Cart Before The Hearse (David Mallin Detective Book 14)

by Roger Ormerod

  I went, unresisting. The door she opened was not unlike the others. I suspect the room was. It was elegant and crushingly feminine. It had a circular bed and circular rugs and an atmosphere of corruption slightly scented with violets. She indicated two other doors, and the secret was unfolded. One door was for the clients. It would lead to a silent, shaded staircase, which deposited them, depleted, at the rear of the restaurant, where, assuming there was anything left in their wallets, they could replenish their energies for the journey home to the loving wife.

  The other was for the girls, who could, equally discreetly, return to the gaming floor.

  Or elsewhere, it seemed.

  “Turn right,” she said, “not left. Then right again, and there’s a long corridor all along the rear of the building. You’ll see the lake through the windows. Wally’s door is the sixth along. It has a small red bell push.”

  “And how do we get in?”

  “Push the bell and deal with the guard.”

  “Ah!”

  “Well, you’re so damn tough!” she said fiercely. “I can’t do any more.”

  “They’re armed. Didn’t you know?”

  “And you…”

  “We’re not. And he’ll have some sort of a peep-hole. Hell, we’ve got to get m.”

  In the end, she came with me. George was hanging around loose in the corridor, contemplating the lake.

  “We don’t need her!” he said violently, softly.

  “We need her, George.”

  She stood in front of the door and touched the red button. She smiled at the little ball of glass in the middle of the door. We were each side, flat against the wall. I heard a soft whirr, and the door clicked open.

  George swivelled on one heel and crashed his foot against it, bounding in crouched on the impetus. I turned, put my hand on Pat’s face.

  “Get lost, sister,” I snarled, hoping Wally had seen all the Bogarts.

  I slammed the door after us, and turned. George was kneeling on a large, heaving chest, both hands twisting an arm off. For a moment, the thug’s legs thrashed, then the gun fell softly to the Aubusson carpet, and George rose, balancing a.357 S & W Magnum in his huge palm.

  “Slow,’ he commented, looking down at the rumpled remains. He turned to Wally. “You need him any more?” He cocked the Magnum with his thumb and levelled it at the guard. There was an undignified scramble. George laughed, took two quick paces, and kicked him under the chin. The man lay still.

  It was George’s way of indicating that he was on serious business.

  There was time for me to take a quick look round. It was more a lounge than an office, although, against the left-hand wall, there was indeed a desk, with a swivel chair of kingly proportions. Beside it, a safe door was set into the wall, its combination dial plainly shown. That probably meant that the real safe was in the opposite wall behind the reproduction Matisse, which was possibly genuine and worth more than the safe contained anyway. The wall decoration was bare pine, the lighting hidden and discreet. The whole rear wall was one-way glass, giving a panoramic view of the gaming floor.

  Wally hadn’t been watching the floor. He was stretched on a Queen Anne settee with a phone at his left hand, and conveniently at his right a small, inlayed round table bearing a large, pale drink, an ashtray, and a sandalwood box for his cigarettes. Wally was in a tight outfit of grey, with a black shirt and a white bow tie. He was, I saw, watching television, unfortunately Bogart as Philip Marlowe, and I suddenly realised that I hadn’t done the lisped menace very convincingly.

  His hand was poised over the phone. He was plumply, palely sweating, with the ends of his painful smile plumping out his cheeks.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” said George.

  Wally raised his shoulders in apology. “But this is delightful. Friends visit, so I must have company, drinks, girls. The night is young.”

  “Then let’s try to see it through,” I suggested. “Cut out the act.”

  He looked dejected. “You’re going to be rough. I simply couldn’t stand it.”

  “You’re stalling.”

  “Of course. Things will happen. I don’t need to touch any buttons.” To prove it, he folded his arms across his chest and hugged himself. “But every few minutes that phone rings. See for yourself.”

  He turned negligently towards the wall of glass. The gaming floor was spread out in clear detail.

  “You see that man — there, the far left corner. He’s heading for a phone cubicle. That’s Krasner, in charge of No. 3 roulette table. He’s about to ask whether… ah yes, Colonel Toombs, I should guess… whether I shall honour yet another cheque. Any second now…”

  The phone rang.

  “Pick it up,” I said, “and say one word. No.”

  “So clever.” He touched his lips with his fingers, then lifted the phone, listened, and said: “No.” And replaced it.

  “Colonel Toombs?”

  He lay back, suddenly at his ease. “How do you know that Krasner hasn’t just asked me if everything’s all right? Oh, you clever fellow, what will you do about that?”

  George moved over. He sat on the arm of the settee and placed the Magnum close to Wally’s ear.

  “We came to ask you something,” he said quietly. “If anybody comes, then we shall never find out the answer, shall we?”

  Wally tensed. Without a flicker to the smile he spoke softly. “Touch my ear again with that, friend, and I’ll break your wrist.”

  George laughed. There was a sudden blurr of movement, and the edge of Wally’s hand chopped down on the sandalwood box, shattering it. George grunted. Wally gave a snickering sort of chuckle, dived his hand into the debris, and it came up clasped around a neat little.32 Walther automatic. The gun came across as fast as the chop, and I was already moving. George threw himself over backwards, and the pistol exploded in my face.

  I felt the hot breath of it past my cheek, and behind me I heard a squeal of pain. Then I had one hand on the gun wrist and the other at Wally’s throat, my knee in his guts.

  “Drop it.”

  We looked into each other’s eyes for a few seconds, and I saw in there what Wally really was. I don’t know what he saw in mine, but his flabby lips accomplished a childish pout, and he whispered:

  “Why do you have to be so aggressive?”

  And then he dropped the gun.

  I scooped it up quickly and turned, expecting the thug, but it was he who had stopped the bullet. He was sitting on the floor holding his ear, blood pouring between his fingers. Not actually stopped the bullet, I saw. The Matisse had depreciated in value to the extent of one hole.

  “Now,” said George, recovering his position, “suppose we talk.”

  Wally wriggled a bit, composing himself. His face shone.

  “Then state your business.”

  “Mia,” I said. “Your relationship… Mr. Florence… the lot.”

  “Well… really! Mia was my friend. I don’t discuss my friends… Oh, very well. She worked here. I watched her, from here. She was a good girl, neat and clean. Good for trade.”

  “Come on, come on,” said George.

  Wally licked his lips. “I developed,” he said, “a feeling for her, an affection. Nothing, you understand, physical. I wanted to do things for her, put her in fine clothes and parade her on my arm. I would have been proud. But she would have nothing of it. I did what I could. If she asked — if I heard she had expressed any desire — then that she was given. She came to… to at least smile at me. To speak to me in friendship. It was all I asked. Do you understand what I am saying?”

  I understood that he was lonely, here in his tower, that he wanted her in a way that he could not really understand or handle. Almost, I could feel sorry for him.

  “I understand you got her on to heroin,” I snapped. He glanced away. Then back. His eyes were empty.

  “If she asked,” he whispered, “I got her heroin.”

  “Which was very easy for you, seeing that you’re t
he chief supplier around here.”

  “Oh now, that’s naughty. Mustn’t say that. A place like this… of course it attracts the pushers, and sometimes, to discourage them, it’s necessary to relieve them of — ”

  “Flossie knew!” I told him.

  That smile again, appealing, warm. “Flossie never knew anything. Oh, he suspected. You can bet. He almost lived here. But he wasn’t interested in me. Not in little Wally. He wanted somebody big, always that was his main objective. He told me. ‘Wally,’ he said, ‘I’m not interested in trash like you.’ He was like that, you know, very outspoken and offensive. ‘Give me a name,’ he said. ‘Just one name.’ As though I could!”

  “Not even under pressure?”

  “I’m telling you this because I want to,” he said softly. “ Not because you frighten me, my friend.”

  And I could see I did not. I nodded. “But there was Mia.”

  “Ah yes. Darling Mia. I was a fool, of course. A man in my position cannot afford to indulge his desires. She came to mean a great deal to me. And her wishes became so very… what shall I say?… singular. There was a time when all her life was heroin. And for giving her that, for supplying a paltry flat where she could live high as a duchess, she’d spare me a smile and a: ‘Thank you, Wally.’ But that was all I asked. Basically, I suppose, I’m a very simple man.”

  “Let me kill him, Dave.”

  “Later,” I promised. “Wally, let’s get back to last week. Let’s get to where Flossie took you in.”

  “Has he told you that? Oh, he’s always been a fine liar. Nothing so legal as taking me in to the station. There he’d have to do something about charging me. And he’d got nothing on me. Yes, he picked me up. A moment of incaution on my part. I was leaving the flat, pleased, happy that she’d smiled at me, and relaxed. I was alone, of course. So stupid. Flossie had me in his hideous car in a second, and took me off to some place of his… and simply kept me there.”

  “Beat you up?” I asked, feeling that it was perhaps overdue.

  “You ruffians!” He was contemptuous. “All violence and no imagination. All he had to do was force me to stay. Because he knew, as I knew, what it would mean to poor Mia, with that horrible sergeant of his stopping her getting what she needed. And all the time he kept saying:

  ‘A name, Wally. A name.’ Over and over. Until I could have screamed.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell him, Wally? Why didn’t you give him what he wanted, then you could’ve gone back to Mia and given her what she wanted?”

  “Because I didn’t know a name! I realised you were stupid the moment I saw you. The look on your face right now! The do-gooders. You’re one of them. You hate me, because I supplied the stuff for Mia. You fool, I didn’t get her on it. You blame me, but there’re legal clinics that do no less than I did. Only I did it with some sort of compassion. Don’t you sneer at me, friend. I can still break your jaw. D’you think he’ll fire that thing? Never. Too soft, like all of you. You don’t live in this world. They’re lost, these kids. There’s nothing for them to aim for, no kicks in life expect the artificial ones. Don’t blame me for what Mia was. I kept her going, and kept her sane. I loved her, damn you!”

  And now there was something twisted about the set of his mouth, something vicious. His eyes, deep and filled with hatred, belied his tone, which had not lifted, even at his most impassioned, beyond a low and steady stream of words.

  George said nothing. The thug groaned.

  “So… he held you,” I said.

  “He taunted me.” He was speaking so gently that I hardly heard. “He didn’t have to spell it out. I knew what they go through. Withdrawal! It’s… obscene. But there was heroin at that flat. I’d hidden it away. It didn’t do for Mia to know where it was. You have to control it, watch that they eat, clean them… Why should I tell you this? I was aching to get free, and he pretended to have reports from that loathsome Fyne. I knew they were false, but he described her distress to me, and I knew… But you don’t care about this. You’re one of those people who’d have the stuff cleared off the streets like that” He snapped his fingers. “And you’d cheer at the benefit to mankind you’d achieved, while the poor slobs in filthy back rooms would slowly go insane because they couldn’t get it any more…”

  “Get on with it.”

  He swept out a white handkerchief and patted his face. His eyes darted past it. His lips were moist and fat and revolting. But I wasn’t hating him any more.

  “On Saturday,” he said, “in the morning, he said I could go. He told me they’d already run my car back to the club. But all I wanted was to get to Mia. He said he’d take me to her, and that was one of his nasty jokes, because he took me to Poole’s house. Christ! Did he think it was over! I think I went crazy then. I ran to the front door, and Flossie was parked out in the street with his window down so that I could hear him laughing. It wasn’t going to stop me, oh no. I got in there. She was bad. Oh, my Mia was really bad! I took her in my arms, got the car keys off that piffling idiot, and carried her to his car, and of course there was only one place to go with her, where I’d hidden the stuff, at the flat.”

  “And Flossie let you do that? After all his trouble, he let you do that?”

  “I wasn’t thinking straight. I guessed that maybe he’d got some idea of catching me actually in possession. But no, he hadn’t finished. Oh no! I got there. Got her up those stairs. She was moaning: ‘Wally please, quickly.’ You know. I dug the stuff out, from behind a loose brick in the wall. I… I gave it to her myself. These hands. Never before… She couldn’t wait. And straightaway I knew something was wrong. It hit her hard. I tried it. You know — a touch on the tongue.”

  “And you’d know.”

  “I knew then what he’d done. What had gone before had only been build-up. This was it. He’d found my stuff. Three sachets. And he’d substituted raw heroin. I’d given her about forty times her usual dose, and she’d been off it for over three days. I knew it was going to kill her.”

  George was no longer pointing the Magnum. I didn’t want to ask Wally to go on. But he did. Fingertips together, eyes half closed, he mused on the memory, as though recalling something pleasurable from the past. His voice was soft, liquid gently flowing. Like acid.

  “You can see how well he’d laid it on. The withdrawal hadn’t got him what he wanted. But the overdose… and he’d rigged it so that I’d given it to her with my own hands. So there I was. There was only a hospital that had any chance at all, and of course he’d have cut the phone line. I’d looked out, and there was his car. Him behind the wheel. And he knew that I knew that there was a radio in his car. And then I looked round, behind me, and he’d even rigged the best trick of all. Her father was there. I knew who he was, but I didn’t know whether he’d just happened to go there, or Flossie had told him to. It’d be about his measure. Irony, he’d call it. To me it was vicious… foul. Do you understand that, Mr. Mallin?”

  So he knew my name. I understood it. I didn’t know his.

  “And what did you do, Wally?”

  “He was standing there, that old fool, leaning in the doorway. His face was green. I don’t think he saw me. His eyes were fixed on Mia. But there was a gun, you see. In one of the drawers of that telephone table in the hall. There was just a chance that Flossie hadn’t found it. Ha! A chance! I tried to get to it. The old fool saw me. I don’t know what was in his mind, if he’d got any mind left. He’d never been there before. His precious Mia! He saw where I was heading. Maybe Flossie’d told him about the gun. There was no end to what Flossie had got rigged. But I didn’t know that…”

  His voice faded away. His eyes were distant.

  “Her father,” I prompted.

  “He went mad. Flung himself on that tabic in the hall, hugging it. Making kind of animal noises. Perhaps he didn’t want me to get the gun. I don’t know. Thought I wanted to shoot her, shoot him! Sweet Jesus, I don’t know. But I had to get that gun. I tried to pull him away. His hands w
ere like claws on that table. I hit him. He turned his face up, and he was croaking something. I am not a violent man. I struck at his face. I think I was screaming. He did not turn away. He looked straight at me, and I beat on his face. I watched his eyes going dim, until he went down with the phone clasped to his chest. I let him lie. The gun was there. A thirty-two automatic. I looked at the clip. He hadn’t found it… the clip was full. I jacked one into the breech and ran down those stairs, waving it. He was either going to call an ambulance, or I’d lean over his dead body to do it myself.”

  He coughed into his handkerchief. The phone rang again. I said nothing. He listened, said no again, and replaced it. I’d had time to think.

  “But he was still one move ahead,” I suggested.

  He nodded, an inclination of the head really, and it streamed sweat from his brows.

  “They’d looked like real shells in the clip. They weren’t. I stuck the gun in his face and he knew what I wanted. He laughed. That was the moment. I pressed the trigger… and, nothing. In that moment, he expected a name. It was the second he’d aimed for over the past four days. And I…” He licked his lips. They were purple in that light, the television flickering at him with the sound off.

  “I threw the other two sachets in his face and ran,” he whispered. “There was Poole’s car. I expected Flossie to ram it or something, to finish it all off. But he didn’t. I got clear away. I suppose… suppose he didn’t want her dead. That had been his last bluff, and I’d called it. He let me go, knowing I was heading for the phone box. He allowed me… him with his glorified imperial majesty, he allowed me to turn and drive away from my Mia.”

  He hissed through his teeth. He looked into my eyes. I glanced at the television screen. No, Bogart hadn’t quite captured the true menace. Wally had that.

  I straightened. One thing was clear. There were a number of accomplished liars around there, and I was beginning to wonder whether Fyne wasn’t the only one to emerge from it with any sincerity and human dignity.

  It was time to leave. Wally had been forthcoming with his story, and it was unlikely he’d prevent us from leaving with it. I relaxed. There was a taste of bile in my throat. George went to the door, searching for the release button.