by Jon Cleary
and tell me all this, Jack? Wasn’t she gunna split the money with you?”
“That was her original idea/’ Savanna confessed frankly. “But when I turned thumbs down on it, she said she’d bite you for the lot herself.”
Gibson’s eyes were still hard and bright. “Did it occur to you to put the bite on me yourself?”
Savanna wondered for a moment if Gibson would appreciate honesty. Then he decided against it: Gibson hadn’t got where he was by being honest. “It never entered my head. I’ve got my set of morals, too.”
Gibson grunted as if he found it impossible to believe that Savanna had any morals at all. But all he said was, “Just as well. You’d have been sat back on your arse before you knew what hit you.”
Savanna complimented himself on his good sense in not having been honest. “What are you going to do about Helga?”
“Where does she live?”
Savanna told him.
Gibson swung round in his chair, looked out the window. Savanna sat ignored, cut off from the old man by the high-backed chair. He wondered if he should get up and walk out of the office, then decided against it. Gibson wouldn’t let him go like that, and he was not going to get halfway to the door to be called back like some cattle dog. Because he knew he would come back if he were called, though he was not quite sure why. Where had the rebel gone that had once been himself?
“You didn’t tell me, Jack—” Gibson was still staring out the window, the back of his chair still turned to Savanna. “Why did you come and tell me all this?”
Savanna had been trying to find the answer to that all night. “I don’t quite know,” he confessed. He took out a cigarette, lit it as Gibson swung back in his chair. “I don’t think there’s any love lost between you and me, is there?”
“If there is, I’ve never missed it. They’ll ruin your health.”
Gibson waved away the smoke of the cigarette as it drifted towards him. He coughed, a reminder of the sixty a day that he himself had once smoked. “You didn’t come to me to spite this girl, did you?”
“I don’t think so. That might be part of it, but I’m not even sure of that. Do you remember the reason for every action, every major one, that you ever took?”
“I don’t remember them, no. But I know there was always a reason. I didn’t get here by accident.” He looked around the room without pride, just acceptance. “There were accidents of luck, but I knew enough to take advantage of them.”
“Well, all I know is, I’m not here by accident. I’m—”
“You’re what?” Gibson said as Savanna paused again.
“You’re not going to believe this. I don’t know that I believe it myself. But I might be here because of Josie.”
Gibson looked skeptical. “You’re right. I don’t believe it.”
Savanna shrugged, but persevered with his explanation, if only to explain it to himself. “Josie has a lot of respect for you. Some of what Glenda feels for you has rubbed off on her.” Gibson blinked, as if he had just been surprised. “You don’t believe that, either, do you?”
For the first time Gibson showed a weakness: “I’d like to. But that doesn’t explain why you’re concerned about me.”
“Only indirectly, Les. I think I might be here because I wouldn’t want Josie to be disappointed in you. If ever this came out into the open, it would knock Glenda for a loop. And that would hurt Josie. She’s had her disappointment in me. I wouldn’t want to see it piled on her.” He drew on his cigarette, blew out smoke, then shrugged again. “It’s not a very convincing reason for my being here. But it’s part of it.”
“What’s the other part?”
It’s a catharsis, an urge to be delivered of all the worries that have plagued me now for five years. Vve reached a stage where Vve become one huge aching boil and if I can open it up, even to you, everything will come out. It wont work, of
course, and the hope is stupid. And you wouldn’t believe what I’d say, anyway, because you’re too tight, too closed up against the world, ever to believe in the value of catharsis. But a man sometimes has to talk to someone, even an enemy.
But all he said was, “Maybe it’s just that I don’t believe in blackmail.”
Gibson sat silent, sucking on his thin lips. He was not afraid of what this girl Helga would do to him and he certainly wouldn’t give her any money. But he hated the thought that an outsider, an absolute stranger, could suddenly and without warning threaten his impregnability. He had arranged his empire against every emergency, against takeovers, economic depression, wars; he had believed till a few minutes ago that his only weakness was the vulnerability to disease of his own body. And now this girl, this harlot, was threatening him as if he were no stronger, no more unassailable, than this weak-kneed bastard of a brother-in-law sitting opposite him. She would have to be taught a lesson. And so would Bixby, the man who had opened the crack in the fort.
“Leave the girl to me. Just don’t tell her you’ve been to see me.
“Don’t hurt her, Les. I mean physically.”
“I don’t knock women around. Blokes like me, the ones who don’t have much time for women other than our wives, we’re usually the ones who treat ‘em best. It’s bastards like you, the playboys, who knock ‘em around.”
“You’re wrong there.” Savanna stood up. He was still not sure that he had done the right thing in coming to see Gibson, but he felt a curious relief, as if at last the boil was coming to a head of its own volition. “I’ve never hit a woman in my life. But if you hurt Helga, I’ll come back and belt the living daylights out of you. I’ll be bastard enough to take advantage of your smallness and your age. You might be the only man left I could belt. And I’d do it, don’t make any mistakes about it.”
Gibson stared up at the tall man opposite, thinking: twenty-five or thirty years ago he could probably have taken on a football team and done the lot of them. The army didn’t give him his medal because it liked the look of him; he must have done something courageous to get it. What happened to him? When did his particular cancer begin eating away at him?
“Do you love this girl, Jack?”
Savanna shook his head without hesitation: he loved Silver, but he wasn’t going to mention her name to Gibson. “Not at all. But I liked her. And that’s been something. She’s suddenly turned out to be a bitch, but I still wouldn’t want her hurt. Just see that she’s not, Les.”
Gibson continued to stare at Savanna. He’s weak and he’s buggered up his life, but maybe there’s a spark of decency somewhere in him. “All right, Jack. She won’t be hurt. But she’s gunna get the shit scared out of her.”
Savanna grinned. “Unlike Father Wrigley, she doesn’t like vulgarity. Watch your language in front of her, Les.”
Gibson had one of the moments of insight that had made him so successful in business. “I thought you might have a slap at him sooner or later. It sticks in your craw, doesn’t it, that I’m taking him to Europe with us?”
Savanna hesitated, then nodded. “There are better things you could do with your money.”
“Like helping you out of the hole your business is in?”
“Yes,” said Savanna, wondering how Gibson knew the state of Olympus’ finances.
It was Gibson’s turn to grin. “That would do me no good with Glenda. You should get on better with her, Jack. In the long run I only spend my money for her.”
Savanna was at the door. He turned and looked back at the wizened little man hunched like a baboon in the big leather chair. Then he smiled, a little sadly. “It’s a pity there’s
so much bastard in you, Les. There’s a spark of decency in you that you’ve never really given a chance.”
Gibson smiled inwardly, his expression not changing at all. That’s two sparks: between us we might have started a bush-fire of decency. “I don’t regret anything.”
“I don’t believe that.” Savanna waved at the books on the shelves. “What were you looking for there? A man doesn’t
read history unless he feels he’s missed something. What was it, Les?”
“I wasn’t looking for my character there, if that’s what you mean.”
“What then? Are they all just there for show, trying to give yourself an air of breeding?” Savanna shook his head, smiling without malice. “You’ll never be a gentleman, Les, no matter how many books you read, no matter how much education you give yourself.”
“I know that,” the old man said flatly. “I never wanted to be a gentleman. A long time ago, long before I had any money, I realized that having money didn’t make you a gentleman. I’m talking about the old definition of the word. There are very few of them here in this country, but there’s a bloody lot who like to think they’re gentlemen. It’s more than having money or education. It’s breeding, I suppose, and it’s got to go back a long way. There was an Englishman once said, Gentility is naught but ancient riches. The more I read of history, the more I realize he was right on the knocker when he said that. My money is too new for me ever to be a gentleman.”
Savanna looked at him with new interest. “Then the books-?”
“I’ve got a sense of history, Jack. You’re not gunna believe this—” he smiled as he tossed Savanna’s phrase back at him e —but I don’t like to think everything started and is gunna end with me.”
Savanna said nothing for a moment, then nodded. “Don’t
hurt Helga,” he said, abruptly opened the door and went out.
Gibson hunched himself more in his chair and chewed on his lips. A spark of decency that each had recognized in the other: Jesus, he thought, whatever went wrong? And felt an unfamiliar taste in his mouth, one that he did not recognize, the salt of regret.
Then he coughed, felt the pain in his chest and shivered. He sat up, reached for the phone. “Get me Phil Bixby. He’s one of the trawler captains.”
“Where do I find him, Mr. Gibson?”
“Frances, if I bloody knew where to get him, I wouldn’t be asking you.”
“Yes, Mr. Gibson. Mind your ear, I’m going to hang up.”
He put the phone back on its cradle and grinned. He might have fallen in love with Frances Kingsley if he had not met Glenda first.
3
Bixby arrived within the hour. He came lumbering into the office, dressed in slacks, blue sports jacket and bright orange shirt. There was no awkwardness or embarrassment about him; he had already guessed why the Old Man had sent for him. He looked around for the Old Man’s brother-in-law, but there was no sign of him. He went to sit down in the chair opposite Gibson, but his bottom didn’t reach it.
“I didn’t invite you to sit down,” Gibson snapped.
Bixby straightened up, his thick-featured face flushing. “Okay, Mr. Gibson. What can I do for you?”
Gibson never wasted time with his employees, especially ones he was about to sack. “You can stop picking up drugs on my boats, that’s the first thing. The second thing is, you’re drawing your time, you and all your crew. The third thing is, you’re gunna pay a visit to a girl named Helga Brand and warn her to keep her mouth shut. If she doesn’t keep it shut,
you’re gunna have the demons down on you and you’ll go up for seven to ten years. The judges are getting pretty severe on bastards who bring in drugs. And you’ve already done time once. Second time up they’re always ready to give you the maximum.”
Bixby took a match out of his pocket and chewed on it. Then he looked at the chair beside him, looked back at Gibson, then sat down in the chair. He crossed one leg over the other, showing a length of bright orange sock to match the shirt, and sat back.
“If I ain’t working for you any more, Grafter, then I ain’t asking you whether I can sit down or not. If you brought me up here for a talk, then I’m gunna have it in comfort. I left school a long while ago, sport, and I’m too old for lectures. But first, let me get a few things straight. What’s this about me running drugs?”
“You pick ‘em up somewhere outside after they’ve been dropped and you bring ‘em in with the ordinary fish catch.”
“Who told you that? That poofter brother-in-law of yours?” Bixby laughed, a rumble in his chest more like an indigestion sound. He undid his jacket and the orange shirt stretched tight across the muscles of his broad chest. Though he was a heavy beer drinker, twenty years of trawler fishing had kept him from running to fat. He was a violent man, taking pride in his ability to frighten others, a bully who had recognized there was no other way of asserting himself and making his mark in a world that preferred to ignore him. But he was not an unintelligent bully and he knew he was not going to frighten this little old sonofabitch behind the big leather-topped desk. “You’d have a bit of trouble proving it, Grafter.”
“I don’t have to prove anything,” said Gibson, not offended by the nickname; there had been a time when he had taken pride in that. It hurt Glenda to hear him called the name; but she wasn’t going to be meeting this lout on the other side of the desk. “You’re not working for me any longer, so you won’t
be using my boat and it’ll be none of my business. But that still leaves the girl. If she starts talking, you’ll have the demons watching you. And they’ll get you sooner or later.”
Bixby chewed on his match. “You’ve become a sanctimonious old coot, haven’t you? I can remember a time when I was doing some smuggling for you.”
“Not drugs. I was bringing in gold then, and gold never hurt anyone. Anyhow, that’s all past now.”
“Yeah, you’ve made your pile, ain’t you?” Bixby snapped off the match in his teeth, leant forward and dropped the two chewed pieces into the ashtray on the desk. “What d’you want me to do with this piece?”
Gibson stared at the ashtray as if he might pick it up and hurl it at Bixby’s head. Then he looked up and said, “Tell her to keep her mouth shut. I don’t care how you do it, but don’t rough her up. If you scare her enough, she might take to the idea that she oughta go back to Europe. She’s a Hun. I’ll pay for her ticket.”
“Why would you do that, Grafter, if it ain’t none of your business?”
But Gibson had all the answers ready: “If you were picked up, they’d start investigating all my boats. That’d cost me money and it wouldn’t make the rest of the crews too happy.”
“How much do I get as a—” Bixby grinned “a golden handshake?”
Gibson picked up the ashtray, dropped the two pieces of match into the wastebasket beside his chair, then put the ashtray back on the desk well away from Bixby. “A month’s pay.”
“That ain’t much. I could tell ‘em a few yarns about the gold we used to bring in.”
“That was nearly twenty years ago. As you say, you’d have a bit of trouble proving it. Consider yourself lucky I was able to warn you. If the girl had gone to the demons about you—”
“Why would she do that? If she’s the piece who was with that feller Savanna, a blonde bit, she ain’t the public-spirited sort. I seen her kind around too much—they ain’t innarested in anyone ‘cept themselves. Did she come and try and put the bite on you?”
“I’ve never seen or heard from her,” said Gibson, and felt that odd little thrill that always came when he was able to win a point merely by telling the truth. So much of his life in business had been taken up with double-dealing, prevarication and outright lies that the truth had become a luxury to be appreciated. That was something else he had learned from his reading of history: only the liar knew the full value of truth. “She’s your concern, not mine. If you can persuade her to go back to Germany or anywhere she wants to go, I’ll pay her air fare, just to stop any interference with my boats. Economy class,” he added as an afterthought, not wanting to reward sin too extravagantly.
Bixby took out another match, chewed on it, then nodded. “Okay, you win. But I dunno how you do it, Grafter, you got me beat.”
“Do what?”
“Stay outa jail.”
Gibson permitted himself a confiding smile. “I’m careful and I don’t act
like a damned fool. See the girl, then phone me up what she’s gunna do. I’ll give you the fare in cash when you’re ready to buy the ticket for her. Just give me some warning so I can have the money.”
“Don’t you trust me?”
“Would you?” said Gibson.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Thursday, December 12
1
“Who do we go to see first?” asked Clements. “This bloke Savanna or old Grafter Gibson?”
“What have we got on Gibson so far? Just the photos of him and his wife. Nothing else.”
“Are you going to pass him up then?”
“We’ll get around to him. But Savanna looks the better bet. Just the one photo of him and his missus. But that gabby woman next door to Helga’s said she’d seen a handsome, grey-haired feller knocking on Helga’s door. Or rather, she said he had a key.” Malone picked up the photo, turned it round towards Clements. “He’s grey-haired and I think you might say he was handsome.”
“I never know what handsome is, not the way some women
see it. What else have we got on him? Personally, I’d rather try Gibson. I’d like to see how these millionaires live.”
“Russ, mate, you’re too frivolous-minded. Is that all you want to do as a copper-go around interviewing millionaires in luxury homes?”
Clements thought about it, then nodded. “Yeah, I think I’d settle for that.”
Malone shook his head. “A snob cop. I never thought I’d live to see the day. It’s these TV films, Burke’s Law and that.”
Clements took out a handkerchief, blew his nose. “Think I’m getting a summer cold or something.”
“It was that chilly atmosphere up at Helidon’s last night. It might be even worse at Grafter Gibsons.” Then he turned round as Inspector Fulmer came into the room. “We went to see Walter Helidon last night.”
“I know,” said Fulmer gravely, like a bishop who had just heard there had been heresy in his diocese. “The Commissioner has just been on the phone to find out what it’s all about. Seems Mr. Helidon called him this morning, wanting to know couldn’t you have gone to see him at his office instead of worrying his wife at home.”
