Page 27 of Blow Down (The Plumber's Mate)
“Ooh, yes.” Gary beamed. “After all, you don’t want to leave it—”
“Too late,” I finished for him. “I know, all right? I know.”
I was glad to get back to work on Monday, if I’m honest. Had a mare of a job sorting out a blockage at one of those big, posh houses on London Road—God knows what the cowboys who put the original plumbing in were thinking. They put in some of the pipes so the water literally had to run uphill, and when I took off the bath panel to have a butcher’s, there was all kinds of old crap they’d just shoved in there rather than clear up after ’emselves. Including—I kid you not—someone’s greasy sandwich wrapper, still with a mummified apple core inside.
Mr. K. sent it a look of betrayal. “They seemed like such nice young men. Always polite. And they did the job so quickly too.”
I did my best for the bloke—unblocked the pipe and tidied up a bit—but I told him straight, the same thing was gonna keep happening unless he had a total refit including raising the bath. I could tell he thought I was just trying to screw him for some extra work.
Maybe if I’d bodged the job so I could do it in half the time and thrown in a few sirs, he’d have given it to me.
The rest of the day was your bog-standard stuff, mostly involving, heh, bogs. New siphon on one and a leak on the other—sort of jobs I could do in my sleep, which was just as well considering my eyelids were a bit on the heavy side after the previous night. I had to stifle a yawn as I waited for Mrs. G. to write out a cheque in shaky old-lady handwriting.
“You look like you could use an early night, dear,” she said as she handed it over. “New baby, is it?”
She was eyeing my ring finger like it meant something it didn’t. And yeah, I guess it looked like I was wearing a wedding band, but seriously, did questions of right and left have no meaning to anyone these days? “Uh, no. I haven’t got any kids. Just didn’t sleep well, ta.”
“No children? Well, don’t leave it too late. You want to be young enough to enjoy them.”
Cheers, love. Just what I needed—a reminder of another conversation me and Phil hadn’t quite got round to.
Phil was busy on his identity-theft case, so I ate my tea alone. Even the cats had buggered off somewhere. They sloped back in just as I was on my way out to meet Dave, presumably to make sure I wasn’t trying to sneak off without filling their food bowls, as if I’d do anything that daft. I prefer my legs skin on, ta very much.
I beat Dave to the White Hart by around thirty seconds, and we were both early. Not that early has to mean desperate to get out of the house, of course.
“You’re lucky you caught me on a free night,” he said as he parked his considerable arse on the barstool next to mine. “What with all the bloody antenatal classes and pregnancy massage and all that bollocks. I ask you, why’s she got to bother with all that this time round?”
I shrugged. It wasn’t exactly my area of expertise. “Dunno, mate. They changed the procedure since you had the first two?”
Dave and his wife married young and popped out a couple of kids in their early twenties. Dave and Jen, I mean, although come to think of it their kids were now also in their early twenties and therefore old enough to be this latest sprog’s parents. Both had been living away from home for a few years now. Maybe I should ask Dave to give Phil’s mum some tips.
I hadn’t really thought about it before, but it must be weird growing up with your dad a copper. Must be like dad squared, when it came to underage drinking and the odd herbal cigarette. Not that I’d ever done a right lot of either, but I didn’t kid myself I was in the majority here.
Dave laughed and patted his belly. There was a fair amount of it to pat. “Can’t you tell? It’s the dads what have ’em now, like bloody seahorses.”
I grinned. “Your Jen not still giving you grief about the diet, then?”
“Too bloody knackered to give a toss. She’s spent the summer with her feet up, going Get this bloody thing out of me. Says she’d kill for a rum and Coke too.”
Cheers, mate. A flashback to Vi saying I could bloody kill her made me shudder, but I s’posed it was as good a way as any of introducing the topic of the day. “So are we gonna talk about this murder?”
Dave sighed. “Better buy me a pint, then, hadn’t you? And a packet of salt ’n’ vinegar, while you’re at it.”
A skinny barmaid with creepily perfect makeup and bleached-blonde hair took our order. “You new here, love?” I asked, ’cos I hadn’t seen her before.
“Yes. Since two weeks.” Her accent was foreign—German, maybe?
I caught Dave giving me a sly look. “Bloody foreigners,” he muttered when she went over to the other side of the bar to use the till. “Coming over here, taking our jobs, impregnating our women—”
“Har bloody har,” I told him, sticking up a finger and swivelling it gently at him.
Dave cackled, and the barmaid gave us a funny look. “Private joke,” I told her, in case her hearing was sharper than Dave had given her credit for.
We took our pints over to a secluded table (not hard to find on a Monday night) and sat down.
“So, you spoken to your mates in St. Leonards?”
Dave nodded. “Yep. Rang ’em up and offered them the scoop on one Tom Paretski. Course, they were well disappointed when I told ’em you were a local bloody celebrity round our way, tripping over bodies both dead and alive left, right, and bloody centre.”
