David Jack Smith
Kevin Fuchs Esquire
4
‘So—you in or you out? What the fuck’s it gonna be then, love?’
This was it. Ringland prison. Not quite the point of no return, that would come later. But it was it, none-the-less.
Melody stared at Aaron Fuchs, her recently discovered distant relative—sixth cousins thrice removed, or something. That made him family, of sorts.
She glanced up at the C.C.T.V. cameras, paranoid that an operator was watching her right now. Zooming in on her alone, because this God-like watcher could sense she was thinking about bad things. About doing bad things.
‘Yeah, don’t worry ’bout them. No sound. Put yer hand over yer mouth, like this—
Aaron scratched his nose with his index finger, then held the hand in place so his palm masked his lips.
—case youse was worried ’bout lip-reading.’
Melody hadn’t been worried until then. She complied and mirrored Aaron.
‘Yes.’
‘Sorry girl. Didn’t ’ear yer.’
Melody cleared her throat. ‘Yes. I’ll do it. I’m in, so to speak.’
‘So to fucken speak? This ain’t no fucken Home Counties game girl. Kevin told me youse was strong. That sounds fucken weak to me. Can’t be doin’ wiv weak.’
Six weeks after Melody surfaced from her dreamless sleep, Ms. Soresh allowed her to leave St. Michael’s. One proviso—well, there were a few, but this was the biggie: Melody had to stay with someone able to care for her twenty-four-seven, for the foreseeable future. Her younger, only sister Ruth would not take no for an answer. Ruth and husband Gerald had the big house in Totteridge, so there was plenty of room. The huge garden was serene and quiet and perfect for Melody to recuperate. After nearly two years lying immobile in a hospital bed, muscles wither and shrink. Endurance collapses.
Ruth and Gerald’s baby girl was on her way in few months to join little Freddy. And while Ruth understood this was going to be a painful reminder of her big sister’s loss, nothing could be done about that. The house was not far from Golders Green Jewish cemetery, where Ruth had the body of her niece interred in the Jewish tradition.
Melody’s fiancée, and Charity’s step-dad, was Paul McRae. His Catholic parents took Paul back to his home town in Northern Ireland.
Both the Fox girls’ parents had been secularly and culturally Jewish. Not that religiously inclined, except for the traditional days. Melody had followed that path, but Ruth had rediscovered her faith in her late teens and was fully observant.
As her sister lay close to death in St. Michael’s hospital, her niece lay in cold storage seven floors below in the basement—the location of Scotland Yard’s Forensics Post Mortem Complex. Gerald moved heaven and earth to enable the family to bury Charity as quickly as the police formalities allowed.
May her memory be a blessing.
Melody kept telling herself that every time she visited her lost girl. Daily for the first few weeks. But that couldn’t go on forever.
’It’s you, it’s you, it’s all for you
Everything I do
I tell you all the time
Heaven is a place on earth with you—’
Nobody dared utter the words moving on, but her family were quietly concerned. Melody decided to cut down, visit Charity twice a week. She walked the two miles to the cemetery to build up her strength. It took a lot out of her, but she managed to reduce the walking time from two hours to an hour. She still had to get the bus back. Her next goal was to walk there and back again. Total Bilbo.
Melody had noticed the bloke a few times during the period of daily visits. He was standing in front of a headstone situated about thirty yards away from Charity. She caught him glancing her way more than once. Then she changed her visit pattern and he seemed to disappear. Melody assumed their visits no longer coincided, and thought no more of him. Until—
Looking up from her daughter’s headstone, the gangly stranger was striding quickly towards her.
Bloody Nora. What’s he want? Can’t be doing with this.
She contemplated turning tail and leaving, but that was ridiculous. It was a cemetery not a bar.
He waved at her. ‘Hi.’
Too late now, he was at her side.
‘Wotcha. Sorry love, didn’t mean to scare ya.’
‘You didn’t.’
‘Okay then. Fantastico. Great. Kevin Fuchs. Eff. You. Sea. Haitch. Ess. Spelt like you know what, but pronounced Fooks. Kevin Fuchs, Esquire, of this parish, et cetera et cetera, ad infinitum.’
Kevin stuck out his right hand. It was rough, grimy, calloused. Not at all like the hands she was used to shaking.
‘Melody. Melody Fox. You know Fuchs is German for Fox, right?’
‘Course I knows darling. S’why I been keen to make your acquaintance.’
Melody sipped from the mug of hot, strong black coffee as she carefully assessed Kevin Fuchs, Esquire, of this parish, et cetera et cetera, ad infinitum. Her instant appraisal was Hitchhikers-esque: definitely odd-ball, mainly harmless.
They had walked slowly to Nell’s Kitchen, a re-imagined transport café on Golders Green High Street. Melody steeling herself for the usual so sorry, terrible thing, what can I say, how are you coping and all the other banalities well-meaning people said. But he didn’t press beyond the initial platitudes.
As Melody sipped, Kevin was munching into his free range bacon butty, slathered in organic tomato ketchup—yes, that was its advertised name. She guessed that, like herself, Kevin wasn’t strictly kosher these days.
‘So basically you don’t know nothing about the black sheep side of the Fuchs family then? All the reprobates and ne’er-do-wells like meself.’
A memory—a fragment of Melody’s past—which had been stored safely away, popped right into her head.
‘When I was a kid, about eight, we did this genealogy project at school. Dad digs out these huge photograph albums from a massive trunk stored away somewhere, which I don’t think he’d even looked at properly. Photos going back, what, must have been a hundred years. There was one, very formal, severe, a couple and their six kids, two boys, four girls, from nineteen oh one I think—’
‘Nineteen oh one. VR. Victoria Regina, like ER is Elizabeth Regina, and Charles will be CR on the red post boxes, et cetera. Yeah, they was your great-great-grandparents David and Rebecca Fuchs. Mine too. Was a tailor, very good one by all accounts. Probably wearing one of his own suits in that photo. Anyways, they departs toots-de-sweets from Germany, near the Polish border. Very bad news for us Jews over there, it was. Probably still is. Nasty fuckers, pardon my French.’
‘I work uh—worked with the military. Feel free to fuck away till the cows come home.’
‘Long story short, them two little boys you saw in the pic, Aaron and Isaac, well Isaac studies hard, becomes a doctor, real mensch, respectable like. David and Rebecca couldn’t be happier. Your side of the family. Then there was the massive irrevocable split, like Moses parting the Red Sea.’
‘Biblical.’
‘Totally. Aaron, well see, he’s just your natural born villain from the off in short pants. Brought shame on the family. Sociopath right? Youse a head doctor, a shrink, clever like, you know this shit I bet.’
Melody smiled. She liked Kevin. ‘Yes, I have the head doctor label to my name. Not that sort of practicing psychiatrist, but today, yes, he could be classed as a sociopath.’
Kevin stuffed in another bite from his bacon butty. ‘Knew it. So by the mid-twenties, roaring twenties they called ’em, Aaron Fuchs, he’s like this East End gang Kaiser. Thirty, forty guys at least on the payroll. Coppers on the take. Docks all covered. Goods in, good out, all gets sliced. Ins with the unions.’
‘Sounds like a business.’
‘Family business. Still is to some extent. Father to son to son. Like the bible says, Aaron begat Abraham who begat another Aaron blah de begat de blah.’
‘Where do you begat into this family tree Kevin?’
‘Very low hung fruit is me. That original Kaiser Aaron who begat Abraham, Abe the Yid as he was not so affectionately known, after the second war, well Abe also begat another nine others. One of them my granddad, Michael.’
‘Good grief, how many Fuchs are there?’
‘A lot love. A fuchs lot. Ha-ha-ha. You should come meet.’
‘Not such good company these days.’
‘Don’t have to be at Shabbat. My great-grandmother, let’s see, she’ll be like your great-great Aunt Sharon. Great something anyway. Aged ninety. The Fuchs matriarch. Holds forth every Friday night.’
Kevin popped the final bit of the free range bacon butty into his mouth. As he chomped down, he caught Melody’s knowing smile.
‘If you ever do come, for crying out loud in your sleep, don’t let me great-grandma know I ain’t keeping kosher. Life won’t be worth living even worse than now.’