'You're very sharp, Mr Dalziel. Conrad had no machinery for retaining money. I used to tell him to get his suits made without pockets. What did he need them for? I kept quiet about it till today, hoping that the insurance people might cough up enough to pay off the Young Wives at least. But they're still dragging their feet. My business partners were far from pleased when I told them.'
'I heard something,' said Dalziel. 'It sounded like Bertie, mainly.'
'Yes. The others are less committed,' she said. 'Or rather, he's the only one who understands enough about finance to know just how close to bankruptcy we really are. If Conrad had let Bertie look after the business side… but you know what fathers are like with their sons.'
'No,' said Dalziel. 'You're an odd lot though.'
'What?'
'For a board of directors, I mean.'
She laughed again.
'I suppose we are. We just happened, really. Bertie started it. He did a business studies course at Liverpool, then got a job up there with a big combine, Provincial Traders. They have a lot of interests and he sampled them all, including catering. But he didn't like company politics and wanted his own business. The house is mine, or rather mine and Lou's. It belonged to her father, my first husband. The boys are just her step-brothers, you must have spotted that, of course. When he died he left it to me, but entailed so that it couldn't be sold and would become hers when I died. Well, as you've seen, it's a white elephant. We tried letting it, but for what? We couldn't get anyone to pay enough to keep us somewhere else. There's no fish worth speaking of in the lake and the big marshes to the east where there used to be some good duck-shooting were drained over ten years ago. Now we've got to stop Charley Tillotson going out and blowing up the few poor survivors!
'Anyway Bertie suggested a restaurant, one of these medieval junket places. A licence to mint your own money, he said it was. The catering was done on a production line, no skill needed. And the discomforts were part of what the customer was paying for. So, the innocents abroad, we launched ourselves into it. It was either that or board up the house and apply for a council flat somewhere.'
'What about money?' asked Dalziel.
'Money?'
'You need cash. Nowt gets done without some cash.'
'You're right there,' Bonnie said. She turned once more and peered down at the railway line. Her movement brought her within a few inches of Dalziel who contemplated a brotherly arm around her shoulders but dismissed the idea on the grounds of indecency. A fraternal gesture would make what was happening beneath his mackintosh incestuous.
'We borrowed, mainly. Lou and myself raised a small mortgage on the house. They don't like lending money to women. Conrad was more successful. He didn't have much to offer as security, but he did have the gift of the gab. Bertie had no cash, but it was his idea and he knew something about the catering trade. Also he brought along Hank Uniff and his sister from Liverpool. Hank had just had a bit of a disaster. His studio had just been gutted by a fire, so he was desperate for somewhere to work. He's making a film and was delighted at the chance of being somewhere nice and quiet while the fire-insurance money worked for him in the business. He says he despises cash, really. Well, when we go bankrupt it'll be a test of his principles! His sister, Mave's, very artistic too, terrific with clothes. She's in charge of costumes.'
'What costumes?' interrupted Dalziel.
'Your retainers, court jesters, minstrels, serving wenches. Don't ask me what serving wenches. We're all serving wenches. Lou sings a lovely 'Greensleeves'. I can manage anything that stays within a four-note range. Hank plays the guitar – don't they all, these days? We were planning to hire some help, of course, but all of us in the business were going to be very actively involved.'
'You haven't mentioned Tillotson,' commented Dalziel.
'You notice everything, don't you?'
He glanced at her sharply. She was grinning slyly – there was no other word for it. It did not diminish her attractiveness one jot.
'Charley; well, Charley came along with Lou one weekend and he seems to have been around more or less ever since. He had a few hundred which he poured in almost uninvited and he'll make a lovely Sir Philip Sidneyor someone to direct traffic. So, there it is. Not a bad set-up. Money to be made. But we'll probably have to sell up to pay off our debts. We'll be lucky if we break even.'
There it was, thought Dalziel. If Mavis had been right, this was the gentle flick of the fly over the trout stream. No. Wrong picture. He was no trout. Carp, perhaps. Or shark. But even sharks could flounder in unfamiliar waters.
'What kind of money were you looking to make, Mrs Fielding?' he asked.
'I can't really say. Finance isn't my line. I wouldn't know which way up to hold the Financial Times. But the gross income's easy enough to work out. Five pounds a head; well that includes VAT, so we get four-fifty. Five hundred and forty from a full night. Bertie says other places like this in the north get six full nights a week and booked up for months ahead. So, six times five-forty.'
'Three thousand two hundred and forty a week,' Dalziel said, unimpressed. Income was nowt without expenditure. He didn't read Dickens but he'd heard of Mr Micawber.
'What do they get for a fiver?' he asked.
'Soup,' she said. 'Half a chicken. Spare rib. Cold pudding. Rye bread. Salad. Half a litre of red wine. Coffee. And a night's entertainment.'
'Uniff on guitar. Tillotson tripping over his codpiece,' he said. He didn't mean to be sarcastic nor did she take offence.
'You can pay more and get less,' she answered. 'Try to walk out of the Lady Hamilton's restaurant with a full belly and change from a fiver. And that's without any drink or floor show. We've got a bar too, of course.'
'Have you?' he said. That could double the profits. People come in groups, in a minibus, taxi, coach; someone else driving; one night when you could afford to let go without risking bother from the sodding police.
'Sounds a good proposition,' he said.
'It was,' she answered. 'Conrad will be sorry to have missed it, wherever he is.'
Dalziel glanced at her again. She was staring out into the night with a faintly puzzled look on her face.
'Or perhaps not,' she went on. 'You know, this is one of the straightest bits of track in the country. Look.'
She pointed. Dalziel stared into the blackness for a few seconds before spotting the light.
'Train,' she said. 'One of our rare expresses. Conrad and I often used to stop on this bridge if we'd been up to the village. Just about this time it must have been, because we'd watch this train coming nearer.'
The light was growing and now the sound of the wheels on the track was quite audible.
'It must touch a hundred or whatever it is that trains can travel at,' Bonnie continued. 'Conrad would stand here and watch it getting nearer. As if he couldn't take his eyes off it. And you know what he once said to me, one hard, frosty midwinter's night? 'Bonnie,' he said, 'Bonnie, you realize it's just a step into summer'.'
The diesel seemed to cover the last few hundred yards in a single leap, the horn blasted its three-note clarion call over the quiet countryside, and the upward blast of air as the train punched through the bridge made Dalziel take an involuntary pace backwards. Bonnie did not move.
'Some fucking step,' said Dalziel.
7
Dalziel woke up early the following morning and lay in the darkness knowing it was full of menace. He forced himself to relax, and gradually the menace faded as the shapes and angles of the unfamiliar room began to emerge in gradations of grey, bringing with them something worse than fear, a sense of the grey hours, days, weeks, stretching ahead like a desert landscape of unrelieved, grinding, unsharable monotony.
