The Geranium Kiss

by John Harvey

  She still didn’t move; only those green eyes following me back to the door.

  ‘Come up with anything I can use and there’ll be a fiver in it for you.’

  I pulled the door to behind me and walked down the stairs. I’d known Sandy a long time. Maybe too long and maybe not too well.

  What the hell! I didn’t have time to stop and figure it out … not now.

  Not ever.

  6

  There was one letter on the mat inside the outer door of the office. I picked it up as delicately as if it were a flower. There weren’t that many pink envelopes that came through the letter box that I could afford to be blasé about them.

  I unlocked the door to the inner office, threw my coat at the rack and pulled the chair round by the desk. I was going to enjoy this. From the third drawer down on the right hand side, I took out a slim paper knife. The handle was dark wood, the blade had two arcs cut out of it close to its base, then tapered away smoothly to its tip. I inserted the tip under the edge of the envelope and slid the knife across the fold.

  It was a very satisfying feeling.

  I put down the knife and removed the card from the envelope. It was pink, too. I read it very carefully, savouring every word. It said:

  SU VENNER DESIGNS

  Attract the attention of both old

  and new customers with personally

  designed stationery and business

  cards that reflect your own

  especial character and personality.

  Then there was a nice logo and an address and telephone number.

  Perhaps that was what my business was lacking: the right kind of stationery. That was why the right kind of people weren’t flocking over the threadbare mat to hammer on my door and pay me handsomely for solving their problems.

  Now I knew the answer there need never be another worrying day in my professional life.

  I held the card between two fingers of each hand and very lovingly tore it in two. Then I dropped it down into the waste paper bin, watching the pink petals float on to the grey enamel.

  I pushed back the chair and stuck my feet up on the desk. It was still too early in the day to be drinking, so I reached out from where I was and was just able to finger open the drawer with the bottle of Southern Comfort in. Sadly, I couldn’t reach the glasses. I tipped the neck of the bottle between my lips and enjoyed the orangey taste as it swam lazily around my mouth.

  The right kind of people, I thought. If they were that then they wouldn’t come into my office at all. The kind I got were mostly timid and frightened and wanting help to stop bigger guys leaning on them, husbands or wives cheating on them, bigger fish feeding on them.

  Or they were rich enough to have money oozing out of their arses and used to buying their way out of any little trouble that their arrogant thoughtlessness had got them into. So they came round and strewed notes all over my desk and expected me to lick their feet and lap up their shit while I was down there.

  Oh, yes, I was called on by the right kind of people!

  I took another swig at the bottle and rinsed my mouth round with it, trying to get rid of the taste of bitterness. Not that I should be feeling bitter. I was the guy who spent all his time using other people, remember?

  Then the phone rang.

  I picked it up and said, ‘Hello, sweetheart, this is Su Venner Designs.’

  ‘What the fuck are you playing at, Mitchell?’ growled Tom Gilmour’s voice from the other end.

  ‘I’ve decided I’m in the wrong line. What I want is something a little more sensitive, a trifle more artistic … in keeping with my personality.’

  ‘Will you cut that pansy crap and give me a straight answer?’

  ‘Sure, Tom.’

  ‘Right, then what the mothering hell are you doing in your office instead of being with Blake?’

  ‘I’m sitting with my feet up on the desk drinking Southern Comfort from the bottle and waiting for inspiration to strike me.’

  ‘Well fuck you … sweetheart!’

  And the phone went dead.

  I took another drink.

  The phone rang again.

  This time I picked it up and said nothing. Sometimes it paid to play safe.

  There was a silence, then a voice saying, ‘Is that Scott Mitchell’s office?’

  I thought about it for a while and decided that it still was. I said, ‘Hello, Stephanie, where are you?’

  ‘I’m at Crosby’s house.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘Mitchell, I didn’t phone you up so that you could make your usual sneering remarks.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘you want a special kind of sneering remark. That comes more expensive.’

  ‘Mitchell!’

  ‘Sorry, but everyone seems to be into charging for everything all of a sudden. What’s your price?’

  ‘More than you can afford.’

  ‘I believe it.’

  There was a silence. Maybe she was thinking of offering me some kind of discount.

  Then she said, ‘I thought you might like to know what’s happened.’

  ‘Okay,’ I replied, ‘try me. What’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing. No more phone calls. Nothing.’

  ‘That’s great. The sort of progress that throws my adrenaline into a mad fit of excitement. You’ll keep me informed if nothing else happens later?’

  ‘All right, I’m sorry. It’s just that …’

  ‘I know, it was a long while since you talked to me and your tongue was in danger of getting blunt.’

  ‘All right, I said I was sorry. What more do you want?’

  ‘We both know the answer to that, but we also both know I can’t afford it.’

  ‘Mitchell!’

  ‘You’ve said that before.’

  ‘What do you want me to say?’

  ‘You could tell me the name and address of Cathy’s friend. The one she spent the evening with on the night she was snatched.’

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ she said.

  While she was gone I wondered if they were being pestered with newsmen and TV cameras and if not, then why not. But she said that nothing had happened. If the others were letting the Comet get away with their scoop free of competition, then Tom Gilmour had someone up high pulling a lot of heavy strings for him.

  ‘It’s Lyn Cameron. Thirty-five, Gladstone Avenue.’

  ‘Okay, thanks. And, by the way, have you had anyone round from the press asking questions, taking pictures?’

  ‘Not as far as I know. The police arranged for a press conference at the station so as to keep as many people clear of the house. There could be photographers around in the street, I don’t know.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll be round later. Thanks for ringing with the news.’

  This time I beat her to it and got the receiver down fast.

  It was a long time since I made a call on a seventeen year old schoolgirl and I didn’t want to miss a minute of it.

  Gladstone Avenue was a street of detached houses that were a couple of leagues down from the Blake place, but still high enough on the social register to put them out of my class.

  Which was what Lyn Cameron was … out of class. Until I knocked on the door and she answered it, it hadn’t occurred to me that she shouldn’t be there at all. Should probably be off in some stuffy schoolroom somewhere going over the finer points of some poet or other. Then why had I just got in the damn car and driven round?

  Who knows? But there had to be some occasions when my instincts worked correctly.

  ‘Hello,’ I said, ‘my name’s Scott Mitchell. I’m a detective working on Cathy’s disappearance. I understand she’s a friend of yours.’

  The girl didn’t move out of the way to let me in. She was a well-built seventeen and although upl
ift bras were out of style that didn’t seem to bother her any. Perhaps she wasn’t fashion conscious. She wasn’t silly, either.

  She said, ‘Shouldn’t you show me a warrant card or something?’

  I reached for my wallet. ‘It’s not a warrant card because I’m not the police. I’m a private detective.’

  I gave her one of my cards, suddenly conscious of how very ordinary it looked. I’d have to give Su Venner a ring after all.

  The girl looked at the card and handed it back to me.

  ‘That doesn’t prove anything, does it?’ she said. ‘Anyone could have one of those printed for next to nothing.’

  I sighed. ‘You could phone West End Central police station. They’ll check me out.’

  ‘But they’d only tell me a Scott Mitchell existed. That still might not be you. You could have knocked him out and stolen his wallet.’

  I grinned at the thought. ‘I might have knocked him out, but I wouldn’t be so stupid as to waste my time stealing his wallet.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘I’ll risk it. Besides, a bit of excitement wouldn’t be a bad thing.’

  I followed her through the hall and into a small room that was obviously her own.

  ‘Do you think that’s what your friend Cathy thought?’ I asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That she could do with some extra excitement.’

  Lyn wrinkled up her nose for a moment. ‘I don’t know. Anything was possible with Cathy.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Just that I’d known her for a long time and yet I hadn’t. Does that make sense?’

  I thought that it made sense all right and I told her so. I sat down on a wooden chair and she sat on the bed. On the wall behind her there was a large colour poster of Elvis Presley, looking slightly paunchy in a white suit flashed with blue embroidery. He was trying to look mean and evil, but to my eyes he only succeeded in looking comfortable and cuddly. I wondered what he looked like to Lyn’s eyes.

  On the table beside my chair there was Allen Harbinson’s photo biography of the singer; pinned to the wall was a badge that was a replica of one of his early records—a single on the yellow Sun label called ‘Good Rockin’ Tonight’.

  In those days, yes; today, I wasn’t sure.

  I could ask her what she saw in him, but there probably wouldn’t be a coherent answer. People were attracted to other people for the strangest of reasons and mostly they couldn’t be explained. There didn’t seem to be rhyme or reason.

  Someone had liked me once and I’d never been able to believe that until it was too late.

  I wondered who Cathy had liked.

  ‘Did you know enough about her to know what she thought about boys, men?’

  ‘Not really. I mean, she didn’t agree with me about Elvis,’ she laughed. It was a good laugh, open and without affectation: I hoped that nothing would happen which would make her lose it.

  ‘But she must have talked about men she did fancy? There must have been boys she saw?’

  ‘The only boys Cathy saw were strictly at a distance. Her uncle saw to that. He seemed to think she should have been a nun or something. There was time enough for her to see boys when she’d finished at school, he said.’

  ‘Weren’t there any boys at school?’

  Lyn shook her head. ‘Sorry. Strictly private, fee-paying and single-sexed. Even the gardener’s a woman … of sorts.’ She laughed again.

  ‘How about on the way there or going home?’

  ‘No way. That uncle of her’s had her taken there and back by taxi. If he could have sent her into the loo with someone to watch her I think he would have done.’

  ‘So she accepted all this, did she?’

  Lyn’s face lit up. ‘Did she? She hated it! But she was waiting until school was over and she got away to university. Then she was going to cut loose and break every law and taboo that existed. She was really going to throw over the traces and spit in her dear uncle’s face with a vengeance.’

  ‘Why didn’t she just leave home before that? Lots of girls do.’

  Lyn gazed past me at the wall. ‘Cathy couldn’t do that. She liked her comforts too much. She liked money. Her uncle may have kept her away from boys, but other than that he’d let her have anything she wanted. Cathy wasn’t going to let go of that in a hurry.’

  ‘What about when she got to university?’

  ‘She had that covered as well. He was letting her have some kind of endowment when she was eighteen.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Twenty thousand pounds.’

  I sat back and let out a long, low whistle. That was a large amount: large and interesting.

  I asked, ‘She didn’t say anything about the money that evening?’

  ‘Sorry. We spent all of the time going over school work. That and my usual efforts to get her to listen to some of my Elvis. But she couldn’t take it at all.’ She smiled. ‘I’m not being much use to you am I?’

  I wasn’t sure how useful she was being, but there were a whole new brand of ideas fighting for space in my head. That twenty thousand could be a coincidence, but then again …

  I took out a card again and gave it to her.

  ‘Hang on to this. If anything does occur to you, give me a call. Okay?’

  I got up and she showed me towards the door. I was on the outside step when she remembered.

  ‘She did say something once, about a man she found attractive. He was one of the drivers who took her to school and back. But then he was switched round for someone else. Maybe he got another job altogether, I don’t know. Anyway, she didn’t say anything about him after that.’

  ‘How long ago was this?’

  ‘Oh, some time. Cathy would have been fifteen. It was towards the end of the summer term and her birthday was in October.’

  ‘You don’t remember the man’s name?’

  She laughed. ‘How could I forget?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It was Burton. James Burton.’

  I looked confused.

  She explained: ‘He was the guitarist on a whole batch of Elvis records. There was no way I was going to forget him!’

  Was Cathy, I wondered?

  ‘Thanks, Lyn, you’ve been great … and keep laughing.’

  I walked away down the path and for the first time in a long while I felt as though I was starting to make a little sense out of things. I just hoped I wasn’t deluding myself again.

  The office of the taxi company was in a side road close to Tufnell Park underground station. The sign over the door was blinking off and on accidentally, as though contemplating whether or not to short out altogether.

  I pushed open the door and found myself in a scruffy little room with black seats pushed back against the walls. The plastic coverings had been torn and pulled from the cushions in a number of places and bits of tatty foam were poking through. On and around a low, long table a large number of empty plastic cups were stacked in piles or lying on their sides. There were cigarette ends everywhere, even some in the ashtrays. Magazines were strewn around over much of the floor and seating. The walls were adorned—if that’s the right word—by the kind of pin-ups that went out of date when pubic hair stopped being painted out.

  Whatever it looked like, it wasn’t the prosperous place I’d been expecting. I walked through the mess, trying not to disturb it with my big feet.

  Behind another door I found the cab controller. He was sitting in front of a blue telecommunications set-up. In front of his face was a microphone covered in blue plastic up to the grid at the top. His right hand held the mike stand, thumb poised above a red button.

  Alongside him, by his left hand, there was a small switchboard, with two phones on the table before it. He was talking into one of these.

  ‘Right. There�
��ll be a cab there in five minutes.’

  He put down the phone and spoke into his mike, his thumb holding the red button firmly down.

  ‘Any cab near Holloway Road?’

  ‘Seven.’

  ‘Say on, Seven.’

  ‘Turning down from Finsbury Park.’

  ‘There’s a Mr Turner waiting outside the old cinema on Holloway Road, by the pet shop. Got it?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Okay, Seven.’

  The thumb released the button. Another voice came through: ‘Four.’

  He pressed the button down, then sensed my presence. Looked round. Went down on the button twice quickly. The calling stopped.

  He swung round in his chair and looked up at me. A little guy of around forty-five. Sort of hunched-up by too many years over cab wheels and microphones.

  ‘What are you creeping around here for?’

  ‘I wasn’t creeping around. You were too busy to notice me.’

  ‘Yea. And I’m too fucking busy to waste time. Outside!’

  He turned back to the set. I took a couple of quick paces towards him and pulled him round hard in the chair. I didn’t have much time to waste either.

  ‘What the … !’

  ‘Shut it!’

  My voice cut across him and he did as he was told. Till he tried to push himself away from me and reach down into the deep drawer alongside where he was sitting. That was naughty.

  I told him so with a punch to the head which sent him off the chair and down on to the floor. He didn’t look as though he liked that very much.

  I opened the drawer and took out an old-fashioned car jack. I picked him up off the floor and pulled him towards me so that I could see the frightened look that jumped in his eyes. I rested the edge of the jack alongside his face.

  ‘Now you don’t want to get too close to this nasty looking bit of iron, do you?’

  He didn’t say anything, but he shook his head quickly from side to side.

  ‘Good boy. Now, tell me about a driver called Burton. Jimmy Burton.’

  His expression didn’t change. There was no obvious sign of recognition.