Page 100 of Blow Down (The Plumber's Mate)
He chuckled. “Don’t matter what I believe. Sharp’s satisfied, so who am I to argue? You want the girl to go down for shooting that turd?”
Well, when he put it like that . . .
There was another snuffle, then a tiny cry, which rapidly turned into a full-on wail from the direction of the padawan in Pampers. Dave unstrapped him from the car seat and picked the little mite up in his big hands, smiling fondly. “Oi, now, we’ll have none of this, my lad. Anything you say will be taken down and used in evidence against you.”
I shot Phil a worried glance. “Think he’s hungry?” I asked Dave.
“Nah, he’s just making sure we haven’t forgotten he’s here, aren’t you, champ?” Dave patted the tiny back a few times, and the crying subsided. “Want to hold him?” he asked me out of the blue.
“Uh . . . Thought you were worried about concussion?”
“Just stay sitting down and you’ll be fine. Here you go.” He bent down to hand me Southgate junior and laughed. “Christ, don’t look so bloody terrified. They’re harder to break than you think.”
They were? I was having trouble believing it, desperately trying not to hold on either too tight or too loose. This kid weighed less than Merlin. He probably weighed less than Merlin’s dinner.
“Put him up against your shoulder. He likes that.”
Slowly, carefully, I lifted the kid up, holding his tiny head ’cos even I knew that much about babies. He snuffled warmly into my shoulder, smelling of nonbiological washing powder and the barest hint of wet nappy. He didn’t cry again. I could hardly believe I was holding an actual little person.
I certainly couldn’t believe he’d got half his DNA from Dave.
I glanced over at Phil, and the way he was looking at me made my chest go tight. The poker face had slipped, and he was blinking a lot faster than he normally did.
Then Dave burst out laughing, the insensitive git. “Better watch out, Paretski—looks like your bloke’s got his heart set on a shotgun wedding.”
With my hands full of our nation’s future, I couldn’t make the rude gesture I wanted to.
Luckily, Phil did it for me.
Gary and Darren popped in to see us midafternoon. We’d actually been supposed to be going for a pub lunch with them that day—Darren knew a place out Berko way that apparently did a great Sunday roast with all the trimmings—but given the events of the day before, we’d cried off, giving minimal details.
So naturally, Gary wanted to hear the full story from the horse’s mouth, as they say.
Speaking of which . . . “Any news about your hobby horse?” I asked, as we lounged around in my living room, Phil having given them the short ’n’ snappy version of events.
He was better at that than I was. Came from writing case reports, I reckoned.
Gary raised an eyebrow. “Oh, that? Yes, it all came out last night in the pub. In vino, as they say, veritaserum.”
“Veritas,” Phil corrected.
Gary gave him a look that strongly suggested Phil could take that and shove it up his (verit)arse. “Anyway, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, it turned out that a certain lady who shall remain nameless but is, however, not Mrs. Hobby had been harbouring a secret desire to emulate Catherine the Great.”
“You what?”
He sighed. “Russian monarch? Famed for, shall we say, a somewhat excessive fondness for our equine friends?”
“You what?”
This time I got the full eye roll. “Horse fucking, darling. Horse. Fucking.”
Darren sniggered, then shook his head solemnly. “We get a lot of that.”
I stared at him. “Horse fucking?”
“Nah, Morris dancing groupies. Women what get all excited when they hear the jingle of a man’s bells. Me, I have to beat ’em off with a stick.”
I swallowed. He was winding me up, right?
