Amphetamines and Pearls (16 page)

‘No,' I said, ‘they wouldn't. They probably didn't bother to tell you that the house was being watched either.'

This time he really looked rattled. Even Stephanie looked as though she would have dropped a stitch if she'd been knitting. Not that I could easily envisage her knitting; not for a good few years yet.

‘But that will throw everything away if the kidnapper finds out.'

‘Relax, Blake, that's one hell of a big if.'

He got up and walked over to the curtains.

‘You're sure?' he said.

‘I'm positive. And don't start twitching with those curtains. If our man is around he'll probably think you're making signals. Why don't you sit down and tell me what you want me to do? I still don't know.'

‘When the man phones again and tells me what to do … I just thought it would be a good idea if there was somebody here who knows more about this sort of thing … than I do.'

I was one step ahead of him.

‘And if I know the arrangements, I just might be able to think up some way in which you can get back your niece as well as the money. I mean, it's not that you mind paying it out, but if you could get it back again real quick that would be better.'

Having almost regained his poise, he jumped up again. This guy had enough inner spring to double for Zebedee.

‘That remark makes, me sound a remarkably mean man, Mr Mitchell.'

I stood up, too. It was the growing thing.

‘Not remarkable mean. Ordinary. This place didn't come from throwing your pennies around. Don't worry, Mr Blake, nobody's going to criticise you for trying to hang on to what's your's. However you got it.'

I let the last remark drop into the conversation as easily as a final raindrop into a pool. No-one said anything but the looks that passed between Blake and his secretary sure counted for a lot of ripples.

Stephanie stood up as well. Fine. Now we could all practise baton changing or something.

‘All right, Mr Blake, I'm sure Miss Miller made you acquainted with my terms. I'll be here early in the morning.'

I turned and looked at Stephanie: ‘A couple of slices of brown bread lightly toasted, orange juice and strong coffee. I presume that in these troubled times you stay at the house. In one of the guest rooms, naturally.'

If looks had the power to maim, I would have spent the rest of my life walking around sporting a particularly ugly wound—like a hole in the head. But they didn't, so I smiled back and headed for the door.

‘Mr Mitchell,' said Blake, ‘naturally I had assumed that you would stay the night yourself. So as to be here early in the morning.'

I held the handle of the now open door.

‘Don't worry, sleeping isn't one of my problems. And thanks for the invitation, but too long in this kind of atmosphere gives me an acute sense of financial claustrophobia.'

As I was saying this, Cathy's mother appeared in the hall. I said goodbye to Blake and Stephanie and smiled at the worried-looking woman.

‘Hello,' I said, ‘Mr Blake has just hired me to help with things. I wonder if you could spare me a minute or two of your time?'

She looked confused, as though the last thing she expected was that someone would want to ask her about anything—except where the dinner was.

When it had finally sunk in, she glanced nervously over her shoulder. I could imagine Blake standing behind me in the doorway; I couldn't quite picture the expression on his face, but I had a pretty good guess at it.

If my guess was anywhere close to being right, then the woman did a brave thing. She opened what turned out to be the door to the kitchen and ushered me in.

As she shut the door quietly behind her, I heard the slamming of another door across the hall.

The eyes still looked bewildered … and something else. They were plain sore from the perpetual crying, the endless rubbing with her hands.

She sat on a stool and I wanted to put my arm round her, hold her hand for a while. I wondered if anyone had done those very simple, very important things since her daughter had disappeared. I doubted it.

But then neither did I.

‘Mrs … ?'

‘Skelton. My husband's name was Skelton. My brother wanted me to change it back again after my husband had his accident, but somehow I didn't like to. I don't know why. It would have been wrong. A kind of betrayal almost.'

She looked at me and she had the expression of someone who was expecting to be shouted down.

‘Is that silly of me?' she eventually asked.

‘No,' I said, ‘I don't think that's silly. It might be a little unusual in these days, but it's none the worse for that.'

I hadn't held her hand but I had said that and she tried a weak little smile.

‘I wanted to ask you about Cathy, Mrs Skelton. Was she happy? Can you think of any reason why she might have wanted to have run away?'

The look of bewilderment returned.

‘But she didn't run away, she's been
…'

‘I know, Mrs Skelton, but let's suppose things were different. Can you see her wanting to run away?'

The mother seemed to shrink far away, back into herself, back into who knows what thoughts.

When she said something at last it was: ‘Of course not. Why, Cathy had everything she wanted here. A nice home, pocket money. She was doing well at school. She had a lot of friends. She
…'

I had to interrupt again. I didn't want to risk big brother coming in too soon.

‘How did she get on with her uncle, Mrs Skelton? What did she think of him?'

‘Oh, Crosby thought the world of Cathy. Always did, right from when she was a little girl. He would do anything for her.'

And right on cue Blake came in. She hadn't answered my question and I didn't know if it had been on purpose. I wouldn't know now. At least, not yet.

Blake was standing there holding a photograph album.

‘With everything else we talked about, Mr Mitchell, I forgot to show you what Cathy looked like. If you would like to take this with you and bring it back in the morning
… 
?'

He handed me the album and I stood up and accepted it.

‘Don't worry, Mrs Skelton,' I said, ‘I'm sure it will all be all right.'

She didn't look up or move. I walked past her and shut the door behind me.

‘That wasn't what you were just saying to me,' said Blake as I stood doing up my coat.

I gave him a good ten seconds of my best stare.

‘You're not her mother,' I said.

As I shut the front door behind me I felt somehow better for that; even though I hadn't put my arm round her.

3

I left the house with the photograph album in my hand and a nagging pain in my head. There was a lot going on inside that place which I didn't like, which I didn't understand—yet. Well, I was sure as hell going to understand it and I didn't think that when I did anyone was going to be any the happier.

I stood on the kerb and looked back at the house. Solid. Respectable. Prosperous. How many people would give how much money, how much time to be in there? I mean, that sort of thing is what we spend our lives striving for, isn't it? To get more than our fellow men. More money, more comfort, more land, more happiness …

I spat down into the gutter. Happiness, shit!

The people in that house were as happy as a family of stoats which can't get round to hunting food for fear of being eaten by one of its own.

Mummy stoat, daughter stoat, secretary stoat—I wondered which ones dear old uncle Crosby stoat sank his teeth into and how often?

It seemed to me like a house which was about to explode. And then along came a nice little kidnapping, very conveniently, to act as the detonator.

Makes you think, Mitchell, doesn't it? I asked the question to myself as I climbed back into my car.

But I wasn't so busy with the conversation that I didn't see the upstairs curtain opposite twitch a little. There was a flash of light from the room beyond and a suggestion of dark hair. Then nothing but curtain.

Just nosy neighbours, I guessed. Anyway, I thought I'd sit there in the car a while to make sure. After a minute or so, the curtains parted once more. Why the hell didn't whoever it was switch the light off behind?

Good question. Possible answer: our peeper didn't mind being peeped at herself.

Why herself? Well, this time you could see a little more than a head of dark hair. A shape that was definitely female in what had to be her honeymoon nightie revisited. And she wasn't too hasty in letting the curtain fall back into place. Not this time. Not now that she knew I was looking.

I remembered this movie I'd seen once … or was it twice? There's this cop who drives around a small southern town in the U.S., each night the same route, the identical patrol. Each night he passes the same window. Each night the blind is raised. Behind it there's a young girl, well-built, itchy and aching from the heat, letting the man see her body, letting him know what she wants him to do to her. If only he'd be man enough to get out of his old police car and get on over to her room.

She was asking for it. She got it. So did the cop; he also got a whole lot of trouble—including killing a guy and getting caught for it by this smart-arsed black cop.

Just a movie. The curtain fell back. I turned the key in the ignition and ran the motor a little. It was a quiet engine. I could hear the car at the far end of the street start up, then wait.

So somebody was watching. The thing was—were they watching the Blake house or were they watching me?

I made a turn with the aid of someone's drive and headed for home. The headlights that shone in my mirror as I drove along the main road answered my question. My first question.

The second one was: who were they?

I didn't think it would be too long before I found out. They weren't trying to keep themselves much of a secret.

There were several things I could have done, including driving along to West End Central and taking a nightcap with my friends in the force. In the end I did none of them: except go on home.

I pulled the car into the lay-by and looked in the mirror. A pair of lights flicked down from head to side; an animal waiting in the night. Between where I now was and my front door there was some concrete, some grass and a little more concrete. Either they were going to let me cross all that and get inside or they weren't. Either they wanted to know where I hung out or they wanted more. Either they were going to stay in their motor or they were going to come out after me.

I opened the car door.

They did the same.

That settled a lot of things. I didn't want to get my front door kicked in, so I made the walk real slow. I was half-way across the grass when they caught up with me.

The street light on the corner told me all that I wanted to know. Whoever they were, I didn't think they were cops, although with recruitment what is is, you never can be certain. But they were big enough and ugly enough and I hoped they weren't going to ask a lot of questions that I wasn't going to want to answer.

They stood there not saying anything, trying to look intimidating. I had this dreadful feeling that one of them was going to say something like, who the hell are you, buddy ?

The one in the dark blue overcoat stuck out his chin and did his best to talk without opening his lips. As a ventriloquist the boy had possibilities, but as a scriptwriter he was nowhere.

‘Who the hell are you, buddy?' he said.

I looked at him with a certain amount of disbelief: they didn't make movies like this any more. Did they?

‘I'm losing track,' I told him, ‘but I'm rapidly beginning to think that one of us is in the wrong picture. I haven't heard lines like that since Warner Brothers started parodying their own material.'

He looked at me as though I'd said some dirty words. To him, anything with more than four letters in it was a dirty word.

He glanced across at his pal and stuck his chin out even further. This time he even opened his mouth a little. Given time he might even make it big.

‘Look, smart-arse, never mind with the fucking about. Answer the question!'

Jimmy Cagney never said anything like that.

I still didn't answer his question: I asked another one instead.

‘What wants to know?'

‘I do, stupid! Who do you think?'

I grinned at him. ‘I wasn't sure if it was you or your dummy there. In fact, I'm still not sure which of you is the dummy. On second thoughts, maybe you both are. So who's pulling the strings?'

He didn't like that at all. I could tell by the way he snarled and screwed up his face in a fair imitation of anger. Also, there was something about the way he formed his fingers into a fist that made a bunch of bananas look like one of Carmen Miranda's ear-rings.

Any minute now he was going to throw a punch at me and it was going to be a good one. He had to be able to do something.

The shoulders under the blue overcoat heaved themselves into the air like a whale breaking the surface of the water.

‘I'll ask you once more, buddy, who the fuck are you?!'

‘Well, if you put it like that,' I said pleasantly, ‘the name's Mitchell. Scott Mitchell.'

‘And what do you do? Aside from trying to get your face pushed in for talking clever?'

He really was improving now he'd got started. A sort of clockwork action man: wind him up and he'll play for hours.

I reached inside my coat for my wallet. Or I started to. The fist hit me once below the ribs and I staggered back, winded. The silent type grabbed for my right arm and swung it up behind my back as though he was trying to find out if I was double jointed. I wasn't. My mouth opened and I yelled out. Blue overcoat showed me his fist again. That close to my face it was really impressive.

‘Shut it!' he hissed.

‘Then tell your friend to stop taking my arm off at the roots.'

‘Leave him,' he ordered.

He left me. My arm swung down and hung there, moving slightly like a useless propeller blade.

‘Don't reach for anything again,' he said.

‘I was getting my wallet. I have this nice line in business cards.'

He grunted. ‘We'll see.'

He nodded to his friend, who frisked me in a pretty professional way. Then he lifted my wallet and began to go through it. Not for long. A huge hand was stuck out and the wallet lost itself in that.

There were no prizes for guessing who was Hardy and who was Laurel in this team.

He took out one of my cards and examined it. Then he jammed it back and looked at me hard.

‘So what are you investigating now?'

‘Nothing. I'm collecting my dole money regularly every Tuesday morning.'

The fist unbunched itself and the fingers grasped me by the coat lapels. He pulled me close to his face and I caught the stink of old salami like a sudden slap.

‘If you're not working, then what were you doing at Blake's house tonight? And don't waste my time with smart-arsed answers!'

‘Just a social call.'

‘Huh! A social call at a time like this?'

‘A time like what?'

He hit me again. This time I made it all the way down to the ground and thanked the laws of gravity that I landed on the grass and not the concrete.

Nobody made a move to pick me up—which had its good points. At least it meant they weren't about to knock me down again in a hurry.

‘I keep telling you not to get smart! Now just what sort of social call would a bum like you be making on a guy like that?'

‘Well, not exactly on him. I was seeing his secretary. She's staying there at the moment. I called round to ask her out to dinner.'

‘Like hell!'

‘That's funny,' I said, ‘how did you know?'

‘Know what?'

‘That that was exactly what she said.'

The look in his eyes told me if I had been standing up he would have knocked me to the ground. So sitting there was saving him trouble: even though it was giving me a quick dose of pneumonia.

‘Okay, buddy, now listen and listen good. You remember how easy it was for me to get you down there. And that's just a little taste of what might be to come. You keep out of Blake's affairs. Let things carry on as they are. If we see your face round him again, you'll get such a working over that your old man wouldn't recognise you. That's supposing you know who he is!'

He turned on his heels and muscled himself down the pathway, his talkative companion following along behind. I stayed where I was until they had turned their car round and I had got a look at the number plate. Then I picked myself up and brushed the seat of my pants. I had been right: the grass was damp. My chest was aching. It was past midnight. I went inside.

As I was midway between the living room and the kitchen, the phone rang. I stayed where I was and listened to it. There used to be a time when phone calls meant good news, meant voices that I wanted to hear: one voice I wanted to hear.

But that was yesterday. Or was it a few hundred years ago? I couldn't remember which.

The phone kept ringing. I walked back into the living room and picked up the receiver. As soon as she said my name I recognised her voice.

‘Hello, Miss Miller. Isn't this kind of late for a social call? Or are you operating an early alarm system to make sure I don't miss that breakfast you're going to cook me?'

‘Neither,' she said. ‘I just wanted to … to apologise for the way Crosby was tonight. He's not himself at the moment.'

‘Who is he then?'

‘Mitchell, I was trying to be nice. Don't get smart.'

‘Why not?' I snapped. ‘Maybe it's about time that I did.'

‘Why? What's happened?'

‘Nothing important.'

She managed to sound anxious. ‘Are you sure? I phoned before and there wasn't any answer. I couldn't understand why it took you so long to get home.'

I felt my side and winced a little. ‘I just had a visit from two real nice guys who wanted to chat a while and punch me around for practice. Like I said, nothing important.'

‘But are you all right?' Now she did sound worried. The only thing was, I wasn't too sure whether she was worried on my account or for other reasons. She wasn't saying.

I said, ‘I'm fine. It's nothing that a minor operation, half a mile of bandages and a couple of bottles of pills won't cure.'

‘Now you're not being serious.'

‘You're right,' I said. ‘There's only one kind of treatment I need and if you were here you might be able to oblige.'

She made a low whistling sound.

‘Now who's getting saucy?' she asked.

‘I don't know,' I replied. ‘Is old Crosby creeping up behind and goosing you?'

‘Mitchell, that's a cheap remark!'

‘I'm a cheap detective.'

‘At your rates?'

‘Remember my rates for this job are special.'

‘Then could you arrange a little high-class chat to go with it?'

I paused for breath. This sort of thing was more wearing than being knocked around by some big guy in an even bigger overcoat.

‘Look,' I said, ‘can we call a truce?'

‘Call anything you like,' she said, ‘only look after yourself, will you? And think about what I said—Crosby didn't mean to behave like he did.'

‘Did he tell you to phone and apologise for him?' I asked. ‘Or are you using your secretarial initiative again.'

‘You don't make things easy, do you?'

‘No-one makes things easy, sweetheart. Not any more. Not even for folks with lots of money in the bank and houses on Millionaires' Row.'

‘Now you sound bitter and jealous,' she retorted, anger rising in her voice.

‘Bitter, yes, but jealous, never. Not any longer. I'm not a kid any more.'

‘What does that mean?'

‘Skip it. It's too long a story to tell over the phone … and too boring.'

She mellowed her tone. ‘You should have stayed the night. Then you could have taken your time and told me. That and all sorts of things.'

A pause, then she said, ‘Why didn't you stay?'

‘I was afraid of sleepwalking … all the way to your room.'

‘What's wrong with that?' she asked, and the voice was really low and soft now.

‘I was afraid of who else I'd find there apart from you.'

She called me a very rude name and slammed down her phone so hard that the sound echoed in my ears for several minutes afterwards.