Neon Madman

by John Harvey

  ‘The day I realised that the world didn’t stop at the end of my pram.’

  Patrick didn’t say anything to that. I didn’t blame him. He was a married man with kids and a good job, a retirement pension, and a savings account in the building society.

  To agree with me would be to make a lie of his own life.

  ‘Okay, Patrick, you’re right. I’m a bitter, cynical sod and I exaggerate and our British policemen are still wonderful. Or most of them are. But not all. Just possibly not the men who looked at the Mancor books.’

  ‘What do you want from me?’

  ‘Is there any way of finding out who did the inspection?’

  Another pause.

  ‘I know an inspector in the Fraud Squad. He comes to me for a snippet of information sometimes. He might know; or find out. If I wanted to know badly enough.’

  ‘Could you put me on to him?’

  ‘Sorry, Scott. I couldn’t do that. Besides, he wouldn’t talk to you. And after that he wouldn’t talk to me either.’

  ‘Well, can you … ?’

  ‘How important is it?’

  ‘It could be very.’

  Silence. Possible moves ran through Patrick’s mind. Sometimes there were reasons for running risks, for offering an opponent the opportunity of check. As long as it wasn’t checkmate.

  ‘I’ll try to see him, Scott. Will Monday do?’

  ‘You can’t manage it this weekend?’

  ‘All right, if it’s that urgent.’

  ‘Thanks a lot, Patrick, only …’

  ‘Only what, Scott?’

  ‘Take care.’

  I’d said it again; meant it again. Perhaps I was softening up. In the head, perhaps, not the heart.

  ‘I mean it, Patrick, there are some very nasty people involved. I don’t want you to get hurt.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Scott. I won’t get hurt talking to a friend of mine who happens to be a policeman.’

  I didn’t answer. I was too busy hoping that he was right. Probably he was. After all, I had a friend who was a policeman, too. One.

  We said our goodbyes and hung up. I wondered how he would explain it to Frances and didn’t envy him the expression on her face when he did so. Not that I blamed her at all. She had every reason to feel about me the way she did. I hoped that she wouldn’t have any more before this thing was over.

  I collected the two sets of prints and the negatives. He said that if the chick in them ever wanted to earn some good money he could fix her up with some sessions. The kind of sessions he had in mind, I reckoned that she’d probably jump at the chance.

  I went in for a coffee and gave the prints the once over. They were hot stuff all right. Perhaps I was missing my vocation. The girlie mags would welcome me with open legs.

  Tricia had gone home and her replacement was a coffee-skinned youth with oddly purplish lips and a small silver ring in his left ear. The coffee didn’t taste the same.

  I left without having my usual second cup and started the drive across London. I guessed that somebody might be trying to follow me, so I made a few sharp changes of direction and followed some pretty odd routes with the hope of throwing them off. Once I’d crossed the river, I slowed down and found myself some clear, straight roads. I couldn’t pick out anybody behind me so maybe they weren’t bothering. Maybe they were just very good.

  Either way, there was nothing to do but get to Richmond and see what was up with Caroline Murdoch.

  She opened the door herself. The miniature Chinese didn’t seem to be anywhere around. It must have been his night off. I followed her into the same room where we’d had our first little chat. It didn’t look any more cosy, but perhaps that suited what she didn’t have in mind.

  I let her pour me a drink and sat toying with it, watching her doing her best to appear settled and unconcerned. She wasn’t very good at it.

  She was wearing a black dress that seemed to have padded shoulders and a healthy opening at the front. The material clung closely to her chest and she wasn’t wearing a bra. A fold-over belt in the same material pulled the thing in at her waist, allowing it to fall away loosely towards where her feet would have been if she’d been standing up. As it was, it had got carelessly arranged so that there was a nice amount of leg showing. She had small feet inside funny little shoes, with straps that wrapped themselves quite high up her calves.

  One hand rested along her thigh. It seemed long and white and still. Very still. As though she was willing it not to move. The nails were painted dark red and were curved into elongated points. Perhaps they were false.

  I didn’t think it mattered.

  The waves in her hair seemed less pronounced than they had before; some of the bounce had gone out of them. She lifted up her other hand and ran it through one side of her hair. She did it slowly, time after time after time. Nothing else about her moved. Not even her eyes: deep and brown, as could be: staring unblinkingly into the pinkish liquid at the bottom of her glass.

  She stayed like that for more than five minutes; the fingers combing through the hair.

  I wondered if she had forgotten that I was there.

  I set my glass down on the carpet and walked carefully across the room. It was the sort of room that encouraged you to go across it that way.

  I went round behind her and put both my hands down on to her shoulders. I’d done that before; I used it sometimes when I wanted to reassure people. There were times when it was the right thing to do. This wasn’t one of them. Or perhaps it wasn’t the right person—I wasn’t, she wasn’t.

  I felt her body stiffen under my touch; she held herself in tight. Her shoulders pushed backwards and her spine moved forwards into a slight arch. I didn’t have to look to know that her eyes were clenched shut.

  I moved my hands away and walked round where she could see me. It hadn’t been the reaction I had expected. She didn’t look the kind of woman who freezes when she’s touched. Perhaps she was more particular than most who did the touching. Perhaps she was more afraid than I had thought.

  I stood there for a little with my hands in view and what was meant to be a neutral expression on my face. I didn’t want her to think I was about to make any more dumb moves.

  I wanted to say something to get the conversation going, only I wasn’t sure what to say. It didn’t matter. Suddenly she was talking as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

  I stood there and listened.

  ‘There was a phone call in the very early evening. It was James. I didn’t know who it was at first; I didn’t recognise the voice. The line wasn’t very good, but it wasn’t only that. He sounded worried, frightened. I was surprised. I’d never heard him like that before, not even once or twice when he’s been in a state in the past. It was as if he was physically frightened. As … as though he genuinely believed his life was in danger.’

  ‘So did you.’

  She looked at me sharply.

  ‘The first thing you said when you phoned me before was that you thought your husband had been murdered.’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, but although I said the words I don’t think I really knew what they meant. Not physically meant. I don’t even know if I believed them. I just thought something wrong had happened to him. But hearing his voice like that was different. It was as though he was trembling on the brink of some horrible, hurtful thing and desperately wanted to escape.’

  ‘Could someone have been there with him while he was making the call? Someone who was forcing him to talk to you?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so. But I do think he believed that they might arrive at any moment.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘I don’t know and he didn’t say, but it must be something to do with those people who had a hold on him before.’

  ‘Mancor?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

&n
bsp; ‘Anyway, what did he say you were to do?’

  ‘He told me to get some money from the bank. Quite a lot of money. Several thousand pounds. And his passport.’

  ‘Clothes?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did he say what for?’

  ‘Yes. He’s going to leave the country. He didn’t say where to. I don’t think he wanted to implicate me more than necessary. At least, that was what he said. The less I knew about where he was and what he was doing the less I could be forced to tell anyone else.’

  Great! I thought. That means they could play pretty little games with you for hours on the assumption that you did know and were holding out on them.

  I didn’t say so. I didn’t say anything.

  She was talking again. ‘I can’t do anything until Monday, of course. Then I have to deliver the passport and money to him.’

  ‘Where at?’

  She shook her head. He really was being cagey. ‘He wouldn’t say where he was staying. He said he would phone on Monday morning and tell me where to meet him.’

  ‘Did he say anything about you going with him?’

  The hand on the leg made its first move. It twitched. Just once, but I saw it.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  I didn’t understand it. It sounded as though that mattered. The last time we had talked about her husband I had got the impression that she wouldn’t have cared much if he had disappeared from her life forever. Now … I didn’t know why exactly, but she was reacting differently. It could be that his fear had communicated itself strongly to her and was getting at her in the same way. Or maybe she saw herself losing a grip on all of his money.

  I went back to my drink and rescued it from the carpet. It was nearly empty and I drained what was left in half a swallow. She got up and took the glass from me without asking; she walked out of the room and came back with it refilled. I noticed she had got herself another too and that the level was twice as high as before.

  I sat down and looked at her. She was beautiful.

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Just as James says. Go to the bank and draw out the cash, then take it to him with his passport.’

  ‘Very dutiful.’

  ‘I couldn’t refuse him.’ She ignored my sarcasm.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘I’m not sure. He said I wasn’t to talk to anyone about it …’

  ‘But you did,’ I interrupted.

  ‘Now you sound as though you’re reproaching me. I needed to tell someone and, besides, you are supposed to be finding him for me.’

  ‘And now you’ve found him yourself. More or less. I’ll let you have your money back.’

  ‘No. No.’ There was a quickness, a firmness that I neither understood nor trusted. ‘I want you to come with me. To the bank and then to wherever James wants me to meet him. You don’t have to come as far as where he actually is.’

  ‘You’re worried about carrying all that money round?’

  She nodded her head. I still didn’t like it. She shouldn’t have been worried by toting round a cool million. The Caroline Murdoch I had talked to before wouldn’t have been.

  I took my cheque book from one pocket and my pen from another. I opened the book and started writing. I wondered how far she would let me get.

  Caroline Murdoch got up and came over to where I was sitting.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she asked, when she could see perfectly well what I was doing.

  ‘I’m making you out a cheque for the retainer you paid me.’

  ‘But I’ve told you …’

  I let the pen drop between the folds of the book and stood up. There wasn’t much space between us. Across it I said, ‘I’m sorry, but there’s no way I can carry on working for you if you’re not going to level with me. You’ve paid me too much to do a simple bodyguard job and if you want more than that you’re going to have to spell it out good and clear. And you’re going to have to tell me a whole lot more about Mancor.’

  She took it well. The expression on her face didn’t falter. The eyes didn’t leave mine. They were her trump card and she was playing them for all she was worth. I only had to lift my arms away from my sides by less than nine inches and I could hold her. She would let me hold her. Now. She wanted something and she knew what she might have to pay to get it. It wasn’t something you could let her have back by making out a cheque.

  Her eyes still didn’t leave me. I knew that I could have her right there in that room if I wanted her. I wanted her all right.

  I turned away and made space between us.

  ‘What’s it to be?’ I said. ‘Do I carry on writing that cheque and drop it in your lap as I walk out of the room or do you do a little more talking?’

  The eyes tried again but for now they’d lost me. She knew and she didn’t like it; she didn’t like it one little bit. But she sat down anyway and started to tell me some more. She didn’t tell me everything still, I was certain of that, but she said enough to stop me feeling a total dupe and enough for me to back down without making it too obvious.

  There was no way I could afford to turn down that money. I thought she probably knew that as well.

  ‘When James wanted to get off the Mancor board he persuaded them that he had valid reasons—as far as they were concerned as well as for himself. If he became involved in any kind of serious financial scandal then he wouldn’t be any use to them in the future. As it was, if he could step down out of the limelight then after a while he would be able to go back on the board and things could go on as before.’

  I put the glass to my lips but didn’t drink a drop. I was listening.

  She was talking. ‘Once he was out of it, James wanted to stay out. His career in the city was becoming increasingly successful. There were all kinds of possibilities in the offing. The first trace of scandal would lose every one of them.’

  ‘So he tried to resist the pressure—that and a little more,’ I suggested.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m not sure. But if there was a cover up of irregularities in the Mancor group’s finances and if those irregularities were as serious as I’m beginning to be certain they were, then he could have tried to turn their blackmailing back on them. It would be a hell of a bluff to make and hope to get away with, but if they as much as half-way believed him, they’d be rattled. To put it mildly.’

  I stopped and looked across at her. She was interested in what I was saying, right enough. The left hand was back in her hair and her mouth was turned up a fraction at one corner. In most women you’d never notice that, but on her any deviation from perfection stood out like a fat blue fly on top of a wedding cake.

  ‘Do I seem to be making sense?’

  ‘Yes. I think so. James was certainly up to something and there were often phone calls at all hours. Arguments that ended up with James slamming down the phone as often as not.’

  ‘Do you know who was phoning him? Was it the same person all of the time?’

  The waves rippled slightly as the head moved from side to side.

  ‘I’m not sure. Sometimes he would use a name. Two I remember: Don and Franco. Franco would be Franco Tabor. He was the man at the top. The one who made all of the decisions. He came, to the house once with James. I didn’t like him. He had an awful way of leering at you through half-closed eyes. I didn’t trust him. He’s a dangerous man, I’m certain of that.’

  I remembered his name from somewhere and I wasn’t able to put my finger on it. Not then, maybe later when I had more time to think.

  ‘And Don?’ I asked, while she was still feeling helpful.

  ‘Don Allen. He was the chief accountant.’

  ‘What do you know about him?’

  ‘Nothing much. I met him once at a party. He was not the sort of man you notic
ed at all. Fiftyish. Rather fat with dark horn rimmed glasses and wine stains on his tie. I think he drinks quite a bit. On that occasion he did. He even …’ She paused and looked at me for all the world like a young girl about to confess to something dreadfully naughty that had happened in the dorm. ‘He even put his hand up my skirt. Well, not that far, actually, but he tried. I couldn’t believe it. Suddenly there were these fingers rubbing against my tights and when I looked behind me it was him. Don Allen. He didn’t even apologise. Just pulled his arm away and moved on.’

  ‘Did you say anything to your husband?’

  ‘Of course not. What would have been the point?’

  I didn’t know. None, probably. I got the impression that he wouldn’t be very bothered. But then I could have been wrong. I’m often wrong about a lot of things.

  My glass was empty again and I thought it was time to go before she refilled it. I stood in the middle of the room and she came and stood in front of me. Even closer than before. This time she had her eyes begging me to touch her and I knew she wouldn’t be frigid or stiff. Not now. She wasn’t frightened any longer. I didn’t understand that either.

  I looked downwards slightly and I could see that her nipples were erect and were pressing through the black material of her dress. She would let me have her because she thought it might be necessary. If I were fat, grubby Don Allen with groping hands she would still let me have her.

  I moved around her and went towards the door. She let me get as far as the hallway before she came after me.

  ‘What should I do?’ she asked.

  I felt like telling her. I didn’t. Instead I told her to ring me if anything else came up, especially if her old man got in touch with her again. I wrote my home number on the back of a business card and passed it across to her. Her fingers rested on mine a fraction longer than was necessary.

  ‘Scott.’ The red lips opened just enough to say the word.

  ‘Great,’ I said with my more sardonic tone. ‘You did it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You remembered my name.’

  I turned around and walked out of the house. I thought as I made for my car that it was getting cooler, but I couldn’t be certain.