Shut Eye

by Adam Baron

  I left the gym just as two of the black kids were climbing through the ropes with Sal. They weren’t much to watch and everyone else was milling around, starting more exercises, working on the bag. I turned at the door to wave to Mountain Pete who was skipping, trying to get some speed into those flat iron feet of his.

  ‘Catch you next time, Mash!’ he called out, getting the rope caught round his shins. I waved to Sal in the ring and she waved back as she showed the two kids how to face each other and begin. The kid who had looked scared darted his eyes over to me as Sal spoke to him. He looked even more nervous than he had before.

  Outside, the temperature had taken a dive, and even though it is only half a centimetre long my hair let me know that I hadn’t dried it properly. Hat time soon, I thought. The old brown Mazda started eventually but somehow it refused to drive me home, and took me to The Old Ludensian instead, a bar I frequent down on St John Street near to Smithfield. I stayed there for an hour and a half, sitting at the bar, talking to some of the regulars. I had three or four, flirted with the waitress who I always flirt with, and then went home.

  Nicky, who owns The Old Ludensian, had suggested making a night of it down at The Titanic but I put him off. I didn’t think I deserved a night of carousing and these days I can’t enjoy it that way when I don’t think I’ve earned it. I wouldn’t have been able to stop thinking about a guy with a broad smile who was never going to smile again. Also, Nicky was probably the best-looking and most charming man I had ever met, and a night out with him often entailed drumming my fingers on the bar top while he chatted away to some impossibly gorgeous woman. Not tonight, Josephine.

  ‘Soon though, Billy,’ Nicky said. ‘I don’t see enough of you.’ He had walked me to the door and was shaking my hand.

  ‘You would if you let me pay for my drinks,’ I told him. ‘I get embarrassed.’

  ‘After what you did for me, never.’

  ‘OK, Nicky,’ I said, shaking his hand. ‘I’ll see you. Probably when I’ve sorted this shit out, one way or another.’

  ‘Make it soon, Billy, soon.’ He slapped me on the back and I walked outside.

  Nicky was referring to the time when, with the help of Mountain Pete, I had talked a certain gentleman into allowing him to remain alive. The gentleman was a midranking member of an East End security association, and while Nicky had constantly refused to give the gentleman what he wanted whenever he had called at Nicky’s bar, my friend had not been so ungenerous with the gentleman’s wife. I did the talking while Mountain Pete showed the man how much the butt end of a twelve-gauge sawn-off shotgun can hurt somebody’s head. I assured him that the butt was not the end Mountain Pete would be using next time, and the problem was solved. Mountain Pete is a member of a security association of his own, run out of Westbourne Park. Nicky was relieved and thankful, and since then neither Pete nor I had ever been allowed to part with a penny at the bar of The Old Ludensian. The incident shook Nicky up so much he didn’t sleep with another married woman for at least a week.

  I gunned my dream machine into life and this time it did take me back to my flat, which is above an old print shop behind Exmouth Market in Clerkenwell. No messages. I showered, poured myself a whiskey and took it to bed, drifting off into sleep with one of Nick Drake’s stark mellow tunes on the stereo.

  * * *

  At two fifteen the phone woke me and I let the machine get it. The room seemed empty without the music, which had turned itself off. A big, angry voice said it knew I was there and told me to pick up. It was quite insistent. Why not? I did. The voice then told me that if I wanted to find the man whose face was in the photograph I had been showing around like I was a Catholic priest and it was a piece of Jesus’s fucking toothbrush or some shit, I should go and stand in the entrance to the freight depot halfway down York Way as soon as I could get there. I was to wait and be sure to bring along some money – five hundred would be ample. Any less would not be. The voice said soon or don’t bother, and then it became the dialling tone.

  I sat up in bed and turned the lamp on.

  I ran my hands over my head and yawned again, trying to bring myself to some level of decision-making consciousness. I thought about it. Standing around York Way in the middle of the night with a pocket full of money, waiting for a man who probably had, instead of information, a very big knife in his pocket, was not something I’d ever advise anyone else to do. The guy probably saw my name on the back of the photo somewhere or other and thought he was on to an easy mugging. York Way is not what you would call a safe place to hang out at the best of times, but even less so when it’s two fifteen in the morning and someone knows you’re going to be there. But what the hell. It was the first thing approaching a lead that I’d had and I was awake now anyway as the joke goes. I wanted to do something, even if that something was something very stupid.

  It took me two and a half minutes to climb into jeans and a sweatshirt, pull on my Red Wings, and grab a jacket. I saw my wallet lying on the kitchen table. I left it there.

  Outside there was no one about and I shivered myself awake as I lowered myself on to the torn driving seat of the Mazda. I checked my watch and pulled the belt on. I inserted the key into the ignition and turned it, expecting a fight. Luckily the car started first time.

  Luckily?

  Chapter Two

  I don’t normally take cases that the police are already working flat out on. I usually spend my time looking for runaway kids, teenagers or younger, who are a low priority to my ex-colleagues on the Met but a high priority to the families they have left behind. In most other matters the Met have me beaten. They have more resources, and more powers of surveillance, entry, and arrest. They do, however, tend to stand out like sore thumbs in bars and clubs and casinos in either cheap suits or tacky undercover leather jackets, and this makes room for me. The bars and the clubs are the sorts of places where I generally find my teenagers because they are often part of the reason the teenager comes to London in the first place. The Big City, provider of action and anonymity. I don’t look like a copper, I don’t even look like an ex-copper, and having spent the first fourteen years of my life in Toronto I can make sure that I don’t sound like one either. I can go to the places I have to go to and not have half the kitchen staff legging it out of the back door before I’ve even managed a sip of my Canadian Club. Also, thanks to a vicious old man I haven’t seen in twelve years, I know what it feels like to be a kid and to hate your life so much that anywhere, anywhere, is better than home. I do OK at what I do, but I usually leave the big stuff to my previous employers.

  The message I found on my machine one bright Monday morning in mid October, however, intrigued me. I had just opened up the small, sparsely furnished office that I keep in a business unit up behind Highbury Fields. A plummy middle-aged male voice informed me that it belonged to one Sir Peter Morgan, and it asked if I could please call it back as soon as I was able. The voice was nervous and far too restrained, as if the owner of the voice was afraid of what the voice might say, and held it tightly in check like a pit bull on a leash in a Montessori Centre.

  The name intrigued me. It had been in the news a lot recently, although it had been sidelined in the last couple of weeks by the state of Sarah Ferguson’s thighs and the health, or lack of health, of the Russian President. I have a good memory for names, though, and even if I hadn’t I could hardly have forgotten it. Sir Peter Morgan was a Conservative Member of Parliament, a (now) Shadow Minister at the Treasury. He was a leading Euro-sceptic and senior member of the 1922 Committee. He was a regular guest on Question Time, Any Questions, and those political programmes you turn off immediately when carving the Sunday roast. His name was especially familiar, however, for the fact that his younger brother Edward, an airline pilot, had recently been brutally murdered in the flat he shared with his wife of six years, by person or persons unknown wielding a broken champagne bottle. I wrote down the number he gave and sat for a second, wondering why he was calling me. />
  There were three other messages on my machine and I dealt with those first. One was from Joe Nineteen, a regular provider of information concerning the whereabouts of errant children, and one was from a woman whose son I had located six months ago; she wanted me to locate him again. The other was from Sharon. I called Joe and told him that his tip of the day before had been spot on and that I would be round to see him soon. I called the number the woman – a Mrs Lewes – had given, and left a message on her machine stating that I would be happy to help her and that I would be in touch when I knew more. I didn’t call Sharon because the message was from yesterday and I had already arranged to have dinner with her after she’d reached me at home. I sat for a second, thinking, and then dialled the number the MP had given.

  A secretary put me on hold for a minute and I was just about to hang up, redial, and leave a message when Sir Peter came on the line.

  ‘Mr Rucker?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. Sir Peter Morgan? ‘I’m just returning your call.’

  ‘Thank you. I…’ He thought for a second. ‘I was wondering if you are free for lunch today. Your services were recently recommended to me and I have something I would like to discuss with you.’

  The MP’s voice wasn’t so restrained as it had been on the machine. The pit bull wasn’t on its leash any more; it was dressed up like a poodle.

  ‘May I enquire who you spoke with?’ I asked. My usual customer survey.

  ‘I really would rather do this in person if you don’t mind, Mr Rucker. Could you meet me at one today? Do you know where the Portman Club is?’

  I waited a second. I don’t like talking to people who give orders by asking questions, or whose tone of voice indicates that they cannot conceive of ever not getting their way.

  ‘Sir Peter,’ I said, ‘I have an idea as to what you might want to talk to me about. If it is what I think it is, I really don’t think that I can be of much help to you. I’m not a big organization, I don’t have anyone else working for me. I usually look for missing teenagers.’

  ‘I am aware of that,’ he answered. ‘My information is, however, that you are very good at your job, and that it would be worth speaking to you.’

  ‘All the same,’ I went on, ’I don’t want to waste any of your time.’ Or mine, I thought. ‘It would be pointless to come all the way down to your club to tell you exactly what I could tell you now.’

  ‘Nevertheless, Mr Rucker, I would like to meet you. I will of course pay for your time, whatever the outcome, and I can assure you of a most excellent lunch.’

  ‘I…’

  ‘Please, Mr Rucker. It would save me the trouble of hunting you out. If you have an idea as to why I want to speak to you then you might understand how much it means to me that I should.’

  The ex-Minister stopped speaking abruptly. The leash on his voice was back and ready to snap. I thought about it for a second. Something inside me sighed wearily.

  ‘Crème brûlée?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘On the menu. At your club.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, thinking. ‘Of course. The finest west of Paris.’ He managed a short laugh.

  ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’ll be there.’

  He laughed again, stiffly. ‘Thank you.’ Then he added, ‘I don’t want to sound patronizing but the club insists that visitors should wear a jacket.’

  ‘I’ll buy one on the way, sir.’

  ’And a tie, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Right. What about trousers?’ I asked. I took the address from him and then hung up.

  * * *

  It was perfect. Mine is as good but I don’t have a blowtorch to get the top perfectly crisp while leaving the underneath firm. I make do with a grill.

  I had made a few calls, looked at the file I had on the missing Dominic Lewes, and decided that I would work on him either that evening or else the next day. I had drunk some coffee in the café that serves the business units, and then gone back to my flat and donned the Paul Smith suit that I had bought for my brother’s wedding but never had a chance to wear. I’d chosen an antique Ralph Lauren from the seventy or so ties in my cupboard, which I collect, but which I seldom get a chance to wear.

  We were sitting across from one another in the Portman Club’s dining room, a huge, high-ceilinged room, with the requisite wood panelling, oil paintings of sea battles, and huge chandeliers. Sir Peter Morgan was a tall man of forty-seven/forty-eight, elegant in a conservative way, with a greying, full head of hair, which would make him look very distinguished in a few years’ time. He had a high forehead above a narrow face, with striking blue eyes and a nose that seemed just a little too small compared with his other features, making him look slightly boyish. A pair of reading glasses hung on a delicate silver chain around his neck.

  Throughout the three courses we made polite conversation. I asked him how he was normally addressed and he said that Sir Peter was fine. He didn’t like being called Mr Morgan but he never complained when people made the mistake because it sounded very petty to do so. He told me a little about his job, I told him a little about mine. At one point I thought he was going to get into politics but luckily he didn’t. It might have been the end of a very beautiful friendship. We ate, we chatted, he nodded at the odd acquaintance, and I noted his perfect Windsor knot over a starched Hilditch and Key blue striped shirt, with matching handkerchief poking cautiously out of the pocket of an exquisitely tailored single-breasted pinstripe. He showed few signs of his recent loss beyond an unwillingness to engage any of the people who passed the table in any conversation beyond the usual pleasantries. His table manners and posture demonstrated a man who was used to being in control of himself. He was like an uncle who invites you to lunch during your final year at Cambridge in order to dissuade you from going to live on a commune in Goa, recommend a tailor, and enquire as to which City firm you would like him to get you a job at when you graduated.

  When the waitress took away our dessert plates Sir Peter told her that we would take our coffee upstairs. We stood up and I followed him through the dining room and up a broad circular staircase, covered in a deep red carpet held down by bold brass rods. The walls were similarly covered in oils, but most of these were of stern old men whose faces gave the impression that, unlike me, they hadn’t found the crème brûlée at all satisfactory. We walked past them and along a broad corridor, towards a heavily polished oak door which Sir Peter pushed open. It didn’t make a sound. On the other side of it was a large room, filled with armchairs that were mostly vacant, next to low coffee tables liberally covered in broadsheet newspapers. I say liberally: they were either the Telegraph, The Times or the FT. Sir Peter led me through the speckled columns of light charging through large arch windows on the opposite wall, across to the furthest corner of the room where we sat facing each other, both of us encased in green leather.

  Sir Peter shifted uncomfortably in his seat, looking for a way to begin. I waited while he sipped his coffee, listening to the faint hum of traffic on Piccadilly. I noted that he had the same colour Turk’s Head cufflinks as I had found in the pockets of a second-hand Gieves and Hawkes suit I’d bought on Portabello Road a year ago.

  ‘Mr Rucker,’ he began finally. ‘I find this quite difficult. I’ve never needed the services of a private investigator before. I…’ He stopped speaking and gazed out of the window.

  ‘You want me to find the person who murdered your brother,’ I said. Well, I didn’t have all day.

  ‘Yes. It’s as simple as that I suppose. Yes. Yes I do.’ He looked at me, relieved that the ice had been broken. He seemed scared too, scared of going over what had happened, of seeing it again.

  ‘In that case I’m afraid that this has been a waste of time,’ I said. ‘Except for the crème brûlée. You are aware of the amount of manpower the police are already putting in to this? Especially now.’

  ‘I am aware that the police are doing what they can.’

  ‘I happen to know one of t
he officers on the case. He’s good. I don’t think that there is any doubt that they’ll find whoever it is who’s behind these killings.’ Sir Peter seemed to wince, to shy away from what I was saying. I carried on.

  ‘The first one hardly got into the news as far as I can remember. It certainly didn’t make the TV. A lorry driver found dead in the sleeping area of his cab. Stabbed with a broken beer bottle and all his cash taken. Kids probably, crackheads who needed fifty quid bad enough at certain times that they’ll quite cheerfully kill a man to get it. Without breaking a sweat. No sign of sexual activity, a simple robbery that possibly went wrong.’ I leant forward for my coffee cup. Sir Peter was perfectly still, his expression blank, looking straight at me.

  ‘The second one did make the headlines. A rent boy in Brixton, only fourteen, still at school, halfway through his GCSEs. This time there was sexual activity, although it’s impossible to state in this case whether or not any of the four brands of sperm found in various areas of the corpse actually belonged to the perpetrator. Again a bottle, this time Lucozade I believe, was used to pierce the victim’s abdomen. Pieces of glass were discovered in the boy’s anal canal, which was severely lacerated.’

  Sir Peter shifted in his seat and looked at me in a way which suggested he was used to being treated with just a touch more deference.

  ‘You seem to know what you are talking about,’ he said coldly.

  ‘I read the newspaper. I also called DI Gold after I spoke to you earlier. The officer who recommended me to you. I trained with him at Hendon, he filled me in. With the MO similar to the motorway killing a link was established and background work done on the driver. It appears that he was a homosexual, or a bi-sexual bearing in mind that he was married with three children. The pathologist still insists that there was no evidence of sexual contact the night he died, but several men were found who admitted sexual encounters with him, some of them in his lorry. It’s curious. Apparently the driver’s wife was more distressed when an officer was forced to relay this information to her, than she had been when she’d been informed that her husband had been killed.’