Borribles Go For Broke, The (13 page)

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Authors: Michael de Larrabeiti

BOOK: Borribles Go For Broke, The
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‘The Woollies are coming this way,’ said Bingo, ‘and searching
every bit of ground. They’re spread out, torches, truncheons, dogs sniffing. Hurry up for Pete’s sake.’
Stonks surveyed the steaming blackness at his feet. He wrinkled his nose and then raised a worried face to his companions. ‘I recognize that smell, don’t you?’
‘Not half,’ said Vulge. ‘It’s the stink of Wendles and mud and blood.’ As he spoke the smell became noticeably stronger, rising from the depths on a visible curl of green air. The Borribles stared at it, mesmerized with fear until Spiff broke the silence.
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘and out here it smells of coppers and ear-clippin’. I’m going down. I ain’t scared of a few Wendles.’
‘You know what Flinthead will do if he catches us,’ said Chalotte.
‘Then he mustn’t catch us,’ retorted Spiff. ‘Wendle country’s big enough, we’ll have to hide down there and keep out of the way.’
Ben laughed and his head rolled loosely on his shoulders. He had drunk a lot of beer now. ‘You’ll be all right, just go down the hole, only don’t go far. As soon as the coppers have been and gone I’ll let you out again, easy, see.’
‘Ben’s right,’ said Spiff. ‘We may only have to stay there half an hour.’ He went towards the door and looked over Bingo’s shoulder so that he could see what was happening.
Everything had changed outside. The dawn had struggled to the top of the sky and was brightening from grey to blue. The mist had lifted and the line of policemen was plainly to be seen as they walked steadily across the dump, poking at the ground with rods and shining their torches into the dark places. A dog barked, then another. Spiff recognized the small figure of Inspector Sussworth with his long overcoat flapping at his heels; next to him was Sergeant Hanks.
‘We’ll have to go anyway,’ he said between clenched teeth, ‘the Woollies will find us in a minute.’
Ben waved his bottle. ‘You’d better bugger off, all right; what’s the good of me telling this Sussworth feller I don’t know you if he walks right in and sees you standing there? Won’t look reasonable, will it?’
Spiff elbowed his way past his companions and went to the
edge of the black pit. ‘Thanks, Ben,’ was all he said and then he stepped on to the broad rung of the iron ladder that was built into the side of the manhole and, without sparing a glance for anyone, he climbed rapidly down into the rising steam. In a moment he was gone.
‘When I got home from the Rumble hunt,’ said Vulge, ‘I swore I’d never go within ten miles of a Wendle again … Well here we are. I’ll be lucky if I’m limping on both legs after this.’ And with a sideways jerk of the head he too went down into the stinking vapour.
Just then a police whistle shrilled outside and shouts were heard, the loudest coming from Sergeant Hanks. ‘We know you’re in there; you’d better come out with your hands on your heads.’
The remaining Borribles waited no longer. Twilight flung himself down the ladder; Sydney followed, so did Bingo and Stonks. Chalotte went last, easing her feet on to the second or third rung so that her head was level with the ground. She looked at Ben. He was sinking lower and lower in his chair. In a few moments he would fall asleep but if he didn’t close the manhole behind her it would be obvious to the police where the runaways had gone.
There was another roar: ‘You’d better come out, you kids; it’ll be the worse for you if you don’t.’
Chalotte stretched an arm and grabbed Ben by the ankle and shook his leg. The tramp swung his eyes open with a lurch of the face and stared down at Chalotte. For him she was a disembodied head rolling about on the floor and yet still speaking.
‘My God,’ said Ben, and he leant forward, his elbows on his knees, ‘bloody good stuff this Special Brew.’
‘Oh, Ben,’ pleaded Chalotte, ‘don’t be daft, it’s me. There’s coppers outside. They’ll be in here in a twinkling and your only chance is to say you haven’t seen us. You’ve got to close this manhole, roll back the carpet and then move the table over a bit. Do it now Ben, otherwise Sussworth will skin you like a banana. Hurry.’
Ben blinked. The talking head had gone but it had shocked him sober enough to do what was required. He dropped his beer bottle and fell to the carpets, landing on all fours. He took a deep breath
to gather strength, and crawled round and round until he got himself behind the manhole cover. Once there he pushed it hard with his shoulder several times, grunting and swearing until it pivoted past its centre of gravity, slamming shut with a muffled thump that echoed through the sewers below but was almost silent above.
Ben was the only person in the world who could move on hands and knees and still stagger. He did it now, wobbling backwards and pulling the carpets after him, smoothing them down as he went. Another shout came from the police cordon. There was a banging of truncheons on the walls of the hut. Ben made one last effort, grabbed hold of a table leg and dragged it towards him. When this was done he smiled and groped for the bottle he had dropped earlier. As soon as he found it he rolled over and gazed at the roof, enjoying the support of the ground in his back.
‘I’m weary,’ he said, and fell fast asleep.
Sergeant Hanks was the first officer into the shack bashing hits way through the door like a fifty-ton tank, his truncheon swinging. Tramping on his heels came half a dozen policemen, heavy and tall, their arms held stiffly by their sides.
‘You’d better come quietly,’ shouted Hanks, ‘the place is surrounded. You can’t get away and if you try we’ll split yer heads open.’
‘There’s no one here,’ said a policeman after looking carefully into every corner of the room.
Hanks smashed the table with his truncheon. ‘Well investigate the other rooms,’ he cried, ‘they can’t get away.’
The sergeant moved round the table and stumbled over Ben’s body. ‘Here’s one,’ he said, and while his men searched the lean-tos he sat on a beer crate and gazed into the tramp’s dirty face.
More and more policemen stormed into the hut and prodded and stamped their way everywhere. At last Inspector Sussworth came and he stood near the door, lifting himself up on his toes every now and then, stretching his neck like a cockerel. Hanks removed his right index finger from his left nostril and wiped a yellow bogey on to the leg of Ben’s table. Then he saluted.
‘There’s no one here, sir,’ he said, ‘except this specimen on the
floor.’ And he kicked Ben in the ribs to show Sussworth where the tramp lay.
The inspector squared his shoulders and sniffed and his little moustache danced under his nose as he tried to identify the various odours imprisoned in the shack.
‘There’s a malodorous pong in here,’ he said, ‘a very nasty pong. I suspect it emanates from this recumbent malefactor, alleged.’ Sussworth clasped his hands behind his back like royalty and squeezed his fingers till they hurt. He was looking very smart in his flowing overcoat and chequered cap. He took a delicate step round the table and looked at Ben, who still slept contentedly on the floor. ‘Wake him up,’ said the inspector, ‘and ascertain if he can help with enquiries.’
Hanks smiled. This was the kind of job he liked. He grabbed the tramp by the lapels, pulled him into a sitting position and began to shake him vigorously, like a pillow he was knocking the lumps out of. After a few moments of this treatment Ben’s eyes blinked, then they opened.
‘Oooer,’ he said, ‘I feel a bit sick.’
Sussworth bent over, tipped the tramp’s hat off and seized a fistful of hair, twisting it tight until the tears welled up in Ben’s eyes.
‘I want to know the present whereabouts of those children you aided and abetted,’ cried the inspector. ‘Where are those Borribles?’
‘Bobbirols,’ said Ben, ‘whazzem when they’s at home? Bobbirols.’
Sussworth pulled Ben’s hair tighter and struck him in the face with his free hand. ‘Borribles,’ was all he said.
‘Them kids you saw at Fulham police station,’ said Hanks, ‘you know who we mean.’
‘Oh, them,’ said Ben, trying to sniff up his tears, ‘them’s Bobbirols, are they? Well, I heard ’em in the fog, followed me along they did. I could hear them moving about. Scared stiff, wasn’t I? I thought they was going to mug me, you know what kids are like today. Where was the law and order then, I asked myself. I could have been duffed up by them hooligans. I’m an old man, I need protection at my age.’
Sussworth struck Ben once more. ‘You will do,’ he said.
‘I come over the bridge on me way home,’ explained the tramp, ‘and they went on towards Battersea, I think, down York Road.’
‘You’re lying,’ screamed Hanks, and he jabbed his truncheon deep into Ben’s stomach. All the breath he possessed shot out of Ben’s lungs and his face was drained of blood in an instant. ‘You liar,’ shouted Hanks again, ‘we had the bridge closed off by then. Our men heard you chatting; don’t chat to yourself, do you?’
‘Of course I bloody well does,’ retorted Ben, trying to look indignant at the same time as having no breath. ‘Who the Saint Fairy bleedin’ Anne would I talk to else? There ain’t no one, is there?’
‘For the last time,’ said Sussworth quietly, ‘those children have absconded from police custody and have stolen government property; item, one horse belonging to the Greater London Council Parks Division. Where are they?’ At each word the policeman tried to twist Ben’s head from his shoulders, yanking it round and round as if he were unscrewing it.
‘Aaagh,’ screamed Ben in pain, ‘leave off, can’t yer? I’d tell yer if I knew, wouldn’t I? Can’t stand kids, can I?’
The inspector released his grip on Ben’s hair and stood up. He stamped his feet angrily on the floor, his body jerking in a spasm of bad temper. ‘We’re getting nowhere with this imbecile, Hanks,’ said Sussworth. ‘Those children can’t have disappeared, nor the horse. They can’t be on the river, they aren’t north of us and they can’t have got through the cordon back to Battersea. There’s only one place they can be, the one place we can’t go without getting our noses bloodied.’
Hanks scrambled to his feet in consternation, releasing Ben’s lapels with such abruptness that the tramp, who hardly knew what he was doing anyway, fell backwards to the ground, rapping his head so sharply that he rendered himself unconscious.
‘You don’t mean they’ve gone below?’ the sergeant said.
The inspector looked carefully at his men who, having searched the seven rooms of the shanty, now awaited further orders. ‘They’ll have dumped the horse and gone down to Wendle country,’ he pronounced with finality. ‘That much is plain and obvious to the mind of a detective, and if we descended in pursuance of our bounden
duty we’d be knee deep in mud and muck, and that I will not tolerate. If the evil vapours did not kill us then there’d be a Wendle behind every corner ready to crack our skulls open with a catapult stone.’
‘What are your orders, Inspector?’ said Hanks as he crossed his arms and hoisted a fat buttock on to the table to rest it there.
‘I know exactly what to do,’ said Sussworth twitching his moustache from side to side, delighted with the complication of his own cunning. ‘I have a map from the Wandsworth water authority, a map that has every manhole in Wandsworth marked upon it. I’ll put a guard on every exit, I’ll put a line of men round the whole of this area … and then I’ll wait. The Wendles won’t be able to get out for supplies and will soon conclude and deduce that something amiss is afoot. Wendles are highly averse to strangers; they’ll soon find our runaways, and when they do they will boot them straight into our waiting hands.’
At the conclusion of this speech Sussworth stretched his back and made himself as tall as he could. He looked at his men and a black fire burnt in his eyes. He saluted and every officer present returned the salute in a respectful silence which might have lasted quite a long while had not Ben rolled over and farted very loudly in his sleep.
Sussworth blushed and shifted his weight from one foot to the other, embarrassed; his moustache trembled. Hanks touched Ben in the stomach with his boot.
‘What shall we do with the prisoner?’ he asked.
The inspector narrowed his nostrils against the odours that attacked him from everywhere. ‘He’s a suspect, he is,’ he said, ‘accessory after the fact, obstructing a police officer in the pursuance of his duty, drunk and disorderly, carrying an offensive weapon, that bottle for example, obscene behaviour definitely, offending public decency, contravening the health acts, all of them, vagrancy, no fixed abode, squatting, stealing council property … My goodness me, there’s enough to send him away until the year three thousand and dot. Take him back to Fulham and put him in the cells; only lock him up this time and put him somewhere I can’t smell him.’
‘Yes sir, certainly sir,’ said Hanks, ‘but shouldn’t we teach him a lesson, sir?’
Sussworth took a step away from the tramp’s smell. ‘Excellent thinking, Hanks,’ he said. ‘Get the men to turn the furniture over, break all the bottles, knock down the shelves, rip up the mattresses; let them have a bit of fun, they deserve it after a night like we’ve had. Next time we ask this slovenly human being for aid and assistance in protecting the
stadium quo
perhaps he’ll be a little more disposed to turn Queen’s evidence.’
Hanks slipped his bottom from the table and stood firmly planted on his fat legs. He rubbed his hands together with pleasure. ‘Oh, yes, sir,’ he said, and he gave his orders and two policemen seized the unconscious Ben by the feet and dragged him from his shack. When the tramp’s smell had gone Sussworth followed, his legs moving stiffly, his expression cold. As he walked away, along the faint path that wound between the tall piles of rubbish, he heard behind him the sound of falling planks, the crash of crockery and the shouts and laughter of the SBG men. A slow smile crept over the inspector’s face. Things were beginning to go well now.

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