‘She bought your friendship with hard drugs?’ I reiterated. ‘I thought you said you didn't take them, Steve. Don't wind me up.’
‘I lied,’ he said. ‘But I'm telling the truth now, honest. I do some now and again, but not as much as some of the others. They loved it, some of them.’
‘Did they get hooked?’ I asked.
He looked at me through his sleepy eyes and said, ‘You do sound like a fucking copper, now I come to think of it. How the fuck do I know?’
Or care, I thought.
He patted his jacket, ‘I want a fag, alright?’
I nodded assent and then continued, ‘Did she sell dope to your friends when they became junkies?’
‘No, she just gave them more. She had loads. She always had loads.’
Whilst we had been talking, Steve had been searching his pockets and finally produced a battered packet of ten Embassy filters and a book of matches. He took out a cigarette and lit it. He even offered me the packet like a perfect little gentleman. I declined his offer.
‘Did she supply the girl upstairs?’ I asked when his cigarette was burning to his satisfaction.
‘I keep telling you I don't know. I haven't seen Patsy for ages, I hadn't seen Jane for days.’
‘Before, I mean. In the past.’
‘Maybe, who knows.’
‘Was Jane one of the friends you used to go about with?’
‘No,’ he laughed meanly. ‘She was just a dirty junkie.’
‘Don't you care that she's dead?’
He shrugged. Steve was a natural shrugger.
‘Jane got hold of some pure smack from somewhere. Do you know of any going around?’
I was grasping at straws by then.
‘I wish I did. I feel like getting smashed,’ he replied.
He was flicking ash carelessly off his cigarette end and it fell onto the bed cover.
‘Do you live here alone?’ I enquired.
‘Sometimes, sometimes not,’ he answered.
I could see he was nodding out and was not interested in further conversation.
‘You're sure that Patsy never told you who supplied her the drugs or who she sold them to?’ I probed again. I had to discover the truth or something that passed for it.
He waggled his forefinger in my direction. He was going with the sleeping pill fast. Or more likely, putting it on. ‘She said it was a secret.’
‘Did she stay here with you at all?’
‘I don't think I was her type.’ He giggled again. Giggling and shrugging were big with him.
‘What was her type?’ I asked, more interested than I should have been.
‘How the fuck do I know? It don't bother me. I can always get a tart if I want one.’
‘Yeah, I'm sure Steve,’ I said. ‘You're a prince. I bet the girls flock around you.’
‘I'm going to be a rock star,’ he said wearily, as if he'd heard the words so many times from his own lips, he no longer believed them himself. ‘But some bastard's nicked me bass.’
If it hadn't been so sordid, it would have been funny. He lay back on the mattress and closed his eyes. I took the cigarette end that smouldered between his fingers and stubbed it out in a saucer that lay on the wooden draining board of the sink. The tap still dripped fitfully and the drops drummed down on to the outside of an old tin cup that lay in the sink. I turned the tap hard anti-clockwise to no avail. The washer must have gone. I pushed the cup from under the tap and a cockroach flew blindly to hide in the folds of a dishcloth.
I didn't think there was much more information to be obtained from Steve that night. I left him to his dreams of stardom and easy money and let myself out of the house.
I needed to see George Bright right away. I wanted answers to the questions that talking to Steve had raised. Not for the first time since I had started looking for Patsy Bright, I felt that someone was really taking the piss. And by that, I don't mean a good natured leg-pull down at the local on a Saturday afternoon.
I drove straight back to George's house in Dulwich.
Although I knocked and rang for five minutes or more, there was no answer. I felt drained by what Steve had told me. I hoped that he was lying, but had a suspicion he was telling the truth. It crossed my mind to break into the Bright mansion, but I couldn't think of a good reason why I should. The chances of me stumbling over anything important in a place that size were slim to say the least. Anyway, I'd probably get caught.
So I went back home and sat for a while staring at the picture of Patsy.
She had begun to take on the look of a fallen angel.
At twelve thirty, I went to bed and fell straight asleep.
The clanging of the telephone bell woke me in the small hours. I felt as if I'd been asleep for only a moment as I surfaced through confused dreams. It was pitch black in the flat and I fumbled blindly for the light beside my bed. When I found the switch and illuminated the room I picked up my watch from the table. It told me that it was one thirty. I swore out loud as I lifted the receiver from it's cradle. Whoever was ringing was in a call box. I waited for the pips to slop. I recognised the voice at once. ‘Nick, is that you?’ it asked. ‘It's me - T S.’
He sounded slurred and distant, half pissed or stoned, and over-amplified electro-funk music buzzed down the line, which didn't help me to hear him.
‘It's a bit late, pal,’ I said. ‘I've just got to sleep.’
‘Sorry about that, but I have to talk to you.’
‘Good, I tried to get you earlier.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I spoke to Precious. Where have you been? I've been calling you all evening.’
‘I've been out socialising,’ I said, as the ‘phone crackled loudly in my ear. ‘Where the hell are you? I can't hear a thing for all that noise.’
‘I'm at the Olive,’ he replied.
‘You never change, do you?’ I asked.
The Olive Branch was a club just off the Brixton Road that catered to a multi-ethnic, multi-sexual, rough trade clientele that was bizarre to say the least.
‘Is that dump still open?’ I continued.
‘Of course it is,’ he replied, shrugging off my question. ‘Listen, I've got to see you.’
‘OK, I'll meet you in the morning.’
‘Not in the morning, now.’
‘Leave me out,’ I said. ‘Do you know what time it is?’
‘Who the hell cares?’ he said. ‘I think someone's putting you on.’
‘It won't be the first time,’ I told him. ‘Who in particular now?’
His voice faded on the line, then I heard him faintly again.
‘I can't talk from here,’ he said through the interference. ‘This line is bloody awful. I'll be home in fifteen minutes. Can you come round?’
‘I'm in bed.’
‘Fuck bed, it could be to our mutual advantage to meet. I've got news about the girl you're looking for, and a slight problem.’
‘What news? What problem?’ I asked, suddenly wide awake.
‘I think I'm being followed.’
‘Who by?’
‘I'm not sure, it's a salt and pepper team, and it only started after I began asking about your Patsy Bright.’
‘Are they there now?’
‘No, that's why I'm going to split.’
I could hear the shrieking of female voices in the background.
‘Are you on your own?’ I asked.
‘No.’
‘Anyone I know?’
‘I shouldn't think so, she's still at school.’
‘Well get rid of her,’ I said urgently. ‘And I'll meet you at your place in twenty minutes or so.’
‘No chance, Nick. I want to find out if she's wearing any panties.’
‘Don't be a cunt, Terry. It could be dangerous, if these people are who I think they are. Get shot of the scrubber for Christ's sake. She could get hurt.’
‘Forget it, she thinks I'm a war hero. I'm telling you boy, this is love. Just get over here. We'll be waiting.’
I tried to protest further, but Terry hung up and left me holding the cold receiver. I lay back in bed cradling the ‘phone onto my chest. Although I was bone tired, I was more than intrigued by what he'd said. And worried that he thought he was being followed. I didn't like the sound of that one bit. It seemed as if someone was determined to fuck up, what on the face of it seemed to be a simple investigation into the whereabouts of a missing girl. If such an investigation could ever be simple.
I felt as if I'd stepped into a den of wolves, when I was only looking for a little puppy dog.
I got out of bed, went into the bathroom and splashed cold water onto my face. The reflection that looked back at me from the mirror over the sink was midnight old and fluorescent pale. I dried my face and pulled it into a semblance of dynamic youth with the tips of my fingers.
I cleaned my teeth to get rid of the taste of my short sleep and went to find some clothes. I pulled on tired jeans and a wrinkled cotton sweater.
I hoped that Terry wasn't throwing a surprise party. I was looking far from my best.
The night was warm, but damp, so I tugged on a raincoat, grabbed my keys and left the house.
The street lights outside were haloed with a fine mist of drizzle. I slid behind the wheel of the Pontiac and turned the key in the ignition. The starter motor whined, but the engine refused to fire.
I slammed the steering wheel with the palm of my hand in frustration. I guessed that the damp had got into the electrics. Charlie would have diagnosed the fault in seconds and had me on my way in a minute. I just sat and cursed the damn car and wished that I had my Jaguar back.
Finally I got out of the Trans-Am and manhandled it out into the street. It rolled gently down the hill, and I managed to bump start it just before I reached the traffic lights at the T-junction with the main road. I allowed the car to idle until the temperature guage began to show a degree of heat. When the needle finally moved out of the blue area on the dial, I drove the car through the streets, slick and black with rain, towards Terry's flat.
The brief drive reminded me of how much I used to love the night. I loved to stand in the shadows and feel the darkness like velvet fingers on my skin.
When I was on the force, I always preferred the nightshift. Prowling the deserted streets under the yellow sodium lights past quiet houses was one of the few good memories I had of that time.
Towards the end it caused problems with Laura, but by then, so did everything. Early on though, before Judith was born, the pair of us revelled together in the darkness. When we were first married, we lived in a little terraced house in Horsham. On my nights off during the summer, we'd take the Jaguar down to Brighton late at night. We'd roll the windows down and Laura would hike her skirt up to let the warm breeze caress her thighs. Somehow I always remember the summers as being warmer in those days.
I loved her so much then, that not touching her actually hurt. We would have to stop somewhere in the dark countryside and make love. She was blonde and cool, but on those nights her skin burned me in our passion. She made me think of a wild animal, tawny eyed, long and lean with a wild streak in her.
She'd come in colours, like a rainbow rising from the sea then plunging down to dash itself on the rocks below. Although I searched and searched, I could never find the pot of gold. Perhaps, because all the time I was holding it in my arms and never knew. Afterwards we'd lie together, barely touching as our sweat dried and listen to the muted sounds of the night. I would look at her by the light of the moon and marvel at what I saw. She was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, with the kindest heart in the world. To my eternal shame, I crushed it like a dried flower.
On the way back home, I'd drive the car as hard as I could on the narrow country lanes, then without warning turn all the lights off. With Creedence or The Doors blasting out of the stereo we'd race through the night.
Laura would scream at the top of her voice, half in pure terror, half with some kind of sexual pleasure. The black car would roar through the night like a banshee released from the underworld and revelling in it's new found freedom.
When we got home, the adrenalin of the sex and speed still hot in our veins, unable to sleep, we'd sit together and wait for the dawn, smoking joints in the garden, lying on the damp furniture and breathing in the scent of the roses I'd so carefully grown.
I wished that I could have bottled the happiness we felt then and kept it to savour when the shadows in my life grew long and dark, then poured it out like perfume, and tasted it's sweetness.
I remember checking my watch as I pushed through the glass doors of the block in which Terry's flat was located.
It was two twenty five in the morning as I entered the lobby. Exactly fifty five minutes since he'd called me on the phone. Because of the trouble with the car it had taken me a lot longer than I'd anticipated to get to his place.
I took the weary old lift up to the third floor and walked down the corridor to his flat. I rang the doorbell, but got no reply. The block had been built in the twenties and the front door to the apartment was a solid, old fashioned job, painted dark green. It was secured by two locks, one Yale and the other a Mortice. On the outside was a brass handle, dull and pitted from use. After waiting for a minute or two, I rang again. There was still no answer.
I didn't expect the door to be on the latch, not at that ungodly hour of the night. But when I tried the handle, it turned, and with a push the door slowly opened.
At any other time I might have thought it merely careless of Terry to leave the door unlocked. However, after what had happened to me over the last few days, I was suspicious and wished I was carrying a weapon.
I pushed the door open wide. It moved slowly on it's oiled hinges. The hallway was dark. But the living room door, directly in front of me was ajar, and a dim light shone inside. From somewhere I could hear music. Just the thin top of recording, no bass, and something else in counterpoint, like a baby crying.
I crept noiselessly across the hall carpet, pushed the living room door fully open and peered into the interior. I was going to call Terry's name, but what I saw in the room silenced me.
The place was much as I remembered it from my previous visit two years previously. It was a mess. Military memorabilia was everywhere. Rifles, pistols, swords and bayonets were mounted on the walls. Above the fireplace was a huge stars and stripes flag, on the wall opposite was a smaller, tattered black flag of the NVA. Books and papers were stacked everywhere. Model military vehicles covered every spare surface. By the side of the door was an army radio equipped with a long whip aeriel. Furniture was sparse. One straight backed chair, a coffee table and a leather chesterfield sofa. There was an old stereo rigged on pale pine shelves along one wall. A console TV was hooked into a video set-up, and on the screen Martin Sheen was busy battling the Viet Cong in glorious technicolor with the sound turned down. The music I could hear was played by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. The sound was coming through headphones via the stereo. The amp must have been turned up to number ten. The headphones lay on the carpet and pumped out their tinny noise into the pile.
The air in the room smelled stale and used. I tried to breathe with the side of my nose. The other sound I could hear, the sound that reminded me of a baby crying was coming from a young girl sitting on the floor leaning against the sofa. She was typical T S material. As he'd always put it, young and dumb. Except that she kept making that noise, a high keening came from her throat. The sound was soft in the dead air, and Jimi played on through the headphones in the background.
The film had reached the episode where a boatload of soldiers are involved in a night time action against the enemy on a bridge across a river.
The silent screen was full of bright flashes like a firework display and the band was playing ‘Electric Ladyland’, and the girl was crying. It was too perfect a scene to describe.
She wasn't wearing any stockings, and when I saw Terry, I could tell him that the answer was positive on the panties. They were white and transparent so that I could see the darkness of her pubic hair. They probably hadn't been transparent when she put them on. But they were now, because she was sitting in what I guessed to be a pool of her own urine which had hardly had time to soak into the carpet. I could see all this because her short skirt had hiked up around her waist. I tried to pull it down to cover her modesty, but it was too short, a bare few inches of poor quality leather. I soon realised I was wasting my time. She didn't care about her modesty, or me touching her. She was too far gone on something to see me or anything else. Not right then, not for a while, maybe never.
Her eyes were open, but looking somewhere else. Blue eyes, like two marbles set in a china background.
Her face was young and round and innocent under heavy makeup. Her hair was stiff and spikey with lacquer or gel and smelled like it needed a wash.
I spoke to her gently, asked what the matter was, but got no reply. Just more wailing, soft and far back in her throat.
I switched the TV and stereo off, then left the girl to herself. She'd started rocking gently to and fro by the time I left the room. I left as quietly as I had entered, and checked the bedroom and kitchen. Both rooms were empty and appeared to be undisturbed. That left only the bathroom. I pushed open the door and fumbled for the cord that operated the light. I found it and pulled it gently with my fingers. A bright fluorescent light sprang into life above me. I was momentarily dazzled by the reflection from the shiny white porcelain tiles that covered the four walls of the room. Terry was waiting for me. Just like he said he would. Except that he wasn't going to tell me anything about Patsy Bright that warm, early morning.
Terry had been messily decapitated, and his head mounted on the centre of the closed toilet seat. His mouth had been stuffed with tissue to silence the screams that must have welled up in his throat as he faced whoever had chopped his head from his body. The paper bulged out from between his lips and dangled pinkly to his chin. The stink of death filled my nostrils again, for the second time in two days.
I stood in the doorway at the edge of a viscous pool of blood that stretched from wall to wall. Red splashes had spattered the tiles on one wall. The force of the blow to his neck had sent a shower of blood almost to ceiling height. I was so reluctant to believe the evidence of my own eyes that I looked away as if the vision would somehow dissappear. There was no chance, when I looked again the horror became even more apparent. Strings of tendon and skin fanned out across the lid of the toilet seat and watery dribbles of pink liquid ran from his neck across the plastic and trickled down the white porcelain of the bowl to join the scarlet sea on the linoleum covered floor.
Terry's eyes were open too. As I stared into the unblinking depths, my mouth filled with the contents of my stomach. The liquid bubbled thick and foul between my teeth. I turned and spat the vomit into the bathroom sink. I heaved again and again until only bitter bile remained. I was very neat and tidy. I washed away the stinking mess with clean, cold water. I even sipped a little to clear my mouth before I checked closer. Time seemed to stand still in the flat. My ears filled with the silence as I looked at my old friend's mutilated features. The harsh light reflected off his bald patch, around which the hair stood as if electrically shocked. His skin was blue-white and I could almost count the individual stubble on his chin. I finally dragged my eyes away. I saw that shower curtain around the bath was shut. But I noticed that there were splashes of blood around the edge of the bath tub. I saw a vague, still silhouette through the opaque plastic. Sweat was pouring off me, soaking into my clothes. Avoiding the puddle of blood, I stretched over and pulled the curtain back. I didn't want to look, but I had to. I had to see everything. Terry's headless body was sitting in the bath, with his feet jammed underneath the taps. The enamel was stained with his bodily fluids. His shirt was soaked with the stuff. A saw toothed bayonet lay in the liquid and a sabre protruded from his chest, pinning the photo of Patsy Bright that I had given him at our last meeting to his torso. That final, theatrical touch nearly sent me over the edge. I turned and fled the room. I stood in the hall, leaning against the wall with my heart tearing at the inside of my chest. I almost ran away, but dragged myself together and began to think.
I knew that I musn't be found with the body or even in the vicinity. I wouldn't get away with being tucked up with a corpse for the second time.
I was aware that I was being set up again and that time the law would happily lock me up and throw away the key. It was a real groove. A body, a witness and little old me on the scene. Who'd believe that I'd arrived after the murder. Not too many, I was sure. But the murderers, whoever they were and I had a pretty good idea, had gone too far with the girl. Whether they'd given her a front row seat to the killing or not, she'd overloaded her circuits in the flat that night. She wasn't about to finger me or anyone else. Tough luck boys.
I began to clear up after myself. I went into the kitchen and found a fairly clean tea towel, which I used to wipe all the surfaces I had touched since I entered the place, and quite a few I hadn't. Reluctantly I went back to Terry's headless body and carefully tore Patsy's photo from the blade that held it against the wound in his chest.
That was the closest I came to cracking up. I could hear myself making these peculiar sounds as I peeled the thin card away from his bloody shirt. I think I was apologising to him. I bit down on my lip as hard as I could to stop the whimpering.
By the time I'd wrapped the stained picture into the towel and forced the whole package into my raincoat pocket, blood was dribbling from the side of my mouth. I looked into Terry's face once more, so that my eyes would sear the image of the sight onto my mind and I would always remember the white hot horror of finding him mutilated, then turned and went back to the girl.
I swear that when I went back into that close little living room, after leaving Terry, to wipe my prints from the equipment I'd touched, I was as horny as hell. I looked at the little girl sitting there in a pool of her own piss, still moaning and rocking gently back and forth just where I'd left her. I wanted to screw her into the ground. I'm not proud of the feeling. Maybe amongst death I was looking for life, or maybe that's too noble a concept. Probably I just wanted a quick fuck. I looked at her there with her tiny breasts pouting through the material of her T-shirt, her nipples erect beneath the fabric and felt a surge of desire more intense than I'd had for years.
I'll never know what might have happened next, because then I heard the sirens ripping the night. Soaring and echoing against the walls, and I knew with certainty that they were coming after me. Superb timing, I thought, but no prizes for the racket.
I shimmied the curtain aside and looked down into the street. I saw two squad cars skid to a halt, their sirens dying with one last whoop each. Blue lights flashed, illuminating the dead windows of the houses opposite.
I dropped the curtain and ran back through the room, past the girl and out into the hall. I dived through the front door, then heard from below booted feet on the stairs, and the indicator above the lift door blinked from G to 1. I skidded to a halt on the polished floor of the corridor, then turned again and ran back into Terry's flat, slamming the door behind me. I tore through the hall and into the kitchen, where I pushed the protesting window open and climbed through onto the sill. A narrow, rusty fire escape ran along the back of the building. I climbed out onto the metal which sagged under my weight and flaked paint and rust in equal quantities down into the darkness to patter gently onto the back path. I scrambled along the escape, then heard a noise from below. I pushed myself back against the brickwork, away from the diffused light from the kitchen window and froze. I peered down and could just make out the silhouette of a man in a peaked cup standing below. I moved gently along the escape, trying not to dislodge any further debris. Within a few footsteps I was around the corner of the building and out of sight.
Butted next to Terry's block was another building, old Peabody flats that had stood empty for years. The block was only two storeys high and the flat roof was about twelve feet below me. It was my only escape route. I could hear voices calling behind me. I prayed that the roof would take my weight and jumped down. When I landed, my bad foot sent a stab of pain through my body, so intense that I nearly fainted. I saw colours in my head that don't have names yet, and I bit down hard on my shredded lip to stop myself screaming. I must have made a hell of a row as I landed, but no-one shouted, no windows were flung open and no local burghers cried havoc in the street. After a moment I dragged myself across the flat roof to a gap which had once housed a door, now long gone for firewood.
I limped down what seemed like interminable flights of stairs until I hit civilization in the shape of an exit onto a gravelled path which led me onto an anonymous back street. I walked around searching for the Trans Am.
By the time I was completely disorientated through a combination of what I'd seen in the flat, climbing around outside buildings and the pain in my foot, so I took some time to find it. Especially as I had to keep one eye out for marauding squad cars. I was glad I'd taken the precaution of tucking the Pontiac out of the way. Then I realised I hadn't shut T S's eyes. As I limped along the pavements to the car, keeping as close as possible to the shadows of the buildings, through the sultry air, I remembered that I hadn't shut his eyes. I'd left him staring sightlessly into eternity. As long as I live I'll wish I'd taken time to shut Terry's eyes. My luck held. I didn't see a soul as I made my escape. I just heard more sirens and saw more blue lights flashing in the distance.
The car started immediately and I drove straight home, favouring my left foot on the clutch pedal.
All at once I didn't like the night time at all. When I got back to the peace of my own flat, I retrieved the bundle from my pocket. I knew all about the laws of evidence, and hi-jacking that particular piece from the scene of T S's murder was very serious indeed. I wrapped the whole caboodle in a black plastic rubbish sack and stuffed it into the back of the tiny freezer compartment of my fridge. Not very original, but it would have to do.