’ got himself side-tracked, ‘I never voted for them you know, but I bet half of you did. Well, not smiling now in your feckin’ Big Society Masonic lodges, are you?’

  Mandy liked it when he said “feckin’,” it was something he picked up from his love of Father Ted; Cod Irish he called it, and she smiled.

  ‘Jane, we're aware of your political views, keep to the script, please, and keep the expletives, Irish and English, to a minimum,’ the Commander said.

  ‘Is Paolo taking notes, Sir?’ The suppressed giggles blew, and the atmosphere was disarmed, with the exception of Paolo, who fumed. ‘As I was saying,’ Jack was getting into the swing, swaying his arm and pointing with his spoon that had half a mussel held there only by the viscous strength of the tiniest amount of salad cream. ‘I’m going to open up the old squad room; the Sissies can go in there, they will be in nobody’s way in that part of the house.’ Mandy thought, nice Jack, Lady Catherine de Burgh. ‘I want Frankie drafted in to work with my computer officer, Confucius.’

  Mandy put her hand up and immediately thought, what am I doing. ‘I yield the floor to the pervert in the corner.’

  Not to be diverted, and leaning towards Jack, hands flat on the table, and despite the pong, she asked, ‘When did community policing get a computer officer, and Confucius?’

  Jack sat back and grasped his hands behind his head and applied a smug smile, ‘Superintendent, darlin’, if I’m to run an efficient community policing department, clearly I need a computer expert, Der.’

  Paolo sniggered but kept his counsel. Mandy thought she should probe but was wary, ‘Confucius?’

  Holding his hands up as if to stop a barrage of critical comment, ‘Way Lin, and before you say it, I know we should call her Wailing Wall or the Wall of China, but I settled for Confucius,’ and he nudged Mandy with his elbow, which she returned in good measure along with a frigid stare. Jack laughed nervously; Mandy had some devastating looks. The Commander seemed distracted, looking down his nose trying to remove a part of a mussel from his uniform jacket, indicating Jack should get on with it. Jack did, ‘Frankie, a Met computer whiz, will hook up with Confucius; you and your mob Cyrano can camp in with me, as needs be.’

  Cyrano, with minuscule amounts of body movement, chuckled, demonstrating just how much he was enjoying himself, aware Paolo wanted the incident room to be set up at his nick in Cosham. ‘Okay, Jack,’ Cyrano replied, and pitching in with the fun, ‘you got this, and working it from Kingston is good, near the docks and bandit territory.’

  Jack started to get up. ‘No way I was gonna be cycling up to Cosham,’ and showing his Tupperware box to everyone, ‘probably won’t eat anymore; want some?’ greeted by unified retching, ‘suit yourself. Commander, d’you want to see Nobby?’

  ‘Good idea,’ the Commander answered, rising enthusiastically. ‘Amanda, will you join me, and you chaps,’ pointing around the table, ‘sort out the incident room, toute suite.’

  ‘Ah, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Sir, nicely done,’ Mandy said, and Good Manners bathed in his inadvertent glory.

  Jack buzzed down the stairs and, entering the corridor, noticed a scurry of activity in the CP room. He ducked into the toilet with Martin, leaving the door ajar. As the Commander and Mandy approached, Martin and Jack looped behind them as the commander opened the CP room door and Jo-Jums jumped, 'Boo!'

  Jack bent over in hysterics; toilet paper popped off his knees and blood cascaded down his shins. The Commander bellowed, ‘Fucking kids!’ and stomped off, accidentally treading on Jack’s bad toe causing him to double over again, this time bashing his head on the closing door. ‘Serves you fucking right,’ but the Commander felt a mellow warmth, relieved, because his son David had been in on the act, and he could tell Dorothy their boy has a nickname and is fitting in.

  Nine

  Maternal instincts on red alert, Jo-Jums sprung to Jack’s side, giggling and cooing as she steered him to his chair. ‘DS Wild, I’m not one of your brood!’ Jack retorted and immediately felt a bit Catholic. Jo was a good
woman, loyal colleague and, in his way, he loved her. She’d worked with him in Sissies, and when he was demoted and shifted to Community Policing, she was one of the few who stood by him. In her trademark baggy cardigans, tent dresses, Mumsey stood firm, hands on hips. ‘Sorry, Jo,’ he said.

  Disguising her actions, she kissed him on the forehead, and so all could hear, ‘Feck you, Jane Austin, you’re a bleedin’ wuss.’ Tantrum over, normal relations restored, and grinning, Jo made her way to her seat, and everyone breathed.

  In the meantime, Mandy returned from the Ladies producing a roll of toilet paper and collected the sellotape. Jack hissed as he examined his knees then his toe, laid back, and put his handkerchief to his bleeding head. Peeling a strip of sellotape, Mandy said, ‘You put your head back for a nose bleed, dinlo, and don’t look to me to get the bogeys out of your cut; that hanky is filthy.’

  He bolted upright, ‘You say the nicest things, bacon-bonce.’

  ‘Bacon-bonce?’

  Panicked, and not wanting people to think Oldtimers had set in, ‘Just made it up.’

  Too late, Dolly was in, ‘No you didn’t, we used to say that all the time in the fifties.’

  ‘The 1850s, Dolly?’

  The Dolly and Jack banter would have continued if Mandy had not said, pleasantly, ‘Sorry, Dolly, we've things to sort before we go home tonight.’

  ‘That’s alright, dearie, I was going to clean next door first, least that’s what Jamie said to do. He was in a good mood, d‘you tickle his fancy?’ Dolly remarked as she went off chortling and spraying, Jack thinking his office might be no safer than Chernobyl.

  Mandy thought about the highly polished floor of the CP Room. Jack had apparently been offered a carpet as this voluminous, old and tired room still had the original plastic tiles. He’d refused, and playing the old cockney boy, said he preferred the “Oil clorfe,” or to the posh, linoleum. Dolly loved the floor, polished it regularly to a beautiful shine, and Jack would say, “Look at that, real working class, proud of what she does, happy with her lot but wanting the best for her kids,” and he meant it; Dolly was his girl, and woe betide anyone who upset her.

  Mandy summoned the team to the jumble of tables Jack had dubbed the “chaos table.” Jack decided he needed his deckachairo, offered up a token Cornetto and, complete with fresh toilet paper and sellotape, but still clasping the blood-soaked handkerchief to his forehead, he sat, feet up.

  Wotsermatterwivim, Mandy thought, looking around at the team: Jo-Jums; Nobby; the beautiful Alice Springs; Half-bee who was DC Eric Timpson; Kettle, a tall slender black man, not a huge intellect, posh, deep voice, real name Russell Hobbs; and Wally, a bear of a man whose real name was Ken Burke. ‘Where’s Biscuit?’ she asked. Biscuit was a Detective Sergeant, recently transferred from vice to work with Jack. Biscuit said he liked his nickname, preferred it to ginger nut, which was the unsubtle epithet given him in vice; he had an abundance of curly, ginger hair. His real name, Brian Smith.

  ‘Biscuit’s on something for me, Mands,’ Jack answered, though he did wonder where he was.

  Mandy continued, ‘Jo, where are we, drugs and the gang assaults?’

  The question hung in the stilted atmosphere, Jack looked sheepish, and Mandy thought the delay was because Jo-Jums needed to shuffle her thoughts and reply in her usual succinct manner, but instead, Jo replied, ‘Begging your pardon, Ma’am, and I appreciate having to look up the leg Jane’s shorts can be a mite distracting, and please pardon my French, but what the feck are you talking about?’

  Jack took his legs off the table and wrapped up the ends of his shorts, miffed, ‘That’s not French, it’s Irish,’ he said, ‘and why’s everyone looking up me shorts? You could always look away, Jo.’

  Never one to be bested by Jack, Jo retorted, ‘I was intrigued, you seem to be covered in toilet paper, including a big lump sticking out your arse.’

  Mandy had been around Jack and Jo for many years and would not let this spat distract her; this was either a play on Father Ted or Jo really had no clue as to what was going on. Jack was sweetness and light, having taken his legs off the table, stepped out the deckchair and settled in his wheelie chair, and she knew, this was not Father Ted.

  Jack shaped to speak when there was a faint scratching at the door; Jack ignored it. Mandy thought, did he ignore it or did he not hear? He started to speak, scratching again, ‘Come in,’ he had heard. Nothing, a continued scratching, Martin was alert, ears pricked. ‘Come in, for Christ’s sake,’ a distinct tutting from Dolly next door.

  Mandy admonished him with her eyes and went to the door, shaking her head. Hovering in the doorway was a flat screen atop a box of tricks encircled by a pair of spindly arms. The machinery spoke, ‘Scue me, bu’ I go message you wan’ me.’

  Jack shouted from his chair, ‘Confucius? Come in, sweet’art, and put your stuff over there.’ Jack waved his hands indiscriminately around the room that clearly Confucius could not see as Confucius couldn’t see anything over her burden, but it was clear also Jack had not a clue where Confucius would be working; not his problem.

  ‘Let me help you,’ Mandy offered.

  ‘Oh, fang you, Ma’am.’ Yep, this is Confucius, who put her stuff down in a space along the back wall, and standing beside Jack, she started to talk about getting a ping slip from Hiss Sid and “Not know wot it mean.” Jack had conspiratorially asked Sid to use the pink Post-it so she would say “Ping,” not being the most politically correct man you would ever meet.

  ‘Jane can’t see out of his right eye, love.’ Mandy said.

  ‘Oh, solly about eye, sir, does hurt?’

  ‘Only when I laugh, but it does help me to sense when something is amiss.’

  "Like shagging," a unified chorus from the team.

  Confucius shuffled to Jack’s left side, and he could see Way Lin’s four-foot-nothing, skinny frame, round face with John Lennon bottle glasses and distinctive teeth; well, not four-foot, more like five-foot, but if you could not exaggerate in this life, what is there left to live for, Jack thought, exaggerating to himself.

  ‘Solly, sir, I no unerstan why I here?’ and Way Lin looked in horror at the toilet paper, sellotape, and the blood saturated, bogey-ridden, handkerchief, ‘Is this joke, sir?’

  ‘What, the toilet paper or the job?’

  ‘Ah, bofe, I fin.’

  Jack answered using his kind and sensitive voice, usually reserved for kittens and villains, accompanied with his universal wry smile, ‘Way Lin, you wanted to do more in computers?’ Way Lin was confused, and Mandy wondered if Jack came up with Confucius because she was Chinese or whether she was just confused. ‘You’ve been working with Hissing Sid, right?’ Way Lin nodded. ‘Well, he’s recommended you, so what d’you say?’

  ‘I only done free eve classes and Googled Millwall for you, sir,’ Way Lin answered.

  Mandy gripped the edge of her seat; it stopped her leaping up in dismay. She’d seen Jack, over many years, do some daft things, but wondered if this time he’d lost it, big time. He’d clearly not briefed his team, hijacked the investigation for what can only be called a cowboy outfit to run, and apart from Paolo, everyone was up for it. She shook her head slowly and jumped with everyone else as Jack all of a sudden leapt up and strutted; it was his look how masculine I am walk; she was reminded of John Wayne with a carrot up his arse.

  ‘Don’t worry your little cotton socks, Confucius babes, you’ll be working alongside Frankie, a real computer expert, and you’ll love her too,’ and he nudged Confucius with his elbow, and she went flying across the room as Jack’s one eye winked; and they say he can’t multi-task.

  Amid the team’s confusion, and the patent fear on the puffed oval face of Confucius, Dolly shouted from the other room, ‘You will, she’s lovely.’

  ‘Dolly, why don’t you put your cleaning stuff down and join us,’ Mandy called back.

  ‘I would if I thought I'd hear something interesting, dearie,’ the faint, almost feeble reply muffled by a his
s that signalled the death knell for the Ozone layer.

  Mandy put her hand to her forehead, apart from Jack’s not particularly subtle reference to Frankie’s sexual preferences, and the fact he thought the two girls would get on famously, in more ways than one, it would appear he had also discussed this with Dolly. She felt obliged to reassure Way Lin. ‘Jack’s right, Way, you will...’

  Way Lin interrupted, ‘Oh no, I call Lin, no Way.’

  Jack resisted the obvious comment, and Mandy appreciated it. ‘Okay, Confucius,’ and Jack winked with his good eye, ‘Jack is right, he and Dolly, by all accounts, Frankie is the best.’

  Mandy stood, stretched fully, arms and legs akimbo, and Jack thought, there’s never a sunny window when you need one, and talking into a yawn, ‘Why don’t we all meet up tomorrow morning, get the ball rolling. Before then, perhaps Jack will tell you all what he just told the Commander, why you lot should be leading this feckin’ investigation with the world’s best feckin’ computer expert on the team.’ Way Lin mewed as Mandy sat back down, sighing loudly, which set Martin running back and forth.

  ‘When time?’ Jack asked, rubbing his hands together, thinking he’d gotten away with it, which caused Martin to stop, his dog aware he rarely got away with anything.

  Nobby, keen to impress, ‘I can do 6.30, Guv.’

  Jack swung his gaze around the room and settled to lecture the new boy. ‘Nobby, Nobby, my boy. Are you married?’ Jack shook his head as though what he was going to say was obvious. ‘Of course not, I’m not sure you would get on with her guide dog...’ paused for laughter, flicked his hand in receipt, ‘...and how many children do you have? How many American Cop TV shows d'you watch?’ Nobby was looking worried. Jack gestured his bloodied head to Jo, ‘Take Jo-Jums, she and her husband have to get up before the four kids, get themselves ready, then get the kids up and abluted.’ Mandy smiled; she’d not heard Jack say that for a while. ‘Then she gets them breakfasted while Tanner does the lunches; on a copper’s salary, you can’t afford school dinners, not with this government anyway...’ He paused to look around to see if he could spot a closet Tory in his team. ‘Then you have to get them to their different schools, always assuming they’re all well, and one doesn’t want to go, and you suspect it’s because they’re being picked on, and what can you do about that?’