Get Carter (23 page)

“Right,” I said. “Now then. About the film.”

Her head lolled from side to side. Her eyes weren’t fixing on anything. I slapped her face.

“The girl,” I said. “Tell me about the girl.”

“The girl?”

“The girl in the film. Who pulled her?”

“I don’t know.”

I slapped her again.

“Was it Albert?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“Do you know who she is?”

“No. She was new.”

“Who pulled her?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s one of Kinnear’s films, isn’t it?”

She nodded.

“Who set it up? Eric?”

“Yes.”

“Then he pulled her. Didn’t he?”

She didn’t answer.

I took hold of her neck and twisted her round and pushed her head under again. I held it there for a while and she thrashed about and when I pulled her back up again she’d got the counterpane tangled round her head.

“Who pulled her?”

Her mouth opened and closed like the mouth of a dying fish. Water streamed from her nostrils and diluted the smudge of blood below her nose.

“Eric. It’s usually Eric.”

“Why did they knock off Frank?”

“Frank?”

“Frank. My brother.”

“I don’t know.”

“Did he find out?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re a lying bitch.”

“I’m not. Honest.”

“What does Cliff know?”

“I don’t know.”

“What was said after I left last night?”

“Nowt. I was lying.”

I raised my hand.

“Honest. I was lying. After you went, they stopped playing cards and then Eric went after you and came back and then them other fellers left and him and Cyril cleared off into Cyril’s office. That’s all that happened.”

I looked at her.

“Cliff’s wasting his money, isn’t he? You don’t know fuck all.”

She opened her mouth to answer but I gave her a back hander and knocked her off the side of the bath. She lay in the pool of water on the floor, shivering.

I lowered the lid of the toilet and sat down and lit up.

“So you don’t know who the girl was?”

She shook her head.

“Sure about that?”

“Eric called her Doreen. That’s all I know.”

“And he didn’t mention her second name?”

“No.”

“Shall I tell you what it is?”

She looked at me.

“It’s Carter.”

I watched her face while that sank in.

“Her father was knocked off last Sunday,”

She began to slither slowly away from me but there wasn’t very far she could go.

“My brother. Frank. As if you didn’t know.”

She was up against the bath now, pressing herself against the simulated marble.

“And you don’t know anything.”

She shook her head. She stopped doing that when she saw me take Con’s knife out of my pocket.

“All I want you to tell me is two things,” I said. “Who killed Frank. You know, the names, all of them. And why. But exactly. What he’d actually done. And then I’ll let your face stay as it is.”

She couldn’t speak for a few minutes. I waited.

“God,” she said. “Listen. I don’t know. Believe me. When you came to The Casino last night, that was the first time I heard the name Carter, and that’s the truth. I only knew that girl as Doreen. And I never heard anybody say anything about your brother. Christ, I’d tell you. I really would.”

“What about Cliff? What’s he told you?”

“Nothing. All I know is what he told you. He doesn’t tell me much.”

After a while I put the knife away. I stood up and threw my cigarette in the bath.

“Get up,” I said.

She didn’t move. I opened the bathroom door and bent down and pulled her to her feet and pushed her through the door.

“Get in the bedroom,” I said.

She half fell into the bedroom and turned and stared at me. The square of light on the white wall was blank but
still flickering. I walked past her and dragged open a dressing-table drawer.

“Get dressed,” I said.

“Dressed?”

“We’re going out,”

“Where?”

“We’re going to see if Albert knows any more than you do.”

“Why—why do you want me to come?”

“Don’t be fucking stupid.”

She thought about it.

“Look,” she said. “You can trust me. I won’t tell. Just …”

“Shut up and get dressed before I make sure a different way.”

She began to get out of her wet underwear.

“Besides,” I said. “I’d like you to be there when I chat up Albert.”

She looked at me.

“Just in case, you know, you’ve not been telling me straight like.”

Now the late afternoon was solid grey. The wide dead expanse surrounding Albert’s house was all one colour, a reflection of the uniform sky. Beyond the house the hot flashes from the steelworks were pastel behind the haze.

I bumped the TR4 across the soaked ground. Next to me Glenda was pressing the plaster she’d put on her lip to make sure it was sticking.

This time I drove straight round the back. The kitchen window was brilliant in the darkness of the back of the house.

As I pulled the handbrake on Albert appeared at the window. I opened the car door and Albert disappeared hooking his braces on to his shoulders. I yanked the keys from the dashboard and ran for the house. Glenda didn’t have to be told what to do. She stayed where she was.

I opened the kitchen door but Albert wasn’t there any more. Just Eddie Waring and Hull Kingston Rovers and St. Helens and their supporters making a lot of noise in the corner.

I flung open the door Lucille’d come through the night before but there was just the old biddy making the bed. The room stank of carbolic. The old biddy froze and I slammed the door on her.

There was one other door and I opened it. There was a dark hall with oil-cloth wallpaper and at the end of the hall there was the front door which was open. I ran down the hall and out into the greyness. Albert wasn’t anywhere in sight.

I ran along the front of the house and round the corner but he still wasn’t there so I kept going and turned the other corner and I was at the back of the house again. Albert was there. Frozen in flight. He’d been running for the car but Glenda was screaming at him that I’d got the keys. Albert fucked and blinded and then Glenda screamed again having seen me and Albert turned and he saw me as well and then he began running away from the house and me in the general direction of the steelworks.

I walked over to the car. Glenda tried to scramble out but I got to her before she could do that. I got in on the driver’s side and pulled her down into her seat and gave her a couple of backhanders round her head. Then I inserted the ignition key in the dashboard and switched on and began to trundle the car after Albert.

When Albert heard the engine start, he looked over his shoulder and tried to run faster but the trouble was he couldn’t. He was on his top wack already. It didn’t take long for me to catch him up. I slowed the car down to his speed and let him carry on. Now his strides were getting longer and every time he looked over his shoulder to see what the distance was he stumbled and I could tell from the way he was running he was in agony with his breathing.

I stuck my head out of the window.

“What’s up, Albert? Your tubes playing up are they?”

He staggered on.

“Keep going, Albert,” I shouted. “Better not let me catch you.”

Albert was almost at the end of the waste ground. Here the ground sloped steeply away down to the outlying edge of the steelworks. I put my foot down and steered the car past Albert. He veered right and so did I. I drove alongside him, between him and the top of the slope.

“Any minute now, Albert. You’ve just about had it.”

Albert pulled up sharp and before I could stop the car he ran behind it and started slithering down the slope. I swore and jammed everything on and snatched the ignition key from the dashboard. I got out and ran to the edge. Albert was about halfway down. At the bottom of the slope was a narrow gauge railway track curving back towards the steelworks. The track ran along the edge of another shorter slope, but Albert wouldn’t be running down that one because that was where they tipped the molten waste and they’d just dumped a fresh load. Farther down the track an engine pulling some empty pans was receding into the greyness. Albert’s best bet was to follow it back to the works where there were people about. When he got to the bottom that’s what he did, but it wasn’t any good because I charged down the slope on a diagonal track and I was ten feet behind him before he’d gone twenty yards.

He didn’t stop running. He knew it wouldn’t do him any good. But he kept going anyway. Until he fell that is. And even when he fell he kept going, trying to crawl to get back on his feet but it was no good because then I was on him, dragging him to his feet, pushing him against an up-turned pan by the side of the track, holding him by his windpipe, punching his face.

But I didn’t do much punching. Not yet. I wanted him to tell me things first.

“Tell me all about it, Albert,” I said. “Tell me about Doreen. Tell me about Frank.”

He couldn’t speak. There wasn’t enough breath in him. What there was rasped up and down his tubes like a
cheese-grater. So I let go of his windpipe and I stood back and took out a fag and lit up. Albert bent double and braced himself by gripping his knees. He began to heave and pale bile began to fall from his mouth. Gradually the heaving and the bile got less and he relaxed the grip on his knees. He straightened up and fell back against the pan.

“For Christ’s sake, give us a fag,” he said.

I gave him a fag. I even lit it for him. It seemed to make him better. He didn’t even cough.

I let him have a couple of drags before I said:

“Now tell me, or I’ll kill you here.”

“I know,” he said, taking another drag. “I know.”

I waited.

“I didn’t know who Doreen was,” he said. “I didn’t know that she was Frank’s daughter. She was just another bird.”

“Eric pulled her, didn’t he?”

Albert massaged his brow with the heel of his hand.

“Yes, Eric pulled her.”

“How?”

“I dunno. He’s got his ways.”

“When did you find out who she was?”

“About a fortnight ago.”

“How?”

He took another drag.

“Look,” he said. “There’s one thing. I had nowt to do with it.”

“With what, Albert?”

“With Frank. What happened to him.”

“Later, Albert,” I said. “We’ll come to that later.”

He sucked on the fag.

“Listen …”

“How did you find out who she was, Albert?”

He blew his smoke into the damp air.

“I had to. I had a visit from somebody.”

“Who?”

“Feller called Brumby.”

“Brumby?”

“Yeah. Said he’d seen the movie. Wanted to get hold of the young bird in it. For certain activities of his own, like. I said it couldn’t be done. He said if it wasn’t the Chief Constable’d be getting himself a nice lot of publicity closing down a certain brothel on the edge of town. So I found out. I mean, I couldn’t go to Eric. Him and Kinnear would’ve dropped me like a brick if I’d been paid a visit.”

“How did you find out?”

“I found out, that’s all that matters.”

“And you told Brumby?”

“That’s right.”

“And shortly afterwards Frank got killed.”

He didn’t answer.

“Why?”

He still didn’t answer.

“Do you want to be dead, Albert?”

Another drag.

“See, it was Sunday afternoon. I was watching the football on T.V. and Eric comes in. With Frank and two boys of his. Only Frank’s out. He tells me to clear Lucille and the kids off into the other room, but we have to go in the other room because if I shift the kids from in front of the telly …”

“Albert,” I said.

“Yeah, well, anyway. So Eric says Frank’s rumbled. Somehow Frank’s seen the movie. He’s going to go to the button men. So I imagine they’re going to duff him up in order to make him think twice, like. But Eric says no. Frank’s not the type. Break his arms and legs and carve him up, do anything, but he’d still land us there. So I say what? Eric tells me. I tell him no, not here. He tells me not to be so fucking stupid. It’s going to be an accident. Have I got any booze? I say yes, so he tells me to fetch a bottle and meantime the boys bring Frank round. When they’ve done that they hold him while Eric pours the stuff down his throat.”

“What did you do, Albert?”

“Nothing.”

I didn’t say anything.

“What could I do?” he said. “Tell me, what could I do? You know Eric.”

“Then what happened?”

“They’d got Frank’s car outside. They took him away. That’s all.”

“Did Eric know I was Frank’s brother?”

“Yeah.”

“How?”

“I told him while he was pouring the stuff down Frank’s throat.”

“Why?”

“To try and make him stop.”

“Oh yes?”

“Honest.”

“And what did Eric say?”

“He said ‘Good,’ and went on pouring.”

I threw my cigarette away.

“Is that all there is?”

He nodded.

“Then that’s it, Albert?”