The Wrong Hands by Mark Billingham

Author:Mark Billingham [Billingham, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-06-19T16:00:00+00:00

THIRTY-FIVE

The launch of the ‘Bardsley’s Bangers’ range three days before had gone more or less as well as could be expected. Better than Frank had thought it would, considering that he’d been so distracted by Maureen’s foul mood and therefore unable to give his bangers the attention they deserved. On and on at him she’d been, for bloody days now. She kept insisting that he wasn’t giving her enough time or consideration even when he tried to tell her that these weren’t exactly normal circumstances. Trying to keep his temper, he’d explained that right now he was having to consider if he’d ordered sufficient sausage meat and consider why a huge shipment of brioche baguettes was currently sitting in the back of a truck at Dover; all this on top of a horrendous situation in Blackburn where there seemed to be a calamitous shortage of ketchup and mustard.

‘I don’t give a tuppenny stuff about your ketchup,’ she’d said. ‘Or your mustard.’ This was a few minutes ago in the kitchen.

‘Please, Maureen.’

‘Am I not more important to you than a bit of bloody sausage meat?’

‘It’s more than a bit, love—’

‘I’ve had enough, Frank … I’ve had it up to here.’ Maureen had slumped against the worktop and begun sniffling and no amount of comforting or reassurance from Frank had seemed to make any difference.

Eventually she’d begun shouting again, and when Frank tried to tell her that they could definitely go away together – somewhere luxurious for at least a couple of weeks – just as soon as the condiments situation had sorted itself out, Maureen had lost it altogether. Things might have got even nastier had his phone not rung while Maureen was ranting about playing second fiddle to an oversized hot dog, and Frank had discovered who was calling.

He’d immediately slapped his hand across the handset. ‘I really need to take this.’

His wife was still shouting about sausages as Frank hurried away down the corridor, closed his office door behind him and sat down to focus on his phone conversation.

‘I’m all yours, Mr Cutler.’

‘Call me Wayne for God’s sake,’ Cutler said, chuckling. ‘We can dispense with formalities, can’t we? Things being as they are.’

‘You sound a bit … echoey,’ Frank said. ‘Are you in a toilet?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘Good, because I’m not sure I’d be comfortable with that.’

‘I just thought we should have a quick natter—’

‘You’re not recording this, are you?’

‘I’ve got you on speaker, Frank,’ Cutler said. ‘That’s all.’

‘Fair enough.’ Frank leaned forward to straighten the ‘Lancashire’s Best Burger’ award which he’d now won three years on the bounce and which had his name engraved on the faux-marble plinth. It wasn’t the prettiest trophy he’d ever seen, but he was fiercely proud of it. ‘What did you mean, “things being as they are”?’

Cutler laughed again. ‘Oh, come on, Frank. The Panaides business. I know you think I was responsible for what happened to him.’

‘You’re not seriously going to deny it, are you?’

‘Well, I’m hardly going to admit it, am I? For all I know you might be the one recording this conversation.

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