Those Who Feel Nothing (7 page)

You hear the crack and feel the blood spurt across you. The man puts his hands up to his face as he slumps. You drag him in and leave him half in, half out of the men's cubicle. You close the bathroom door behind you.

You follow the corridor to the end. The fire exit is locked, double-locked and padlocked. You are going to have to leave by the front door now. You re-enter the bar and move as quickly as you can before people respond to the commotion. You see the barman coming out from behind his counter.

You are trying to be light on your feet but, given the amount you have drunk, you feel like a barrel rolling into the street.

The humidity hits you first and then Neal, standing to the side of the door.

He is aiming for your kidneys but by chance your elbow gets in the way. He has his own knuckleduster. You feel the pain shoot up to your shoulder as your whole arm goes dead. You stagger to the side.

You still have the cosh in your other hand and you swing it tight and fast and hit him across the side of his head.

You are aiming for his temple. You are doing it by reflex and not thinking about the fact that you might kill him. But you can't get enough swing so it is not a good blow. Even so, he totters.

There is an alley directly across from the restaurant. You huff and you puff and though you may not blow the house down you do get across the street and halfway down the alley before the two little piggies at either end of the street have started moving.

You abandon any idiotic thought of trailing them back to Sal Paradise. Instead you head back to your hotel and take to your bed, exhausted and drunk and cursing yourself for that drunkenness.

You are woken some time later by the sensation of drowning. You are drowning, in the plunge pool in your backyard.

Whilst Rafferty was on the telephone to his solicitor, Gilchrist and Heap huddled.

‘You know we have to arrest him, ma'am, if we're to secure the car and the house,' Heap said. ‘If we leave him here he can destroy evidence.'

‘I know,' Gilchrist said, chewing on a nail. ‘But, Bellamy, we're out on a limb here. We don't know for certain it was his car. If it is his car we don't know he was driving it. He could say someone stole it – because, actually, we don't know where his frigging car is.'

‘With respect, ma'am, we haven't looked yet.' Heap gave a half-gesture. ‘And it's him, ma'am. You know it is.'

‘It seems probable but he's an important person in the town.'

Heap looked up at her. ‘I didn't know you were the cautious type when it came to worries about a powerful person biting back.'

Gilchrist flared. ‘Mind your bloody lip, Sergeant,' she hissed. ‘We have to be seen to be acting properly.'

‘Arrest them both and we will be,' Heap said.

‘Easy enough for you to say,' Gilchrist almost snarled at him. ‘The shit doesn't stop with you.'

Heap nodded slowly. ‘You're right, ma'am. Nine times out of ten shit does flow downward to land on my head and the heads of people like me. But in an instance like this the shit flows upwards.' Unexpectedly, he grinned, his cheeks reddening. ‘But it doesn't stop with you either. Isn't that why God created chief constables?'

You lie on the tiles by the pool, face down, spluttering up chlorinated water and vodka. Someone kicks you in the ribs, hard enough to lift you off the tiles. You retch again and curl into a ball, expecting further kicks.

Nothing happens.

You can see out of the corner of your eye a man standing in the doorway of your room. He is half in shadow, appropriately enough. You look behind you. Neal and two of his men are standing in a semi-circle, well within kicking distance, looking towards the shadowy figure. He leans out of the shadow. He jabs a finger at you though his voice is low and calm. Hoarse, exactly as you remember it.

‘If you want to speak to somebody, what's wrong with just picking up the bloody telephone, asshole?' He shakes his head. ‘Jesus. Coming on like gangbusters in one of my bars.'

Sal Paradise. You recognize the voice but you've never seen his face before. You're not sure how you expected him to look. Mean-faced like Neal? Barbaric? You've met enough bad people not to expect him to be wreathed in sulphur or breathing fire from his nostrils.

Of course, he just looks ordinary. A bit jowly, bags under his eyes. He looks down at you. He has your passport in his hand. He scrutinizes it then looks at you, frowning.

‘We know each other?'

‘From a long time ago,' you say.

‘And you've come for payback? Because, let me tell you, that ain't going to happen. Better men than you have tried, Gunga Din.'

‘I came to you for help,' you say.

‘I ain't in the helping business, friend.'

‘That's what you said then.'

‘What – and that has rankled with you all these years? Now that's what I call a slow burn.'

‘I've got no beef with you. I'm looking for men you had dealings with thirty-five years ago – men you may still have dealings with. Men you told me were dead.'

‘Most men I had dealings with thirty-five years ago are dead. Nature of the business. I'm the exception.'

‘I know one of them is alive,' you say. ‘I don't know if you still have dealings with him and the others.'

‘If the others are still alive. You say I told you they were dead back then?'

‘You did. An ambush, you said.'

Paradise shrugs. ‘Then they're dead.' He peers at you. ‘But if they are still alive you want me to welch on someone I do business with?'

‘I just need to be sure there won't be a problem with you when I go after them.'

Paradise grimaces. ‘
When
not
if
you go after them, you say. Sounds like you've already made your mind up, whether I give you permission or not.'

You say nothing.

‘That's all you want?' he says. ‘My permission?'

‘Current whereabouts would also be useful.'

Paradise shows his teeth. ‘If I were you I'd be contemplating your own whereabouts in about ten minutes' time.'

You take a gamble. ‘They ripped you off thirty-five years ago and I bet they just pissed themselves laughing at what a dumb fuck you were.'

Paradise clenches his big fists.

‘You're about a spider's fart away from having your back broken. How do you feel about spending the rest of your life as a head on a stick?'

‘Do you mind if I sit up?' you say.

‘Go ahead – it makes it easier for me to kick your teeth in.'

You roll on to your side, trying not to grimace at the pain in your ribs. You're hoping they're only bruised, not broken, though it actually makes little difference. Your throat and chest burn from the forced ingestion of water. You sit up, cross your legs loosely.

‘Thirty-five years ago you did a bit of business with four men: Rogers, Cartwright, Howe and Bartram. You told me at the time they were dead but I'm guessing in fact they ripped you off.'

‘And pissed themselves laughing – yes, I got that. Why do you care?'

‘That's a long story.'

‘And you don't have much time left, so why don't you give me the SparkNotes version?'

‘They took something precious away from me.'

‘Thirty-five years ago?'

You nod. He laughs but it's not much of a laugh.

‘And only now you're pissed about it?'

You cough up some more water. ‘I've only just realized,' you say hoarsely.

‘And what do you want with these guys? You're going to kill them?'

Your lungs are hurting now as well as your ribs. ‘Probably.'

‘No offence, but don't you think you're getting a bit old for that shit?'

You say nothing. Paradise shakes his head.

‘And you want me to facilitate that? I don't think so.'

‘Why?'

Paradise leans forward again. He has a vein throbbing in his forehead. You watch it, trying to calculate his heart rate. It's low. As if to explain why it's low he says: ‘I never let emotion get in the way of business.' He sits back. ‘Let me tell you something, pilgrim.' He works his jaw, preparing his pronouncement. Here it comes. ‘The world belongs to those who feel nothing.'

You nod. ‘I've heard. You think that's a good thing, do you?'

‘I think it's a damned shame, but that is the world I live in so I have to acknowledge it.'

‘Embrace it?'

‘Deal with it.'

You look at the water in your pool for a moment. ‘Don't you want to know how they ripped you off?”

Paradise shakes his head again and smiles. You think he's aiming for genial but he's forgotten how to be anything but ruthless. The smile is a grimace.

‘That long ago? Couldn't give a fuck. I've done my share of shafting and been shafted since.'

‘Do you still do business with them?'

Paradise stands. ‘Leave them alone, pilgrim.'

‘I know one of them is attached to an office in Siem Reap.'

‘There you go then – you don't need me.'

‘I'm paying that office a visit next.'

Paradise wags a finger at you. ‘If you try that there may not be any
next
for you.'

Gilchrist told a constable to keep Rafferty and his house guest, now in a shirt and jeans, in the kitchen. She and Heap went into the hallway.

‘We'll have the first look then let Don-Don and the rest do the thorough stuff when they get here,' Gilchrist said.

Don-Don was Detective Sergeant Donald Donaldson, who was a loose part of her team. Or perhaps a loose cannon part of her team was a better description.

‘Ma'am,' Heap said.

‘Obsessive-compulsive?' Gilchrist said to Heap, gesturing around the long ground-floor room.

‘Extremely,' Heap agreed. ‘Remarkable when it's so overstuffed with knick-knacks and all this fussy stuff.'

‘No wonder he lives alone,' Gilchrist said. ‘Who else could find shelf space? You live in Brighton, Heap?'

‘Lewes, ma'am,' he said, leading the way up the steep staircase to the first floor. ‘Brighton is too exciting for me.'

The front room on that floor was a library, lined with books from floor to ceiling. All hardbacks. The master bedroom was at the rear with long French windows looking out over the well-kept garden.

Neither these rooms nor the floor above held anything of immediate interest. The house was formidably tidy except for the guest room on the top floor scattered with Roger's clothes.

Gilchrist pulled the bedcover back. ‘And?'

‘He's been sleeping here,' Heap said. ‘Whether he was last night I wouldn't know.'

They descended to the basement, which had been fitted out as a self-contained flat.

A room at the front was locked and bolted on the outside. The key was in the door. Heap and Gilchrist exchanged looks. Somebody locked in here?

There was and there wasn't. When they walked in both stopped dead. It was a big sitting room with sofas and armchairs and, over against one wall, a dining table and chairs. And on every available seat were placed oversized dolls, in skirts and stockings, aprons and Bo-Peep hats.

‘Has he been nicking the museum stock …?' Gilchrist started to say when she realized something.

Heap must have realized it at the same time because he suddenly clutched at her. ‘Christ,' he said.

‘My sentiments exactly,' Gilchrist whispered, gently disengaging Heap's hand from her arm.

He looked down at what she was doing and the second realization dawned. He jerked his hand away from her and flushed bright red. ‘Sorry, ma'am,' he said.

‘It's all right, Bellamy,' she whispered, unsure why she wasn't speaking in her normal voice. ‘We all get taken by surprise.' She surveyed the room. ‘I'd say Keymer isn't the first graveyard Mr Rafferty has robbed.'

Bob Watts looked down on the promenade from his balcony. The seafront was busy in the sunshine but hardly anyone was actually promenading. Scarcely a walker to be seen. Jostling together were cyclists, joggers, then grown men and women on scooters or roller-blades or skateboards. There was also a new breed: people on skis with little wheels attached, propelling themselves along with ski sticks.

One of the few people walking was a man with a huge cluster of balloons battling with the wind. Dirigibles really, shaped as Dalmatians, dolphins, whales and tigers. A big gust of wind almost lifted him off his feet as it caught the balloons. Watts smiled but the man didn't. There seemed something wrong about a man selling such happy, silly things being so churlish.

Damn if the middle-aged Asian woman from the pub wasn't standing against the railings, holding a carrier bag. She scowled at the balloons as they bobbed towards her. Watts watched her for a moment then went to his telescope.

He had bought it when he moved in. He'd decided that of a sleepless night, of which he'd been having many, he would stargaze, light pollution permitting. He'd always been vaguely interested in astronomy and he'd read there would be two comets to watch this year.

Since he'd started living in the flat, however, he'd slept like a log and the nightly sea frets had obscured even the moon.

He trained the telescope now on a boat on the horizon that looked familiar. It was the elegant rum-runner from the Great Escape heading back to Brighton. Smoke puffed out of the central funnel. He scanned the length of the boat but could see no one on deck.

G
ilchrist left Heap at Rafferty's house questioning Roger the house guest whilst she escorted Rafferty to the station. She handed him over to the desk sergeant to process and went to her office to call Legal for advice about what he might actually be charged with. Whilst she was waiting for a call back she googled ‘contemporary grave robbing' and found a case of a man in Russia, an academic, who had done a horribly similar thing, even down to the tea party.