thankless, six-week effort to get himself a proper patch and actual customers.
There had come a time when Dean had started to think that maybe he wasn’t ‘a lad with good selling potential’ after all.
Then he’d got his break, and found his feet, and these days he was in business for himself. He stuck to his old man’s basic rules of salesmanship: presentation, clean nails and a nice pen. He’d always had the patter too, the charm factor that his dad had set plenty of store by. But Dean had something else, something his dad had never had. Dean knew the real secret of selling, and it turned out it wasn’t clean fingernails.
Dean Simms had the real secret of selling in his briefcase.
He checked himself in his rear-view mirror, checked his teeth for specks of food, checked his nails, checked his tie and got out of his vehicle. Game on.
The street was quiet. His vehicle would be all right where it was for an hour or so. He crossed the road.
His old man had always talked about ‘his patch’ with a genuine measure of proprietorial pride. Dean knew what his dad had meant. These streets were Dean’s patch, and he worked them hard. In return, they paid him well. Another few months, he reckoned, and he’d have to move area. Just to freshen things. You could go back to the well once too often, as his old man used to say.
He walked down the path, opening his zip-seamed briefcase, and looked at his list. It was easy to forget faces from one visit to the next. Early on, he’d hit the same house twice in a fortnight. Of course, the woman hadn’t recognised him, but he had no wish to repeat the mistake. He had a list of addresses printed off the electoral roll, and he ticked them off.
Number eight. Mr and Mrs Menzies. He consulted his watch. Two oh five. Just after lunch. Perfect.
He walked up the pathway of number eight and pressed the bell, hearing it ring deep inside the house. He waited, whistling softly.
The door opened. Ignite smile.
‘Good afternoon, Mrs Menzies?’
‘Yes?’
‘Good afternoon, sorry to bother you. My name is Dean Simms of Glazed Over, and I’m in your area this afternoon to introduce a remarkable domestic opportunity. Now, it’s available for a limited period only, and exclusively, to a few, specially selected households.’
‘Are you selling?’ the woman asked. ‘Are you windows?’
‘I’m just here to talk about a remarkable domestic opportunity.’
‘I don’t want sodding windows,’ scowled the woman, and started to shut the door again. ‘Are you blind? We’ve got replacement windows back and front.’
‘Let me just leave you with a leaflet,’ Dean said, smiling. He reached into his unzipped case and squeezed the soft lump inside. ‘Just a leaflet, Mrs Menzies?’ He loved this bit.
‘A leaflet?’ she asked, slightly blank.
Dean’s grin broadened. He made a gentle sweep with his hand. ‘These aren’t the droids you’re looking for,’ he said.
‘Come in,’ she replied.
‘Oh, that’s so got to be our man,’ said Jack. He and James were walking briskly, side by side, along the pavement from the space where they’d left the SUV. Over a box hedge, they could see a young, suited man chatting to a homeowner in a front doorway.
‘What do we do?’ asked James.
‘Ruin his day and queer his pitch,’ replied Jack. They arrived at the gate. ‘Excuse me,’ Jack called pleasantly.
The woman in the doorway squinted at them from her doorway. The young man in the suit who had been talking to her turned slowly. He eyed Jack and James warily.
‘I don’t want to cause a scene,’ said Jack, ‘but could we have a quiet word?’
‘A quiet word?’ asked the woman.
‘With your friend here?’ Jack indicated.
The young man looked from James to Jack quickly, weighed his options, and then bolted. He vaulted the front garden wall and began to run away down the street.
‘Oi!’ cried the woman.
‘Sorry to trouble you!’ Jack called back to her as he and James gave chase. The young man in the suit was really moving. Head back, arms pumping, sprinting like a maniac.
James was leading Jack by three or four yards. ‘Go left!’ he yelled as they passed the turning to some backyard garages.
Coat flying, Jack broke left up the unmade track. James kept on, flying after their quarry.
The young man in the suit turned right and took off across the road.
‘Damn!’ James barked, and continued to pound after him, crossing the street diagonally behind a slow- moving car. He was force to halt sharply in the middle of the road to let another car go by the other way. By the time James had reached the far side and begun to pick up speed again, the young man in the suit was leaving him behind. James tried to up his pace, but the young man was putting increasing distance between them.
Jack ran out of the garage standing and back onto the street at the top. No sign of their quarry. Still running, he turned right and, in a moment or two, caught sight of James up head of him, running flat out away from him down the tree-lined avenue.
‘James!’
James didn’t appear to hear him. Much further away, with a good thirty-yard lead on James already, Jack could see the young man in the suit, leaning as he turned left again.
Jack crossed the road, edging between the cars parked under the trees, his feet slipping on wet leaves, and set off down a left-hand street running parallel to their target’s flight path. If the young man in the suit doubled back, Jack would nab him around the next corner.
A man walking a dog frowned at Jack as Jack bombed past.
‘Afternoon!’ Jack called. Twenty yards to the corner, then right. He jinked around two men carrying an old bath out to a skip. He reached the corner, and skidded around it.
Jack’s intercept prediction had almost been bang on. Left to his own devices, the young man in the suit would have doubled back again, and run headlong into Jack coming the other way.
But the young man in the suit hadn’t made it that far. A few yards in from the opposite street corner, James had him pressed against the wall in an arm-lock.
Jack trotted up, breathing hard. The young man was struggling and mouthing off.
‘Be still!’ James told him. He looked around at Jack. ‘Got him,’ he said.
‘How?’ asked Jack
‘I ran like a bastard and caught up with him,’ said James. ‘How do you think? Be still, I said!’
‘Last time I saw you pair, he had thirty yards on you,’ said Jack, panting.
‘All in the finish,’ James replied. ‘He went off too early. Soon as he began to flag, I had him. It’s pacing, Jack, pacing.’
‘My ass it is. He was flying.’
‘Are you going to help?’ James asked. The young man in the suit was struggling harder.
‘Get your hands off me! Get your filthy hands off me! I know my rights! Police brutality!’
‘Turn him round,’ Jack instructed. James manhandled the wriggling young man around to face him. The young man was sweaty and flushed, sucking painful breaths in after his exertions.
‘You think we’re police?’ Jack asked him.
‘Get your hands off me!’ the young man replied.
‘Do you think we’re the police?’ Jack asked him again, more slowly and deliberately this time.
‘Y-yes?’
‘Boy,’ smiled Jack. ‘This is going to be fun.’
They walked back to the SUV.
‘OK,’ Jack admitted. ‘Not so much fun as I’d hoped. Or success.’
