Ali launched into another round of heartfelt apologies, threats against the life of whichever ‘Lowlife scumbag’ had done this to her boy and promises that she’d deal with Jimmy.
Carlton – at this last point – shook his head. “No, Mum. It’s gone past the time for you – or me – to deal with Jimmy. This is police business.”
He looked at me for support, and I agreed with him. “The guy’s out of control, Ali. You’ve got murder, threats, arson, maiming and burglary. I don’t think this is something that any of us can handle. Let the professionals deal with it.”
Ali shook her head. “They’ll wag a finger at him. Nothing ever sticks to him. He’s like the devil.”
“Ali,” I beseeched her, “he’s a nasty, brutish thug who’s blighted your life. And this time he’s gone too far. We can talk to the police. I bet – if he was involved in that robbery – they’re looking for him,” I said. “That would be a start.”
But Ali shook her head. “Nobody ever knew who did that job,” she said. “I only knew cos he turned up here and started demanding I get the bastard who took his share of the proceeds.”
“He’s not the devil, Ali,” I insisted, but she just shook her head like a woman defeated.
Carlton sipped his tea and stared at her over the rim of the mug. “Mum,” he said, at length, causing her to look up at him, her red-rimmed eyes softening just for seeing his face, “I know this much. He’s never going to hurt you again. I promise.”
And putting down his mug, he lifted her right hand in both of his, brought it to his lips – swollen and split – and kissed it gently.
“Never,” he said again, with a fire in his eyes.
NINETEEN
The ASBO twins arrived for their evening shift at about 5:00 p.m. and I immediately noted that Dash, like Carlton, had a bruised face and scraped knuckles.
“I fell over,” he said flatly when I asked about the source of his injuries.
“Repeatedly, by the looks of it,” Caz said, wincing as she inspected the damage. “I’m not sure how pleasing our regulars’ll find the view for the next few days,” she opined, “but we could always do a pugilistic theme night. Have you got any boxing gloves?” she asked me in the same tone she might have asked, say, a fashion stylist whether they had a pink Chanel suit in their Jackie Kennedy dress-up box.
“Oh yeah, sure,” I muttered, “I keep them next to my shin pads and hockey mask.”
“Don’t be sarcastic, dear,” Caz shot back, “it ages you. And talking of age and beauty,” she said, turning her attention back to Dash, “you, my boy, should give that broken-hearted little woman over there,” she nodded towards where Ali was skulking on the other side of the bar, as though she had no right to be involved in our conversation with Dash and Ray, “a hug and tell her how you feel.”
Dash blushed to his roots. “I dunno what you’re on about,” he muttered, looking blindly around the bar.
“Mate,” Ray clapped him on the shoulder, eliciting a wince of pain, “there are people in comas on the other side of the planet who know what she means.”
Dash settled his eyes on Ali, who glanced at him, smiled and went back to studiously polishing a glass that was in danger of being worn back, by the sheer power of her effort, to smears and sand.
“I’m not her type,” Dash said sadly.
“How do you know if you never say how you feel?” Caz asked.
“Because she likes Jimmy fucking Carter,” Dash announced, a sudden flash of fury in his voice.
“Idiot,” Caz punched him gently in the shoulder, getting another wince. “She’s afraid of Jimmy Carter. She loathes the man. I think, once upon a time, she might have endured him. But I don’t think she has ever liked him. But you know what I think she does like? Kindness.”
Dash blushed. “She’s too old for me,” he muttered.
“Says the rest of the world,” Caz answered.
“Says you,” he shot back.
“I mentioned age and beauty, it’s true,” she answered, “because they are simple facts. Not because I think either of them – her age or the fact that her beauty is less obvious than yours – a reason for the two of you to carry on this ludicrous pretence of disinterest for a second longer. Now, you can at least ask her how she’s doing. If she wants a cup of tea or – I don’t know – what do working class people like you two drink? A milk stout or something?” and so saying, she gave him a gentle shove and watched till, his blush suffusing even the back of his neck, Dash walked, like a man approaching the gallows, towards Ali.
Then turning her gaze towards me, Caz raised a perfectly-plucked eyebrow and pursed her lips. “And what, Mr Bird, is the source of that smirk?” she demanded.
“You,” I said straight out. “Since when did you start turning into Clare Rayner?”
“Watch it,” she smiled, “or I’ll start advising you on your own romantic situation. That pretty policeman’s not going to sit around waiting for you to get some sense and bury your misplaced pride forever, you know.”
“I know,” I smiled back at her, “which is why he’s coming around here this evening.”
“At your invite?” she asked eagerly.
“At my invite,” I nodded, “to talk.”
“Well,” Caz smiled happily, “all’s well with the world. God’s back in his heaven and you, my boy, can get back into that kitchen and drag out the decent gin, because the stuff you’ve been feeding me lately has clearly had something wrong with it. How else to explain this,” she moued disgustedly, as though experiencing a repulsive aftertaste, “empathy I’ve taken to feeling.”
From behind her, Ray coughed discretely. “Not entirely sure that all’s well with the world,” he said gravely.
“What news from the Rialto?” Caz asked, turning to him.
“Our fat mate called me this morning,” he said, beckoning us towards a quiet corner. “His friends visited your friend in the early hours of the morning. They found the venue somewhat short of pickings.”
Caz, an expression of puzzlement on her face, stared blankly from Ray to me and back.
“In short, the mission,” Ray continued, “whilst accomplished, accomplished very little.”
“Wait,” Caz held a hand up, addressing me rather than Ray, “are you also hearing a string of words which make absolutely no sense whatsoever?”
“He’s talking in euphemisms,” I said.
“Well thank God for that, I thought he was talking in tongues. Why,” she asked, addressing herself, now, to Ray, “aren’t you talking in English? Plain. Simple. English.”
“Because,” the unbruised twin replied, “I’m discussing illegal activity.”
“With the two people who instigated said activity.”
Ray frowned, processed her words and nodded. “Fair point,” he acknowledged.
“So, they broke in,” Caz prompted, and Ray nodded.
“And there was nothing there,” he finished.
“Nothing?” Caz frowned again, her confusion resurging. “Explain.” She held a hand up to stop him as he opened his mouth. “In plain English.”
“Well, when they gained access,” Ray began.
“And you will note,” Caz added, “I have still not asked how, exactly, this was effected.”
“It was effected,” Ray deadpanned, “via the use of a euphemism. And a crowbar.”
“Charming. So they gained access,” Caz prompted.
“And there was nothing there.”
“Yes,” Caz snapped, her impatience beginning to show, “we’ve already had that line. It makes it sound like the entire building had evaporated.”
“Oh, no,” Ray assured her, “the building was there. There was chairs and pictures and coffee tables with magazines on them, an’ all that shit. But there was nothing anyone might possibly want to pinch. No laptops, no desktops, just a bunch of generic furniture and an empty filing cabinet. Nothing.”
“But I don’t understand,” Caz frowned. “Where’s
he keeping the evidence if there’s nothing there?”
Ray smiled at her. “And we’re back to age and beauty,” he said, receiving, for his words a squint of warning from Caz.
“Explain,” she said.
“Nobody, these days, needs to keep physical artefacts with them ever. Books, CDs, files of blackmail ammunition. It’s all in the cloud.”
“And we’re back to euphemisms,” Caz answered, before frowning again.
“Look,” Ray explained, “I’m guessing from your confusion that you’re of an age that assumes everything has to be physical, but the beauty of Lowe’s data management approach – if I’m right – is that he can go anywhere, be anywhere, travel in just his boxers if he needs to, and still have access to the dirt he’s collected on his victims.”
Caz smiled fondly at Ray. “I’ve always liked you, Raymond. You’re pretty, and smart. But not too smart. But this latest news – and your clear admiration for the loathsome Mr Lowe – are causing me, right now, to reconsider my admiration.”
“No, hear me out,” he interrupted. “Lowe’s smart. He’s got to know that sooner or later one of his blackmail victims will call his bluff, decide that they don’t care about whatever damage his evidence does to them and call the cops. Then, he’ll be raided and filing cabinets full of photos and tapes and – I don’t know – spunk-stained dresses, whatever, would not only cook his goose, but also wipe out most of his stock in trade.
“So my guess is that as soon as he’s got his victims on the hook, the evidence is converted to data, uploaded to the cloud and burned. Now, he can play the tapes of your brother’s conversation any time he wants by accessing the recordings from a private – and presumably anonymous – account in the cloud and just streaming them.”
“A sort of Black Spotify,” I said, and received a despairing look from Caz.
“You had to, didn’t you?” she asked, before returning to Ray. “So what are we going to do?”
Ray shrugged. “Not entirely sure, but I’ve got a mate.”
He stopped talking mid-sentence, his gaze fixing over Caz’s shoulder, the blood draining from his face and, on turning around, I discovered the source of his sudden attack of nerves.
The pub door had opened and into the bar had stepped two uniformed PCs.
Then into the pub stepped Detective Constable Nick Fisher.
I smiled, remembered we weren’t supposed to be friendly to each other, reshaped my face to a flat impassivity and stepped forward, making eye contact with him momentarily before he tore his gaze from me, directed it at the far side of the bar and, turning his back on me, walked over to Ali.
I crossed the room as he reached the bar and introduced himself to Ali who sniffed, straightened her spine, stared him straight in the face and advised him that she not only knew who he was, but that, “We’ve met before.”
Nick froze, at just the moment I arrived next to him.
“Everything okay?” I asked, feigning a bright and breezy tone as dread crept up my legs.
“Not really,” Nick responded, glancing from me to Ali and back. “Is there somewhere private we could talk?”
“The kitchen,” I said, as Ali – dropping a slice of lemon into a G & T, handing the drink to a customer and, with a nod, indicating that Dash should complete the order and accept payment – walked, wiping her hands on her t-shirt, towards the gap at the back of the bar.
“What’s going on?” I asked Nick as the two of us, his uniformed back-up in attendance, followed her.
Nick, his jaw set tightly, glanced sideways at me. “My least favourite part of the job,” he said, “is what’s going on.”
We made our way to the kitchen where Ali stood, her back to the industrial cooker, her arms crossed defensively, her face fixed in the angry scowl that I’d come to recognise as her habitual defence against both authority and disappointment.
“What’s going on?” she echoed my query.
“Mrs Carter,” Nick began and, before he could get another word out, the kitchen door flew open, slammed against his straight-backed, impassive-faced cohorts, throwing them forward until their outstretched arms stopped their journey against the kitchen table.
All eyes turned to the kitchen doorway where Dash and Carlton, looking like a couple of Conor McGregor tribute acts, stood half in and half out, a mixture of emotions playing across each of their faces.
The two stepped into the room, offering guilty apologies to the two constables, looking at Ali, me and Nick and, as one, echoing – as if it had become some sort of popular refrain – the words, “What’s going on?”
Nick glanced nervously from the two newcomers to me, to Ali, licked his lips and, seeming to decide that diving in was better than delaying the moment, said, “I’m sorry, Mrs Carter, to be the bearer of this news but I have to advise you that the River Patrol pulled a man’s body from the Thames today and that, further to the inspection of various documents on said body, we have reason to believe that the body belongs to your husband James Carter.
“I am therefore,” he continued, as Ali gasped, unfolded her arms and staggered backwards, her arse catching the switch on the cooker and filling the kitchen with the smell of gas and the sound of a flint ignitor failing to catch, “asking you to accompany my colleagues and I to a facility at which you will be asked to confirm the identity of the deceased.”
Ali, caught in the gas-scented, click-filled moment, stared at the assembled in confusion, her hand clapped squarely across her heart, before saying, “Oh thank Christ; I thought you were here about my telly licence…”
TWENTY
“Are you okay?” I asked Ali, and realised as I asked the question how stupid it was.
She barked a wordless positive and stared at the wall opposite her.
The wall was one of four, relaxingly painted in a calm beige with a hint of green; as though we were suspended in a nutmeg-scented, crème fraiche spinach puree, which formed the room in which we sat, mostly mute and totally alone.
I coughed, unnecessarily, and looked fully at her.
“You sure?” I asked.
Ali stared silently at the wall for a minute or so then turned her gaze fully on me. “You reckon they wire this room?” she asked.
I flapped my gums like an Alzheimic Tory Lord presented with an openly homosexual male and repeated the word wire, but with a question mark after it.
“Record,” Ali said. “Listen in. Earwig. Like, if I said right now, ‘I killed the bastard,’ would they hear it?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted, correcting it to, “I’m not sure. I doubt it,” I finished, half-heartedly, adding, “I mean – if they did, what would be the point? How admissible would anything they recorded in this room be?”
“True,” she nodded, staring absently at the anaemic wall opposite us before fixing her gaze on the figures observing us from the window opposite.
“Feels like I’m on the conveyor belt on The Generation Game,” she said bitterly. “Remember? A trip to Paris, a cuddly toy, a far-from-grieving widow.”
She chuckled dryly, then, looking down, she added: “I’m glad he’s fucking dead. And I hope he died in pain. And alone.”
I followed her gaze down to the slab we were stood beside and to the body laid out on it.
The functionaries had offered her the choice of observing the body in person, or – like a patron at the cinema considering the latest Tarantino flick with the hope that it will prove to be better than one expects – from behind a window, following the slow opening of curtains.
Ali had chosen the in-person, face – as it were – to face approach.
And so we were both standing over the very lonely and very dead figure of Jimmy Carter. I stared at Ali as a single tear rolled over her lower eyelid, down her cheek and dropped sloppily off her chin. She glanced downwards at the body before us and then blinked, shrugging aside the trail so that none of its brothers might follow it, and turned directly to me.
“Well unless he
’s got a previously unknown tribute act, I’d say that’s him. What d’you reckon?”
The body was almost glowing with a blueness that seemed to seep from within and that was darkest around the lips and up to the roots of the hair. Even the hair, so suspiciously blond in life, seemed to have a miasma of blue-green floating over it, as though the spirit of Jimmy Carter – a nasty, angry spirit, I had no doubt – was still floating protectively over the ruined hairdo.
“That’s him,” I said. “What do you want to do?”
“Throw a fucking party,” she said, then catching my eye, frowned. “What do you think I should do?”
“You’ve options,” I said quietly, casting an eye around the room. “Say it looks like him but you’ve not seen him for years, admit it’s him and you’ve seen him lately, or say you have no idea who it is.”
She stared at me for a moment and then chuckled dryly. “Jesus, you’ve a crooked mind,” she muttered.
“Too much time working at The Marq,” I admitted.
“He’s dead,” she said, glancing down at the body, naked to the waist, and back up at me.
I looked down at the cadaver – surprised at how brightly the chest hairs still glinted, how lively the shadows around the arm pits still seemed – then glanced back at her.
“Good decision.”
Ali crossed the room, pressed a discretely-hidden button, and a moment later a door opened and she – with me following – left the cold room.
Nick looked at her, his question unnecessary, but, “That’s him,” Ali said flatly, to close any doubt down.
“You’re sure?” Nick asked. “Only the only ID on him is an out of date Tesco Clubcard, so we have no photo ID.”
Ali adopted the pose I’d seen her take when faced with a punter suggesting her double vodkas were anything less than a full double, and nodded solidly.
“I’m sure,” she said.
Nick frowned. “When did you last see your husband?” he queried.
Ali stared Nick straight in the face with the attitude of someone expecting the gas man to believe that the meter hadn’t been tampered with in her lifetime and said, “Twenty years ago, when the bastard walked out on me.”
Death Of A Devil Page 12
