A Good Year for the Roses (1988) (12 page)

And he went. I watched him turn and leave the office, slam into his car and turn it around with a screech of tyres. I watched him and could do nothing about it. I wished I'd bitten his leg.

If I'd jacked it in then, as George had ordered me to, got the motor fixed and billed him, how different things would have turned out. How many lives would I have saved by minding my own business?

That thought is never far from me, even now. I must take full responsibility. I was just too clever. I was sure that in the end the great detective would get to the bottom of the mystery and ride off into the sunset with the girl.

I was becoming obsessed with the picture of Patsy. I took it out of the envelope again. I looked at it for a long time.

I knew that the trail picked up back at the house in Brixton where I'd been lured by the heavyweight's ‘phone call. Fox's threats and George's reluctance to continue the investigation aside, I had to go back.

I tried to contact Terry Southall at the clinic. I spoke to Precious who told me he was going to be out all day on home visits. I made it clear it was vital that I spoke to him, and to get him to call me if he contacted the office. He had both my numbers, but I gave them to her just in case.

I decided to wait until dark before returning to Brixton, and spent the afternoon at home nursing my sore head and my battered ego with a bottle of gin that I had picked up from the off-licence. I wasn't sure which of the two hurt most, but they were both pretty painful.

I lay on the bed for hours listening to Radio Four buzzing gently in the background. I drank and catnapped and dreamed of dead girls dancing on windblown streets.

When twilight fell I was more than half pissed and ready to take on the world. Armed only with a pen torch and a gutful of gin, once more I drove to Brixton. I decided to park around the corner from the house. Not that anyone would wreck the old Pontiac, they wouldn't bother.

It would be towed away as a dumper before then.

I left the car on the darkest corner I could find. I slunk down the street like a criminal, weaving through the shadows. Most of the buildings on the block were dark, including the one I wanted to visit. I entered the tiny garden, slid onto the porch and tried the front door. It was locked. I fumbled for the bell-pushes and rang each of the three. I couldn't hear a thing from inside. Without any lockpicks on my person, and never having been able to open a Yale with a credit card, I went back to basics and busted the door in. Only one lock held it shut as far as I could tell, and a single hard kick soon dealt with that. Once I was inside I checked the lock. The force of my kick had pushed the screws that held the metal cup secure, out of the rotten wood of the door-frame. I pushed the screws back with my fingers and closed the door behind me.

I searched the house, leaving the lights on as I went. I started at the bottom and worked my way up. No-one was home. It was obvious that the house was being used as a squat when I discovered that the electricity meter had been bypassed with a length of heavy duty cable. Very dangerous, I thought, but not as lethal as being injected with 98% pure heroin.

As I searched, the house seemed to lean inwards upon me. The thin walls closing in as I checked the rooms. The wallpaper that decorated them was damp and faded, and peeling off in parts like skin from a year old corpse. Only two of the rooms seemed to have had recent tenancy. One was where the heavyweight had taken me to visit the deceased occupant. The police had searched it and any clues found were now down at Brixton Police Station. The room was dusty with fingerprint powder. It pearled the dull surfaces like sugar on a doughnut. Even so, I checked around, trying not to leave my prints in the dust and cursing myself for not bringing gloves. As I searched I kept listening for any sounds below. I should have saved the effort, as I came up empty-handed. My head began to throb in the silence. The room was beginning to get to me. I could feel the dead girl's presence like a persistent itch I couldn't scratch.

The only other room that seemed to be in use was on the ground floor at the back of the house. It contained a double mattress neatly made up into a bed with a single sheet and a couple of frayed blankets. An old stove was in one corner, relatively clean and grease free, with a kettle and saucepan on the hob. There was a record player and some albums lying on the floor. I flicked through the record sleeves. There wasn't much that appealed to my taste. Sex Pistols, Clash, Cramps, Anti-Nowhere League, The Stranglers and a bunch of rockabilly compilations made up the bulk of the thin collection. It's amazing what you can tell about a person from their choice of music.

There was an ancient, battered wardrobe standing next to the bed and inside hung a few items of male clothing. These were mostly basic black and styled circa seventy six. I decided that I'd stumbled into a punk's nest. I decided to wait and see if he returned.

I went back through the house turning off all the lights. By the thin beam of my torch I made my way back to the back room, pulled up an old armchair and settled down.

I sat in the darkness and slowly the interior of the room began to take shape as my eyes became accustomed to the night. Once again I listened to the silence, punctuated only by the slight sounds of the building settling and the tap dripping in the sink. I was impatient for something to happen, yet at the same time content to sit in the comfortable old chair and let time drag itself by. I rubbed my fingers together as I sat and my skin seemed dry and powdery. I felt old and redundant, waiting for someone who was probably never going to arrive.

Abruptly I was aware of a sound that couldn't be attributed to the house. I heard the front door open and quiet footsteps in the hall coming towards the room in which I sat.

I stood up from the chair and moved towards the door. I heard the handle turn and someone pushed it slowly open. I waited until I could see a vague silhouette against the dim light that filtered in from the street to the hallway, then I grabbed for the figure. My hand caught onto the lapel of a leather jacket and I pulled the person wearing it into the room with me.

I heard a muffled cry, half scream, half shout but ignored it. I held onto the jacket with one hand and felt for the light switch with the other. In the harsh light from the unshaded bulb I looked at what I'd caught. He was a spaced out looking gothic boy with long black hair that was mousey at the roots. He wore his studded leather jacket over a loose, faded black shirt and tight denims artfully ripped at the knees. His face was deathly white under the cruel electric light and a bunch of livid red pimples were dotted around his mouth and nostrils. He was young, no more than nineteen or twenty and he smelled bad, like something had gone off in his life and he'd never noticed.

He tried to pull free, but I was too strong and held him tightly. When he realised, he changed his tactics and tried to plant the toe of one of his winklepickers into my groin. I turned away from his kick and caught his left arm with my free hand. I let go of his collar, spun him round and twisted his arm up his back. I held him with his middle finger pushed back against his palm. If he struggled it broke, simple as that. He drew breath to scream, but I grabbed a fistful of greasy hair and tugged his head back hard. The scream died in his throat. He was my prisoner for what he was worth. ‘Don't shout, move or even breathe hard or I'll break your bloody finger,’ I whispered into his ear.

‘Let me go, you fucker,’ he hissed.

I pulled his head back further until his already pallid face began to turn grey.

‘Don't call me that,’ I said quietly, ‘or I'll really hurt you.’ He was still. I went on, ‘I'm going to let you go, but when I do, don't do anything silly. I don't want to cause you any unnecessary suffering, but I will if you force me to. Do you understand?’

He didn't move or speak, so I allowed him his freedom.

He turned and looked at me, rubbing at his neck. I looked back.

‘Sit on the bed,’ I ordered.

He didn't move, so I pushed him hard in the chest, back towards the bed. I could feel his bones through his shirt. He got the message. He sat down and I remained standing.

‘Who the fuck are you? And what do you want?’ he demanded, after staring at me for half a minute or so.

‘Police,’ I said. It was the first thing that came into my mind. It always used to work.

‘Boolocks, show us your warrant card,’ he demanded. Things seemed to have changed. I raised my fist.

‘This is all the warrant card I need,’ I said. I think he caught my drift. ‘Were you around here yesterday?’ I asked.

He said nothing.

‘There's only two ways to do this,’ I said. ‘Either you answer me, or I beat the shit out of you, and then you answer me. Nobody's around. Nobody cares about you. Which one's it going to be? I haven't got all night.’

‘You wouldn't dare,’ he said bravely. But the expression on his face showed that he didn't entirely believe it.

‘Don't be so fucking naive, son,’ I said. ‘I thought you punks were supposed to be street wise. I don't give a toss what happens here. I just want some answers to a few simple questions. It's easy, tell the truth, I'll go and you'll be alright. It's no big deal.’ I roughened my voice and accent as I spoke, it often worked. His face showed he believed the hard talk.

‘What then?’ he asked.

‘That's good,’ I said. ‘Were you here yesterday?’

‘In the night time,’ he replied.

‘Not before?’

‘No.’

‘Were there any police here?’

‘I waited until they'd gone.’

‘What time?’

‘About eight.’

‘Right, did you know the girl who lived upstairs?’

‘Which girl?’ he asked innocently.

I moved threateningly towards him.

‘You know which girl,’ I said between clenched teeth. ‘The girl they found dead yesterday.’

‘All right. I knew her. So what?’

‘What was her name?’

‘Don't you know?’

‘Don't fuck me about. Just tell me her name. Humour me.’

‘Jane,’ he said at last.

‘Good, when did you last see her?’

‘Dunno, last week sometime.’

‘Do you know how she died?’

‘No.’ He didn't seem interested.

‘She OD'd,’ I said.

He shrugged.

‘On skag,’ I continued.

He shrugged again. I was beginning to lose my patience. ‘Do you indulge?’ I enquired.

‘What?’

‘Do you take heroin?’

‘No.’

‘What then?’

‘Just a little draw.’

‘Do you know Patsy Bright?’

‘Never heard of her.’

I knew by his face that he was lying.

‘Did she ever come here?’ I asked.

‘Who?’

‘Patsy Bright,’ I said patiently.

‘I told you I never -’

I shut him up by simply hauling him off the bed by the collar of his studded jacket and smacking him around the side of the head with my open palm. The crack of skin on skin rang loudly in the room. The sound reminded me vividly of two previous incidents.

Firstly, walking into the gloom of a filthy basement garage and seeing TS trying to stop two police officers kicking the shit out of a black teenager. Secondly, how I'd felt on the previous afternoon when Bachman had decided to alter the contours of my own face.

I only had one blow in me. I hoped the punk didn't realise that. I still felt like a cheap bastard, beating up on a skinny little boy. As I held him in front of me, watching the skin of his cheek reddening from the force of the smack I noticed his eyes for the first time.

I held him by his jaw and looked into them closely. His pupils were mere pinpricks.

‘Just a little draw,’ I said. ‘You lying little sod. What are you on?’

He twisted his face away.

‘Are you on downers?’ I asked, pulling his face back towards me and squeezing it hard.

‘Might be, what's it to you? You ain't no copper,’ he whispered through my grip.

‘It's nothing to me, except you lied, and I don't like that.’

I let go of his face and raised my clenched fist. I was getting tired of playing the hard man.

The fight seemed to go out of him all at once.

‘Please don't hurt me, please. I'll tell you.’ He begged as he cowered back.

‘No more lies now, all right.’

‘All right,’ he agreed.

I pushed him back onto the bed again and pulled the armchair close. I perched on one arm so that I could look straight down at him.

‘What's your name?’ I asked. I changed to a gentle approach. It was another ploy that worked. That time was no exception.

‘Steve,’ he replied.

‘Terrific, Steve. Do you know Patsy Bright?’

‘Yes,’ he replied.

‘Do you know where she is?’

‘No, I haven't seen her for awhile.’

‘How long?’

‘Six weeks, two months. I can't remember.’

‘Where did you see her last?’

‘At a Cramps gig at Hammersmith.’

‘Was she alone?’

‘Yes.’

We could almost have been two friends chatting about a mutual acquaintance, we were so polite.

‘Has she ever lived here?’

‘Here? In this shit hole. She wouldn't be seen dead living here.’

I didn't bother to point out the irony of that remark.

‘Was she into drugs?’ I asked.

He looked at me as if I'd asked a particularly stupid question.

‘Depends what you mean,’ he replied.

‘You know what I mean?’

‘Are you kidding me?’

I was fed up with him replying to a question with a question.

‘I don't kid around. Tell me.’

‘She didn't take drugs. Not hard stuff anyway. She wouldn't dirty herself with that shit. She just sold it.’

I couldn't believe what he was saying. ‘She was a dealer?’ I asked incredulously.

‘Sure she was, and a big dealer. She didn't sell little, she sold big.’

‘How big?’

‘Kilos, that kind of big.’

‘Bullshit,’ I said. ‘I don't believe you.’

‘It's true,’ Steve was indignant, as if he'd lie, not much.

‘All right then, kilos of what?’

‘Smack and coke.’

‘Where did she get it?’ I demanded.

‘I don't know.’

‘Let's get this straight,’ I said. ‘You're saying that Patsy Bright was a big time dealer in hard drugs. She's only eighteen for Christ's sake. There must have been someone behind her. Supplying her. Who was it?’

‘I've told you, I don't know.’ It was probably safer that he didn't.

I thought of Patsy's photograph, and felt betrayed by her angel face.

‘How do you know all this?’ I continued.

‘She didn't keep it a secret. We used to meet at clubs and places. There were a few of us that knocked around together. But a lot of people don't like her. She's weird, spaced out.’

‘I thought you said she didn't take drugs,’ I interrupted. ‘If you're telling me more lies, you'll be sorry.’

He looked genuinely scared. I was beginning to believe him, although God knows I didn't want to.

‘She didn't take the hard stuff,’ he explained. ‘She liked dope though.’ He giggled at the thought. ‘She said it made her feel sexy. She gave us smack and coke to keep in with us. I told you lots of people didn't like her. Anyway,’ he added as an afterthought, ‘who said you had to take drugs to be weird?’