Ashes by Now

by Mark Timlin

Grisham, Collier and Millar took turns at interrogating Grant. They never let up. I wasn’t asked to speak. Just sit and listen.

  Grant himself was terrified. So terrified he kept changing what he’d said about his movements the previous day, and why he’d made them. He contradicted himself on every detail except one. That he hadn’t attacked Carol Harvey.

  We took a break about ten.

  We left a uniform with Grant, and sloped off to the pub opposite for a livener. It was my round. Both times.

  ‘He won’t shift,’ said Grisham to Collier. Somehow it seemed as if the junior officer had taken charge of the case and the DI was deferring to him.

  I didn’t get it.

  ‘He’ll fucking well shift if I say he’ll shift,’ said Collier, and I knew that things were beginning to go from bad to worse.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Grisham.

  ‘What I say. Give me and Lenny some time with him on our own.’ Then he looked at me. ‘And our friend here. I want to teach him some of the tricks of the trade.’

  ‘All right,’ said Grisham. ‘I’ve got some things to do. I’ll catch you later.’

  ‘Don’t leave it too long, Paul. We wouldn’t want you to miss all the fun, would we?’ said Collier, and I didn’t like the way he said it.

  Grisham looked almost as bad as I felt, as he left the boozer.

  The three of us, Lenny, Collier and I, were back in the nick by eleven. We dismissed the young uniformed constable who was looking after Grant, and the shit really hit the fan.

  Collier and Lenny took off their coats and ties and hung them neatly over the backs of two chairs.

  They were good, I’ll say that for them. They didn’t mark Sailor up much. Not until the end when it all got too much for me to bear.

  And still the little bastard wouldn’t change his story.

  They used towels soaked in water and wrapped round their fists. That way the bruises don’t show as much. They stripped Sailor to the waist and took turns beating on his skinny little torso. The slap, slap, slap of wet material on wet skin, and Sailor’s cries of pain, and the sound of Lenny’s and Collier’s grunts of breath, filled the little room until I thought the walls were going to burst.

  And Sailor still maintained that he was innocent.

  They’d hit him, then take a break and smoke a cigarette and chat together as if nothing was happening, and Sailor would perch on the edge of his chair and look pleadingly at me.

  And what was I doing through all this?

  Fuck all, was what I was doing.

  I didn’t join in, but I didn’t try and stop them.

  And then Collier lost his temper, and the claret began to flow.

  He started slapping Grant around the face. Hard slaps that brought the blood to the surface of his pallid skin.

  ‘Tell me, Sailor,’ he said. ‘Just tell me that you did it, and this’ll stop and we can all get to our beds.’

  Sailor looked down at the floor and shook his head and Collier planted a punch on the side of his jaw that knocked him off his seat, and left him lying on the floor spitting out a tooth in a mouthful of blood and saliva.

  Lenny Millar pulled him to his feet, stood beside him and trapped his arms, and Collier punched Sailor again between the eyes.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Stop. You’ll kill the fucker.’ And I grabbed Collier’s arm.

  He shook it off and turned on me and said, ‘If you don’t like it, get out.’

  Which is exactly what I did. I got out and went into the lavatory, and put my head against the cool tiles that covered the walls, and wondered if I’d chosen the correct career.

  I took a piss, washed my hands and looked into the mirror over the washbasin. It was still me in the reflection. But I knew that from that night onwards I would never feel the same about the man I saw in the mirror.

  10

  I stayed in the washroom for another fifteen minutes and smoked two cigarettes. When I went back to the interview room, Sailor Grant had gone. Collier and Lenny were sitting in their two chairs drinking more tea. DI Grisham was perched on the edge of the table, also drinking tea.

  ‘Where is he?’ I asked.

  ‘He had a nasty fall on the stairs,’ said Collier. ‘You should know, you saw it. We all did, didn’t we?’

  Lenny and Grisham nodded. I looked at Grisham. He wouldn’t catch my eye. I wondered how he was going to feel about mirrors for a while. I was finding it harder and harder to believe that an officer of his rank was going along with all this.

  ‘We’ve called for the surgeon,’ said Collier. ‘He should be here soon. No problem.’

  Collier stood up and picked a statement form off the table and slapped me in the chest with it.

  ‘Grant’s confession to the rape of Carol Harvey yesterday. I told you it would be only a matter of time before he coughed.’ He lowered his voice so that only I could hear. ‘And I told him, and I’m telling you, anyone, anyone at all, that goes against what I say happened here today is going to regret it. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Are you threatening me?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t be fucking stupid. Just look around. We’re the ones who say if you get on in this job or not. Play the game and you will. Don’t and you won’t.’

  And he smiled a nasty smile and raised his voice and said, ‘Who’s coming for a celebration? We’ve had a result and we all deserve a good drink. I know a place that’s still open.’

  And though I hated myself for it, I went.

  Carol Harvey died later that night without regaining consciousness. The doctors said it was a miracle that she’d lived as long as she did after her brutal attacker had left her for dead.

  The next morning I charged Sailor Grant with murder. He was in the hospital wing at Brixton prison recovering from the ‘nasty fall’ he’d had the previous night. He was so sedated that I wondered at the legality of what I was doing. But I was under orders, and in those days I did as I was told. As I finished reading out the charge and again asked if he would like a solicitor present, which again he refused, Sailor reached his skinny hand up from the bed and touched my arm. I looked down at him and he opened his eyes and stared into mine. ‘It wasn’t me, Mr Sharman,’ he croaked. ‘As God is my judge.’

  I duly noted his remark. It was my job. ‘Anything you say may be taken down and given in evidence.’ You know the spiel. For all the good it did me, I might as well have saved the ink. But I believed him, and in those few seconds, looking into my eyes, he must have known that I did, to get in touch with me all those years later.

  Frank ‘Sailor’ Grant got a life sentence at the Old Bailey.

  Not that it was much of a trial. Sailor pleaded guilty. I think he must have known he was wasting his time doing anything else. He was convicted on his confession alone. There was no forensic evidence at the scene linking him to the crime. Or anyone else for that matter. The trial was all over in a day. Grisham, Collier, Millar, Superintendent Byrne, DI Harvey and I were all in court to see justice being done. Afterwards we got drunk in a bar in the Strand.

  I never really fitted into the squad after what happened. I suppose they thought they couldn’t trust me. I transferred out of Brixton after a year or so, and didn’t return for another three, when I was posted to the drug squad, which eventually was to be my downfall.

  By the time I got back, Byrne, Grisham, Collier and Millar had all moved onwards and upwards. They were all fine officers and no doubt were getting exactly what they deserved. But I was glad they weren’t at the nick to see me come back. I was still a DC, and my daughter was almost four, and my marriage was disintegrating before my eyes.

  There was no doubt in my mind at all that I was getting exactly what I deserved.

  11

  And the earth moved round the sun twelve times, and everyone involved went their appointed ways, until that
Monday morning when Sailor Grant called me up on the telephone.

  It was almost eleven before I finished remembering, and the contents of the can of beer I was still holding had gone warm.

  I thought I’d left that time behind, but deep inside my secret self I had never forgotten Sailor, or how I’d caved in to Collier and his pals that night and afterwards, and I’d carried round a sense of shame ever since.

  There was only one thing for it. I rolled a light joint, smoked it, and took myself and my hangover down to the local bar where I got rotten drunk on imported beer and listened to some deep soul music. Not that it’s to everyone’s taste, but the geezer who was running the place at that time had some tapes of Ruby Johnson, Mable John and Bobby Marchan, which is about as deep soul as you can get without drowning.

  When I was on my eighth bottle of Rattlesnake, I called Dawn and Tracey up on the dog.

  Tracey answered.

  ‘Fancy a drink?’ I said.

  ‘We’ve been working.’

  ‘What difference does that make?’

  That threw her a bit. ‘Don’t know,’ she replied.

  ‘So get down here.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Guess.’

  ‘Your local.’

  ‘In one.’

  ‘I don’t know…’

  ‘I’ll spring for the cab.’

  That cheered her up. ‘Maybe. I’ll have to ask Dawn.’

  ‘So ask her.’

  The phone went dead as she put her hand over the mouthpiece. ‘All right,’ she said, when she came back on. ‘We’ll be there in about an hour.’

  ‘Speed it up then, I’m lonely.’

  ‘All right, Nick, don’t get your Y-fronts in a twist.’

  ‘Just get here.’

  ‘Sure. Don’t worry. We won’t leave you to drink on your own.’

  ‘That’s what I like to hear,’ I said, and hung up.

  I went back to my seat by the bar and the guv’nor had stuck on an Otis Redding tape, and I bought him a beer on the strength of it and sang along quietly to ‘My Girl’. But somehow I couldn’t get Sailor’s telephone call out of my head.

  The girls turned up in an antique Ford Consul about four. Somewhere along the way they’d scored a gram of decent coke, so it was straight up into the ladies for a line, which cheered everyone up, and I bought a round of beers and then we shot off for a curry.

  Happy days.

  They weren’t going to last long.

  12

  Sailor Grant kept phoning. He wouldn’t leave it alone.

  He was like a man obsessed. In fact he was obsessed. And I copped for his obsession at all hours of the day and night.

  Eventually, about two weeks after the first call, I gave in.

  The phone rang at about seven in the evening.

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  ‘Mr Sharman?’

  By then I knew his voice off by heart.

  ‘As if you didn’t know, Sailor.’

  ‘How are you?’

  By that time we were enquiring after each other’s health, like old mates. Which I suppose we were in a way.

  ‘Can’t complain.’

  ‘Good. I wondered if you’d changed your mind.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About me. About meeting for a chat.’

  I couldn’t handle it any more. I knew there was only one way I was going to get rid of him, and that was to do what he wanted.

  ‘All right, Sailor,’ I said. ‘You win.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘You’ll meet me?’

  ‘Do I have any choice?’

  ‘You’re a gem, Mr Sharman.’

  ‘It’s just for a chat, Sailor. About old times. I’m not promising anything.’

  ‘I know. But I know you’ll help me.’

  ‘Don’t count on it, son,’ I said. ‘I’m not in much of a position to help anyone these days. Not even myself.’

  ‘But you were in the papers.’

  ‘That doesn’t make me Bob Geldof.’

  ‘Who?’

  Sailor had clearly been selective in what he read when he was inside.

  ‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘Where and when?’

  ‘How about tomorrow midday?’

  He obviously believed in striking whilst the iron was hot.

  ‘I’ll check my social calendar,’ I said. ‘No. You’re all right. No one’s taking me out to lunch at the Caprice. Where-abouts?’

  ‘Well, I’m moving around at the minute. Staying with people. You know how it is.’

  Dossing down, he meant.

  ‘I know how it is,’ I said. ‘But I thought when you were on licence you had to have a fixed address.’

  ‘You are. I gave them me uncle’s, but we don’t get on. Anyway, I’m in Deptford tonight. D’you know a boozer called the Live And Let Live?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s off Creek Road. Going down to the river. Deptford Green, I think it is.’

  ‘Sounds attractive.’

  ‘It’ll do,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll find it,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll be in there about twelve. Saloon bar. Got a nice view of Greenwich Reach. It reminds me of me days at sea. And I like to see a bit of space these days. It’s with being banged up for so long.’

  I didn’t want to get into his memoirs. And suddenly I didn’t want to go at all. My heart sank at the thought of meeting an ex-con in a dump of a boozer, in a scruffy part of town, and listen to him bellyache about ancient history.

  Or did I suddenly remember that night in the interview room, and Collier and Lenny Millar beating the shit out of Sailor, and me doing sweet FA about it?

  ‘Look, Sailor,’ I said. ‘I’ll do my best to get there, but I can’t promise anything.’

  ‘But you said –’

  ‘I know. But I don’t know that it’s such a good idea after all.’

  ‘Please.’

  How could I resist?

  ‘I’ll try,’ I said.

  ‘See you then, Mr Sharman, and thanks.’

  ‘Don’t thank me yet,’ I said, and hung up in his ear.

  13

  In the end, of course, I went. I knew that I would all along, I suppose. I got up about ten, made myself a bacon sandwich, and drove to Deptford.

  I got to the boozer at about twelve. It was close to the old docks. But no one had had the time, energy or money to gentrify that part of south London. It hadn’t changed much in twenty-five years, since back in the swinging sixties, when they pulled down the old back-to-backs and stuck up the council tenements, and took all the life out of the place. The Live And Let Live was down at the end of a dusty, dirty, litter-strewn street off Deptford Green. Which was nothing like as colourful as it sounded, and where it looked like the council cleaners hadn’t been seen for months. I pushed open the nicotine-coloured door, walked into the saloon bar and looked round for Sailor Grant. I didn’t even know if I’d recognise him, but it wasn’t hard. He was the only punter in the room. He sat on a red leatherette bench seat, behind a scarred wooden table on which sat a pint of beer, with just a sip taken out of it, a tin of Old Holborn and a packet of green Rizlas. A prison-thin roll-up sat dead in a metal ashtray next to his glass. Next to him was a single, battered khaki bag which probably contained all he owned in the world.

  Sailor looked like shit. Worse. His thinness had gone gaunt, until he looked like he was just a step away from a wooden overcoat. His blond hair, what was left of it, was grey, and his face was seamed with more lines than a map of the London underground system.

  He looked up as I entered, and his eyes were as dead as the grate of the fireplace in the corner of the bar. I walked over to where he was sitting
. ‘Mr Sharman,’ he said, and his teeth were dark brown in yellow gums. ‘I knew you’d come.’

  ‘You knew more than me, then,’ I said.

  ‘You’re here.’

  I felt like asking him: ‘What is here?’ But I didn’t feel like getting into an existential argument right then.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Nice place.’

  He looked round the bar. It had seen better days. But then so had he, and for that matter so had I.

  ‘Drink?’ I asked.

  He half rose to his feet. ‘Let me get them in.’

  ‘Save your money,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t look like you made your fortune in jail.’

  ‘I am a bit short.’

  ‘Want a chaser to go with that?’ I asked, nodding in the direction of his pint.

  ‘I’ll get pissed,’ he said. ‘I’m not used to strong drink.’

  ‘Didn’t you sample the home brew in Wandsworth?’ I asked.

  ‘I was on Rule 43, Mr Sharman. You didn’t get nothing like that where I was.’ Rule 43 is about keeping nonces like Sailor away from the rest for their own safety.

  ‘Well, do you want a short, or not?’ I said. ‘I haven’t got all day.’

  ‘Scotch,’ he said.

  I went up to the bar, where a barmaid who had also seen better days was cleaning her fingernails with one of the forks that she was wrapping in white paper serviettes.

  ‘Pint of lager and two large Bells,’ I said. What the hell? It looked like I was the first person to buy him a drink since we’d nicked him all those years ago. It was the least I could do.

  The barmaid got the drinks in the surly way that some staff in the service industries cultivate as a shield against being taken as skivvies. She banged the glasses on to the bar top in front of me, and demanded an extortionately high price in return. I paid without a word and took the drinks back to the table where Sailor was waiting. I could feel her eyes drilling into my back as I walked across the thin, filthy carpet.

  It served me right for wanting a drink.

  I put the glasses down, pulled over a chair, and sat facing Sailor. He wouldn’t look at me. I took a packet of cigarettes out of my pocket and offered him one.