Sugarcoated Read online

  Sugarcoated

  Catherine Forde

  Copyright

  Sugarcoated

  Copyright © 2008 Catherine Forde

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher

  Egmont UK Ltd

  239 Kensington High Street

  London

  W8 6SA

  Visit our web site at www.egmont.co.uk

  First e-book edition 2010

  ISBN 978 1 4052 49355

  For Pauline

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part 1

  1 crumblies ahoy!

  2 through the glass

  3 questions, questions . . .

  4 sweet-talking guy

  5 clod’s first date

  6 nothing to wear

  7 the glasgow speakeasy

  8 dishing the family dirt

  9 to hell and beyond

  10 better safe than sorry

  11 stefan’s crib

  12 failed getaway

  13 doubting stefan

  14 rings on his fingers

  15 personal shopping

  16 ducking and diving

  17 the big man

  18 all day breakfast

  Part 2

  19 a cuppa with starsky and hutch

  20 the nicotine room

  21 shock tactics

  22 beauty parade

  23 off down under

  24 all by myself . . .

  25 dangerous mint

  26 open wide time

  27 missing links

  28 mind map

  29 hidden talent

  30 clod’s law

  31 sleepwalking

  32 sugarcoated

  33 this is it . . .

  part 1

  1

  crumblies ahoy!

  There I was, slumped over Dad’s appointment book. Doodling speccy faces to match the names in it. Trying not to die of boredom. Thinking nothing ever happens round here …

  Next thing, four palms thudded flat against Dad’s shop window. The racket jerked me so rigid the castors of my chair shot from under me. I landed on my backside behind the reception desk, legs in the air. OK. Soft landing. But hardly a flattering pose for a Big Girl. By the time I scrabbled upright the same four palms were splutting along the glass. Leaving smeary pawprints.

  ‘Crumblies Ahoy,’ I hissed; although to anyone looking in, my eyes were crinkled into crescents of joy. My expression was totally phoney, though. Forced. Because Dad insisted patients must be greeted with a friendly face.

  ‘Go away,’ I waved out at these two cotton tops, who were now peering in at me through circles they’d made for their eyes with their thumbs and index fingers. To watch me smiley-smiling, you’d think seeing old Mr and Mrs Mullen had made my day. Would never guess I was growling through my grin, ‘Just shuffle off and die you ancient –’

  ‘Yoo hoo, hen,’ Mrs Mullen’s quaver misted Dad’s glass. ‘Where’s the opticians? Canny see it.’

  I showed all my teeth.

  ‘Can you see this?’ I flicked the Mullens a vicky with the KitKat I’d be guzzling as soon as my dad toddled himself off for lunch.

  ‘Oi, behave yourself, Clod,’ Dad said to me.

  Shucking off the sad white coat he felt he needed to wear for staring into milky cataracts all day, Dad put himself between my scowl and his shop window. He kept his voice low. Finger a-wagging.

  ‘Let the old souls have their joke and keep smiling out till they bugger off,’ he told me. ‘Then clean my window. All righty!’ Putting on his professional smile and his outdoor jacket, Dad twitched the Mullens a palsy-walsy wink.

  ‘Mum leaves glass-wipes under the till,’ he instructed me with the same cheesy smile. ‘Make sure you lock the shop while you’re out cleaning. And no playing with my phones or breaking my computer. See you at two.’

  As he spoke, Dad was flinging the door open, his tone morphing from Claudia Quinn’s Bossy Pa to Mr Friendly Local Optician.

  ‘Well LOOK who’s here again! Always a sight for sore eyes. Get it? Sight? Sore eyes? Going my way?’ he boomed at the Mullens, steering them well clear of his shop. They were too busy beaming back at him to notice his pernickety head-jerk from me to the dirty window: Get cleaning, Clod!

  ‘Yeah. See you, Pa. Get it?’

  Before Dad was out of sight, I’d two KitKat fingers rammed into my mouth whole.

  Didn’t a gal deserve some pleasure?

  ‘Working here all sodding Saturday for twenty-five quid,’ I chewed. Where Dad found patience to deal with doddery gits like the Mullens I DID NOT KNOW. And my mum? She was even better. Always charming managing Dad’s practice and his brigade of blindos for more than twenty-five years. Grace itself.

  ‘By name and by nature,’ as Dad liked to wag about Mum. Always up for a bit of banter, she was. Always ready with a tasteful joke …

  Unlike me: Grace and Sean’s Utter Lost Cause Of A Daughter. Who frankly, could not be assed trying to be civil to folk so past it they didn’t even bother to switch their hearing aids on, let alone put in their false teeth.

  ‘Frigging twilight zone this place, so it is,’ I was muttering while I scuffed out the shop with glass-wipes in one hand and a second KitKat poking out my mouth. Naturally, I didn’t bother locking up like Dad warned. Get real.

  It wasn’t like some joker was going to make off with the till in the next thirty seconds. Not when the handprints I was wiping away counted as High Drama in Greenwood Shopping Centre.

  Deadsville, I scowled at my freshly gleaming reflection. Beyond myself I could see Dad stepping out in front of this big black off-road car thing. You know the kind yummy-mummies like to park on zigzags? D’you call it an SOB or STD or SUV … I don’t know, do I?

  Whatever, Dad made it brake hard so the Mullens could shuffle across the shopping centre car park at zero miles an hour. Dad, like he was their personal lollipop man, stayed with the Mullens till they reached the pavement. Whenever they said something, Dad threw his head back and roared and laughed. You’d think he was enjoying a private audience with Billy Connolly, instead of tolerating a couple of oldies drabber than their tartan shopping trolley, whose idea of hilarity was groping up to the window of Quinn’s Eyecare with their even drabber joke:

  ‘Help. I’ve lost my guide-dog.’

  For a change it wasn’t crumblies who mucked my Mr Sheeny window next. It was ‘yooths’ as the Mullens would say. And what’s really galling is that while I was out wiping off traces of the Mullens’ pawprints I thought I heard sniggering nearby. A voice snorting, ‘Check the state of that big lassie’s muffin top, man!’

  Being stupid, it didn’t cross my mind that moi could possibly be the source of mirth wafting from this trio whose white tracksuits glowed in the shadows of Gluehead Alley along from our shop.

  Stoners, I decided. Crackheads.

  Wrong.

  No sooner was I back behind reception tucking into a sultana scone than the white tracksuits lined up outside. I assumed they were showing off their combined mathematical skills to each other when they counted to three in turn. But then they gobbed. Smeared their tags in the dribbles:

  Big Eck. Rotty. Blotto.

  And skedaddled.

  As I belted out with the wipes again, taking a few token steps in pursuit then stopping to hurl a fruity mouthful of abuse instead – ‘Ya shower of trolls!’ – one of Dad’s more intrepid narcotic-dependent patients seized his moment.

  Six Armani frames for sale in the entire shop. T
his waster trousered them all.

  Dad would dock my wages for that one. To teach me a lesson: ‘What d’I tell you about leaving the practice unattended, Clod? Can’t you pay attention to one simple instruction?’

  Man, I was totally seething while I dabbed the window this second time. Manky it was. Never mind giving ASBOs to the white tracksuits. With phlegm that colour, at least two of them needed antibiotics.

  ‘Crap day. Only half over,’ I complained while I disinfected my hands in Dad’s back shop. Outside someone was trying the door.

  ‘Locked. Saturday. Ridiculous!’ A woman’s voice exclaimed. ‘Mr Quinn’s lassie phoned to say my specs were in. Never said Mr Quinn shut for lunch.’

  ‘Just scram, missus,’ I sniggered into the mirror at the round-faced ginger girl with a set of shop-keys between her teeth.

  I took my time – brushing my hair, checking for dandruff, dealing with a couple of blackheads – before I slipped back behind reception. Coast was clear outside. I’d peace to finish my scone.

  ‘Take five,’ I chuckled, keeping hunkered down, head tucked below the desk so the shop would look deserted to passing trade.

  As a thick layer of butter yielded to my teeth I dislodged a cluster of sultanas. Before they hit the floor I dived to save them.

  And for the third time that morning Dad’s window was walloped.

  2

  through the glass

  This time though, the glass was scudded with so much force that the fluorescent kiddie frames I’d taken half an hour of my life to stack into an artful pyramid, tumbled from their display.

  ‘Piss off,’ I tutted, edging on hands and knees to peek round the desk and check the state of the window. ‘You’ll crack m’dad’s glass, hitting it like tha-’ I was ready to pull myself upright. March outside. Give someone a bit of grief.

  Then I froze.

  A hand – Massive. Splayed. – was pressed to the window. Must have been leaning hard. Really hard. I could tell because both the fleshy base of the thumb and the fingertips were white. Almost fluorescent. Totally bled of colour. Especially in contrast to the dense gout of blood they were streaking as the hand slid down the glass. Slow-motion slow.

  ‘Oi –’

  That was the extent of my protest. My voice a bleat. That’s if I even spoke aloud. No idea.

  Such a rammy outside.

  Ten feet away.

  Telly screen distance.

  Maybe less.

  And so much blood.

  Slapped on the window like paint.

  Then so much violence.

  Real.

  A layer of glass from me.

  Thank Christ I’d locked the door.

  Because the next thing to hit the window was a man’s head.

  Full force it glanced the glass. Temple first. I watched long grey hair stranding the thick blood-splat. Pooling it wider. But only for the length of a blink. No sooner did I register that the muffled crack I’d heard was human skull-bone meeting something rigid – horrible, horrible, horrible sound – than two ringed hands gripped the head by the hairline. Yanked it back. Then slammed it even harder against the window. This time the impact dispersed blood like a gory sunburst. Only the centre of the window stayed unspattered. That’s where the man’s head …

  Would you listen to me? I nearly said rested. But only his eyeball made contact with the glass. It was mashed against it. Staring full open. Fishy. Unblinking. Fixed on the middle distance. Pupil downturned. Towards the floor. Staring. Right where I cowered.

  Staring back.

  Unblinking.

  We were eyeball to eyeball.

  ‘But he can’t see me. He won’t see me,’ my throat gurgled. Dry and strangled-sounding through my open mouth. Scone mulch was clogging the back of my tongue. But I didn’t dare swallow. Daren’t move.

  Crouched behind the desk, I prayed the eye still holding my gaze couldn’t really see me. Prayed that whoever I could hear whispering through the glass, ‘Help, please,’ wasn’t talking to me.

  Because two different eyes – heavy lidded, monobrow-shadowed – were at the window now.

  And a black-gloved fist was swiping the glass clear of blood so the new eyes could scan the shop.

  ‘Some bastard watching.’ Black Glove’s voice was a growl with a foreign accent. His words a threat; not a question.

  ‘No. Shop shut. Keep going.’ A different voice replied. Staccato. Also foreigny. But the hammer in the gloved hand rapped the window all the same.

  Lightly.

  Playfully almost, as a matching gloved hand lent shade to the eyes sweeping the shop. They narrowed on Dad’s vacant waiting area, darting from the reception desk to the blind racks of frames stretching one wall. Back to the desk. But they didn’t see me. Sure they didn’t see me. Coz I’m low down. Hidden. Not moving. I allowed myself a gulp of air. And then the hammer swung back from the glass.

  Oh not Dad’s window. That was my first thought.

  Don’t ask what my second one was. I don’t remember. Because I’ve never exactly seen, at close range, a man hit with a hammer.

  Have you?

  Across the back of the skull.

  Then on the neck.

  Then full in the face.

  That first blow splatted the victim against the window. Wumph! Chest striking first, followed by hands. Nose. Forehead. Chin. The second crack drove his mouth against the glass. Jeez Louise, I really hope the way this man’s eyes rolled up meant he was unconscious already, because when his full weight stonked the window, his teeth smashed against it.

  And I mean smashed.

  When he slid towards the ground his upper lip peeled away from his gums. He looked as if he was grinning at me through his own blood and saliva and broken teeth.

  ‘See this. And this. And this.’

  Three more times – Calm. Rhythmic. Like it really knew what it was doing – the black glove rose to pound at this man now slumped outside. He wasn’t moving.

  ‘This. This. This.’ The second foreigny voice repeated. Its accent was precise. Its tone, more excited than his accomplice’s, rose with each word. Practically squealing this other man was, as he bounced on tiptoes round the victim, light footed as a bantam weight. Filled the measured intervals between each hammer blow with a vicious, random kick.

  Thigh. Groin. Side. Ribs.

  Somehow, what he, the dancing man was doing, seemed worse to me than the hammering. His contact more personal.

  Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. I heard myself chant but I don’t know whether my voice or my head was speaking. My body was petrified. Literally.

  Otherwise I’d have shut my eyes or covered my face with my hands or fast-forwarded or changed over or switched off or flicked to teletext or turned away like I do whenever a violent scene begins on telly.

  But here I was: stone.

  And I witnessed everything.

  Wasn’t over yet, either.

  Before the attackers disappeared down Gluehead Alley, they heaved their victim away from the window. At least, they tried to, but he must have been too heavy for them to move, so they gave up. Flung him down in a crumple across the wheelchair ramp outside Dad’s shop. Used their heels to roll him on to his back, heedless when the dead weight of his head lolled behind his torso and cracked off the concrete. They straightened his legs. Spread his arms wide at his side. Smoothed his fingers out. It was all very, very matter of fact.

  Then Black Glove straddled him.

  ‘See this, dog?’ I heard him say, heavy accent almost pleasant. He raised the hammer over his head with both hands. Gave his accomplice a nod.

  ‘Hands off. Boss says.’

  As the foreigny voice hissed, Black Glove drove his weapon into the left hand of the man beneath him. His full weight coming down with it. When Black Glove raised the hammer again, I managed to force my eyes shut. Didn’t watch the hammer fall. Heard it land, though. Won’t ever forget the sound.

  ‘Yes, hands off.’

  This t
ime Black Glove gave the warning.

  When I opened my eyes, both attackers were gone.

  3

  questions, questions …

  ‘So who phoned the police?’

  ‘Ambulance?’

  ‘Went out to see if the bloke on the ground was alive?’

  Questions. Questions. Nothing but in the couple of hours after the attack. Most of them bouncing back and forth outside Dad’s shop. That’s where an arthritic semi-circle gathered to mutter round the mound of unconscious man. Remained long after he was bagged and splinted and stretchered and sirened to hospital. This sounds sick, given what had just happened, but there was a real upbeat vibe to these rubberneckers. Pensioners the lot of them. From inside the shop I heard them shouting into each other’s hearing aids, cheerily post-morteming what had just happened.

  Or what they thought had just happened:

  ‘That fella on the ground had a gun in each hand, did you see?’

  No. There was no gun.

  ‘And what about that blade yon skinny bloke flashed?’

  What blade?

  ‘Serrated, wasn’t it?’

  That man was attacked by a hammer.

  ‘Aye, giant teeth on it.’

  Bollocks.

  ‘Fishing knife, maybe?’

  Get yourself in here for an eye test.

  ‘And the bloke with the hammer? A blackie, wasn’t he?’

  You colour blind now? He was white. Same as the other fella. One thickset and dark, wearing black gloves, the other slight and fair. Chav rings on all his fingers. I saw both men, remember? I witnessed everything.

  For the usual clientele of Greenwood Shopping Centre, two thugs hammering lumps out of someone else was a major novelty. Not only did it provide fresh blood for entertainment instead of fake telly gore, but, even better, Scene of Crime Officers who weren’t actors in real life kept piling out of vans, stepping into noddy suits, and swarming about the place. Sure beat your full Sky package on the box!

  Normally round here, apart from truants pilfering Kwiksave, the odd car window being panned, and occasional junkies knocking Dad’s stock to sell in the pub for a ten quid wrap of temporary happiness, crimes were mainly committed when the shops were shuttered. All my dad’s patients safe in their high-rises watching murders on C.S.I. That was when the dodgem-like opening hours chaos of Greenwood’s car park morphed from crammed to tumbleweed deserted. Then the area became a no-go zone; its traffic-free concourse an arena for Buckfast-fuelled stand-offs between local teenage gangs, its doorways the business premises of dealers and their clients.