Rather a Common Sort of Crime

by Joyce Porter

  ‘It’ll be a pleasure, lady,’ said Mr Gorostiago quite sincerely.

  ‘Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s get cracking, shall we?’

  ‘Just a sec!’ Mr Gorostiago was not, as he frequently pointed out, a bleeding benevolent society. He started rooting in the pigeon holes of his desk. ‘We’ve got to observe the formalities, haven’t we? One lousy irregularity and Fenner’ll be down on me like a ton of effing bricks.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ agreed the Hon. Con, all amiability now. ‘’Sides, there are one or two questions I want to ask you.’

  ‘I wasn’t in the club when it happened,’ Mr Gorostiago was quick to assure her. ‘I was in here, doing the books.’

  ‘All evening?’

  ‘All evening. I didn’t know nothing about it until Mrs Diamond phoned me the next morning and told me she’d found the body.’

  ‘I’ll have to check that against what other people say,’ said the Hon. Con with the air of one who wasn’t going to have the wool pulled over her eyes. ‘Can’t accept unsupported statements.’

  Mr Gorostiago didn’t take this too well. ‘Are you doubting my bleeding word?’ he demanded angrily. ‘Look, I’m telling you – I was in this room all that evening. Anybody as says anything different is a bleeding lying bastard!’

  The Hon. Con smiled thinly and pointed at a bottle standing on the top of the desk. ‘That yours?’

  ‘Of course it’s mine.’

  ‘Rabbie Burns. Genuine Scotch Whisky,’ she read aloud, squinting at the label which showed a cheery, red-bearded Highlander in a kilt. ‘Same brand as that which killed Rodney Burberry, isn’t it?’

  ‘Pure coincidence!’ blustered Mr Gorostiago, looking sicker than ever. ‘Millions of people drink that make, millions.’

  ‘You didn’t by any chance give young Burberry a bottle of whisky, did you?’ asked the Hon. Con thoughtfully.

  ‘No, I bleeding well didn’t! I wouldn’t have given that crooked little bastard the time of day! Why should I start giving him presents?’

  ‘I can think of a dozen reasons,’ said the Hon. Con smoothly. ‘It might have been a bribe or you might have been fond of him or …’

  ‘My gawd!’ gasped Mr Gorostiago, throwing up his hands in despair. ‘ I’ve been accused of some things in my time but never that! Do I look like a bleeding queer?’

  ‘Or’ – the Hon. Con continued unperturbed – ‘ you could have given it to him, suitably laced with weed killer, because you wanted to kill him.’

  ‘Jesus!’ moaned Mr Gorostiago, burying his head in his hands this time. ‘This is getting ridiculous!’ He looked up. ‘Why should I want to kill Rodney Burberry? What was Rodney Burberry to me? He was just another member – one more crummy kid no better and no worse than fifty others. He didn’t mean that to me!’ He gave a defiant snap of his fingers insultingly close to the Hon. Con’s nose.

  ‘We’ll have to see about that,’ said the Hon. Con. ‘ By the way, where do you keep your whisky?’

  ‘What do you keep going on about the effing whisky for?’ demanded Mr Gorostiago angrily. ‘Burberry bought that bottle himself. Everybody knows that.’

  ‘He bought a bottle,’ the Hon. Con corrected him. ‘ I don’t think anybody has proved that the bottle he bought was the same as the bottle he drank the poison out of.’

  ‘Well, you can cross me off the list, lady. I keep my whisky in here and I never leave this room for one single second without I double-lock the door. I don’t take any chances, not with the mob I’ve got here, I don’t. They’d nick the pennies off a dead man’s eyes, the lousy little bleeders!’

  ‘Hm,’ said the Hon. Con, beginning to realize that being a detective wasn’t as easy as it looked. ‘Well, we’ll leave it there for the moment.’ Her knee caps scraped embarrassingly against Mr Gorostiago’s as she stood up.

  ‘Just a minute!’ It was Mr Gorostiago’s turn now and he was going to enjoy himself. ‘Those little formalities – remember?’

  ‘Oh … yes.’ The Hon. Con sat down again.

  ‘I can’t let you into the Kama Sutra without you’re members, see?’ Mr Gorostiago slipped smoothly into his horse-dealer’s voice. ‘Bleeding ridiculous, of course, where a lady of your social standing is concerned but – that’s, the legal position. Still, I can enrol you here and now, so there’s no real difficulty.’ He hunted through his pigeon holes again and brought out a handful of brightly coloured cards. ‘If you could just let me have your entrance fees and a first year’s subscription …’ He began to fill one of the cards in. ‘I don’t usually take cheques but, in your case, I think we can make an exception if you haven’t got any of the ready on you.’

  The Hon. Con’s face fell. ‘Can’t you make us honorary members?’

  Mr Gorostiago assumed an expression of mild shock. ‘With your Sergeant Fenner breathing down my bleeding neck? One slip and he’ll chuck the bloody book at me.’ He glanced slyly at the Hon. Con. ‘Where would all your witnesses be then, eh? – if we gets shut down. Scattered all over the place, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘How much?’ The Hon. Con reached for her right hand hip pocket where she kept her small change.

  ‘Well, now, let’s see,’ mused Mr Gorostiago, calculating quickly how much the market would stand. ‘There’s three guineas for the entrance fee and two guineas for the first twelve months’ subscription.’

  There was a gasp from the Hon. Con.

  ‘Each,’ murmured Mr Gorostiago and jotted down the figures on a scrap of paper. ‘ Making a total of ten guineas in all. Did I say I’d be happy to take a cheque?’

  ‘Ten guineas?’ The Hon. Con forced the question out of a tight throat. She was prepared to make some sacrifices but this was going too far. Well, there was one obvious economy. ‘ Bones!’

  ‘Yes, dear?’

  ‘You go outside and wait in the car!’

  ‘Wait in the car, dear?’

  ‘Don’t argue!’ roared the Hon. Con and swung back to glower at Mr Gorostiago. ‘Membership for one, if you don’t mind. And I’ll pay cash. Don’t want my bank manager to think I’ve any dealings with this dump.’

  Mr Gorostiago was impervious to insults where money was concerned. He made out the Hon. Con’s card and accepted the Hon. Con’s money quite happily. ‘There you are, my dear,’ he smirked as he handed the bit of pasteboard over. ‘The entire bleeding club is now at your disposal. Oh – and payment on the nail for anything you have. I don’t allow no credit.’

  ‘I’ll bet you don’t!’ snarled the Hon. Con, grabbing the card. ‘What the hell are you still hanging around for, Bones?’

  ‘The car keys, dear,’ said Miss Jones unhappily.

  The Hon. Con tossed them over. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here!’

  ‘Bye-bye!’ said Mr Gorostiago.

  The Hon. Con forgot that she was a lady. ‘ Get knotted!’ she spat and pushed her way out of the office.

  Miss Jones followed her.

  ‘Damned crook! growled the Hon. Con when they were both outside in the corridor. ‘I’ll pay him back for this – you see if I don’t. Five guineas! I’ll bet he doesn’t charge these kids five guineas or anything like it. Bloodsucker!’

  ‘Oh, Constance,’ whimpered Miss Jones as the Hon. Con gave her a shove in the direction of the stairs, ‘I do think I ought to come with you.’

  ‘At five quid? You must be joking!’

  ‘But it’s like letting you walk alone into a den of thieves.’

  ‘Den of fiddlesticks! I’ll be all right. Gorry-whatever-his-name-is won’t dare let anything happen to me – the stinker!’

  ‘Oh, Constance’ – Miss Jones clutched at the Hon. Con’s arm – ‘I don’t trust that man. He’s got such’ – she hesitated as she searched for the right word – ‘such hot eyes!’

  While the Hon. Con frittered away still more of her valuable time in exhorting her chum to try and think about something other than sex for a change, the juke box exploded into life again. Miss Jones abandon
ed her denials that she had a dirty mind and, clapping her hands over her ears, headed thankfully for the outside world. The Hon. Con watched her go. Then she squared her shoulders and marched resolutely towards the swing doors which led straight into the heart-land of the Kama Sutra.

  She stepped into what appeared for a moment to be total darkness. The blare of the music, which had been bad enough outside in the corridor, hit her right between the eyes like a sledge hammer. She groped uncertainly forward and descended a couple of steps that she hadn’t realized were there. She stopped to get her balance and an alien body rubbed insinuatingly against her. She jerked away to one side.

  ‘Here, watch it!’ a shrill voice warned her – and a milky white, apparently disembodied face bobbed up and down before her startled gaze.

  ‘Sorry,’ she muttered and moved off, more cautiously, in another direction. Bodies continued to thud softly into her and at one moment a hand napped gently across her face. When her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness she realized that she was in the middle of a dance floor. All around her barely distinguishable forms swung and bumped and wriggled in time to the distorted yowl of a current pop hit. The faces were blank, the eyes stared at nothing.

  Zombies, thought the Hon. Con as she edged her way through the oblivious throng. ‘Zombies!’ She repeated the word aloud in an effort to keep her spirits up. ‘Thank God I didn’t let Bones come! She’d have been terrified!’

  The tune, if that’s what it was, stopped and was replaced by a disconnected series of loud clonks and clicks. The juke box was sorting itself out a new record. Most of the dancers, if that’s what they were, continued to jiggle to the memory of the rhythm. One or two couples melted away into the gloom and, right next to the Hon. Con, a young man slowly plastered his mouth on to his partner’s lips while, his hands clenched and unclenched lazily on her buttocks.

  The Hon. Con felt the sweat breaking out on her forehead.

  A final muffled hiccup came from the juke box and the needle dug into a new disc. Obediently, without any sign of enthusiasm or interest, the dancers picked up the beat.

  The Hon. Con, having paused during the momentary silence, moved on again. At the far end of the room she had caught sight of the bar, a glowing oasis of three twenty-five watt electric light bulbs. She headed towards it. Heaven only knew what they charged for drinks here but, for once, she wasn’t unduly worried about the expense. This place was giving her the creeps.

  Somewhat to her surprise there was nobody much at the bar when she finally got there. Down at one end there was a huddle of four boys, their heads close together. At the other end one solitary girl sat slumped against the counter.

  The bar was unusually high and even the Hon. Con had to stand on tip-toe before she could see right over it. She craned her head round a dusty pile of fruit pies in cardboard boxes and squinted through a plastic dome which housed some elderly sandwiches. At last she caught sight of a white jacketed back and rapped loudly on the counter for attention.

  What with all the row from the juke box it was a long time before she could evoke any response. Then the white jacket, possessed no doubt of the second sight, raised its head from its book.

  ‘Service!’ shouted the Hon. Con before the white jacket could distrust its intuition and retreat once more behind the barrier of the music. ‘ Service!’

  ‘The white jacket turned and the Hon. Con gulped. Bloodshot eyeballs shone eerily at her from a rich, chocolate-coloured face.

  The Hon. Con promptly modified her attitude. She knew, of course, that they were generations away from the jungle and eating people, but she could never somehow quite make herself feel it.

  ‘Could I have some service, please?’ she asked in a much politer tone than she would have used if the barman had been pink.

  Two rows of pearly teeth appeared briefly. ‘ What you want, man?’

  ‘A double brandy, please,’ said the Hon. Con, throwing common thrift to the winds.

  The pearly teeth reappeared while the glow of the eyeballs faded away in a blink of boredom. ‘Very humorous. Now, are you going to tell me what you really want or am I just going to hope that you’ll shuffle straight back into your piece of cheese?’

  ‘Oh, all right, if you haven’t got brandy, I’ll have whisky.’

  The white jacket sighed, pushed itself upright and moved a couple of paces nearer. ‘You educationally sub-normal or something, man? You know we don’t purvey fire-water here. You’ve got two choices, man: coke or nothing.’

  ‘Well, give me a coke, then.’

  The white jacket came even closer, a deep frown ridging the polished ebony forehead. ‘ You new here?’

  ‘Just joined,’ explained the Hon. Con with an ingratiating smile.

  The white jacket, fascinated, kept his eyes on her while he reached for a bottle, ripped the cap off, stuck a straw in the neck and passed it across. The Hon. Con laid a ten shilling note on the counter and hoped very hard that it would be enough.

  A dusky hand groped out and closed on it. ‘You sure you’re a member, man?’

  The Hon. Con was on the point of assuring him, most earnestly, that indeed she was, when the juke box let fly with a scream of anguish and cut out once again.

  An angry mutter of protest rose up from the dance floor.

  ‘What the hell’s gone wrong this time?’

  ‘Fetch Gorostiago in so’s we can lynch him!’

  ‘I thought you was supposed to have fixed it, Mick?’

  ‘Put another nickel in!’

  In a raucous baritone: ‘Give the bloody thing a kick up the Brenner!’

  Somebody switched the overhead lights on and about twenty people stood revealed on the dance floor. They blinked in the sudden glare. A burst of whistles and mocking shouts of ‘Naughty, naughty!’ broke out. Several couples, grinning sheepishly, adjusted their clothing.

  For a moment the Hon. Con was as much blinded as anybody else. The scene which met her eyes, when she was finally able to take it in, fulfilled her worst expectations. The Kama Sutra had not been designed for inspection in the harsh light of four naked electric light bulbs. The room had once been an old storage cellar and Mr Gorostiago hadn’t wasted a penny on transforming it. The brick walls still bore their original grubby whitewash – enlivened, it must be admitted, by some very spirited graffiti – and the old coal bunkers had been turned into snogging booths by the simple addition of half a dozen second hand church pews. Otherwise the place had hardly been touched. The soft drinks bar, beside which the Hon. Con was standing with her bottle of Coca-Cola clenched in her fist, had apparently been constructed from discarded orange boxes, sparingly and amateurishly bedaubed with paint.

  The Hon. Con abandoned her evaluation of the decor and, watched curiously as a boy with luxuriant mutton-chop whiskers slouched over the juke box and removed the back panel with a well-directed kick. He started poking around inside and the dancers gradually lost interest and turned back to their own affairs. One or two couples headed purposefully for the comparative seclusion of the church pews whilst others satisfied their less intimate sexual needs right out in the open on the dance floor itself. A small group, mostly young men, began walking over towards the bar.

  The Hon. Con took a firmer hold on her Coca-Cola bottle. She wasn’t by any means anticipating a rough house but it did a chap no harm to be prepared.

  The leading youth – strikingly arrayed in faded blue jeans, frilly shirt and crimson cummerbund – caught sight of the Hon. Con and came to a dramatic halt. His cronies and camp-followers stopped too and glanced sideways to see how their leader was going to play the situation.

  Heavy-handed bantering, it soon became clear, was to be the key note of the confrontation. As one by one they caught on, the gang gradually relaxed and allowed their faces to sag into a lazy sneer.

  ‘Jesus Christ, what – but what – is that?’

  The number one lieutenant stopped picking at a pimple on his chin and, as befitted his rank, undertook the
responsibility of intoning the responses. ‘A monster from outer space?’ he asked and was rewarded by a gratifying snigger from his mates.

  More people came crowding round. If there was going to be a punch-up or something, they didn’t want to miss it. They formed a hostile looking semi-circle centred on the Hon. Con and the lad in the cummerbund.

  ‘Naw!’ drawled the pack leader, examining his victim insolently from head to foot. ‘I don’t reckon it’s no monster. It’s only got one head. You know what, Pimp old son, I think this here is human.’

  ‘Garn!’ scoffed Pimp delightedly. ‘Animal, vegetable or mineral – that I’ll allow you. But, human – never!’

  The Hon. Con knew enough about handling people to realize the dangers of letting this sort of thing go on too long. As yet she wasn’t really frightened but she had a sneaking feeling that she might be any minute. There was something menacing about these vacant young faces which were edging nearer and nearer to her. Summoning up all her undoubted courage she cleared her throat and addressed herself to the young man with the crimson midriff.

  ‘My name is Morrison-Burke,’ she announced in ringing tones. ‘I’m here to ask a few questions about the death of Rodney Burberry.’

  This flat statement seemed to take the wind out of her would-be tormentor’s sails. The young man frowned. His colleagues looked questioningly at him. A faint growl of a murmur came from the back of the crowd.

  Pimp the henchman got a mite above himself. ‘Shall we sling her out, like, Jack?’ he asked, pulling a heavy flick-knife out of his pocket.

  ‘Button it!’ Jack didn’t even bother to look at him. He kept his attention fixed on the Hon. Con. ‘Rodney Burberry?’ The Hon. Con nodded. ‘That’s right. You remember, the boy

  who drank the poisoned whisky here three or four weeks ago.’

  ‘Oh, we remember, Butch. What the hell’s it got to do with you?’

  ‘The investigation is being re-opened,’ said the Hon. Con with

  a nice sense of evasion.

  Jack was not fooled. ‘By the cops?’

  The Hon. Con put a bold face on it. ‘I am working with the full