Gone Tomorrow (33 page)

At Mr Rice’s invitation he sat himself in one of the armchairs and chatted inconsequentially until Mrs Rice came back in with a wooden tray on which reposed two cups and saucers of instant
coffee made with milk, a sugar bowl, and a plate of mixed biscuits. The china all matched and was decorated with pink and silver roses, and there was a spotless embroidered linen tray cloth underneath. There was something about people like this that made Hollis almost want to cry. He thanked Mrs Rice warmly and admired the china, and she looked pleased, and took herself off with a puzzle book and a Biro to sit at the dining table and give them privacy, or as much of it as was possible at a distance of three feet.

‘So, Mr Rice, you knew Colin Collins? Or Sonny Collins, as he was known.’

‘Not when I knew him,’ Mr Rice said. ‘Not Sonny. Never heard him called that. Crafty Collins, we called him. We all had nicknames, o’ course. Mine was Speedy. Not that I was fast, or anything – though I was a lot spryer in those days than I am now – but my initials were S.P.D., you see. Stanley Philip David. S.P.D. – Speedy Rice, you see?’

Hollis got it. ‘So why was he called Crafty Collins?’

‘’Cause he
was
crafty,’ Mr Rice said promptly, opening pale blue eyes wide. ‘I mean, crafty as in handy with his hands, yes, that was one thing. He was what we called an artificer. He could
make
anything
out
of anything. But he was crafty the other way, too. On shipboard, even on a shore base, you live on top of each other, you know, Mr Hollis. And that means you have to get on, you have to trust one another. And if somebody’s not honest, it messes up everybody’s life. No, he wasn’t popular, wasn’t Crafty Collins. We knew he’d come to grief sooner or later, and there was no tears shed when he did.’

‘Oh, Stan!’ Mrs Rice protested, proving she was not as far out of earshot as she was pretending.

Speedy seemed to understand her objection. ‘Well, I know it’s a terrible thing to lose an eye. But it has to be said he had it coming, if not from one source, then another. A terrible
contentious
man, he was. Always getting into fights. He’d argue about anything. You couldn’t say it was raining without he’d pick you up and say it wasn’t. He just
wanted
to fight. Needed it, sort of. There are men like that – I’ve known a few of them.’

He looked enquiringly at Hollis, who nodded and said, ‘Yes, I know what you mean.’

‘Thought
you did. After all, the police is a service, just the
same as the navy. And men are men all over. And there are some that’ve just got to be getting their fists out and proving it, even when nobody’s said “boo” to them.’

‘So how long did you serve with Crafty Collins?’

‘Well, let me see. We were two years on the base before he got in his bit of trouble and got discharged, and then it must have been another three years or so he was still there, but as a civilian. Then it was about six months after he left before I was posted back to England, home and beauty. O’ course, we weren’t
friends,
you understand. I mean, I was a good bit older than him, and I was a petty officer, while he was just a rating. And apart from that, you didn’t make friends with Collins. He wasn’t a friendly man. Not,’ he added thoughtfully, and pausing to sip his coffee, ‘that he didn’t have a soft spot somewhere. I maintain everyone’s got one. And Collins had this bird. We weren’t supposed to have pets,’ he went on, dismissing Hollis’s immediate vision of a girlfriend, ‘but on a shore base things are a bit different and blind eyes are turned now and then, if you know what I mean. Anyway, Collins had this little bird in a cage. A finch, I think it was. He bought it off a Chinee –they’re big on these little cage birds, the Chinese. Walk through a Chinese section of Hong Kong and you’ll see a cage hanging up on every balcony with some canary or whatnot whistling its little heart out.’

‘Cruel, I call it,’ Mrs Rice put in.

‘She’s not keen on birds, Mother,’ Mr Rice explained for her. ‘Give her the creeps.’

‘It’s not that,’ she said. ‘I like ’em well enough in the garden, but keeping ’em in cages is not natural. They just sit there hunched up all day and night, like they’re in mourning.’

‘Fanciful,’ Mr Rice explained her to Hollis.

‘No I am not,’ Mrs Rice defended herself. ‘Even when they sing, it’s not happy singing. Makes me shiver.’

‘I knew a man once had this parrot,’ said Mr Rice. ‘Or, well, it was a cockateel, to be absolutely accurate—’

Hollis felt they were on a banana skin to unfettered reminiscence, and coughed slightly. About Mr Collins?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Mr Rice, quite unembarrassed. ‘I was saying he had this finch or whatever it was – a little grey bird with a red cap, very smart. Looked like an MP. And, I will say, it whistled
a treat. Well, you wouldn’t think Crafty would care that much about it. He was built like a bag of boulders, and full of boiling oil, if you know what I mean, and this little bird was only about three inches from head to tail. But he looked after it like a mother. Used to go down the market to get it fresh lettuce and fruit and stuff. He loved that bird, which goes to prove what I’ve always said, that there’s a soft spot in everyone, if you know where to find it.’

‘What happened to the bird?’ Hollis asked in spite of himself.

‘Oh, it died. They don’t live long, them sort, even in the wild.’

‘And was he upset?’

Speedy gave a snorting laugh. ‘I don’t suppose there was anyone on the base brave enough or daft enough to ask him. He never showed anything, but I reckon he was upset. He never got another one to replace it, anyway. And I’ll tell you something.’
He leaned forward a little. ‘He gave that bird a Christian burial. Put it in a cigar box and buried it somewhere up on the Peak. I’m the only person that knows that. I saw him put the bird in the box and I saw him leave with the box and come back without it; and later someone told me they’d seen him up there, so I worked it out.’ He sat back. ‘Nothing as queer as folk, is there?’

It certainly was an interesting, if unilluminating aside on the character of Sonny Collins. ‘Tell me about the fight when he lost his eye. What was all that about?’

‘Well, I can’t tell you officially,’ Mr Rice said, settling himself back for the long haul, ‘but
un
officially a lot of us knew what was really going on. I told you Collins was crooked, but crookedness doesn’t pay when you’re practising it on people you live on top of. So he started to look outside, and it wasn’t long before he built up contacts with the local people. Well, Hong Kong – you ever been there?’

‘No, I haven’t,’ Hollis said. ‘More’s the pity.’

Speedy nodded. ‘It’s a special place, is Hong Kong. I expect it’s different now, of course. Pity we ever gave it back, that’s what I say—’

‘Now, Stan!’ Mrs Rice warned.

‘I know, I know. Well, as I was saying, Hong Kong is – or was – the best place in the world to set up a bit of business and make a bit of money on the side. Anything you want, they’ll
get. And when you’ve got it, there’s a stack of people to sell it to – tourists, service people, ex-pats; boats and planes coming in all the time with new customers, all of ’em with money burning a hole in their pockets. So Crafty gets in with a lot of shady characters. This particular one – can’t remember what he was called – one of those wing-wang-wong names – he was a right wrong ’un, a real cross-eyed ugly little geezer and as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. The local coppers had been after him for years for drug smuggling.’

‘Was that what Collins was into with him?’

‘I can’t tell you as to that, not as a literal fact. But I wouldn’t be surprised. Anyway, thieves fall out, as they say, and one night him and this Chinee start arguing, and before Crafty can get a swing at him, he outs with a knife and stabs him right through the eye.’ Mrs Rice sucked her teeth in protest. ‘The medico said he was lucky to be alive, because a fraction further and it would have gone right into his brain, which is probably what this Chinky was after. But he missed his shot, and Crafty came right back and swung a right hook at him, caught him under the chin and lifted him four feet in the air, so they said that saw it. Flew like a bird. He was dead before he hit the ground. Broken neck, neat as you like. Saved somebody a job, because he’d have been hung sooner or later, the sort he was, sure as eggs are eggs.’

‘But Collins wasn’t punished for it?’

‘Well, it was self-defence, wasn’t it? There were enough witnesses, and there he was without an eye and the medico saying he was lucky to be alive. Open-and-shut case. The enquiry cleared him, but he couldn’t serve with only one eye, could he?’

‘Nelson did,’ Hollis couldn’t resist.

Mr Rice smiled. ‘Nice one! That’s one to you! But Collins wasn’t no Nelson and the Royal Navy’s a bit different now. So he got discharged on medical grounds. Honourable discharge – funny to think of anything Crafty Collins did being called honourable.’

‘And then what?’

‘Well, everyone thought he’d go home. That’s what any of us would’ve done. But I suppose old Crafty didn’t have anything to go back to. No, he stopped on and set himself up in business.’

‘A tattoo parlour.’

‘That’s right. You’ve done your homework,’ said Mr Rice approvingly. ‘Well, where there are sailors, you can’t go wrong
with a tattoo parlour, can you? He learnt how to do it off an old Chinee that was going out of business, and bought his needles and dyes and everything, and there he was. Service people and daft young tourists flocked to him. O’ course, tattooing wasn’t all he provided ’em with.’

‘Now, Stan!’

‘Got to tell him, haven’t I? That’s what he’s here for,’ Mr Rice said indignantly.

‘What else did he supply?’ Hollis asked.

‘Whatever was wanted. Hashish, cocaine, girls. I dare say he’d find you a watch or camera or pearls if that was all you wanted. But that stuff doesn’t pay as well as the other. It wasn’t long before he had a very nice stash built up. But o’ course that sort of activity attracts attention in the long run. In the end he had to pack up and get out before they clamped down on him, but I reckon he took a good bit back to Blighty when he went. Enough to set up in business.’

But he didn’t, Hollis thought. He got a job in the licensed trade. He didn’t buy a pub, he got a job as a manager. So what did he do with the stash? Spend it all in one wild debauch? Maybe – except that he didn’t seem like the debauching kind.

‘Did you,’ he asked casually, but with great anticipation, ‘ever know a man called Trevor Bates?’

‘What, Crafty’s friend?’ Mr Rice said, little knowing what joy he brought to a policeman’s calloused old heart with those three words. ‘Well, I didn’t know him personally, o’ course, but I knew
of him.’

Thank you, God! Hollis offered inwardly. ‘Tell me about him,’ he said aloud, settling himself comfortably to listen.

‘Boss,’ said Swilley as he crossed the office on his way back from the loo. He changed direction towards her. She was looking extremely fetching in a skinny powder-blue top that consolidated her assets magnificently. He was about to conclude that Tony was a lucky man when he remembered that Tony was at home alone in his slippers reading the papers while his new wife was here with them, which wasn’t so very lucky after all.

‘Life’s a bitch,’ he said.

She raised her eyebrows at him. ‘You don’t know what I’m going to say, yet.’

‘It was a general observation. Go ahead.’

‘Well, I hope you’ll be pleased. I’ve found out about Susie Mabbot, and I know now why we had trouble tracing her.’

‘Oh?’

‘She’s dead.’

‘Oh, my God, not another one!’ Slider sank into the vacant seat at Anderson’s desk, next door.

‘No, no, it’s all right, she’s been dead for ages. Before we started.’ She spread out the sheets of paper under her hands for him to see, and walked him through it. ‘She was pulled out of the river. She was right down at Creekmouth – that’s the opposite bank from Plumstead Marshes – but they reckoned she’d gone in a lot further upstream. You know how far bodies can be dragged if the tide’s set right. There was nothing on her to identify her, but fortunately one of her girls had reported her missing, and she got matched up as soon as they checked Mispers.’

‘And how was she killed?’

‘It was a bit strange and nasty,’ Swilley said, turning down her mouth. ‘I’ve got the PM notes and the inquest report. Apparently
they found a whole lot of tiny holes all over her, only a couple of millimetres deep and so small in diameter they were hardly visible to the naked eye. The pathologist said they looked like the marks left by acupuncture needles.’

Slider frowned. ‘Acupuncture’s hardly life-threatening. You’re not telling me the water rushed in through the holes and drowned her?’

‘No, her neck was broken. The pathologist concluded it was some kind of sex game, because there was evidence of penetration, and semen in the vagina, but no sign of force having been applied, apart from the death blow. PM report said her head was probably pulled sharply backwards by someone standing behind her – which of course could be part of it. Naturally once they found out she was a tom they concluded she did it for a client. I mean, being stuck full of needles would be uncomfortable but they do worse things for their money. And then he got carried away and killed her.’

‘So if it was a client, I presume they were able to find out which one?’

‘No, that’s the odd thing. No-one was ever charged. They questioned all the girls, but none of them had anything to say, not even the one who reported her missing. Her evidence says she was worried about Susie being missing because of the nature of their work. Later, with a bit of pushing, she said she knew Susie had a client who was into some weird stuff. Susie had apparently told her she was seeing him that night – the night before she was reported missing – and was apprehensive about it. Here, look, her words: “Susie said this bloke gave her the willies. I said to her, well, don’t do it then, and she said it’d be the worse for her if she didn’t. She said he wasn’t a bloke who took no for an answer.”’