Ashes by Now

by Mark Timlin

  ‘Toby,’ he said to Gillis.

  Toby nodded.

  ‘And you must be Jacqueline Harvey,’ said Sturridge, and stuck out his hand in Jackie’s direction. She took it, and he gave hers a sharp shake.

  ‘And you’re Sharman,’ he said finally, letting his pale blue eyes focus on me.

  I nodded.

  ‘I’ve written about you before. You do manage to get into some scrapes.’

  ‘I was born under a bad sign,’ I said.

  ‘You can say that again,’ he replied, and leant over and offered his mitten to me. I took it, and got another short, sharp shake for my troubles.

  Sturridge pulled up a chair and said, ‘Jacqueline, I want to talk to you first. There’s a conference room upstairs that I’ve booked for the entire day. Lunch can be served there, or we can come back downstairs, depending on your preference. I understand you want Toby and Mr Sharman present for the interview. Is that right?’

  Jackie nodded.

  ‘Fine. When we’ve finished I intend to get Mr Sharman’s –’

  ‘Call me Nick,’ I interrupted.

  He deferred to me with a nod. ‘Nick’s side of things. And please call me Walter. Not Wally, if you don’t mind. I hope to have it all wrapped up by dinner time. If not, or if there’s anything further, I trust I can see you again.’

  Jackie nodded once more.

  Sturridge turned to me. ‘I understand you’ve been busy, Nick,’ he said, and took a sheet of paper out of the inside pocket of his jacket. ‘Tom Slade faxed this over to me before I left home.’ He placed the paper face up on the table next to the cups. It was a copy of Byrne’s confession.

  ‘Before I saw this, I must admit I was doubtful. I’ve read what Chas Singleton put down on disc, and I know what happened to him, and to you, Nick. And I’ve read what you wrote in your journal of events. I’ve checked up also on Grant’s suicide. And gone back further and looked into what happened to Carol Harvey in Brixton all that time ago, and Grant’s subsequent confession and conviction. It all fitted together nicely with what you’ve told us, except for one thing.’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘There was absolutely no proof that the police officers concerned did what you two say they did.’ He looked at Jackie. ‘And weren’t, in fact, just doing their jobs properly, when they arrested Grant for the rape and murder of your sister.’ Under his gaze, she paled, then blushed red.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I don’t mean to upset you. But you must admit I had a point. And as for your uncle. Well, he did end up as Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, and retired without a blemish on his character. But now, with this’ – he pointed at the paper – ‘we’re going to have the bastard. Well and truly. And I’m going to enjoy seeing him squirm when we publish on Sunday.’

  39

  Sturridge was a very professional interviewer. But then I suppose working for the paper he worked for, he’d need to be. He interrogated Jackie for four hours, with a break for lunch around two. I could tell she hated telling him what had happened between her uncle and her sister and herself. Toby sat close by her, and after a little while kept a firm hold on her hand. I sat in the corner and chain-smoked. Sometimes I could tell that the words she spoke were so painful for her that I wanted to call a halt on the whole thing, but somehow I couldn’t.

  At three, Slade called and spoke to Sturridge. He didn’t say much, just listened, then passed the phone to me.

  ‘The handwriting checks out,’ said Slade. ‘Good work. Sunday it is.’

  ‘Thank Christ,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll keep in touch,’ he said, and hung up.

  When I put down the phone I could see by the look on Jackie’s face that Sturridge had told her. I said nothing. Just went back to my seat and lit another cigarette.

  By the time the interview was concluded, which was exactly five forty-six by my Rolex, Jackie looked as washed out as my Levi’s, and Sturridge had filled a stack of Maxell tapes with her memoirs.

  Before Toby took her down to her room, and Sturridge started on me, she came over and took my hand. I stood up.

  ‘Was I all right?’ she asked.

  ‘You were great.’

  ‘I’ve got to go and rest now. Do you need to see me again tonight?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Then I’ll see you soon.’

  ‘Whenever you want.’

  ‘Goodnight then.’

  ‘Goodnight… And, Jackie.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t you want to see what your uncle wrote?’

  She blanched, and I think she would have fallen if I hadn’t grabbed her. I felt like a berk for asking.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t. I never want to see it.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Sorry I asked.’

  She shook her head, and Toby took her arm and led her out of the room.

  Sturridge came over and said, ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘She will be,’ I replied.

  He fitted a new tape into the machine, and started asking me questions. All of a sudden I knew how Jackie had felt.

  I told him the story, just like it had happened. Just like I’d written it down in the exercise book that Dawn had bought for me. I left nothing out, and added nothing. As I talked I could feel the sweat soaking through my clothes.

  We finished just after eight. I had a terrible headache and a matching thirst, and I wanted to talk to Dawn.

  He gathered all his stuff together and stood up.

  ‘Would you like a drink?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure.’

  We went down to the bar together and he bought me a couple of beers. Then he told me he had to get home and put the interviews down on disc. I didn’t press him to stay. I wasn’t in the mood for company. After he went I had another beer, then went out into the cold evening air and wandered from bar to bar until chucking-out time. I had two dozen drinks and didn’t taste one. Isn’t that always the way?

  40

  The next day and the first part of Friday passed pretty quietly. I spoke to Dawn and Tracey on the phone a couple of times. They said that they were doing fine, but beginning to pine for London. I told them not to bother. They weren’t missing much. I spoke to Jackie too, but didn’t go and see her. I thought the scars had been reopened deeply enough and were still too raw for that. She said that Toby was taking care of her, and I told her that I was glad.

  Otherwise I just sat in the flat, looking at the Colt Commando, and wondering if I’d get a chance to use it on someone, and picking at my guilt like a particularly unattractive scab.

  Slade called me on Friday at noon.

  ‘I need a chat,’ he said.

  ‘About?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when I see you. Can you manage this afternoon?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Where and when?’

  ‘I’ve got to meet the wife in town later. We’re going to the bloody theatre, and I’m taking her out to dinner first, so I’m going for a quick one in Gerry’s. Do you know it?’

  ‘Gerry’s in Dean Street?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Course I knew it. Everybody knows it. Even cabbies know it. It’s a subterranean, members-only place where a lot of serious drinking takes place.

  ‘I know it,’ I said.

  ‘Four o’clock.’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  I took a taxi. I wasn’t going to drive. The parking is murder round Shaftesbury Avenue, and there’s been lots of times I’ve gone into Gerry’s at lunchtime and come out twelve hours later wondering where I’d left my head.

  Before leaving, I tucked the Colt into the pocket of my leather jacket.

  The cab got caught in the traffic by Cambridge Circus, and I sat and gazed out of the window at the passers-by. I love Soho. Always
have done, always will, no matter what the tourists, and the developers, and the landlords, and the people who used to call themselves yuppies have done to the place. But even they couldn’t kill it, hard as they tried. Soho’s like mercury. Grind it down under the pad of your thumb, and it’ll find its natural level and trickle out from under the side and pop up all bright and silvery. And most of all, I love drinking there in the afternoon, with people who never seem to have a steady job, and the wedge fluctuates from grands one week to shillings the next, and I’ve seen people counting out piles of pennies for the next Scotch. ‘A large one, dear. Mustn’t let standards slip.’

  I jumped out of the cab and paid it off, then walked down Shaftesbury Avenue towards Dean Street. The door to Gerry’s was on the latch, and I pulled it open and went down the stairs into the aquamarine-blue twilight of the bar. There were one or two people sat up at the jump on stools, who looked round as I went down, but no one I knew. Tom Slade was sitting at the table next to the coffee machine. In front of him was a glass half full of beer.

  I walked over and he looked up. ‘Afternoon,’ he said.

  I nodded at the glass. ‘Another?’

  ‘Beck’s.’

  I went up to the bar, and smiled at the barmaid, which wasn’t hard, the way she looked. ‘Good afternoon, Nick,’ she said.

  ‘Hello, doll,’ I replied. ‘Two Beck’s please. And one for yourself.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind if I do.’ She went to the fridge and pulled out two beers and a coke, and I paid for them, took the two bottles of beer and one glass, and went to join Slade at his table.

  ‘So what’s up?’ I said, when I was sat down with my beer poured out in front of me and a Silk Cut lit.

  ‘We’ve got a small problem.’

  Straight away the alarm bells started ringing.

  ‘What kind of small problem?’

  ‘Don’t worry. It’s just that Walter spoke to all the police officers involved that he could reach this morning, and we’ve been threatened with an injunction.’

  ‘He what?’

  ‘He spoke to all the officers concerned. All that were available.’

  ‘Christ. You never told me… I thought you weren’t going to name names.’

  ‘We’re not. Not in the first instance. But it’s routine. It’ll make an interesting sidebar in the later editions, and next week.’

  I could have hit him. ‘A fucking sidebar,’ I said. My life and Jackie’s as a fucking sidebar. ‘Are you kidding? He spoke to all of them?’

  Slade nodded. ‘Almost.’

  My heart sank, and I was glad I’d brought the gun with me. From now on, we were in the free-fire zone I’d dreaded. ‘What did they say?’ I asked.

  ‘Not a lot.’

  ‘Ex-Assistant Commissioner Byrne?’

  ‘No comment. But Walter thought he sounded like he was going to shit himself. Then we had his lawyer on the phone. Threatening us with the injunction I told you about. Don’t worry. We’re still going to print. Our lawyers are very happy with the story.’

  ‘That’s not what I’m worried about, believe me. What about Collier?’

  ‘He told him to fuck off apparently.’

  At any other time I would have laughed, but this was no laughing matter. ‘Did Sturridge mention the confession, do you know?’

  ‘I don’t think he had a chance. But he did to Byrne.’

  Which meant they all knew. And the original was probably ashes by now.

  ‘Millar?’

  ‘Put the phone down on him.’

  ‘Grisham?’

  ‘Couldn’t contact him. He was out on a case. Like I said, they weren’t all available.’

  ‘Did he try Jackie’s father?’

  ‘He wasn’t around either. He’s away until tomorrow on leave. Couldn’t be reached.’

  Probably just as well, I thought, and I wished for the millionth time that Grant hadn’t phoned me, and I hadn’t seen him in that pub in Deptford. But what was the point? I couldn’t change what had happened, no matter how much I wished. What was it that my old nan used to say to me when I was a kid and wished for something I’d never get? ‘If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.’ So true.

  ‘Stupid,’ I said, half to myself. ‘If they’d just done nothing…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Forget it. Does Jackie Harvey know that they know?’

  ‘Not from me she doesn’t.’

  I drank some beer and lit another cigarette.

  ‘I suppose I’d better tell her then.’

  ‘I suppose you’d better. You can phone her from here.’

  ‘I’d rather tell her in person,’ I said. ‘I’ll go over to the hotel and tell her what’s happened.’

  ‘How is she?’ asked Slade.

  ‘All right, I think. I haven’t seen her since the other day, when old Walter dug around in her psyche for four hours. Just spoken to her on the phone. She sounded as well as can be expected. Under the circumstances.’

  ‘Listen, Sharman,’ said Slade. ‘That’s the way it goes. We have to ask the questions to get the answers to build a story. I’m sorry if your friend, or you for that matter, didn’t like the way we did it. But that’s the way it’s done.’

  ‘I understand,’ I said wearily, and finished my beer. ‘I’d better be off. Enjoy the play.’

  And with that, I got up and left the bar.

  41

  I grabbed a black cab right outside the club and headed for Bayswater. I trolled through the main door and up to the desk and asked for Miss Clancey. The receptionist informed me that she had left the building with two gentlemen, at about four. Just as I’d been meeting Slade at Gerry’s.

  ‘Which gentlemen?’ I asked, feeling a cold chill creep down my spine.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Was she with Mr Gillis?’

  She shook her head. At least she knew who I was talking about.

  ‘Were the gentlemen from the newspaper?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said again.

  ‘Was one of them a Mr Sturridge?’ I pressed.

  She told me she wasn’t able to help.

  ‘Did she say when she’d be back?’ I asked.

  ‘She didn’t leave any message,’ said the receptionist.

  I asked her to describe the men that Jacqueline had left with. She was pretty vague. But the descriptions she gave could have fitted Collier and Millar. On the other hand they could have fitted ten thousand other adult males in the Greater London area. If not more.

  ‘Is Mr Gillis in?’ I asked.

  She tried his number, but it didn’t answer.

  The cold chills were getting worse all the time.

  I checked the bars and restaurant, then went back and asked if I could look round Jackie’s room. The receptionist wasn’t keen. I told her to get the manager. When he arrived, he wasn’t keen either, so I gritted my teeth and asked if I could use the phone on the desk. The manager ummed and ahhed, until I wanted to wrap his neck in the phone cord and pull it tight. But eventually he agreed. I looked up the number of Gerry’s in my address book, and called the club. Luckily Slade was still there. When he came on the line I told him what was happening. He asked to speak to the manager. I handed the phone over. I don’t think the manager got in three words. When he put down the receiver, he gave me a dirty look, and we went upstairs in the lift. Using a passkey he let me in to Jackie’s room, and he stood inside the doorway as I took a squint.

  Her handbag was still there. The bed was neatly made, a tray of tea things sat on the table, and the TV set was on, tuned into an early-evening soap, with the sound turned down.

  There was no sign of a struggle or anything like that.

  I opened the bathroom door. It was empty. />
  ‘Satisfied?’ asked the manager.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  He tossed his keys in his hand to show displeasure.

  ‘Toby Gillis,’ I said. ‘In the room next door.’

  I thought he was going to give me a blank, but the memory of the phone call from Slade still lingered, and with a sigh we went along the corridor and he threw Toby Gillis’s room door open.

  The place was in a right two-and-eight: furniture upset, a curtain torn from its runner, and clothes strewn everywhere. There was no sign of Toby. I opened the bathroom door and there he was, dressed in a shirt, slacks and socks, trussed up in the bath with the cord from the shower curtain. Someone had stuffed a flannel into his mouth as a gag. He was rolling about trying to get free, his face was badly bruised, and there was blood in his long blond hair.

  Ex-SAS, I thought. God give me strength.

  I went over and pulled him out of the tub, and tugged at the knots on his wrists until he was free.

  He ripped the gag out of his mouth and said, ‘Where’s Jackie?’

  ‘You tell me,’ I said. ‘She left with two men. What happened?’

  ‘One of them knocked at the door and said he was from room service.’

  ‘And you were too busy being charming to check them out. Shit, Toby, what the fuck were you thinking about?’

  His face reddened under the bruises.

  The manager was standing in the doorway of the bathroom, hopping from one foot to the other.

  ‘Yes?’ I said.