The Geranium Kiss

by John Harvey

  My stomach turned over inside and I thought a while about what the effect of all this might be: on whoever the kidnapper was: on Cathy. I didn’t like either thought.

  When I parked the car and made to get out, the bedroom curtain across the street dropped back into place. Sometime soon I would have to go visiting. For now, I slammed the door shut and walked up the drive towards the house.

  It was lighter and somewhere a solitary small bird was setting up a conversation with itself.

  Not all little birds sang as sweet; not all little birds sang to themselves. I wondered what Tom Gilmour was thinking and saying at this moment. I wondered who had sung and who had listened. I walked through the door which Crosby Blake held open for me and handed him the paper as I did so.

  Stephanie still looked beautiful, but the beauty was rather saddened, flattened by the morning. For some reason I gave her a smile; for some reason she returned it.

  I went on into the kitchen and played around with the coffee grinder, trying to think what the two of us could be so happy about. Finally, I gave up and went to find Crosby.

  He was sitting in that room again, the curtains still drawn over against the light. The same record was playing. He had the look of a man who has seen the earth crumble away underneath himself and can’t understand why he hasn’t yet tumbled after it.

  It was just a matter of time.

  I sat down opposite him again and said, ‘What is it?’

  He looked up abstractedly, not really seeing me.

  ‘The Hammerklavier,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The sonata,’ he said. ‘Beethoven.’

  Jesus! All I needed was a music lesson!

  I said, ‘That wasn’t what I meant.’

  He said, ‘Oh.’

  I got up and left him sitting there, staring into space and lost in his own thoughts.

  Stephanie was finishing the job I had started with the coffee and some of the crispness had come back into her blouse.

  ‘Would you like some?’ she asked.

  I shook my head, partly in surprise to find that I was shaking my head. Mitchell refusing coffee. It didn’t happen often. But nor did my great ideas and when they did I knew better than to waste them.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘your boss is lame with depression, introspection and a few dozen other self-indulgent things. If the phone goes again, you’d better try to handle it. As soon as anything does happen, especially if our boy rings back, I want you to get in touch. Try me at my office. If I’m not there, then keep trying. And phone Gilmour as well.’

  She looked able to handle it. She looked able to handle most things. Including me. But that, like the coffee, would have to wait.

  ‘Think you can cope?’ I asked.

  She smiled. ‘Sure.’

  There was something about the way she looked, standing there in the middle of that brightly polished kitchen. I didn’t know what it was but it made me go towards her and take hold of her arm and lean down my head and kiss her hair.

  ‘Take care,’ I said.

  ‘You take care,’ she replied as I walked out the door.

  I should have turned back but I didn’t. Just kept right on heading for the front door. I had things to do; there were people I wanted to see before anyone else got to them. And I wasn’t cut out for a modem remark of ‘Brief Encounter’. Perhaps I didn’t like the idea of railway station buffets.

  Dave Jarrell had been around a long time: as long as me. Ever since I’d known him, he’d made some kind of a living from peddling odd bits of news to papers and magazines. His pockets spilled over with broken stub ends of black Sobranie and empty match boxes. In the midst of these movable ashtrays there were always numerous scraps of paper bearing hastily scribbled notes in a florid, artistic hand.

  He always seemed to be wearing the same black corduroy suit, which grew increasingly threadbare and scuffed. Its front was a mixture of tobacco stains and the droppings from the bottoms of the innumerable pints of draught Guinness that he got through in a normal working day.

  Jarrell wasn’t just a slob: he was a fat slob.

  I guessed that he punished the scales at between sixteen and seventeen stone and that was when he was living carefully. Because he was over six foot tall, he sometimes gave the impression of being able to fill a normal sized room all by himself.

  Not that he was often in rooms alone. Dave was a compulsive talker—just as he was compulsive about most things that he did—and there was never any shortage of people who were willing to listen. For he didn’t only talk; he talked well.

  The listeners came in three basic groups. There were the reporters and would-be hacks who came round for whatever tasty morsels they could gather from the fat man’s table; there were the ardent little left-wingers in their beards and badges, anxious for evidence of the decadence of the ruling classes; there were the quiet, pretty boys who sat in the corners of his room until everyone else had gone and then went to bed with him.

  It was still early in the morning and I wondered whether any of the first two sets had arrived; whether any of the third were still around.

  I rang the bell three or four times before I decided that it wasn’t working. Then I knocked politely on the door. Still nothing. He could be out, but it wasn’t likely. Not unless he had changed his ways. And I doubted that.

  This time I banged the door with the side of my closed hand and after a moment or two there were sounds of someone moving around inside.

  I could hear muffled voices, then the door opened a couple of inches and came to a halt at the end of its chain. Unusually careful, I thought, then looked at the half a face I could see.

  Not more than eighteen, fair curly hair still tousled from sleep, the eye was blue and the mouth which opened to speak was full and oddly red.

  ‘Yea?’

  It didn’t open for long. Long enough to catch the sharpness of cockney.

  ‘Dave Jarrell.’

  ‘Wot about ’im?’

  ‘I want to see him.’

  ‘S’pose ’e don’t want to see you?’

  ‘Too bad.’

  ‘Right!’

  He pushed hard on the door, but I was ready for it and forced the underside of my shoe between door and jamb. He looked oddly surprised. Pushed nevertheless. My foot held and I leant on the woodwork. Something was going to give and the mood I was in it wasn’t going to be me.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘why don’t you piss off?’

  ‘Why don’t you stop pushing on the door and let me in like a good boy?’

  I kicked hard against the bottom panel and there was a fierce cracking sound. Then another voice from inside the flat: ‘What the fuck is going on out there?’

  Very intellectual, I thought. Must be the company he’s keeping.

  ‘If you’ll tell your boy friend to stop pretending he’s Supergirl for a minute, I’ll come in and tell you.’

  ‘Mitchell?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say so?’

  ‘I didn’t get the chance.’

  ‘All right. Let him in, Mick, before he takes the door off the hinges and eats it for breakfast.’

  The boy shut the door, undid the chain and opened it wide enough for me to get through sideways but no more. Something told me that he didn’t like me too much.

  I don’t know why. If I’d been that way inclined I could have quite fancied him.

  ‘I’ve had it, anyway,’ I told Jarrell as I walked into the flat and started to search for a chair that wasn’t covered in clothing, old newspapers or spilt ash trays.

  ‘Lucky you!’ said Jarrell in the camp voice he adopted whenever he thought the occasion demanded it.

  ‘I meant breakfast.’

  ‘Of course; you’re off everything else at the momen
t, I suppose.’

  I shrugged my shoulders and thought that he might be right. It was so long since I’d got myself laid that I could have been excused for thinking someone had slipped in during the night and performed the operation.

  I made a mental note to call Sandy and succeeded in finding somewhere to sit.

  Jarrell wandered between the main room and the tiny kitchen, holding a large brown teapot and offering to make me some of his fine brew. I said no. I’d been caught like that before.

  His tea was thick and strong and acted as the finest laxative I’d yet come across. Three cups of that and you were running for the nearest gents like a ferret up a trouser leg.

  ‘Well, Mitchell, if you don’t want tea … and you don’t want Mick … what have I got that you could be after? Don’t say it’s me after all this time!’

  I made a face and pretended to throw up over the side of the chair.

  ‘That’s nice, init?’ said Mick.

  ‘Mitchell always has had the most charming manners. When he was in the police force they always made him head flunkey at the Commissioner’s Ball.’

  Jarrell came into the room with two mugs to tea, gave one to Mick and sat by the table, brushing things aside to make room for his tea and his elbow.

  ‘Well, my fine friend, what is it?’

  I pulled the copy of the Comet out of my pocket and threw it across at him. He sipped at his tea and glanced at the front page.

  ‘What am I supposed to be reading?’

  ‘The front page.’

  He did so and grunted. ‘Usual muck. What about it?’

  ‘Only that it shouldn’t be there.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘The law put a silencer on the whole thing. Like they did with that Cypriot girl a while back. Same tactics. Beat the ransom down while you’re investigating, then get the girl safe, hand over the money and pick up the kidnappers before they’ve had time to spend it.’

  Jarrell waved the paper at me from his pudgy hand.

  ‘Where did this come from then?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s what I’ve come to you for.’

  He looked hurt, then perplexed, then contrite. But he didn’t say anything.

  ‘You got a bleedin’ cheek,’ said Mick.

  ‘So will you have if you don’t keep your nice little nose where it belongs!’ I didn’t have anything against him, but I didn’t have time to waste either.

  ‘Where’s that then?’

  ‘Right up against Dave Jarrell’s arse for all I care. Just sit there and drink your tea like a good boy.’

  He jumped to his feet and came for me across the room.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Mick,’ Jarrell warned.

  He was too late. The boy reached down a hand towards my jacket and when his fingers grasped the front of it I hit him in the chest with a right uppercut that loosened his grip and sent him back a couple of paces. Then I stood up quickly and crossed with my left.

  It was okay but a bit too much like working out in the gym with a punch bag; not a very heavy one at that.

  He dropped to the floor and stayed there, groaning quietly to himself as he rubbed his chin.

  ‘I did warn you,’ Jarrell said to him and sipped some more of his tea.

  I sat down again.

  ‘What about it then?’ I asked.

  He shrugged his shoulders and tried a look of abject innocence.

  ‘It wasn’t me, Mitchell, honest.’

  ‘Okay, so it wasn’t you. I’ll believe that for now. I will. Whether Gilmour will is another matter.’

  The expression changed to one approaching physical fear. I didn’t think masochism was Dave Jarrell’s bag at all.

  ‘This is his case?’

  I said it was and he whistled softly from between pursed rather rubbery lips.

  ‘Then whoever wrote that piece for the Comet had better look out, as well as whoever grassed.’

  ‘Exactly. So there are two things. One, there’s a chance you might know where the cough came from or you might hear something in the next day or so … if you listen good and hard. Two, you might know who did that hack muck and where he might be hiding. Cause if he isn’t hiding, then he’s too much of a fool to have lasted even till now.’

  Jarrell poured himself another mug of tea and thought; apart from the almost audible sound of the cogs ticking against each other inside his brain, there was only the noise of the blond boy, still moaning on the floor. It obviously wasn’t his scene either: masochism, I mean.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I haven’t heard anything, Mitchell, but I might.’

  ‘And if you do?’

  ‘If I do, I’ll let you know.’

  ‘Good. Now what about the reporter?’

  ‘Their crime stuff’s usually handled by Ivor Jacobs.’

  I reacted to the name and Jarrell noticed.

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Used to. A lot of years ago. It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Well, if there was a tip-off he would have handled it. As for hiding out, I don’t know. The thing isn’t signed and the Comet wouldn’t let on to the cops. Newspaper ethics. They won’t tell you where the tip came from either.’

  I stood up. ‘Ivor will.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘He’s another guy who doesn’t much like being hit.’

  ‘You’ve done it before, then?’ Jarrell asked.

  Yes, I’d done it before. It had been at a party and we’d both been around eighteen. Ivor had been dancing with the girl I was with and getting his paws a bit too close to her arse for my comfort. So I’d asked him to step outside. I was a gentleman in those days.

  When he’d refused, I’d knocked him down there and then and started to mash him into the red Wilton carpet.

  It hadn’t gone down very well. Kids didn’t do things like that at respectable parties in Golders Green and get invited again. It hadn’t even done me any good with the girl … whoever she’d been. Not so much as copping a quick feel that night.

  I walked around Mick’s pretty body and looked back at Dave Jarrell, still at the table drinking his tea.

  ‘You won’t forget to call me?’

  He waved his mug at me and some of the brown liquid slopped down on to his trousers. He didn’t appear to notice; it couldn’t have been very hot.

  ‘On my word of honour, Mitchell. My word of honour.’

  I went through the doorway and shut the door hard behind me. There was a splintering sound as the bottom section of wood split further.

  I considered it all the way down the stairs but I still couldn’t figure what Dave Jarrell’s word of honour was worth. Maybe I’d find out.

  Maybe I’d find out lots of things. Some of them from Ivor Jacobs: one way or another. I hoped it would be the other.

  5

  It was late morning but the darkness as I drove northwards made it seem like dusk. I switched on the car radio and some idiot told me how many shopping days there still were till Christmas. I flicked the knob and enjoyed the silence. That was the kind of information I could do without.

  What I needed was far more substantial, more difficult to come by—and you usually had to do more for it than reach out your left hand a few inches.

  Something had started nagging away at my brain like the rough edge of a broken nail. I didn’t know what it was for sure, but whatever it was nearly took me through the set of lights showing red in the gloom.

  At the last minute I stabbed down hard with my foot and grabbed for the hand brake. The car did its best to stand up on end and someone behind me barely screeched to a standstill a few inches from my rear.

  If only people would watch what the hell was going on!

  What the hell was going on?

  I didn’t know, but I
did know that the reason the car following hadn’t seen the lights either was that they were more interested in watching me.

  The smart one was still wearing his blue overcoat, but today he’d added to it a cute little hat with a narrow brim that perched on top of his head like a dark golf ball on an oversize tee.

  His friend was driving and as he tucked his car in behind me again, there was something shining in his eyes that made him look suspiciously as if he was alive after all.

  But I discounted that. They were just making better dummies this year.

  For a while I wasn’t sure whether I wanted them to know I was going to Ivor’s or not. If they’d picked me up at the Blake place again, then that meant they already knew about Dave Jarrell. Perhaps it wasn’t a good thing for them to know too many of my contacts; just in case, they did have it in them to turn nasty.

  As if they would!

  I swung left off the main road and made a few desperate efforts to lose them. But taking corners on two wheels wasn’t really my thing and for a dummy that guy could handle a motor well enough.

  This kind of thing was all right in glorious technicolour with cars chasing one another up and down hill, suddenly flying off into space and landing again with a bumping of springs and a squeal of wheels.

  But Golders Green isn’t San Francisco and I’m not Steve McQueen. I’m not a cop and I certainly don’t have Jacqueline Bisset waiting beside the road wearing a yellow dress that looks good even through the gathering petrol fumes. Even if she was waiting to say goodbye.

  My goodbyes hadn’t come that way at all. There had been no searching looks, no anxious fumblings for words. She had known what she wanted to say all right and she had used the telephone to say it.

  Oh, I mean I suppose I’d known well enough, though there had been weeks when I’d hung on to every last vestige of hope. Like a drowned man who still splashes his arms vainly when he’s already dead.

  And rumours eddying round his body pick his bones with the keenest of whispers.

  Only I hadn’t had to rely on rumour: not for long.

  Nor whispers.

  Her voice had been clear and strong. She had never sounded more confident, more sure. Only afterwards had she softened slightly, said that she shouldn’t have told me on the phone, should have been there to hold me, help me.