Amphetamines and Pearls

by John Harvey

  I allowed myself to be pushed back the way I had come, still, nervous about the Luger and wondering whether he was going to search me for my own gun now or later. He was pretty good. He stopped me by the door and told me to put my hands high against the wall and my feet apart. Then he frisked me as if he was enjoying it. He found the gun and eased it out of its holster.

  ‘Nice one,’ he chuckled, ‘police issue, is it?’ He chuckled again. He really was a happy little soul. ‘All right, sweetheart, open the door and through you go.’

  When we entered the hall all but the most serious game stopped and looked round at us. The Luger prodded me over towards the man in the chair.

  He was small and he looked old and tired. Perhaps he had taken so long to build everything up that he had lost interest by the time it had happened. It’s that way sometimes. Whatever he looked like he didn’t look like the boss of a crime organisation. If anything he looked like a retired docker. His neck had started to go straggly and the hands with which he nursed the thing on his lap were boney and veined. The thing was a bayonet.

  He saw me looking at it and spoke: ‘My boy was in the Korean War. Brought this back as a souvenir. While he’s inside I have it as a kind of keepsake. Company till he comes home. Nothing like your own flesh and blood. I never trust anyone else.’

  I wasn’t sure if this last remark was meant for me or for those clustered round.

  The one who had brought me in showed Jupp the gun he had taken from me.

  ‘He had this on him, boss. He was trying to slope in the back way. Sneaky, like. Weren’t you, sweetheart?’ He accompanied this with a poke in the back with the Luger. I was still afraid it might go off. Maybe Jupp was too, for he told him to put it away. Then he asked me who I was and what I wanted.

  I told him my name and then I turned and pointed to the Negro, who was still chasing the very last red around the cushions.

  ‘I want him.’

  Jupp laughed—a dry crackle of a laugh, a memory of a laugh that sounded as real as ashes of roses.

  ‘What do you think you’re going to do with him, son?’

  I looked back into the old man’s face: ‘I’m going to kill him.’

  For a moment something flickered in the tired eyes then lay to rest.

  ‘I doubt it, son. Even if I was to let you try, I doubt if you could do it. But suppose you did, would you try to kill all the rest of us? Would you try to kill me? ’Cause what he did, son, he did because I told him to.’

  He fingered the edge of the bayonet without looking at it, almost unconsciously.

  ‘I told him to, boy.’

  There was no answer. I knew that I had no right being there: not if I had any sense of respect for my own life. But there I was and I wasn’t expecting to get out alive. I just wanted that big spade first.

  I turned my back on Jupp. I took off my jacket and holster and stood there watching the big man pot the yellow ball with a long shot down the table, then curl the cue ball back for the next colour. He was good.

  ‘Cut that fucking crap and come where I can take your head off your shoulders!’

  It was loud, loud enough for him to hear and for him not to be able to ignore. Not in front of all these people. Not in front of Jupp. Not that he wanted to.

  He turned from the table and came towards me; he hadn’t put down the cue but held it in front of him, slightly raised. I began to move to my right, not too quickly. I didn’t want to startle him into a move just yet. He kept coming at me and I watched as the cue got higher. Then I reached fast to the side of the nearest table and grabbed up the rest that was hooked there. I grabbed it and brought it up as the cue in the Negro’s hand swung down for my head. The rest was longer and it struck him alongside his head, causing his own blow to fall short. But it didn’t stop him coming. He lifted the cue again, with two hands, and brought it down on top of me. I tried to parry it with the rest, held across the path of his swing. The cue snapped through the wood of the rest and thumped down into my leg above the knee. I was aware of a blinding pain as I jumped to one side and rolled over the top of the nearest table. He followed me with another swing which broke his cue against the slate bed.

  Then I jumped for him and aimed my fist at the side of his head, and in my fist was a billiard ball and the crack as it landed on his jaw bone cut clear across the room. He shrugged his head and looked at me in disbelief. I aimed up at his face a second time but got nowhere near it. His arm wiped mine aside and something equivalent to a power-shovel drove into my face and sent me into a stack of cues on the wall.

  I went down hard and came up spitting out blood and bits of broken tooth. I also came up with a cue and lifted it off the floor, aiming it for his groin as he followed in his punch. I hit him full on and he let out a piercing yell and clutched at his balls. I brought back the cue fast and caught him one high on his undefended temple.

  For a moment he stood there, perplexed, swaying. I was sure he must go down. Instead he reached inside my next swing and grabbed me off the ground. He hauled me high into the air, swung me once in a full circle and threw me across the room. I landed in a sprawling heap across Jupp’s chair.

  My fall sent the old man tumbling and when I got back up as far as my hands and knees the bayonet was close to my grasp. My fingers clutched at the end of it; I looked at the Negro. He was standing a little unsure of himself: the blow to the temple must have shaken him after all and he was confused about knocking his boss to the ground.

  There wouldn’t be a second chance. I pulled back the bayonet into a swing and went for his right arm. The old man must have kept the blade well-honed for it cut through his sweater right into the flesh of the upper arm. As I pulled it away and as the blood followed, he let out a high scream of wonder and grabbed at the wound. I lifted the bayonet high and aimed for the area just above the bone of his right hip. Once more the steel bit home and the giant staggered to his knees. That was where I wanted him: the bayonet was right back over my head at the beginning of an arc. My eyes were fixed on the top of his shining skull.

  ‘Freeze!’

  The Negro’s eyes clung to the blade above his head.

  I stood balanced and in mid-swing: my own eyes were still sharp on their target.

  ‘Everyone back to the far wall. And keep your hands high, high, high.’

  Tom Gilmour stood at the doorway. His feet placed slightly apart, both hands tight round the Magnum that was aiming behind me, aiming at Jupp who was holding the boy’s Luger in his skinny hand. He had been about to shoot me in the back of the head. Then the room was full of cops.

  Tom came over and lowered my arms from the position in which they had stuck. He lowered them and took the bayonet from my grasp. Took it and dropped it to the floor with a clatter. Then he turned to the Negro who had not moved, except to attempt to stem the flow of blood.

  Gilmour looked at the cut in his right hip and kicked him in the leg just below it.

  ‘All right, you black mother-fucker, shift your arse over to that wall!’

  15

  Vonnie was wearing a white blouse that buttoned up to the neck and ended in a cute little frilly collar. She had on a plain black skirt and she was sitting beside me changing the plaster on my cheekbone.

  Her hands were small and cool and I liked the feel of them on my face. Still I flinched when the plaster came away from the bruised skin and she tutted at my babyishness. She leaned her head over towards me and put her lips alongside the centre of the bruise; she ran her kiss down the cut. It was good to close my eyes and concentrate on that. On that and nothing else.

  I needed to forget a lot of things: I needed to forget whose mouth was moving over me like warm silk.

  ‘Do the police think it was this John who killed Candi, or do they think it was Thurley?’ She was whispering in my ear. ‘After all, didn’t you say that Thurley’s gun was the one which sh
ot her?’

  I moved my head an inch away. Her mouth came after it. I tried again.

  ‘The same kind.’

  ‘What do you mean? I thought you said it was the same gun.’

  I kept my eyes away from her face.

  ‘I said the same calibre gun. That doesn’t make it the same weapon.’

  She slid her hand over my arm and began to nestle up to me.

  She said: ‘So they don’t know for sure who did it yet?’

  I said: ‘You’re showing a lot of concern.’

  She said: ‘Well, I did pay you to find out, or had you forgotten that?’

  I stood up and walked a few paces away. I felt safer out there.

  ‘No, Vonnie, I hadn’t forgotten that. In fact, that was one thing that made me uncertain for longer than perhaps I should have been.’

  Those clear innocent schoolgirl eyes were looking straight at me.

  ‘Uncertain about what, Scott?’

  ‘That you killed your own sister.’

  The room was suddenly very cold: a shiver swept through me and the hair at the back of my hands began to crackle slightly. The smile moved off her face to be replaced by something that was a mixture of fear and hate. Then these, too, disappeared and the winning smile returned. She got up and came towards me; put her hands on my arms and raised herself to her toes. One of her hands crept up behind my neck and pulled my face down on to hers. She kissed me for a long time, her tongue hotly probing my mouth as though she were trying to get inside my mind. I let myself go limp and she was kissing nothing and she let go of me and stepped half a pace away.

  Her face crumpled and the tears came; she wiped at her cheeks with the back of one of her smooth little hands.

  Through her tears she said: ‘Oh, why do you accuse me of such a …’ and then the tears returned and stopped her saying more.

  I didn’t know whether she was playing at being Mary Astor on purpose, or whether she had seen ‘The Maltese Falcon’ so many times that she said the words unconsciously.

  But I had seen it too.

  ‘This isn’t the time for that schoolgirl act!’ I replied. ‘You’ve been trying that on ever since I first saw you and it just won’t work on me any more. So don’t stand there forcing tears out of your face and looking like a virgin martyr!

  ‘At first I couldn’t work out why, Vonnie, until I remembered seeing your face a long time ago. It was at a party at your house and I was there with Candi and I was kissing her and I opened one eye and caught sight of you watching us. I knew that if you could look at us with such hatred in your eyes, such jealous hatred, then you were not the sweet unspoilt little thing you were busy making out to be.

  ‘Jealousy like that doesn’t vanish, Vonnie, along with childhood games and comics: it stays, it germinates, it grows inside until it swamps the person it’s thriving in.’

  The tears had stopped now and she was just standing there, listening and looking up into my face and I didn’t have any idea at all what she might be thinking.

  ‘You must have got to thinking about what Martin was doing those nights he came home late from meetings about his new business. And, besides, a woman can tell when her husband is having another woman.

  ‘So you made it your business to find out. And you found out that he had been seeing your sister. And the jealousy you would have felt about anyone else was compounded inside your heart until there was only one way of letting it all out.

  ‘And that way was through a .32 calibre hole into the middle of Candi’s back.’

  The look in her eyes was changing now: I thought it might have been like this when she had called on Candi.

  ‘Candi rang me as she was afraid of getting a nasty visit from one of Jupp’s boys, then how pleasantly surprised she must have been to see her sister on the doorstep. Only she didn’t know that you had a gun in your handbag.’

  Vonnie said, ‘Scott, you don’t have to …’

  She reached up for me and kissed me again, but my mouth was closed and my face was like stone. She pulled her face away and looked at me with hatred in her schoolgirl eyes.

  I knew the script. I knew there should be a knock on the door and I would say, ‘Come in’, and then the door should open and a cop would be standing there and I would say, ‘Hello, Tom’.

  But I hadn’t said anything to Tom. Or to anyone else. Yet.

  Vonnie was sitting on the settee, staring at her handbag. I went forward and picked it up by the handles and held it out in front of me.

  ‘Is it still there, Vonnie? The little gun you killed her with—Candi—Ann—whatever you called her when you did it. Is it still there?’

  I dropped the bag down on to the settee in front of her, without opening it.

  I didn’t look at her face again: I didn’t want to see what was in her eyes.

  I turned and walked to the door. Opened it. Walked out into the street. The wind was still cold and once again I pulled my overcoat collar up round my neck and hunched down my head. Looking for the warmth that was so difficult to find.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Scott Mitchell Mysteries

  1

  It was nine minutes after eleven and I was lying in a bath tub of water, that was gradually becoming the same depressing shade of grey as the sky outside. Or my last memory of it. But then, most of my memories were that colour.

  It was early December and after pretending for a long time that it wasn’t going to happen, it was winter. Summer had been hot and long; Autumn had produced reds and golds the brightness of kids’ picture books. Just when everything had conspired to lull folk into a false sense of security—wham!

  The thing that annoyed me most was that I had been surprised. I shouldn’t have been. I’d been around long enough to know that life worked like that. Maybe I’d been around too long. Thirty-six years too long.

  No. It hadn’t all been like that. There was a time back there, somewhere. Four years less than four days. …

  Something cut in on my self-pity. Downstairs the phone was ringing. Another thing I should have known. No-one would call for days. Then when I took a bath there would be enough bells ringing to make me think I was the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Not that I’d ever worked out whether the best thing to do was to jump out of the bath, grab a towel and run down the stairs or wait until they phoned again later.

  If it was important they’d call again.

  Maybe.

  Maybe they’d just move on through yellow pages to the next private investigator in the book.

  I stayed where I was. There’s something about your own warm dirt which is eternally consoling. I guess in the end it has to be.

  The phone stopped ringing. I began to apply my mind to the great human problem of how the hell I was going to pass the time until there was a reasonable chance of getting to sleep for the night.

  I could walk down to the coffee shop and indulge myself in blueberry shortcake; stay home with my stereo and a book of bridge problems; wait in the bath until my skin began to flake off into the water …

  The phone cut across my thoughts again.

  Okay, I said to myself, let’s go.

  I splashed a good quantity of murky water on to the floor; pulled at a towel and secured it around myself at the third attempt; collided with the edge of the bath; half-ran, half-hopped down the stairs, almost slipping three steps from the bottom; grabbed at the receiver; in time to hear the phone cut off at the other end of the line.

  I told the telephone exactly what it could do with itself and sat down on the stairs, drawing breath. Then I padded through into the kitchen and put water in the kettle, switched it on. Took down the glass jar of Columbian coffee beans and shook some into the electric grinder. Ground the beans, warmed the enamel pot. I measured the amount of coffee that went into the pot and the amount of water that followe
d it. Stirred everything up and set the pot on the cooker.

  Now I could go upstairs and get dressed. It was five minutes off twelve o’clock.

  At three minutes past midday the phone went again. Don’t ask me why I noticed the time. Occasionally I get obsessive about little things like that. Once I swore to myself that I wouldn’t be able to live unless I had scrambled eggs for breakfast every day. I had sworn I wouldn’t be able to live without a whole lot of things.

  But here I still was and it was a hell of a long time since I’d had scrambled eggs.

  I took the phone off the hook.

  ‘Hello,’ I said, ‘this is Scott Mitchell.’

  ‘Well, hello,’ said someone somewhere, ‘I’m glad you’re finally up.’

  The speaker was female with the kind of voice that goes with all those ads for Martini and Bacardi and the other drinks I’d never really got around to. I wondered what she wanted from me.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, Mr Mitchell, you have been proving rather difficult to get hold of.’

  ‘I’ve been taking a bath,’ I explained.

  ‘Oh,’ she said with a slight smirk in her voice, ‘then that would make you even more difficult to get hold of.’

  ‘That depends where you had in mind getting a grip,’ I said.

  ‘That depends what you’ve got that’s worth the effort.’

  She was rising in my estimation with every minute and that wasn’t the only thing that was rising. It wasn’t every woman who could make me feel randy over the telephone in the middle of the day. But perhaps I’d been taking calls from all the wrong people.

  ‘Are you still there, Mr Mitchell,’ the voice said, ‘or have you slipped away for a quick rub down?’