Dirty Weekend

by Alan Scholefield

That had finished Leo as far as his school friends were concerned and it had made him briefly hate, then be embarrassed by, his parents.

  Suddenly, he found their Austrian accents ludicrous, and their habit of arguing in front of strangers shaming. He hated the way his mother called his father Manfy. He hated the fact that his father was a kind of semi-Bohemian instead of being a doctor or a lawyer.

  It was a bad period for him.

  And it was during this period that he took some money. He liked to use the word ‘took’ but steal was more correct.

  He had taken it to use as a bribe. He had seen Rosenberg stuff it in his anorak pocket then take his anorak off to play soccer. He took a total of five pounds. He’d bought chocolate and Cokes and dispensed them to his group in a desperate effort to buy friendship. The police had been called and Leo had been taken to the headmaster’s room to be interviewed by a detective from the local station. He’d confessed instantly, there seemed little point in denying it.

  The detective had written it all down and then closed his notebook with a snap and said, ‘You’re Jewish. My mother’s Jewish. That makes me half Jewish. And I’m going to tell you something, sonny. Jews don’t steal.’ He’d gone to the headmaster and suggested he drop the case, which he had. Then he’d seen Silver once more. ‘Don’t forget what I said, sonny. And God help you if you ever do anything like it again.’

  He never had and he had never forgotten.

  That was the first part of the equation.

  The second was a combination of things, but mainly his parents’ lifestyle. To their eccentric ways was added the hazard of always being on the point of bankruptcy.

  ‘We’re poor Jews,’ his father often said, cheerfully. ‘That makes us special.’ Being an artist he despised the commercial life.

  So, it was not unnatural, when Leo left university and found that his degree meant nothing and that he was just one more in a total of three million unemployed, that he should want a job and security. Only the police were recruiting.

  His family had been against his joining from the start, especially his father and Ruth. She was just qualifying then and thought the Metropolitan Police were a bunch of corrupt thieves and robbers. It was the fact that they didn’t want him to join that made it even more imperative.

  Now, it all seemed a long time ago.

  He reached Foster’s apartment block. There was no porter or carpeted foyer, just an entrance hall with a couple of lifts. A constable was still on duty outside Foster’s door. He looked bored and tired and Silver chatted with him for a few moments then went into the flat by himself.

  It was an odd feeling, he thought, going into someone else’s home, being among someone else’s possessions when the owner wasn’t there. In the grey morning light, the apartment was sombre and filled with muted tones. His first impression of neatness and order was intensified.

  Forensic had been over the apartment and found nothing except the usual smudge of prints. The only clear ones belonged to Foster himself.

  He looked at the desk. He’d been through the drawers and found nothing unexpected. But still he felt there was something, an aura, an atmosphere that wasn’t right.

  He went into the bedroom. That’s what it was precisely, a bedroom. Again, the overwhelming sense of neatness. But, as Macrae had said, you don’t murder a man because he’s neat.

  He opened the wardrobe and looked at the clothes. The shoes, all in shoe trees, stood in neat rows. They’d be like that in the Sussex house too, he thought.

  A sudden picture of Foster in bed with his wife came into his mind. He thought of how restrained and cool their sex must have been in producing their two sons.

  He went into the bathroom. This was the one room that seemed to have been remodelled recently, for it had an opulent look about it. The overall colour was rose, magnified and multiplied a hundred times by the mirror tiles around the bath. The bath itself was bigger than most.

  He poked about in the bathroom cupboards. Nothing heinous there. Towels hung neatly on the rail. A shower bracket high up on the wall, but the shower itself had been removed, probably because the trailing pipe made it look untidy.

  He ambled back into the kitchen. It looked as though it might have come from a catalogue. He pressed the foot pedal of the rubbish container under the sink. It was empty and a new plastic bin liner had been put in place. He wondered if a cleaner had been in just before Foster had left. She might have been the last one to see Foster alive. He made a note to check.

  Back in the living-room he stared at the row of tapes all marked, ‘Name of programme: Focus.’ Then the times and dates.

  He had a strong desire to get to know the man whose corpse had been found at Hungerford Bridge. He switched on the video and TV set. The little green light on the video lit up to show there was a tape in it. Part had already run through so he reversed it and pressed play.

  There were one or two ads and then the single word Focus. He switched up the sound as Henry Foster’s head and shoulders replaced the title.

  ‘As everyone in London knows,’ Foster said to his early morning audience, ‘getting to work is becoming more and more difficult. Traffic jams and transport strikes are now everyday occurrences. A recent study states that cars are now moving at an average speed of eight miles an hour in Greater London – the same speed as horse-drawn carriages a hundred years ago. What can we do about it? I have with me in the studio Professor—’

  Silver ran the tape back and started at the beginning again. The face that spoke the words was solemn and serious and earnest. Foster was neatly dressed in a dark suit, tie and white shirt. He wore a pair of heavy horn-rimmed glasses and his hair was going grey at the temples. His voice was a rich baritone.

  Silver ran the tape several times, but Foster’s face was like the apartment, it gave nothing away. That was the point, he thought, there was not one tiny thing that was out of character. At least, not in Foster’s life – but there sure as hell was in his death.

  He locked up and took the stairs down to the yard at the back. There was no rubbish chute and the bins were lined up. There were eight apartments, so eight bins. But when he counted there were only seven. They were numbered. One, two, three, four, five, six, eight. Seven was missing. Foster’s apartment was number seven. He began to search and soon found it. It had become separated from the others, probably when the refuse collectors had returned it. Now it stood behind a staircase.

  He had, for a moment, felt the old adrenalin, but when he opened the bin he was disappointed. Here too all was as neat as a rubbish bin could be. The rubbish itself was in plastic liners. He poked through them turning over damp tea bags and brown banana skins. It was all just kitchen rubbish except for one which contained broken china – as though someone had dropped a tea-tray.

  He replaced the lid, walked to his car and set off to pick up Macrae. It hadn’t been much to get out of bed for.

  *

  London may have been dead on this cold Good Friday morning, but not Cannon Row police station. Easter, like Christmas, brought out the sadness in some and the violence in others, just as it brought out the goodness in many more. But the Met wasn’t concerned with goodness. In Central London there had been a dozen suicide attempts. Some had used razors, some ropes, one woman had set light to herself. There were several young coppers in Cannon Row now who were sick to the stomach at what they had seen.

  A dosser had died under the arches near Charing Cross; there had been several muggings in the South Bank complex; the window of a gift shop in the Vauxhall Bridge Road had been smashed and its contents looted. An elderly man who weighed nearly three hundred pounds had become stuck in his bath and had died of a heart attack as the police were breaking down his door; there had been several late-night and early-morning accidents and the result of one, bloodstained and shaking, was in the charge-room now, giving his account. And there had been four rapes, one in a churchyard off Piccadilly.

  But the big one was still Henry Foster.r />
  Macrae was with his boss, Detective Chief Superintendent Wilson. He showed no signs of the previous night’s drinking but his stomach was still reacting badly to the chilli sauce.

  ‘It’s beginning to hit the fan, George, and that’s a bloody fact,’ Wilson said, his eyes darting from one side of the room to the other. ‘And I’m in it up to here.’ He touched the top of his head. ‘The DI’s catching it from upstairs and he’s coming down on me and—’

  ‘You’re coming down on me.’

  ‘Of course I am. Specially after the TV stuff.’

  ‘What TV stuff?’

  ‘Didn’t you see her on the news last night?’

  ‘See who?’

  ‘His bloody wife, George. The one you and Silver went to interview. Christ, you never look at TV, never read the bloody papers! Listen, she said the police were dragging their feet. Said they’d have had someone by now if her husband hadn’t been black.’

  ‘Oh, Christ.’

  ‘She as bloody good as said you and Silver were a pair of racists who treated her like a piece of shit because she’d married a black.’

  ‘That’s a lie!’

  ‘You don’t have to convince me, George. I’m telling you what’s being said. And they don’t like it upstairs. I mean this guy isn’t some scrote pushing crack in Brixton, he was on the bloody box.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Well . . . I mean, what the hell’s going on, George? You say you’re looking for some little half-caste you think may have been responsible, well, where is he? Jesus, he’s running around London in a bright green hat and he’s bloody invisible!’

  ‘He’s gone to ground somewhere. We’ll winkle him out.’

  ‘You better.’

  ‘There’s an “or” in there somewhere, isn’t there?’

  Wilson paused. ‘You got a cigarette?’

  ‘Only these.’ He gave Wilson a thin panatella.

  ‘There’s no “or” in it. Well, yes, I suppose there is. This is high profile, George. You’re under the microscope.’

  ‘I told you they can stuff promotion.’

  ‘I know you did. But people change. Even you, George. Even the Great Thief-taker. Money, George, money. It makes the world go round. And, speaking of which, there was a new duty sergeant yesterday afternoon. He logged six calls from Mandy. You’ve got to do something about her.’

  Macrae went to his office and closed the door carefully behind him. There was a pile of messages on his desk. He stood with his hands behind him staring from the dusty window at nothing. There was a knock at the door. ‘Give me a few minutes, Harry,’ he called.

  But it wasn’t Sergeant Laker. ‘It’s me,’ Silver said.

  ‘What is it?’

  Ever since Silver had picked up Macrae that morning he had kept his mouth shut and his eyes down.

  ‘There’s been another sighting.’

  ‘Is that all!’

  ‘This one sounds right. Guy who works in Kensington Gardens. Says he saw a coloured boy, light-skinned, wearing a green knitted hat – beret he called it – on Wednesday around dusk. Said the boy was running like he was an athlete. Trainers. Track suit. That sort of thing.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I got his address. He’s not working today.’

  ‘OK. I want to make a couple of calls.’

  He waited for Silver to leave the office and then he dialled.

  ‘Norman?’ Macrae said, when the phone was answered.

  A man’s voice said, ‘No, sweetie, it’s not Norman.’

  ‘Who’s that? Lionel? It’s George Macrae here.’

  ‘You’re an early bird,’ Lionel said. ‘I’ll get him.’

  While George waited he visualised the flat off Baker Street. He’d been there many times.

  Norman wasn’t your usual crime correspondent. The days of the Hollywood old sweats with their fedoras and their pencils behind their ears were long since gone. But even by today’s standards Norman was odd. They’d known each other for years. In fact, Norman Paston had once made a pass at George, the only male person in the entire world so to do.

  ‘Call me a queer, call me gay, call me a bender. Doesn’t bother me a bit,’ Norman had once said to him. ‘Just so long as you don’t call me straight.’

  He was tall, in his forties, and elegant in a 1950s kind of way. He wore charcoal grey suits which he bought at Harrods and had his shirts made in Jermyn Street. As far as Macrae knew he originally came from the sticks, somewhere in Suffolk where his father was a farm worker. He didn’t talk about his background.

  Macrae tolerated Paston, indeed liked him. And the same could be said for Norman. They often drank together, or had a meal. Paston had an encyclopaedic knowledge of crime, not only contemporary but also historical. He had excellent contacts and was respected both by the police and by his fellow journalists. If Norman Paston said something in print it was usually eighty per cent right.

  Once, and George had known him in those days, he had been married with two children. But for some reason George had never discovered, Paston had decided to come out and revert to what he really was.

  He had written several excellent books on recent murders and another in which his research had led to the release of an innocent man. He made a lot of money out of books and the Chronicle paid him a handsome salary which he could have doubled had he wanted to go to a rag.

  He and Lionel, a young bricklayer from the north of England, had lived in connubial bliss for several years.

  ‘Morning, George,’ Paston said. ‘I’ve been waiting for you. Just as well there’s no paper today.’

  ‘There’s nothing definite,’ Macrae said. ‘You know almost as much as we do, probably more.’

  ‘Remember our agreement, George.’

  ‘I’m remembering.’ It was said harshly.

  ‘Rough night?’

  ‘So, so.’

  ‘You should watch it. Age and all that.’

  ‘You can talk.’

  ‘Me? I was in bed by ten last night with a box of chocolates. Oh, and Lionel. And we watched Come Dancing. You should have seen some of the frocks, George. Just gorgeous.’

  ‘Yea, OK,’ Macrae said. It was all part of Paston’s spiel.

  Over the years they had formed a useful partnership. Macrae fed Paston titbits for the Chronicle and Paston passed on what information he had to Macrae.

  ‘I’ll fill you in when I’ve seen a couple of punters later today but I need some line on Foster’s private life here in London. I’ve been down to see his wife.’

  ‘Lucky you.’

  ‘You know her?’

  ‘We’ve got a man down there. And I saw her on the box when she slagged you lot off for being racist bastards.’

  ‘Yeah, well if you believe that you’ll believe anything.’

  ‘Sure. What d’you want to know?’

  ‘Well, was he playing around? That’s the big one. And, if he wasn’t, what the hell was he doing with his spare time? I mean he was up in town all week and he couldn’t be working on the programme every bloody minute.’

  ‘Hang on a sec.’ There was a pause and he heard papers being ruffled. ‘I’ve got a note here. There was a girl. A researcher on the programme. It’s just a whisper. Maybe nothing in it. I was going to check it out today.’

  ‘I’ll check it out for you.’

  ‘Got a pencil? Sheila Gant. Forty-three Lighter Lane. Twickenham. Just a whisper.’

  ‘Thanks, Norman. I’ll get back to you today.’

  ‘Do that. We’ve got a paper tomorrow.’

  Macrae rang off and dialled another number.

  ‘Linda?’

  ‘George? You sound—’

  ‘My throat’s a little rough. It’s the chilli sauce.’

  ‘I told you last night. God knows what it’s doing to your stomach.’

  She paused, waiting.

  Macrae cleared his throat. ‘I just wanted to say,’ he began and uncharacteristically felt tongue-tied
. ‘I’m just phoning to say I enjoyed last night.’

  ‘I should be doing that. I was the guest.’

  ‘Are you up?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Dressed?’

  ‘Not yet. Why? You’re not suddenly dropping in are you?’

  ‘Would you like me to?’

  He heard the clink of a spoon on a cup and felt suddenly embarrassed. ‘You having coffee?’

  ‘You haven’t been to this flat, George. I’m sitting in the bay window, looking out on trees and a pleasant street of terraced houses. It’s really very nice. And I’m having a coffee.’

  He felt an ache in his chest at the thought of her. Jesus, what a bloody fool he’d been.

  ‘I wish I could drop in. I’d like to sometime.’

  ‘That would be nice.’

  Her voice was cagey, but underneath it he thought he could detect a faint note of warmth.

  ‘Once this Foster thing is over.’

  ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘So, so. We’re getting there – I hope. Otherwise they’ll have my b— They’ll be down on me.’

  ‘You can say balls, George. I told you, I’m a big girl now.’

  ‘I’d like to come round and talk about Susan,’ he said.

  ‘Oh?’ Her voice suddenly hardened.

  ‘I want to do what’s best for her.’

  ‘I told you what’s best for her last night.’

  ‘That’s what I want to talk about. What we talked about last night.’

  ‘George, I don’t want you coming to tell me you don’t think it’s a good idea or anything like that. I’d rather you just stayed away from both of us.’

  ‘No, no. It’s not like that.’

  ‘Well . . . I don’t . . .’

  ‘I’ll work something out,’ he said. ‘But I’d like to talk to you about it.’

  ‘OK, if that’s what you want.’

  ‘I’ll ring you later today. Maybe tomorrow. This weekend may be good, if I can get rid of the Foster thing. I mean, if you’re not doing anything.’

  ‘I don’t know what I’m doing yet,’ she lied. ‘But give me a ring.’

  As he put down the receiver it rang instantly.

  ‘Macrae,’ he said.

  A woman’s voice said, ‘I meant what I said last night, George. You better have the cheque here by Monday or I’m going to start making problems for you.’