Blood Sympathy

by Reginald Hill

  Maybe I became a PI because the only other way out I could see was to become a crook, thought Joe Sixsmith. And, with that saving grace of self-mockery which had always kept him sane, laughed riotously at the thought of what a lousy crook he’d have been.

  But only inside. His expression was serious and sympathetic as he watched Mrs Bannerjee examine his debating point.

  He guessed that when her husband had finally come clean last night she had flipped her lid and piled abuse on him from a great height. Poor Bannerjee. He’d probably been hoping for some kind of absolution, or at least of understanding that a father, believing his own destruction would mean the destruction of his entire family, might be justified in taking any action, no matter how extreme, to get off the hook. He guessed that Bannerjee’s life had been full of small borderline criminous acts performed as ‘favours’ for his boss, and that with the distorted logic of the abused, he had decided if mere terror could turn him into a drug smuggler, it must be positively virtuous to do it out of love. What fantasies must have filled his mind; of using the money to escape from Herringshaw’s clutches, of setting up his own business, of God knows what. ‘A dreamer,’ Butcher had called him, a man who saw one last hope of making his dreams come true.

  Till his wife had screamed at him that dreams built on drug money were worse than the foulest nightmares.

  But now Joe’s question, and perhaps her own calmer thoughts since the explosion, were making her see things through her husband’s eyes. And perhaps she was finding the distortion not quite so great.

  But still great enough.

  She swept the plastic carrier off the counter, turned, tipped the bull on to the parcel shelf and in the same movement pulled a neatly wrapped package into the bag.

  ‘Here,’ she said. ‘This morning it arrives. You take it, Mr Sixsmith. It is yours. Do what you will with it. And thank you for Amal’s bull.’

  And she turned away from him to greet another inquirer with her wide professional smile.

  Oh shoot! thought Joe Sixsmith as he walked towards the exit door. Here am I, strolling along with enough heroin in my possession to get me put away for the next ten years. Or, put it another way, to set me up in comfort for about as long. What the shoot am I going to do with it?

  One negative answer came straight away. Not carry it around in a car which also held Beryl Boddington and her kid.

  First thing was to be sure he’d got what he thought he’d got. Best place to check that was the Gents, which was also the best place for dumping it if that’s what he decided. Luton rats’ loss would be Birmingham rats’ gain.

  He did a swift about turn in search of the toilet, and found himself looking straight at Mr Grey.

  ‘I always knew you was bent, Sambo,’ said the thug complacently.

  He looked to have regained full vulgar health after his bewitched belly-ache, if that’s what it had been. If Joe had had the poppet in his hand, he’d have bitten its head off now without hesitation. But in the absence of supernatural aid, he opted for the human touch and kneed Mr Grey very hard in the groin.

  Beryl Boddington, impatient at being abandoned for what was becoming an unmannerly length of time, had got out of the car and was strolling through the parking bays with Desmond when she saw Joe come running out of the hotel. Behind him came another man, about twice Joe’s size, his face flushed with rage or pain or both, and running with a strange hobbling kind of gait.

  ‘What’s he doing now?’ Beryl asked her son in exasperation, and the boy indicated by a delighted laugh that whatever it was, it beat being strapped in the back of a car with an unsociable cat.

  Joe glanced back, saw to his amazement that Grey was following—he must have a groin of granite!—but estimated that the handicap was enough to give him time to reach the Morris and make his getaway.

  Then he looked to the front again and saw Beryl.

  ‘Get in the car!’ he yelled breathlessly. ‘In the car!’

  ‘What? Why should I wait in the car?’ she called back indignantly. ‘We’re your passengers, not your prisoners.’

  With a groan of dismay, Joe changed direction and was immediately knocked down by a vehicle moving slowly along the parking bays. It wasn’t a hard blow but enough to make him drop the bag and by the time he had scrambled after it on his knees and picked it up, Grey was almost upon him. He pushed himself to his feet and dodged behind the car which had hit him. Across its dirty white roof, he and Grey confronted each other.

  ‘I’m going to flatten your black skull and use it as a frisbee,’ said Mr Grey, extreme emotion mining an unsuspected vein of poetry.

  ‘Help,’ said Joe. It came out as a croak, but it wouldn’t have made much difference if it had come out as a clarion, for the Great British Public was performing its usual trick in face of disturbance of carrying on as if nothing was happening. This was an admirable quality when the disturbance was the Blitz, or a Tory Election victory, or some great natural disaster, but it could get right up a PI’s nose when it was his personal destruction.

  Grey lunged forward, his outstretched hands almost catching Joe’s head, and the weight of his body making the little white car shake.

  Joe shot back. At his waist level the driver’s window opened. Perhaps after all help was going to be offered. An Englishman’s car was his castle and you attacked that at your peril. Then a hand came out of the window, dipped into the plastic bag, plucked out the package and withdrew it into the car.

  ‘Hold on!’ cried Joe, stooping to the window.

  ‘’Afternoon, Mr Sixsmith,’ said Mr Blue, his smile showing teeth like a portcullis. ‘Knew we could rely on you to keep a bargain. That cat of yours all right, is it? Are you getting in or what?’

  This last, very bad-tempered question was directed at Grey who, with many a longing glance towards Joe, doubled up his bulk and squeezed it into the passenger seat.

  ‘Wait!’ yelled Joe, leaning in through the open window and trying to grab at the package.

  Blue had set the car rolling slowly forward, so Joe found himself running sideways, half in, half out, with the package just out of his reach. Then Grey’s huge hand wrapped itself round his face and he was hurled backwards. He crashed painfully against the bonnet of a black BMW and slid slowly to the ground.

  Scooping up Desmond in her arms, Beryl came racing towards him.

  But she wasn’t first there. A well polished pair of shoes and a nicely creased pair of trousers slid out of the BMW into Joe’s view.

  ‘You all right?’ asked a faintly familiar voice. And he looked up into the smiling face of Detective-Inspector Yarrop.

  ‘I think my nose is broken,’ groaned Joe. ‘They’re getting away! And they’ve got the dope!’

  ‘Yes, of course they have,’ said Yarrop. ‘That’s why we let them loose, wasn’t it? And soon they’ll be handing it over to Mr Charles Herringshaw. And that’s the point when we’ll scoop up the lot of them.’

  As if in illustration, he reached down a hand and pulled Joe to his feet, then stepped back sharply as blood dripped on to his shoes.

  ‘You mean you deliberately let this happen to me?’ gasped Joe. ‘I could have been killed!’

  ‘Or you could have been picked up carrying two kilos of smuggled heroin,’ said Yarrop reasonably. ‘Which wouldn’t have looked very good.’

  ‘I was going to hand it over to you,’ protested Joe feebly.

  ‘That’s what they all say,’ said Yarrop. ‘Naturally I tend to believe you. But I’ve got a boss who likes a result above all things, so if push came to shove, I might have had to offer him you, and of course the Bannerjees.’

  Joe looked for signs that he was joking, but Yarrop only smiled and dusted the bonnet of his BMW. The smile vanished as Beryl arrived, dumped Desmond on the car, and started examining Joe professionally.

  ‘Why do you do these things, Joe?’ she demanded as she probed his nose. ‘This is a game for young, fit, and very stupid men, and you don’t qualify on at l
east two counts. Does that hurt?’

  ‘Only when I breathe,’ said Joe.

  ‘He may not be young, but he takes his punishment well, you must give him that,’ said Yarrop, gently prising a windscreen wiper out of Desmond’s fingers. ‘As for stupid, he got that Eytie killer, didn’t he? And he worked all this out for himself. Luckily so did we, else things could have been very different. Always share with the professionals, Joe. Let that be your motto. Always share. Now I’ve got to be off. I’ve got an appointment with Mr Herringshaw.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s broken,’ said Beryl, abandoning the nose. ‘What we need is some ice.’

  ‘In a minute,’ said Joe. ‘Mr Yarrop, what will happen to Mr Bannerjee?’

  ‘He’ll be all right. He came to us this morning after his wife bawled him out. Told us everything.’

  ‘So that’s why you’re here,’ said Joe. ‘You didn’t work it out.’

  Yarrop smiled.

  ‘Didn’t need to. The package got sniffed out at the Post Office. We told ’em to let it through so’s we could see what happened. Bannerjee was lucky his wife reacted like she did, otherwise he’d have stayed right in the frame. There’s nothing like the love of a good woman, so they say. But sometimes the nagging of an angry one does us more good. You think about that, Mr Sixsmith, if you ever get thoughts of matrimony. This belongs to you I think, madam.’

  He deposited Desmond in Beryl’s arms, touched his hat and got into the car.

  They stood aside and watched him drive away.

  ‘Where’s it going to end, Joe?’ said Beryl softly.

  ‘I don’t know. I hope Bannerjee’ll be OK but I’d better let Butcher know so she can watch out for him.’

  ‘Sod Bannerjee. I’m talking about you. Where’s it going to end for you? I mean, you can’t go on for ever like this. I’ve only known you a couple of weeks and I’ve seen you with your face split open, and being attacked by a mad Italian with a knife, and knocked down by a goon in a car, and punched in the face by his partner …’

  ‘It’s not always like that,’ said Joe. ‘Usually it’s exciting.’

  She looked at him sadly and said, ‘You’re talking telly-speak again.’

  ‘Am I? Don’t know how. I never have time to watch it. Do you reckon they’ll let us have some ice here?’

  ‘If you promise to leave quietly without starting any more fights, they’ll probably give us a choice of flavours,’ said Beryl.

  With the bleeding staunched and his nose confirmed as unbroken, they returned to the car. Whitey was sulking at having been left for so long, but in compensation, Desmond had been so impressed by Joe’s entertainment potential that he was now putty in his hands.

  ‘Tell you what,’ said Joe. ‘I think I’ve had enough of the security business for one day, and dragging you round an exhibition was never a good idea anyway. Let’s buy some grub, head down to Woburn or somewhere, look at the animals, have a picnic.’

  ‘That sounds good,’ said Beryl.

  ‘Yes yes yes!’ shouted Desmond. ‘Uncle Joe gonna fall down again?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised,’ said Joe.

  They had a great day all things considered. There were times when Joe felt the chaperoning presence of Desmond to be a definite drawback, and times when it was a source of considerable comfort, though whether he was frightened of making a pass at Beryl, or frightened of being rebuffed if he did, Joe wasn’t quite sure.

  However, if there were options open, it seemed silly not to keep them that way, so when they got back to Rasselas in the early evening, he pulled up round the corner from Beryl’s block.

  ‘Don’t want Auntie hanging over her balcony,’ he explained.

  ‘She’s ten storeys up!’ objected Beryl.

  ‘You don’t imagine she ain’t got a telescope, do you?’

  Beryl laughed and said, ‘Anyway, what’s going to happen you don’t care for her to see?’

  Joe knew a cue when he heard one.

  ‘This,’ he said. And leaned over and kissed her.

  For a moment it got interesting, then as their mouths manævred for maximum contact, their noses clashed.

  ‘Oh shoot!’ cried Joe, pulling back.

  And Desmond clapped his hands with glee at this latest comic turn.

  ‘Let’s do it again some time,’ said Beryl, unstrapping the boy and getting out of the car.

  Uncertain what she was referring to, but certain of his answer, Joe said, ‘Yes.’

  He didn’t drive straight round to his block. Instead, almost as if on automatic pilot, he found himself driving back through town and out past the University till he reached the Stemditch Industrial Estate. Here he brought the Morris to a halt with its front bumper against the rusty security fence surrounding the deserted and desolate buildings of Robco Engineering.

  ‘What the hell are we doing here?’ howled Whitey, who had none of Joe’s conditioning against swearing.

  ‘She wants to know where it’s going to end,’ said Joe. ‘That’s a good question, Whitey. I don’t know a good answer though, except, not here. They tried to make it end here, but they didn’t, and they won’t, that’s for sure.’

  It wasn’t a very articulate expression of the tumult of defiance he felt welling up inside him, but, as with crosswords, he was better at answers than explanations.

  Suddenly the door was dragged open and a huge figure blocked out the evening sun. Thoughts of Blue, Grey, even Rocca, escaped from police custody, ricocheted round Joe’s mind.

  Then Merv Golightly said, ‘Joe, my son, if you’re here on a stake-out, I reckon you got the wrong address!’

  ‘Merv. What the shoot are you doing here?’

  ‘Just dropped a client close by, thought I’d take a look-see at the old place.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Joe.

  The two men looked at each other, knew they were lying, knew they both knew, and knew it didn’t matter. A shared defeat, whether in war or in work, binds men together but doesn’t leave them needing to talk about it. Here where they had spent years feeling themselves useful they had at last been told they were useless.

  Where else should they come to express their defiance?

  But defiance needs other sustenance than a view of dereliction, else it can simply waste away to yet another defeat.

  ‘Here, Joe,’ said Merv with sudden brightness. ‘It’s Race Nite tonight down at the Glit. Fancy losing your money over a couple of jars?’

  Joe looked at Whitey whose eyes grew round at the prospect of bacon fries and ashtrays full of beer.

  ‘Why not?’ said Joe Sixsmith.

  If you enjoyed Blood Sympathy, read the next book in the Joe Sixsmith series:

  Click here to order Born Guilty.

  Read on for the first chapter now.

  1

  This all started when Joe Sixsmith came sneaking out of a small side door at St Monkey’s.

  The reason he was in St Monkey’s was to rehearse Haydn’s Creation.

  The reason he was sneaking out was that on arrival his Aunt Mirabelle had seized his arm in a grip like a council bailiff’s and said, ‘What’s this I’ve been hearing, Joseph?’

  Only the impatient rattatooing of Mr Perfect’s baton saved him from immediate grilling.

  Joe had no problem guessing what it was Mirabelle had been hearing. Galina Hacker, that’s what. Normally his aunt, a firm believer that any bachelor butting forty and not an alto needed a wife, would have been delighted to hear her baritone nephew was keeping company. But in this case, as well as being an affront to her own preferred candidate, Beryl Boddington (who gave Joe a little wave from the sopranos as they took their place), rumours about Galina must have hit the Rasselas Estate like word of Mrs Simpson reaching Lambeth Palace.

  Joe, a reasonable though not always a rational man, could see how it might be a shock to the auntly system to learn he’d taken up with a spiky-haired seventeen-year-old with a stud in her nose, no bra, and a skirt like a p
elmet. But he saw no reason to explain himself. On the other hand, he saw every reason to avoid interrogation.

  If the Boyling Corner Concert Choir had been on its home ground, he wouldn’t have stood a chance. Mirabelle had the few exits from the square-built chapel more tightly covered than a nun’s nipples. But the choir’s growing reputation had led to an invitation to join with the South Bedfordshire Sinfonia and St Monkey’s Chorale in a performance of the oratorio to mark the five hundredth anniversary of the granting of Luton’s Royal Charter. After token resistance from some of the older members, Boyling Corner had agreed that it made sense for the performance to take place in St Monica’s (known to impious Lutonians everywhere as St Monkey’s). Its advantages were obvious. Better acoustics, central situation, more seating space. And, less obvious, but best of all to a desperate man, a much greater variety of escape routes.

  Joe waited for the final Amen. He glanced towards the contraltos. Mirabelle’s eyes were fixed firmly on Mr Perfect’s – that is to say, the conductor, Geoffrey Parfitt’s – raised baton. As it came down, he took a step backwards into the taller men behind him. His heel came down on someone’s toe and a voice shot up an anguished octave.

  ‘Sor-ry!’ sang Joe.

  Then he was off like a whippet. He’d spotted an outer door in a small side chapel. He’d no idea if it would be open, but if you couldn’t trust God in a place like this, what’s a heaven for? As he reached the door he heard the conductor saying, ‘Not bad, but still a way to go. Wrap up well. It’s a raw night and we don’t want any sore throats, do we?’