Neon Madman

Neon Madman

A Scott Mitchell Mystery

John Harvey

MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

This is for Libby Houston: poet.

The Scott Mitchell Mysteries

An Introduction

Growing up in England in the immediate postwar years and into the 1950s was, in some respects, a drab experience. Conformity ruled. It was an atmosphere of “be polite and know your place.” To a restless teenager, anything American seemed automatically exciting. Movies, music—everything. We didn't even know enough to tell the real thing from the fake.

The first hard-boiled crime novels I read were written by an Englishman pretending to be American: Stephen Daniel Frances, using the pseudonym Hank Janson, which was also the name of his hero. With titles like
Smart Girls Don't Talk
and
Sweetheart, Here's
Your Grave
, the Janson books, dolled up in suitably tantalizing covers, made their way, hand to hand, around the school playground, falling open at any passage that, to our young minds, seemed sexy and daring. This was a Catholic boys' grammar school, after all, and any reference to parts of the body below the waist, other than foot or knee, was thought to merit, if not excommunication, at least three Our Fathers and a dozen Hail Marys.

From those heady beginnings, I moved on, via the public library, to another English writer, Peter Cheyney, and books like
Dames Don't Care
and
Dangerous Curves
—which, whether featuring FBI agent Lemmy Caution or British private eye Slim Callaghan, were written in the same borrowed
faux
American pulp style. But it was Cheyney who prepared me for the real deal.

I can't remember exactly when I read my first Raymond Chandler, but it would have been in my late teens, still at the same school. Immediately, almost instinctively, I knew it was something special. Starting with
The Big Sleep
—we'd seen the movie with Bogart and Bacall—I read them all, found time to regret the fact there were no more, then started again. My friends did the same. When we weren't kicking a ball around, listening to jazz, or hopelessly chasing girls, we'd do our best to come up with first lines for the Philip Marlowe sequel we would someday write. The only one I can remember now is ‘He was thirty-five and needed a shave.'

I would have to do better. The Scott Mitchell series was my attempt to do exactly that.

I'd been a full-time writer for all of eighteen months. Spurred on, to some extent, by tales of Chandler, Dashiell Hammett—another formative influence—and others, writing for the pulps at the rate of so many cents a word, I had given up my day job as an English and drama teacher to try my hand as a hack for hire. Biker books, war books, westerns: 128-page paperbacks at the rate of roughly one a month. One of the editors I got to know was Angus Wells, with whom I would later write several series of westerns, and it was he who gave my proposal for a new crime series the green light.

Scott Mitchell: the toughest private eye—and the best.

American pulp in a clearly English setting—that was the premise. A hero who was a more down-at-the-heels version of Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade. A style that owed a great deal to Chandler and a little, in places, to Mickey Spillane. Forty years earlier, I could have been Peter Cheyney selling his publisher the idea for Lemmy Caution.

Amphetamines and Pearls
—the title borrowed from Bob Dylan—was duly published by Sphere Books in 1976. John Knight's gloriously pulpy cover design showing a seminaked stripper reflected in the curved blade of a large and dangerous-looking knife. 144 pages, 50,000 words, £500 advance against royalties. You do the math.

But, I hear you asking, is it any good?

Well, yes and no. Reading
Amphetamines and Pearls
and the other three books again after many years, there were sequences that left me pleasantly surprised and others that set my teeth on edge like chalk being dragged across a blackboard.

Chandler is a dangerous model: so tempting, so difficult to pull off. Once in a while, I managed a simile that works—“phrases peeled from his lips like dead skin” isn't too bad—but, otherwise, they tend to fall flat. What I hope will come across to readers, though, is how much I enjoyed riffing on the familiar tropes of the private-eye novel—much as I have done more recently in my Jack Kiley stories—and how much fun it was to pay homage to the books and movies with which I'd grown up and which had been a clear inspiration. Inspiration I would do nothing to disguise—quite the opposite, really.

As an example, quite early on, there's this:

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 practiced 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.

And later, this:

I didn't know whether she was playing at being Mary Astor on purpose, or whether she'd seen
The Maltese Falcon
so many times she said the words unconsciously.

But I had seen it too.

Intertextuality. Isn't that what they call that kind of thing? Metafiction, even?

Much of the success of the book depends on how the reader responds to its hero. In many respects, Scott Mitchell fits the formula: men are always pointing guns at him or sapping him from behind; women either want to slap his face or take him to bed or both. When it comes to handing out the rough stuff, he's no slouch. Anything but. He's the toughest and the best, after all. But, personally, I find him a little too down on himself and the world in general, too prone to self-pity. On the plus side, he does immediately recognize Thelonious Monk playing Duke Ellington, he knows the difference between Charlie Parker and Sonny Stitt, and he has a fondness for Bessie Smith.

The scenes in the novel that work best, for me at least, are those in which the attempts to sound and seem American are pulled back, letting the Englishness show through. That only makes sense: it's what I know, rather than what I only learned secondhand. And what I know, of course, London aside, is the city of Nottingham, destined to be the home of the twelve novels featuring Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick.

It had been so long since I last read
Amphetamines and Pearls
that I'd forgotten that's where quite a lot of the book is set. And in the chapter where Mitchell visits the city's new central police station, there's a description of urban police work that points the way pretty clearly towards the world Resnick would step into a dozen or so years later.

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 colored 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 center; 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 down these mean streets … well, you know the rest.

 

—John Harvey

London, December 2015

CHAPTER ONE

It was hot. The circles of darkening sweat that spread from my armpits reached almost to my waist; my new navy blue cotton briefs were welded to my body. Inside my shoes, my feet were carrying on an argument with pain that had started several hours earlier and never had they felt less like winning. When I shifted my position in the chair and lowered one foot to the floor, it sang back at me with a flat note of suffering.

I reached up my right hand and wiped away the moisture that dripped from my scalp. Before I had finished more had appeared. Like most things, it was a losing struggle. I gave up and allowed the lines of sweat to run into and through my eyebrows, from there to drip down on to my cheek, the side of my nose. When I couldn't take the gradually increasing irritation any longer I shook my head and watched the drops fall on the blotter on my desk. This time they had met more than their match. I thought I knew how they felt.

It was something after four in the afternoon and I'd been on the go since that morning. Seven hours and much of it on my feet. Walking around, pretending to be looking casually in shop windows or at the dying fragments of roses in other people's gardens; walking around or standing still; standing and watching; watching and waiting.

I don't know what I was complaining about. That was how I earned my living. If living wasn't too strong a word for what I did. I was a private detective.

All day I'd been out on a case. Following this guy's wife as she went through her daily routine. A routine which he suspected to include more than a soup
çon of infidelity. Though
where she was going to get the desire from in that heat I couldn't understand.

Her old man drove the Rover out of the garage at around eight thirty and she leaned her head through the window and gave him a good long kiss on the mouth. He headed off towards the city and she went back into the house. Half an hour later she opened the door to a smart young man in an off-the-peg suit and a ready-made smile. It was a little early for the man from the Pru, I thought, and it wasn't the kind of area where the tally boys had to get up with the dawn in order to scrape in a few overdue payments.

She was still wearing her housecoat and there was a welcoming burst of cleavage to accompany her good morning smile. Okay, I thought, so my better days begin with scrambled eggs and orange juice, but out here in the land of plenty, who knows?

I got out of my car which was parked fifty yards down the road on the other side and walked up to the house. A neat gravel path led alongside the garage and into a hundred feet plus of garden. I have a way of walking on gravel that's as soundless as treading on silk. It comes with years of practice.

They hadn't gone upstairs, nor had they bothered to draw the curtains. You could have ridden a bike through the gap between them, never mind aimed the telephoto lens of a Pentax SP 1000. Oh yes, we professionals only use the best. Scott Mitchell's Pentax, it will say when you open your colour supplement one of these fine Sundays and flip through the ads gazing at all those things you should have. That's before you read in the news pages how you can't afford them.

This lady could afford more than most and from the earnest look on the guy's face he was explaining to her how she might make even more. There were some brochures open on his lap and some forms lying on top of one of those smart black brief cases that are too thin to take a decent-size sandwich. I snapped away for a few minutes, but without any enthusiasm. If this was voyeurism, it had all the eroticism of yesterday's cold potatoes.

I went back to the car and waited for him to come out so that I could get a few shots of his face. It had all the smugness you'd expect from someone who'd made his first commission before his first cup of coffee.

I waited around some time while she took a quick bath or a shower or something. She was looking very new and shiny when she reappeared with a shopping bag and made for Kingston High Street. She was wearing a halter top over a loose skirt that finished somewhere around her knees. Her skin was a beautiful, even brown and she was showing a lot of it. Her hair was cut short and shone with a dull coppery colour. She had too much money in her purse and too much time on her hands. She went from shop to shop parading her sensuality as though it was next year's original model.

The only thing was, nobody appeared to be buying. The hottest thing on view apart from the weather was a little double-entendre with the butcher's assistant about how big a piece of steak she wanted that morning.

She broke off her exhausting routine to drink some vile and overpriced coffee in a mock Tudor place called somebody or other's pantry. Then it was back on the shopping trail. I nearly offered to push her trolley in Sainsbury's, but thought better of it. I wasn't into gestures of devotion.

So it went until lunchtime, when she was whisked away by a guy driving a plum-coloured Datsun with the certainty of someone who knew nobody else had a right to be on the same road. They drove down to the river and parked outside a discreet looking hotel with so much ivy on the walls that if it was cut down the brickwork would disintegrate with it.

I parked my own car and made for the dining room. A hasty glance around told me that they hadn't come for lunch. Their hunger was of a different kind.

It wasn't easy getting past the sweet grey-haired old lady who sat behind the reception desk with all the benevolence of a cobra. I finally managed to twist her arm with a five-pound note and got myself and my camera up in to the first floor. The keyhole didn't yield much, so I tried the balcony which ran along the back.

It was turning into the sort of job I would have used a double for if I was making a movie. But this was real life. Or so I kept telling myself as I considered the possibilities of falling from the narrow ledge which led from one section of balcony to another.

I made it all right and thanked her for being so untroubled about the curtain again. Whatever she was suffering from it sure wasn't a guilty conscience.

I stood there for a while taking all the usual pictures while they did most of the usual things. I will say this, though, what they lost in originality they more than made up for in enthusiasm.

Most of the time I could only get shots of his back—you see what I mean about originality—with the occasional glimpse of her face from underneath his arms. I didn't think it would matter much. As long as she was clearly there and doing what she was clearly doing, I didn't think my client was going to be too bothered about her companion's identity.

I was about to make my way back when they stopped and he rolled over on to his side. She lit him a cigarette and put it lovingly between his lips. I caught him three times. He was an impressive looking man. The sort of face which inspired confidence.

Well, I'd buy a used car from him any day. Even a Datsun.

I slipped back downstairs. Now that I'd got what I'd come for the ledge didn't seem to be any kind of problem at all.

I waited in the bar for them to come back down. A little more arm twisting told me that they came every Tuesday and Thursday, always at the same time. I wondered if his secretary wrote it in his diary for him and then reminded him of his engagement if he seemed in danger of forgetting.

There's a meeting of directors at eleven, an appointment with a merchant banker at twelve and your twice-weekly screw at one.

Nice work if you can get it.

Unlike mine. Mine was a reel of film, a few neat pages giving names of places, descriptions and times. Those were my business. Those and nothing else. As long as I stuck with them I guessed I would be all right. There had been occasions in the past when I had stepped too far outside my league and got myself mixed up in nasty things like murder. It hadn't been nice; it hadn't been easy; I'd been warned by my friendly neighbourhood policemen that my nose was getting in where it wasn't wanted. And I nearly got myself killed.

I hadn't liked that. I had no intention of getting beyond myself again. I was going to stick with nice easy divorce cases and large brown manilla envelopes filled cram full of photographs and notes. I pass the envelope across the desk; the client passes me back a cheque in exchange.

What could be simpler?

I looked up and saw the silhouette against the glass of the office door. For a big man he walked softly. He paused then opened the door and stepped through. He was big. He shut the door with the same decisiveness and leaned back against it. I guess he wanted me to take a good look at him and I could see why.

He was four or five inches over six foot and broad enough for his height not to be the only thing you noticed about him. Some of his muscles were housed in a short-sleeved satiny white shirt, but mostly they bulged outside it. There was a rich scrub of dark curly hair on his chest that made my office doormat look positively threadbare. Above this he wore a plain silver chain necklace.

His legs were threatening the seams of a pair of yellow slacks above a pair of light tan casuals. Both hands were open and spread with their knuckles towards me so that I wouldn't miss any of the rings that adorned his fingers. They weren't just pretty—I bet they hurt some, too.

His hair was curled on to his scalp as tightly as that on his chest. The nose that spread across his face was broad enough to have been broken at least twice.

He was both the most handsome and the most dangerous looking West Indian I had seen for a long time.

I opened my mouth to say something, but there didn't seem much point.

As soon as he had finished making an impression I was sure he would tell me the score. I just hoped the way he read the game I wasn't going to lose by too many.

He moved away from the door and came over towards the desk. I tried to stop them, but my eyes flicked down to the barely open desk drawer anyway. This boy didn't miss a trick.

He gave a funny sort of grin and pointed. ‘Don't do that, man. It would be a mistake, like I'm telling it to you.'

From where I was sitting he looked awfully big. I knew that if I stood up he would still be a few inches taller and a hell of a lot heavier. I thought that he was right about the drawer. There was no way I could get the gun out in time. I grinned back at him and tried anyway.

His right leg kicked up under the far side of the desk and the next thing I knew I was trying to chew wood. By the time I had given it up and was spitting out the odd splinter, a few changes had taken place.

Like I was on my back and the chair I had been sitting on had spun away across the room. The desk had rebounded off my mouth on to my legs and tried to knock a tune out of my shin bone with all the delicacy of Lionel Hampton in his third successive chorus of ‘Flying Home.' Except the only sound was me—yelling.

The desk drawer had banged itself shut. My visitor had come round between me and it, though he couldn't have thought I was going to be so stupid as to try that trick twice. In case I was he gave me a short, sharp kick into the top of my shoulder. I grunted and pulled my head to one side till it was staring at his shoes. The one he had kicked at me with hadn't got scuffed in the process and I was glad, I felt that if it had he would have blamed me and taken a second shot.

I moved my head and looked up at him. For the second time, I grinned. He pulled his lips back to reveal the usual set of fine, white teeth—then he spat right in my face.

I reached up with my left hand and wiped the thick mixture of spittle and phlegm from my eyes, my cheeks and mouth. I scraped it off on me carpet and did my best to look as though nothing had happened. But I knew that I would remember what had.

So did he.

He took a couple of paces back and told me to get up off my fat white arse.

I did exactly as I was told: I got up off my fat white arse.

‘You're Scott Mitchell, right?'

‘Right. How did you guess?'

He looked at me with scorn. ‘For one thing your name's all over the outside door. For another, from what I've heard about you, that's the kind of dumb trick you would try.'

‘Too bad,' I said. ‘I'll have to stop them sending copies of my references to every cheap hood and heavy in town.'

This time he laughed out loud. I went over and got the chair and sat down.

‘So what is it?' I asked. ‘Or did you just come over to grab a few laughs and have a little work out on the side?'

He had something against me sitting down. This time he kicked the chair from under me and grabbed me before I bit the floor. He yanked me into the air and jolted me down on to my feet.

As if I wasn't having enough trouble with them already.

‘Look, man, you don't try games with me. You listen. See?'

I did my best to show him that I was going to do exactly that and without any trouble. Apart from anything else, I was anxious to know what he wanted.

‘You were down south of the river today. You were at a place called the Three Swans. Asking questions. That right, man?'

I could have denied it but I was feeling tender and tired—and hotter than ever. I didn't want a going-over. Not right then and there. Later maybe.

‘Sure,' I said, ‘I was there.'

The large head nodded. ‘What you doing there?'

‘I was following somebody for a client.'

‘Who?'

It was my turn to shake my head. Only I did it in the opposite direction.

He took a step towards me and I saw his fists begin to bunch up. They looked like over-ripe bananas.

‘You've got to know I can't tell you that. Once I start giving away clients' names as soon as I'm asked, there goes my hope of getting any more work.'

I knew that if he really went to town on me, the question of work would be purely academic. I had to say something, and fast.

‘Look, I'll give you this much. I was following a woman. Divorce business. She was supposed to have showed up at the hotel. Nothing happened. I asked a few questions and got nowhere. Her old man's obviously some kind of nut. It was all a big waste of time. Now there's nothing in that to interest you—or whoever you're working for.'