by John Harvey
‘Cheers, Scott.’ She downed it in a single swallow. Her hand moved for the pack of cigarettes. My hand moved to cover it, stopping her. She pulled it clear.
‘I don’t need looking after like a child.’
‘Don’t you?’
‘No. Not by you, anyway.’
‘By Blagden.’
She allowed herself to show a trace of surprise. ‘You know him.’
‘I know him. He hired me.’
‘I don’t believe you. What would he hire you for? He’s got men of his own to do his dirty work.’
‘How do you know it was dirty?’
‘It would have to be. What is he supposed to have wanted you to do?’
‘Watch a flat, find out who was there. Help him get some people moved out.’
‘Which flat?’
‘The one you’d been living in.’
‘That’s ridiculous!’
‘I know. Now. I didn’t think so at the time.’
‘What happened?’
‘I got fed up with waiting around watching the same guy go in and out. I went to take a look for myself. Maybe that’s what Blagden figured I’d do. I don’t know.’
‘What did you find?’
‘A frightened guy sitting down drinking coffee. A girl who’d been beaten up and then given a lethal overdose … and your photograph.’
Anna didn’t like what I had told her. She showed it in her face, in the way her body seemed to close in on itself.
She began to talk, abstractedly: ‘Blagden let me have the flat when I was living in London, before I went down to Devon with George. I used to do … favours for him. He was good to me. When I went away he didn’t think I’d stick it out for long. He said I could keep the flat on, use it when I came up to town. He was certain I’d be back with my tail between my legs after less than a month. Well, I wasn’t. It was longer. It … but George must have told you all that.’
I nodded.
‘While I was away I let Trevor have a key. He didn’t have anywhere to stay. I’d known him for years. He was sweet, harmless …’ Her voice trailed away.
‘And the girl?’
‘I don’t know. Apart from the name that was in the paper; I saw that of course. It didn’t say how … what had happened to her.’
‘Does that make it different?’
She looked at me. ‘It might.’
I was about to ask her another question but she stood up. She needed to go to the Ladies. She flashed me another smile from the end of the table. It really was a pretty good smile.
It kept me in my seat for a minute longer than it should have done. She had gone out through a rear exit and she must have picked up a cab straight away.
I walked back and paid the bill.
9
I decided to look in on my office on the way home. It was still there. Feeling pretty pleased with that I carried on to the flat. All I wanted was to put my feet up and have a drink or two and remember that smile. And forget a few other things: until the morning.
Not much to ask, you might think.
When you want very little it seems you have the least chance of getting anything. Except trouble.
They were waiting on the other side of the road, parked underneath a streetlight. This time the car was marked so the visit was official. I wondered if Hankin had come himself.
I thought back to an earlier occasion. A figure who hadn’t wanted to step forwards into the light. Simply to watch. Even needed to watch. To feel the revenge for my words taken by fists and boots that he controlled as surely as his own.
The car doors opened as I walked across the patch of communal grass in front of the block. Three men: again. Hankin was definitely one of them this time. There was no disguising his size or the way he moved. On either side of him, two men in the regulation raincoats. They may have been the same two, they may not; such men are usually interchangeable. If they were the same, either their faces had healed up more quickly than mine or I was losing my touch.
Or they’d been issued with a shiny new lower-than-life mask each when they left the station.
I stood in the doorway and waited for them to arrive.
‘Good evening, Chief Inspector.’ I thought I would try to start things on a polite level, at least.
‘Mitchell.’
‘I hadn’t expected to have the pleasure again so soon.’
One of the others said something under his breath that I didn’t catch.
‘We’ve questions for you, Mitchell,’ said Hankin in his disinterested, blunt voice. ‘For your sake I hope you’ve got answers.’
‘Fine,’ I told him. ‘Where’s it to be? My place or yours?’
For an answer he pushed past me and walked on into the living room. One of the other two shut the door behind us all and looked as though he was prepared to stand guard. I followed the chief inspector into the room; the second man followed me.
I thought we might all sit down and have a nice little chat and later I could serve tea. But they had other ideas.
Hankin started his first question before I was over the threshold of the room … and he wasn’t asking for lemon and sugar.
‘Yesterday, Mitchell?’
I thought about it carefully, I didn’t want to make any mistakes.
‘It was Wednesday,’ I told him.
I must have been wrong. The guy behind me grabbed my arm and yanked it so far up behind my back that I thought it was coming off. I shouted out and lurched forwards to within under a foot of where Hankin was standing.
He looked at me with an expression of extreme distaste, like I was something the cat had left at the bottom of his bowl. I had this nagging feeling that by the end of the evening that was how I would be feeling.
‘Mitchell, you’re not a very bright man. When you try to be clever you only end up stumbling over your own inadequacies.’
So that’s what it was! In all these years I’d never noticed. I chanced a glance downwards. If I went along to my doctor he might give me a truss.
‘Are you listening, Mitchell?’
At that range it would have been hard not to, but he seemed to need convincing. I assured him that I was.
‘Right. Then let’s have some answers. Where were you yesterday afternoon?’
‘At the movies.’
He moved away. Far enough away to give his arm a chance to get a good swing. The same old routine. Back and forth across the face, that ring catching me hard both times. And I had been at the movies, at least for part of the time. If that’s what I got for telling the truth then I’d better really watch out when I started lying.
Which I was sure as hell about to do. There were several places I hadn’t been that afternoon and one of them was a grotty little street in the suburbs; the other was a flat in Camden Town.
‘I’ll ask you again, Mitchell. This time, think. Where were you yesterday afternoon?’
I didn’t want to do it but I had to. I gave him the same answer, flinching as I did so. This time I got it with the open hand first, then the knuckles. Anything for a change. The one behind me added an extra tweak for good measure.
That did it. I didn’t like him getting his kicks on somebody else’s time. I dug my elbow back into him hard and it must have caught him in between a couple of ribs. I felt the breath ooze out of him as he let go of my right arm. Which was just what I needed. Without that I would never have been able to get in my follow-up punch. I was aiming for the same spot I’d got a couple of seconds before and from the colour his face turned I must have come pretty close.
He staggered a few paces backwards looking like a bad heart case.
Hankin hadn’t interfered, except to call the guy at the door. He came running and that was nice and handy, too. It made it easier to dodge him when he grabbed for me because he was
off balance and I wasn’t. It also increased the impact of the knee that I stuck up into his crutch. He went down on to his knees and didn’t seem too keen on getting up.
I stood up straight and looked over at Hankin. He still hadn’t moved. I wasn’t too sure why.
He spoke from amongst the coughing and wheezing of his men. ‘Just what do you think you’re going to do now?’
‘I was thinking the same thing about you.’
The guy with the bad ribs made a move towards me, but Hankin waved him back. He didn’t like it, but he went.
‘They’re not as good as the last lot of heavies you sent after me. Recruitment must be a problem.’
He stared back at me as though he didn’t know what I was talking about.
I said, ‘How do you want to play it now?’
He said, ‘I want to ask you some questions.’
‘Okay. Only this time we’ll try it my way.’
‘Which means what?’
‘You ask the questions and I’ll answer as honestly as I can without prejudicing the interests of my clients. That’s all. No comments from those ham hands of yours and no interference from the hired help. How does that sound? Apart from extraordinarily straight.’
A lesser man might have lost his temper at that; smiled even at the cheek of it all.
Not this one. Not Hankin. He said, ‘You play it close to the edge, Mitchell.’
I knew he was right but in the kind of fix I was getting jammed further and further into what other way was there to play it? Like the song says, if you’re skating on thin ice then you might as well dance.
He lurched over towards one of my chairs; I found another one and sat across the room from him, staring into those tired, empty eyes. The one on guard duty shambled back to the outside door. He was still wincing slightly as he walked.
We were back in business.
‘Okay,’ Hankin began, ‘where … ?’
‘Save your breath,’ I told him, ‘I know that one by heart. I was at the movies. Berwick Street.’ I gave him the name of the film and the story; it wasn’t difficult to let my imagination play around with the implications of the bits that I had seen.
I still didn’t think he believed me, but he let it ride.
‘You mentioned clients, Mitchell. Like who?’
‘One’s a writer. George Anthony.’ From the look on Hankin’s face, he’d never heard of him either. ‘The other’s a property man, Hugh Blagden.’
I watched him closely. There wasn’t a flicker of the eye lids out of place, not a single shift of the face muscles. No sign of recognition at all.
‘And what are you supposed to be working on for these two clients, mythical or not?’
I told him, without giving him any more details than I needed. I wasn’t going to give him Anna Vaughan’s name, but in the end there didn’t seem any way round it. I wasn’t even sure of a positive reason as to why I shouldn’t.
‘This girl,’ he asked, ‘you have any luck with her?’
‘I found her once, then I lost her again.’
‘Sounds smart, Mitchell. Did you do all that before your visit to Camden Town or after?’
I gave him one of his own blank, looks back. He didn’t want it.
‘We know you were there, Mitchell.’
‘We?’
‘You were seen. On the way there and at the flat.’
‘The flat?’
‘Yes, you remember the flat, Mitchell. The one where Trevor Warren was killed.’
‘Trevor Warren?’
‘You know Trevor Warren, Mitchell, he was the fellow you claim to have spent days watching walking into and out of that first flat. You recall that one, don’t you? The one where you found the body of the dead girl.’
‘I remember that,’ I told him. ‘I just didn’t know … what was it, Warren? . . . was the guy’s name.’
‘You didn’t read it in the papers?’
‘Sure, but I didn’t see a picture. How was I supposed to know it was the same guy?’
He got up from the chair. I hoped that it wasn’t about to start all over again.
He stood in the middle of the room and looked down on me. I got the impression he felt better like that. It was more in keeping with his impression of the natural order of things.
‘Sorry, Mitchell,’ he finally said, ‘it was a natural mistake.’
I sat there waiting for the pay-off. I didn’t have to wait long.
‘I suppose I naturally thought that before you shot someone you got to know their name. Obviously I was wrong.’
Now this I didn’t like. Having tried to get me for one murder and not done too good a job of that so far, they were slinging a second one in my lap. That I could do without.
‘Who says I shot him?’
‘I do.’
‘And … ?’
‘And this.’
He made quite a business of taking it out of his pocket. Perhaps he wasn’t as lacking in interest in the whole affair as I had thought. There was something of the showman about him after all.
Perhaps he’d realised that it was time to pull something a little different.
Not that what he pulled was really very different at all: just the same old gun from the pocket trick. The same old Smith and Wesson .38. The same old Smith and Wesson .38 that another guy had been holding in his hand the other night; the one I had dived at; the one that had killed a frightened youngster with curly hair and an unusual line in borrowed overcoats. The same old Smith and Wesson .38 that had been hidden away in my office until someone’s prying eyes had found it and their prying fingers had taken it away.
What I didn’t understand was this: if it was one and the same gun, and I couldn’t see any point in Hankin waving it around if it wasn’t, then what the hell was he doing with it? There wasn’t time to figure that out now. Hankin was talking again.
‘Do you recognise it, Mitchell?’
‘I might,’ I said.
He offered it to me. It wasn’t loaded any longer. I looked at it more carefully than I needed.
‘Sure,’ I admitted. ‘I recognise it.’
‘You know what that little toy’s been up to lately?’
‘No, but I could make a pretty educated guess.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Well, from what you said before, I would guess it was the gun that fired the bullet, or bullets, into the man you’ve said was called Trevor Warren.’
‘You’re being very cagey, Mitchell.’
I handed the gun back to him. ‘Wouldn’t you be?’ I asked him.
But he wasn’t about to tell me.
‘I’m glad you found it,’ I told him. ‘Someone let themselves into my office and turned it over beautifully. It was the second time in quick succession—and much more thorough. The gun was well hidden. They found it all right.’
‘They?’
‘Whoever it was.’
‘You can prove it, of course?’
‘I can probably prove the place was broken into, I can’t prove that the gun was taken. Any more than you can prove I was standing with my finger on the trigger when Warren was shot. I’m certain the gun was taken then, but it wouldn’t stand up in a court of law. You may be just as certain that I fired that gun and murdered a man with it, but you haven’t got the proof to take me to court on it.’
‘What makes you say that?’ he asked.
‘You’re still not going to arrest me.’
He stood there with the gun in his hand. It looked small and insignificant in those large fingers. It wasn’t. He jerked his head at the man standing over by the window. The man moved. Slowly.
When he was out of the room, Hankin came up real close. ‘I’ve told you before. Mitchell, and I’ll tell you again. I’ve got you by the short and curlies and any tim
e I want to I can haul you in and slap the biggest charges on you possible. But there’s no hurry. If I let you bungle around for another day or so you’ll stir up so much shit you’ll think you’ve fallen head first into the sewage works.’
The face pressed itself even closer; again the faint but definite smell of brandy.
‘You will have, Mitchell. You will have.’
He walked on past me and after a moment I heard the, door slam shut. I walked to the window and watched through the glass as the car pulled away from the fight.
There were only two men in it.
I let the edge of the curtain fall back into place, walked to the door and ran both bolts across from the inside. Then I went into the kitchen and pulled a bottle of Southern Comfort out of the cupboard. It was new. It was always nice, when they were new. I twisted the top against the paper seal and when it broke I peeled it off and threw it into the bin. Then I unscrewed the top the rest of the way and put the end of the bottle to my nose.
It smelt good: rich, orangey. I reached down a glass from the shelf and went back into the other room.
I put a Stan Getz record on the stereo, poured a drink and put my feet up.
A lot of thoughts ran in and out of my brain and I sat there letting them play hide and seek and wondering who would be found out. Usually it wasn’t anyone.
I was worried about how he’d got hold of the gun. Assume he was telling the truth about it being the weapon that blew away Warren. Would the guy who did that walk into the nearest police station after using it and hand it in to lost property? I didn’t think so. Of course, there could be some very smart or lucky cops around and the gun could have been dumped and found. But why would a professional hitman do anything so silly with a murder weapon? Unless he wanted it to be found. Found and identified. As mine.
Which brought me to why it had been taken in the first place. And who had taken it. The cops hadn’t been good enough the first time, so why reckon they suddenly got a lot better? Someone else could have taken it, someone who wanted to set me up in a nice frame. An even nicer frame than the one that almost dropped round me the minute I went into that first flat by the back door.
The flat that Blagden set me on to.
Then there were the two guys who had taken such an interest in where I was going the other day. Who were they working for?
