by Reginal Hill
"Deal," said Joe. They traded skin on it and stood up. As they left the cafe, Joe noticed Hooter Hardiman standing by the art gallery entrance, watching them, but as they walked towards him he turned and moved away.
Joe headed straight for the car park, eager to minimize the risk of being spotted by Zak or indeed Jones.
He felt good. There was a public phone on the edge of the car park. Ride your luck, he thought. He picked up the receiver and dialled Naysmith's number, etched forever on his memory. Lucy Naysmith answered. She didn't sound overjoyed to hear his voice, but clearly Pollinger's wish was his employees' and ex-employees' command.
"All right, you can come, Mr. Sixsmith. But you mustn't tire him. I don't know what that hospital was doing letting him out like that. He's still far from well."
"I'll be gentle as a lamb," promised Joe.
What he hoped to get out of the interview, he still wasn't sure. But he'd learnt long since that when things were going his way, the only tactic was to go with the flow.
Usually the sight of the Magic Mini was an instant mood depresser, but as he approached it now, it had the opposite effect.
He'd spent much of the sixties in short trousers, so most of the ideology had passed over his head. But one thing was for sure, no one painted such way-out stuff on a piece of machinery without they thought they could see a big bright light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe hope was all we had,
all we needed. And when had hope ever had anything to do with reason?
With a smile that would have had Ram Ray raising his eyebrows and his prices, he patted the Mini on the bonnet, slid inside, gave an amazed Whitey a big hug, and drove away.
Twenty-Two.
An hour later the Magic Mini was puffing its way up Beacon Heights. Houses here were set too well back for curtain twitching, but Joe did not doubt that some kind of early-warning system operated and wouldn't have been surprised to find his way into Naysmith's drive blocked by old Marble-Tooth of the S AS bearing a horsewhip. Instead, all he found was a young Scottish PC called Sandy Mackay looking bored in a Panda.
Mackay's soul was still up for grabs between the instinctive belligerence of officers like Chivers and Forton, and his own natural friendliness. True, he'd once nicked Joe on suspicion of being a hospital flasher, but Joe, who believed in building bridges rather than burning them, greeted him enthusiastically.
"Sandy, my man, how're you doing? Hey, they're not keeping a man with a claymore in his sporran on duty over Hogmanay, are they?"
He only had a faint idea what claymores and sporrans might be but the notion tickled Mackay who grinned and said, "No way. I've got tickets for the ceilidh at the Cally. You coming, Joe?"
"No, I'm going to the Hoolie at the Glit. May see you in the streets later. Sandy, I'm expected here, you want to check?"
"No, Mrs. Naysmith told me you were coming when she brought me a coffee out. Nice lady. You can take the cup back if you like."
"Glad to, but sure you don't want to hang on to it so's you've an excuse to knock at the door later on when you fancy another cup?"
"Good thinking," said the youngster appreciatively. "Hey, Joe, I heard them saying down the nick that you probably knew more about this lot than you're letting on. Do you think there's much chance of this geezer Montaigne having another go?"
Joe's ears twitched. The reference to Montaigne sounded a bit stronger than just a precautionary assumption.
He said, "If he's got any sense he'll have got out of the country again."
"Again? From what we've been told he never left it in the first place. Not unless he swam."
He looked at Joe speculatively as if it was dawning on him he was giving rather than receiving information.
Joe said hastily, "You'll have got a good description, I suppose?"
"Yeah, medium size, hook nose, black beard."
"Yeah, well," said Joe. "But don't forget."
He made a cutting motion at his throat with his index finger.
"You reckon he might've topped himself ?"
"No," said Joe. "Shaved himself. See you."
The door opened as he approached and Lucy Naysmith greeted him politely rather than warmly and repeated her telephone reservations.
"He's still very weak, Mr. Sixsmith. Please don't overtire him. He's stubborn and will probably go on as long as you want to talk to him, so I'm relying on your good judgement."
She herself looked a lot better today with her hair in some kind of order. But there was still a lot of strain showing and she still wasn't bothering her make-up bag.
She led the way up the stairs into a roomy, overheated bedroom. The curtains were drawn back, but there were Venetian blinds on the windows half closed, ploughing furrows of light across the bed. This, with the heat and a faintly musky perfume, gave Joe the weird impression that he'd strayed from an English winter into the kind of old-fashioned colonial set-up you sometimes saw on the movies.
Should maybe have worn my houseboy gear, he thought.
Naysmith was sitting up in bed, propped against an avalanche of pillows. He wore a bandage round his brow and had a dressing taped from his left cheek across his nose with a lot of bruising seeping from under it. With the memories, not to mention the pain of his own recent assault fresh in his mind, Joe regarded the man with considerable sympathy.
"Mr. Sixsmith, I'm glad to have a chance to thank you at last."
The man's voice was strong but had an odd lisp to it. He smiled as he spoke and Joe saw where the lisp came from. His top front teeth were missing.
"I didn't do much, well, nothing actually," said Joe. "All over by the time I got here."
"You tried," said Naysmith. "And if I'd listened to you a bit longer on the phone, I probably wouldn't have opened the door."
"Yeah. You remember that now, do you?"
"Not clearly," admitted Naysmith. "I think it's coming back, but I'm not sure how much I'm being influenced by the police, who are obviously very keen for me to remember that it was Victor Montaigne. I keep getting flashes of Victor but that could be autosuggestion, don't you think?"
"Maybe," said Joe, who was something of an expert on the way certain cops could keep on dropping ideas in your mind during questioning till you didn't know where your thoughts ended and theirs began. "I did hear you say What the hell are you doing here? like you knew the guy. And we have established that Montaigne never actually left the country."
Willie Woodbine was never backward in taking credit from Joe, so no reason the process shouldn't be reversed.
"Is that so. Good Lord. Victor! But no, I'll need to get my own memory back loud and clear before I can accept that, and even then it won't be easy."
Good old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon loyalty, thought Joe. Or Anglo-Saxon arrogant assurance in the infallibility of his own judgement?
He said, "No one's jumping to conclusions, Mr. Naysmith. Listen, when you spoke to Mr. Potter on the phone and he said he wanted to meet with you because there was trouble in the firm, did he actually mention Mr. Montaigne?"
Naysmith hesitated then said, "I'm not sure if I should talk about this with you, Mr. Sixsmith. Superintendent Woodbine seemed pretty keen I shouldn't discuss my statement with anyone but the police."
Joe smiled. Willie Woodbine was a big card to play, but even the biggest bowed to the Ace of Trumps.
"Yeah, well, that's Willie," he said negligently. "On the other hand, old Darby is pretty keen I should get the full picture."
For a second he thought Naysmith was going to challenge his right to sound so familiar, but, like a good -lawyer, he decided to play safe.
"Yes, he did urge me to be frank with you," he admitted. "All right. Yes, Peter did mention Victor. But only inter alia, among others. He felt the same distaste as I did, still do, for suspecting any of our staff or colleagues, particularly those who were, are, close friends. All he knew for certain was there were discrepancies. What he hoped to do before we met was pinpoint their source. Till then, little th
ough he liked it, he wasn't excluding any possibility."
"No? That mean Mr. Pollinger himself was on the list."
"Yes, he was."
"And Mrs. Mattison?"
"Everyone," said Naysmith firmly.
Then why'd he ring you?" asked Joe.
The man's eyes rounded in a shock of indignation.
"Perhaps it's hard for someone like yourself to understand," he said, his toothless lisp exaggerated by his effort at control. "But Peter and I had been friends since school, we were like brothers, twins even. If one of us had been in the kind of trouble which could only be solved by big money, the other would have known. It's not a question of either of us being incapable of crime, it's a simple statement of fact.
We would have known. That answer your question?"
"I reckon," said Joe, thinking, Fafner and Fasolt, the twin giants, big, lumbering, simple-hearted souls. Montaigne might be a crook but he had a good nose for character!
The door opened behind him and Lucy Naysmith said, "You all right, dear? Anything you need?"
I'm fine," said Naysmith rather irritably. "And I really don't see why I should have to be treated like a terminal case. I always found when I got injured playing rugger that the longer you lay in your sick bed, the weaker you became."
"Yes, dear, we've all heard about the time you and Peter finished playing a match and you found you'd got three broken ribs and Peter had cracked his femur. Oh shit. Sorry, I shouldn't have said ... Mr. Sixsmith, when you're finished, do come down and have a coffee before you go."
The door closed. Signs of strain, thought Sixsmith. That's the trouble with the dead. You keep on forgetting they are, and each remembering is like losing them all over.
He said, "Think that's enough for now, maybe, Mr. Nay-smith. Thanks for seeing me."
"Any time, Mr. Sixsmith. The sooner they nail this bastard, whoever he is, the better. I hope to be up and about very soon, so perhaps the next time we can meet at the office. The further I can keep Lucy from all this, the better. It's always the ladies who suffer most, isn't it?"
This guy's upper lip is so stiff, it's a wonder Montaigne, or whoever, didn't bust his fist on it, thought Joe as he left the room. He needed a run-off, so making an inspired guess he pushed open the most likely door.
So much for inspiration. Not a bathroom but a nursery, all gleaming bright with cartoon characters on the walls, a cot and a rocking horse.
But Mrs. Naysmith had lost her baby and couldn't have any more, wasn't that what Butcher had said?
So this room, once lovingly prepared for new life, had become a memorial to a life that had never really begun.
"Oh shoot," said Joe guiltily. Closing the door he headed downstairs.
"No, I won't have a coffee," he said to Lucy Naysmith, thinking of his thwarted bladder. "Got to be somewhere."
"I hope that was worthwhile, Mr. Sixsmith," she said. Implied was, bothering an invalid on his bed of pain.
"I think so. And I thought he seemed pretty fit considering."
"Considering he's been murderously assaulted by a man he thought of as a friend?" she replied sharply.
"Yeah, well, the physical damage, I meant really. That'll soon mend."
"You have a medical qualification, do you?"
"No, ma'am. Just some practical experience," said Joe, gingerly touching his stitched-up skull.
For the first time she seemed to notice that he too was damaged.
"You've been in an accident," she said.
"Sort of," he said. "But I was luckier than your husband. At least I didn't lose any teeth."
"Teeth?" she echoed.
"Yeah. You know. His top fronts. That must be really painful."
To his surprise she laughed and said, "Oh no. That hasn't just happened. Another rugby souvenir. He always takes the plate out while he's sleeping. You mean, he's been talking to you without it in. That makes him sound like Violet Elizabeth Bott!"
"Don't know the lady," said Joe. "But I'm glad that's all it was. Look, try not to worry too much, Mrs. Naysmith. I really don't think there's any more danger."
"Really?" she said sceptic ally "Why not?"
"Because your husband was presumably attacked to keep him quiet. Now he's had plenty of chance to speak to the cops, no point any more in trying to shut him up, is there?"
She thought about this, then the nearest he'd yet seen to a smile touched her lips.
"You could be right, Mr. Sixsmith. Thank you. Thank you very much."
He left, feeling pleased with himself for having brought a little cheer into Lucy Naysmith's life. Always good to do good. Even if it took a lie.
Whoever it was, Montaigne or anybody else, who'd tried to silence Naysmith, he'd done it after the guy had talked to the police, so whatever reason he'd got could still be valid.
Also, until Naysmith got his memory back fully, switching it off forever could seem very attractive.
"Sandy," he said to the young cop in the car, 'if Sergeant Chivers checks you out, he's going to want to know how often you took a look round the back of the house too."
"Yeah, yeah," said the Scot with an attempt at a teach-your-grandmother inflection.
But as Joe drove away he was pleased to see in his mirror the young man climbing out of his car and heading up the drive.
Twenty-Three.
The year seemed eager to anticipate its own end. The sky was so overcast that early afternoon was already shading to dusk and a sharp blustery wind whipped leaves and crisp packets around Joe's ankles as he walked across Bessey Park.
The only other occupants seemed to be a man with a dog and a pair of youngsters in the bandstand, their hands deep into each other's clothing. Who needs central heating? thought Joe.
He'd made up his mind that Molly and Feelie had had more sense than he had when he saw them by the pond. The little girl looked impervious to weather as she scattered crumbs on the bank, then retreated shrieking as the hungry ducks advanced to peck them up. Her grandmother sat hunched on a bench, gloved, scar fed booted and hatted, and still looking cold.
"Joe, there you are, I'm sorry you've been dragged out on such a day, and all for nothing."
"No sign of her then?" said Joe.
"No. She may be mad but she's not stupid," laughed Molly. "Probably sitting at home with a cup of cocoa and a good book, which is where you and me ought to be. Come on, darling, or you'll catch your death and then what'll your mammie do to me?"
The child left her ducks with great reluctance and only after a promise of ice cream.
"Ice cream!" said Molly. "Oh what it is to be young."
As they walked out of the park, they talked of many things. She was an easy woman to chat with and Joe felt attracted to her on many levels, from basic lust up. Not that he was going to do anything about it. While not yet sure if his relationship with Beryl Boddington had passed the fidelity marker, he had no doubt about his relationship with Merv Golightly. In any case, even if the code of the Sixsmiths had permitted him to try and cut a friend out, Molly spoke of Merv with such obvious affection it didn't look a possible strategy.
"Will you come on up and have a cup of tea, Joe?" she asked when they reached the door of her flat.
"Don't think I've got the time," said Joe with genuine regret.
She opened the door and the little girl rushed in and started gathering up some advertising leaflets which had been pushed through the letter box.
"That's right, darling, see if there's any coupons. By the way, Joe, those leaflets Merv got Dorrie to run off, they doing you any good?"
For a second Joe imagined a sexual innuendo, then he remembered that Merv had been adamant that he didn't want Molly to know about the Sexwith cock-up.
"Early days," he said, recovering. But the second had been significant.
"Something wrong with them, Joe?" she said suspiciously. "Come on, I'm a country girl, I can smell bullshit two fields away."
"Well, not really, just a bit of bother
with the spelling," he said.
"You mean Dorrie? You mean Merv didn't double check? I told him to make sure she'd got it absolutely clear in her mind! It's not her fault but she sometimes gets things jumbled, especially names. What did she put?"
Joe told her. She kept her face sympathetic long enough to check that he wasn't particularly put out, then she burst out laughing.
"Joe Sexwith! Mebbe you should have let it run, Joe, see what it brought you in! I'm sorry, but it is funny. But it's also a nuisance. I'll be talking to that Merv, never you fear! Some favour."
"Well, it didn't do him much good either," said Joe defensively.
"No? How was that?"
Oh shoot, thought Joe. Me and my big mouth.
But now he had to tell her about the telephone number.
She seemed to think it was poetic justice and Joe tried to extend the light-hearted moment by adding, "Yeah, and the really funny thing was, the number that did get printed turned out to be the ex-directory number of a lawyer who's probably going to be getting calls asking for a taxi for evermore!"
He saw at once he'd hit stoney ground.
"A lawyer?" said Molly, all smiles fled. "You sure of that, Joe? How do you know that?"
"I rang the number," said Joe. "By coincidence it was a guy I happened to know. Or know about, anyway."
No reason to go into the complicated and messy details. But Molly wasn't satisfied.
"What's his name?" she demanded.
"Look," he said. "Don't think I can tell you that. Not without knowing why you're so interested."
"His first name is all I need," she insisted. "That can't harm anything, can it?"
Joe couldn't see how it could, so he said, "It's Felix," and even before her gaze moved from him to the little girl playing on the hall floor, he had made the connection. Feelie, short for Felicia. Naysmith, the legal Lothario; Mrs. Mattison's reaction when he'd asked if she remembered Dorrie McShane from Freeman's; the irritated message on Naysmith's answer machine Your stationery order is ready for collection in a week when Freeman's was closed down for the holiday. That was what had been niggling at the back of his mind when he met the McShanes in Daph's Diner. Funny how inside a head which couldn't by any stretch be called big, the distance from the back of his mind to the front could sometimes be a trans-Siberian trek!
