by John Harvey
The shape came closer and a leg lifted then came down fast. I tried to roll out of its path, but the heel caught me on the hip and a searing pain went through the bone. He lifted the foot to try again.
I dived forwards for it and hung on. He swayed uncertainly for a couple of seconds before falling backwards with my arms still wrapped about his thigh.
Something hit me hard on the back of the neck, trying to knock me clear so I moved my hand up the short distance into his crotch. The fist was clenched fast and I put all the weight of my shoulder behind the blow. Both blows. He called me several very nasty names and the punches stopped pounding at my neck.
It was time to stand up. I did so by way of a hand in his face, my fingers searching for his eyes, thumb jabbing down at his mouth. This time he screamed rather than shouted and I kicked between his still spread legs.
Then I took hold of the lapels of his famous blue overcoat and lifted him to his feet. He sure was a heavy guy.
I had to punch him three or four more times before he fell on to the cobbles again and I could drag him back up.
Only he came up with his Walther stuck in the middle of his hand. I was close enough to chop down at the forearm and swivel my body to one side in case he fired off a shot. He didn’t. He didn’t drop the gun, either.
I hit down at the arm once more, but this time I held the wrist fast at the same moment. The pain jarred through me sharply enough, so I didn’t like to think what it did to him. But the gun did fall to the ground and bounce into a shallow pool of water. He reached down for it and my knee caught his body at an angle across his chest and drove him over to the wall.
He staggered back, arms flapping out in a vain effort to maintain his balance. He hit the wall and started to rebound back and downwards. I met him on the way and hoisted him up high enough to smash my fist into his face and enjoy the feel of his nose crunching up beneath my knuckles.
I grabbed his arm and the collar of his coat and spun him round, then threw him at the brick wall with all of my strength. This time there was no bouncing back. His face cuddled up to the harsh surface as though he wanted to go to sleep. But it was still too early for that.
I yanked one arm high behind his back and with my other hand I took a grip on the back of his neck.
There were things I had to say to Mr Billy Cole.
‘Listen, you big dope! You’ve been leaning on me for too long and too hard. You had your chance the other night when you came at me with a gun in your paw and there was nothing I could do about it. But you thought a good going-over would be enough to keep me quiet. Well, this is to show you that you were wrong. There’s only one way you could have kept me from getting to you and that was to press the trigger of that nice little gun of yours. And now it’s too late for that even, because when I’ve finished with you the cops are going to pick you up for what you did to Dave Jarrell and you’ll be inside for a nice long time.’
I pressed down with my right hand and moved his face over the brickwork, opening up the cuts that I had made in the playground.
‘If there’s one kind of bum I can’t stand, Billy, it’s the dumb heavy boys like you who think the world owes them a living just because they’ve got a few muscles and aren’t fussy how they use them. Well, I am. And I don’t like what I saw of Jarrell’s face. He may have been a fat poof as far as you were concerned, but whatever he was he was doing me a favour and I don’t like people who do me favours getting roughed over for it. So this is to let you know what it feels like. And when you look at yourself in the mirror next … when you can finally get your eyes open wide enough to see anything clearly, you’ll know what it looks like as well.’
He tried to push himself off the wall and swing round at me, but I simply hoisted his arm a little higher and his head automatically dropped down. I extended my right arm straight, keeping a firm grip on his neck. Then I folded the arm towards my chest, bringing his head back. I repeated the process half-a-dozen times, until it was like bashing a bundle of dirty washing against the wall instead of a man’s head.
I pulled him round and looked at him. In the darkness it was difficult to see the features of the face for blood and shreds of skin. I pulled at him and threw his body down into the middle of the alley. His face landed in the water, soiled tissue paper from the fruit boxes lying alongside his head.
Then I went over and picked up the gun. It was my night for emptying other people’s weapons. I stuffed the Walther back into his pocket and walked back into the street.
The tout was still calling out for custom for his strip show and from the noise that spilled out of the Club Internationale when I went past business was going on very much as usual.
I looked down at my knuckles in the light that changed colour and intensity above my head. They were raw and bleeding slightly from the punches that I had sent into his face. It had been a good job the wall had been there to do most of the really nasty work. I’d forgotten to bring my gloves. It was a long time since I’d worked anyone over that well and I’d forgotten the mechanics of the thing.
Maybe I should get in a little more practice. Maybe I should get back to what I was being paid for. Cathy Skelton still hadn’t been found … as far as I knew.
I went into a bar and bought myself a double Southern Comfort, then made my way to the phone.
Tom Gilmour said that they hadn’t turned up anything about the girl, but that now the supposed kidnapper had been found they were releasing as much to the media as they could in the hope that someone would have seen her recently and would come forward. He asked me if I had any ideas as to where she might be and I said that I didn’t, which was true. I might have had a few thoughts as to how I might find out, but for the time being I was going to keep those to myself.
‘Listen, Mitchell,’ he said, ‘do you think that guy is telling the truth when he says everything was the girl’s doing? The planning, the whole bit.’
‘Sure,’ I told him. ‘Don’t you?’
‘I guess so. But, Christ, she’s only seventeen.’
‘How old was that girl who threw herself past you off a building in New York? You don’t have to be old to make pretty big decisions. How old are your average terrorists? Girls with bombs in their bags and sub-machine guns for excess luggage.’
‘Shit!’ he said, then rang off.
I rang the Blake house and a woman answered. It was a moment or two before I realised that it was Mrs Skelton. She sounded quiet and I was sure that she had been crying.
‘Is Crosby there?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she replied, ‘he went out about an hour ago.’
‘And his secretary?’
‘She’s hardly been here all day. I think it was starting to get her down. She went home to rest.’
‘Where’s home?’
She told me and I wrote it down.
‘Mrs Skelton,’ I said, ‘you sound very upset. Has anything more happened.’
‘I don’t think so. Not since that poor man was caught.’
‘Poor man? You mean the kidnapper?’
‘Don’t, Mr Mitchell.’ Her voice was on the edge of tears once more. ‘Crosby told me what the man said about Cathy after he had spoken to the police. He told me all about the things Cathy had got that man to say and do … the things she had agreed to do for him …’
Her voice trailed off into nothing, to be replaced by quick, breathy sobbing. I waited until she had controlled herself enough to answer my next question. I thought that she might be able to answer it better than anyone.
‘Mrs Skelton. Your daughter, would she have been capable of doing all those things, of striking out against her uncle in that way?’
There was a silence. I didn’t think she was going to be able to say anything. I thought what I was asking of her was impossible.
But the voice came very slowly and with only the slightest of tr
emors. ‘Cathy used to love her uncle. She would go everywhere with him, do anything he asked. Until … I don’t know. Almost overnight it seemed, she changed to him. Not just to him. To me. To everyone. It was as though she had grown out of childhood and happiness and suddenly found herself in a different world which she didn’t like or want to like. And so she shut herself off from it.’
‘You’ve no idea what might have caused this change? What might have triggered it off?’
She thought and then said no, that she hadn’t.
‘And you’ve no idea where she might be hiding now?’
Again the time taken for consideration; again the negative reply.
I told her that she wasn’t to worry, that everything would be all right. It should have sounded fine. Should have sounded true. I don’t know what it came out like down at the other end of the phone, but inside my own head the words rang hollowly, like so many useless lies.
But why shouldn’t Cathy Skelton be all right? Who would harm her now? Who knew where she was?
I left the bar and thought about where I had parked my car. Then I remembered that somebody had borrowed it from near the cab office. I could always call the local station and see if it had been taken for joy-riding and left somewhere.
I didn’t. I hailed a passing cab and gave him Ivor Jacobs’ address. Now that the news had broken officially he might be back in circulation and receiving visitors.
9
‘And Spurs intercept that, the ball is up to Bobby Smith, Bobby Smith inside now to White, White back through to Smith, taking it right down along the line, across the goal, a header there—it’s in the net! It’s in the net!
‘That’s a beautiful goal by Dyson! They upset Smith, but that’s a beautiful goal. Smith lobbed that right across the whole defence, across to the left wing and there Bobby Smith, who made the first goal, pushed it into the back of the net, lobbed a beautiful centre over and Dyson went into it, eight feet up, son of Ginger Dyson the jockey, and he slashed that with his head into the net and now Spurs are two up.’
I moved easily across the hallway. The football commentary went on from the speaker attached to the wall at the bottom of the stairs. As I opened the door to the living room, the excitement began to fade from the man’s voice and the cheers of the crowd died away. But the game wasn’t over yet.
I put on the light and looked around. A lot of furniture, a couple of walls packed with books and tapes and records. On the side wall three large framed photographs: I walked over and read the inscriptions. For one of them it hadn’t been necessary. I knew Marilyn Monroe when I saw her. This one was titled ‘The Legend and the Truth.’ Black and white. Marilyn sits on a chair in the foreground; she is wearing a black slip, or it might be a dress. That much isn’t clear. What is clear is the expression in her eyes. They look wide and tired and hurt the way a child might … an animal, even. For too long she has been treated as either or both of those: child or animal.
The head is slightly raised and tilted to one side; the shoulders are rounded, slumping forwards. She has rested her hands on her knees and her legs are slightly apart. But there is nothing sensual in this. She is only trying for comfort.
Aren’t we all?
I stood back and looked at the other photos. Both men. A skinny footballer in a white shirt with a cockerel on the front; a man named Tommy Harmer. The other shows a man in left profile. His head leans backwards and his forehead is so high that it looks like a ski slope in winter. All that intelligence in one man! The slope of the head is repeated almost identically on the nose. He’s wearing those skinny wire frame glasses that were fashionable all over again a few years back. The thing I don’t like about him is the thin pursed lips. They make him look like some kind of puritan, some kind of religious nut. His name, apparently, is Gustav Mahler.
From the other side of the door, the sports commentator is still doing his best to keep up with the play and to convey what’s going on.
Myself, I’m not too sure.
I started trying the other rooms, upstairs and down. No Ivor. I was almost at the front door again, when I noticed a door under the stairs. I figured it was only a broom cupboard, but what the hell?
The handle was small and round and made of something that felt cool and smooth. It also opened the door easily.
Ivor Jacobs was inside. He was sitting on a stool with headphones on his ears and his hands were all over a glorified switchboard full of plugs and dials and a lot of other things I wasn’t too familiar with.
He obviously hadn’t heard me until I’d pulled open the door and he didn’t look too pleased at the intrusion. Which was too bad.
He pulled the phones from his ears and attempted a half-smile which only got a little way towards succeeding.
‘It’s Mitchell, isn’t it?’
‘You’re doing well, Ivor. For a newspaper man you’ve got a good memory. I want to test it a little more. Can you come out of there, or are you only paying rent on this bit of the house?’
He tried the smile again and reached out and turned a switch to the right. The voice behind me cut out abruptly in mid-word; the cheers and singing were suddenly no longer there.
Ivor got up and ducked his head to get out of the tiny studio he had had built into the cupboard.
‘I was just transferring some tape from reel to cassette,’ he explained. ‘It’s so much easier to store.’
‘What was it?’ I asked. I didn’t really care, but if he was prepared to be friendly then perhaps I could get what I wanted without having to turn nasty about it. And I was fed up with hitting people.
Especially, I didn’t want to hit Ivor, who was only around five foot six and looked as though a strong wind would play havoc with his navigation.
Ivor led me into the living room. ‘It’s the sixty-one Cup Final,’ he told me enthusiastically, his beard moving up and down as he spoke. ‘Spurs beat Leicester by two clear goals. It was the double side, you know. And they won the Cup in two consecutive years.’
I gave him a look that was meant to be a mixture of admiration and interest. I didn’t know whether it worked or not. Probably it didn’t matter. Like most enthusiasts, Ivor was keen enough to provide his own dynamism. He automatically assumed that everyone else would be as keen as he was.
‘You do a lot of recording, Ivor?’
‘Yes,’ he nodded, ‘as much as time allows. All kinds of things: music, talks, commentaries …’
‘Telephone conversations?’ I suggested.
‘Well, that … that depends on what you mean.’
‘I mean you have an attachment which enables you to record any incoming call. Either one that comes straight through to you here, or which is transferred from your office.’
Yes, sometimes it is useful to … to make certain recordings of important conversations …’
‘But until the call has begun you can’t know if it’s going to be important or not.’
‘What do you mean?’ He was starting to look flustered now and his eyes were searching the room as though looking for a way of escape.
‘I mean that you at least start to record every call that is put through to you. If it isn’t any use then you switch it off and later erase what was recorded. Right?’
He didn’t say anything, but I knew from his expression that I was working along the right lines.
‘Now, you can guess what I’m interested in, can’t you, Ivor?’
‘No. Well, not really. I don’t see what …’
‘There was a story in your rag the other morning.’
‘A story?’
‘A story, Ivor. Don’t get all coy with me! It was something none of the other papers carried, something there was a clamp down on. But you got something special, didn’t you? Something that you weren’t going to let slip if you could help it. So you got round your editor, who’ll do anything to
scrape up a few more readers, and got it all over the front page.’
He stared past me for a moment as though concentrating on the pictures on the wall. I wondered which one he was looking at and what kind of inspiration it was giving him.
He shifted uncomfortably in the seat and I thought that it was time to pile on some pressure so I stood up and reminded him of how much taller I was. Taller and heavier. Possibly he could even remember what it had felt like all those years ago at that nice polite party … I hoped he would remember. Then I wouldn’t have to do it again. My knuckles were still sore.
‘It was a good scoop,’ he said apologetically. ‘No newsman would pass that sort of thing up.’
‘Not even after what the police had warned might happen?’ My voice was getting steelier with every syllable and his eyes were growing wider with apprehension.
‘What warning was that?’
‘I’ve told you before not to be coy with me. The guy who snatched the girl said that if anything appeared in the press then she would be killed.’
‘No.’
‘Yes!’
I reached down and he pushed himself back into his chair. But not far enough. I lifted him to his feet and still had to bend down a long way to look into his eyes.
‘You knew damn well the risk you were taking, but you went ahead, regardless.’
‘I didn’t think it was that much of a risk.’
‘Not that much of a risk! Not for you. You weren’t the kid involved.’
‘You can never trust nutters like that. You know that as well as I do.’
‘Who says he’s a nutter?’
‘Aren’t they always?’
‘I don’t know. What’s a nutter anyway, Ivor? Some people would say that a grown man who spends his spare time listening to recordings of old football matches isn’t exactly sane and sensible.’
He ducked away from me and went over to the window. He stood in front of the brown curtains and looked at me. I couldn’t be certain what he was thinking, but I could guess that it wasn’t all that charitable. I did think he wanted me to go. Which was good. It meant that he might be more willing to tell me what I wanted to know.
