by John Harvey
After all, if you’ve got the kind of ethical grasp which enables you to go against a firm warning that printing a story might endanger a young girl’s life, then what price the so-called ethics about disclosing sources of information.
In that sense I thought that Ivor was probably like me. He played the game as it came and figured out the consequences afterwards.
‘So who was it, Ivor?’
‘Who?’
‘The informant. The mysterious caller. The break out of the blue which gave you the names and addresses which the cops were withholding and without which you had no printable story.’
He was just standing there and I could almost see the little wheels turning over inside his head, as the pros and cons of telling or keeping quiet were considered in detail.
‘Who was it, Ivor? Who wanted the story published and came to your paper because they knew it was the most likely to pull the kind of cheap stunt it did?’
He was still thinking it over. But I sensed that time was running out. Mine and maybe that of a lot of other people, too.
‘Come on, Ivor.’ I started to walk towards him. ‘All I want is a name.’
I was almost up to the curtains. The beard was looking decidedly droopy. I was going to get what I wanted. Only then did I query whether I did really want it; the confirmation of what I had been thinking for some time now.
But there was no going back: there never is.
‘I don’t know a name,’ he said. ‘But I can play you the tape of the call. It was put through from the office.’
I followed him back into his cubby hole underneath the stairs. It was as cute and cosy as a nesting box for a couple of hoopoes.
He handed me the headphones and searched along the shelves for the right cassette. I slipped the phones down over my ears and waited. There was a hiss of blank tape sliding over the head, a couple of mechanical clicks, then the voice.
Something very unpleasant hit me in my stomach and tried to force some of its contents up into my throat. It wasn’t a fist and it wasn’t a boot: just a tone, a nuance, a vocal gesture. It hadn’t even helped that it was what I had been half-expecting.
If you know you’re due to get into the ring with Ali and that there’s a better than even chance he’ll hammer all hell out of you, that doesn’t keep your body up off the canvas or stop your eyes from closing over.
I didn’t really want to keep listening to the end, but something made me do just that. There might be something else on the tape that I ought to know. But nothing more was given away. It had all been very precise, very professional, very business-like.
As I would have expected.
I took off the headphones slowly and handed them back to Ivor.
‘Is it someone you know?’ he asked.
‘That would be telling, Ivor,’
‘Come on, Mitchell, after what I’ve just done for you. That could cost me my job. At least give me a break in return.’
I came out of the little studio and stretched myself back to my proper height. No wonder Ivor’s growth had been stunted.
‘Sorry, Ivor,’ I said, ‘professional ethics you know. Never disclose anything which might prejudice a client.’
He followed me to the door. ‘Christ, Mitchell, you’re still as big a bastard as you ever were! You won’t ever change.’
I reached out and patted him on the head. Why not? I was prepared to be friendly. That was the kind of guy I was.
I had walked maybe half a mile before a cab came by with his sign lit up. The driver was a skinny guy in his early twenties, with long blond hair which ran down to his shoulders. He wore a green jacket and the fixed smile of a man who knows he’s already driven two hours too many and is trying to live with the fact that there’s still another two to go.
I gave him the address and sat back. I wondered if he was already on his way to another call and if that made me another of his mouldies. But instead of looking at the meter, I lay my head along the top of the seat and closed my eyes. I was tired.
I was tired of many things. Tired of getting a lot of crap from people who told me everything but the truth. Tired of having to peel away mask after mask and still not knowing when you were down to the real thing—until you had scratched your way through a layer or two of skin and your fingernails were stained with blood. Tired of having to slug my way from one situation to another, without ever really being sure of why I was doing it or even where I was going.
I was especially tired of people with too much money and too little sense whose blind stupidity got them into a maze of callous lies which they then used more money to try and get out of—by hiring me.
Scott Mitchell: shit-eating Theseus to the over-privileged!
There weren’t many others who could afford even my miserable fees. I felt like a guy with a sensitive nose who was forever doomed to spend his days and nights toiling in a sewage farm.
‘Well fuck them! Fuck the whole cruddy lot of them!’
I had opened my eyes and I saw the driver glance over his shoulder and give a sort of funny grin. I didn’t know if he’d heard what I’d said but it didn’t matter anyway.
I checked to see where we were, then closed my eyes again and tried to relax.
My years in the police force had taught me a lot of things. Most of them bad. But some useful … like getting into other people’s property with the minimum of difficulty and without disturbing the occupants.
Supposing there were any.
I flashed the torch at the bedroom door for a second and thought about it. The bed might be untouched, unoccupied; or it might contain a curled sleeping form. I didn’t think I wanted to know: yet.
There were things I wanted to check first. Like the photograph. It had to be here somewhere and I didn’t think it would be very hard to find. I guessed that whoever had taken it had not only wanted others not to see it; I guessed that they looked at it more than a little themselves. For whatever reasons.
I was right. It was in the centre drawer of the writing desk, and there was only a pad of paper on top of it. I stood and looked at it carefully in the light of the torch.
Cathy Skelton was sitting on an ornamental garden chair, all wrought iron and white paint. Behind her were fruit bushes, behind them, disappearing into the sunny distance, fields. She was wearing a white dress that was short enough to leave most of her legs uncovered as she sat astride the chair. She had good legs for a young girl and at their centre there was a patch of a different colour which could have been her pants but didn’t have to be.
She was looking straight into the camera and smiling. She looked happy: very happy. It looked to have been taken a few years ago. She could have been fourteen, probably not any more.
I flicked off the torch and I was disappointed though I hadn’t known what I thought I would find. But as it was, the photograph didn’t tell me all that I still needed to know.
I stood there in the dark and thought about the place and wondered where it was.
Then I thought about the smile and wondered why she was looking so happy.
I thought about who had been holding the camera and receiving the smile.
I thought for so long that suddenly I was no longer in the dark.
Someone had come silently into the room and switched on a light.
I turned round to look at her.
She was standing in the doorway wearing a green lawn nightshirt with a narrow white stripe. It might have been meant for a man but the way that green was doing things to her eyes, it looked even better on her. The light which shone from behind her kind of helped as well.
The outline of her legs was clear all the way up to where they joined the rest of her body and it was there that I was centring my attention.
For the moment.
I raised my eyes and took in the shape of her breasts as they s
welled out against the material, nipples already hardening for whatever reason, whatever excitement.
She had pulled her hair round so that it swung alongside her cheek on one side only.
She had a smile on her face and a neat little. 32 in her right hand.
She looked as if she could use it; would use it. Standing there like that she looked as though she could use anything … or anybody. And when she was done they’d come round and ask to be used again.
‘Why, Mr Mitchell,’ she said, the smile broadening, ‘I thought you were a burglar.’
I smiled back. Why not keep the party happy for as long as possible? ‘I am.’
‘I see. And what have you come to steal? Should I be afraid?’
‘That depends?’
‘What on?’
‘On what you’ve got that’s worth taking?’
She pouted and came a couple of steps towards me. But she didn’t lower the gun or move it away from the direction in which it was pointing.
‘Can’t you see anything you fancy?’ she asked.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I can see a lot of things. Things I expected to find and some that I didn’t.’
She had stopped walking and was staring at the photograph in my hand.
‘Don’t tell me you have a preference for little girls, too?’ she said.
I shook my head. ‘Not ordinarily. Not this little anyway. I prefer something a little more experienced.’
‘Well, now, Mr Mitchell, that’s what I’ve been waiting to hear you say ever since I first called you on the phone.’
I knew it was a lie, but she had started coming for me again and I didn’t care. I tried hard to keep my eyes on the gun, but other things kept distracting me: the dark triangle that was barely visible through the nightdress, the pressure of her nipples against the green material, the fire in her eyes.
Suddenly she was too close for me to be able to focus on anything and her arms were around my neck and I was kissing her and it was as good as I had always known it would be.
Her mouth opened and the warmth of her lips spread over mine; then her tongue was living in my mouth, living and darting, darting and flickering like some soft and swift creature that had just been given life. I could feel her breasts pressing against my chest and one of her legs slid itself between my own.
I felt myself stiffen against her and she responded by pushing even harder, against me. Her mouth moved from mine and found my ear. She alternately whispered and drove her tongue into it while my hands eased over her back and came to rest on her bottom. I pulled her into me and moved my head away so that her mouth came back on my own.
Then I kissed her hard and long and all the while I was trying not to notice the vein which thumped and thumped at the side of my head.
It wasn’t any use: not after a while.
I moved my left arm round and the fingers of that hand sought out her wrist; closed on it hard so that she would not be able to turn her nice little gun on me. When I had done that I stepped away. Stepped far enough away to be able to slap her.
I slapped her across her face with my hand outstretched, first with the back, then the front. The cracks sounded loud in the quiet of the room, in the quiet of the night.
There was no other sound: she didn’t cry out or shout or say a word. But the fire in her eyes changed. It still glowed, but with a different kind of heat.
My left hand increased its pressure and the gun fell to the floor.
‘You’re a bastard, Mitchell!’ She spoke as though her words were made of finely honed steel.
‘People keep on calling me that,’ I told her. ‘It’s enough to make my old man turn over in his grave.’
‘Don’t try and be funny,’ she said.
She needn’t have worried.
I pushed the picture at her and she averted her eyes. I took it in the fingers of my right hand and pulled it back, forcing her to look.
‘Don’t be shy,’ I said. ‘You must have looked at that enough before doing what you did.’
‘What was that?’
‘Phoning that paper and leaking the details so that they would print a story. So that whoever had taken Cathy would carry out his threat and kill her. That would have been perfect for you, wouldn’t it? She was the only thing in the way between you and Crosby Blake. I don’t know whether you wanted him for his money or because you loved him or both. But you wanted him, all right. That was why you stayed around for as long as you did. Always efficiently there, never quite sure why he didn’t make the passes at you that you anticipated. Never certain why it was that even when you made a point of leaving your bedroom door open nights you stayed at his house, he didn’t come calling. Until you realised that he might have been taking nightly trips in another direction.
‘That was more than you could take, wasn’t it. A woman like you being passed over for some silly kid. So you hung around thinking it was a crush that would wear off and it didn’t. Then when this happened you had the perfect opportunity to get rid of Cathy and be on hand to give Crosby Blake all of the consolation he was undoubtedly going to need.’
I stopped talking, looked at her. There was nothing more to say.
She wasn’t about to deny anything. Now that she no longer needed to use me, she probably thought I was beneath any contempt she might have to feel.
‘What do you intend to do with all this supposition, Mr Mitchell?’ she finally asked, as though daring me to give her an aggressive answer.
‘Nothing,’ I said, ‘if you tell me one thing I don’t know.’
Her eyes widened: ‘Don’t tell me there’s something you don’t know. You, the great detective.’
I ignored what she said and showed her the photograph again. ‘Where was this taken?’
She considered it for a couple of moments, then told me. ‘It’s a cottage in a village called North Creake, in Norfolk. Crosby has a weekend cottage there. When that was taken, he had taken her for a holiday.’ She pronounced the word ‘her’ as if she was saying something only just mentionable. Then she added, ‘Her mother didn’t go that time; it was just the two of them. No wonder the bitch looks so gormlessly happy.’
I still had hold of her left wrist. I let it go and moved back towards her. I let my head travel the short distance that was still between us and then I was kissing her again. She stood there like a statue, but somehow I didn’t seem to mind. As I moved my mouth over her’s I could taste the blood that ran down her lip from where I had slapped her.
Then it was enough. I walked past her, the photograph held tightly in my hand. I think I was trying to tell myself that it didn’t matter, but I couldn’t be clear even about that.
It was cold and I wasn’t going to be able to get a cab. I hunched up my shoulders again and listened to the sound of my own shoes on the wide pavement.
10
By the time I got home it wasn’t only my feet that were aching. All down my legs and through my arms ran some dull throb that I tried to shake but failed. My head was as thick as curdled vomit.
I didn’t know what had grabbed hold of me, but whatever it was I could have done without it. All that I wanted to do was curl up in front of the electric fire and sleep for a long, long time.
Instead I went into the bathroom and began to run a hot bath. Then I poured myself a large brandy; drank some; coughed; wiped my eyes clear; fumbled in the phone book.
The car hire office at the airport was open and after a lot of bad hassle they agreed to have a car driven round. I don’t know why they were worried; it sounded as though they were going to charge me plenty.
I put my feet up and sipped the brandy. After a while my eyes began to flicker and I couldn’t keep them open any longer.
The guy with the car banged on the door enough times to rouse all of the neighbours several times over before I came round and let him in
.
He told me that the last thing I looked fit for was a long drive so I agreed with him and phoned for a cab to take him back. When he had gone I made a flask of black coffee and walked out into the night.
There was a good chance I’d get there without putting the car into a ditch or driving it headlong at some poor jerk coming the other way. If I pulled into a lay-by every time I felt my eyes going and rested up for ten minutes, then I should make it. And by first light.
Apart from a scratch on the right mudguard and an argument with the woman in the all-night café about the contents of my bacon sandwich, I did okay.
It had been light for around half an hour when I drove along the only street that North Creake seemed to possess. Even then, they had to put something approaching a racing bend in the middle of it. But perhaps when all you were driving was sheep it didn’t matter.
The cottage was on the left hand side at the far end of the village. It had the normal stone faced walls and with its white paint on the window frames and the orange blinds behind them, everything seemed nice and cosy. The perfect country retreat.
Both doors were locked, but the back one was forced open without too much persuasion. It led into a kitchen with one of those wooden dressers along one wall and a pine table against the other. Directly opposite me was the door which led into the front room.
I swallowed hard, then pushed it open. A couch, some chairs, a lot of bottles and other knick-knacks, dried flowers in the fireplace. Nothing else.
I went up the wooden stairs and into the front bedroom.
The bed was an old-fashioned four-poster with brass ends and a white candlewick bedspread which reached down to the floor. The blind was down. I walked round the edge of the bed and let it up slowly.
Outside the rows of ploughed mud in the field were reflecting the early light from their edges. As I stood there the brightness grew until it formed a glistening spray. I closed my eyes and for an instant the inside of my head was lit by a memory: the edges of a girl’s hair as she bent across a lamp.
