Killing Time

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘It does to me,’ Slider said. ‘He didn’t say ask her what?’

  ‘No, guv. That’s absolutely all he said, word for word.’

  ‘Right,’ said Slider. They reached his room. ‘Have those photographs gone round to Monty’s garage?’

  ‘Ten minutes ago. And I’ve got some good news and some bad news.’

  ‘Bad news first.’

  ‘Them fingerprints off the bottle – all negative. No match in the records. Whoever he is, he’s got no recent form.’

  ‘Damn,’ Slider said. ‘Given the MO, I wouldn’t have thought that was his first attempt at violence.’

  ‘Maybe he’s too professional to get caught,’ Hart offered.

  ‘You’d better pray he’s not,’ Slider said. ‘What’s the good news?’

  She grinned triumphantly. ‘We got a witness.’

  ‘Eye-witness?’

  ‘I spy with my little eye, something beginning wiv B. A big black bugger in boots kicking the door in at half past eleven Tuesday night. Female living opposite. She does office cleaning at nights, and she’s just got home, walking along the balcony feeling in her bag for her key, when she hears this wallop, looks across and sees chummy just kicked the door in and going in the flat.’

  ‘You’re sure it’s the same flat?’

  ‘It’s right opposite. She pointed it out to me. Same floor and everything. No mistake, guv.’

  ‘She must have been questioned before. Why didn’t she say anything?’

  ‘I looked up the notes, and one of the woodentops knocked on her door first time round, but she done the free wise monkeys. When she sees it happen, she just reckons someone’s forgot his key, none of her business, right? But when they come round asking about murder, she gets scared. She reckons if she says anything, she’s next on the list. So she stays schtumm.’

  ‘How did you persuade her to unbutton?’

  Hart grinned. ‘You either got it or you ain’t. Plus a few freats.’

  ‘You what?’ Slider was alarmed.

  ‘Oh, nothing too pointed,’ Hart said airily.

  ‘What description did she give you? Did she get a good look at him?’

  ‘Not really. Well, those flats are lit up like Colditz on a bad night, but he had his back to her, and she wasn’t stopping to stare.’

  ‘But you say she thought it was the occupant who had forgotten his key? She thought it was Paloma, in fact?’

  ‘Oh, she never knew Paloma. Never knew who lived opposite. It’s like that in them flats. You know the people on your own balcony – sometimes – but that’s that. The block opposite’s like the other side of a river and the bridge is out. Different country. Strange natives wiv peculiar customs.’

  ‘Thank you, Michaela Dennis.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Skip it. So we’ve got nothing at all by way of description?’

  ‘Well, she said he was black. And he was big.’

  ‘The PC could have told her that.’

  ‘Yeah, but I asked her how big, and she said like massive. As he went in the flat, he had to duck his head. Now, I measured and them doors is standard six foot six high.’

  ‘If he’s more than six foot six tall he’ll be easy to find.’

  ‘Yes, guv,’ she said intelligently, ‘but he needn’t be that big. I mean, internal doors can be anything from six foot, six-three, six-four, yeah? Well, a bloke who’s only six-two, six-three can get used to having to duck, and it gets to be a habit. Self-preservation. But there ain’t that many blokes six foot three even, and she said he was big with it, like a weight-lifter.’

  Slider nodded, thinking. ‘Well, if she didn’t see his face it’s no good trying to get her to come in and look at some pictures. Still, I suppose at least it’s further confirmation of the time.’

  ‘That’s what I fought. So what’s this message, boss? About maroon. Maroon what?’

  Slider thought about what had happened last time he went out in the field without telling anyone where he was going, and explained. ‘Maroon is a person,’ he said. ‘Maroon Brown. She’s a prostitute, lives in Percy Road.’

  ‘Appropriate,’ Hart said. ‘Is that her working name?’

  ‘Strangely enough, it’s her real name. It’s short for Mary Oonagh. She had an Irish grandma who brought her up.’

  Slider told what he knew of the story. Maroon’s grandma at age sixteen had got herself up the duff by a black stoker from a ship which had put in to Cork Harbour for repairs, and shortly put out again. Rather than face her family she had run away to London to have the baby. The war had just ended and the men were beginning to come home, and she had supported herself by working part time in a café and part time on the game. The baby, named Alice, had grown up to show a preference for her father’s lineage, and at sixteen had followed family tradition by succumbing to the charms of a West Indian lorry driver and becoming pregnant.

  ‘Of course, by the time the kid was born the father had already disappeared. So Alice did the same.’

  ‘Leaving grandma holding the baby?’

  ‘Quite. So grandma had her Christened with a fine Irish name, and shortened it to Maroonagh, but everybody either misheard it, or thought it was a joke, so she was Maroon Brown for ever more.’

  ‘So how do you know so much about her, guv?’

  ‘Oh, she gets nicked from time to time. I’ve seen her around, interviewed her a couple of times. She’s not a bad sort.’

  ‘And this snout of yours thinks she knows something about the murder?’

  ‘So it seems.’ He paused, weighing probabilities. ‘I’m off to have a chat with her. If I take you along, can I trust you to keep your mouth shut?’

  Hart looked wounded. ‘Follow your lead in all things, that’s my rule.’

  ‘Ha!’ said Slider.

  The house in Percy Road – sounds like a film title, he thought – was one of those miniature grand houses built in the 1840s, semidetached, three storeys including the semi-basement; where once a senior clerk, with a live-in cook and housemaid, aped the style of his immediate superior, who had much the same only bigger and detached. Now the house had fallen on hard times. It stood at the kink of Percy Road, alone of its type, surrounded by meaner dwellings; seedy and paint-lorn, it had sunk to the ignominy of division into a basement flat and four bedsits. Judging by the bell labels, all the occupants were toms. What would Mr Pooter have thought of that?

  Slider gestured to Hart to stand close by the door where the overhang of the shallow porch hid her, and rang the bell. The curtain at the front bay window stirred slightly, and Slider felt himself invisibly considered. He tried to exude unthreateningness. The door did not open, but there was a feeling of activity inside. He rang again. After a further pause the first floor window at the front opened and a female face looked out – black but not Maroon.

  ‘Whajjer want?’ it enquired uninvitingly.

  Slider stepped back a little and looked up. ‘Is Mary there?’ he asked.

  ‘There ain’t no Mary lives here,’ the head said scornfully.

  ‘Mary Brown. Mary Oonagh,’ Slider said. The head drew back a little, and seemed to be conferring, if not with its own thoughts then with someone inside.

  ‘You a mate?’ it asked doubtfully.

  ‘Yes, I’m an old friend. It’s all right, it’s not trouble, I just want a chat with Mary.’

  ‘You better come in,’ the head said at last. ‘Push the door when the buzzer goes, and wait in the hall, orright?’

  After a few moments the buzzer went. Slider pushed the door, gestured Hart inside with a finger against his lips, and let the door close again, flattening himself against it. Almost at once the bay window sash was put up, and a foot and leg appeared. He stepped out of the shelter of the porch to find Maroon halfway out, her leading limb reaching perilously over the short railings for the top step. She gave a squeak like a caught mouse when she saw him.

  ‘Hello, Mary. Going somewhere?’

  ‘Oh, bloody hel
l,’ she said, trying to reverse her progress.

  ‘Careful, now, you’ll hurt yourself,’ Slider said. ‘Come on, love, I just want a chat. You don’t need to go all Colditz on me. It’s not grief for you.’ She stared, wide-eyed, and struggled a little, unable to correct her balance so as to pull herself back. ‘I think it’ll be easier for you to come the rest of the way out,’ Slider said. ‘Here, grab my hand. And for God’s sake be careful. If you fall on those railings you’ll never play the cello again.’

  ‘I don’t need your bloody help,’ she growled. But he helped her anyway, keeping a firm grip on her upper arm when she was safely on the ground. She wriggled it experimentally, between fear and anger. ‘Let me go, can’t you? What was all that Mary cobblers? Nobody calls me that except my mum.’

  ‘Reassurance,’ he said. ‘I just want to talk, that’s all, I promise. Don’t make it difficult for yourself.’

  She was near to tears, and now that he was close to her he saw that she had been crying a lot recently, and he could smell how afraid she was. She had also been drinking. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Let’s get inside. I don’t want anyone seeing you here.’

  Despite her acquiescence he kept hold of her until she had opened the door and preceded him in. She started like a terrified deer when she saw Hart lingering in the shadows, but Slider soothed her, introduced Hart, and ushered Maroon into the first room on the left. He half expected her to bolt for the bay window again, but she seemed to have resigned herself, and went straight to the mantelpiece to get a cigarette. The room had been the best parlour of the original house. It had a splendid marble fire surround, which had been horribly, carelessly chipped at some time, and also painted red, though the paint was now abandoning it in sheets. It housed a gas fire of extremely, not to say life-threateningly, mature vintage. The rest of the room contained an unmade double bed, a large wardrobe with a mirrored door, two basket armchairs, a chest of drawers, and a tatty chaise longue covered with dirty yellow damask. The room was wildly untidy, a mess of clothes, papers, empty bottles, crockery and glasses and other clutter.

  Maroon lit a cigarette rather shakily. Slider sat down on the chaise longue and watched her. ‘You must be in trouble if you were thinking of running away from me,’ he said at last. ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’

  ‘I s’pose that’s what you’ve come for. Oh Gawd.’ Tears began to leak out of her eyes again, and she puffed rapidly at the cigarette as if that might staunch them. She had been quite good-looking once, but her nose and right cheekbone had been broken at some time, giving her a lopsided look, and though she was only thirty-two or three, drink, cigarettes and her general lifestyle were aging her before her time. She looked entirely West Indian, except for the higher cheekbones and slightly narrower face which was all she had inherited from her grandmother. Her hair was closely plaited into windrows from front to back, finishing off with eight little plaited tails tagged with red beads. Her eyes were bloodshot and heavy-shadowed as she looked at Slider miserably, but without flinching. ‘I had nothing to do with it, I swear to you. That’s the honest trufe. I’d never do anything to hurt Andy. Christ, you must know that.’

  Slider heard, comprehended, and made the mental adjustment without external sign; willing Hart, standing by the door, not to move or look at him. Not Paloma, then. He had been sent here for the flip side: she had information about Andy Cosgrove. ‘If you had nothing to do with it, then you’ve got nothing to fear, have you?’ he said.

  She moaned and sat down on the end of the bed. ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘Is someone putting the frighteners on you?’ Slider asked. ‘You can’t be scared of me, surely?’

  Maroon looked up, and Hart saw that indeed, she wasn’t afraid of him. How did he do it, she wondered? Must be pheremones. Maroon had already forgotten Hart. Her eyes were fixed on Slider with appeal, but she was going to come across. Hart almost held her breath, not to disturb the delicate balance.

  ‘Oh Gawd, oh poor Andy,’ Maroon said. ‘How is he? Do you know how he is? I tried ringing the hospital, but they wouldn’t tell me nothing. The word on the street is he’s still in a coma. Is that right? Is he going to die?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Slider said, feeling his way with a sense of eggshells underfoot. ‘They say he’s stable, but of course they’re very anxious that he should regain consciousness soon. The longer he’s out, the worse it is.’

  She put her face in her hands. ‘If I’d known how it would end, I’d never have asked him to help me. But I didn’t know. I thought he’d just – you know – start the ball rolling. Pass it over to your side. I never thought he’d go asking questions himself. Oh, my poor Andy!’

  Her poor Andy? Slider’s ears were out on stalks, but he spoke matter-of-factly. ‘How did you and Andy first meet? I’ve often wondered.’

  ‘When I lived on the estate of course.’

  ‘The White City Estate?’

  ‘Yeah. He arrested me for drunk and disorderly outside the General Smuts one night. I was only nineteen. I was all right then – before I got this.’ By ‘all right’ she meant in looks. She reached up and touched the broken side of her face delicately, as though it still hurt; probably it still did in her psyche. ‘I got let off with a caution, and he come back the next day, when he got off duty.’ She smiled shakily. ‘Wanted to reform me – talk me into going straight. “You could get a job,” he said. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I mean, me! What could I do? I been on the game since I was sixteen. I don’t know nothing else. But he got to me. He was so—’ She hunted for a word.

  ‘Earnest?’ Slider offered.

  ‘Yeah. Like that. For him it was like, the whole world was a good guy really, you know? He wasn’t long married then, and his wife was expecting their first. Little Adam.’ Her face softened at the name. Blimey, she knows all the history, Slider thought. ‘He was so happy, he thought he could change the world. Bleeding sunshine merchant. He even had me believing for a bit.’ She nodded, her eyes round with the wonder of it. ‘I tried getting a job, on the checkout down Gateway, just to please him. But I couldn’t stand it, getting up every morning and sitting there all day, bloody customers treating you like dirt, yes-sir-no-sir while the manager looks down your front, dirty old git. And the end of the week, what’d you got to show for it? Peanuts. So I chucked it.’

  ‘And what did Andy think of that?’

  ‘Oh, I kept out of trouble in those days, so I didn’t see much of him, unless I happened to see him walking down the street. No, it was later I got to know him really well. After I got away from Billy Yates.’

  ‘Billy Yates?’

  A look of great bitterness crossed her face. ‘Yeah. Him. I’ll tell you about him, but you can’t use it.’ Now she glanced at Hart, aware of her danger. ‘You gotta promise me. He’d have me killed like you’d stamp on a beetle. D’you want to hear it all?’

  ‘Very much,’ Slider said.

  ‘Lock that door, then,’ she nodded to Hart, and got up and closed the window and pulled the curtains. Hart put the light on. Maroon crossed the room and put a rap tape on the cassette player, turning it up to a conversation-covering pitch. She was that scared, Slider thought. Hart had taken out her notebook, but Maroon looked at her sharply. ‘Nothing written down. You can stay if he says. But you can’t use any of this.’

  ‘I vouch for Hart,’ Slider said. ‘Go on.’

  Maroon sat on the bed and crossed her legs, putting the ashtray and cigarettes down beside her. Evidently it was going to be a long story.

  ‘Billy Yates,’ she said.

  Billy Yates, it seemed, not only ran nightclubs, casinos and amusement arcades, he also ran a string of girls.

  ‘Night after night you lie on your back thinking sixty per cent of this is for Billy Yates. I got quite good at sums. Take a fifteen minute blow-job: you’re gobbling for Billy Yates for nine minutes.’ She made a violent sound of disgust. ‘But you know what was so creepy about him? He never did it hims
elf. If he’d liked girls, if he’d come round now and then and had one on the house – management perks, like his boys used to – you could almost have liked him better. But he’s a cold fish, Billy Yates. He never does it – never done it in his life, if truth be known. And it’s not that he’s the other way, either. He’s not queer. He’s just cold as a corpse. He looks at you like you’re—’ She shook her head. ‘But I’ve seen him with his business pals, and it’s all smiles and big cigars and slap-me-back old pals act. We did this trick once, me and this other girl, Jasmine her name was, at some posh hotel up west, up Lancaster Gate. We was supposed to spend the night with some business contact of Billy Yates’s. See them come in together, you’d think they was brothers, arms round each other, laughing and joking. Only his eyes never smile. He’s making nice to this Arab, and all the time his eyes are going round like a machine, checking everything in the room. Like he’s taking photos. Click click click. The bed, the champagne, the lights, the fruity videos. And he looks at Jasmine and me, click click. That’s all we was to him, two bits of gear for oiling up this deal.’

  But it was unusual for Maroon to see Yates. Normally he ran his girls at arm’s length, and that, in its way, was what they resented most. His ‘boys’ did all the hands-on work. They called themselves doormen or drivers or security guards, but Billy Yates just said, ‘I’ll send round one of my boys.’ They were bouncers in the clubs, croupiers in the casinos, managers in the amusement arcades, and pimps to the girls; they were messengers and chauffeurs and bodyguards and sorters-out of trouble. They collected money and delivered rebukes. They were young, fit, tooled up, and saw themselves as an all-powerful elite. The girls hated and feared them.

  ‘They could do what they liked, as long as they didn’t damage the goods.’ She shrugged. ‘Some of them just wanted to get their end away, they was no trouble, just get on, do it, get off again. But some of them liked to hurt you. And they worked out ways to hurt you so it didn’t show.’