A Commonplace Killing by Siân Busby Read Free Book Online Page A

boy’s trousers, but was not: a pity as he could have had him for that.
    “What do you want, you flat-footed bastard?”
    Cooper was not troubled by the newer sort of wide boys. Most of his colleagues saw trouble everywhere in these post-war days, but he knew criminals as a class, and understood that they were all the same when it came down to it: mostly pretty stupid. The current crop of third-rate spivs were kids who had grown up fast on the streets during the air war, burgling bombed premises from the age of ten; little sods who deserved a damned good hiding from fathers whom they never knew, or who were away on active service or dead. Some of them, like Johnny, had grown into violent thugs armed with razor-studded potatoes and bottles of acid, but they were still kids. That was what war did: it blighted youth, one way or another; it extinguished innocence at a stroke; it made contentment and happiness an impossibility: it made boys grow up too fast; or rather it made them think they had grown up. They all cried for their mothers when a judge sentenced them to be flogged, or hanged.
    “Now, now, Johnny,” Cooper said. “That’s no way to greet an old friend.”
    “I ain’t done nothing, so you ought to leave me alone. Go and catch some crooks, why don’t you. I’m a respectable businessman . Your wages come out of my rates, copper.”
    “I didn’t realise that they were letting blacketeers and slum landlords into the Rotary Club these days.”
    The boy snorted.
    “Trying to impress your girl are you, Mr Cooper?”
    Cooper had to admit that there was probably an element of truth in that.
    “Picked up a couple of your chums last night, Johnny. Quiet Sid and ‘Little’ Jimmy Dashett. They’ve been very naughty boys. Just thought you’d like to know that they shan’t be joining you for tea and crumpets for a while.”
    “They ain’t no friends of mine, Mr Cooper.”
    “Really? We’ll see what they have to say about that.” Cooper turned to look at the scowling kid, fixing him with a penetrating gaze for as long as Johnny met it. “Well,” he said, as the spiv looked away first, “I shan’t keep you any longer, Johnny. I know how busy you tycoons are.”
    He motioned to Policewoman Tring to move on.
    “It makes me sick, spivs like that getting away with it,” she said, as she changed gear and sped a little faster along the empty road towards Nag’s Head.
    “I suppose you’ve never had a pair of stockings or a lipstick from a blacketeer?”
    He felt a little caddish, but moral indignation always made him tetchy.
    She was quiet for a few moments.
    “The world’s in a pretty bad way, isn’t it, sir?” she said.
    “Yes. Yes it is.”
    He watched the dusty misery of Seven Sisters Road slip past the window, marking the back alleys, the pubs with their grimy saloon bars, the cafés with their fly-blown sugar bowls: he knew it all with an unseemly intimacy and it had touched him, insidious , infecting. He sighed. It was too late now for insight. The fact of it was he was tired of it all, and the future was not any longer his problem.

6
     
     
    M aking herself presentable for the baker took some considerable amount of time; for, although she enjoyed catching the attention of men, she was always careful to avoid being seen as the sort of woman whom men regard as a “possible”. In any case the baker was a respectable married man whose daughter helped in the shop: she just wanted to look her best for him, so that he would be inclined to be good to her, in an under- the-counter sort of way. She wasn’t going to give herself for a loaf of bread, like those German housewives selling themselves on the streets.
    Her girdle was on its way out and the suspenders were unreliable, so she slipped a tatty old garter over her leg. There was nothing worse than having your stockings hanging down. A wave of despair washed over her. People shouldn’t have to live like this, she thought. And for a moment she