‘Please,’ Mr Nayyar was crying as Sixsmith approached, ‘the fire is out, you are ruining my stock with all this water.’
‘Better safe than sorry,’ yelled one of the firemen.
Mr Nayyar looked ready to give him an argument. Then he spotted Sixsmith and a new anxiety flitted across his face.
He came towards him and said, ‘Mr Sixsmith, hello to you. Can you perhaps persuade these fellows to stop drenching my shop.’
‘What happened, Mr Nayyar?’ said Sixsmith, ducking the opportunity to test his natural authority.
‘Someone poured paraffin through the letter-box, then set it alight,’ said Mr Nayyar. ‘I had put the fire out with my own extinguisher by the time these people arrived, but they do not seem to want to listen to me.’
‘Did you see anyone outside?’ asked Sixsmith.
‘No. No one.’ Nayyar hesitated then went on, ‘Please, Mr Sixsmith, that trouble this morning. I would prefer you did not mention it to anyone. To make accusation without proof will just make things more of a problem for me.’
‘If that’s what you want, Mr Nayyar,’ said Sixsmith. ‘But I think you’re wrong.’
The shopkeeper shrugged, then, attracted by a crash from inside the store as the powerful waterjet brought something down, he rushed back to the firemen.
By now the police had arrived and were urging spectators to retreat with assurances that there was nothing to see. Presumably if there was something to see, they’d be selling tickets. Most of the hopeful onlookers looked like neighbours, curious, even concerned, but there was a group of kids with motorbikes obviously just having a good time. They were wearing True-Brits T-shirts. Among them Joe spotted the shoplifting couple he’d clashed with that morning. At the same time, the girl, Suzie, spotted him and pointed him out to her companion, Glen.
‘So it’s you again, Sherlock,’ said a voice. ‘Always popping up where there’s trouble, aren’t you?’
Joe sighed. It was Dean Forton, the fat young copper. Over his shoulder he saw the Brit couple, not wanting to see what came of his contact with the police, retreat into the dark.
He said, ‘I know Mr Nayyar. I just stopped to see if I could help.’
‘Is that right?’ said Forton sceptically. He’d probably read a Readers’ Digest article telling him that arsonists often turn up at their fires, offering help.’
‘That’s right. If I were you, I’d be more interested in talking to those bikers from Hermsprong.’
‘That’s your professional advice, is it?’ sneered Forton.
A voice from the Brits cried, ‘When’s the fire sale, then, Pakki?’ and there was a jeering laugh.
‘Of course, there are a lot of them,’ said Joe sympathetically.
Forton glowered at him, then turned and headed aggressively towards the youngsters.
‘And the best of British,’ said Joe, getting back into his car.
It was with great relief that he got home. It had been a long, long day, and in more ways than he could have forecast demanding. All he wanted was a mug of strong tea, then a long, long sleep and Whitey on his shoulder purred his agreement.
But when he saw the tell-tale marks round the lock on his door, his heart sank. You didn’t need to be a detective in these parts to know what they meant.
He’d been done over.
At least it had been by a pro. There was vast confusion but no deliberate fouling, though that was small consolation as he viewed the wasteland of tipped-out drawers and slashed upholstery. He went into the kitchen and found himself paddling in water. The doors of the fridge freezer hung open. It had needed defrosting for weeks and now it had got it.
At least that showed there was no urgency about calling for help, thought Sixsmith. Such a complete defrosting took at least a couple of hours so the sod who’d done it was long gone.
He felt quite pleased with his reasoning. This was real detection. He put the kettle on and went back into the living-room. Whitey had decided that the flat had been rearranged purely for his benefit and was curled up quite happily in the depths of the eviscerated sofa. Sixsmith would have given much for such a religious response to disaster, but, knackered though he was, he could not so philosophically accept the assault on his home. He owned nothing very valuable, but what he did own was precious to him.
And, curiously, it began to dawn on him as he looked around that in fact he continued to own most of it. The obvious targets for your modern hi-tec thief, like radio, tape-deck, VCR—were still here. As were the few things that might have appealed to your arty-farty connoisseur—the candle clock, the shell painting and the little soapstone menagerie, which were his heirlooms. He went into the bedroom. His genuine gold-plated cufflinks and cultured pearl tie-pin had been tipped out of the dressing-table drawer along with the cash card he didn’t use because he’d forgotten the PIN number and the two fivers he kept as a reserve against finding himself moneyless on a bank holiday.
What the hell was this guy looking for?
What kind of nut broke into a hard-up PI’s pad and started searching like he was expecting to find Imelda Marcos’s pension fund?
He went back into the living-room and found out.
‘Hello, Joe,’ said Mr Blue. ‘Who’s a dirty stop-out, then?’
‘Dirty stop-out, then?’ echoed Mr Grey who was working at his fingernails with implements from a manicure set. It was like cleaning a chain-saw with Brasso. Vanity was a cuckoo, it nested anywhere. But this was no time for such philosophical musings. This was time for complete cooperation between nations.
Sixsmith said, ‘Whatever you’re looking for, I don’t think I’ve got it, but if I have, it’s yours, no hassle, OK?’
‘Yeah, that sounds OK,’ said Blue. ‘What we want, Joe, is what that Indian slag left here last night. That’s all. Then we’ll be off.’
‘That Indian … oh, you mean Mrs Bannerjee? Listen, she left nothing. Honest. She came with her suitcase, true, but she never opened it. I mean, think about it, friend, if she had left anything, you’d have found it!’
He gestured at the surrounding chaos. It seemed to him a clinching argument, but neither Blue nor Grey looked persuaded.
‘What do you reckon?’ said Blue. ‘Kill the cat?’
‘Yeah,’ Grey said. ‘Kill the cat.’
Whether they meant Whitey or were talking hip, Sixsmith didn’t know. Either way, he didn’t doubt they were serious.
‘Listen,’ he pleaded. ‘There’s no need to get heavy. I want to help. Truly. Maybe if you just told me what it is you’re looking for …’
‘Jog your memory, you mean?’ said Blue.
‘Knock his black head off, that’ll jog his memory,’ said Grey in a sudden flood of verbosity.
‘That’s true,’ said Blue. ‘But give him a last chance, eh? All right, Joe. Here it is. Mr Bannerjee was contracted to bring a small present home with him, by way of a sample as it were. Scag. Couple of kilos. Pure. Only the useless article got himself picked up, didn’t he?’
Sixsmith looked at him aghast. Two kilos of pure heroin. Cut, and on the street, that must be worth hundreds of thousands. And this was a sample? These were truly very heavy people.
‘Surely Customs must have got it,’ he said.
‘That’s not what we hear, Joe. We hear they found nothing. But Mrs Bannerjee got let loose and she headed straight round here. That’s what set us wondering, Joe. Did Bannerjee have some clever fail-safe plan?’
‘No, listen, I don’t know anything about this. I never heard of the Bannerjees before last night …’
‘No? Just a coincidence, was it, that an old mate of yours was waiting to pick her up? Just the goodness of your heart that made you arrange a brief for her old man? No, we reckon there’s something naughty going on, Joe. But just you tell us where the stuff is and all will be forgiven, except maybe my oppo here will want to smack your bottie for you. But that’s better than your head, you’d better believe me.’
Sixsmith believe
d him. His mind was racing; well, not exactly racing; like his old Morris Oxford, you had to lean into the accelerator a long time before it picked up speed, but once it got some momentum going, there was plenty of weight there.
He had to think of something to get them out of the flat. Outside there might be a chance. In here, he was dead meat. He summoned up all his power of invention.
Then he realized he didn’t need to fall back on that desperate device.
He said, ‘Oh, shoot!’
‘Yeah?’
‘She did leave something. Not her, the kid, the boy. He left a toy bull.’
‘How big?’ demanded Blue.
Sixsmith made an outline with his hands. It was certainly big enough.
‘So where is it, this bull?’ demanded Grey, examining his fingernails critically as if in anticipation of pulling up floorboards.
‘It’s in my car,’ said Sixsmith.
‘You’d better not be pulling our plonkers, Joe,’ said Blue.
‘Do I look like I’m trying it on?’ said Sixsmith indignantly. There’s nothing a self-confessed coward hates more than being suspected of closet courage.
‘Maybe not. Right, let’s go.’
They ushered him out of the flat and into the lift. They saw no one else and it probably wouldn’t have done much good if they had. Even Major Sholto’s regime hadn’t yet persuaded most people that after midnight good neighbourliness went beyond not pissing in the lift in mixed company.
Outside Sixsmith led them across the draughty hinterland of the tower block into Lykers Lane where he parked the Morris Oxford. There were several cars there, but they knew his without being told. Blue went ahead and tried the door.
To Joe’s surprise, it opened.
‘Trusting sod, aren’t you?’ said the man. ‘All right, where’s this bull?’
‘In the back,’ said Sixsmith.
‘I can’t see it.’
Grey made a noise at the back of his throat which gave Sixsmith courage to shoulder Blue aside and climb into the car.
There was no sign of the bull on the rear seat.
He searched the floor, got down on his knees and looked under the seats. There was no bull.
‘Joe,’ said Blue warningly, ‘I’m starting to get bad feelings.’
‘It was here, I swear,’ said Sixsmith desperately. ‘Hang about. Maybe I put it in the boot.’
He went to the rear of the car and unlocked the boot. It was empty, but he cried triumphantly, ‘There it is!’ The two men craned their necks to see, and Sixsmith stepped back between them, spun round and set off running.
He realized his mistake at once. He was running towards the dead end of Lykers Yard. Here there was no escape route, only the fortified double doors of the lock-ups, high, smooth and unscaleable.
He glanced back. His explosive start had opened up a gap, but the terrible twins knew their geography and weren’t hurrying. He hesitated in the orange glow of the old sodium lamp which, suspended from a bracket high up on the angle of the last building on Lykers Lane, sent just enough light into the Yard to make the blackness of its corners look liquid. Once in there, he was completely out of touch with the world of lights and cars and people …
But there was someone in that darkness. His straining eyes glimpsed a movement, the figure of a man, raincoated, wearing a slouch hat, his hand up to the brim as if holding it on in a high wind … something familiar about him … but it didn’t matter who he was … it could be Old Nick himself, just now he was a better bet than Blue and Grey who were almost upon him …
Joe threw his head back and screamed, ‘Help!’
The figure paused, half turned, stepped back into the darkness, and vanished. He must have gone into one of the lockups. Not that it mattered.
Sixsmith had a strong suspicion that whoever it was, he wasn’t about to offer assistance.
But it isn’t only the devil’s ear that picks up human cries for help. Somewhere out there in the dark after-reaches of the Universe, the Divine Ear twitched, the Divine Mouth opened, the Divine Voice spoke.
What He said was, ‘Whee-whee-whee-whee.’
And He was saying it louder and louder.
Blue and Grey had stopped at the first note of the approaching siren.
‘Let it not fade,’ prayed Joe Sixsmith. ‘Let it not fade.’
And it didn’t. Nearer and nearer it came.
And Grey and Blue, realizing that the cul-de-sac which had been Sixsmith’s trap was now their own, turned and ran for the open end.
Sixsmith, exhilaratingly changed from prey to hunter, went in pursuit. As the lights of the police car swept into Lykers Lane, he saw Blue and Grey fling themselves into a doorway. The car shot by them. Sixsmith ran towards it, screaming, ‘You’ve passed them! There they are! Don’t let them get away!’
The car stopped. Two policemen got out and came towards him. He was now so out of breath with his exertions that he couldn’t express his gratitude.
But before he could embrace them to show how he felt, they did a funny thing. Or rather two not so funny things.
One kicked his legs from under him. The other knelt on his back and handcuffed his arms behind him.
‘No use running, Sixsmith,’ said the kicking cop. ‘There’s nowhere to go.’
He was wrong. There were plenty of places to go and from his worm’s eye viewpoint, Sixsmith could see Blue and Grey slipping round the corner in their haste to reach them.
‘Thought you’d give the car a bit of a spring clean, did you,’ said the cuffing cop, pulling him to his feet and pushing him towards the Morris Oxford which with its doors spread wide and its boot lid gaping stood like a dodo vainly hoping for flight.
‘What’s going on?’ gasped Sixsmith. ‘You can’t do this to me.’
‘Quite right, you’ve got your rights like the rest of us. Here’s what they are. Joseph Sixsmith, I’m arresting you. You don’t have to say anything but anything you do say will be taken down and may be used in evidence. Understand, do you, sunshine?’
‘Arresting me? On what charge?’
‘You name it, Joe? For starters, how about rape?’
Which knocked the breath out of him again.
CHAPTER 11
If anyone ever published The Wit and Wisdom of Joe Sixsmith, they could get away with a single sentence.
Doubts may sometimes drop you in it, but for guaranteed total immersion, you can’t beat certainties.
So convinced was he that Meg Merchison was the complainant that instead of exercising his right to say nothing, he started protesting, ‘This is crazy. She wanted it as much as me. More! If anyone got raped it was me. I couldn’t keep her off me, man. I tell you she was rampant!’
‘Changed her mind later, did she?’ said the kicking cop not unsympathetically. ‘It happens. Without a witness and an affidavit, it’s hard to be safe these days.’
He was still protesting his innocence when they took his clothes from him, but at least by then he’d had the sense to ring Butcher at home. She was ex-directory but in a moment of weakness had let him have her number.
‘Jesus, Sixsmith, is someone paying you to stop me from sleeping?’ she sighed.
Sixsmith, who thought he detected another voice in the background, said nastily, ‘No, it sounds like you’re paying someone else to do that.’
A weary doctor came and examined him, then, clad only in a scratchy blanket, he was dumped in an interview room.
After a while the door opened and Dildo Doberley came in.
‘What the hell are you playing at, Joe?’ he said.
‘Red Indians,’ said Sixsmith, pulling the blanket closer round his shoulders. ‘What’s it look like?’
‘It looks like you’re in deep dog shit,’ said Dildo. ‘Time of the month for you, is it? Lots of mentions in despatches for you today, Joe. Annoying a girl in Dartle Street. Then chatting up a jogger at the university—she took your car number. Acting suspiciously at the scene of a fire …’
‘Come off it, Dildo. All that lot got sorted out,’ protested Sixsmith.
‘That’s true,’ agreed Doberley, looking at his sheet of paper. ‘Explanations noted in each case. Plausible too. Pity you ran out of plausible explanations in this last one.’
‘I tell you, she said yes.’
‘So you did penetrate?’
‘Penetrate?’ exclaimed Sixsmith. ‘Hey, man, she took me in so deep, I thought I was going to come out of the other side.’
Sexual boasting was not his bag, but if it helped him get off this ludicrous rape charge, he’d brag like a soldier back off leave.
‘Then, willing or not, you’re snookered, Joe. She’s only fifteen.’
‘Fifteen?’ He thought of Meg Merchison’s mature charms and began to laugh. ‘You must be joking … or she must be joking … I mean, you have seen her, have you?’
‘Oh yes, I’ve seen her. Fifteen’s pushing it, I’d say. Looks more like twelve to me. We’ll know exactly when we track her mother down.’
Before he could react to this new lunacy, the door opened, and a constable was half way through announcing that the prisoner’s brief was here when Butcher shouldered him aside.
‘What’s going on here?’ she demanded.
‘A legal interrogation,’ said Dildo indignantly. ‘I must ask that—’
‘Legal? Interrogating a man who’s naked in an ice-box except for a dirty blanket, and you call that legal? I’d like a thermometer in here straightaway. I bet you’ll need to shove it up his ass to get the mercury rising. Joe, have you been offered any refreshment?’
‘Look, I don’t want refreshment, all I want is …
‘No refreshment. Have you seen a doctor?’
‘Yes, some guy took a look at me …’
Butcher, ready to be indignant if no doctor had been in attendance, switched tack easily.
‘Some guy? Not your own doctor? You’re entitled to access to your own doctor. Did this guy examine you?’
‘He poked around a bit …’
‘Poked around? With your permission?’
‘No one asked for permission …’
‘Which makes it assault.’ She turned to Doberley. ‘I think we can safely strike off as inadmissible anything my client may have said up to this point …’
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