He heard a sound at the front of the house. Someone was there. A user of the squat, like himself? He didn’t know all of them. He had been here for months now, but people came and went. No one asked any questions, which was why he had come here, why he had been allowed to stay.
There was the sound again. Footsteps. You could hear them, because there were no internal doors left in the place. They had all been burned for warmth, during the winter. He wondered how long that presence had been in the house. Perhaps for many minutes, before he caught the sound; his hearing, like his other faculties, was affected by the drugs. He knew more about what coke and horse did to you than most addicts. He had taken the cure, hadn’t he?
Perhaps if he stayed out here they would think there was no one in the place and go away, like that smart bloke in the suit had done yesterday. He found himself cowering in the cobwebbed corner of the old wash-house, his buttocks on the damp flagged floor and his head between his bony knees. He clasped his arms across his chest, tried to pull down the tiny sleeve of his T-shirt over the bruising on his arms. The goose-pimples on his forearms reared before his eyes in hideous close-up two inches from his eyes, the hairs rising from them like the limbless trees of a First World War battlefield.
He hadn’t felt that the May morning was cold when he came out here. Now he could not control the violent shivering which had taken him over.
If they didn’t come into this little brick outhouse, they would scarcely see him through the single window, which was so filthy that it let in very little light. There wasn’t much of the door left — most of it had gone for firewood —but that made the place look more derelict from the outside.
Then Joe heard something which chilled his racing, corrupted blood. It was the sound of his own name, called softly through the big, three-storeyed house across the yard.
They were going to find him, he was certain. He heard the name being called up the rickety staircase, then the sound of cautious steps ascending. There was more than one of them. He thought he heard his name again, more distant, echoing from the high ceilings of the upper rooms of the old house.
He could run for it now, while they were up there. He must run for it. He could be over the back wall, through the house in the terrace behind which was also a squat, away into the centre of the city, burying himself if necessary among the other derelicts there. There was safety in numbers, for someone like him.
But when he tried to lever himself up, his right leg gave way like a stick. He tried again, but all he got from both of his legs was a ridiculous, exaggerated, trembling: they were like the legs of a sleeping dog, which were moved only by dreams. He sank back, feeling the damp again on his bottom, shutting his eyes against the nightmare vision of the goose-pimples on the arms he clasped across his chest.
Perhaps they wouldn’t notice him, after all. He lost his sense of time. It seemed to Joe, with his head thrust deep into his chest and his arms over his eyes, that it was a long, long time since he had first heard the noises in the house. Perhaps they had gone now. But he mustn’t move yet. He must stay here and not move at all, not even a muscle, until he was sure that it was safe. But he felt his limbs trembling, felt that they were moving out of his control. His head was raging and his thirst seemed to be not just in his mouth, but in his throat, reaching downwards into his chest, beginning to dry out his whole body.
‘You all right, son?’
The voice seemed to come from a long way away, from another place, another point in time. It had to repeat the question before Joe opened his eyes. ‘I said, are you all right, son?’
Two huge figures rearing in the doorway, black and threatening against the blinding light behind them. An immense distance above him. Two-dimensional, black against the white of the light, so that he could see no feature of the side which was turned towards him. They looked more than human in their stature and their menace, so that he cowered even lower, shutting his eyes, waiting for the blows which must surely come.
Yet the voice had been kind. And the contact, when it came, was gentle, though he ground himself further into the damp beneath him at the touch. ‘Get up, son. It’s no good for you here. You know that.’
Large hands beneath his elbows, arms which were immensely strong as he scrambled up, the grimy bricks of the corner harsh against his shoulder blades. The voice repeated, ‘It’s no good for you here, is it? Let’s go inside.’ He nodded, wanting to comply, sure now that they were not going to hit him.
If this was going to be the end, if it was going to be all over for him, so be it. So long as no one was going to hit him, the end would be rather a relief. He moved out of the wash-house, into sun that seemed blinding, almost lost his balance, turned towards the back door of the house, found the broad hand underneath his elbow again, assisting him that way.
There were two stools and a battered upright chair in the kitchen. They set him carefully on the chair and drew the stools up opposite him, watching him carefully, as if he might break into pieces before their eyes. He could see them, now that they were no longer against the light.
The one who had helped him was a burly man with a weatherbeaten face. The other one, the one who had not yet spoken and yet seemed to be studying him so intently, was taller, with a long face, plentiful, tightly curled grey hair and grey eyes which seemed never to blink.
He had expected them to shout at him. Instead, the tall man said quietly, ‘Would you give us your full name please?’
‘Joseph Charles Ashton. My friends call me Joe.’
‘I’m Detective Superintendent Lambert. And this is Detective Sergeant Hook.’
Joe nodded dully and looked at the sergeant, who gave him a small smile, like a teacher trying to draw out the best from a young child. Joe wished his head would stop thumping, that he could control the shaking in his limbs, which was not constant, but came back to convulse him with another bout of trembling each time he thought he had conquered it.
His mouth was very dry now, and his thirst so great that his tongue felt much too large and seemed determined to adhere to the roof of his mouth. He heard a cracked beaker full of water set amid the deep scratches on the table in front of him. The sergeant said, ‘Drink, lad, and get a hold of yourself. We need to ask you a few questions.’ He watched Joe drink, looked at him assessingly with his head on one side, decided he was not going to fall off the chair, and sat down on his stool.
Joe told himself to be careful, when he heard about questions. These men were coppers, they’d just told him that. And a superintendent was quite high up in the police, he remembered that. He took another gulp of his water and said with a sly smile, ‘Do I need a brief?’
He saw the two men glance at each other. Then the tall one said, ‘No, you don’t need a brief, lad, not yet. This is an informal chat.’
Joe nodded, though he wasn’t sure he understood. He was pleased with his question about the brief; he’d remembered that word from the things he’d watched on television — years ago, that seemed now. That would show them that he was no pushover. But he wished they’d get on and accuse him, if that was what they were here for. Get things over and done with.
Instead, the tall one, Lambert, said, ‘How long have you been living here now, Joe?’
‘Don’t know exactly. Months, maybe.’ He fixed his face into an inscrutable mask. That would show them that they weren’t going to catch him out easily.
‘Since Christmas, would you say?’
‘Around then, yes.’ It was after the new year when he came here, but he wouldn’t tell them that.
‘And where were you before that?’
‘Can’t remember. Another squat, I s’pose.’
‘Had a job, have you, these last few months?’
He frowned. They must be trying to catch him for claiming the Social. But he didn’t think he had, not while he was working. But the law was like a bloody great snake: they could have you for anything, if they put their minds to it. Best to be on the safe side. He said,
‘No. Can’t remember when I last worked.’
Lambert said, ‘Be much better for you, Joe, if you were honest with us. About this and everything else.’ He looked down at a sheet Joe hadn’t noticed before, on his side of the shabby table. ‘We made some enquiries about you before we came here, you see, Joe. Heard some good things, actually. That you’d kicked the drug habit. That you were in regular employment. Shelf-stacking at Sainsbury’s, wasn’t it?’
If they’d been able to find out about that, they probably knew everything else about him, were probably just playing cat and mouse with him in this dirty old kitchen. But you didn’t live for months in squats without learning the code: you gave the police nothing. Nothing they could turn against you. Joe’s lower lip came out in a sulky stubbornness. ‘Casual work, that was. No guarantee of permanent employment, they said, when they took me on. Five pounds an hour. But I didn’t claim the Social, not when I was stacking.’
‘No, I don’t believe you did. And you were doing well. Through the trial period and into a proper job. Mr Harding at Sainsbury’s was quite pleased with you, when we spoke to him this morning. Hard-working and reliable, he said.’
Joe felt a stab of pride at that, although he was still determined not to trust them. Fancy old sourpuss Harding saying that about him! ‘It wasn’t hard, not really. Not after the first few days. And—’
‘Until this week, that is. Mr Harding hasn’t seen you since last Saturday, and he’s had no word from you that you were sick. He didn’t like that, Joe.’
Was it only last Saturday that he’d been at work? It seemed months ago, part of a better and vanished world. ‘Couldn’t help that, could I?’
‘Couldn’t you, Joe? Well no, perhaps you couldn’t, not once you’d gone back on the heroin.’
Joe made to deny it, knew it was hopeless, let the thin arms he had lifted drop back hopelessly against his sides. Lambert’s voice was suddenly harsh and angry. ‘You’re a fool, Joe, and you know it! You know what it takes to kick drugs, and you’d done it. Now you’re throwing it all away!’
He wanted to deny it, and when he knew he couldn’t, he wanted to beat his fists against that long, lined, unblinking face. The words were like nails in his splitting head. He shut his eyes and felt himself swaying as he gripped the sides of the chair beneath his thighs. Then, as a fit of trembling came again, he felt something warm and heavy about his shoulders. A coat. Not his coat. It must be the one that had been hanging on the back of the kitchen door. He was glad of its musty, enveloping warmth, but he must put it back as soon as they’d gone. Or leave it behind if they took him with them. People in squats didn’t have many possessions, but they could cut up rough if they thought you were light-fingered with what few things they had.
They were speaking again, dragging him back to the world he had forgotten for a moment, as his brain hazed with the need for heroin. It was the burly one, the one who had helped him in, who had put the coat on his shoulders just now. Hook.
He said, ‘You have a girlfriend, haven’t you, Joe?’
‘Had, you mean! Had a girlfriend!’ The bitter correction was out before he thought. He saw them looking at each other, realized dully that he had given something away. In his grief and anger, he didn’t care.
‘Kate Wharton, wasn’t it, Joe?’ The sergeant’s voice was slow, insistent, brooking of no argument from the fraying brain which needed its fix. Joe nodded.
‘What happened to Kate, Joe?’
‘She’s dead.’ He found the tears were flowing down the sides of his nose, down his cheeks, gathering on his chin. They accumulated there for a moment. Then he felt the first one drop on to the thin cotton of his T-shirt.
‘How do you know that, Joe?’
He was dimly aware that there was a trap here. ‘In the papers, isn’t it? Found strangled, wasn’t she?’ He wondered if that was the right thing for him to say; he could no longer work out any tactics.
‘That’s right. I’m sorry, Joe. Got on well with Kate, did you?’
The tears ran still, surprising him. There was no sobbing, just moisture he could not control, running steadily from his eyes. ‘Yes. She was my girl, Kate. We were going to be an item.’
‘I see. Did Kate think that, too, Joe?’
Just like them to go questioning that; everyone used to ask him that, when Kate was still around. He said stubbornly, ‘Yes. We were agreed. We were going to be an item.’
‘But it never happened, did it?’
He shook his head dumbly, feeling the salt tears on his lips.
‘Who killed her, Joe?’
They didn’t know.
That message came leaping into his throbbing head. They didn’t know what had happened between him and Kate, how it had all gone wrong. And he must keep it that way. He remembered the tale they had told him when he was taking the cure, about the millions of brain cells you lost when you were an addict. His head felt as though it hadn’t many brain cells left within it at this moment, but he tried to muster them into a fierce concentration on that fact: they didn’t know. They couldn’t arrest him without evidence, and he wasn’t going to give them any now. Not him. Not Joe Ashton.
The tears had stopped, as suddenly and unexpectedly as they had arrived.
He said, ‘I don’t know who killed Kate.’ It came out slowly, with each monosyllable an immense effort.
There was a pause, and he knew they were studying him, but he didn’t look up. Then the tall one, Lambert, started the questioning again. ‘When did you last see Kate, Joe?’
He was careful now. They weren’t going to catch him, for all that they had been kinder to him than pigs should have been. Perhaps that was all a trick. ‘Last Friday night. After I’d finished at Sainsbury’s.’
‘And did she seem upset about anything?’
Still he concentrated, and still the words came to him when he needed them. ‘No. She seemed just the same as she usually was. We — we had a laugh together.’
‘And what was that about, Joe? What made the two of you laugh?’
He’d gone too far there. Given them something to fasten on, when he should have kept them guessing. ‘I can’t remember now. Nothing important.’
‘And then the laughter stopped, and you had a bit of a row, I expect. Serious quarrel, was it, Joe?’
He didn’t know how the switch to the quarrel had come, wondered what he’d done to let them get into that. He forced himself to think, to search for the right response. He mustn’t look rattled. ‘No, nothing serious. I’d have remembered what it was about, if it’d been serious.’
‘Who killed Kate, Joe?’
It came as suddenly as a stone shattering a window. But Joe wasn’t thrown by it. He kept his eyes closed, focusing all his failing resources on finding the right answer, on not making a mistake now, when he sensed it was nearly over. ‘I don’t know, do I? I’d tell you if I did, wouldn’t I?’
‘Would you, Joe? Do you know of any enemies Kate had, Joe? Think carefully now.’
Apart from me, they mean. Apart from me, after that awful quarrel. Why didn’t you give way, Kate? Why did you make me fight? ‘No. No enemies. None that would kill her, anyway.’
He was swaying now, holding hard to the seat of the chair at each side of his slender thighs, feeling he might fall on to the floor if he did not do that. The silence stretched, and he opened his eyes. They were both looking hard into his face.
Lambert said, ‘We’ll need to talk again, when you’re in better shape. Before we go, you’re sure you can’t think of anyone who might have killed Kate?’
He shook his head, unable to speak now, frightened that his tongue would betray him if he did. He wanted only to lie on the mattress against the torn wallpaper of the wall upstairs, to curl up tight in the foetal position which might let him forget.
Hook turned when they reached the door, came back and spoke quietly but urgently into his ear. ‘Don’t give up what you’ve achieved, lad. Don’t go back on the heroin, not now. Whateve
r else you might have done.’
Joe thought for a moment he was going to start the questions again, He nodded, without reopening his eyes. Hook said, ‘Go and see Father Gillespie at St Anne’s House. He’s a good man. He’ll help you, without asking questions. Get yourself round there this morning, in time for the meal at one. You need food, Joe. You’re not hooked again yet, but you need help.’
Joe wanted only to be alone, wanted only to be rid of this unexpectedly kindly man. ‘I will. I’ll go there today,’ he gasped. He struggled upright, reeled to the door, clutched the rickety handrail as he climbed the rotting stairs. When he reached the top and turned with a sigh, he found Hook still watching him from the kitchen door.
He leaned against the wall of the bedroom and watched the pigs through the cracked pane of the big sash window. The tall one folded himself stiffly into the car. Hook looked up at the white-faced watcher at the window and gave him a fleeting smile.
Joe watched them drive away. Then he fell face down on the stinking mattress, rolled on to his side, and drew his knees up against his chest.
Nine
Julie Wharton had made the bed during the morning. But she went up to the bedroom after the phone call, retrieved the pyjamas from under her nightdress, and shut them carefully in the drawer of the dressing table. She went into the bathroom and moved the razor and shaving cream from the washbasin to the cupboard beneath it. There was no reason why they should come up here, but she was taking no chances. You never knew where the police would poke their noses, if you excited their curiosity.
She looked at the time on the bedside radio. Two o’clock. She had half an hour yet before the time they had agreed. She went downstairs, set the small table in the kitchen with a single setting of cutlery and a single cup and saucer, and moved the shirts, socks and underpants from the clothes stand, where they had been airing. Then she vacuumed the floor in the living room, picked up Roy’s picture from the sideboard and looked at it fondly for a moment. ‘Got to keep you out of this if we can, haven’t we, my love?’ she said as she laid the silver frame in a drawer beneath the tablecloth she never used.
Death on the Eleventh Hole Page 7
