Rainstone Fall achm-3

by Peter Helton

  Back outside I turned up my collar in a feeble attempt to keep pneumonia at bay and scooted along Manvers Street. The rain was back, driven by a wind that seemed to come from all directions at once. Everyone else was hurrying too with hunched shoulders or fighting umbrellas more a hindrance than an asset. By the time I got to York Street and pushed open the door to the steamed-up Café Retro I felt clammy and miserable and in need of comfort. I found a tiny table at the back. When the waitress appeared I ordered a large mug of hot chocolate and a bowl of chips. The Retro was, as the name implied, made to look like it had been there since time immemorial with the aid of imitation marble, fake gilded mirrors and distressed waitresses, but now it had been here for so long it had taken on a genuine patina of its own. It seemed an age until my order arrived but it was worth it just for the chips. I drowned them in ketchup and took comfort by the handful. Losing the car was bad enough but while I was filling in the form for Sergeant Hayes I’d realized how much stuff I’d left in it: video camera, binoculars, Dictaphone, CDs, sunglasses. .

  The big café window was blind with condensation and the door opened constantly with people looking in, hoping to find a table just to get out of the rain. I called Annis on my mobile; I was in no mood for getting soaked at a bus stop. She answered grumpily and my request for her taxi service didn’t exactly cheer her up but the offer of hot chocolate finally swung it. After a short while I put in the order and made sure the waitress took the empty chip bowl away so it couldn’t damage my culinary reputation. French fries, moi? When Annis splashed through the door her hot chocolate had only been standing on the table for a minute which puts the respective speeds of the disgruntled painter and harassed waitress in perspective.

  ‘What a sight for sore eyes,’ she said and sank her face into the mound of whipped cream. She had hardly got wet in the rain which could only mean one thing. ‘I’m parked right outside on a triple yellow. Any parking fines payable by the passenger,’ she slurped.

  We ran the few yards across the street and jumped into the cab of the Land Rover. She had a fabulous moustache of whipped cream. I leant over and kissed it away. ‘Thanks for coming to the rescue once more.’

  ‘That’s okay. I was getting a bit fed up anyway. Smoke from the stove, blue light from the plastic tarpaulin and the flapping noise it makes, it’s enough to drive you potty.’ Annis did her mysterious ministrations and mumbled her invocations and the Landy burbled into life.

  Some unexplained bottleneck in Broad Street had slowed traffic to a crawl. A number 7 bus was shipping water as it took on a few bedraggled passengers at the corner with Green Street. And there he was. ‘Look. See the guy about to get on the bus with the hood up and the shoulder bag? That’s James Lane, the guy I’m supposed to be following.’ It looked like the same few people who had left from Larkhall in the morning were coming back on the same bus. I recognized the snotty kid and his young mother and the bloke in the raincoat.

  ‘I’ll let the bus pull out then, shall I?’

  ‘Don’t bother, I know where he’s going and the bus’ll only go round in circles.’ I settled down to a good moan about traffic jams, the state of public transport, the price of roof repairs, the apathetic police response to my car crisis, the freak weather and that bit of hard skin on my middle finger that annoyed me. In fact the unusually violent bouncing action Annis got out of the Landy as she flung it down the track to the house made it completely impossible to chew at it. ‘Whehehewow what aaaare youhoohoo dooin?’ I managed.

  She turned into the yard and scraped to a halt by the outbuildings. ‘I was trying to shut you up, Honeysett, you’ve done nothing but moan from one end to the other. I come all the way to pick you up and you’re trying to bore me rigid in return. What do you have to say for yourself?’

  ‘Sorry, let me make it up to you,’ I suggested suggestively.

  ‘Mm. . okay then. Get into the kitchen and fix me a decent lunch. I’ll be in the studio.’

  Chapter Three

  ‘Yes, you look utterly ridiculous,’ Annis answered lazily, the duvet drawn up under her chin against the chill of the morning. Her hair was spread invitingly across the pillow and I suddenly felt like taking all this gear off again and getting back in beside her, but duty called.

  ‘What? Ridiculous? Not. . cool? Stylish? Dashing?’

  ‘Yes, dashing, that’s it,’ she cackled. ‘You look like you’re about to dash off somewhere. Like the Western Front, in one of those biplanes held together with string.’

  ‘Well, that’s all the biker gear there is.’

  ‘I know. But perhaps you should dispense with the goggles. I think Lane might remember you like that: black open-face helmet, long hair, goggles, tatty black leather jacket, gauntlets, jeans and clumpy boots.’

  ‘Well, I don’t have a choice. I either use your Norton or follow him on roller blades. You can’t follow a man on the same minibus more than once unless he’s blind.’

  ‘I know. Just make sure you don’t drop the machine, now that it’s been repaired.’

  A few months back Annis had crashed her 1950s Norton after someone had sabotaged the brakes, landing her in hospital. Both Annis and Norton had been beautifully restored, the bike with the help of the Norton Owners Club, but Annis’s enthusiasm for riding the thing had somewhat diminished. In fact, she hadn’t ridden it since.

  I wasn’t exactly overexcited myself. A fine rain was falling when I wheeled the Norton into the yard, and the air had turned noticeably colder. I had to work the kick-starter only five or six times before the engine fired, which wasn’t at all bad for a fifty-year-old bike that didn’t get used much. The people who restored it had fitted a pair of working exhaust pipes, a not unimportant detail since before the accident it used to sound like a Sherman tank. Even so it was noisy enough.

  I hadn’t ridden a bike for ages but by the time I reached the other end of the valley I had got used to the gear change and the lack of a CD player and could concentrate on other things. How much time was I going to devote to the limping Lane? Several shortcuts to finding out how disabled he really was came instantly to mind but none of them were exactly ethical and at least one of them contravened the Dangerous Wild Animals Act of 1976.

  I cut the engine just before I reached the Oriel Hall car park, coasted in and chained the bike up out of sight of Lane’s house. All this faffing about had made me quite late this morning and no sooner had I found a relatively sheltered spot than Lane left the house, dressed entirely the same as before and carrying his blue shoulder bag. I walked to the street corner and peered round. He had hobbled to the bus stop again and the bloke with the raincoat, who seemed to be a regular himself, made room for him on the bench.

  I got the bike, sat with the engine idling at the exit to the car park until the number 7 bus rattled past, waited a couple of minutes, then followed.

  The bus really did go round in circles, cranking up Claremont Road and taking the less than scenic route through the estates of Fairfield before revisiting Claremont and grinding on into town. I hung well back and stopped several times to allow for the excruciatingly slow speed of the thing.

  Lane got off in Walcot Street. I quickly parked the bike opposite the Pig and Fiddle and followed on foot. I didn’t have to walk far. He disappeared into the Podium, an understated little shopping centre, and soon I was gliding up behind him on the escalator to the upper floor that housed, among some cafés and restaurants, the central library. Naturally I hoped that Lane had a secret job as a limbo dancer at the Indian restaurant but of course he went into the library, returned a couple of books, then disappeared between the shelves. The place was full of school kids sitting on the floor, working at some kind of project. I followed Lane into the history section, kept my eyes on the books until I picked him up in my peripheral vision, then casually looked him over. He was checking the shelves against some notes on a scrap of paper. His walking stick hung over his left forearm. He moved sideways along the shelf but there it was, that awk
ward jerk of the torso, as though the right leg refused to move by itself. The man had a limp. Either that or he was a very good actor indeed; it’s difficult to dissemble while concentrating on something else entirely. I’d come quite close to him so I picked up a book at random: Britain at War, Unseen Archives. I got so engrossed in the black and white photography that when I looked up again Lane was gone. In a panic I scooted round the shelves and eventually spotted him at the issue desk. I ditched my book and walked closely past him while he was busy exchanging pleasantries with the young librarian who was issuing his books and I managed to read a couple of the titles: Witchcraft in the Middle Ages and A History of Sculpture.

  Best to wait for him downstairs, I decided, and left the library. I was already on the downward escalator and just calculating whether to tell Haarbottle that Lane was most likely a genuine case when I caught sight of two ugly blokes blocking the exit at the bottom. They had just let through a woman with shopping bags and now plugged the gap again looking up at me with expressionless faces. Both were quite tall, both had short hair, wore dark rainproof jackets and gave me the creeps. The escalator carried me inexorably towards their waiting, unwelcoming arms. One of the men I’d never seen before, the other was Detective Inspector Deeks. Sod this for a laugh. I turned around and started running up the downward escalator, not making much headway but at least I wasn’t going any further towards the goons. Fortunately I was the only one on the thing at that moment. I looked over my shoulder. The other guy had started running up after me and was making headway just as slowly but being halfway to the top already gave me a sure advantage over him. Once I hit terra firma I could leg it down the back stairs and disappear into the underground car park before he had a chance to catch up. Suddenly the escalator stopped. My frantic running motion tipped me forward and I landed painfully on my front. The next second it started going down again and by the time I was once more on my feet it had deposited me and the running bloke, who had also fallen, in front of Deeks who still had his finger on the emergency button.

  ‘Just as well one of us has brains, isn’t it?’ he said with a theatrical sigh and stuck his warrant card into my face. I had to lean back to read it. It didn’t tell me anything new. I looked at him with little interest and much loathing. Deeks had been Superintendent Needham’s preferred sidekick for years, something I’d always found hard to fathom. For a start he was not a thing you wanted to have to clap eyes on every working day of your life. Especially first thing in the morning. He was one of those blokes who probably wanted to look like his dad when he was twelve and by the time he was sixteen had succeeded. There was no way of telling how old he was. Forty? Sixty? His face was long and jowly, his eyes dark and narrow and his scar-puckered nose nearly hid his ungenerous, thin-lipped mouth. His bad breath alone was enough to make me want to go on the run. His attitude to civilians in general and PIs in particular was one of profound contempt. He brought his cadaverous face close to mine and wafted his halitosis up my nostrils. ‘A word.’ Several came effortlessly to mind. He grabbed me by the arm so he could lead me aside to the window of a silversmith’s shop. ‘This is Detective Sergeant Sorbie,’ he introduced the other officer, who was peeling chewing gum off his trouser knee. The DS looked equally unpleasant with an unhealthy pallor, an inept shave and tired, bloodshot eyes which seemed to have problems fastening on to anything in particular. ‘You’ve been traipsing after James Lane, sitting outside his house in your car, even following him to the pub,’ Deeks continued accusingly.

  ‘Don’t tell me he made a complaint,’ I said, wondering how Lane could have clocked me so quickly.

  ‘He didn’t. I’m making the complaint.’ He drew me further back and pointed out Lane who was just then stepping off the escalator. Only a few seconds later the ubiquitous bloke in the raincoat appeared from behind one of the large fake columns and followed him out of the building. ‘DC Howell. A bright new detective constable, good practice for him.’

  ‘So you’re having him followed as well. Care to tell me why?’

  ‘None of your business. Who’s paying you to sniff about?’ he asked.

  ‘Sorry, client confidentiality.’

  ‘Bollocks.’

  ‘Tough titty.’

  ‘Stop fucking me about, Mr Honeysett, or I’ll be forced to arrest you,’ he said in an unpleasant singsong.

  ‘I’m not breaking any damn laws by following Lane until he takes out a restraining order against me,’ I said, serious now.

  ‘You’re interfering with a police investigation.’

  ‘You’ll never make it stick. Especially since I demanded clarification on the matter and was refused. Your sergeant here’s my witness.’

  ‘You what?’ grunted Sorbie.

  ‘Look, we’re bound to follow him for the same bloody reasons, aren’t we?’ I said reasonably. ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.’

  Deeks considered for a second. ‘All right, let’s go and find a bike shed somewhere.’

  Five minutes later in the Green Tree, just around the corner from where Lane was still waiting for the bus with his personal DC in attendance, Deeks lifted a pint of Janglepaws or some other odd-sounding stuff to his pale, floppy lips and slurped. I stuck my nose into my Guinness to help me through this. I couldn’t believe I was sitting at the same table as Deeks without a tape recorder running. DS Sorbie was staring glumly into his glass of reconstituted orange juice.

  ‘Okay, you first,’ Deeks said.

  ‘N-nn. You first,’ I countered skilfully. Kid’s stuff.

  Sorbie groaned.

  ‘Does he have a hangover?’ I asked.

  ‘Doctor told him not to drink with his medication. But DS Sorbie likes to try everything once.’

  ‘Laudable.’ I didn’t ask what DS Sorbie needed medication for. Lots of things by the look of it. ‘Okay, no big secret, Griffin’s, the insurers, want to know if he’s faking his disability which they are forking out for.’

  ‘Same here. I believe Lane’s always been a part-time fraudster. He’s got two convictions for fraud, one insurance, one benefit, though neither are very recent. Which doesn’t mean he’s not been at it in the meantime.’

  ‘So why are you interested at all, surely you must have better things to do than to keep small fry under surveillance?’

  ‘I certainly do. Only the landlady who got sued for damages by the little toerag is the Assistant Chief Constable’s ex-wife. She’s only a recent ex and he wants to impress.’

  ‘I took the job because my roof got blown away. I believe I have the purer motive: money.’

  ‘You’ll do as you’re told. Don’t underestimate my career plans, Honeysett.’

  ‘What about you, DS Sorbie? Do you have career plans?’ I asked pleasantly.

  He gave a pained and joyless grin and nodded. ‘When I’m not too busy trying not to puke in your Guinness, yeah.’

  ‘Well, it’s a job and I have to make a living, guys, just like everyone else. .’

  ‘Too right, you’ll never survive on your art, mate, I’ve seen the crap you paint.’

  Everyone’s a critic. ‘Okay, howsabout we’ll take it in turns to watch Lane?’ I suggested. ‘Saves on the man-hours and we’ll let each other know if he suddenly starts jogging round the park.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ Deeks said and took a long slurp of his pint, then set it down precisely on its beer mat. ‘I’ve thought about it. You have to be shitting me. I’m telling you to piss off out of it. But I’ll make you an offer, and you’d better take it ’cause you won’t get a better one: if we catch him line dancing we’ll give you a shout. And another piece of advice: you really should take the goggles off inside.’

  Next morning I was watching Lane’s house as usual, only even more carefully. Two things had made me suspicious: the chummy offer to let me know if they found anything on Lane and the frankly unlikely fact that Deeks had paid for the drinks. Not at all normal behaviour for the fuzz, as I liked to think of them. Sounds c
uddly, doesn’t it? They were to get less cuddly before the day was out. In the meantime I was getting soaked under the inefficient shelter of a near-bald tree in the now familiar car park, waiting for Lane to make an appearance. It had started to rain again when I’d set off for Larkhall and not stopped since. It was that annoying kind of dancing rain, so fine it wafted about on the breeze and there seemed an endless supply of it upstairs where the sky was a featureless slab of wet cement.

  It wasn’t until after ten that Lane left the house. Again I made sure he got on the bus, then started up the Norton and followed the by now familiar bus route into town, just to make sure he didn’t get off before then. He had his blue bag with him and went to the library once more. He returned some books and walked on into the history section where he browsed, picking up books, reading the blurb or the index, then returning them to the shelf. Another batch of school kids was there and Britain at War was still on the shelf so I opened it again. If his surveillance went on like this I might get to finish the book in tiny increments. This time I made sure I didn’t miss him leaving. He exited the Podium at the back, where a couple of wooden picnic tables stood deserted, crossed the road and disappeared into the Victoria Gallery. The large sign over the entrance read A Half-Century of Sculpture. An exhibition of American and European sculpture from 1905 to 1955, sponsored by this, that and the other.

  I waited a minute, then followed inside with a stony heart. Did it have to be sculpture? Being a painter I wasn’t really wild about it. Especially this piddly stuff. If you must do sculpture (and I really don’t see why) make it big, make it heavy, do it properly. And preferably outside somewhere.

  Lane was taking a clockwise turn through the exhibition space. On the walls were some drawings and photographs of stuff they couldn’t get in here, an awful lot of blurb about the history of sculpture and how Duchamp’s urinal had changed everything. (Surely if one pissoir can revolutionize your entire discipline you’re in trouble, non?) I skipped most of it, keeping one eye on Lane. There were things plonked about everywhere: some guy’s reinterpretation of a pietà, better luck next time, mate; a couple of de Kooning things that looked like he left them on top of the stove too long, should’ve stuck to painting; two rather witty wire things by Picasso, should’ve stuck to sculpture; some motorized Alex Calder stuff that was ever so slightly bent which gave it an art-schoolish feel. The unavoidable Mr Moore was represented by some reclining, sorry, recumbent lump with holes in all the right places, and the centrepiece was a small contorted bronze by Rodin on a plinth. The whole exhibition looked like the stuff had just been dragged out of storage and no one had taken the time to give it a dusting. The names were all there but the examples, apart from the Rodin, were rubbish.