Amphetamines and Pearls (2 page)

2

It was not a marked car. It just sat by the kerb, sidelights on, waiting. The two men inside the car looked big from their shapes through the windscreen; when they got out of the car they looked even bigger.

They got out slowly as though they had all the time in the world, as though they knew that I wasn't going to make a run for it. For what? A bullet in the back? No way. They didn't have guns: I didn't have a gun. It was just a cosy little English arrest in a quiet English street.

Well, almost. Even the ordinary English cop isn't exactly like Dixon of Dock Green any more. Perhaps they can't afford to be. Perhaps they didn't know I wasn't carrying a gun. I mean, how could they?

They came up on either side of me, two men in their late thirties, in raincoats. They moved slowly, confidently, without bothering to speak. They didn't need to—they had done this before.

One of them wore a hat: he hit me first. Hard, with the flat of his outstretched hand into my solar plexus. While I was bending forward the one without a hat rabbit-punched me from what seemed to be a great height. Then one of them tripped me. I don't know which one—by this stage in the proceedings I had lost interest in their wardrobe.

Together they hauled me from the pavement where I was quietly retching and slung me into the back seat of the car. Somehow they had managed to slip the handcuffs on me during the same brief moments. Real professionals!

With timing like that they should have been in variety. Except that variety had already died when I was a kid and God knows when that was. If you were a variety artist you either died with it or television embalmed you shortly after. That is, unless you are a genius like Max Wall and even he's had to go straight.

I glanced at the two cops and wondered if that was something they'd had to do lately. For a moment I even thought I might ask them. But I decided against it—I had been hit enough for one evening.

With little fantasies like that we keep ourselves going.

The one with the hat was sitting in the front of the driver's side, making notes in a little book. I wondered what resemblance his report bore to what had happened. I might as well have wondered who would be the next British heavyweight champion of the world. The warm-blooded one sat beside me; he was taking more than his fair share of room, but it wasn't because he wanted to hold my hand.

‘That house you came out of. We heard there's a singer called Candi Carter living there. You know her?'

Easy now, Mitchell, I thought to myself, you've got to play this one cool. I looked up at him. ‘Maybe,' I said.

He wrenched hard at the cuffs and scraped several layers of dirt, sweat and skin off my wrists. Before he slapped my face.

Very good, I thought to myself. Very cool.

He repeated the question, his mouth close to mine. He stank of beer, stale cigarettes, hamburgers with sour onions.

‘I used to know her.'

‘Meaning?'

‘Meaning I don't know her any more. Meaning she's dead. Now nobody knows her.'

His partner turned round from the front seat and stopped writing fiction. I must have said something interesting.

‘What kind of dead?' he asked.

‘The usual.'

He looked as though he was going to clip me as well, but his intentions were interrupted by the car radio calling for a report on his position. Tersely he told them where he was and what I had said about Candi. The station told him to wait until more officers came, then bring me in.

While we were waiting, we got real friendly. They even asked me my name: just when I had begun to think that they didn't care. The only thing was—when I told them I got the impression that they had known all along.

The central police station was quite a new building. Outside and in the fabric was impressive, strongly made and clean. The rooms were sparsely furnished with upright chairs which never did seem to be the right height, pearl-grey filing cabinets, wooden tables barely marked by cup rings and cigarette burns. On the walls there were the usual posters: missing since last July; tickets for the Police Ball; wanted in connection with the murder of a publican in Sutton-in-Ashfield; measures to take against potato blight; watch out, there's a thief about; dull it isn't.

Men in uniform and out of it moved quietly around the building. Policemen doing their job with as much seeming efficiency as men who are worked too hard and paid too little can muster. From room to room they went, sifting the steadily gathering detritus of the city night: a group of drunken youths with coloured scarves tied to their wrists and plastic-flowered pennants on their coats; the first few of the many prostitutes whose soiled bodies would spend the remainder of their working hours in custody; a couple of lads—not older than fifteen—who had been caught breaking into a tobacconist's shop and beating up the owner when he discovered them; a sad queen who had announced his desires a little too loudly and obviously in the public lavatories of the city centre; and the car thieves, the junkies, the down-and-outs.

You couldn't work in the midst of all this without it getting to you. It didn't matter how clean the building was, how new. The corruption of man was old, old, old.

And yet it was not the petty and the unsuccessful who really corrupted. It was those who made it big outside the law and stayed outside it. Easy money and good times just for the asking. Just for turning an eye in the other direction, just for overlooking a piece of evidence, just for picking up a guy and shaking him down hard. A guy walking along a darkened street one November night, a guy who had been looking at the murdered body of a girl he might once have loved, who had been sapped and booted, then hit and hit again.

The room I was sitting in held no surprises. By the door stood a uniformed constable, his mind firmly on other things. Across the table from me a C.I.D. Inspector was checking through my statement. The only sound was a steady hum which seemed to come from nowhere and fill the heavy air.

Since the law had found out that what I had told them about Candi being dead was true they had been treating me a little more carefully and a lot more seriously. The two heavies who had picked me up first had obviously been working on a quick tip-off that I might be worth turning over and a request that they did it hard. But murder made it all different. Maybe.

At least the Inspector had asked my name first.

A call to Tom Gilmour at West End Central had brought me a certain credence, even a little grudging respect. What it didn't bring me was any love. Cops who left the force and opened newsagents shops they could understand, cops who crossed the line and went bent full-time even, but a cop who wanted to do the same work by himself and probably for less money … ?

He had finished reading my statement—for the second time. A methodical man: or maybe he just didn't read too well.

He was not far off retiring age, I guessed. Maybe he even had a little calendar somewhere on which he ticked off the final months. He had a small moustache of the kind that had long since gone out of fashion, one eye was slightly runny and he dabbed at it from time to time with a handkerchief. He looked tired: he had been tired for a long time now.

When he spoke his voice sounded far away, beneath the hum that still permeated the room.

‘You've made a full statement, Mr Mitchell, and what we have been able to check so far substantiates it. The marks which the police doctor found on your body correspond to your assertion that you were attacked by persons unknown after leaving Miss Carter's flat.'

The phrases peeled from his lips like dead skin.

‘You say that you were shocked by what you found in the flat and did not think to call the police from there. That you were on your way downstairs for help when you were struck from behind. All that is not necessarily admitted by us to be so. Not yet. So you see, Mr Mitchell, it is most likely that we shall want to speak to you again.

‘However, I can see no reason for holding you here any longer at present and you may return to London as soon as you wish. I must ask you to report to West End Central police station in the morning and to keep them informed of your daily whereabouts until further notice.'

He paused and looked up at me, till a stream of rheumy fluid caused him to turn his head away.

‘You have been very co-operative. Thank you for that. There is still a train for London tonight, if you don't mind travelling up with the mail. If you ask at the desk, there may be a patrol car going towards the station. You could get a lift.'

I hesitated for a moment, thinking he was about to stand up. He was not. When I turned again at the door, he was still sitting behind the table, notebook open in front of him, eyes open, staring at the blankest of bare walls.

I went out of the station without talking to anyone. I had had enough rides in police cars, had spoken to enough policemen, had seen enough of humanity for one night.

I crossed the empty square where the fountain no longer played and headed for the railway station. It was still cold.

There was a guy once who told his wife that sleep was the balm of hurt minds. Well, it didn't do too much for him and, since she turned out to be some kind of insomniac, it didn't help her much either. As for me, I usually find it soothes the body and sometimes brings a pleasant memory or two. Usually some old movie with a heart of gold. But not this night.

In my dream I awoke in the small, plain room of what had to be a motel. Dressed and went outside. It was night, I guess, but there appeared to be a lot of light. I suppose I should have looked for a full moon, but it didn't seem important at the time. Maybe it wasn't.

I walked through this batch of scrubby trees towards a tall, battered-looking house. My movements were slow, as if stepping through invisible waves. Inside the front door I hesitated, not knowing at first which way to go: there was a staircase leading up to the floors above and another which went down to the cellar.

Then I knew which way I was to go; knew also that I didn't want to go that way; didn't want to follow those steps down to the basement. But something drew me down, something which left me no choice.

A door. Again, a door. A door which creaked slowly, then swung wide. I wasn't aware of stepping inside, but somehow I had.

And suddenly it flailed at me. It. Something. Something large and whirling, like a giant bird, flapping its black wings across my face. Then a blade, huge, shining strangely and swinging at my body.

I threw myself at the thing, whatever it was. My hands touched nothing but sticky, cloying dampness. Strangely swinging—shining—a single bare light bulb. A face. An old woman's face approaching me, smiling, toothlessly, invitingly. The mouth opening till I could see the pulp of the gums seeming to swallow me up. The sickly-sweet stink of over-ripe fruit was everywhere.

Then the face was that of a young man, high cheek bones, small dark eyes staring. I summoned all my strength into one punch and drove my fist at that face. As I did so it changed into the mask-like features of Candi, the line of dried blood a hair-line crack in the white plaster. I tried to pull back the punch but it was too late.

My knuckles drove through the unearthly surface of Candi's face, passing through bone and flesh as though delving into some strange fruit.

From somewhere, Candi's voice singing:

‘The more I reach for you it seems

As though these hands of mine just pass right through you.'

I shouted and shouted for release but no sound came, only a blackness into which those flailing wings disappeared until they tore and tore at the inside of my brain.

At some time my nightmare must have ended and allowed me to sleep, though when I eventually woke it was still imprinted on my mind. When I could lay in bed with it no longer I got up and pulled on some clothes and walked unsteadily into the kitchen.

What I needed now was a little honest routine. I remember reading in one of Chandler's Philip Marlowe novels that he began the day by making coffee in a set and practised way, each morning the same. It also said somewhere that Marlowe liked to eat scrambled eggs for breakfast but as far as I can recall it didn't say how he did that.

What I did was this. I broke two eggs into a small saucepan, added a good-size chunk of butter, poured in a little off the top of a bottle of milk and finally ground in some sea salt and black pepper. Then I just stirred all of this over a medium heat, while I grilled some bacon to go with it.

They say that a sense of achievement is good for a man.

After breakfast I had a bath and examined my bruises. Then I made a second pot of coffee and thought about opening the morning's mail. From the nature of the envelopes it didn't seem too good an idea. Then somebody rang the doorbell. I wasn't sure how good an idea answering that would be, but
Ä® went anyway.

She was standing a couple of paces back from the doorway, smiling a smile which would have thawed out the frostiest of November mornings. Her face was beautiful and I stared at it for what seemed a long time. A fine face, without a disfiguring line of blood: Candi's face.

3

I stared at her for what seemed a long while. Mouth, eyes, bone structure: all the same. The hair was the identical colour, but was cut shorter and turned up just above her shoulders. When I took in her whole body I could see she was shorter by several inches and when my eyes swept back to her face they found it lacking the hardness that Candi's had developed.

She had frowned at the coldness and surprise in my stare. Until she guessed the reason and then she smiled at me again. I should have known then that smiles like that meant trouble for men like me. But then I never did learn that kind of thing until it was too late.

‘Hello, Scott. It's a long time since we saw each other.' She wrinkled her nose in a way her sister would never have done. ‘Are you going to invite me in?'

By way of answer I stepped aside and watched her pass by me, on into the living room.

‘Coffee?' I asked.

‘Please. White with sugar, if that's all right.'

It was and when I brought it through from the kitchen she was reading the newspaper, opened out at its centre pages.

‘They don't waste much time, do they?'

I put down the two cups on the small glass table and sat beside her. The middle of the spread was taken up with a large photograph of Candi Carter exposing as much flesh as her manager could persuade her would be good for her record sales. She was draped around the mast of a yacht, wearing the smallest of small bikinis. On the pants, slightly to the right of centre, were her initials, one C running through the other. Her mouth was parted and her tongue poked out, as it were, provocatively. Meat for the world's meat market: now dead meat. Dead at the world's table.

The inch-deep headlines to the left of the page shouted out her murder. The text underneath said nothing in great detail, while it suggested a good deal more. Had she been waiting for a lover? Had she known her killer? What was the mystery of the woman in white alone in an anonymous flat?

The right hand side listed the facts of her career—from teenage band singer in the provinces to international recording star—and gave the names of her currently available albums. For those who wanted to climb aboard another cult wagon.

‘Tasteful, isn't it? Someone must have worked hard through the night to put all this …' she held the paper up between two fingers as though it might be contagious … ‘muck together!'

She stood up and flung the pages across the room. I looked up into her face, looking for the saving smile. This time she could not manage it. The tears fought their way past her will into the corners of her eyes, then sprung out on to her cheeks.

‘Scott!'

The cry was despairing: as though she could hold in her anguish and her fears no longer. She half-fell, half-dived down into my arms and I was holding her tight, tight; her breath was warm against the inside of my neck and her face was damp and small against my shoulder. I sat like that until her breathing eased and the chest that pumped a plea through me had calmed; I sat and stroked her hair and all the time part of me wanted to be more than a million miles away.

But when I had stepped aside at the door to let her through I had already made my move.

I took her by the arms and held her away from me.

‘Would you like a drink?'

She wiped at her face with a tissue, yellow and already overused. Again the smile.

‘Maybe another cup of coffee. If you've got the time.'

Time. I had all the time in the world and then some. Time to live and time to die: time to get suckered into a few more beatings: time to be a fall-guy for murder even. What I didn't have time for wasn't worth having. And what I sensed Vonnie was going to offer wasn't worth having either.

‘Why were you there, Scott? It says in the paper that you found the … the body. I didn't think you had been seeing her. Any more than I had.'

I was putting the coffee down as she said it and something about that last sentence made me spill it over into the saucers. Only slightly, but enough to notice. Why did she need to tell me that? I knew they hadn't been on speaking terms for years.

I went back into the kitchen to find something to wipe up the mess. Methodical. Neat, tidy
 
… and suspicious. I'd been in this business too long.

‘She phoned me the night before last. Said she needed help—she wouldn't say what over the phone.' I went up to see her and
…
'

Vonnie looked at me: ‘It must have been horrible!'

‘Dead bodies are never nice. Especially when they were people you knew.' She was stirring her coffee absent-mindedly. ‘What do you want, Vonnie? Why did you come round?'

She sat back, a little startled, and stopped playing with her spoon.

‘Scott! That doesn't sound very nice. It makes it seem as if I wanted something from you.' A pause. A smile. ‘I suppose I do … a little sympathy. I mean, you used to know her so well, and
…
'

‘… And I just happened to find her body.'

The room struck very cold. I wanted to ask more questions but she was too close and the memory of her crying in my arms was too fresh. I got up and walked over to the sideboard; poured myself a whisky; drank it down. When it hit my stomach I spoke.

‘If you wanted sympathy what was wrong with your husband? All you had to do was roll over in bed and there he was. Instead you get up early, make yourself up smart, wear your most appealing clothes—while allowing for a little sisterly mortification in honour of the recently deceased—and get round here hotfoot so as to weep your pretty little tears all over my morning coffee. Why, Vonnie? Why?'

At first I thought she might be going to start wailing all over again, then I thought she might try and smile her way out of it. But she was good. She stood straight up and came right at me.

‘Look, Scott The first I knew of Ann's death was when I went downstairs early this morning and picked the newspaper up out of the hall. Nobody else had thought to tell me, though I suppose there was no reason why they should and I can't think who would have done it anyway. I bring the paper back upstairs and then I find out she's been murdered and that you, of all people, found her body. Martin's still in bed sleeping—he had a late night. So I got dressed, left him a note, and came round to see you. I wanted someone to talk to, damn it!'

‘And more
…'
I suggested.

‘All right! And more.' She sat down, but she wouldn't let me off the hook of her stare. ‘I want you to take the case.'

‘The case?'

‘Yes, the case. Isn't that what you call it?'

‘Call what?'

‘What you do.'

‘Vonnie, all I do is try to make a living from walking round with my feet dragging in the sewers and my head even lower. If that's what you call a case, then I guess that's what I do.'

‘Then if that's what you do, I'll pay you to do it.'

I went over to the easy chair and lowered myself into it, slowly. My bruises from the night before still hurt me; my head was singing out inside with warnings and snatches of old songs about dying; when I looked over at her still young body I felt suddenly old.

‘I'll say it again, Vonnie. Why?'

‘Why? Come on, Scott, I thought you were the detective. I'm asking you because you were the one who found her and because you used to know her. Know her well.' The look cut through me. ‘Surely if anyone can find out what happened, then it's you.'

I hauled myself forward in the chair. ‘Maybe. But why not just let the po
…'

‘… The police don't exactly have a very good record for solving murders at the moment, do they? And besides, there may be things they wouldn't turn up, things they … Oh, Scott, I don't know. I just feel that if you were looking as well then there might be more chance of getting to the truth.'

‘The truth?'

‘Yes, the truth.'

I had a horrible feeling that we were about to go into one of those Marx Brothers routines again. Only I had no doubt in my mind who was Groucho and that the dope who was being fooled by the dollar bill on the end of a piece of thread was me. The thing was I couldn't see the face on the bill and I didn't want to grab the thread yet for fear of breaking it.

‘If I agree, there's the money. Your old man may not like the idea of his hard-earned cash going into my pockets.'

‘Don't worry about that. I have some money of my own. I won't even tell Martin.'

I looked at her quizzically. For a girl who had come through my front door under the pretext of being all dewdrops and roses, she was rapidly becoming decidedly thorny.

‘Martin wouldn't care. He's too wrapped up in his own business to pay much attention to what I do.'

It was said in a matter-of-fact way, without a trace of sarcasm or bitterness. But it was said. I filed it away under possibly useful information and went on.

‘I thought he was a librarian. I'd never thought of that as a totally absorbing occupation.'

‘He is a librarian. But lately he's gone into partnership with somebody in the book trade. Rare editions, special bindings, that sort of thing. They do a lot of export trade. So, since he began doing that, he's been twice as busy. Some weeks I hardly see him at all. But
…'
She shrugged her shoulders and twitched her nose again. ‘… as long as he's happy
…'

Vonnie's voice trailed off. If she was playing for sympathy, then she sure as hell wasn't going to get any. Only I didn't know if she was—playing, I mean. I didn't know what she was doing. I just wondered if she did.

She was sitting down again and one of her smooth hands was holding the sleeve of my shirt.

‘Will you help?'

Now was the time to be definite: now was the time to say no. To look her back straight between those smiling, pleading eyes and say no—politely, yet firmly—and show her back out of the door.

Instead I heard myself saying, ‘Fifty pounds as a retainer. Then ten pounds a day, plus legitimate expenses.'

She said, nothing. After a few seconds I got up and went over to the filing cabinet that served as desk and flower pot stand. Not that I had any flowers. But the stand gave the room an air of hope, at least. At least, that's what I thought. Sometimes.

I gave Vonnie her receipt and took her cheque. It was made out in a small, neat hand to Scott Mitchell. It was for fifty pounds only and at the bottom, in the right hand corner, was the signature—Veronica Innes.

When she had gone I had got two-thirds of the way through making yet another pot of coffee before I realised that I didn't want any more. I sat on the stool in the kitchen and looked idly at the pattern on the tiles. Martin's name was Lambden. Her married name was Lambden. So why had she signed the cheque with her maiden name?