“That could be the filth.”
He was dependent on her now. Had he scared her, Joe wondered. Would she give him away?
“Get behind the arch,” she whispered. “Go now.”
Joe got to his feet and stumbled away, realizing his entire future was in the hands of this vagrant girl. He felt completely pissed and hardly able to stand.
Dimly he could hear the police asking the girl brusque but benign questions.
“You on your own, then?”
“I’ve got a friend. We had an argument. But he’ll be back.”
“Shouldn’t be alone out here.” The policeman was avuncular.
“Got a fag?”
“No.”
“I bet you have.”
“You seen anybody?” The other officer was less friendly.
“Not a soul. Why?”
“Been an incident up King’s Cross.”
“What happened?” she asked eagerly.
“Someone got stabbed.”
“Dead or alive?”
“His assailant would have bloodstains on him.”
“Any description?” she asked, the same note of salacious eagerness in her voice.
“Bloke in an overcoat. Tall. Not a lot to go on.”
“Better take a look round,” said the other policeman.
“Do you think I’ve been entertaining some blood-soaked psycho? I’m not that fucking stupid.”
The two policemen swept their torches dutifully around the devastation as Joe flattened himself at the back of the arch, praying they would go away.
“You look after yourself, then,” said the more civilized of the two. “Keep warm. It’s bloody freezing tonight.” He paused and then said almost tentatively, “There’s that new hostel in Vauxhall. Know where it is? Near Monson Street —”
“Come on, Eric,” snapped his partner. “It’s enough to freeze your arse.”
“You get down there.”
“Maybe I’ll give it a go one of these days,” she replied.
Joe listened to the police scramble back through the hole in the steel sheeting and a few minutes later he heard then car move away.
When he thought he was safe, he came back to her ruefully, as if he was a kid again, grateful for a favour.
“You did that bloke.” It wasn’t a question, just a statement of acceptance. She picked up the bottle and took a long pull, but Joe thought he could see a tremor in her wrist.
“No way.” Joe tried to sound casual but found he could see Weston again, and despite the cold he began to sweat.
She yawned, failing to mask her fear. “You owe me.”
Joe pulled out his wallet and gave her fifty pounds which she counted carefully and then shoved into the back pocket of her jeans. “Now you can push off,” she said with mock bravado.
“Give me another drink.”
But she threw the bottle into the fire and it exploded in a shower of glass.
“You stupid cow.” He had needed the gin and felt a blind rage rising in him that he hadn’t experienced for a long time.
“You a nutter, then?” She was scornful. “I told you there was another bottle.”
“You’re a right little slag, aren’t you?” He moved a few paces towards her.
“I’ll scream,” she said, more confident now she was in the face of danger. Joe remembered that was the way he had felt when McMarn appeared at the door of his flat, but he also recalled how quickly that confidence had dispersed. She gave him an uneasy smile. “My night with a deranged killer. That’s something to remember, isn’t it?”
Joe shrugged. “You’ll end with a knife up your fanny if you’re not careful, but it won’t be mine.” A sudden surge of desire swept over him and he moved nearer. For a moment there was fear in her eyes, but she didn’t back away. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said.
“What do you want then? A blow-job?”
“Why not?”
“You’d like to fuck me? Why? Suppose I was HIV? That stopped you in your tracks, didn’t it?” She went over to the supermarket trolley and tore off some more cotton wool and dipped it into the tepid can. “I’ll finish the job,” she said and began to scrub at his forehead again.
“You’re hurting.”
“Sorry.”
“Are you still afraid of me?”
“You don’t live in a hotel, do you?”
“No.”
“You’ve got a home.”
“That’s right.”
“Kids?”
“A baby.”
“A wife?”
He nodded.
“And you’re going back to them? After killing this bloke?”
“It was a job.”
She gazed at him curiously.
“What’s your friend’s name?” asked Joe at last.
“Ed.”
“How would you like to go to France, or somewhere? Spain — where it’s warmer.” He found himself blurting out the words without knowing why.
“Can’t do much on your fifty quid, can I?”
“What’s your name?”
“Ruth.”
“Got a passport?”
She nodded.
“Suppose I put a grand in a left-luggage locker at Victoria. Say this time next week.” It’s all a gesture, the mocking voice said. What is it? Atonement? Christ, he hadn’t even got the money, hadn’t agreed to another killing. And would he be able to stomach it, especially after this one had gone so obscenely wrong? He was more like a butcher than an executioner.
“You having me on?”
“Morning of the twenty-eighth. Half-ten to eleven. Be here.” Joe grabbed her shoulders, and as he drew her to him she started to shake. “Don’t,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“What’s it like, killing someone?”
He didn’t reply.
She was still shaking, but Joe was no longer sure whether she was afraid of him. Maybe it was the cold — or the lack of gin.
Joe suddenly kissed her chapped lips.
“If you go that way — right across the yard — there’s another hole in the fence.” She stammered slightly. “You ought to get going.”
“How do I look?”
She struck a match and scrutinized him. “Terrible.”
Michael McMarn had parked his Rover on the embankment and decided to take a gentle stroll up to the meat rack on Piccadilly. His motives were twofold: he liked to check on new arrivals and he also wanted a distraction. Having been reduced to operating a no-hoper like Barrington as his last resort, the Candy Man was feeling deeply depressed.
Whatever damage Barrington had or had not done, McMarn was now sure that he had made an appalling mistake. Why hadn’t he taken Leslie Ryland’s advice and tried his luck in Algiers? Why the hell had he decided to go it alone? But McMarn knew the answer. The meat rack. That’s why he stayed at such risk in London. Despite Tommy, his power over the boys was as addictive as Leslie Ryland’s cocaine and what was more, the familiarity of the London meat rack was much safer than its counterpart in Algiers.
As he walked towards Trafalgar Square, McMarn yearned for the old days, remembering painfully the Villa Torentino, the Florentine hotel where Fergus Quinton had had his suite. He could see the pale winter sun creeping over the balcony, penetrating the room, sending shadows over the walls. Then he saw the pink-washed house south of Grasse, with its flaking blue shutters and sloping tiled roof, the small formal garden ending in a grove of cypress trees and the Mediterranean sparkling far below.
McMarn had to scour the low life of Grasse to find Quinton his boys, but eventually it had not been difficult and he had become experienced enough to know how to top local rates and to ensure discretion. He remembered Pierre, who had sat long-legged at the bottom of the stairs with their iron railings and the wooden sculptures of nature’s harvest on the walls, and who had once bathed with him in a cold spring sea and had pleasured McMarn so much in the sand underneath the pine trees.
But there had bee
n a singular absence of golden limbs in Newcastle and Glasgow and, more recently, in London. Instead there was scruffy, puffy, rough trade, pallid and stinking, so that nowadays McMarn preferred them black or brown. He had quite gone off white flesh unless it was tanned, and sadly it rarely was.
Michael McMarn reached Piccadilly just as the rain began to spit, already regretting his journey to the pale fleshpots of the great metropolis. What was more, there wasn’t much flesh around. Only by a wink or a nod from the old brigade would McMarn know that there was someone new, someone worth sizing up. Tonight he was lucky. The boy couldn’t have been more than fourteen, yet he reminded him of Tommy at the same age.
Louis moved casually out of the shadows with the youngster in tow, and McMarn followed some paces behind, seemingly uninterested, strolling casually, a heavily built elderly man in a dark coat, out for a walk, perhaps from a nearby hotel. He did not excite attention, but there were no police visible anyway and his antennae for plain-clothes officers were highly sensitive.
Once in the comparative anonymity of Soho Square, the three of them paused briefly while Louis introduced McMarn to William, a runaway from Birmingham who had retained his charm and looked reasonably clean in his still good jeans and comparatively unsullied jerkin and sweater. He was in good nick, thought McMarn, tall and dark with an unmarked face, looking younger than he should, and he felt a rush of desire which he fought to control.
“This gentleman can do you some good,” Louis was explaining. “We call him the Candy Man.”
“Got any sweets?” asked William cheekily.
When McMarn reached home it was after midnight. He was tired, but at least he had the satisfaction of adding another recruit to his rather meagre London stock. Someone might pay a lot for William.
As he opened the door, Leslie was already in the small hallway, looking agitated.
“Stanton’s here.”
“Shit!”
“He’s in the front room.”
“You mean the lounge.” McMarn suddenly felt he could hardly cope. Although he had never been arrested, D.I. Stanton of the Met Vice Squad had called once before, tipped off not only by the Glasgow police but no doubt also by Sears.
McMarn took off his coat, slowly hung it up, straightened the old-fashioned Windsor knot of his tie and strolled in, rubbing his hands and radiating a casual bonhomie he certainly did not feel.
“A late caller. Will you have a malt?”
“No, thanks.” Stanton was a young and ambitious officer who was frustrated by his department’s inability to nail McMarn. He knew he was the Candy Man, had been told he had been run out of Glasgow, and guessed there could be a price on his head, but there was a singular lack of evidence and his visit could only be an attempted frightener.
Stanton was a large man in his mid-thirties, running to fat and already heavily jowled.
“Scotsman’s been slashed tonight.”
“Have you come to give me an update on London crime?” replied McMarn, concealing a hot rush of panicky apprehension.
“He’s dead.”
“What was his name?”
“Weston. James Weston.”
“Never heard of him.”
“It was a crude job. Penknife.”
“Nasty.”
“Had his throat cut. But he had your address in his wallet.”
“I see.” McMarn looked carefully taken aback.
“Do you think he meant you some harm?”
“No,” said McMarn. What in God’s name could have happened? Why hadn’t Barrington used the Magnum? Why had he hacked at Weston like that?
“You don’t think Weston was sent to top you?”
McMarn smiled as if at a very small joke. “I’m a retired man,” he said. “I’ve done no harm to anyone.”
“Hell’s Gate?”
“A social club.”
“I thought it was for pederasts.”
“That’s slander.”
“Do you think your own life might be in danger?”
“I can’t imagine why.”
“Most villains I know think you suck,” said Stanton, trying to rattle him.
But McMarn was back in control now. “You’re abusing my hospitality. Any more of this and I’ll call my lawyer.”
“Who did you pay to kill Weston?”
McMarn went to the phone, a routine move, signifying to Stanton that his time was up.
“It was a clumsy job.”
“As you describe the attack, it sounds barbaric.”
“You’re on the run, McMarn.”
“I’m rather settled, here in Islington.”
“You’ll be in a safe house next.”
“That doesn’t sound too cosy.”
“You need protection.”
“So that’s what you’re leading up to.” McMarn gave him a studiedly forgiving smile. “Well, it’s kind of you to want to spend all that money but I really don’t need it.”
Stanton stood up. “Why don’t you co-operate?” he asked. “We could look after you.”
“You speak with forked tongue,” replied McMarn, assuming a calm he certainly didn’t feel.
“You’re too old for this.”
“Too old for what, may I ask?”
“For running. As a snout you’d —”
“Are you offering me a bribe?” asked McMarn, full of moral indignation.
Stanton sighed. “Why don’t you get real? You’ll end up a stuck pig.”
When he had gone, McMarn knew that Stanton had summed up his situation all too well, and a renewed wave of depression seized him.
Leslie Ryland closed the door softly behind him.
“Where did you say you were going to meet Barrington tomorrow?”
“Tesco’s.”
“Scare that shit-head out of his mind, and buy me some Andrew’s. I feel liverish.”
“Why were you so late?” asked Carla, standing by the bed, looking down at Joe uncertainly, knowing she shouldn’t be probing but this time too worried to stop herself breaking the unspoken rule. “Do you know what time you came in?”
“No,” he grunted.
“You woke me.”
“Sorry.”
“Lucky you didn’t wake Tim.”
Joe rolled over, his head splitting.
Carla smiled her tolerant smile, but it was thin and artificial. “Night out?”
“Job.”
She didn’t ask any more questions for which Joe was grateful. He had slept heavily without dreaming, thanks to the amount of alcohol he had consumed, and when he woke he had not remembered what had happened for a few minutes as he mentally groped his way back into reality. Then it had hit him with maximum force as Joe saw the blood spurting from the ragged wound in his victim’s throat, running bright and sticky, and heard again the animal sounds.
He wondered how long the man had taken to die, crawling about on the floor of that squalid toilet, shifting himself the while.
“I had to ditch that overcoat,” he told Carla, trying to think straight.
“Ditch it?” For once she was indignant. “That’s new, that is. We can’t afford to —”
“Got into a ruck, didn’t I?”
“For God’s sake, Joe.” She was concerned again now and he could see the raw fear in her eyes.
“Right mess. Didn’t want the old Bill to get hold of it.”
“Someone hurt bad?”
“No.” He had actually thrown the overcoat into a pile of dossers’ blankets and the gun and the knife into an oil drum, having carefully wiped them clean. It was the best he could do. “I don’t want to talk about what happened. It was a mistake. A fucking awful mistake.”
“Your brother rang, but I didn’t want to wake you. Said he’d call back.”
Joe closed his eyes and Ruth swam into his consciousness. When Carla had gone he began to masturbate.
“Phone,” she said, half an hour later. “You’re in demand this morning. You’ll have to think of getting
up sometime.”
Joe stared at her blankly. He had killed a man. He still couldn’t believe what he had done. Years ago the army had trained him to do just that, but he could never have imagined the reality was so appalling.
“Who is it?”
“Ryland. New one on me.”
Joe picked up the extension, his head splitting from the hangover. He must have drunk half a bottle of neat gin last night. Maybe more.
“You fucked up last night,” said Leslie Ryland. “You really fucked up.”
“There were reasons.”
“Give them to me in Tesco’s. Kingston. Two o’clock on top of the multi-storey. Remember?”
As he put down the receiver, Carla brought in Timothy and placed him in Joe’s arms. He kissed his eggshell forehead.
“Got to go out.”
“Time for a fry up?”
“I’d murder one.” Then something sickened inside him and he glanced at his watch. “No time. If Eamonn rings again, say I’ll be round later.”
Chapter 8
Leslie Ryland found a vein and shot up, the cocaine easing into his system while he waited in anticipation for the surge. This was the best moment, even better than the effect itself.
He could hear McMarn moving around in the living-room — or the lounge as he was so anxious to call it — and Leslie felt a renewed wave of hatred for the old bastard to whom he was so securely manacled. The Candy Man had picked him up on the meat rack in Glasgow when Leslie had only been thirteen and had been his sugar daddy ever since. Fortunately he no longer held any physical attraction for McMarn. He had grown up. He was no longer his Peter Pan.
After Tommy’s death, Leslie had despised McMarn even more than he had before, if that was possible. Yet he had been kind, keeping him in a style to which he had gradually become accustomed. McMarn had bought him clothes, given him money, generously shared the rough trade they both relied on. He hadn’t treated him badly, but now, in hard times, Leslie knew he was tied to a loser who was grimly hanging on to the past. Try as he might, he still couldn’t convince him to cut his losses, and the longer McMarn stayed around the more likely Sears was to pick them both off.
But as the cocaine began to work, Leslie was flooded with a new optimism and his objectivity dissipated. Soon he was sure he would be able to convince McMarn that he had to get out. They could be in Algiers in a matter of days.
I Want Him Dead Page 10
