Risking It All by Ann Granger Page A

the wriggling Bonnie and made for the yard door and my garage home before Hari could ask me any questions, like, how much longer was I going to be there. How was I to know? It was beginning to look like indefinitely.
     
     
    In the circumstances I had decided it might not be the best thing to eat with Hari and Ganesh in the flat that evening. However, Ganesh, who pretty well always guesses how my mind is working, came down to the garage when they’d shut up shop at eight, and suggested we went out for a bite to eat. We ended up in Reekie Jimmie’s baked spud café because it was near at hand, certainly not because Jimmie’s baked potatoes were anything your average gastronome would want to write about. The best you could say about it was that it was warm in there. In fact there was a real old fug, what with the odours of cooking and hot greasy dishwater, to say nothing of the smell of the fags Jimmie nipped out to smoke in the corridor behind the counter area, the smoke from which seeped in through the half-open door. That evening he had on offer the usual four fillings: vegetarian (baked beans); chilli (baked beans with a token amount of meat); cheese (rubbery); tuna with sweetcorn (a lot of sweetcorn and very little fish). Gan asked for vegetarian and I had the tuna, even though all that sweetcorn tended to give me wind.
     
    ‘Haven’t seen you in a while, hen,’ said Jimmie reproachfully, ladling beans over a blackened spud.
     
    We muttered excuses and carried our potatoes to the far corner, which took us out of Jimmie’s orbit but put us directly under the piped music.
     
    ‘When are you thinking of going to see your mother again?’ Gan asked. ‘Only I’ve got to let Dilip know if I want to borrow his car.’
     
    ‘Perhaps tomorrow,’ I said. I could at least let her know that I’d an address for the Wildes. Pity it was so far away. This was an exercise requiring time and money, and I was short of both.
     
    We made conversation on a variety of subjects, skirting round the one uppermost in my mind and Gan’s suspicions that I was getting into something over my head, as usual.
     
    Business had slowed. Jimmie left his counter and drifted towards us. He wore checked chef’s pants and a whitish jacket. His hair must once have been red but had paled to a speckled grey and hamster ginger. Rumours about Jimmie were numerous, but you couldn’t check any of them. He was said to be an ex-bank robber, to have two wives and several children in Scotland, to have played professional football, and, the most unlikely, to be a criminal mastermind who used the spud café as a front. This I found hard to believe, because he spent most of his time in the café, and if you had any money, would you do that? I suspected the rumours were started by Jimmie himself just to keep the punters coming in.
     
    He seated himself uninvited. ‘All right?’ he enquired.
     
    We took this as wanting to know if the food had been satisfactory and assured him it had. Well, it had been as good as we’d expected it would be, which was not very, but then you couldn’t say it had failed expectations either.
     
    Jimmie leaned forward to impart a confidence. ‘Spuds have gone out of fashion, you know, hen. Right, aye?’ He nodded towards Ganesh.
     
    Ganesh, appealed to as an authority on the capital’s eating habits, said cautiously, ‘Depends.’
     
    ‘No, no, you take it from me. I’ve been thinking of turning this place into a pizza joint, you know?’
     
    At the thought of the same spud fillings spread on pizza bases, I probably blanched. ‘There are a lot of pizza places about, Jimmie,’ I said. ‘At least this place is – is different.’
     
    ‘Aye, but that’s because they’re popular!’ he returned wistfully. ‘That’s what the public wants. I thought, mebbe paint the place up, make it look a wee bit Eye-talian. Hang some of those fancy bottles on the walls. Table service. You wanting a job?’ This was aimed at