Friends in Low Places

by Simon Raven

  “And more recently?”

  “He survived,” said Lawrence.

  “Where is he now?”

  “In Venice. Or rather, getting out of it, I imagine, as fast as his bandy little legs will carry him. If they let him.”

  “They?”

  “For Christ’s sake. You’ve come to pick me up. Can’t we cut out all the crap about Holbrook? The wops will deal with him.”

  Fielding said nothing. Lawrence leant over the back of the bench and emitted a spurt of vomit. Then he turned again and said confidentially, “You know, I couldn’t believe it. No warning. Nothing on the grape-vine. And then to read about it, just like that, in an inside column of the evening paper.”

  Fielding still said nothing.

  “Salvadori arrested. And dozens more of them. After all this time. And so bloody silly. Beating up that nice little Greek gambler who never did anyone any harm. Sheer spite.”

  “Salvadori,” said Fielding, carefully groping his way, “is a big man. Too big for that, one would have thought.”

  “Salvadori never beat up anyone,” said Lawrence with the grave conviction of counsel for the defence. “It was Holbrook. Must have been - before he left Italy for this last trip here. He’s a mean bastard, Holbrook. I can just see it. He went to Lykiadopoulos to ask him what he wanted to know, and Lyki made some difficulty, and so Holbrook got impatient. That’d be it.”

  “He always seemed a very patient man to me.”

  “Yes, but mean. If there’s one thing he can’t stand it’s the sight of a happy man, and that little Lykiadopoulos was a happy man if ever I saw one. So then, when Lyki held out a bit, Holbrook got impatient, couldn’t resist it . . .”

  “It all seems highly conjectural.”

  “He was beaten to pieces, poor little sod. If that’s what you call conjectural. Acid used on him. Bloody near killed. And so then the wop police came in, and this and that and t’other, and the next thing is they’ve got back to Salvadori. After all this time.”

  “Tell me,” said Fielding. “If Holbrook gets out of Venice ahead of the police, where will he go?”

  “Dunno. Or do I? I hadn’t seen him in years, and no more had Penelope. Then, only a few weeks ago, I was told that someone was coming to England, and I must meet him and give him any help he wants, and it turns out to be Holbrook. The old bad penny. We saw quite a lot of him, me and Penelope, because she was curious about her ex. Took rather a fancy to him again - you know how it is after a long interval. So perhaps,” said Lawrence, his drunken logic rambling to its conclusion, “he’ll shack up with her. She’s been through a lot of men since him, so she might be ready for a second time round. And she’s a good liar, if people like you come poking their noses in.”

  “You think he’d come back to England?”

  “As safe as anywhere. He hasn’t committed any crimes here or nothing like that foul business with poor little Lyki-thing.”

  “Where do we find . . . Mrs. Jude Holbrook?”

  “Just round the corner. Victoria. Carlisle Mansions. What are you going to do about me?”

  “You can come too. Can you make it to Trafalgar Square?”

  “Get a taxi here.”

  “Taxis,” said Fielding sententiously, “may not pick up fares in the Royal Parks.”

  If, he thought in the taxi, Holbrook has managed to leave Italy, and if he is coming back to England, he’ll be here by now. Salvadori - whoever he may be, the boss presumably, the one Maisie’s so scared of - Salvadori must have been apprehended this morning, since it was announced in the evening paper. So if Holbrook has escaped what sounds, from Lawrence’s version of the news item, like a mass arrest, he must have left last night or early today.

  “Look,” he said to the slumped figure beside him: “when we’re there just ring on the bell and ask. I’ll keep out of sight.”

  “What are you going to do with me?”

  “That’s not for me to decide. But if you’re helpful . . .”

  “I get it. But I can’t promise anything. Jude may have done a Gauguin for all I know.”

  With a great effort Lawrence lurched forward to tap the glass behind the driver.

  “Just here ... on the right.”

  Lawrence, followed by Fielding, tottered through an entrance hall into a dignified lift, which carried them to the second floor. About thirty yards along a corridor, Lawrence stopped and thundered on a door. Fielding flattened himself against the wall.

  “Christ, you’re reeking,” said a shrewish voice.

  “Jude been here?”

  “Yes. But I didn’t ask him to stay and I’m not asking you. You lot can bloody well keep out of the way till the row’s over. I don’t know you, see?”

  “You had your share,” mumbled Lawrence.

  “The party’s over now. So we’ll all get quietly into our own little beds and go to sleep.”

  “Where’s Jude?”

  “He’s gone running to Mummy. And brother, is he in a nasty temper.”

  ‘'What’s he going to do now?”

  “Ask him yourself. I had enough to do keeping him out of here. Now git.”

  The door slammed and Lawrence got.

  “He’s gone to his mother,” Lawrence said as they went down in the lift.

  “Where’s that?”

  “I don’t know. But I know who will. His old partner, Donald Salinger.”

  “Jesus,” said Vanessa Salinger when Fielding rung up, “how in hell should I know?”

  “Perhaps your husband . . , .”

  “He’s in the Princess Margaret Rose Hospital for Gentle-folk,” she said in a prinking voice. “He thinks he’s got a duodenal. If you ask me, it was the champagne at a wedding we went to. Enough to burn a hole in a rhinoceros.”

  “Perhaps ... in his address book?”

  “You sound nice. Come round and we’ll see what we can find.”

  “I don’t look nice.”

  He rang off, then consulted the directory and dialled for the Princess Margaret Rose Hospital.

  “I’m Major Gray of Special Investigations,” he said, rather enjoying the role which Lawrence had thrust upon him. “Kindly find out from your patient, Mr. Donald Salinger, the address of the mother of his former partner, Mr. Jude Holbrook.”

  “Mr. Salinger cannot be disturbed at this time of night. He has a stomach condition.”

  “So have I, baby,” Fielding said. “Now get that address before I blow an ulcer.”

  Too strong a flavour of television? But no. The voice said it would see. After all, what could be more authoritative, in the television age, than the television idiom? Fielding wondered why more people hadn’t realised this. Would it work on head waiters? Or tax inspectors? What effect would it have on Tessie Buttock? Or Somerset Lloyd-James?

  “Mrs. Anthony J. Holbrook,” the voice said, “The Ferns, Peddars’ Way, Whitstable.”

  “Thanks, doll,” he said, feeling quite skittish with triumph.

  “Your friend’s gone,” said the taxi-driver when he came out of the telephone box.

  “We don’t need him any more.” Should he? Yes, surely this was the television way.

  “Drive to Whitstable,” he said.

  “Sweet bleeding Jesus, Guv. It’ll cost you at least a tenner.”

  “Then start earning it.”

  He sat back and lit a cheroot. For the first time in what seemed years it started to rain. Nice and cosy in here, he thought, still warmed by the wine he had drunk at dinner; and what’s a little rain to Major Gray of Special Investigations?

  But when, an hour and half later, he arrived in Whitstable, Fielding’s enthusiasm for the expedition had waned with the wine and he was bitterly regretting the expense. Peddars’ Way turned out to be a long cart track, or little better, and by the time the taxi reached The Ferns at the very end of it he was feeling both empty and sick. But here he was and he must see it through.

  “Wait,” he told the driver, “or 'I'll never get away again.�
��

  “Very true, Guv,” said the driver looking happily at the meter. He muttered something about adding 30 per cent for all journeys over five miles, but Fielding, gathering himself for a last effort, hardly heard. He went through the pouring rain to a low front door in a porch, could not see a light, could not find a bell, seized a knocker shaped like a lion’s head, and knocked as if to summon the dead.

  Almost immediately, a light went on and a sad, intelligent looking lady in a dressing-gown, her head surmounted by a neat bun, appeared at the door.

  “Mrs. Anthony J. Holbrook?”

  The bun bobbed assent.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you.”

  “I was only reading.”

  “Even so....” Come, come. Politeness to elderly ladies was no part of the new role. “My name’s. Major Gray.” He decided against specifying his branch. “I must see your son.”

  “He’s in bed.”

  “Nevertheless - ”

  “ - Please show me your credentials,” she said, calmly and sensibly, one hand on the door ready to swing it shut.

  Fielding produced his identity card again. Mrs. Holbrook examined it carefully and passed it back.

  “I don’t know much of these things, but as far as I can see it’s just an ordinary Army identity card. And I am reluctantly bound to observe that the photograph is one of a young man with regular features which bear no resemblance to your own.”

  Very slight Scottish accent, he noticed; with the tone, the logic, the attitude, not of a shrilly protective mother, but of an intelligent man. Very well; treat her as such.

  “Mrs. Holbrook. I can’t make you admit me. But I should tell you that your son is in very bad trouble, and that it is probably in his interest, in so far as anything is, to hear what I have to say.”

  “Trouble?” said Mrs. Holbrook dispassionately.

  “Trouble. Don’t tell me you expected him here today. He’s on the run.”

  “His visits are always sudden.”

  “Whenever he wants something, I suppose. Just now he wants refuge.”

  “And you? What do you want?”

  “Simply to talk to him.”

  She looked at him quietly but sternly.

  “Very well,” she said, and drew aside to allow him to enter. “Please follow me.”

  She led him up a flight of stairs to a landing and knocked on a door.

  “Jude. Someone to see you.”

  She gave Fielding another stern look and went down the stairs. Fielding opened the door. He found himself in a narrow bedroom decorated as a night nursery. Holbrook, fully dressed, lay smoking on a white bed. Above his head was a picture of a small bright boy, who might have been himself at the age of five or, to judge from the modern style of clothes, his son.

  “I didn’t expect to see you,” Holbrook said. “You’re a long way from Buttock’s Hotel.”

  “The letter,” said Fielding. “Did you give it to someone in Venice or have you still got it?”

  “What’s that to you?”

  “Friends of mine . . . important friends . . . are anxious to know where it is.”

  “Indeed.” Thoughtfully, Holbrook picked a strip of skin from his thumb. “Well, I’ve no objection to their knowing. I've still got it, and as long as I'm left alone, no one will know what’s in it. I suppose that’s what they want?”

  “Can I see it? I hate to appear mistrustful, but I must be able to give them proper assurance.”

  “Surely.”

  Holbrook opened a door in the little white cupboard by his bed. He took out some large folded sheets of paper and a small bottle.

  “Now then,” Holbrook said. “You can look at that letter for as long as you think necessary in order to assure yourself and your friends that it is the genuine article. While you look at it, I shall be holding this bottle.” He unscrewed the stopper. “If you make the slightest suspicious movement, if you tear so much as half an inch of that paper, then you’ll get a face full of acid.” He gave the bottle a slight shake.

  “Fair enough.”

  Holbrook passed the letter.

  “Tell me,” said Fielding as he looked over the first sheet, “why didn’t you deliver it in Venice as planned?” Careful now. “To. . . . Salvadori?”

  Make time.

  “Salvadori was away, thank God. By the time he came back I knew there was something wrong. The police had been sniffing round ever since that little Greek was beaten up . . . .”

  Make more time. How to get out of here with the letter and without receiving quarter of a pint of acid in the face?

  “They tell me it was you that beat up the Greek. Not very prudent, surely?”

  “Necessary. He wouldn’t talk.”

  “Oh? I heard he was the sort of chap who’d be quite easy to persuade.”

  “He still wouldn’t talk. I think he was going to. Then he stopped and gabbled something about protecting someone. It turned out later, when the job was almost done, that he didn’t want to tell us about Lewson in case Lewson got hurt. He’d warned Lewson, when he gave him the letter, that sooner than get hurt himself he’d spill the beans right off, but when it came to the point . . . Funny man, Lykiadopoulos; sentimental.”

  Although none of this meant much to Fielding, it was providing him with time during which means of escape might occur to him.

  “But surely,” he said, “it wasn’t Lewson you took the letter from. It was Somerset Lloyd-James.”

  “Yes. But I’d never have got on to him if I hadn’t known about Lewson first. Lewson very nearly did get hurt - the Greek was right about that - but fortunately for him I found out that he no longer had the letter and what he’d done with it.”

  “How?”

  Time. Time.

  “Logic. A little luck. Lewson had been to see Lloyd-James and come away with a lot of money to spend. The answer wasn’t difficult.”

  “What would . . . Salvadori have done with the letter if things had gone according to plan?”

  TIME.

  “I think he was going to use it to procure certain unofficial trading concessions for his own line of goods. He had legitimate interests as well, you know. Small arms. A word or two from one of the mandarins into an ear at the War Office might have, been very helpful.”

  “But as it is ... I wonder,” said Fielding slowly, “that you left it so late to leave Venice. You knew Salvadori’s time was running out. Yours too.”

  “I had other business to finish up. I always know,” said Holbrook complacently, “just how long I’ve got. I’m the kind of man that always has a seat booked on the last train out. Have you finished with that letter?”

  A bottle of acid. In the face. The face. The face. Of course. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? Holbrook would very soon call the bluff, but even an extra second might make all the difference.

  “I’ve finished reading it,” he said “I think I can assure my friends that it is genuine.”

  He folded the letter with care and moved closer to Holbrook, who held up the bottle.

  “Careful,” Holbrook said.

  Fielding pointed to his face.

  “Plastic surgery,” he said, as he put the letter in his pocket. “I can’t get any uglier and I shan’t feel a thing.”

  Just for a moment Holbrook hesitated, and it was long enough.

  “So the bottle was safely on the floor,” Fielding told Peter Morrison in London two hours later, “and then there was a scuffle. He’d been well taught somewhere, but the dear old Army teaches you quite well too. Anyway, we hadn’t been at it long before his mother came in and dressed us down like a couple of kids. Holbrook may be a killer but it seems he has a great respect for his mother. He just couldn’t go on brawling while she was in the room. I fled ... and that was it.” Peter crammed his hands fiercely into his dressing-gown pockets.

  “Fielding,” he said: “let me see that letter.”

  “I thought that you were not prepared to be involved in this kind of thing
.”

  “If it comes to me . . . unsought . . .”

  Fielding laughed. He sounded as if he were whinnying. “I’m just an umpire,” he said. “Remember? At this stage in the game I must consult my colleague. As you know, both Detterling and he are staying with Lord Canteloupe in Wiltshire, and I propose to go there straight away. If you want to come too, you’re welcome. You might like to drive us and so save an impoverished ex-officer his train-fare.”

  He went to the window. His haste to see Stern and Detterling was prompted, as was this visit in the small hours to Morrison, less by a sense of expediency than by desire for congratulation. He was delighted and astounded by his own performance.

  “The weather’s broken,” he told Peter, “but it should be an interesting drive. We can discuss the old days . . . and consider how both our characters have deteriorated since.”

  “They’re not here,” said Canteloupe. “Detterling rang up last night to say they were going to stay in some place near the Quantocks.”

  “Oh,” said Fielding, heavy with fatigue and disappointment “Where?”

  “Didn’t say. But I suppose they’ll be back this evening. Spend the day here, if you like. There’ll be some lunch. Stay the night if it’s important.”

  Canteloupe, as always when action was in prospect, was in an expansive mood.

  “Better still,” he said. “Come with Weir and me. We’re going to the Quantocks to put my bloody caravan site to rights. Might run across Detterling and his chum. Good day out anyway. If only the rain lets up.”

  “That would be interesting,” said Peter. Other things being equal, he was always polite to men in office.

  “I’d like to come,” said Fielding; in his present mood, tired though he was, any activity was better than none.

  “So that’s settled. We’ll have a spot of breakfast first, and we’ll be at Westward Ho! by twelve.”

  “Right,” said Alfie to Tom. “We should get to Westward Ho! about twelve. I’ll have a quick look, and then we’ll have the rest of the day to hunt for the love birds. And that’s the end of it for Alfie. If we’ve found nothing by five this afternoon, I'm off to London. Understood?”

  “Understood.”

  “What’s on today?” said Stern. “Not that I mind. Anything to get out of this unspeakable hotel.”