You Can't Make Old Friends

by Tom Trott

  ‘Are the handcuffs really necessary?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ one of them replied wittily.

  ‘That’s just your thing is it?’

  ‘Shut up, Grabarz.’

  ‘Hey, I’m not judging, I like the kinky stuff too. I’d just rather you asked permission first.’

  ‘You better shut up before we pull the car over.’

  ‘And do what? Not take me to the police station? I’m shaking with terror.’

  ‘Maybe a bit more than that,’ the other one added.

  ‘Then we should probably decide on a safe word.’

  ‘Shut your fucking mouth, Grabarz, or—’

  ‘Or what?’ I interrupted, ‘Because I don’t think you’ll do anything. Smack me about and I can walk any charges your boss wants to bring against me. And her boss is just itching to send officers packing, you don’t even need to give them a reason. So go ahead, do me a favour.’ I waited a moment but they didn’t say anything, so I continued, ‘In fact, I think I can say whatever the fuck I want.’ So I did, ‘Your mum likes the kinky stuff too by the way.’

  ‘Don’t you dare, Grabarz.’

  ‘And your dad.’

  The second one piped up again. ‘Can’t smack you around, huh? With a face looking like that, who’d be able to tell?’

  ‘People,’ I replied. ‘People would be able to tell. They’re smarter than your species.’

  At the station I was quickly corralled into a bright, white room, pushed into a chair, and left alone. Fluorescents hummed above me, stabbing my tired eyes.

  Slowly, my eyes adjusted and I could look around. There wasn’t much to see. The chairs and table were nailed down. The walls lightly padded to catch some of the screams. On them were advice posters about sexual disease clinics and how to report a crime. I made a mental note to wash my hands afterwards.

  There was a recording device built into the table, and a camera in the corner, facing me. Looking down at me with a supervisory and stern expression in its bulbous glass cover. A little red LED sent scum like me the unmistakeable message: YOU ARE BEING WATCHED. I was getting used to the idea.

  After what I assume was a deliberately long time the door opened with a loud clank, and the two burly officers from the car came in and stood behind me. They were the kind of big lunks that spent all their spare time in the gym. They were only good for one thing: to get in the way of punches. They’re worn as body armour by the smarter officers.

  Price sauntered in and took the seat opposite me. Not turning on the recording. Which meant I wasn’t a suspect for anything. Yet. She gave a nod to one of the officers behind and they yanked my hands onto the desk, removing the cuffs in the most aggressive way they could.

  She didn’t notice, she was busy searching through a plastic tray that contained my effects. One by one she spilled them onto the table for me to pick up and return to my pockets.

  ‘One penknife. One book of matches. One cocktail napkin with a doodle on it. One pen. One pad. One very old-looking mobile phone. And one—’ she held up a condom. I shrugged and she chucked it onto the table.

  As I finished putting them away she kept hold of the last item. My wallet. She was calmly inspecting the contents, I knew she had already done that. She was making a show of it.

  ‘Interesting selection of business cards.’ She was mocking me. ‘Spencer French, Heating Engineer. Martin Bentley, IT Installation and Repair. Dan Harman, The Argus Newspaper. You know that entering a building under false pretences can be a crime, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Really?’ She had been expecting that response.

  ‘Those are genuine business cards, call them and ask.’

  ‘So the receptionist at the school was lying when she told us you were from the council?’

  ‘She must have been mistaken.’

  ‘And the business card?’ She pulled it from her pocket in a sealed plastic bag.

  ‘Must have fallen out of my wallet.’

  She didn’t respond, she was busy pulling another one out, ‘Wow! Dean Craggs, Locksmith.’ She smirked, ‘I bet that one comes in handy.’ Then she ripped it in half, ‘Oops,’ and threw the wallet and cards onto the table.

  I pocketed it and scooped up the cards.

  ‘You didn’t have any concealed weapons on you. That was lucky.’

  It wasn’t luck. But I don’t need to tell you that. All a private investigator has to do in this country is not get caught doing anything illegal. There are no licences, not like in America. Anyone can set themselves up as a PI and start filming infidelities. That said, everyone in the business knew licences were coming, especially thanks to the phone hacking scandal and public revelations about the dark arts of journalism. In London being a PI can be lucrative if you get in with a tabloid. Break in here. Hack a dead girl’s voicemail there. Steal some files, some emails. Just don’t get caught.

  ‘We still have you for breaking into the flat.’

  I didn’t say anything, but she studied me, and maybe she saw something I didn’t mean to give away.

  ‘Except we don’t,’ she was stopping and starting, working things out and making each logical leap as she spoke, ‘The sister, she had a key and she gave it to you. Which you didn’t tell me last time I accused you because you knew I’d take it off you. Which means you wanted to revisit the flat. Which means you already have.’ She nodded to herself, then smiled wryly, ‘Find anything interesting?’

  I was a little impressed, but I didn’t show it.

  ‘Not even a shrine to you?’ she added, and slammed one of the photos onto the desk. It was me and Rory at secondary school.

  ‘Exactly what kind of relationship did you have with Rory?’

  ‘We were just friends.’

  ‘And his sister?’

  ‘Even less.’

  She took a second to think before continuing, ‘Here’s how I see things happening: your friend, one of Robert Coward’s low-level soldiers, steals a ton of starz from Coward’s men and they kill him for it. How does that sound to you?’ Half her voice was accusing me, the other half actually wanted to know.

  ‘If he stole them then why were they still in his flat?’ I said.

  ‘Because he never told them where they were.’

  ‘So he died to protect some pills?’

  ‘Maybe he died to protect you. Maybe the two of you were in this together.’ I could see her thinking, but it was year-one detective thinking. Not the kind of thinking that gets you to DCI at her age.

  I leant back in my chair and broke out my wicked smile.

  ‘You’re Pistol Penny, aren’t you?’

  ‘What?’ She was uncomfortable, shifting in her seat.

  ‘As a hard-working taxpayer,’ I continued, ‘I would just like to thank you for saving us all that money that their fair trial would have cost.’ I turned to the two brutes, ‘What about you guys? You like the shoot first, lie to review boards later approach.’

  ‘Shut your mouth, Grabarz!’ one of them barked, squaring up to hit me.

  ‘Guys! Step outside.’

  They backed off instantly, throwing me dirty looks as they shut the door behind them. When I turned back, Price was glaring at me.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  I shrugged in a way that would be charming to any other woman. ‘I don’t trust them.’

  ‘Thanks for the compliment,’ she said with no feeling.

  ‘Penny isn’t even your real name, is it? Your warrant card says Noël.’

  ‘Penny is my middle name. The newspapers thought it scanned better.’

  ‘P.P.’ I sounded it out loud, ‘Penny Price. It makes you sound like a superhero.’

  She snorted derisively, ‘It makes me sound like a superhero’s girlfriend.’

  It was her turn to lean back in her chair now, relaxed for a moment.

  Her suit was sharp and her shirt was buttoned up to the top, just like her, but her blond hair was slightly loo
se, and I could see that it was naturally curly. I jumped over the desk and pulled off her hair band. Her hair exploded out in every direction in all its big curly glory. It was over her face. Then she flicked it back with a swing of her neck like Rita Hayworth, ‘Me?’ and we were all over each other. Doing it on the desk. Who cared if the camera was watching, it was a treat for it.

  In reality, none of that happened. Just in my mind. She’d probably break my arm, but maybe it would still be worth it.

  If only things could have stayed like this between us. But, with a sigh, she refocussed.

  ‘You failed to report an assault on Rory’s sister. Who were they?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Once again, she was right behind me. The neighbours had reported it, I guessed.

  ‘Fine, spend an hour with a sketch artist.’

  ‘My memory of the thing is pretty hazy.’

  ‘Spend the whole day with them then.’ She wasn’t letting it go.

  I took a moment to look at her. Top to bottom. What did I know about her? She had risen through the ranks. She had killed at least six men. Brought down here because she was a good detective, but so far I hadn’t seen the evidence. She wasn’t corrupt. But she was bendable. She didn’t always follow the rules: you don’t kill six men by following the rules. And even if she was honourable in her police work, she hadn’t been honourable with me. I couldn’t read her, she was too unpredictable, too difficult to get a hold of. She was as slippery as wet soap.

  ‘We made a deal that you had no intention of honouring,’ I said, referring to the blood work she owed me.

  ‘And you’ve told me about as many lies as you have truths.’

  Fair enough.

  She stood up suddenly. I didn’t know why she was standing so close to me at first, but when she pulled a sealed envelope from her inside pocket I realised she was positioning herself between us and the camera. We were in the blind spot.

  ‘I’ll give you the blood work.’ I tried not to look surprised, ‘You give me one hour with the sketch artist. And you do the best fucking job you can with them. Don’t screw me over.’ She placed the envelope on the table.

  Well, well, well. Things were so mixed up I couldn’t work out if I was wrong about her or right about her. I moved for the envelope but she placed a single finger on it.

  ‘How did you identify him on the beach?’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s no longer part of the deal. How did you identify him, anyway, you were only minutes behind me.’

  We looked at each other, suddenly it seemed so childish what we were doing. I decided to show faith in her for once. That would confuse her.

  ‘He had pectus excavatum. The chest curves in. What about you?’

  ‘Oh, that was easy,’ she gave a wicked smile not too dissimilar to my own, ‘I had one of my men follow you.’

  Jesus Christ. How many fucking people were spying on me? Whoever he was, he was good. At least, I hoped he was.

  I did like her, I decided. She was a bit like me, yet nothing like me. I went to say something but I was cut off when an older man in a pressed, starched uniform burst into the room.

  ‘Chief Superintendent!’ Price jumped out of her seat.

  He didn’t look like he would have the strength to open the door. He was grey skinned, grey haired, with tiny wire-rimmed glasses. Dry lips. Sunken eyes. All the appearance of a corpse. And yet he was always upright, as though he had a scaffold pole down his back. The way he had opened the door we might have been kids having a cheeky snog-session in a cupboard.

  She looked to the envelope, but it was already in my pocket.

  ‘Sergeant Price,’ he spoke in a weary but unmistakably private-schooled accent, ‘I sought you out for this position in order to drag this service’s reputation out of the dirt. And then I hear of you consulting with the dirtiest of them all.’

  ‘Always a pleasure, Roy.’ I jabbed. He didn’t even look at me.

  This was the man who had blacklisted me. A paragon of incorruptibility, we were encouraged to believe. Dixon of Dock Green. As stiff and straight as his uniform.

  I was trying to leave but he was blocking the door.

  ‘Mr Grabarz witnessed an assault that I believe is connected to our murder.’ She sounded afraid of him. Just getting caught in the same room as me was enough to make her feel dirty. ‘He’s about to sit with a sketch artist.’

  The Chief regarded me for the first time in months. He wasn’t regarding me as a person, more like the contents of his handkerchief. ‘That sounds unusually cooperative of Mr Grabarz.’ He turned his gaze back to Price. ‘I do hope we haven’t given him anything in exchange.’

  ‘Nothing but gratitude,’ I answered before she had to lie.

  ‘Good,’ he said loudly.

  I tapped him on the shoulder. ‘I haven’t received the gratitude yet.’ I was proud of that one.

  I had to spend almost two hours with the sketch artist creating pictures of the bear and the weasel. I thought when she said it that it would be some specky geek with a computer making E-FITs. But this was an actual sketch artist. An arty, middle aged woman called Mary, who clearly made her money through a combination of this, teaching, and selling portraits from a market stall.

  She liked me. That’s why it took so long. She was trying to keep me there all day, and I wasn’t entirely sure that some of time she wasn’t sketching me.

  Eventually I got out of the station. If I was going back to the school to get whatever was hidden in the den then I needed to make sure I wasn’t being followed. I did the usual dry-cleaning. In shops and out the back exit. Dropping things and picking them up. I was alone, whoever Price’s man was she hadn’t been able to give him the order in time. Either that, or she was leaving me alone now.

  To torture myself I decided to walk through the Open Market, almost drowning in saliva at all the things I couldn’t afford to eat. Maybe I could survive on the smells alone. Isn’t that what supermodels do?

  I walked from there to the school through damp air. Storm Joseph wasn’t finished, apparently it was giving us a day off today, but it would be twice as bad tomorrow.

  I marched past the reception, mud half up my legs, ‘Me again,’ I looked like a crazy person. Again the receptionist was calling for me to sign in, but I was long gone. Into the woods. Through the wreckage of the den. Price’s bastards had been thorough, after tomorrow you wouldn’t know the den had ever been here. I knelt down to the tree stump, down to the cavity, and reached inside.

  A moment later I was interrupted by more rustling sounds from the trees. Not Price again!? It wasn’t, it was the receptionist and a balding, vaguely pathetic looking man.

  ‘What the hell is going on here?’ the man bleated.

  ‘Who are you?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m the head, who are you?’

  ‘Then you’re just the man I need to speak to. I’ll be sending you a letter in the next few days: there’s groundwater from your field rising up into people’s homes.’

  He went white. I handed him a long stick.

  ‘Jab it in the ground and see for yourself.’

  ‘We don’t control the water, Mr Burke. ’

  ‘Take it up with our lawyers.’

  ‘Oh, they’ll be hearing from me. They’ll be hearing from everyone.’

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ I said, as I passed him Grimace’s card.

  I marched away and couldn’t help chuckling as I heard him prodding at the mud.

  Afterwards I walked to my flat, up my stairs, and fought with my door to get in. I was tired again now. Those two hours of sleep had been used up, I needed more.

  Thalia was sitting on the window sill, smoking her last cigarette, wearing one of my shirts and nothing else. It struck me that taking her from her place without packing a bag had left her perpetually naked and unable to leave my flat. This was not something I was going to complain about. Oh, and those curves I mentioned earlier? I was glad to see they were all real. The fact t
hat she was just a little larger than the average woman meant that whatever you liked about a woman, she had plenty of.

  ‘Did you find anything?’ was all she asked. I had been gone all day.

  I held it up: an ordinary-looking writing pad in a plastic bag. The type with a robust hardboard binding. For university or business notetaking.

  Together we pored through the pages. Columns. Two with letters, two with numbers, then a date. Once we had been through every page, Thalia spoke.

  ‘Initials. Initials. Number. Number. Date. Every page the same. What is it?’

  I wasn’t listening. As I stared at that sharp, un-joined-up writing that I had copied so many times, I could see those last ten years that Rory had lived revealing themselves in front of me, and suddenly, I understood everything.

  11

  The Last Years of Innocence

  rory stood staring into nothingness. There was dim light making it through the grimy windows, as the sun set over the houses on the other side of the street. This alien room was strangely quiet, he could hear children playing out in the street. How could there still be children in this city? How was that possible? It sounded like they were playing football. They were enjoying their last years of innocence. His last memory of innocence had just dropped dead.

  What was in front of him wasn’t there anymore, just a vodka haze. His brain had seen it, processed it, then shut it out.

  He stood over the body of a young girl, just as I had stood over the body of Jo Whiting, and his brain said no. Just no. No more.

  Dealing drugs by night had left him pale. Taking drugs by day had left him aged. Every sinew in his body overused. His muscles tough like overcooked beef. The sound of a train caught on the wind. He would give anything to be on that train right now.

  Ten years ago he was selling baggies of weed on the street. Indulging in plenty of the stuff himself, too. No harm in that. Then from a desperate single room, the type he was standing in now. Making more than any of the shitty minimum wage jobs everyone else his age had.