Get Carter by Ted Lewis Page B

while they were all gawping.
    “Hello, Keith,” I said.
    “Somebody been asking about you,” he said.
    “Oh, yes?” I said. “Anybody we know?”
    “Remember we were talking about Thorpey? The loan merchant?”
    “Old Thorpey, eh? Haven’t seen him in a long time.”
    “That’s what he was saying about you.”
    “Oh, yes?”
    “Yes. He said he’d heard you were visiting town and he was wondering if I knew where you were staying at, like. Wanted to look you up. Old times’ sake and that.”
    “That’s nice of him.”
    “I would have come to tell you but I didn’t think you’d be there.”
    “Sure.”
    Keith began to go red.
    “I would have come, honest.”
    “What did you tell him?”
    He went redder.
    “Nowt,” he said.
    “Good. How was it left?”
    “They went after they realised I wasn’t letting on.”
    “They?”
    “There were three of them.”
    I lit a fag.
    “Thorpey, eh?”
    Thorpey was the kind of rat who I would have thought preferred to work on his own. Not for a governor, at any rate. He’d always been very full of himself. He’d liked being a top dog in his own little way, and the business he operated saw him very nicely. He’d like the profit margin kept the way it was. Supposing Frank had done something to upset Thorpey? Which of course he wouldn’t. But supposing. What could Frank have done to Thorpey that warranted Thorpey going to the trouble of knocking Frank off? Even if Thorpey and his lads had half the nerve. So if Thorpey was on his own, there’d be no need for him to want to see me. But, of course, there might have been a merger. The loan systems in Doncaster and Bradford and Leeds and Barnsley and Grimsby all owned by one governor might have been added to by seconding Thorpey’s little operation, just to make things nice. Thorpey would still be the figurehead, but from time to time whoever he was working for would ask him to do this and that, things that on his own Thorpey normally would have steered clear of. Like having a little talk with me. Or filling Frank up with scotch and letting the hand brake off his car.
    I looked at the clock on the wall. It was quarter to ten.
    “You wouldn’t happen to know where they went?” I said.
    Keith shrugged.
    “Could have gone anywhere. The clubs, pubs, anywhere. But wherever they are, they’ll be looking for you.”
    I didn’t say anything.
    “What are you off to do?” asked Keith.
    “Go and see somebody who can give me a little bit of gossip.”
    “Who?”
    “Oh, just an old friend I haven’t seen in years,” I said.
    I walked away from the bar. Miss Jackie Du Val was naked except for a g-string. She’d come off the stage and now she was moving between the tables. There was hands all over the place. One bloke held up a pint of mild and Miss Jackie Du Val sat down on his knee and dipped her left breast in it. There was a load of laughter until the woman who was with the bloke with the pint of mild grabbed it and chucked it all over Miss Jackie Du Val and the bloke. The bloke got up and Miss Jackie Du Val hit the floor shrieking. The bloke socked the woman he was with and began wiping himself down. The woman fell over a chair and landed on the floor too. She and Miss Jackie Du Val found each other and began rolling about on the floor pulling and scratching and biting. There was much cheering. The woman on top of Miss Jackie Du Val was trying to bite one of Miss Jackie Du Val’s titties while Miss Jackie Du Val was trying to remove both of the woman’s eyes. A very drunken woman on the edge of the circle the crowd was making round them put her foot forward and with the toe of her shoe lifted the dress of the woman on top right up to her waist. There was more shrieking laughter. A couple of barmen had vaulted the bar and were trying to get through the crowd. The bloke who’d had the mild all over him stopped wiping himself and picked up a pint bottle of brown ale and emptied it slowly and deliberately over the