His macho mood lasted only for the short time it took him to drive down Lykers Lane. He parked right at the end of the Lane where it gaped into Lykers Yard. The storm was right overhead now, its lightning flashes so brilliant that the after-darkness seemed almost solid, despite the feeble glow of the bracketed sodium lamp above the car. At least it wasn’t raining. Yet.
He opened the glove compartment and took out a pencil torch. Then he reached under his seat and probed his fingers through a slit in the upholstery till he found a wash-leather pouch. Whitey watched these preparations with interest and when Joe got out of the car, he prepared to follow.
‘No,’ said Joe. ‘Generals don’t get their bayonets dirty. They lounge around HQ signing casualty lists.’
Whitey yawned as if to acknowledge the justness of this as Joe closed and locked the door, waited for a lightning flash, and set off towards the lock-ups.
The return of darkness turned the worn but fairly even flagstones into a rock-strewn desert, and he stumbled several times. His torch beam did little more than scratch the surface of this blackness. When the lightning flickered again, the lock-ups seemed to be further away, as if they’d taken the opportunity to shuffle backwards. He pressed on, arms outstretched like a blind man. Suddenly he was there, and had to stop in mid-pace to avoid a painful collision with the wall.
He felt a sense of relief but not for long. Walking across the yard, he’d just been a guy walking across a yard, a bit odd maybe, seeing that it didn’t actually lead anywhere, but strictly within the law.
Now he was on the brink of becoming a burglar.
Worse, it for once he’d got it right, he was on the brink of finding a car with a body in the boot and maybe a killer in the offing.
He took a deep breath and said to himself, ‘Come on, Joe. Either do it or shog off home, watch a bit of cosy mayhem on the telly.’
Was it a real alternative? Not for a man with a mind-reading cat waiting to sneer at him.
He checked the flaking number on the wooden door. Fate or good judgement had brought him straight to No. 5. From his pocket he took the wash-leather pouch. It held a set of picklocks. A man as good with machines as he was hadn’t had any problem making these out of a set of kitchen skewers. A man with friends like Butcher and Sergeant Brightman knew that mere possession of such implements could get him banged up for six months with desperate men like serial killers and poll tax defaulters, which was why he kept them hidden in the car seat.
Carefully he selected, gently he inserted, deftly he twisted … There was a click, the door groaned at the release of pressure, Joe let out a sigh of relief and self-congratulation.
And a hand descended on his shoulder and a voice in his ear breathed, ‘Hello hello hello.’
He recognized the honeyed breath even as he shrieked with shock and twisted round to defend himself, and he was able to stay his blow and even bring his voice down within an octave of normal as he said, ‘Beryl, what the hell are you doing here?’
‘Thought your auntie said you didn’t swear, Joe?’ she said.
‘My auntie never frightened me half to death,’ he replied. ‘So what are you doing here?’
‘You kissed me,’ she said.
He shone his torch into her face to try to get some visual clue to her enigmatic meaning. All he saw was her big brown eyes regarding him with gentle seriousness.
‘That mean you’re compromised, or something?’ he said. ‘That mean we’re going to be engaged maybe?’
‘You kissed me twice,’ she said. ‘First time in the hospital was because you were all relieved and happy your friend was going to be all right. Second time, just now, it felt more like a soldier’s farewell kiss, know what I mean?’
‘I know you seem to be some kind of expert on kissing,’ said Joe. ‘You take a course, or what?’
She ignored his gibe and went on, ‘So I got to thinking about what you’d been telling me in the car and wondering what crazy thing you must be considering to make such a shy bashful boy so bold.’
‘My auntie told you I was bashful?’ said Joe. ‘Isn’t that woman ever going to let me grow up?’
‘Don’t rush it, Joe,’ said Beryl reprovingly. ‘It’ll happen. Anyway, it struck me that this sudden urgent need to get back to Rasselas came after I showed you the Major’s list, so I took a good look at it, and know what came jumping out of the page? Lock-up No. 5 was let out to a party name of Andover. Now that’s not a common name. So maybe it’s this insurance man with the dead wife. In which case, what’s he doing with a lock-up out here? Is that where Joe’s gone, I asked myself. Only one way to find out. And here I am.’
Joe looked at her with the admiration he always felt for those whose minds moved with such microchip speed. Reverse the situation and with her limited information he might have got there, but a couple of hours, or maybe even a good night’s sleep, later.
‘OK. But that still don’t explain why you’ve come,’ he said.
‘Joe, surely you know a soldier’s farewell kiss gives a girl the right to know how long she’s supposed to stay in mourning after she gets the bad news,’ she said, her eyes bright with mischief now. ‘Now are we going to take a look inside or just stand around out here spooning?’
She was mocking his fears of falling into one of Aunt Mirabelle’s carefully baited traps, thought Joe. Which meant she really wasn’t interested in being the bait. Which should have filled him with relief …
This was no time for trick-cycling.
He said, ‘You wait here while I take a look, OK?’ in his masterful voice.
Then he pushed open the door and stepped inside.
There are times when being right is almost a bigger disappointment than being wrong.
‘Oh shoot,’ said Joe as the narrow beam of his torch hit the bonnet of a blue Ford Fiesta.
He let the light slide down to the number plate just to be sure.
‘Is it the one?’ breathed Beryl in his ear.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Hey, I told you to wait outside.’
‘Have you got a royal warrant saying you can order me around?’ she asked sweetly. ‘What’s all this stuff?’
Her eyes were better than his or maybe it was just her mind. The walls of the lock-up were lined with stacks of cardboard boxes. The torch picked out names like Sony, Panasonic, Philips. If full, the boxes had to contain several thousand quids’ worth of VCRs, tape-decks, CD players and so on.
This was a puzzle, but even a man who’d found a clue to fit PIT WIT RIP in The Times crossword couldn’t be expected to deal with more than one problem at a time.
He said, ‘Wait here. Please. I’m going to look around.’
Again her quick mind was with him and ahead of him with dazzling speed.
‘You think if it was Andover did the killings, his brother-in-law could be in the boot,’ she said. ‘We’d better open it.’
‘No,’ he said sharply. ‘Not you. I’ll do that.’
She bubbled a laugh.
‘Joe, don’t go chivalrous on me. How many dead bodies have you seen? Me, I see them all the time.’
‘You do? Remind me to stay clear of your hospital,’ said Joe. But he could tell that argument was useless. The sooner he got this next bit over, the sooner they could get out of here and back to a telephone and a stiff Scotch.
He sniffed the air as he moved forward. There was a strong body smell here, pungent, fæcal. The smell of decay? How quickly did a body begin to break down? In her line of business, Beryl probably knew. Just like in her line of business, Gwen Baker knew he was going to end up somewhere dark and smelly and it could be dangerous.
He pushed all these know-it-all women to the back of his mind and stooped over the boot with his picklocks.
Beryl took the torch from his hand and said, ‘It’ll be easier if I hold the light.’
She was right. In fact having her there made things easier in all kinds of ways. Put simply, her presence was a comfort to him. He examined the p
roposition, decided it held no danger, and admitted it gladly.
The picklock caught, held, turned again, then the lock snapped open.
He took a deep breath, held it, and raised the lid.
Beryl let the torch beam wander over the floor of the boot.
It contained an emergency triangle, a canister of oil, a windscreen scraper, and a thick paperback in a plastic cover. Beryl picked it up and looked at the title. Cobbett’s Actuarial Tables—1st Edition (Revised).
‘I saw the movie,’ she said. ‘Joe, don’t look so disappointed. Not finding bodies is a good thing, believe me. The car’s enough to win you fame and fortune. I think that now would be a good time to go for the police and make it their problem.’
She was wrong, thought Joe looking over her shoulder. Five minutes ago would have been a good time. Now they definitely had a problem of their very own.
Beryl computed the focal point of his eyes, turned and saw it too.
Silhouetted against the paler darkness beyond the door was a figure. Medium height, overcoat, slouch hat.
‘Oh shoot,’ said Joe. ‘Andover.’
He was less disturbed than he might have expected. Perhaps it was Beryl’s presence again, making him feel macho, but he was pretty sure if it came to a struggle he could deal with Andover, and his mind had already slipped past fear to the prospect of triumph as he actually handed over the cringing killer to DS Chivers.
Lightning jagged across the invisible sky and suddenly the silhouetted figure looked bigger, solider, more formidable.
Joe took a step forward.
‘It’s over, Andover,’ he said with an authority only slightly marred by the awkward assonance.
‘Stand still,’ said the man, his voice made low and sibilant by (Joe hoped) his fear.
Beryl flicked the torch beam towards him and he raised his right hand to ward it off but not before Joe had got a glimpse of his face.
What he saw made him laugh out loud. The stupid sod was wearing his big droopy false moustache. He’d actually disguised himself once more as the man police all over the country were looking for!
This swept away any residual fear. The fellow was a clown!
‘OK, Stephen,’ said Joe in his kindest tone. ‘Let’s go somewhere a bit more comfortable and sort this thing out.’
He advanced confidently. Lightning flashed, thunder rolled. It was all comically theatrical.
‘Stand still,’ said Andover, still putting on his comic Italian voice. He reached his hand beneath his coat.
‘Got a gun, have you, Stephen?’ mocked Joe. ‘You been seeing too many movies.’
The hand came out. There was something in it. Certainly not a gun. A pen maybe? Perhaps he was hoping to sell some insurance. Suddenly irritated, Joe leapt forward to bring an end to this farce, and seized the false moustache with both hands to rip it off.
The man shrieked like a mating peacock as his head was dragged down against Joe’s chest.
It is strange how strongly the mind clings to its misconceptions. Almost as strongly as these hairs were clinging to this lip.
He must have used superglue, thought Joe as he tugged and tugged with no result except a leap of an octave in the screaming.
And it wasn’t till the man’s thumb found the button in the object he’d pulled out of his coat, and a long thin blade snapped into the air that he admitted he’d got it wrong.
Interestingly his mind was at last working at computer speed, though not in any useful direction. Somehow in the split second before the blade reached his throat, he had time to think, PIT WIT RIP was wrong.
Clue: epitaph for a dumb dick.
Answer: PI twit. RIP.
The knife point struck.
Joe fell sideways, feeling more like he’d been hit with a blunt instrument than stabbed with a pointed one. Perhaps that’s how the death blow always felt. Difficult to know, of course, as first hand accounts were hard to come by. He wished there was light. A man shouldn’t have to die in the dark.
God obliged, switching on the lightning for a couple of seconds.
Not long, but long enough for Joe to see he was, as so often, both wrong and right. It wasn’t a death blow because what in fact he’d been hit by was that bluntest of instruments, a set of actuarial tables.
Beryl was holding it. Fleet of foot as well as mind, she had somehow contrived to thrust it in the path of the flick knife which had driven into it with enough force to knock Joe over while the book remained impaled like a loaf of bread on a toasting fork.
Nor did her talents end there. As Rocca (Joe had given up all hope that it might not be Rocca) redirected his assault, Beryl ducked under his sweeping arms, seized his left ankle, rose to her full height and tossed him lightly backwards. His head hit the door jamb with a crack which in another place at another time Joe might have found sickening. Here and now it sounded almost melodic.
‘You all right, Joe?’ she said anxiously, kneeling beside him.
It would have been nice to relax and let himself be cradled to that warm and generous bosom, but this was no time for such languorous delights.
‘Fine,’ he said, pushing himself upright. ‘Let’s get out of here, fetch help.’
But, reassured he was OK, Beryl now began examining the prostrate Italian. So it was only professional interest after all, thought Joe glumly.
‘You go,’ she said. ‘I’ll stay here.’
‘With him?’ he cried. ‘That’s Rocca. He’s killed four people that we know of.’
‘He’s harmless now,’ she replied. ‘Also he may have cracked his skull. He could vomit and choke on it if we leave him. You go, Joe. Get an ambulance. Hurry!’
The weight of her authority sent him staggering out of the lock-up. He stood there a moment taking in deep breaths. The storm seemed to be retreating. He turned towards the mouth of the cul-de-sac and saw his troubles weren’t.
Under the solitary lamp stood a gang of youths, examining his car. Individual features were impossible to pick out in the lurid sodium glow, but their shaven heads and Union Jack T-shirts told him who they were. The Hermsprong Brits. And he didn’t need a dictionary to tell him why they were here.
They hadn’t yet spotted him, but Whitey was in the car and there was no way he could step back from this.
‘Hey!’ he cried.
Darkness returned, followed almost instantly by another flash.
And now they were all looking his way.
‘It’s him!’ someone yelled. ‘Saves us the bother of flushing him out!’
So they’d come specially. He might have guessed that the yobs who’d assaulted him the previous night wouldn’t lie down quietly under their humiliation by Blue and Grey.
They were moving towards him, not hurrying, confident that there was nowhere for him to run to.
He went forward to meet them. It wasn’t courage, just a hope that he might be able to keep them from spotting Beryl.
Now he could recognize last night’s attackers, one of them had his arm in plaster. At their head was Glen Ellis. So much for acting like a man of principle and alibi-ing the young thug from Mr Nayyar’s fire. God had funny ways of rewarding virtue.
‘What’s your problem, boys?’ he said.
‘Boys? Who are you calling boys? That’s what we call you lot, Sambo. Hey, boy! Bring us another beer and make sure you wipe your big lips clean before you kiss my ass!’
This pearl had them all hooting with laughter.
Then one of them said, ‘Hold it. Someone’s coming!’
For a heart-lifting second Joe thought it might be the US cavalry riding to the rescue. Then he saw that he’d been half right. It was cavalry all right, but home grown and extremely superannuated. Striding round the corner, wearing an ancient riding mac and a battered deerstalker, came the Major. In one hand he carried his shooting stick, in the other a torch whose broad beam he directed over the Brits.
‘Right, you chaps, what’s going on here?’ he said. ‘Bit off you
r patch, aren’t you?’
So he knows who they are, thought Joe. That’s hopeful.
‘What’s it to you, dad?’ asked one of them.
‘A great deal perhaps. It’s bad enough to have our own people scrawling on walls and peeing on stairways without having strangers messing up the place.’
‘Why don’t you piss off, you daft old git, before we stick your stupid hat down your stupid throat!’
The Major looked at the speaker gravely.
‘Young man,’ he said. ‘I observe you are wearing a facsimile of the Union Flag. I have served that flag in many strange places and against many fearful foes, and up till now, whenever I saw it draped round a man’s body, it was because the man was dead and had died honourably. I suggest you go away and think about this and find another way of advertising your patriotism.’
‘What you on about, you silly old wanker?’ demanded the youth.
‘I should warn you, I’m not alone,’ said the Major.
For a moment Joe’s hopes rose again. Then he glanced towards the pool of light around his car. It was true, there were figures there, three of them, but they were hardly the stuff relief columns were made of.
It was the Major’s hardcore vigilante patrol—Auntie Mirabelle, brave as a bulldog, but rising seventy and carrying all that weight; Mr Holmes from 718, still using a stick since his hip replacement; and Sally Firbright from 54, in her twenties but so short-sighted she wore spectacles like the bottom of a beer glass.
If only one of them had had the sense to go and call the cops!
The Brit looked at the vigilantes too, summed them up, and laughed.
‘What you going to do with a fat old nigger, a cripple and a four-eyed kid, grandad? Why don’t you just … aaahhhoww!’
The Major’s stick had swung up sharply between the youth’s legs, doubling him up in eye-popping agony.
‘You need to learn some manners, young man,’ said the Major.
And you need to learn some sense, old man, thought Joe desperately. Talking, there’d been just a chance the Major might convince some of this lot they didn’t want to commit mayhem in front of witnesses. But now he’d started speaking their language and the Major was no Blue or Grey to frighten them into submission.
Blood Sympathy Page 22
