The Devil's Home on Leave (Factory 2) (18 page)

‘Billy brought him back to Queenstown Road one night some years back. They told me to fuck off; they had business, Billy said, so I went out to the pub. When I came back at closing time the man had gone. But at different times after that he’d be back; sometimes we used to sit and talk, the three of us. And drink. I could tell he fancied me; a woman always knows. Then one night, after Billy had gone – abroad on business, he said – this bloke came round. We sat and drank for a while, and then it started.’

‘I just want his name, Klara,’ I said. ‘That’s all. Just the name.’

‘I daren’t.’

‘Look, Klara,’ I said, ‘if it comes to the worst I can arrange for you to be watched. It’s not easy, because we’re always short of men. But I could do it.’

‘You promise? You give me your word?’

‘If you find you’re in danger on account of information you’ve given me then yes, I give you my word.’

She sighed, closing her eyes and putting her hands on her knees. On the back of her hands I noticed red angry scars. ‘Yes, it’ll be a relief,’ she said, ‘if it’ll help put that devil away where he can’t do any more harm. It’ll have been worth it, even if something happened to me.’ She looked at me and said: ‘Well, it was Pat Hawes.’

‘Thank you, Klara,’ I said. Excitement surged through me. Everything fitted. The business they were discussing years ago was murder – Wetherby’s murder. I thought, if we could have got hold of Klara then, we’d have had the evidence that would have nailed McGruder for that. Meantime I had lost Klara again. She had refilled with scotch, and was talking about her father.

‘Did Hawes tell you anything while you were going with him?’ I said. ‘Anything you think I ought to know?’

She shook her head. ‘Pat Hawes was no talker,’ she said, ‘he was a grunter. All he wanted was a rough fuck. That’s all they ever want, the men I get. Women with them, they don’t get no credit for brains.’ She started crying again.

‘Hadrill was never mentioned? A man called Edwardes?’

Her reddened eyes gazed at me as though she were surprised I was still there. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I never asked questions, they was always good for a smack with Billy.’

I thought, you don’t surprise me. Billy’s a psychopath; he laughs on the surface; often, I’ve seen him do it. But the expression on his face has nothing to do with what he’s thinking or feeling at all.

‘When we lived in France,’ said Klara, ‘I always used to have good feelings about the English. We used to watch them playing football on TV. Big, solid men. Kind-looking. Anyway, after Belgrade.’

I didn’t say anything; I was thinking about what I had just found out.

Klara was wandering, but after a while she started up again. ‘All music’s like the wind,’ she said. ‘My mother was from Titograd; she worked on a collective there. She’s been dead a while now. Yes, she used to say, music’s like the wind. You hear it and then it’s gone; it takes the people who played it, the people who listened, and its pleasure and damage with it. You could hear the same music, perhaps, at another time, in a different place; but it would be played by other people even though they looked like the same people, yet you would never hear it the same way again.’ Scotch came back into her mouth raw, but she held it with her hand to her mouth, and a tear like a varnished fingernail slipped down her face. ‘My father was from Despotovac, a village on the Zagreb–Belgrade road. In the winter it was buried under snow. The children had one dress, the same as for summer, and one pair of boots, and they crept out to go for the bread under a black sky full of snow, under pine trees loaded with ice.’

It should have been drunken melodrama but it wasn’t, and I sat
listening silently in the dark room; by talking of children, Klara McGruder had brought Dahlia into my mind.

I stood up. ‘Well, I’ll be going,’ I said.

She gazed up at me blearily. ‘Have a drink. Just one. It’s so lonely by yourself.’

‘I can’t,’ I said, ‘I’ve got too much to do. Another time.’ I scribbled down the number of the Factory and my home number on a page out of my notebook and put it on the table.

‘Ring me at either of these numbers. Any time, if you feel afraid.’

But she had lain back. Her eyes had closed, her despair making her look like death, her face purple and swollen in the wicked shadows.

I went quietly downstairs. The weather had turned sick. It had stopped raining, but the air was like thunder over the puddles in the street. The heavy lorries were jammed solid and it was too warm for April, sickly warm; it was weather that made me sweat. I went over to the tube station to buy a paper, and the headlines were that Pat Hawes had gone on the hot cross. I didn’t bother ringing the Factory; I just bought a ticket and went on down to the platform reading the story.

When I got in to the Factory, there was a man waiting for me from Serious Crimes, a sergeant from Bowman’s crew.

‘Christ, we’ve been looking everywhere for you!’

‘Well, you didn’t look in the right place.’

‘You’re meant to carry a bleeper so you can be contacted.’

‘I’d look a bloody fool questioning a man,’ I said, ‘and then just when you’re getting to the interesting bit that thing goes off in your pocket.’

‘All the same,’ he said. I could tell he always carried one like a good boy. ‘Anyway, what the panic is, Pat Hawes is out of Wandsworth.’

‘Yes, I know,’ I said, ‘I just read it in the paper.’

‘Well, you’ve got to go up and see Superintendent George.’

When I got up there George said: ‘Jesus, what a flap. Hawes – we’ve got every copper in the country looking for him. You saw him the other day – any idea where he might be?’

‘I might have,’ I said, ‘on a hunch basis.’

‘What did he go on the hot cross for? Jail fever?’

‘You could put it like that,’ I said. ‘The man was sick with fright; he’d been well leaned on. He had to go where we couldn’t get at him again; some of my questions were near the bone. Also, he talked to us.’

‘You’re on this plastic bags business.’

‘Yes, it’s all connected.’

‘Well, we’ve got to get this bastard.’

‘How did he get out?’ I said. ‘Usual? You bag the screw who sold him the key?’

‘That’s only a matter of time,’ said George, ‘there’s four over at
that nick we’ve an eye on.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said, ‘you can book him for flogging the key but that won’t tell us anything more.’

‘It’s a right fuck-up,’ said George. ‘You’re on the plastic bags thing, we’re onto catching Hawes, we’re all tripping over each other, it’s like Charlie Chaplin.’

‘Screws aren’t millionaires,’ I said, ‘they’ll take a chance where the money’s right and their wages are wrong, and won’t the heavy Sundays have fun with it? Hawes went straight out of the main gate, did he?’

‘It’s hardly worth putting them inside,’ said George, ‘not the well-heeled ones. Motor waiting right out there.’

‘Well, it’s pathetic,’ I said. ‘What they call a security wing in a prison these days, it’ll hardly keep a sardine in its tin.’

‘If you’re going to tackle it,’ said George, ‘you’d better get your skates on, it’s going right up the ladder this one is, you’ll see – the brass is running about like a chicken with its head cut off.’

I knocked, and after a time McGruder opened the door.

‘It’s me, Billy.’

‘What do you want this time? I’m really busy, copper. Why not another day?’

‘You’re never too busy to see me,’ I said.

‘What do you want?’

‘To have a look round.’ I was already doing it. ‘You got Pat Hawes here?’ I called to him from the bedroom.

‘I never even heard of him till I read about that jail break he made in the papers.’

‘You certainly read the papers, don’t you?’ I said, rejoining him. ‘It’s all right,’ I added, ‘I didn’t expect to find Hawes here; even you’re not that stupid.’

‘I’m not stupid at all.’

‘That’s what really stupid people always say.’ I’d only mentioned Hawes to give my Billy a jolt. Now I gave him another. ‘Your wife around?’

‘Wife? What wife?’

‘Our records tell us you had a wife. Klara, maiden name of Godorovic. What have you done with her? Divorced her? Killed her? Cooked and eaten her?’

‘That cow,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen her for years, I don’t know where she is.’

‘That’s lucky for her.’

‘Look,’ he said, ‘you’re giving me a right pain in the arse.’

‘OK,’ I said, ‘and now here comes a worse one. I’m taking you down to the Factory with me, McGruder. I’m doing it now. I’m taking you down for questioning in a nice peaceful room I’ve got
there. Chief Inspector Bowman’d like a word with you and he doesn’t like to be kept waiting. So get ready, I’m sick of going round the houses with you.’

He started shouting. ‘You can’t take me in! What could you do me for?’

‘If you keep rabbiting on,’ I said, ‘obstructing a police officer would do to begin with.’

He managed to calm down again. ‘Look, I just told you I’d got a lot on right now,’ he said. ‘I’ll not be in the country much longer, and I’ve a lot to arrange. That’s why I’m on edge, see? I’m sorry, really sorry if I come on a bit sharp.’

‘Don’t bother with the soft pedal,’ I said, ‘you’re coming, sport. If it turns out you’ve never had a connection with Pat Hawes, nothing’s changed. But if you have, then a lot has. If it turns out that you did business with Hawes over a period of years, then it could start to rain on you hard, Billy. And if I can establish a definite connection between you and Hadrill last Wednesday evening then it’s going to come pissing down on you. I’m only thinking aloud right now, so I reckon we’ll go on over to the Factory now and get everything in better shape.’

‘I tell you, you must be a maniac coming in here on your own and saying things like that,’ he said, ‘you really must.’

‘But I’m not on my own,’ I said.

‘I tell you I don’t know bloody Hawes!’ he screamed. ‘Nor Hadrill!’

I had a strong feeling he was going to attack me; so I went to the door and banged on it. Immediately a big wooden-top came in. He was young and blond with hair cut short; he was pale and lean with training. He went up to McGruder, whom he topped by three inches, and said: ‘OK. You want this the easy way, son, or the uphill route?’

McGruder stood in the middle of his neat room in a crouch for defence, and the officer said to him: ‘I want you to touch me, son.’ He spoke softly. ‘Go on. Just once. Give me a pat. Go
on, then. Just to see what I’m made of.’

The tension in the place was deafening.

‘I hear you think you’re a hard man,’ the officer said. ‘Christ, I’ll have you licking my boots to stop the fucking pain.’ He looked over at me and said: ‘What’s the matter with him? He broken a spring or what?’

McGruder just stood there, motionless.

‘He usually carries a razor,’ I said.

‘Oh really?’ said the officer. ‘God help you if I find one on you, son.’

I said to McGruder: ‘Come on, Billy. Get your coat, you can’t win.’

From his stillness, McGruder did it to me. Moving in a blur of speed, he toppled me with a kick in the left kneecap that struck in a red flash of agony. As I was getting up, not feeling that leg any more, I saw McGruder had his razor out and I yelled at the officer, who took it on the arm, kicked McGruder in the genitals, got his wrist in a judo hold and caught the weapon as McGruder dropped it, doubling up and holding his wrist to his balls.

‘All right,’ I said to the officer, ‘put the cuffs on him.’ I added: ‘That arm of yours really is bleeding.’

‘I know it,’ he said, ‘that’s me out of Saturday’s match. Why I ever joined Special Patrol Group I’m buggered if I know.’ He looked at his cut sleeve: ‘Wrecked my tunic, the bastard has, and it was brand-new.’

Back in Room 205 I said: ‘OK, Billy, now talk.’

He shook his head obstinately; I was getting used to it. ‘No.’ His wrist was bandaged, but it wasn’t broken. He still sat hunched over, because of the kick he had had in the balls.

‘I’d rather we sorted this out just between the two of us,’ I said. ‘But of course if we can’t, we can’t, and I’ll have to turn you over to Serious Crimes, and no one seems to care for their methods much. So why don’t you simply tell me all about Pat Hawes – how long you’ve known him, what you used to talk about, everything the pair of you ever got up to together?’

The WPC with the face like a plate sat at the other table with her tape recorder; a uniformed officer stood with his back against the door.

‘I tell you I don’t know this Pat Hawes.’

‘It’s a lovely tune, Billy,’ I said, ‘but you’ll ruin it if you play it too often, also it’s in a key I don’t like. Look, I’m being reasonable, Billy, which isn’t easy for me because I don’t like being consistently lied to, and I know you’ve known Hawes on and off for years. Don’t ask me how I know that because you won’t get an answer; you can just take it that I do.’

He was silent. I thought about Klara McGruder. I had asked the voice for a watch to be put on her; I was sick of people being at risk from men like Pat and Billy. So that when McGruder suddenly said: ‘I’m not telling you anything, you’re just a sergeant,’ I exploded.

‘Now you listen!’ I shouted. ‘You’re a cold-hearted bastard that’s done bird for murder, and who knows but you’re going to do some more – a sergeant’s all you’re fit for!’

He just looked at us. He reminded me of a picture I had seen once of a wolf surrounded by armed men in a forest clearing; his face was white, his eyes red where they should be white, and he seemed to have gone beyond argument but was turning on us because there was nothing else left for him to do. It was also suffocating in 205; everyone was sweating, and I got the constable to open the window.

‘You’ve got to get someone down here that can talk sense,’ he said at last.

‘No, no,’ I said, ‘don’t think I’m going to get my commander out of bed just on your account, Billy. Not at one in the morning.’

‘Well, at least tell her over there to stop that machine, then,’ he said, ‘if it’s you I’ve got to tell I don’t want any of it recorded. Just five minutes or ten with you alone and no witnesses.’