Sixsmith looked. On the stage a lanky figure made even taller by an ill-fitting tophat was belting out ‘Oh Sweet Mystery of Life’, undeterred by the cat-calls from the audience and the fact that he had to keep his hand over his mouth to retain his Groucho Marx moustache. It was Merv Golightly.
‘You’ll give us Sammy Davis, “That Ol’ Black Magic”, won’t you, Joe?’ pleaded Hull.
‘Oh all right,’ said Sixsmith. ‘But let me enjoy my drink first.’
Whitey, his nose now quite out of joint, retired under the table to sulk.
Merv finished to a tumult of laughter and applause. He spotted Joe and came across to his table.
‘That went down well,’ he said complacently.
‘Like a barometer,’ said Joe. ‘Who were you supposed to be? Groucho Marx?’
‘Ha ha. I was Webster Booth. Or maybe Richard Tauber. What’s it matter as long as they love me? Listen, I was hoping I’d catch you in here tonight. I’ve just ferried Maisie Sickert to her first show.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Blimey, that time already. She’ll be finishing at the Blue Lamp soon and looking for me to take her on to the Sundowner.’
‘What about the bull?’ said Joe hopefully.
‘Well, I got there early, like I said, and I sat around waiting and I spotted it, stuck on top of her cocktail cabinet.’
‘Great,’ said Joe. ‘Did you manage to get it?’
‘Sorry, mate, but Maisie came in just then and there was no way. It’s a bit big to tuck up my jumper anyway.’
‘Well, thanks,’ said Sixsmith. ‘At least we know it’s there.’
‘Hang on,’ said Merv. ‘I’m not finished. I’d noticed that Maisie keeps a spare key to the flat in a saucer on the table by the front door. I palmed this as I passed. Here it is.’
He dropped a Yale key on the table in front of Joe, who said, ‘What am I supposed to do with that?’
‘Do? You can stick it up your arse for me, my son, as long as it’s back in the saucer by the time I get Maisie home round three a.m. And the only way you’re going to get it there is by going round and unlocking her door.’
‘And stealing the bull, you mean?’
‘Now what a good idea! Why didn’t I think of that? Of course I mean stealing the bull, only it’s not stealing as the kid lifted it from you in the first place, right? Tell you what, Joe, I sometimes think you’d be better off driving a cab except you’d be stopping off to ask a bobby the way all the time. What’s up with that mog of yours?’
‘Sulking ’cos Dick asked me to sing.’
‘Is that right? Sammy Davis? Hey, you can borrow my hat and tash if you like.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Joe.
‘Please yourself. See you, Joe. Make sure you get the key back, won’t you? I think you’re on. Good luck, mon capitaine!’
Dick Hull was at the microphone.
‘And now, folks, a special treat: the late great Sammy Davis Junior’s golden hit version of That 0l’ Black Magic sung by your friend and mine, Joe Sixsmith.’
In fact Joe’s voice was as unlike Sammy Davis’s as Merv’s was unlike Webster Booth’s, but at least all those years under the eagle eye, and ear, of Rev. Pot had taught him how to hold a tune and he returned to his table to warm applause.
It felt good, and safe, sitting there with beer in his belly and friendly chatter all around. He stayed till closing time, then found, as many before, that the longer you stay in the nice warm pub, the darker and colder the night outside.
‘You gonna sulk forever?’ he said as he placed Whitey on the passenger seat.
The cat gave him his long-suffering why-don’t-we-just-go-home look, and Joe would have been more than happy to accede. But he could feel Maisie Sickert’s spare key burning in his pocket.
He looked around the car park almost hoping he’d see Blue and Grey’s car lurking there, but even that excuse for no action was missing.
‘Look,’ he said to Whitey. ‘There’s something I’ve got to do. It won’t take long but it can’t wait, OK?’
The cat closed his eyes and feigned sleep.
Slowly, reluctantly, Joe began to drive towards the Hermsprong Estate.
CHAPTER 16
Lutonians talk about Hermsprong with a muted horror which is almost pride. Here is the original urban black hole into which all social subsidy and welfare work is sucked without trace. Perhaps the best account of the estate was given by its senior social worker on Radio Luton shortly before her breakdown.
‘Hermsprong is a truly organic community,’ she said in a very quiet, very restrained voice. ‘Here everyone has a place and a function. Here there are none so poor they cannot be robbed, none so insignificant they cannot be reviled, none so inoffensive they cannot be hated. This is the far end of Thatcherism. On Hermsprong they need no nanny state, they already take care of each other.’
Compared with this, Rasselas was a health resort.
Joe parked in front of Carey House, the block where the Sickerts lived. No point in trying to hide the car. Speed was of the essence. Armed with nothing but a torch, he took a deep breath and went through the entrance doors.
He was glad he’d brought his own illumination. Compared with the fetid gloom inside the building, the diesel-stained night outside seemed like the countryside at noon. It was at times like this he realized how much the Major had achieved on Rasselas. He’d waged a long campaign to get unbreakable light fitments. Nothing had happened till one winter’s night someone with a high-powered air rifle and a very good eye had shot out all the porch and security lights on the housing chairman’s suburban villa. Now there was light almost everywhere on Rasselas. Here there was only darkness visible.
Joe ignored the lift, guessing that even if it worked, it would be like travelling in Whitey’s litter tray after a heavy night at the Glit. Fortunately the Sickert flat was only on the third floor, though that was quite high enough for a man to climb who was out of condition and trying to hold his breath.
He inserted the stolen key and turned it gently. The door swung open with barely a sound and he stepped into the living-room.
The thin beam of his torch sketched the furniture till it found a cocktail cabinet. Slowly it ran up the shelves, crowded with multi-coloured bottles like an apothecary’s shop, till it touched the top.
And there, on its side and looking suitably tipsy in such a situation, was the Bannerjee bull.
He reached up and grasped it. The imminence of the bottles tempted him for a moment, but amid their many-coloured delights he couldn’t see anything that looked like a simple scotch.
Besides, at the moment he was merely reclaiming lost property. Open one of those bottles and he was into theft.
He turned to leave.
And heard a noise.
It wasn’t in itself a frightening noise, nothing much more than a kind of gurgling sigh, but in this place at this time, any sort of noise was enough to turn his legs to tubes of toothpaste.
The noise came again. It was time to leave. Yet he was finding it difficult. Some stupid little insignificant bit of him, as useless as an appendix but always ready to nag if it sensed someone in trouble, was tracking that noise to possible sources and coming up with a gagged mouth. Suppose Maisie Sickert had come back early and been assaulted? Or her daughter, Suzie? Suppose one or both of them lay in a bedroom, bound and gagged, desperately trying to cry for help …?
Self-interest wasn’t going to take this bleeding heart blather lying down.
Suppose their assailant was still in there with them, weapon poised to strike if any foolish intruder came through the door?
Sixsmith, you’re not cut out for this business, he told himself for the hundredth time.
But he had no choice. Cut out or not, he couldn’t leave without knowing.
He took a deep breath and tried to focus his ears through the roaring of his own blood as his heart pounded in panic.
There it was again. He shone his light at the door beyond which
lay the source of the noise. It was slightly ajar.
Saying a comprehensive prayer which took in most of the deities of East and West, none of which he actively believed in but there was no harm in being careful, he pushed open the door.
The point of light arrowed in, struck, then gently flowered and spread over the naked bodies of Suzie Sickert and Glen Ellis. They lay together, limbs entwined, her head resting on his chest, his lips buried in her short hair. It was a tableau strangely unerotic. It spoke more of primal innocence than mature experience. So might a sculptor have depicted Adam and Eve before the fall. Sleep had smoothed all the macho aggressiveness from the boy’s face and replaced the streetwise knowingness of the girl with a childish wonder. She breathed out, shallowly, hardly enough to stir the immature breasts, but just enough to produce the soft bubbling sigh which had caught Sixsmith’s ear. It was the kind of noise a baby might make as it slumbered in its cradle.
Then she opened her eyes.
Joe froze, every nerve in his body knotted tight as he waited for the scream.
Instead the girl’s eyes fixed on him with unalarmed curiosity, a smile touched her lips, then her eyes closed again.
She thinks it’s part of some dream, thought Joe. But she won’t think that again.
Quietly he pulled the door shut. Quietly he made for the exit, pausing only to slip the key back into the saucer. Quietly he slipped out into the urine-scented gloom. His stealth was no longer the stealth of a burglar but more like that of a parent. For the moment these two were children. They would wake soon enough into a world which pressurized them into being something else.
Outside he took a deep breath and began to let triumph trickle into his veins. He’d done it. He’d got the bull. Butcher would be proud of him. He could be proud of himself!
Except that something which had bothered him as he talked to Butcher was bothering him even more now that he actually had the toy in his possession. It was tantalizingly close, right on the tip of his mind, only he couldn’t quite reach it. It must be something so subtle that it took the trained professional eye to detect it. He strained every fibre of his intellectual being to make the last connection and it came to him as he reached the car.
Blue and Grey had said they were expecting two kilos of heroin.
However much this bull weighed, it was a long way short of two kilos.
He got in the car and said, ‘Whitey, you’re living with one dumb detective!’
Whitey did not reply. Not even the offended snort which indicated he was pissed off and sulking.
He wasn’t on his usual spot on the passenger seat. Sixsmith twisted round and peered in the back. He wasn’t there either. His stomach beginning to tighten like a knot of wet leather, he stooped down to look under the seats, calling, ‘Whitey, hey, Whitey, are you down there?’ and prayed to the God he didn’t believe in for an answer.
The great Ironist in the Sky wasn’t going to miss a chance like this.
The car door opened and a mocking voice said, ‘Hey, black boy, you looking for Whitey? Well, here I am!’
A hand seized his shoulder and next moment he was dragged out of the car like a gaffed fish and dumped face down on the pavement. At eye level he could see three pairs of eighty-pound trainers. He twisted round and looked up. Three pairs of eyes looked down at him, three mouths stretched in toothily expectant smiles.
They were white, in their mid-teens, all wearing the same Union Jack T-shirts.
They were Hermsprong Brits, and he was as good as dead.
‘This is a private parking area, friend, didn’t you know that?’ said the tallest of the three in a rough approximation of an American accent. ‘You’re parked illegally, ain’t that right, boys?’
‘That’s right,’ echoed the other two.
‘So what we’re going to do is impound your car. But first you gotta pay your parking fee. And after that we’re gonna kick shit out of you. That’s nothing to do with your parking, that’s just because we don’t like black bastards stinking up our turf. Ain’t that right, boys?’
‘That’s right.’
They would have been comic in their imported menace if they hadn’t been so menacing in their own home-grown right.
And he would have been terrified speechless if it hadn’t been for Whitey.
As it was, he was still terrified, but the thought of his little cat helpless in the hands of these thugs, while it didn’t give him courage, at least gave him speech.
He pushed himself up to his knees and said, ‘Where’s Whitey?’
The response at least surprised the Yankee pastiche out of his interlocutor.
‘What’s all this Whitey stuff, then?’ he demanded in the authentic accent of left-bank Luton. ‘You tryin’ to take the piss, or what?’
‘My cat. What have you done with my cat?’
‘Cat? What cat? You trying to talk hip? We don’t speak nigger-speak round here.’
‘I mean my cat!’ yelled Joe, standing upright. ‘Even a brain dead moron like you must have got to know what a cat was before they kicked you out of kindergarten.’
Both the yelling and the standing were tactical errors.
The first provoked; the second presented a target.
An expensive trainer caught him in the crutch. And as he doubled up, a rocky knee smashed into his face.
He went over backwards and once more found himself with a pavement-eye view of their feet.
‘Maybe he’s talking about a real cat,’ said one of the others thoughtfully. He must be the group intellectual.
‘A real cat? And he’s called it Whitey? For that he gets his balls stamped flat!’
And presumably in preparation for this operation, both the speaker’s expensive feet left the ground.
Now something really interesting happened. Instead of descending with all the weight of the youth’s muscular frame on Sixsmith’s already pancaked testicles, the feet remained in the air.
Perhaps, thought Joe, the youth has achieved a new religious level and is levitating.
Or perhaps time has been suspended.
He raised his eyes in search of an answer to this metaphysical puzzle and found an instant solution.
It wasn’t time that was suspended, but the young man himself.
Mr Blue (or it may have been Mr Grey—Joe’s eyes were still watering copiously) had seized him from behind by his belt and was holding him in the air one-handed. Meanwhile the other half of the couple was addressing the remaining pair of the trio.
‘You look like likely lads,’ he was saying, ‘and normally we wouldn’t dream of interfering in your little hobbies.’
This was definitely Mr Blue. Joe recognized the style.
‘Only Mr Sixsmith here is helping us with a little problem we got, and until we’re done, no one gets to lay a foot on him. Except us, Savvy?’
The likely lads did not reply. Blue nodded at Grey, who let go of the belt and the boss youth fell to the ground beside Sixsmith.
‘So run along,’ said Blue. ‘We’ll clear up here.’
The pair still on their feet looked as if they might think this was a good idea.
Joe was not a vindictive man but it struck him they were all getting off a touch lightly. He had recovered sufficiently to sit upright and he gasped in the boss youth’s ear. ‘Won’t Mummy let you play with the big boys, then?’
It was playground stuff, but it was enough. The youth’s hand went into his jacket and came out with a blade. He launched himself at Grey’s knees.
What happened then was too simple to be dramatic. Grey caught his wrist, drew his arm vertical and twisted. The knife flew loose. Something snapped. The youth screamed.
Blue meanwhile stepped between the other two, swung his fists wide like a man using a chest expander, and caught them perfectly synchronized blows right on the ear. They reeled to left and right, like a pair of drunk formation dancers, keeping the wrong time but keeping it in unison.
The really terrifying thing a
bout the performance was its simple economy, and the way the two big men now totally disregarded the injured youths as if there were no earthly possibility of counter-attack.
And they were right, Joe could see that. The trio no longer offered any nationality of menace. Love and sleep had reduced Glen and Suzie to children. Now pain and humiliation had done the same for these boys.
Blue pulled him to his feet.
‘You OK, Mr Sixsmith?’ he asked.
‘I’ll survive,’ Joe gasped.
‘Not unless you get yourself another lady love, you won’t,’ said Blue.
He thinks I’ve been getting my end away, thought Joe indignantly.
‘This is no place for someone like you,’ Blue went on. ‘My advice is get home, have a good sleep. You don’t want to be late for your appointment in the morning.’
‘No, you don’t want to be late,’ said Grey, who was busy combing his hair though his recent exertions hadn’t noticeably disturbed its oily contours.
‘What appointment?’ asked Joe, bewildered.
‘With us,’ said Blue. ‘Ten o’clock in your office. You’re going to bring us that stuff we talked about. So off you go. Drive carefully.’
It was the mention of driving that brought Whitey back to Sixsmith’s mind. The pain in his crutch had made him temporarily forget. It was a reasonable excuse, but it didn’t stop him flushing with shame.
‘Whitey, they’ve got Whitey!’ he said looking after the teenagers who were staggering off into the dark. ‘Don’t let them go! They’ve got my cat.’
‘No, they haven’t,’ said Blue. ‘You really are slow on the uptake, aren’t you? We’ve got your cat, friend, and you’ll get him back when we get what belongs to us. OK? See you at ten sharp.’
They began to move away. Sixsmith, sick at the thought of Whitey in their brutal hands, cried, ‘Wait!’
They could have anything they asked. What was a couple of kilos of heroin by comparison with the tons of the stuff pouring into the country every year? He reached into the car for the bull.
Blood Sympathy Page 16
