In the Still of the Night

by Charlotte Lamb

  ‘Do you, Annie? So do I. But I’ve had some help, of course. I’ve had pictures of you to remind me. Over the years I cut out hundreds of pictures of you from magazines and newspapers – and when I was arrested there was an old photo of you in my jacket pocket, taken here, in the garden, feeding the birds – do you remember that day?

  She nodded, and he gave a ragged sigh.

  ‘I had that next to my bed, all the time I was in prison, alongside a photo of my mother.’

  ‘You loved her very much, didn’t you? I used to feel quite jealous, the way you always talked about her.’

  ‘She was wonderful. I wish you’d known her, I know she’d have loved you.’ His eyes glowed and she smiled down at him.

  ‘I’m sure I’d have loved her, too.’

  ‘She was always delicate. The years with him didn’t help – my father, I mean. He used to beat her up all the time. He couldn’t hold down a job, we never had any money – so he drank to forget what a stupid, useless failure he was. I hated him.’

  His body was tense and strained, his face dark with angry blood. ‘If he hadn’t died I know he’d have ended up killing her.’

  Annie was horrified. ‘Oh, Johnny!’

  He picked up her disbelief and said fiercely, ‘Yes, he would! I’m sure of it. But once he was gone, everything was so different – we were so happy together. I was shattered when she died while I was still at school.’ He sighed. ‘At least she never had to know I was sent to prison.’

  Hesitantly, she asked him, ‘Was it really awful being there?’

  His eyes were wild. ‘It was a nightmare. Being shut in one tiny room year after year. I nearly went mad. Almost every night since I got out I dream I’m back there and I wake up sweating. I’ve got claustrophobia now; it started in prison. I felt the walls were starting to close in on me, I couldn’t breathe, thought I’d suffocate. I don’t know how I got through those eight years. I had no one to talk to – the other prisoners didn’t like me because I wasn’t one of them; I was educated, I’d been to college, I read a lot. We had nothing in common. And I was a target for some of the warders because I’d half killed a copper.’

  Annie shivered. ‘Don’t talk about killing! Oh, Johnny, isn’t it terrible about poor Derek? I can’t believe it – he was the last person I would have expected to get murdered. Did you see Mike Waterford’s interviews in this morning’s newspapers? I was so angry!’

  ‘So was I. I’m amazed the TV company let him talk about you that way. It must have done the series a lot of damage.’

  She groaned. ‘That’s what I said. I hope to God the police don’t believe what he’s suggesting – it wasn’t true, any of it, but people are always ready to believe the worst. Oh, Johnny … who can have killed Derek? Some of the press seem to think he was gay and picked up somebody dangerous, but I keep thinking … what … what if it was Roger Keats? He was the type to resent his wife having another man. I wouldn’t put murder past him. But if it was him … I can’t help thinking … he might come after me.’

  Johnny sat up and took her face between his hands, kissed her softly, looking into her eyes. ‘Don’t look so scared, darling. You’re safe while you’re with me.’

  Mike Waterford got a call that evening. The voice was low and husky, a man’s voice. He didn’t recognise it. ‘I saw you on breakfast TV this morning. Talking about Annie Lang.’

  Mike was about to hang up. He had been getting hostile calls all day from her fans; he was sick of listening to them going on and on about her and what a wonderful person she was and how much they hated him for talking like that about her. Some people didn’t want to know the truth.

  ‘I know something about her that nobody else knows,’ the voice whispered, and Mike froze, listening. ‘Something that would ruin her, if it got out.’

  Mike’s eyes widened. He tried not to sound too eager. ‘What?’

  ‘Not over the phone. And I want something in exchange.’

  Mike smiled cynically. ‘Oh, blackmail, is it? If she doesn’t pay up you’ll go to the press with what you know? You’d better talk to her, not me – or to the company’s lawyers.’

  Again he was about to hang up, but the man quickly said, ‘No, you don’t understand. I don’t want to talk to any lawyers. Look, I’m just around the corner from your place – I can prove what I’m saying.’

  ‘Who is this? How do you know where I live? Where did you get my phone number? Do you work for the company – is that it? Do I know you? Is that why you’ve rung me instead of contacting the company or Annie herself?’

  ‘Yes, I know you, and I think you’ll be very interested in what I’m going to show you. You hate her, don’t you? If I go to the press they’ll probably swindle me. I’m not a famous actor; they won’t dare pay you in peanuts, though. I think we can make a deal, don’t you?’

  Mike hesitated only a second or two. It wasn’t so much the money, although that could be useful; it was more the sheer enjoyment of dragging Annie Lang even deeper into the mud. She had sneered at him once too often.

  11

  Tom Moor rang Sean on his mobile phone at eight o’clock. ‘Where the hell are you? I’m at your place.’

  ‘I’m sitting outside Annie’s house, waiting for her – she’s vanished again. Have you found Keats yet?’

  ‘I’ve found out too much to talk over the phone – I’ll come there. Wait for me.’

  He hung up and Sean yawned, stretching and looking at his watch. It would take Tom a good twenty minutes to drive here. Sean needed to stretch his legs, he was cramped and he needed to go to the lavatory. He got out, locked his car and walked up the road to a pub he had noticed on the corner. A sign swung over head, creaking in the wind – a very shabby-looking lion, the red paint largely gone.

  Opposite on the other side of the road which made a T-junction with Annie’s road stood a few shops; a butcher’s, a greengrocer’s, a newsagent’s. They were all shut now. There was nobody much about in this suburban street. People were home from work and watching TV or eating supper. A memory stirred in Sean’s mind – hadn’t Annie mentioned that her mother once ran a shop just round the corner from their house? Maybe it was one of these? None of the shop fronts carried the name Lang. No doubt it had been changed when her mother sold out.

  Sean walked into the pub; it wasn’t busy, just a few regulars playing darts and listening to a juke box. They looked round at Sean hopefully. ‘D’you play? Want a game?’

  He shook his head. ‘Sorry, not stopping.’ He bought a couple of cans of ice-cold beer to take back with him, used the lavatory, then walked down the road again. In case Annie was back he rang her doorbell; the house was still dark, no sign of her.

  Five minutes later, Tom Moor’s car drew up and he got out and came to sit in Sean’s Porsche. He looked tired. There were flecks of red in the whites of his eyes and a telltale muscle jerking beside his mouth, noticed Sean with contrition.

  Tom talked as fast as ever, though, and didn’t complain. Much. ‘God, I’m dead on my feet. Why can’t you bring me nice quiet cases I can follow up on the telephone sitting in my own chair in my own office?’

  Sean offered him one of the cans of beer, still dewy from the pub fridge. Tom drank it as if it was milk, his eyes closed.

  ‘Man, that was good. You can read my mind.’ He scrunched the can and dropped it on the floor. ‘OK. Still no news of Roger Keats. Chorley’s people are on his trail since his wife told them he’d confessed to killing Derek.’

  ‘Who’s your line into Chorley’s office now?’

  Tom laid a finger along his nose. ‘Ask no questions, hear no lies. Anyway, so far they haven’t found this guy Keats. Meanwhile I’ve checked out Johnny Tyrone for you. Now he was easy. The magazine were very open about his background. In fact, they’re proud of him. They boasted about where they’d got him from. He’s just done eight years for attempted murder.’

  ‘What?’ Sean hadn’t expected that. His jaw dropped.

  Tom Moor
grinned at his visible surprise. ‘Yeah. He stole a car, was stopped by a police constable, and bashed his head in, left him for dead. He got away, but later the same night he was arrested after a car chase and charged with attempted murder in the furtherance of a crime – the poor bastard he hit didn’t die, but his brains never worked so good since. Tyrone was found guilty, got ten years, should have got out on parole after about six – he was a model prisoner, it seems, no trouble at all – until there was another incident. He had a fight with a prisoner and injured him pretty badly. No explanation, neither of the men would talk, but it set his parole back, which is why he did eight years. Seems he was a journalist before he went to prison and while he was there he edited the prison magazine – that’s how he met the editor of this crime magazine, he wrote articles for them about life in prison and some on big-time criminals, the editor liked his stuff and he was offered a job when he got out.’

  Ignoring all the career details, Sean said, ‘So he’s violent and dangerous.’

  He couldn’t help a quiver of satisfaction; his instincts about the man had been spot on. Once a cop, always a cop, he thought. I knew. I just knew.

  And Annie was with this man somewhere. Did she have any idea about all this? Surely she wouldn’t be seeing the guy if she did?

  ‘He has a rather sad family history, too,’ Tom said.

  ‘Par for the course with types like that,’ said Sean, not wanting to be forced to have any sympathy for the man at all. ‘I’m a great believer in genetics. I don’t hold with all that stuff about it being society’s fault.’

  ‘Fifty-fifty,’ argued Tom. ‘Genetics and environment, they’re both important. Even a basically good kid can turn bad if he gets kicked around all his life – I’ve seen it, time and again. They get mad because they aren’t getting nowhere however hard they try, and it’s damned unfair, and then they start on drugs and next thing their whole lives are a mess.’

  ‘We’ll talk this out another time,’ Sean impatiently said. ‘What did you find out about Tyrone’s family background?’

  Tom gave him a look, but shrugged. ‘He’s from Essex, the London fringe, born in Chingford, lived on the edge of Epping Forest most of his life – I got his date of birth from the magazine, he had to fill in the usual income-tax and national-insurance forms. I checked up in the Records Office, drove over to Chingford, managed to find someone who’d lived next door to his parents years ago and remembered him – an old girl with false teeth that didn’t quite fit, she whistled on every other word. But her memory was as clear as a bell. She told me which school he’d gone to, I called in there, pretending to be checking references – several teachers remembered him; they liked him, gave him a rave report, in fact. They told me something else, too – I checked it out in the back issues of the local newspaper, and they were right. He’s an only child and his parents both died while he was young. His mother when he was in his teens, his father when he was about six – and listen to this, it seems his father fell downstairs in their house and was killed outright. He was drunk at the time; the inquest brought it in as an accident.’

  In the shadowy car, Sean turned his head to stare at him, narrow-eyed. ‘But you don’t think it was?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far. Just a hunch.’

  ‘I trust your hunches, Tom, always have.’

  Tom grinned. ‘Thanks. OK, then, from the report in the local paper both the boy and his mother were upstairs at the time – they claimed to have been together in the boy’s bedroom when they heard him fall. He’d been drinking for hours, and the forensic report given to the coroner confirmed that. But the widow admitted that her husband had been knocking her about before he fell – the police evidence was that when they saw her that night she was covered in bruises, had a split lip and a black eye. And a neighbour heard her screaming, but apparently that was normal for this pair. They were always fighting.’

  ‘I think I get your drift,’ Sean said slowly. ‘You mean – did he fall, or was he pushed? And how old was Tyrone then?’

  ‘Six.’

  Sean grimaced. ‘Yes. A bit young to start out on a career as a murderer, but if he was there and saw it happen it must have set up a trauma, reinforced any hereditary tendency to violence. I suppose the mother didn’t come to a violent end too?’

  ‘No, she died of natural causes, and I’m told the boy worshipped the ground she walked on. He was devastated when she died, these neighbours told me, and listen to this – they said he was a quiet, dreamy, gentle boy, wouldn’t say boo to a goose.’

  ‘But half kills policemen,’ muttered Sean and Tom nodded.

  ‘Weird, isn’t it? Anyway, he had to go and live with his grandmother, in Epping Forest. She was his mother’s mother, and had hated his father, had tried to stop her daughter marrying him. A shrewd old woman, obviously, if the guy used to beat up the daughter. I got out of the magazine editor that Tyrone is crazy about the house he used to live in with his grandmother, a big, detached place … the editor called it a folly, but I don’t know what that means, except it sounds like a white elephant to me. Tyrone inherited it when the old lady died eight years ago.’

  ‘Eight years ago?’ repeated Sean sharply. ‘Again? Everything in this story seems to lead straight back to whatever happened eight years ago.’

  Tom looked blank. ‘It does? What haven’t you told me?’

  ‘Oh, never mind – carry on, I was just babbling.’

  ‘Uh-huh?’ Tom said drily, but went on. ‘He kept the house on while he was in prison because he got some insurance money left to him by his grandmother, but that’s all eaten up now and he’s having to sell the house because he can’t afford it.’

  Sean stiffened. ‘Did this editor give you the address?’

  Tom Moor turned to look at him, picking up on his tone. ‘He didn’t know it. I asked him. He gave me Tyrone’s current address – it’s just a bedsit.’

  Sean stifled a groan. ‘Well, give that to me, Tom.’

  Tom handed over a folder. ‘Here you are – photostats of the birth certificate, the death certificate of the father, and the coroner’s report, his home address, income-tax number, national-insurance number … I practically got his vaccination certificates!’

  ‘Thanks,’ Sean said, punching his arm lightly. ‘I owe you one. Great work. You go on home to bed now, and tell Cherie I’m sorry.’

  ‘Won’t make no difference, man. Cherie hates you. And wait till you see my bill – you won’t owe me nothing when you’ve paid that!’ Tom chuckled and got out of the Porsche, leaned on the roof and said, ‘Hey, think I’ll get me one of these after you’ve paid my bill.’

  When Tom had gone, Sean drove to the address Tom had given him. It was a huge, rambling late-Victorian house in the back streets of Hackney which had been converted into single-room flatlets. The one Johnny Tyrone occupied was dark and nobody answered when he rang the bell although a few faces showed at windows and stared down at him in a hostile way.

  He yelled up at them but none of them opened a window; they vanished again when he waved and shouted up again.

  Sean drove back to Annie’s house; that was still dark, too, and nobody answered the bell there, either.

  They’re together, he thought. But where? His stomach burned with acid. He settled down in his car again, to brood and wait.

  Annie got back home at ten o’clock. Johnny had wanted her to spend the night with him, but she had yet to learn her lines for the next day and she had to be up at six, she told him.

  ‘I’d love to stay all night, but I know from bitter experience that if I don’t sleep I’m good for nothing next day.’

  Holding her close he asked, ‘When, then? Do you realise we’ve never spent a night together? We’ve only ever snatched a few hours and then had to hurry off, even when we were living under the same roof, in case your mother caught us.’

  ‘At the weekend? Saturday night, Johnny – I don’t have to get up on Sunday, I have the day off. We could sleep here that
night, or you could come to my house.’

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘This is our place, it always was.’

  She had known he would say that – it was how she felt, too. This was their place, their secret hiding place. Nobody else ever came there and almost no traffic ever went past. Only the trees knew where they were.

  ‘Give me your phone number, Johnny, in case I need to talk to you. I always have to wait for you to ring me.’

  ‘I don’t have a phone of my own.’ He wrote down the number of his magazine. ‘They’ll pass the message on to me; I call in every day. And this is my address. It’s just one room, though, a bedsit – until I sell this house I won’t have the money to get myself a place of my own. This is just a room in a run down old place divided into a dozen bedsits. I haven’t been there long and I can’t wait to get away.’

  Huskily, she said, ‘You could come and live with me, Johnny – why not? I have plenty of room.’

  He shook his head, his face obstinate. ‘I won’t live in your house, Annie, it has to be a place we share. As soon as I’ve sold this house we’ll find a place where we can be together.’

  An idea hit her and her eyes lit up. ‘I could buy this house, Johnny!’ She wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before. ‘I could buy fifty per cent of it – that way, you would have some money, and we would each own half the house!’

  He flushed with excitement. ‘That never occurred to me! I’ve had it valued at a hundred and fifty thousand – could you raise seventy-five thousand to buy half of it? But it does need a lot of work, Annie. I know it’s fun camping out here now, but if we were to live in it we’d have to have the roof seen to, and a number of windows need to be replaced, not to mention that every single room needs to be redecorated. We wouldn’t be able to move in for months.’

  ‘It would be fun, though, seeing it come back to life!’ Her eyes were like candle-flames at the very thought of it. ‘We would have a wonderful time doing it, Johnny.’

  He dropped her off at her home half an hour later; they were still talking eagerly about what they would do to the house once the legal problems had been sorted out. She kissed him goodnight reluctantly and got out, hurrying across the pavement to her house.