Time to Kill

by Roger Ormerod

  I parked under a streetlamp well short of his cul-de-sac, and lit a cigarette from the packet I’d bought at the café. It was completely dark, but the moon had come up and the black clouds were racing past it. I locked the car and got out. I could hardly have timed it better, the traffic from the trooping-home brigade had eased off and the traffic from the evening-out crowd hadn’t started. It was all very quiet.

  I strolled along to the cul-de-sac. It boasted one blue streetlamp, halfway along. There were lights in four of the seven other bungalows, all with picture windows so that you got a good view of their domestic bliss and their wall-to-wall carpeting, with the evening’s television programmes just getting into their stride. There was an orange glow in the clouds in the east, over Wolverhampton.

  The bungalow was dark and empty. The garage doors were open, and the car was missing, as I’d expected. I put my leg over the front wall, to save any possible rusty squeak from the gate, left a hefty footprint between a Peace and an Ena Harkness, and went off down the side.

  There was a kitchen, separated from the lounge by a screen that should have been tastefully arrayed with Hi-Fi recorders and books and ornaments. The owners had apparently stripped it bare, so the light from the streetlamp slanted right in from the big window at the front of the lounge. One of the kitchen windows was two inches open.

  Given two inches, any crook can make it easy. I was in there in a couple of minutes.

  Kyle was a messy eater and a lazy cleaner. There was enough crockery piled in the sink to make it difficult to get a kettle under the tap, and on the kitchen table the remains of two or three meals. The kettle was half full of water on the stove, and cold. I opened a few drawers and found nothing but what I would have expected. There was a kitchen knife sharp enough to have inflicted Geoff’s wound, but I thought not long enough. I wandered into the lounge.

  If there had been a television set it had gone into storage. The three-piece suite had stretch covers and was spread around haphazardly. There was nothing in the room that reflected Kyle’s personality, only a revolting sort of messiness. Away from the snooker table he wasn’t much. But he had used the lounge. There was the remains of a fire, still warm and with just a red glow reaching through the ashes when I stood so that I cast my shadow on it. On the back of the fire was the smouldering remains of a packet, which I lifted out and had a look at. It was the envelope from a pair of nylon stockings, size ten. Half the name was still visible: Gossamer something. I put it back.

  As Kyle would hardly be wearing nylons it meant surely, that a woman had been there. The thought of Kyle with a woman staying there hid interesting possibilities, but what woman would have left the place in the mess it was? What woman with big feet occupied a part of Kyle’s life?

  The drawers in the sideboard were empty. I wandered through into the bedroom.

  It was a two-bedroomed bungalow. The one at the front he was not using. The mattress was stripped down and the wardrobe was empty. The one at the rear was another thing altogether. The bedclothes were tossed back and the bed unmade. It looked as though Kyle simply crawled in every night and drew the covers over him. The wardrobe held three suits, all well-worn. Two cubes of cue chalk in the pocket of one of them, some loose change trapped behind a handkerchief in the trousers. In the top dressing table drawer were half a dozen shirts and some pants and socks; in the drawer below was tumbled much the same thing, only dirty. Kyle obviously wasn’t using the washing machine in the kitchen. Nothing feminine. The side drawers of the dressing table held a few personal possessions—the log book of his 1969 Volkswagen, a wallet with £7 cash in it, and a membership card to the Greenhorn. That was not surprising, considering he’d probably discovered Odin Breeze there. There was none of the scent you usually get from a drawer a woman has been using.

  I went back to the bed. It was a double one, one of the pillows getting decidedly dingy from Kyle’s sandy hair. There was no hint of perfume from the other.

  In the front rooms of the bungalow I had been able to see sufficiently to search without using any extra light. Here it was too dark for that, so I was risking things a bit and using my lighter. I clicked it off and stood to think what I’d got. It all came out to nothing. I turned to leave, and the lights came on.

  Kyle was standing in the doorway, making a dramatic gesture with an automatic pistol stuck in his hand. Even from the wrong end I recognized it as my own. His wrist looked too thin to support it, but held it reasonably steady, lined on my stomach.

  “You got a licence for that?”

  “Did you have one for it?” He smiled, nervously I thought, and moved it in a gesture he’d seen in a Western.

  “You’re outside the law, Mallin. You’re not in any position to put up an argument.”

  I thought of rushing him, but whereas an experienced gunman would have sent a warning shot into the wall, Kyle’s nervousness would probably maim me. “I called, and you were out.”

  “Sometimes I go out. What’ve you been up to?”

  “I’ve been looking the place over,” I told him. “Seeing if you’d left any mistakes around.”

  The gun was getting heavy in his hand, the muzzle drooping.

  “All I’m doing is trying to get going again. You’re persecuting me, and because you are a copper you think I can’t do anything about it. But I could shoot you now, and claim you attacked me. And I could get away with it—in my own house.”

  There was something dull and heavy about his voice, not his usual careful middle-of-the-road intonation. It was as though he spoke to me through a pall of drugs. But Kyle was too canny to be caught on his own merchandise.

  “I thought I might find some more heroin. Where’re your cues?”

  “They’re in the car.” He raised his eyebrows. “Want to see ‘em?”

  There would be no point in that. There seemed no point in hanging around, either, looking into that gun snout and wondering what Kyle was going to do, so I hooked the dressing-table stool towards him with my right foot. It did not actually reach him, but it distracted his attention enough for me to make a dive at him. I got him in the mouth with a straight right and the gun seemed to explode in my face. He went down and the gun slid off somewhere under the bed. While he was scrambling for it I got out of there fast. I had the front door open in a flash, dived over the low front wall, and lay flat behind, not because I expected him to blaze away into the night but to give him the impression I had gone altogether. There was silence. It occurred to me that my left ribs were hot, and I reckoned I must have caught them on the top of the wall. After a couple of minutes I edged one eye over the wall.

  Kyle was dimly visible at his lounge window, looking out into the street with the lights off. I waited. In the four bungalows with lights on they were blissfully watching their televisions, taking in their stride the odd gunshot here and there.

  I looked again. He had put on the light. I would be difficult to see now, so I moved closer. He had stirred the fire until the nylon stocking envelope was in flames, and he was burning his Greenhorn Club membership card, thereby resigning from another seventy-two clubs at the same time.

  10

  By the time I’d got back to the car my ribs were so sore that I thought I had better take a look. The shirt was wet and sticky. I slid into the passenger’s seat, where the streetlamp glanced in a little light. He’d creased me along the ribs with my own gun.

  I had a box of Kleenex in the back, and I put a wad of it between the groove and my shirt. It was giving me hell by that time. I pulled the shirt as tight as it would go, and drove back to Birmingham. Somebody had timed the traffic lights so that I caught every green at a steady thirty, and each red at anything over that, fiendishly planned for somebody bleeding steadily down the side of the driver’s seat. I clamped my lips hard on to a chain of cigarettes and felt the consciousness running away from me.

  I parked any old way in front of the building and used the handrail beside the steps outside. By that time it had stoppe
d bleeding enough not to leave a trail of blood-stains up the stairs. I hadn’t put the new lock on the door, so there was no trouble in falling through it.

  The lights were on and Elsa was sitting waiting for me. She was on her feet in a flash at the crashing door.

  “David, I couldn’t—”

  I never heard what she couldn’t do because I passed out.

  I came round to the sting of spirits in my throat. Elsa was feeding me brandy and I was lying on the rug, my head on the threadbare bit where I did most of my pacing.

  “You’re hurt,” she said, shocked.

  I took the glass off her and tossed it back.

  “Kyle,” I told her. “We had a disagreement.”

  “I’ll have to phone for an ambulance or something.”

  “No.” I sat up. There were things I had to do. “No ambulances. Let’s see what we can do with it ourselves.”

  “You’re soaked in blood. Can you get to this chair?”

  I got to the chair, and managed to ease the jacket off. Elsa pulled off the shirt and shuddered. The Kleenex was soaked through, and had stuck itself firmly to the wound.

  “Hot water,” I said. “Some Dettol in it.”

  She splashed water into the kettle and lit the gas under it. She found a bowl. I was trying to peel off the Kleenex but it gave me hell. I poured myself another drink.

  “You were waiting for me?”

  She lit me a cigarette. “When it came to it I just couldn’t go back there, to the house.”

  “You must have been here hours.” “I played some Stravinsky. Made myself a drink. I didn’t mind waiting, David.” She made an impatient gesture enough about herself. “But you’ll have to report it. You can’t let him go on like this.”

  “There’s nothing I can prove. All I ever do is dig myself in deeper. Elsa, I can’t tie him down.”

  She stared at me. “But he shot you.”

  “In his own house, he could get away with it. He’d call it self-defence. Whatever I do, I can’t nail him.”

  “You men! It’s like some ancient game played to rules none of you can remember. You can’t do this; you can’t do that. The man’s a murderer, David. He killed Geoffrey...”

  “The kettle’s boiling.”

  “...and you’re not doing anything about it.” She turned away to the kettle. I hardly caught what she added. “Unless there’s something you haven’t told me.” She stood expectantly with the kettle in her hand. “Something you’ve kept from me.”

  Only the time schedule of how I could have done it, only the alibi I could have faked for myself, only the motive that was lurking behind every word I said to her, and every glance I gave her.

  “Elsa...the water.”

  She cooled it until she could bear her finger in it, which meant it was twenty degrees too hot for an open wound. I said nothing while she soaked off the Kleenex. The groove was about eight inches long and half an inch across, and already inflamed. I treated it with strong antiseptic outside and brandy inside, then we plastered it with a wad of bandage and I went to look for another shirt. I felt like a man who wants to sit quietly for the rest of the evening, with the woman he loves, listening to come Ravel or the like. I zipped up the slacks and walked back into the sitting room.

  “Do you feel like going home?”

  “I can drive myself. Don’t be ridiculous, David.”

  “I’ve got to go out.”

  I wasn’t too good at walking, but I reckoned it would come back, like riding a bike. I eased into a fresh jacket.

  “You’ll have it bleeding again. David, I do think you ought to get some stitches in. Where do you want to go?”

  “The Greenhorn.”

  “Why men have to be so stupid and awkward I’m sure I don’t know. Now why should you want to go there?”

  I found my stubby pipe. It was all I’d got if Odin got in my way again. I added a tobacco pouch and a pack of cigarettes in the opposite pocket, switched my Greenhorn membership card. “You don’t have to come,” I said.

  “You didn’t ask me.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted her along. If there was trouble she might be a liability. Come to think of it, if there was trouble I wouldn’t be much more than a liability myself.

  I hitched my raincoat off the hook on the door.

  “You’re invited.”

  She smiled. “I’d like to come.”

  “Odin might not be there.”

  She helped me on with the raincoat. “Then I shan’t stay.”

  We put off the lights after I’d finished what there was in my glass. As I closed the door she said:

  “It must be something urgent.” Kind of probing.

  “I want to see Miss Margie Dee. I want to know whether she wears stockings or tights.” But I didn’t remember her feet as size ten!

  We took the Oxford, because the Greenhorn was in the sort of district where the kiddie-winkies run coins along the sides of your car. Elsa drove. She said I shouldn’t distress myself, but she was used to an automatic change and I suffered agonies listening to her crashing my box.

  The moon had given up its game of diving in and out of clouds and had settled for staying behind. I directed Elsa, and we drifted gently into the street that contained the Greenhorn. It was Friday night, with the street packed. We had to park round the corner, and the walk back was murder.

  Mr Green was delighted to see us. The place was full. Friday night is celebration night, the end of a working week and the start to a long and tiring week-end. The combo was going strong, with the addition of an Asian gentleman with strong lungs on trumpet. The joint was literally jumping; you could almost see the vibrations flexing the smoke pall. There were two waiters scurrying round.

  It wasn’t so easy to get a table, hut I eventually found a rickety one right back against the wall behind Odin’s left shoulder. He was looking morose and thoughtful.

  It was clear that Elsa was not going to enjoy any part of that evening. The combo was playing boisterous pop jazz with no attempt at refinement. They sweated and blasted at it, and Elsa shut her eyes. Then, when the singer came on, I saw why Odin was so morose. It was not Margie Dee, but her stand in. Apparently we’d dropped in on one of those evenings that Margie chose to see her mum. The vocalist was a throaty blues singer of around fifty, dusky and buxom and poured into a sleek, shimmering-green dress that was like a pea pod.

  “Excuse me a minute,” I said, and got up to edge my way between the chairs. My side was hurting. I got to Odin’s table and slipped into the chair opposite him.

  “Your girl’s not here,” I said.

  “I reckon she must have gone to visit her mum.”

  The bigger they are the more there is to be stupid. Odin was dead gone on his girl and she twisted him round her mike with ridiculous ease. He knew what her visits to her mum entailed, and he couldn’t do much about it. Not unless he caught one of them at it. He even seemed pitifully pleased to see me, and realize I wasn’t the particular mum of that evening.

  “It makes it a bit dull for you,” I said.

  “I get to play my flute.”

  “Sure. There’s that.” I watched him take down half his lager. “Tell you what. Do something for me, will you?”

  “Anything, Mr Mallin.”

  You wouldn’t have thought this was the same man who’d belted me in the guts the previous evening.

  “I’ll be missing for a while. Keep an eye on my girl till I get back.”

  Where I was going I couldn’t leave her in the car. A solitary woman in a parked car would be asking for trouble. And I certainly couldn’t take her with me.

  Odin looked startled. “Where is she?”

  I looked round. Elsa caught my eye and raised a hand.

  He gave a soundless whistle. “Sure I will.”

  I went back to Elsa. “I’d like to leave you with Odin for a while.”

  “David? What’s this?”

  “I’ve got to go and find that girl.” “You can’
t leave me here,” she protested.

  “You’ll be safe with Odin.”

  “I’m not so sure of that.”

  But I was. Odin was a painfully correct man. He would feel he was retrieving something from the chaos of his girl going out with another man, and would be proud to demonstrate that he, at least, knew how to conduct himself with the opposite sex.

  “We’ll leave, if you like,” I suggested.

  “No. No, it doesn’t matter.” But still a doubt lingered.

  “He’s a friend of Kyle’s. Try and pump him a bit. See what he thinks about it.”

  “Well at least I shan’t be bored. But don’t be long.”

  I drew back her chair. “I shan’t.”

  “Or I may run away with him.”

  Odin was all graciousness and good manners. He ironed-out his accent and managed to sound pleased without being effusive. His gloominess had disappeared. I had at least saved his audience from a doleful performance.

  I walked round the corner for the car.

  This district in which Margie Dee lived was one of unbroken terraces in huddled lines, one street much the same as the other, all drab and dirty and squalid. The same pattern predominated; houses against pavements, with rear entrances at every eighth or tenth to narrow rows of yards at the rear. In the moonlight the house fronts presented a chill indifference, lights in few of the front rooms, because the coloured inhabitants seemed to curtain their windows heavily, with a blanket or something similar.

  There was hardly any movement on the street. They had nowhere to go at night, no pubs, no dance halls, only the odd cinema presenting their own films. So they clung close, retired from sight, and minded their own business. Nevertheless, when I found the street I parked quietly and sat for a minute or two watching the movement in the shadowed side. Mine was not the only car. A dozen were parked with their two nearside wheels on the kerb.

  There was a pungent, quivering silence. A cat, thin and gaunt, walked across the street. I slipped out of the car, cut out the lights altogether so as not to draw attention to it, and locked it. I moved over to the shadier side. Two out of the six streetlamps were not working.