Evil Turn (Nathan Hawk Mystery)

by Watkinson, Douglas

  Caffè Nero was busy and Bewley was already there. I joined the queue and when my turn came the barista greeted me like an old friend as I ordered a chunk of carrot cake with a straight coffee. I hadn’t had anything to eat or drink for about eight hours. Mind you, I hadn’t had any alcohol for five days, but the fact that I was counting probably meant I could’ve murdered a double scotch, ice to the brim. I drove it out of my mind.

  Bewley stood up and cleared a space for my tray as I went over to her.

  “How’d it go this afternoon?” I asked.

  “Autopsy, cause-of-death stuff. The firearms bloke is sitting over there, under Kevin Bacon.” She nodded to a bespectacled man of fifty, dressed for court, reading a newspaper. “He’s really hacked off, has to come back tomorrow.”

  There were other court-looking people in the café, so I leaned towards her and spoke quietly.

  “Marion, did you tell Flaxman’s solicitor what you heard in my kitchen? That Liam Kinsella had checked out? And that I thought he wasn’t coming back?”

  “No.”

  “That I’d scared him off?”

  “I swear I didn’t...”

  I smiled. “I don’t believe you.”

  “I don’t care.”

  I glanced away at the prices board. The coffee I’d just bought was £3.50, the carrot cake £1.50. They’d both better be worth it, I thought, aware that I was allowing the economics of the situation to sidetrack me. Bewley was trying to do it as well.

  “How’s Fee, by the way?” she asked.

  “Do you care, or are you changing the subject? She’s good. The boyfriend she broke up with suddenly turned up on the doorstep. Peace and love were restored.”

  She nodded her approval. “Doctor Peterson?”

  “Knackered. A colleague in her practice ... breast cancer. She’s taken on her workload.”

  She breathed out through screwed-up lips. “It is an obscene disease. Aaron’s mother told me Sarah had a lump removed, earlier this year.” She reached out and tapped a wooden coaster. “The worry never leaves you...”

  I looked at her. “Sarah who?”

  She frowned. “Sarah Trent, Freddie’s widow. You were sitting right next to her in court this morning.”

  “Versace! Tell me she was only there to see her husband’s killer be tried.”

  “Quite the opposite. She was there because she and Aaron, well, you know...”

  “No, I don’t bloody know. What are they? Lovers?”

  “Oh, no, no, no! I mean I expect they are now, or would be, if he wasn’t on remand, but they weren’t at it while Freddie was alive.”

  “You’re working for the prosecution, for God’s sake, not the defence. So what were you doing talking to Aaron’s mother in the first place?”

  “Being polite. Are you going to eat that cake?”

  I pushed it across the table to her. It wasn’t me Carrie Flaxman had been gazing at in court; it was Sarah Trent. Her big sister, Emma, waitress aboard The Amethyst, the Fish Dock restaurant floating in all that treated sewage, had tried to keep me away from her.

  “Did she come back this afternoon?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Was she there yesterday, the day before?”

  “Not that I recall...”

  Was this girl clever or just stupid? Both, maybe. They often go hand in hand.

  “Marion, someone should tell you this and I’m as good a someone as any. You’re playing with fire.”

  “How so?”

  “I reckon you told Flaxman’s defence that Sarah was up in the gallery and they took it from there. Maybe you warned her off yourself.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  It wasn’t a place I could raise my voice in, so I settled for hissing. “Don’t play games! If Sillitoe can put Aaron and Sarah together in the same room, never mind a relationship, he’ll have motive...”

  “I swear I didn’t.”

  “And I still don’t believe you!”

  Not that it mattered to me if she was lying or truthing. In Sarah Trent I had a missing link. I’d been at her house, Freshney Terrace on Scartho Top. Her neighbour was feeding the tarantula; the husband had offered to drive Sarah to the new place.

  “Does Sillitoe think the trial will go all the way?”

  She shook her head. “No, but he’s playing it like Kinsella will show up on the day and spill his guts.”

  She checked a message on her phone and gasped, then jabbed a quick response.

  “Something wrong?”

  Her persona had changed completely. She’d arranged to meet her boyfriend outside the Tate at half four, she said. It was already way past! She gathered her things together. Like my mother used to, she asked me to check, even though she hadn’t put much down to begin with. Had she left anything, on the table or under it? I looked and told her it was clear. She thanked me and hurried away.

  I made two decisions after she’d gone, each of which had a profound effect on the next few weeks of my life. The first was not to tell anyone about a trip to Grimsby I was planning. Except Laura, of course. And Bill Grogan. And Fee, and thereby my other kids, to say nothing of Yukito. Christ, why didn’t I just post it on Facebook and include some photos?

  The second decision was to go for a pee.

  The gents’ toilet was down a wide flight of stairs that took me past black-and-white photos of Ian McKellen, Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro. The stairs bottomed out into another arrangement of tables and chairs, but there weren’t many customers down here, for a very good reason. The walls were painted dark red. It would’ve been like sitting in a giant blood cell.

  The gents’ was posh but anyone who was desperate for that pee needed full control of their bladder as they negotiated a heavy outer door, then a turn down a corridor, past other doors to cupboards, another turn and then the final door, again heavy, sealed at the edges. Inside there was grand porcelain, befitting a smart hotel. Lavish. Mirrors that didn’t tell the truth.

  When the peeing was done I stood at one of the sinks and ran the brass taps. The man looking back at me in the mirror was ten years younger than he felt. He was trying to tell me something, almost mouthing the words. You cannot save the world and you certainly can’t do it single-handedly. I avoided his eyes. Find the heroin? Maybe. Find Liam Kinsella? Possibly.

  I heard the outer door open and thud shut and a few seconds later the inner door open and break that slight vacuum. Someone entered. Then somebody else. In the mirror, by one of those tricks of reflection at the bevelled edge, I could see them multiplied, stretching away into infinity. Carew and Sweetman. I turned, straightened up, hands still wet, and went over to the dryer, not just to dry my hands, but in the vain hope that I could rip it off the wall and use it as a weapon if necessary. Nobody said a word over the hum of the hot air. When it stopped, Carew looked at me, that worm-like smile wriggling across his face.

  “They don’t make karseys like this anymore. You know what I like about it? No cameras. That would be the final assault on privacy, watching a man take a piss.”

  He took a few steps towards where I’d placed my rucksack. Without taking his eyes off me he picked it up and threw it to Sweetman.

  “You can’t say we didn’t give you a chance, Mr Hawk.”

  “To do what?”

  “To do nothing. Now we hear you’ve frightened off our only witness and that defence tart has ‘profound misgivings about our testimony’. Who gave her those, I wonder.”

  The dryer was bolted to the wall with a real purpose. Sweetman had my rucksack and had found the spray. He took it out and smirked. “You travel light. Not even that old Smith & Wesson.”

  “Yeah, next time I go for a piss I’ll take a Kalashnikov.”

  “Nah! Places like this you need something small you can reach quickly. Other than your cock.”

  To be fair to myself there wasn’t much I could’ve done, so I fell back on a well-worn last stand. “I’ll make a mess of one of you, count on it...�
��

  Carew laughed. “The old ones, always the best, eh?”

  Sweetman threw the rucksack aside and approached. I’d go for his face, I thought. Fingers in his eyes, pull down. I knew a bloke who taught women to do that in his self-defence classes. He had a percentage figure for how successful it was. I couldn’t remember it. What I could recall was Jaikie saying to me, over a year ago, that I should stop getting into fights I couldn’t win, and in Sweetman I was facing someone who knew exactly what he was doing. I reached for his face; he flicked open both my arms, jabbed me in the hollow of my throat. He grabbed me by my wrist, kicked away my leg and I keeled over.

  Lavatories like the one at Caffè Nero are bad places to fall in – urinals, porcelain basins, stone floors – and once I was down they resorted to old-fashioned bludgeoning. I rolled over, covered my head as best I could, took most of the kicks in my back and sides. Then Sweetman reached down, grabbed my collar and dragged me to the door. He opened it, put my head between the edge of it and the jamb and was about to slam it shut when he paused. He’d heard the outer door open, voices, at least three. He looked at Carew, who must’ve signalled a retreat. Sweetman went; Carew followed and at the door bent down to say, “They told us you were always a lucky bastard. Next time, eh?”

  He pulled the door open wide and left, allowing it to swing back and pincer my head. The leather jacket, up round my neck, went some way to cushioning the blow.

  I’ve occasionally considered what my last thoughts in this life will be and as that door swung towards me I had a preview of the real thing. I’d always imagined it would involve my children, my wife, some photographic moment catching us in memorable pose, at a table in heated debate, out on a beach somewhere, even at Maggie’s funeral, grief-stricken but solid as a rock. Not a bit of it. The last thing I saw and heard before I went unconscious was my father. He was standing over me, roll-up fag in hand, saying it was a bloody good job I’d never got round to buying a new coffee maker, I wouldn’t have got my money’s worth.

  I must’ve been unconscious for about five minutes and came round to find a young barrister type crouched down beside me, his face a blur, then sharp, then out of focus again. He and his companions hadn’t moved me; they’d simply wedged the door open with my rucksack and played everything by the first-aid book.

  I groaned, which translated meant I wasn’t dead, and he told me to lie still. The paramedics were on their way. He called to his companion, “Charlie, take over, I’m bursting.”

  Charlie kneeled down, readjusted my head minimally and we both heard his friend sigh with relief at one of the urinals. The third guy was evidently out on Newgate Street, waiting to flag down the paramedics. Distraction. The poor sod’s bladder must’ve been full to the brim, but it really was his problem, not mine. I tried to stand up. Charlie advised against it. I asked him where I was. People think that’s just a line from a film, but I’ve heard it twenty, maybe thirty times for real. First thing you need when you come round is bearings.

  “Caffè Nero, Newgate Street,” said Charlie. “You’ve been assaulted.”

  And only then did I remember what had happened. I made another effort to stand up. My head was already thumping, saying that tomorrow it would feel even worse. My guts, my sides, were freshly kicked, and in twelve hours’ time I wouldn’t be able to move them. Did that matter? Yes. I was heading off somewhere.

  “Grimsby,” I said to Charlie.

  He gave me a puzzled, ‘poor old sod’ look. “Take it easy.”

  The paramedics arrived and took over from the three barristers. Dressed for combat, reflective jackets with pockets everywhere, trousers you couldn’t wear out, boots you could kick a door down with, they stuck their dials and meters all over me. The readings said I was alive. I’d tried to tell them that myself. I finally got to my feet, against their wishes. I swayed for a moment as my balance adjusted and using the walls I staggered out into the blood cell and took a break in a passing chair. The conversation with the paramedics was bitty and broken.

  “We’re going to take you to a hospital,” the girl said.

  “You’ve broken a couple of ribs,” her colleague added.

  That was something else I could’ve told them. I was torn between playing along with their good intentions and heading for the stairs, up them and away. I tried to get to my feet and flopped back in the chair. Then the police arrived. I stood up and left. I made it to the entrance, and what puzzles me still is that while they were asking what had happened, how and who, they were helping me to leave. They should’ve held me back.

  Out in the street I hailed a taxi with a low wave. One of the coppers even opened the door for me and helped me in. He explained to the cabby roughly what had happened and, just because a copper was saying it, it was believable. If I’d been on my own, the guy would’ve driven straight past, and who could’ve blamed him? No cabby needs a beaten-up, legless drunk at six in the evening, drizzle in the air and the light fading.

  “Marylebone Station,” I said to the driver. “Easy round the corners.”

  - 24 -

  I knew the next few days would be difficult. In thirty years I’ve never made much fuss about getting kicked in, mainly because I’ve been reluctant to dwell on fights that I’ve lost. Obviously Laura and Fee deserved an explanation about my condition, but I wasn’t looking forward to the overdose of sympathy it would bring.

  When I reached Haddenham Station I called Laura and asked her to come and pick me up. It must’ve been my faltering voice that aroused her suspicions. Why a lift, she wanted to know. Had the Land Rover I’d driven off in that morning died? Exactly, I said. She didn’t believe me and went into action, telling me to wait. Wait as opposed to what, I wondered.

  Ten minutes later she drove into the circular pick-up point at the station and spotted me on a bench, face and head beginning to swell and discolour by then. I stood up slowly, ready to fend off her gushing concern. She looked at me clinically, then wearily, and said, “You’ve been in a fight, for God’s sake.”

  Back at Beech Tree, sympathy from Fee came in the shape of a direct attack.

  “Dad, what the bloody hell were you doing?”

  “I keep telling you, I was having a pee, these two blokes...”

  Tired of my evasiveness, she chopped her response into single words. “I know. What. You. Were. Doing! Who were they and why...?”

  I waved her aside. “I’m going to sit here in your grandfather’s rocker for the rest of the evening, like the old git I feel. Meantime, get off my back. Yukito, how are things?”

  “Things?” he asked, unsure of what I might be implying.

  Fee rattled off something to him in Japanese, then turned to me. “He’s fine.”

  “He can answer for himself,” I said.

  Yukito gazed at me, no doubt wondering if this was how things worked in our family: I would get into fights, my daughter would have a go at me, my doctor friend would be on hand to deal with any injuries.

  “Fee is right,” he said, quietly. “I am fine.”

  That meaningless word again.

  Laura stepped into the breach of silence. She’d been rummaging in her doctor’s bag for something and had finally found it.

  “Arnica,” she said. “It’s a homeopathic gel for bruises, the ones you’ll wake up with tomorrow.”

  “Quackery.”

  “Lift up your shirt.” She groaned impatiently at the expression on my face. “I want to see the damage to your ribs, then I’m taking you to A and E for an X-ray.”

  “No! They’ll try and keep me in overnight. Tomorrow, I’m going to Grimsby.”

  She paused in her examination of my chest and her eyes roamed my battered face.

  “To do what? Frighten the children?”

  We did go to A and E that evening and spent less time there than most people do on account of Laura knowing the doctor on duty. The X-ray revealed two cracked ribs, no broken ones. There’s no treatment, Laura and the doctor told each othe
r, just painkillers and rest. My ribs would be themselves again in two months.

  In spite of that favourable diagnosis, I did spend the next three days confined to barracks, not purely on medical advice, but due mainly to difficulty in moving. The muscles in my back and chest seemed to burst into flames every time I reached out, coughed, ate, drank, swallowed or spoke in more than a whisper.

  In a quiet moment one evening, when Fee had taken Yukito up to The Crown to get Annie McKinnon’s opinion of him, Laura said to me in her own sympathetic voice as opposed to her medical one, “Thank God for the call of nature, eh? They could’ve killed you if it hadn’t been for those three young men. It would’ve... you know...”

  We were in the living room at the time, watching some medical documentary, young doctors in Sierra Leone. She’d muted the adverts halfway through.

  “Upset you? I’m glad to hear it.”

  “What I mean is ... well ... love’s the nearest word. Don’t ask me why.”

  The last sentence was either an apology or self-defence. I wanted to say the feeling was mutual, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. She didn’t push me.

  “Liam Kinsella,” she whispered instead. Her face said she wanted me to pull out of the whole affair and concentrate on getting fit again, but her voice asked, “So, what next?”

  “Grimsby.”

  She winced and was about to protest.

  “I’m going to ask Bill Grogan to come with me,” I said. “And I’m taking the dog.”

  She was pleased about Grogan, puzzled by Dogge and asked me to explain.

  “She’s a drug squad reject, but that doesn’t mean she can’t sniff out a dragon when called upon to do so.”