Trail of the Twisted Cros Page 9

  “No.”

  “Try a place in a little village called Trealaw, near Tonypandy. The Colliers Arms. Run by a funny pair, the Warrys. Watch yourself with her is my advice.”

  “Ta, mate.”

  The young man left the Labour Exchange, his employment card stamped approved for work as a miner. The name on his card was Randall Monckton, but it was a fake. His real name was Ben Slayton.

  TREALAW, South Wales

  He was able to drop the Manchester accent and slip into one that was easier for him—middle-class Londoner. The landlady, Mavis Warry, was immediately fascinated.

  “How long will you be staying with us, flower?” she asked. She fussed over the linens on his bed while he unpacked one of his two bags.

  “I don’t really know. The work is so sketchy these days, you see.”

  “Here’s what you’ll learn about me, right off the bat,” Mavis said. She had left her job at the bed and was standing now very close to Monckton—Slayton. “I just ask a man whatever is on my mind, and I’m asking you this: why is it you don’t seem like a collier?”

  “It wasn’t my life’s ambition, love. But then, neither was living on the dole, you know. So, I became a sooty face.”

  “Well, it’s not so terribly sooty now, is it?” Mavis ran a hand across his cheek, then under his chin. She smiled at him, almost girlishly, then stepped even closer. Her breasts grazed against his chest.

  “You’re the one they told me to keep a look-out for,” Monckton said.

  “I am indeed.”

  Monckton took her into his arms and embraced her, softly and correctly. When he released her, she was breathless.

  “Come with me,” he commanded.

  She followed him to the bed. Monckton lowered her to the bed, with only a sheet for dressing, and lay down beside her. She closed her eyes while he covered her face and neck with embraces.

  Then slowly—she nearly couldn’t feel his gentle tugging—he began removing her clothes. He unbuttoned a high blouse, revealing her small, firm breasts, warm and quivering to his touch.

  He traced a finger down the length of her abdomen, lingering at her navel, then roughly pulling downward at her skirt. Beneath, she wore the garments most British women wear still—hosiery and garter belt. Monckton—Slayton—had complained that a good half of his love life had been ruined by the advent of the damnable panty hose.

  Mavis’ body was bucking, almost wildly. Her cries of urgency were muffled by Monckton’s embraces, even as he moved atop her, kicked off his trousers, and slipped smoothly into her.

  The two of them then flailed away at each other with animal abandon, each of their needs so great. When they were through, Monckton rolled off her and lay on his back on the bed, as exhausted by the rigors of his first encounter with Mavis Warry as by the jet lag that was hitting him at its hardest.

  Mavis wouldn’t leave the man in peace, however. She coaxed his member back to life, stripped the clothes completely off herself and straddled him to have her way.

  “You another one of those odd blokes?” Jack Warry asked him as he came surreptitiously down the stairway.

  “Odd?”

  “I’m Jack Mavis, landlord. You’re the new lodger, is that it?”

  Monckton’s face showed extreme agitation.

  “Oh I see, right away you’re a bit leery about stayin’ round here. Mavis gone and scared you off with her contrary ways, has she?”

  Monckton shook his head no.

  “Well then, the reason I asked you about being an odd bloke was because we got one already. Works out at the St. John’s Colliery, when he works.”

  “I’m working there, too,” Monckton said. “That is, I have to report for work there.”

  “Well, then, I expect you’ll be seeing a lot of him. Maybe I shouldn’t say a word about your mate, you know.”

  “No, I don’t know him yet. Why do you call him an odd bloke, anyway?”

  “Actually, I don’t. Mave does. All I knows or cares is he pays his rent right proper and timely. But I was told to ask you.”

  “I’m not sure—”

  “Mave thinks you might be, you know, a gay boy.”

  Monckton repressed the urge to laugh.

  “Is that what this other… what’s his name?”

  “Thatcher. Leo Thatcher.”

  “That’s what Thatcher is? A poofter?”

  “Who knows? Mave just wants to make sure we don’t become ‘that sort’ of place. Her words.”

  “Tell your lovely wife, whom I have met, by the way, that I stand ready and willing at any time of her choice to demonstrate my complete normality.”

  “You’re all right, Monckton. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not from here?”

  “Manchester, by way of London.”

  “Thought so. I can always tell an accent.”

  “Right-o. So now, my good landlord, I am off to the bloody mine.”

  “Ta-ta!”

  Monckton’s employment card was duly stamped for work, and he was given a locker and togs for the next shift, to begin in one hour. After changing from his street clothes to the bright orange overalls and black boots, the miner’s hat with lantern and safety belt, Monckton milled about the locker facility, drinking tea until it was time for his call.

  He made his way to the tag board to check for number 290, which he held in his pocket. It was missing. He flipped through the union copy of the work roster for number 290 and found the entry, “Thatcher, Leo, lost #290, reissued #271.”

  Chapter Eleven

  LONDON, England, 12 September

  In the Brixton district of south London lives a family of three generations by the name of Toper. Like many of his neighbors in the shabby working-class district, Linus Toper had brought his family one by one from Jamaica, as soon as he could afford their passage on his wages as a porter for British Rail.

  Linus Toper’s son, Joshua, was born in Jamaica, but almost always lies when asked and says he was born in London. He spent exactly one year of his life in the West Indies, and sees no reason to spoil his chances as an Englishman by admitting to being from outside the Sceptered Isle.

  Then there is Joshua’s son, Raymond, a hotheaded twenty-year-old, London-born and hateful of anyone who attempts to diminish his Englishness by calling undue or unwelcome attention to the fact that his skin is ebony.

  Raymond and his father operate one of the score of Jamaican groceries in the peeling neighborhood, a neighborhood wracked by absentee ownership of all the housing stock, poor public services, and resultant lack of pride on the part of residents who are forced to live in the squalor.

  Linus Toper has never so much as crossed a street illegally in his long life. Rarely has he spoken to a white man, never, except when he worked as a porter, to a white woman. Today, he still crosses the street and walks the other side when he sees whites in his path. He does this not out of fear, but out of some enormously undue respect for a superior being.

  His son Joshua has made his peace with his father’s servile behavior when it comes to whites. He has come to accept it. But even Joshua hesitates when he comes into contact with whites. He is not respectful, he is fearful.

  Young Raymond once dared to date a white girl when he was fifteen years old. His grandfather was hospitalized because of the way it affected him. He did not mean to hurt his grandfather, but he couldn’t help but go out of his way to proclaim himself an Englishman, with all the rights of whites.

  “Your boy means to make trouble for his life. Maybe ours, too,” old Linus once told his son.

  Today that trouble came in the form of a dozen brown-shirted white Englishmen dressed in steel helmets, boots, and swastikas, carrying axes. They were members of an organization called the White Guard, and the day before they had been told that Raymond Toper had been seen pushing a white woman in the adjoining district of Camberwell, a once solidly white community rapidly changing to black and Asian.
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  The Topers were seated at the small table in the kitchen of their apartment, drinking stout and eating a ham roast left for them by Joshua’s wife, Raymond’s mother, before she departed for an evening’s maid service job in the fashionable Belgravia district.

  Dusk was just settling over the city when the glass began shattering at the front of the Toper home. The old man was the first to rise from the kitchen table, followed by Raymond, then Joshua.

  Linus Toper was knocked down by the rampaging White Guards, who had chopped their way through parlor windows, then set the draperies afire and set off for the back of the house.

  Without a word, two of the White Guards kicked the old man as he lay sprawled on the floor. Two more tackled the next oldest man, Joshua, forcing him face down onto the floor and going to work with their clubs against his head.

  Eight White Guards struggled with Raymond, who at first managed a scream of horrendous volume, then could scream no more. His throat had been slashed open, and was now spurting streams of crimson.

  Linus Toper was already dead. Joshua Toper had no choice but to pretend he was dead. He was sure the White Guards wouldn’t fire a gun and bring attention from the neighborhood, though he wondered where his friends were now. Hadn’t they heard Raymond’s screams?

  Many had heard Raymond’s screams. But none came to his aid, nor to the aid of the old man who had never in his life spoken to a white woman.

  The white woman whom Raymond had pushed on a street in Camberwell the day before had thanked him for his action. If she hadn’t been pushed, an oncoming taxicab would very likely have struck her.

  When the White Guards finished their task, they left by the back way, skulking down through the alley a few blocks to a waiting truck. One of them said, “This is the lesson we have learned tonight… we can do what we like in Brixton because we can control the streets.”

  TREALAW, South Wales, 13 September

  Afternoon tea at the Colliers Arms is an affair consisting of dumplings, fruit pie, anything left over from the previous night’s supper, stray cheeses that the household friend Lynfa Perry might fetch around, crackers (as Americans would call them), and tea as an incidental refreshment.

  It is also the time of day when pubs all over the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland are closed. For four hours, life in Trealaw at the Colliers Arms revolves around the morning and early afternoon gossip, the day’s news events as reported in the Daily Mail from London, and the upcoming “doom hour,” as the twelve minutes of national news is called on the BBC.

  Both Monckton and Thatcher were present on this day for tea, as was Lynfa, a diminutive, inordinately attractive young woman who was rarely seen without the lapel button she wore today: “Good things come in small packages.”

  Mavis, as usual, was running the conversation. The subject turned to the matter of the Brixton murders of two blacks the evening before.

  “It’ll be on the doom hour, that’s for sure,” Jack said.

  “How witty, my flower,” Mavis answered him. “And will the Queen be in Buckingham Palace this evening, too?”

  Jack laughed at her. He and his mates from the bar would be going off for an evening’s entertainment at a nightclub ten miles up Ynyscynon Road, where they would meet the likes of “Jerky Joan,” “Sweaty Betty,” and assorted other femme fatales of the Rhondda Valley. He could care not a whit for Mavis’ catty remarks tonight. She knew very well that he would be going, that he would be engaging in the mild flirtations that were the custom between the married men of the valley and mostly single women, a custom no one quite knew why existed.

  He looked at Monckton and said, “I married the lady because she looks so sweet when she’s got her nose up. Look at the bird now. Have you ever in your life seen a sight more adorable than that sweet face?”

  Jack cupped Mavis’ chin with his hand. She slapped it away and growled.

  Lynfa said, “Let’s none of us watch the telly tonight. Let’s be content to watch Jack and Mavis for the entertainments.” She looked to Thatcher to see if he would laugh at her joke. He didn’t. For this reason, and others more basic, she was finding him less and less an attraction. The new lodger, however, was quite another matter. She would watch him whenever she could. Would he ever pay her some heed?

  “Thatcher,” Monckton said, struggling to change the subject. Actually no one laughed at Lynfa’s joke because all it accomplished was to put Mavis into a snit. “I wonder, Thatcher, if you’ll be watching the BBC report tonight. You know, they’ll have film of the Brixton incident. You should like that, I should think, beating up blacks and all.”

  For the first time in anyone’s memory, Thatcher expressed an opinion.

  “You’re bloody right I will. The whole bloody bunch of apes ought to be sent back where they came from. I’m tired of their stinking up our nation, taking our jobs and all,” he said.

  He was overwhelmed at the silence his remarks had engendered. He looked at his fellow residents gazing at him.

  “Well,” he finally said, “don’t you all feel the same?”

  “I don’t fancy blacks living around me,” Mavis said, ever quick with a responsive opinion, “but I don’t fancy knocking their heads together for no good reason, either. And these blacks were killed. Killed by some disgusting goons.”

  Thatcher went livid, but didn’t say anything. Lynfa quickly moved away from him. He regained his composure and resumed eating.

  “I’ll tell you what I think, now,” Jack said. He stood up, moved next to his wife, and put an arm around her shoulder. “I think me and Mave could breathe much better without you and your stinking bigotry around us.”

  Monckton clamped a hand on his arm before Thatcher could angrily get up from the table and leave the premises.

  “Just a minute,” he said to Thatcher. “I might have something you could be interested in.”

  He took from his pocket the St. John’s Colliery tag number 290, the one he had picked up from East 66th Street in New York, the garden where the police found the corpse of a mailman.

  “I checked the records down at the colliery,” Monckton said, “and it seems this number used to be yours. Any idea where you lost it?”

  Thatcher eyed him suspiciously, then spat out, “Who the bloody blazes are you, mate?”

  Monckton ignored the question.

  “You know, it’s too bad this tag wasn’t something like a hotel key. I don’t know about this place, but in the States, most especially in New York, you can just drop a lost hotel key in a mail box—a post box, as you would call it here.”

  Monckton had dropped the accent. He was now clearly an American.

  Thatcher said the obvious: “You’re no coal miner, and you’re not from Manchester.”

  “Nope,” Slayton said. “I own up now. I’m an imposter.”

  “What’s going on?” Jack asked.

  “You’ve two imposters at your table, Jack,” Slayton answered. “And one of us is a murderer and a terrorist, wanted by the government of the United States for, among other things, threatening the life of the President, murdering a mailman, and attempted extortion.

  “This is not to mention plotting the overthrow of a Federal penitentiary, and, in the Bahamas, a murder rap, no doubt on a conspiracy charge statute.”

  “Jewish swine!” Thatcher screamed.

  “The two don’t mix,” Slayton said.

  Thatcher pulled a knife from a sheath below his shirt and lashed out at Slayton, opening a gaping wound in his shoulder before he could escape fatal damage.

  Now Thatcher stood over Slayton with the huge, bloodied knife poised for another slashing. Slayton was trapped in a corner.

  Thatcher thrust forward, missing Slayton’s face by less than an inch as he swerved out of the path of the gleaming knife. Again Thatcher lunged. This time, Slayton managed to blunt the progress of the knife with his arm by slamming into Thatcher’s body with a glancing karate chop. But he couldn’t rely on his martial ar
ts much longer. His blood loss was making him woozy.

  Jack, meanwhile, had one by one cleared the dining area, and now only the three men were in the room. Lynfa and Mavis watched this horrible dance through a frosted glass window set between the dining area and the corridor.

  Thatcher was moving in for the kill. His prey was weak and falling.

  Slayton slipped down the wall on which he was backed. His eyes closed in a half-sleep, half-dread of the end.

  Jack grabbed a towel next to the sink, wrapped it several times around his right forearm, and then advanced on Thatcher. Jack raised his leg and sent his boot flying into the small of Thatcher’s back, just as Thatcher had raised his knife on Slayton.

  The kick sent Thatcher reeling into the wall. He collapsed on top of the heavily wounded Slayton. Then he scrambled for the knife he had dropped on the floor with the force of Jack’s assault. Jack, too, grabbed for the advantage of the weapon, but failed.

  Thatcher managed to get up, knife in hand, and now began advancing on Jack Warry. Jack, meanwhile, spotted a carving knife in a dish drainer. He grabbed it.

  A wolfish grin came over Thatcher’s face as he moved in, confident now that he would best Warry in a contest of this sort. What did a publican know about fighting, other than fisticuffs in a barroom?

  Thatcher lunged heavily at Warry, with a wide horizontal swipe of the knife at Jack’s midsection. Warry nimbly jutted his hips back, defended his middle, and countered with a stab to Thatcher’s chest that didn’t penetrate very deeply, but led his opponent to consider some alternatives.

  Now Warry advanced, slashing at Thatcher’s wrists, cutting him once. He took a small cut in the shoulder himself, and deflected one of Thatcher’s blows with his towel-wrapped forearm.

  Thatcher leaped to the table top, which was a mistake.

  Warry slashed freely at the man’s legs and ankles, cutting them to ribbons as Thatcher danced and leaped in attempts to defend himself.

  Thatcher then lost his balance, fell backward, and went crashing out the dining area of the kitchen, through the window, and down one full floor to the garden below. Warry shouted instructions: