We stared at each other.
Then I thought, no, that’s stupid; I helped solve the case, but he had the satisfaction of arresting the killers and putting them away. He wasn’t serious. He was winding me up.
I studied him for a telltale sign: a glint in his eye, the slight widening of his firmly set lips, a subtle rise of an eyebrow; but he was good, as good as a cop should be. But I knew.
‘You nearly had me there. This is the plot of the novel you want to write. You’re funny. Okay. Fine. Got me, got me good.’
Nothing.
Nothing at all.
Just a steely look, and: ‘We believe Billy Randall is at the very least an accessory to murder. The problem, my friend, is that we can find nothing to link him to the actual murder scene. Which is more than we can say about you, and your DNA.’
‘That’s impossible,’ I said.
‘So’s your face,’ said Detective Inspector Robinson.
11
He didn’t arrest me.
That’s not how he works.
He puts information or misinformation out there and then watches and listens and sees how you deal with it, what you do once he’s gone, who you talk to, who you phone or e-mail, if you empty your bank account and head for the airport. And he did have my DNA on record. But there was no possibility that he’d found a match in Jimbo and Ronny’s house unless he’d planted it there himself.
Or unless Alison had.
I sat and thought about that for a while. Was she so bitter and twisted over my lack of interest in her baby that she would actually seek to implicate me in a murder? She was, after all, evil to the core, and a practising witch. I drummed my fingers on the counter. One night, while we were still together, we sat in her apartment and watched a DVD. She’d given me carte blanche to choose one and I’d rented Presumed Innocent, the Harrison Ford movie based on Scott Trurow’s book. It is one of those few adaptations that not only does an acclaimed book justice, but actually improves upon it. It’s about a bitter wife murdering her husband’s mistress and then framing him for it. Could I have been the unwitting architect of my own demise? Had Alison scooped up a handful of my DNA and hurled it around Jimbo and Ronny’s house before cold-bloodedly murdering them?
I needed more information. I surfed on to the Belfast Telegraph ’s website. The headline read: Christmas Horror. There were photographs of Jimbo and Ronny, arms around each other, cans of Harp beer in hand, at a party. They looked several years younger than in the pictures of them I’d forwarded to Billy Randall. There was no mention of Billy Randall, and, crucially, no reference to me or the No Alibis van or Alison. It said the murder scene was a bloodbath. They had been beaten with a blunt instrument.
I mixed up a pint of Vitolink. It was important to keep my levels high. I took my antipsychotic pills, and my bipolar pills, and my fibromyalgia pills. My antihistamines. My blood pressure pills. My cholesterol pills. My antidepressants. My hormones. Taken together, they would keep me going until lunchtime, when I would have to take my full list of medications. Alison has never really appreciated the fact that any one of my ailments could kill me at any time. She believes that I am something of a hypochondriac. She is wrong about most things. If my doctor was not prevented from doing so by the Hippocratic oath, he could tell her a thing or two about the condition of my bowels and liver and heart and blood and veins and head. He could tell her that I am just one of those people who has to live with life-threatening illness. He could tell her that he once prescribed me a placebo, which I turned out to be allergic to. Alison had no need to plant my DNA at a murder scene if she wanted revenge; she had no need to do anything. I was a dead man walking, or limping, already. I probably wouldn’t see New Year’s. I once asked my doctor straight out how long I had left, and he said, ‘How long is a piece of string?’
I rest my case.
The clue is in piece.
If he was meaning longevity, he would have said how long is a ball of string.
A piece of string is what a cat plays with.
I am also allergic to cats.
DI Robinson had accused me of being a low-rent hit man and then had the nerve to ask for a discount on a signed copy of Dave Goodis’ Dark Passage before he left. I refused the discount, but did knock thirty pence off because there was a slight tear in the cover.
Low-rent?
There was nothing low-rent about me.
Many’s the time Alison had said the very opposite, complimenting me by saying I was high-maintenance.
If I was any kind of a hit man, I was an expensive one, cool, calm and efficient.
I shouldn’t have said that last bit out loud, which I tend to do when I’m alone.
Walls have ears, and, sometimes, listening devices.
I spent an hour sweeping for bugs and dust mites. Thinking, thinking all the time. Dark thoughts. I hated being accused of things I hadn’t done. Why did everyone pick on me? I just tried to help people, but it almost always backfired. Why couldn’t they leave me alone? I should close down the detective business. And the store. I should go home and look after Mother and never go out except for milk. I stopped brushing, chilled by a sudden thought. The medication I was on occasionally caused blackouts. I don’t mean fainting, but periods where I just couldn’t remember what I’d done. What if I really had killed Jimbo and RonnyCrabs? What if I’d forgotten to take my anti psychotic medicine and become . . . psychotic? What if I’d gone round there late at night and beaten them to a pulp with my mallet? Maybe I was just being paranoid. Maybe I’d forgotten to take my anti paranoid medicine. Sometimes it is difficult to keep track. I take something to help me with that. I checked my pulse. It was racing. I took a couple of settlers. I made up another pint of Vitolink. It was barely lunchtime but it was almost black outside. There was hail. My doctor says I’m the first patient he’s had with Seasonal Affective Disorder who gets depressed by all four seasons. He says his nurse calls me Frankie Valli.
Breathe.
Breathe deeply.
Relax.
I tried yoga once, but got tendonitis.
Breathe.
Across the road, Alison’s jewellery store had reopened with a sale and was busy with customers. I knew she was there, but with the rain-streaked windows on both our shops it was difficult to get a proper look at her. However, I was pretty certain she was keeping an eye on me and nervously wondering why the police hadn’t dragged me away yet.
The phone rang.
‘Shows how much I know,’ a male voice said.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I was just saying to the plod here, shows how much I know. I said to myself, I’ve got one phone call; who am I gonna call? My lawyer, my wife, my mistress, my children, my accountant?’
‘I’m sorry, but who is this?’
‘And turns out I didn’t say it to myself, but I said it out loud, sometimes I do that, and the plod says that that’s not true, that you’re only allowed one call, it’s not the dark ages, you can have as many calls as you want as long as you’re not, like, ordering pizza or anything.’
‘I . . .’
‘So you’re not top of my list, I called my wife, I called my lawyer and now I’m calling you. Third isn’t too bad, bronze medal.’
‘Is it about a book?’
‘No. It’s me. Billy Randall. You heard what—’
‘Billy?’ My knees felt weak. They are weak, generally, I have a problem with my cruciate ligaments. Weaker. ‘Yes . . . yes . . . I heard . . .’
‘So we should have a chat.’
‘Yes. No. It’s not really any of my—’
‘They’re letting me out of here. We should go for a coffee.’
‘Yes. No. I’m kind of busy. If you send me an e-mail, I’m sure—’
‘There’s a Starbucks across the road from you; say I see you there at three?’
‘I . . .’
‘Looking forward to it. I could just murder a frappuccino. Or you could do it for me.’
&nbs
p; He laughed suddenly, then abruptly hung up.
I stood with the receiver in my hand, and my shirt stuck to my back.
I stared at the phone.
Billy Randall, having not yet settled his bill, was still theoretically my client. He and I were implicated in a double murder. He wanted to meet in my favourite coffee house. I didn’t like it, I didn’t like it one bit. I didn’t know what to do. I needed help. Advice. Another settler. I drained the Vitolink. There was nobody I could phone. Not DI Robinson, not Alison; the way my luck was running, even the Samaritans would rat me out. Nobody I could trust. Nobody I could lean on. Not one human being in the entire civilised world I could reach out to.
Then Jeff arrived.
12
‘Fucking hell,’ said Jeff, ‘fucking hell.’
‘Helpful,’ I said.
‘And did you, like, blank out and beat them to death with your mallet?’
‘No!’
‘Because the odd time you have blanked out in here you haven’t remembered what you’ve done.’
‘And did I kill anyone? You, for instance?’
‘Not exactly, no.’
‘Not exactly? What did I do?’
‘You rearranged the bookshelves.’
‘I rearranged the bookshelves.’
‘Yes. But the point is, you didn’t remember, then flew into a temper and accused me of doing it.’
As I recalled, they were rearranged out of sequence, i.e. they were normally alphabetical but someone had rearranged them into different categories of crime fiction – serial killers, cosies, pulp, golden age, etc. It’s an impractical way of displaying books; there are too many that belong in several categories. Yet Jeff was convinced I had done it.
Which was worrying.
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde would have been infinitely less interesting if Dr Jekyll had merely reclassified his medical texts rather than hacked people to death, but I would have settled for that. The import ant thing, I suppose, was that while there might be evidence that I blanked out from time to time, there was absolutely none that it ever led to violence.
Jeff reached under the counter and took out my mallet and meat cleaver and jackknife and claw hammer. I asked him what he was doing. He said he was checking for bloodstains and brain matter. I took them off him and replaced them, although checked myself as I did so.
‘What,’ I asked, ‘am I going to do about Billy Randall?’
‘Wear a wire.’
‘Wear a wire.’
‘In case he says something, not so much to incriminate himself, but something that might get you off the hook.’
‘But what if I say something that incriminates me?’
‘But you say you haven’t done anything.’
‘But I could say something that might be read in a different way to what I mean. Sometimes I—’
‘Slabber. Okay. But we’ll have the tape. We can just edit it out or lose it.’
‘Not if he’s wearing the wire.’
‘Aha.’
‘If they think he’s involved in these murders, then they’ve released him pretty damn quick. Maybe they’ve done a plea bargain with him, if he can get me to admit the murders on tape.’
‘That makes sense. God, you’ll be trying to get him to admit something and he’ll be trying to get you. It’ll be like a game of chess. Two criminal masterminds trying to outwit each other.’ He blinked at me. ‘Not that you’re a criminal mastermind.’
‘Okay. But where on earth would I get a wire? I need a tape recorder or a dictaphone.’
‘Use your mobile, there’s bound to be a recorder on it.’
I checked. It was old, but there was.
‘But what if as soon as I go in, he frisks me and finds the phone and sees that it’s recording.’
‘Keep it in your pants.’
‘He’ll be thinking the same, and be wearing his in his.’
‘You could, like, spill a drink over him. Short it out.’
‘Or you could go in first, hide it in the toilets. Then I let him frisk me, go to the toilet, pick up the phone, come back in.’
‘He’ll only frisk you again. Everyone knows that one. Maybe it’s out of your hands anyway. If Robinson thinks you’re both involved, then he’s already tapping your phone, so he knows about the meet. He’ll have the whole place wired, or someone at the next table.’
‘Not if you’re at the next table.’
‘Me?’
‘You sit there with a coffee, you take your mobile phone out, you pretend to be playing a game, but actually you’re recording what we’re saying.’
‘That might work. See, we’re a great team.’
I let that one pass.
I looked at the clock. I would have to remember to take my medication at the right time and in the right order. It wouldn’t do to doze off or be hyper during the meet. I had to be focused, alert, my radar working perfectly. I needed to speak clearly and succinctly rather than mumble and drool. I had to tell Billy that I knew nothing about the murders and didn’t want to be involved in his case in any way. Our brief business relationship was over. I’d completed my task and he needed to settle his account and leave me in peace.
Ten minutes before three, Alison arrived. I said, ‘I can’t talk to you now.’
‘Course you can,’ she said. She looked at Jeff. ‘Jeff, could you give us a minute?’
Jeff looked to me.
‘He’s fine where he is. We’re closing up for a little while.’
She looked from me to Jeff and back. ‘You never close up for a little while.’
‘Well we are. We have something to do.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Did I see DI Robinson over earlier?’
‘Possibly.’
‘When I say “did I see”, what I actually mean is, I saw him clear as day.’
‘So.’
‘Bit of a shock.’
‘What is?’
‘Jimbo and RonnyCrabs. Looks like I might have been the last person to see them alive.’
She was such a player. Of course she was the last person to see them. She killed them.
‘He says my DNA is all over the living room.’ She shook her head. ‘The nerve of the man. Of course it is! I just visited them! He thinks it’s still the good old bad old days, first fingerprint you find, you put them away for thirty years; trouble is, nobody else thinks that way, not the solicitors, not the judges, nobody but him. Didn’t he find yours too?’
‘Possibly.’
‘He tried that on me too, like he was Sherlock Holmes or something, trying to get me to rat you out. How come, he says, if you’re the only one who entered the house, how come your partner in crime . . . and he really said that . . . left his DNA there as well? And he gave me one of those looks like . . . ta-da! And it took me about ten seconds to work it out. I’m new to this game, but I’ll get better. I’m sure you had it in, like, three.’
I nodded.
‘Once I said it,’ she continued, ‘that fairly shut him up. You should have seen his face drop. I think it’s quite sweet that my comics had your DNA on them. You must have been missing me and licked them.’
Jeff snorted. ‘It’s the price stickers. Instead of paying for new ones, he’s using this job lot he’s had for years. Most of the stickiness is gone out of them, so he licks them down.’
‘It means I can afford idiots like you, Jeff.’
Jeff made a face. Alison laughed. She was still a witch, but maybe she hadn’t tried to incriminate me. Or she had, in a different way, and I just hadn’t found out about it yet.
I had to remain on my guard.
‘Anyway, now he’s off your back, I’ve something to show you.’ Alison pulled her handbag round from behind her and began to search through it. ‘It’s just . . . here . . .’
‘It’ll have to wait.’
I was already at the door.
‘Jeff,’ I said, ‘lock up and follow me over. We’re late already.’
/> As I hurried out, I caught, out of the corner of my eye, the briefest glimpse of what Alison was removing from her bag. A small black and white photograph with a blurry image on it.
A scan.
Or, as I preferred to think of it, entrapment.
13
Billy Randall had chosen a seat at the window upstairs in Starbucks, a part of heaven I rarely venture into because of my vertigo. It gave him a perfect view of Botanic Avenue and No Alibis. It was fortunate indeed that I’d left the shop ahead of Jeff, otherwise Billy would have seen us together and our carefully thought-out plan to tape the coming exchange would have been spoiled. As it was, he was not quite alone either. A bodyguard sat at the next table. He didn’t have a badge or anything, but there was no mistaking him. Cropped hair, steroids, black suit, earpiece and watching me like a hawk. Billy himself was wearing a crumpled black suit. No tie. His shirt was pink. He was unshaven yet smelt of Calvin Klein aftershave. I recognised it because one day I spent eight hours at the corner pharmacy familiarising myself with all the different brands they had on sale and now it had paid off in spades. I heard the pharmacist committed suicide a while back. Business can be tough.
Billy Randall didn’t stand, but he did offer me his hand. I hesitated. I don’t like shaking hands at the best of times, but I didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot. His fingers were damp and pudgy and I squeezed them with the enthusiasm of a vegetarian being forced to massage half a pound of pork sausages. There was a vague outline of a tattoo running across his knuckles: ‘LOVE’, it said. I glanced at his other hand. Those knuckles bore the legend: ‘HAT’. His little finger was missing. I couldn’t help but stare at it. Or not at it. At the space. The stump. And wonder what had happened. I wasn’t sure if it qualified him as disabled, or if it would have stopped him becoming a professional tennis player, or golfer, or mountain climber, but it certainly would have put a family of five finger puppets into mourning.
‘This is some fucking fuck-up, isn’t it?’ said Billy.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Here, I got you an espresso.’
The Day of the Jack Russell (Mystery Man) Page 6
