One Foot in the Grave (7 page)

“Hunch!”

“I don't believe in hunches. I never did. They always let you down.”

“Right. Remember Ferdy Greer?”

“I don't think so.”

“After your time, perhaps. Hit man for the Blue Bear crowd. Drugged a bit. Mary Lou Isaacs told me this—she and me was quite good pals, once. Forget it. Ferdy. It was after some job, the payout. Everything gone like clockwork. Some very hard boys in the Blue Bear lot, so Mary Lou liked to have Ferdy around case one of 'em tried something. But that night there hadn't been no arguments and they was all sitting around having a drink and relaxing when Ferdy jumps up and says, ‘I'm getting out of this.' Summing in the way he says it, so Mary Lou looks at him, and he's dead white, and all he'll say is summing bad's coming, summing really bad. Born in a gypsy van, Ferdy, so Mary Lou shrugs and gives him a stack of tenners, and that's the last she sees of him. Couple of hours later he's out at the airport with his passport and a ticket, getting on to a plane for Jamaica. Now, there's a rozzer in plain clothes on the gangway, looking for someone else, not Ferdy at all. Ferdy sees him and knows him but he walks past and is going up the gangway when the rozzer does a double take and calls out to him to come back. It'd only have been a couple of minutes' chat, see—he couldn't of stopped him, and he wasn't wanted, nothing like that. But Ferdy's that nervous he's got his gun out—this was before the big hijacks had started, see—and the copper's dead almost before Ferdy's finished turning round.”

“Yes, I remember. He tried to take the plane, didn't he, but made a mess of it?”

“'Sright. Funny thing about Ferdy—he was shyer with women than anyone I ever heard of. Kept a deaf and dumb girl, not much younger than what he was, but he treated her more like she was his daughter and he was shy even with her. That's how Mary Lou managed him, see, but even there it had its disadvantages. Mean as a ferret with men, Ferdy; didn't mind what he did to them—knock 'em off quick or watch 'em linger, it's all one. But suppose Mary Lou needed a woman roughed up or scared, she had to hire a different bloke. Well, there was this air hostess top of the gangway, and spite of what she seen Ferdy do she gets out a smile for him—it's the training, I suppose. Automatic, doesn't mean nothing, but it hits Ferdy like it was a bit of lead pipe and he stands there, all goofy. Can't of lasted more'n a second, but the girl spots what's up—you know how quick some of these tarts are, that sort of thing—and spite of he's got his gun on her she somehow knows he's not going to use it and she gives him a shove and gets the door shut and the plane taxis away with Ferdy still on the steps, no hostages, no plane, nothing. And he's shot a copper for no reason at all, 'cept that he had this hunch that summing bad was coming. He puts his gun in his mouth and knocks hisself off.”

The interruption to Pibble's tenuously maintained reasoning processes turned out to have been no such thing. He half-listened as Wilson told the story—dull voice almost a whisper, small eyes studying glistening fingernails—but at the same time he was becoming aware of how hard it is for a certain type of man to take his secrets to the grave. Some do, almost gleefully, the miser's dead hands still clutching his bag of ducats; but others who have amassed their dangerous knowledge with the same ferocity discover in old age that their lust is for their secrets to live on, where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men. Like a millionaire pouring out his money on some charity that will perpetuate his name, they spill the beans. The Wilson Foundation. No wonder a Chief Super had come down; he'd been on the case long before Tosca died, because Wilson was also a Super. A super-grass. Because of his heart they'd put him into a top-class nursing home, and because of his importance they'd chosen one that was already a fortress, and on top of that they'd given him a bodyguard. With Wilson around, there couldn't be room for much else in their minds than the idea that Tosca had been killed in order to clear the way toward him. If that was true, the killers had made a mess of it, but at least it meant that the opposition was not squeamish.

“Is Mary Lou looking for you?” asked Pibble.

The cold eyes flicked toward him, then back to the fingernails.

“Fellers with rotten hearts,” said Wilson. “You hadn't ought to go saying that sort of thing to them. Besides, she's in Switzerland, last I heard, having her innards taken out. … Meet her ever?”

“Not to talk to. I saw her years ago. She was a defense witness in two of the cases when we broke the Smith Machine. I don't remember that she struck me as anything extraordinary.”

“You wouldn't say that now, not if you saw her. 'Sides, there must have been summing, you remembering her all that long.”

“Not really. It was my first big case, though …”

“Got you. The Smith Machine. There was a bent copper working for 'em, and a big 'un. Now, what was his name?”

“Richard Foyle.”

“Right. A knight in shining armor with dirty underpants, that's him. And you was the young copper who opened it all up. And Mary Lou … now, I heard summing about her in that case. What was it? I hadn't nothing to do with the Smith Machine myself, but somebody told me long after, when we was talking about Mary Lou … got it. She wanted the Smith brothers sent down, spite of being a witness on their side, and she did her best to see that's what happened. Right?”

Pibble closed his eyes and tried to dredge the image out of the quicksands.
A pale child, dark, petite, nervous, biting her knuckles before she answered; starting well, then a faint hesitation and a recovery. A rather ordinary sort of girl
—
older than she looked, one came to realize
—
but a good choice by the defense for an alibi witness, ordinary and credible. Pouncer Malahide rising to cross-examine. The witness suddenly more nervous. The first self-contradiction. Pouncer doing his stuff. Witness going to bits, defiant and pathetic. Stir in court, a shared shiver of triumph along police spines
—
the alibi wouldn't wash after all. The Smiths were going down.

“I wonder if you're right,” said Pibble. “It certainly didn't strike me at the time.”

“It wouldn't, not with Mary Lou. Remember what happened to the Smiths?”

“They got into a fight in Parkhurst. One of them died.”

“And the other just didn't—got his skull bashed in, though, and his brain went sort of soggy. Spent the rest of his life in a home, and not so cushy as this place, neither. I sometimes wonder if Mary Lou didn't lay that fight on, somehow. She wouldn't fancy the Smiths coming out, trying to pick up where they left off, would she?”

“I don't know.”

It was, of course, possible. On the other hand even apparently dispassionate historians like Wilson could become ensnared by the glamour of power, the common belief among criminals that everything that happens has been arranged for the advantage of one of the moguls of violence.

“How long ago was all that?” said Wilson. “Twenny-five years?”

“Thirty-one.”

“Much as that? Water under the bridge, uh?”

If it was, then there must be some kind of eddy in time, set up by the bridge itself, for whenever Pibble stared over the coping he saw Foyle's face trapped there, turning and turning. He watched another peppermint flicker and vanish from the pad on Wilson's lip, and seized on it as the chance to turn the talk away from Foyle and the Smiths.

“Did you find it difficult to give up?” he asked.

“I've not bloody given up. Just laying off—part of the contract, see? But soon as this job's done with, I'm taking my cash and flying out to Bermuda or someplace where I can sit on the beach all day with a fresh box of Havanas beside my chair and watch the bathing girls do-dahing along the sand. P'raps the cigars will kill me, p'raps they won't, but one thing—I'm not going to die of sucking bloody Polos.”

Pibble made a sympathetic mumble, and Wilson leaned forward, apparently roused for the first time.

“What else is there, my age?” he asked. “Girls? No thanks, except to look at. Never been much of a drinker, neither. But a good cigar, now … I shall miss George for that.”

“Uh?”

“My chauffeur, see? Took me out for a bit of a drive, fine days, where I could have a smoke in the back of the Jag without Miss Innocence or someone coming along and sniffing what I been up to.”

“I see. … What did you make of Tosca?”

Wilson leaned back in his chair and considered.

“Kind of life I've lived,” he said, “you see a lot of rubbish. You don't run into a lot of fellers what you respect, if you follow me. You get used to rubbing shoulders with all kinds of scum, and it doesn't bother you. You take what you want of them and you leave the rest. So you won't tell me I'm contradicting myself when I say I quite liked young George, but I knew he was rubbish. He needn't of been but he was, and I'll tell you for why. Because he fancied George Tosca so much. F'rinstance, he'd read a lot of books—always on about his reading—but he'd hardly thought about anything, 'cepting as it affected George Tosca. Vanity made him stupid, spite of him having his share of brains and more. Listen, you remember we was talking about how it might of turned out you being a villain and me being a rozzer?”

“Uh.”

“I give you a caper with a bit of class, didn't I? Sunny Macavoy—he's got class, all right. But if George had been a villain, he'd have been a ponce and nothing more. Yes, and not one of the gentle ones, neither. He had it in for women—you know the sort. Told me once he'd made a list of all the girls here and was crossing them off as he laid them. I dessay that's what he was up to in that room of his in the tower.”

The wing of the nightmare brushed at Pibble's consciousness. He pushed it away.

“Was Tosca bent?” he asked.

“Depends what you mean. Bent enough to slip a box of Havanas into the glove pocket before we went out driving and take a tenner off me for the service—that what you mean?”

“It's a start.”

“He'd have bent more, and you wouldn't have had to wait long for it, neither. You must of met 'em, the fellers what gets a satisfaction out of doing wrong and telling themselves it's all right because it's them that's doing it.”

Wilson knew his world, Pibble thought. There had been a touch of that sort of megalomania in Richard Foyle.

“You want to make anything of it?” said Wilson. “Wasn't a lot of opportunity for his going bent down here, was there?”

“I don't know. I've been wondering. If he wasn't stupid … if he knew the threat to you was serious … I mean, bodyguards get killed as often as the people they're supposed to be guarding … so you'd expect him to take his job seriously, if only because of the danger to himself. But he didn't. Made himself snug in the tower, never varied his rounds. … Suppose he had been in touch with someone—they'd pay for news of your whereabouts, wouldn't they—then he might believe that he wasn't in any danger …”

“It's a thought,” said Wilson, calm as ever. “Yes, it's a thought. You mention this to Mr. Crewe?”

“No.”

“I think you better.”

“But …”

“Come better from you, see? I don't want him thinking. … Not that there's all that to be scared of, now. If it was Mary Lou had George knocked off, she done a dumb thing. Before that, the rozzers had to keep their heads down, pretend they wasn't no such thing. Now with a murder to investigate, Mr. Crewe can put as many as he wants in here and no one's going to pass remarks. Still and all, I'd be glad if you told him what you just said.”

“All right. Including your cigars?”

“Leave that out, cock, will you?”

“All right. … These drives Tosca took you on, I suppose they were appointments to meet Chief Superintendent Crewe?”

“'Sright. Better'n taking the risk of his getting followed down here, see. You got your wits about you, anchew?”

“It comes and goes.”

“Don't give me that. Miss Innocence, she says it's only your legs letting you down.”

“Ur.”

“And that's why I'm still not buying that crap about you hearing a shot. You knew what you was doing all right, dinchew?”

“Ur.”

Pibble was already sliding down the pillow, as if by shrinking under the bedclothes he could withdraw his whole self into the safe shell of illness. But Wilson's presence, which had brought him out of that shell with the bait of interest and amusement, now compelled him with sheer power.

The chilly eyes watched him, unblinking.

“What I been thinking is this,” said Wilson. “They found me somehow. Mind you, we been pretty careful, but now you given me an idea how it might of been. They sent a feller out either to look the place over or to see if he can't get a shot at me. I don't know what happened next. Could of been anything. Some of these young fellers these days, they get themselves so hopped up before a job they don't know what they're doing half the time, so George could of got knocked off almost by accident. Or the bloke might of thought he'd get a sight of me from the tower, and George caught him there. … Even if I dunno exactly what happened, it makes a kind of sense. George in his seduction-scene kit, waiting for that night's bit of skirt to come tiptoeing in, all shy. … And what does he get? A hit man from Mary Lou. Yes, I can see it. What I still can't see is where you come in. You follow me? If I know what's going on, even when it's bad for me, then I can deal with it. But where there's summing as doesn't fit into the picture, then p'raps that means I got the picture all wrong. I don't like it.”

At last Pibble managed to withdraw his gaze from the pale eyes. He closed them with a sigh and lay still. Blurrily a scene began to form in his mind but refused to coalesce. A collage of heroines with Lillian Gish faces crowded the tower stairs, swooned at what they saw on the leads, bent to remove some clue which would in fact have proved their innocence and flickered wide-eyed into the storm. …