by M. P. Wright
Tanner struck first, his fist raised in the air to rain down a heavy strike across my jaw. At the same time, I buffeted my shoulder towards his solar plexus, and as he came in to hammer me, I smashed my own fist as hard as I could up between his opened legs. The massive orderly screamed out, instinctively grabbing at his testicles with both hands, then fell hard on to his knees. As he hit the deck, I gripped at the back to his tight-fitting collar and smashed his face repeatedly against the wooden balustrade before short-arm punching him across his right temple.
The skin at the edge of Tanner’s eye socket split open with the force of my blow, sending a thick spurt of the man’s blood flying through the air, plastering itself in a lengthy streak across the anaemic-looking landing wall. I watched as the big man fell at my feet with a heavy thud. I struggled to rein in my temper and took a couple of steps back from the downed heavy. I breathed deeply, the sweat pouring from my brow and every muscle in my body tensing. I looked up at the shocked face of Ida Stephens, who had backed herself into her own office doorway, cowering from my rage.
“You need to get yo’self a better class o’ hired help if you’re thinkin’ of comin’ on heavy with me, Mrs Stephens. Your man down there, he ain’t up to the job.”
I winked at the administrator then walked slowly across the landing and began to make my way down the stairs. As I opened up the front door to leave, Ida Stephens hollered down to me from the top of the staircase.
“Nothing’s changed, Ellington. I want the Truth . . . The clock’s still ticking. Twelve hours and not a second more. If what I want is not back here with me by 11 p.m. then it won’t be the hired help I send to get it from you, I promise you that.”
Her threat pierced through me like a hot poker through ice as I walked out of the door and made my way back to the car and the steely malice of Stephens’ chilling warning echoed in my ears as I drove back to St Pauls.
10
As I headed back towards Loretta’s place, all I could think of was the little girl, Truth, and what I had to do to keep her out of the rathole I’d just left. Ida Stephens’ nasty threats had secreted themselves into some hidden pocket of my brain for now, but I knew her words of intimidation would drag themselves back into my consciousness as the twelve-hour deadline approached. My late mama often used to tell me that talk was cheap. My mama’s advice might have been right, but my gut instinct told me that Stephens had friends in low places and that she was a woman of her word and I’d be a fool to take her mouthy strong-arming too lightly.
I had more questions than answers. Why would a seemingly respectable administrator of an orphanage use threats of violence and go to such extreme lengths to have this child returned to her? Was I just a smaller player in a game whose rules I was yet to figure out? Ida Stephens clearly thought she’d get herself a dumb-ass ex-cop to do her dirty work in a part of town she could step foot in. She’d known from the start that by sending a patsy like me looking for the doc armed with a pocketful of cash she’d either get the results she sought or her money back. Well, Stephens had lucked out on the result she’d hoped for and I still had her cash in my pocket. Loretta had been right when she said that I was drawn towards trouble: Fowler was dead and I was hiding a mystery child who probably held the key to some kind of dark secret. I’d promised myself after Stella Hopkins’ and Earl Linney’s deaths that I’d never put myself in a place where an outsider had such power over me. But my own hubris and a need to pay off a few bills had shattered any chance of keeping that vow intact. As I berated myself, I recalled the biblical proverb that said as a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool repeats his folly . . . And my folly had been twofold: my foolish zeal in falling again into the employ of strangers whose motivations I had not questioned sufficiently beforehand, and accepting the thirty pieces of silver to do their clandestine bidding.
Outside, the sky was cloudless, and the brightness of the sun poured through the windscreen of the Cortina and lit up the normally dull grey roads and pavements. I looked at my wristwatch: it was just after eleven thirty and I could feel that the temperature was stoking itself up to be another real hot day. My body was tense and I ached after my brawl with Mr Tanner. I stretched myself back in my seat as I drove and could feel my shirt sticking to my back with sweat. I caught the funky hum of body odour coming off my hide and realised that I’d spent the better part of the last twenty-four hours in the same clothes. I wound down the window so that I could get myself some fresh air and decided I’d best stop off at my digs to clean up and change before returning to Loretta and Truth.
My upstairs flat on Gwyn Street consisted of four rooms, each so small that you couldn’t have found the room to swing a cat around any one of them. In the winter, with snow three inches on the ground and with thick ice stuck to the insides of the panes of glass in the windows, you froze. In the height of summer, it was like living in a greenhouse. Inside, the place was stifling and smelt fusty and airless. I walked into the sitting room and then my bedroom and flung up the sash windows then propped open the front door with the wooden coat stand to let some cooler air through. I went into the bathroom and fired up the immersion heater so I could get myself some hot water to scrub some of the stink off me. I went back into my bedroom, stripped and slung my clothes down by the door, then pulled a white cotton short-sleeved shirt and a fresh pair of grey-check single-pleated trousers off their hangers and hung them on the back of a chair by my bedside. I felt at the rough stubble on my cheeks and chin with my hand and decided to take a shave while I ran a bath.
In the bathroom I took my cut-throat razor from out of the medicine cabinet, uncurled the blade and dunked it into the hot water in the sink. I lathered up the soap in my shaving bowl, slopped the suds across my jowls with the badger-hair brush and went about the business of removing the two-day-old beard from my face. I washed off the remaining soap and looked at myself in the mirror but in truth paid very little attention to the reflection staring back at me. I stuck my head out of the bathroom door and looked at the kitchen wall clock. My head was again preoccupied with Ida Stephens and her twelve-hour deadline for me to return Truth to her. With time running out fast, I knew that I had to get myself one step ahead of whatever game Stephens was playing. Thing was, I just didn’t know how to go about staying out in front of her.
I’d let the bath fill up with as much hot water as possible before turning on the cold tap to bring it to a bearable temperature to bathe. I got in and stretched out, letting the warmth of the water cosset my tired limbs. My body began to finally relax; the sound of water dripping from the taps lulled my weary eyes as they became heavy. I felt my lids flicker a couple of times before they shut out the daylight and sleep welcomed me to its darkened sanctuary.
Respite from my worries was short-lived. The intense shock of feeling my head being shoved deep down into the bath and my nose and mouth filling with water while I was held firmly underneath was a pretty effective way of bringing me back into the waking world. I grasped blindly at the edge of the bath with my soaking hand to try and pull myself up, and frantically lashed out with my legs as the pressure on my scalp and forehead increased to keep me down. I gulped in another mouthful of water as I struggled to free myself, clawing with my fingernails at the wrist and arm of whoever was holding me under. As I continued to wrestle, I felt the pressure of the hand release and grab at my right earlobe, yanking me quickly and painfully to the water’s surface.
I gasped air backed into my lungs as I hacked and retched. I rubbed at my face with the palm of my hand, squeezing at my eyes with my fingertips, trying to get them to focus on my surroundings again. My throat and stomach stung from the warm water I’d ingested. I attempted to lift myself up out of the tub but was pushed back down on my ass.
“Hello, Joseph . . . Bit late in the day for a soak, ain’t it, son?”
I opened up my eyes to see the unwelcome face of Detective Inspector Bill Fletcher staring back at me. He was sat on the edge of the toilet seat, his shirtsleev
es neatly folded above his elbows as he rested his outstretched arms on the lightweight mohair jacket lying on his knees. He rubbed at the short, military-style moustache above his top lip with the tips of his thumb and forefinger. He smiled at me then motioned towards the hallway with his head.
“You need to keep your bleedin’ front door shut, mate. Who knows what kind of undesirables you could get swanning in here while you’re trying to take your daily ablutions. Your good neighbour Mrs Pearce downstairs let us in off the street. Most impressed with my constable’s warrant card she was – not too impressed with the police visiting you, though, not from the look on her face anyhow.” He nodded with his thick head again, making me look behind me to my left. “You remember Detective Constable Beaumont don’t you, Joseph? Sorry, he’s looking a bit pissed off: it’s on account of him getting his jacket sleeve all wet while he was giving your hair a good wash.”
I looked up at Beaumont, who was leant against the door frame staring back at me, his face like thunder, the right arm of his coat soaked and dripping water down onto the bathroom lino. I turned back to his boss perched on my khazi and snapped at him like a rabid dog.
“What in Christ’s name’s goin’ on, Fletcher? That goon o’ yours half near drowned me. Why you comin’ into my place uninvited? Roustin’ me like you doin’.”
“Rousting, rousting? I ain’t rousting anybody, Joseph. I’m just here making a friendly house call, here to see an old friend . . . Word is you’re doing all right, old son. Private detective, I hear: that’s a first in these parts. What’s the going rate to hire you for the day then?”
“What the fuck’s it to do with you how much I earn? Git the hell outta my bathroom, the pair o’ ya.”
“Easy now, Joseph, I’m only asking . . . I’d like to think I’ve got your welfare at heart. Besides which, I’m nosey.”
“Last ting I need is you taking an interest in my personal life. Why don’t you and Tess Trueheart there haul it down to the docks and find yo’self some real criminals to play with.”
“Well, it’s funny you should mention criminals, Joseph, because your name’s gone and come up on another of my very short lists of miscreants. Come right to the top of it, in fact.”
“Oh yeah? Don’t tell me . . . you’re here to pin the Kennedy assassination on me. Well you’re shit out o’ luck. I was in the pub when it all went down and I got an alibi as tight as the crack between Beaumont’s ass cheeks.” I flashed a grin up at the detective constable next to me. I watched as Beaumont raised the flat of his hand to strike me, but Fletcher quickly pulled the reins on his subordinate.
“All right, less of the smart alec stuff from you, Joseph. I don’t want Beaumont bruising his lily whites on you, especially after he’s already gone and got himself drenched sorting your locks out. Now, what do you know about a man called Fowler, Dr Theodore Fowler?”
“Nuttin’. Now who’s telling you I know the man?”
“Word on the street. Let’s say I have it on good account that you were seen drinking in the King’s Head pub with him last night.”
“Bullshit . . . Whoever’s told you that crock needs to git their facts straight. I was hanging it up with my friend Loretta Harris last night; she lives on Brunswick Street. We were sat playing crib and drinking rum in her back kitchen till way past one o’clock this morning. I didn’t go in no pub with no doctor and that’s a fact.”
“Well, that’s all I’m here for, Joseph: the facts, simple as that. This Fowler fella was found this morning with his head caved in and a gunshot wound to his guts. He was sprawled out in the gutter on Forest Road. Apparently the poor bastard looked like he’d been just dropped out of the back of an aeroplane without a parachute . . . a right bloody mess, if you’ll pardon the pun.” DI Fletcher smiled at me again then rested his back on the cistern. He gestured towards Beaumont with the back of his hand. “My colleague here’s been doing a little digging on the deceased.”
Beaumont crouched down on his haunches to face me as I sat in the cooling bath water.
“This wog doctor, Fowler, we hear he was a little bit shady. Apparently had a thing going on the side as an illegal abortionist. Known to every scrubber from here to Portishead, he was. By all accounts he liked his scotch too: big boozer, I’ve been told. The jungle drums are saying he couldn’t keep himself upright let alone run a GP’s practice any more. I hear he had a bit of a fall from grace after the death of his wife: nasty shock, took to the demon drink. Shame, I heard he was a pillar of the community back in the late ’50s: big with the local church, kids’ charity work, trusted figure he was, even did a spell as a school swimming instructor for a time.” Beaumont stopped his chatter for a moment and eyed me up knowingly.
I knew Beaumont was trying to gauge some sort of reaction from what he had just told me, weighing me up. I stared back at him blankly, giving nothing away. Riled by my lack of reaction to being browbeaten, the detective constable continued with his sermon. I watched Beaumont as he rose up from the floor beside me to stand over me with an intimidatory air. He stuffed both hands into his trouser pockets and rattled on.
“So like Detective Inspector Fletcher told you a minute ago, the deceased turned up lying face down in a drain, stiff as a board, looking like he’d gone twelve rounds with Sugar Ray Robinson and with a hole in his belly the size of a golf ball. I think you had something to do with Fowler’s death.”
“Yeah . . . is that so? Well, you just keep on thinking that thought, Beaumont. If you’re lucky, in ’bout six months’ time you might get another one come along to keep it company.” I watched as the detective constable’s face became crimson. He balled both fists in an attempt to contain his rage and glared over towards DI Fletcher, who quickly came to his aid by taking up from where his minion had faltered.
“Look, Joseph, Fowler’s body was found at around five this morning by a milkman starting his round. The poor bleeder got the shock of his life as he was about to start delivering his first gold tops of the day. Then your name cropped up less than an hour ago when my desk sergeant got a phone call with a tip-off. This caller tells the sarge that he saw a commotion near the King’s Head pub on Victoria Street last night, says they saw two coloured blokes getting into a car and speeding off. Now, even though they admitted that the light was fading, the caller was sure that one of the two men was an old geezer and the other, and these were their exact words, Joseph, ‘was that coon who was in the Bristol Evening Post last year after finding that mute bird’. You got any ideas who he could be talking about?”
I kept schtum and looked at Fletcher then dumbly shook my head in reply to his enquiry. The pair of them had been more than happy to push my buttons in the hope of getting me to rise to their accusations; it was time for me to start pushing theirs. The detective inspector leant forward and then, shaking his head, stood up next to Beaumont. Darkness fell over me as both their huge frames blocked out the shafts of sunlight that had previously been illuminating my bathroom. I was sat, naked in my bath, waist-deep in lukewarm water with two coppers standing over me and thinking to myself, “How can this day get any worse?”, but of course days like the one I was having generally tended to go downhill fast.
Fletcher looked at his assistant, laughed to himself then swung his leg back and kicked out at the bath panel with the toe of his boot before bending down towards me, getting into my face with his own.
“Stop taking me for a twat, Ellington: you been sticking that big black conk of yours where it don’t belong and I think you’re messing about in other people’s troubles again. Now, cough it up, how are you mixed up in all this crap?”
“I ain’t mixed up in shit. Whoever’s been spinnin’ you that pile o’ junk ’bout me being at some pub last night is just spoutin’ hot air. I told you where I was and you can check it out for yourselves. Somebody’s bin pullin’ on your dick for a laugh, Inspector, cos I know what I’m telling you is straight down the line.”
My mouthing off to his boss got Beaumont ba
ck on his high horse. He shot his arm out towards my head and took hold of my ear again, bending it back and squeezing it tight between his fingers.
“Listen, Sambo, you wouldn’t know straight if it stuck its head out of that shithouse of yours and bit you on the arse. Stop pissing us about and start telling us what we want to hear.” The DC let go of my ear then pushed me backwards. My head cracked against the wall behind me, sending a surge of pain through my skull.
“You just wanna hear me admit to someting I ain’t had no part in. Well, brother, you gonna be waiting a damn long time befo’ I do that. You really think the word o’ some faceless grass that’s been on the blower to your sergeant can fit me up for killin’ this Fowler fella? Well, you on a hidin’ to nuttin’ with that one. You need to git back out there and prove what you bin accusin’ me of rather than just standin’ over me while I’m in the tub starin’ down at my dick.”
Red-faced with anger, Fletcher pushed DC Beaumont back out into the hallway and followed him out, then turned and stood in the doorway of the bathroom and pointed his stubby finger down at me. “You think you’ve got a smart mouth on you, Ellington, don’t you? I think you’re a man who’s got himself neck-deep in the shit again and no amount of your sharp talk is gonna help you. I’ll check that cooked-up alibi of yours and then we’ll have another chat. I’m going to be keeping a real beady eye on you, my son.” Fletcher walked away back down my hall as silently as he’d entered. I yelled after him as he beat his hushed retreat.
