Neon Madman

by John Harvey

  ‘You listen to me, Scott,’ she interrupted. ‘I’m fed up with conducting our relationship strictly in terms of what information I can feed you with over the telephone. I’m beginning to feel like the speaking clock. I think it’s your turn to feed me.’

  There was a slight pause during which I could hear her breathing. ‘What with?’ I asked.

  ‘To start off with a nice juicy steak and a bottle of wine. And then you can take me dancing. It’s a long time since I went dancing.’

  ‘All right, Pat,’ I promised. ‘The next time I call it will be to fix a date.’

  ‘It had better be,’ she said and broke the connection.

  I dialled the number she had given me and it rang a lot of times before anyone came to answer it. It was a woman’s voice: smooth, assured, cultured. The sort who always gets to stand in the royal enclosure at Ascot and picks the winner as well.

  ‘Mrs Murdoch? Mrs James P. Murdoch?’

  A few seconds of hesitation, then the answer came with thoroughbred assurance. ‘This is Mrs Murdoch. Who is that calling?’

  ‘My name’s Mitchell. Scott Mitchell.’

  ‘The name means nothing to me Mr Mitchell. With whom did you wish to speak?’

  I liked the with whom. I said, ‘Is Mr Murdoch there?’

  ‘Does that mean you want to speak with him?’

  ‘Could be,’ I said. ‘Or it could be I want to make sure he’s out of the way before I start chatting you up over the phone.’

  ‘I presume you’re joking.’

  ‘Why presume? With a voice like yours it must happen all the time.’

  I waited for the line to go dead, but it didn’t. After a while she said, ‘How did you get this number, Mr Mitchell? It is ex-directory, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘Well, are you going to tell me how you came by it?’

  ‘Perhaps I saw it written on a wall somewhere. Who knows? Are you going to tell me whether your husband is in or not?’

  ‘My husband is out.’

  ‘When will he be back?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Well, is he anywhere I can get in touch with him?’

  ‘I have no idea of his precise whereabouts either.’

  ‘He is your husband?’

  ‘Mr Mitchell, I don’t know why I persist in talking to you in this inane and undignified manner instead of putting down the receiver.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I agreed. ‘Nor do I. It’s interesting; isn’t it? Maybe you get fed up with talking broken English to the au-pair and reading last month’s “Homes and Gardens”.’

  She might have laughed. Then again, it could have been interference on the line. She said, ‘Actually, it was “Harper’s and Queen”.’

  ‘Would it be worth my trying again later? To talk to your husband, I mean?’

  ‘It might and it might not.’

  ‘You mean sometimes he doesn’t come home nights?’

  ‘He’s a grown man, Mr Mitchell, and he does as he pleases.’

  ‘If I were him I reckon it would please me to get home to you pretty quick.’

  ‘I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, Mr Mitchell, and take that remark as being gallant.’

  ‘As opposed to what?’

  ‘Merely suggestive.’

  I waited a little, then asked where I could get in touch with her husband the next day.

  ‘He should be at his office by ten o’clock.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘The Everyman Insurance Group. My husband happens to be the chairman, you know.’

  I didn’t but I thanked her anyway.

  ‘That’s quite all right, Mr Mitchell. I hope I don’t have occasion to speak to you again.’

  And she hung up with a shade more speed than natural elegance required. Just when I had been thinking we had been getting on so well.

  I checked my watch again and dialled another number. Patrick was at home and he’d be pleased to see me in an hour. I got up and walked over to the filing cabinet. It was time for a whisky.

  Frances let me in, giving me one of those half-smiles that were a mixture of shy beauty and distrust. She showed me into the study where her husband was waiting. He got up quickly and shook my hand. Behind me I heard the door close. We were going to be left alone.

  I looked at Patrick as he poured me a strong shot of one of his precious malt whiskies. Heavy spectacles, unfashionably short hair that was dark and thick. He was a couple of years younger than myself but he didn’t look much older than he had when I’d first met him, which was over fifteen years ago.

  I had been learning the ropes in my job and he had been doing the same in his. When you’re learning, you make mistakes. Patrick’s bad been more serious than most. I had been able to help him cover it up. It was never mentioned between us again but always after that I knew that I could turn to him for help if I needed it.

  And always after that Frances had regarded me with suspicion, as if she were afraid I might be tempted to use the hold I had over her husband.

  I hoped she was wrong, that she needn’t have worried. Though I could understand why she did. Most human relationships work in the same way: we all have strangleholds on those we hate as well as those we love. It’s why those we hate return that hatred and probably why those we love return that.

  Power—that’s what relationships are about. Unless you can keep them to the occasional smile over the coffee machine.

  ‘It’s been a long time, Scott.’

  I agreed. It had. I knew that, as with Pat at the telephone exchange, I was guilty of getting in touch with him only when I wanted to use him. Perhaps that was something else relationships were about. My relationships.

  ‘Yes, I know, Patrick. I’m sorry. It’s just that …’

  ‘You’ve been busy,’ he finished for me, taking his pipe from his mouth and grinning a boyish grin.

  I nodded and looked down at the chess board that was set out on the table between us, the pieces in mid-move.

  ‘Have I interrupted you and Frances?’

  ‘No. I was working through a set piece. Frances was seeing to the children.’

  I nodded again.

  ‘What did you want, Scott? I’d like to think this was a random social call, but I’m sure it isn’t.’

  He sensed my unease and waved his pipe at me. ‘No. That wasn’t mean for censure. I know the rules of the game as well as you do.’

  ‘You’re still writing your city column?’

  ‘Until tomorrow,’ he smiled. ‘The way things are going, there could be no city column within any twenty-four hours.’

  ‘It’s as bad as that?’

  Patrick sucked at the stem of his pipe and his eyes flickered over the top of it. ‘Not really. I don’t suppose it’s ever that bad. We just like to think it is.’

  Frances came into the room with a pot of coffee and some cups on a tray. Patrick moved the chess board carefully down on to the floor and the coffee things were set on the low table.

  Frances paused behind her husband’s chair a moment. She let her fingers bend against the back of his neck and he arched his head backwards. She looked at me quickly, then walked out of the room, shutting the door behind her.

  ‘She still doesn’t like me, Patrick, does she?’

  He handed me a cup of coffee. ‘What was it you wanted from me, Scott?’

  ‘You know a man called Murdoch? James P. Murdoch.’

  ‘Naturally. He’s Chairman of the Everyman Insurance Group.’

  ‘Know much about him?’

  Patrick sipped at his coffee. ‘Usual kind of background. Public school, Oxford, a spell in the Civil Service, merchant banking—he was abroad for a while, Africa, Central America—then the Everyman. He’s been Chairman there for nearl
y four years.’

  ‘Successfully?’

  ‘They’re still paying quite a good dividend.’

  ‘Has he got any other interests—business ones, I mean?’

  Patrick thought for a moment. ‘He did have a couple of directorships, though I’m not sure how active a part he played in those. His name might have looked good on the letter heads.’

  ‘Can you find out for me?’

  ‘Certainly. Tomorrow morning?’

  ‘Fine. And Patrick?’

  ‘Yes?’

  I balanced my cup against the rim of the earthenware saucer. ‘You don’t know any reason why he might be mixed up with a bunch of hoods? Or why they might be interested in him?’

  Patrick chewed his pipe a little more, but finally shook his head. ‘I write a financial column, not a gossip column, though there are times when you could be excused for thinking that the two are one and the same. But sorry, there’s nothing I can think of.’

  ‘Can you ask around?’

  ‘Yes. But I shall have to be discreet.’

  I smiled. ‘Of course. That’s one of the reasons I came to you in the first place.’

  He sat back in his chair, and I sat back in mine. When the pot of coffee was empty, we went back to the malt whisky. We talked about people we’d known in the past and about movies we’d seen; about who would be the best to open the batting for England in the third test against the West Indies and whether Spurs were going to have a really good season again at last. He got up and put on a record of the late Sandy Brown playing some of the best clarinet in the world and we finished the whisky.

  By the time I stepped out into the night I had almost managed to forget that I was a private investigator at the beginning of a case that had started out simple and got progressively complicated ever since.

  I put my arm round Patrick’s shoulders and gave him a hug, waved to Frances, standing in the doorway behind him, and made my way down the steps. I suspect that my walk was slightly unsteady. That malt whisky was smooth as silk, but the power that lay beneath the smoothness was all the stronger.

  For an instant I remembered Murdoch’s wife, her voice on the phone. It seemed to have much the same qualities. If he was playing around behind her back, then I couldn’t imagine her not knowing. And if she allowed it to continue, I couldn’t see her caring.

  I shook my head and looked up at the sky. There were a few stars and a wedge of cloud had pushed across in front of an almost full moon so that I couldn’t see that clearly either.

  Hell! I couldn’t see a lot of things.

  But I could see the dark saloon that was parked across the road; the darker shapes of two men sitting in the front seat. I could have turned around and made it back to Patrick’s, but I didn’t want to get him involved any more than I already had.

  I shook my head again and pushed my hands down into my jacket pockets. I kept on walking. The cloud shifted away from the moon and if there’d been any doubt as to the identity of the lonely guy walking down that silent street that vanished with it.

  CHAPTER THREE

  It was something over half an hour’s walk from my flat to where Patrick McGavan lived. For that reason I’d not bothered to use the car. Right now I was beginning to think I had made a mistake. That kind of walk seemed all the longer when you were being followed. It made you feel all the more vulnerable.

  It was one thing for a couple of guys to pick you up and try to shake some answers out of you, but when you didn’t even understand the questions it was more difficult. What usually happened was that they thought you were being clever. They didn’t like that. That was when they started to get nasty.

  I could still feel a dullish pain high in my shoulder where my West Indian friend had been taking a little kicking practice. There were a lot of things I wasn’t feeling like and top of the list was getting beaten up by two anonymous hoods in some anonymous street at well past midnight.

  I knew what would happen: the car would increase its speed until it had drawn up alongside me; the door on the passenger side would open and a pair of hands that looked as if they belonged to King Kong would reach out. There’d be a few shouts and bangs and up and down the street a number of bedroom lights would go on behind curtains, anxious faces would peer out; then the lights would go out again. Nobody would come out, nobody would phone the police; if anyone asked them the next day, nothing would have been heard at all.

  Who was I to blame them?

  I had known what I was doing when I chose my job. I hadn’t been forced into it. There hadn’t been any false sense of civic duty behind what I opted into. Those people in the street—they didn’t owe me a thing and I didn’t owe them a damn thing either. Not until one of them came into my office and hired me.

  As it was, there was just me walking along with my hands still in my pockets and the saloon still edging along the kerb fifty yards behind me. Two guys biding their time, toying with me, enjoying the knowledge that all I could do was wait for them to make their move.

  Well, fuck them!

  I pulled both hands from my pockets and turned round. I started to walk back towards the car and I walked fast. The side lights flicked off and then the engine cut out. They waited. Fine! I’d see they got something to wait for.

  Who the hell did they think they were anyway?

  By the time I drew level with the saloon they were doing their best to sit there as innocently as a couple of sightseers outside Buckingham Palace.

  I bent down and stared in at them. Thick set, dark coats, trilby hats, a day’s growth of stubble on their chins and less than half an ounce of sense inside their heads.

  I reached down to the car door and they hadn’t even had the sense to lock it. I yanked it open and pulled at the first guy’s arm. He was pretty heavy but he wasn’t that heavy. I got him half out of his seat and stranded over the gutter.

  It suited him that way. He looked up at me with piggy little eyes and what was probably meant to be an angry scowl. To me he just looked like any other cheap hood.

  I let go of his arm and grabbed for his lapels. At the same time I chopped down on him with my right fist. There was a very satisfying feeling of hitting something hard and then he came all of the way out of the car and sprawled on to the pavement. Half of him was still in the gutter but now it was the other half.

  His friend had got out of the car and was moving round towards me. He had a length of piping in his right hand and was in the process of raising it high over his head. Which was fine by me. I threw up my left arm to break the blow and punched him in the gut twice. He folded forwards like yesterday’s dirty washing and I stepped sideways fast, pulling the arm that held the piping round behind his back. I slammed him down over the bonnet of the car and lifted the arm as high as it would go.

  There was a scream and then a clatter as the weapon fell from his opened hand and bounced off the metal on to the roadway. I played with his arm a little more and enjoyed the sounds that came from his mouth. Then I stepped back and kicked at the base of his spine with the underside of my shoe. His groin went into the front edge of the bonnet as though it was trying to make close friends with the engine.

  I stooped down and picked up the length of pipe. As I did so, something drove into my side and sent me staggering backwards. It was the first guy and he was moving in for a second go, but there was no way he was going to make it. Not the way I was feeling.

  I let him come for me, blocked his lunge with an open palm and suckered him one across the temple with his buddy’s piece of pipe. He closed his eyes and took a nose dive into the tarmac. There was a queasy sort of squelching sound as his face bounced back a couple of times before settling down for a nice long sleep.

  The driver was now standing with his weight leant back against the car and his hands massaging his balls. He winced as he saw me coming towards him so I pretended to be goin
g to kick him down there for luck. He shut his eyes tight and lowered his head forwards and I hit that instead.

  He sat down!

  I pulled him back up again. I had a message to give him while he could still listen.

  ‘Okay, you stupid shit! Get back to whoever sent you and take this message from me. If anyone wants to see me, then I’ve got office hours and a telephone number that’s in the book. I don’t like being followed and I don’t like being threatened—especially by cheap trash like you. There might be people around who can take me, but you’re so far away from them you’re not playing the same game, never mind in the same league.’

  I stopped talking to get my breath back. One of his eyes had started to close and there was a thin line of blood snaking out of the corner of his mouth. He looked dumber than ever.

  ‘You got that?’ I gave him a shake and he grunted.

  I slapped his face a couple of times for good luck and let him sink back down to the ground. The other one was still stretched out and didn’t show signs of moving for a long time.

  I left them to it and walked the rest of the way home. I was feeling kind of tired. But good inside.

  I woke next morning to a thickish head, a bruised right hand and a vague feeling that I had done something pretty damned stupid. By the time I had made the coffee and was two mouthfuls into the first cup the vagueness had gone. I had been stupid all right.

  Whoever had sent those heavies cruising after me wasn’t likely to be thrown off by what happened last night. All it meant was that next time the men would be more carefully chosen and instead of lead pipe it would be a gun.

  I seemed to spend half of my life making sure that the other half was as close to impossible as made no difference. And I would have to remember to go easy on Patrick’s whisky in future.

  I thought about phoning him but it would have been too early for him to have got the information I wanted. I thought about making myself some scrambled egg on brown toast but it was too much effort. I thought about a lot of things I should have known better than to have given head room to.

  Only some mornings waking up alone brought memories of her crowding back into my mind with an insistence that wouldn’t be denied: When you’ve spent a year sharing your toothpaste and your breakfast with someone who manages to be beautiful even at seven thirty then it isn’t easy to forget. Like stretching across the table and kissing the smear of butter from the corner of her mouth. Like the look in her eyes when she told you to take care. Like staring out of the window at her as she walked away, knowing that all she had on under the long flowered skirt was the tiniest pair of pants and that underneath those she was still damp because you’d made love before getting up.