by John Harvey
‘They were interested in my health. They told me to take a holiday. I tried to argue with them and they didn’t like it. That’s all.’ I looked up at him and saw he was listening, just. ‘I don’t know where they came from or who sent them. As far as I know I’ve never seen either of them before. If you like I’ll come down and look through some mug shots and see if I can pick them out. Otherwise …’
I let the sentence hang and looked at him, waiting for him to interrupt. He wasn’t going to so I went on.
‘The other guy I told you about. I saw him earlier today, once definitely, twice maybe. I thought he was following me, but I couldn’t be sure. The first time I knew he was near the office was after I came round from my visit from the tourist agency. I found him on the stairs. Then I phoned you.’
‘What did you take from the body?’
I looked him full in the eye. ‘Not a thing.’ I stayed looking at him until I thought my integrity was certain. Whatever else I could do, I could lie with the best of them.
Gilmour went to the head of the stairs and looked down. He shouted a couple of orders then came back. Lit a cigarette and sat down again.
‘And last night … ?’
‘Is that your case?’
‘Don’t give me is that my fucking case! I’ve gone out to bat for you more times than I can remember. So don’t try to get official with me or you might get some of the same.’
I closed my eyes and concentrated for a moment on the dull pain inside my head. I knew that he was right. I said so. I also said, ‘It was just like I told the cops in Nottingham, nothing left out. She phoned me the previous evening and asked me to go up. When I got there she was dead. As I came out of the flat I was jumped. It’s this week’s in thing: hit Mitchell and claim the jackpot.’
Something inside my lump throbbed in sympathy.
‘You used to know her, didn’t you? Know her well, I mean. Did you tell them that?’
‘I told them I knew her: I guess I didn’t go into details.’
He grinned. ‘I bet you didn’t or they would be having a field day. Ex-lover kills mistress in rage of jealousy. Boy, you would be good for a going-over on that one!’
‘Tom, I hadn’t seen her for what—three, maybe four years. Does it seem likely that I would get a sudden burning desire to go and put a bullet in her back because she was being unfaithful to me?’
‘No. But when you’re without a better lead that would do.’
‘And are they stuck for leads?’
This time he smiled outright. ‘How should I know? Like you said, it isn’t my case.’
He got up and looked round the shambles of a room. ‘Why you left the force for this I’ll never know. You don’t look as though you make enough to keep yourself in toilet paper. Are you working at the moment?’
The view from the window was one of a partly-demolished wall which had been decorated with technicoloured graffiti and admonitions to the developers to keep out. They needn’t have worried: there was no sign of anyone developing anything in a hurry. I looked down at the wall and still wasn’t sure if I should tell him. But I did.
‘Sure I’m working. Since this morning. Someone paid me a nice retainer to investigate Miss Carter’s murder.’
Gilmour let out a low whistle.
‘You’re really chasing your own tail this time, aren’t you? You’re going to investigate a murder for which you’re your own suspect. Christ. Mitchell! You do things by your own rules and nobody else’s, don’t you?’
I shrugged my shoulders. I was beginning to think that it was time Tom went. I wanted to be alone with my own stupidity.
‘How long do you think they’re going to let you wander around free? You think you can solve a case from inside a jail?’
I looked at him and wondered how much he knew that I didn’t. I guessed about as much as I had ahead of him. For now, anyway.
‘Look. Clear up this mess here then come down to the station. Sign a statement and then get the hell out. But for Christ’s sake go easy—or the next time I come to scrape somebody’s head off the stairs it will be yours.’
With that encouraging thought he left. If that’s the way your friends think about you maybe you didn’t have much of a chance. I picked a piece of broken wall mirror up from the floor and surveyed my head. I wished I hadn’t bothered. Then I knelt, down and looked at the pieces of my shattered chair to see if they could be stuck together. To do that would have been a gesture of hope too: and about as useful as writing on brick walls before they were pulled down.
I left the pieces and went out without bothering to lock the door behind me. The only thing worth taking was the gun and that was now in my pocket.
6
The street was a street in North London like any other. Two storey villa houses with small front gardens and stubby privet hedges. At intervals along the pavement there were plane trees, their broad, angular leaves spreading over your head as you walked. Outside number forty-seven was parked a black Humber Hawk, beside which a small girl was standing with a bucket almost as big as herself. She was about to wash down the car and it must have seemed to her like scaling Everest. Except that she was probably used to it.
Inside the windscreen a small card poked up with the same printing as the one I had found in bum-freezer’s pocket. Now I knew his name I should get out of the habit of calling him that. Not that it mattered any more.
A woman who could have been any age between twenty-five and fifty came to the door in carpet slippers and with a tatty print dressing gown pulled round her. I guessed that under that she was dressed all right, but I didn’t like to think about it for too long in case she wasn’t. Her hair looked as if the closest it had got to a hairdresser’s lately was on the other side of the road, walking fast and trying not to notice. I told her my name and she remembered it from my phone call. She asked me in and I walked past her into the hallway.
It was littered with children’s toys and old pieces of newspaper. I followed the trail into the small living room at the end of the hallway. Pushed open a door and found myself staring at four kids, all younger than the one who was washing the damned car. The youngest of all was sitting strapped into a push chair, head forward, asleep with a grubby dummy clutched in his mouth. Two curly-headed little girls who looked as if they were twins were intent upon covering each other with jam from fingers of bread which were on a piece of old newspaper on the table. A boy sat on the floor, doing nothing but whimper.
The woman knocked a couple of magazines off of a chair and asked me to sit down.
She lit a cigarette, looked glad when I refused one, offered me a cup of tea and when I said no to that also, poured herself one from a brown china pot on the table. The tea looked strong and stewed and it was probably the only thing which kept her going. That and waiting for her old man to come home with some money.
‘You said on the phone that you wanted to hire a car for a few days?’ The voice was wheedling, servile.
‘Yes, that’s right, Mrs Cook. Three, maybe four days. Would that be all right?’
She coughed and sipped at the tea. ‘Well, I suppose so. My husband’s still not been back, you see. Not since you phoned, like. But there’s nothing else down in the book.’
She opened a small red note book and put it back down again. Then another drink of tea, another drag at the cigarette.
‘Your husband’s out on a job, is he, Mrs Cook? A driving job, I suppose?’
‘No, not driving. We’ve only got the one car, you see. No, he went up West early this morning. I don’t know what for. Just said he had a job to do.’
‘You don’t know who gave him the job, Mrs Cook?’
‘No, I … here, you’re asking me a lot of questions. What do you want to know all that for? You said you wanted to hire a car.’ She stood up and went to the door. ‘I don’t believe you want to hire ou
r car at all. You’re from the finance company, that’s what you are. Always sending people round to check up they are. Well, Jimmy told them last time—they’ll get all the payments that are owing at the end of the week. The man agreed, too. Now what are you here for? They can’t change their mind like that.’
She was holding on to the door now and was on the verge of breaking into tears. She clung to that wood as though it was the only thing that would support her. At any moment I was afraid she would be in hysterics and what I needed I needed fast before the police found out who that battered head had belonged to.
I got up and moved towards her; she backed up against the wall. I knew that if I didn’t move now I would get nothing from her at all. She would just close jam tight.
I caught hold of her by the shoulder. It was like catching hold of loosely covered bones. I felt her jump with fear and cower back even further.
‘Look, Mrs Cook, I’m not from the finance company. That I promise you. I want a little help and I’m prepared to pay for it.’ I let go of her shoulder and reached inside my coat for my wallet. At the sight of the notes I offered her she calmed and I went on.
‘This job your husband is out on—did someone come round here or was it a phone call?’
She spoke quietly but definitely. ‘Oh, no, no one came round. They phoned him up, whoever it was; course I don’t know who it was. Jimmy doesn’t bother me with the business side of things; I have the home and kids to look after, see.’
She looked past me round the little room as though all that justified her statement.
‘But think, Mrs Cook, have you any idea where the call came from? Any name? Would your husband have written it down anywhere?’
For an instant I saw the eyes go past me again, then flicker back to my face quickly. I looked round to where she had been staring. There on the table lay the red book. She must have realised how much I wanted the information and thought she could bargain for more cash. I didn’t have the time. I jumped for the table ahead of her bird-like hand.
There it was, entered neatly and carefully. Two-eighteen a.m. Nottingham. Howard. What could be more precise than that?
‘You’d remember this, Mrs Cook. A phone call in the middle of the night. That’s hardly normal for a car hire business, is it? Or were there often calls at that time about other kinds of business?’
I had hold of her arm again and this time I applied pressure; not too much, but just enough. I don’t enjoy hurting people, especially skinny women whose eyes are already full of tears. But I often don’t have the choice.
My fingers went harder into the edges of the bone.
‘He … he said “Bloody Nottingham again”, that was all. I don’t know who it is, but I think it’s someone Jimmy met when he was driving vans for some jazz band or other. That’s all I know, honest.’
Her weight went out of her arm. She slumped back into her chair and the tears coursed down her lined cheeks. I took out another two notes and put them on the top of her dressing gown, near her hand.
‘That’s for keeping quiet about me being here and asking questions.’
I didn’t know if it would buy her silence and I suppose that I didn’t much care. I stood in the doorway and looked round the room: the two girls had given up smearing themselves with jam and were sucking on the fingers of bread; the baby was still asleep; the boy on the floor had started to whimper more loudly and was trying to catch hold of the bottom of his mother’s dressing gown. I closed the door quietly and went out into the street.
The girl was wiping away at the side of the car nearest to the traffic, oblivious to any dangers. I gave her a quick smile and turned up the road: she didn’t appear to notice and if she did she didn’t smile back. Why should she?
I surfaced from the underground at Leicester Square and walked through into Wardour Street. I thought maybe I’d call in at the arcade and see if Maxie had anything for me yet. But he had said tomorrow, so I didn’t bother.
The building I was looking for was encased in smoked glass for the first two floors and this was centred by a large embossed coloured dragon. The entrance was to one side. A uniformed commissionaire sat behind a desk in the foyer reading a newspaper. He didn’t look up as I came in. To the left there was a smoked glass door, with a smaller dragon. I pushed it open and went through into a large carpeted room. Marooned in the middle of this, a blonde in a bright red dress was seated behind a white desk looking as though she were waiting for someone to throw her a lifebelt. I waded across the carpet.
‘I’d like to see Candi’s recording manager.’ I paused, looked her full in her pretty blue eyes and smiled. ‘Please.’
‘You’d like to see Candi’s recording manager?’
Why was it that everyone repeated my questions at me as though I asked the stupidest questions in the world? Perhaps it was because I asked the stupidest questions in the world. Perhaps I needed to go for diction lessons.
I smiled once again and said please. Once again.
This time she smiled back. It was a nice smile, showing nice white, even teeth and causing a dimple to appear beside her mouth at the right hand side. It said that she was really a nice young girl who came in to work every day from the suburbs; a girl who once upon a time had thought that being a receptionist for a record company was a big deal, but who now knew that it was not. But while they were paying her dress bills she would pretend it still was. Sort of. That was what her smile said to me, anyhow. I supposed it said different things to different people in different places. I was wondering what things it might say to me somewhere different.
‘You’re sure you don’t want to see someone else?’
The smile was slightly coquettish now. I wished I had time, but I didn’t.
‘You have read the paper I suppose?’
I told her that I had but that I supposed Candi’s manager would still exist. Someone had to push all that posthumous product on to the market.
‘Then you want Patrick Gordon-Brown. I’ll buzz him for you.’
She smiled again and crossed her legs underneath her red dress. I heard the slight swish of material as she did so. She followed my stare and grinned.
‘That is Gordon-Brown with a hyphen?’
I didn’t care if he spelt it with a semi-quaver in the middle but I felt that I needed to say something and right at that moment that was all I could think of. Well, almost all and the rest didn’t bear saying. Not right there, anyway.
She went on looking efficient and happy: which I suppose she was. Someone had to be.
‘There’s no answer, I’m afraid. Perhaps he’s not back from lunch yet.’
‘Not back from lunch?’ I looked at my watch. ‘It’s almost time for dinner.’
‘Well, he did have a business lunch, I know, and sometimes these things just seem to go on and on.’ She almost giggled. ‘I don’t know what they find to talk about.’
The giggle did it. There was something about a lovely blonde who spent her days giggling from the splendid isolation of a marooned desk that I could not resist.
‘What time do you have lunch? That is if you don’t mind having lunch with old men.’
‘You’re not old and I wonder why it took you so long to ask and usually from one to two but you’d better phone first. The number’s here on the card.’
And she handed me a small orange card with a dragon logo and an address and phone number. I made my way towards the door.
‘What’s your name, by the way. I’d hate to get hold of the wrong person.’
‘It’s Jane. Look: its printed here on this badge on my dress. You’ll never make a detective, that’s for sure. As a matter of interest, what do you do?’
I let the door swing to behind me. Keep-’em-guessing-Mitchell, that’s what they call me. Sometimes.
It was too late to go to the office and I didn’t want to face t
he mess anyway. I went home instead.
I hadn’t opened the bottle when the phone rang. It was Vonnie. She wanted to know what I’d been doing. I told her I had been having a lovely time being hit on the head. She asked if I had found out about her sister’s murder. I told her that I hadn’t. She said good-bye and rang off. Ten pounds down her particular drain.
No sooner had I put some scotch into the tumbler than the phone rang again. I let it ring and drank the whisky down. That was the way I was feeling.
It was a voice I didn’t know; quiet and cultured and with a distinct sound of breeding and money. Not the kind of voice that I conferred with often.
‘Mr Mitchell?’
I told him it was, indeed, Mr Mitchell’s residence and that Mr Mitchell himself was speaking.
‘I’m so glad. I telephoned your office and there was no reply. I did call several times actually, but there was no reply on any occasion. So I took the liberty of trying your home number. I hope that you don’t consider, that to be an awful impertinence?’
His tone suggested that of course I would not. Well, I did. I didn’t want to talk to anyone right now. At least not a stinking rich old Etonian who could buy me for the price of one of his pet dog’s dinners. But I didn’t say so. I didn’t say anything. So he went on.
‘I have a problem, Mr Mitchell. A personal problem and one which I believe you may be able to assist me to solve.’
‘I’m not a social worker, or a psychologist, you know, I’m …’
‘I know just what you are, Mr Mitchell. You are a private detective. And by repute a reliable one or I should not be calling you. Now do you think you can help me? You see, my daughter is missing.’
I thought for a moment.
‘Well,’ I hesitated, ‘ordinarily that sounds the kind of case I like, but as of now, I’m rather busy.’
‘Mr Mitchell, I will pay you two hundred pounds in advance, twenty pounds a day plus expenses and a bonus of another three hundred pounds when my daughter is found. Now I am sure that those fees are in excess of what you would normally expect and I am equally positive that you would be foolish to pass them by.’
