A Good Year for the Roses (1988) (21 page)

I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

‘He started fucking me when I was twelve,’ interrupted Patsy, a bitter edge to her voice. ‘Then when I was broken in, he started selling me around.’

After her brief outburst, she went back to admiring her rose. ‘It was soon after George Bright's wife died that it started,’ David explained. ‘Like George, a lot of men like young children. He was happy to furnish Patsy's services to them. Then he discovered that at the places he sent her to work, there was a great demand for expensive drugs. So he started to cater to that need also. It turned into a most lucrative business, and quite a safe one. Apart from the fact that some of the clients were highly placed in the establishment of this country and thus well protected. In order to fulfil precise functions of the fantasy, Patsy was expected to wear her school uniform whilst engaged in certain sordid practices. So she was free to travel around London with a satchel full of merchandise. Who would bother to stop and search an angelic child like her?’ David smiled again. ‘I must admit it has a certain diabolical humour about it.’

‘If you think that's funny,’ I said ‘I feel sorry for you. Anyway, where do you come in? What does your taste run to, little boys?’

The Ingram twitched in his hand. ‘My taste is not your concern,’ he said evilly. ‘Do not set yourself up as a moral arbiter. Just listen.’

I shut up and listened.

‘Bright was basically small time,’ he continued. ‘To increase his turnover, and ultimately his profits, he had to take on certain partners.’ He made a moue of distaste with his lips. ‘They had little or no imagination. No flair. Patricia was beginning to outgrow the particular market she was in. The partners were only interested in the drug side of things. However, I learnt that when she visited her clientele she often picked up certain items of, how can I put it, a sensitive nature. These items were eminently saleable. I approached Patricia with a view to marketing her for the nineteen nineties. She has, believe it or not, an unusually keen memory for names, faces and places. She is also an accomplished thief. There are men, powerful men, in this city who are prepared to pay dearly for their particular pleasures. Some of them are still paying.’

‘Blackmail?’

‘An unpleasant word, Mr. Sharman. But use it if you must. Do you realise that you are out of your depth in shark-infested waters?’

‘Why did George Bright pick me, I wonder?’ I asked without expecting an answer,

David looked at me strangely for a moment. ‘Who knows?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps for more reasons than either of us can guess.’

I ignored him and turned back to the girl. She couldn't even see me. She was on her own private trip. I knew the feeling well. I'd been there often enough myself.

I looked back at David. ‘What about the Brixton connection?’ I asked. ‘The punks and the squatters, where do they come in?’

‘Patsy is still a child,’ he replied. ‘She needed friends of her own age. She wanted to see her beloved musical groups. We all crave peer acceptance. She did not choose her friends wisely. She gravitated towards an unfortunate social set. She could and did supply them with drugs, without George Bright's knowledge. It was an easy way to obtain popularity. Unfortunately it brought tragedy in its wake, and notoriety. She has now been weaned away from that particular episode in her life.’

‘So she did supply Jane Lewis with the pure heroin that killed her?’

‘No, Mr. Sharman. How could she? She'd been away from George Bright and his drug sources for over two months when the Lewis girl died.’

‘Patsy could've got them from you. You told me that she's an accomplished thief. She's obviously high right now. You must be involved in drug trafficking too. You didn't get this motor with Co-op stamps.’

‘I must disappoint you again. Patricia has absolutely no access to drugs at all. Any that she receives from me are in carefully controlled doses and administered in a clinical way.’

He really was a cold hearted bastard. If I hadn't had two guns pointed at me, I'd have administered him a clinical broken arm.

‘So what was the tragedy then?’ I asked.

‘Why. Your friend Southall of course,’ he replied.

‘You killed Terry?’

‘No again. I can see I must let some more light into your life. Let us go back to the afternoon you were lured to the house in Brixton.’

My head was spinning. David seemed to know everything that had happened to me recently. ‘How the hell do you know about that?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘May I continue?’ he asked.

‘Go ahead,’ I replied.

‘The three men you met there worked for George Bright's partners. They pose as staff at Bright Leisure. I believe you missed them when you paid a visit to the warehouse earlier today.’

I felt like a burke. I'd believed George Bright when he told me there were only two of them. I'd believed the descriptions he had given to me. I'd believed far too much without substantiation. It was going to get worse before it got better.

‘The yellow haired one is called Lynch,’ he went on. ‘The negro is known as Winston and the other's name is Michael Grant. You may need these names, so I suggest you remember them.’

I hoped I didn't look as confused as I felt.

‘Lynch was sleeping with Jane Lewis,’ David continued. ‘If the euphemism is acceptable. From what I understand, very little sleeping actually occurred. Lynch was introduced to Lewis by Patricia. Sometimes Lynch accompanied Patsy when she visited clubs to listen to the music, and he obviously met her friends. To be blunt, he was paying the Lewis girl for her favours with drugs he had stolen from Bright and Company.’

‘It seems that everyone who works there, rips off drugs,’ I commented.

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘it's the nature of the beast.’

He stopped and thought for a moment. ‘The one thing I'm not sure of,’ he went on, ‘is if he murdered her for reasons of his own, or if he did not realise the quality of heroin in that particular batch.’

I was glad to hear that he wasn't infallible.

‘In any case,’ he continued, ‘he used the body to try and convince you that Patricia was dead. When you saw through that, he decided to incriminate you by leaving you with it. Not very clever, I'm afraid. Lynch is not the most intelligent of human beings.’ David shook his head sadly. ‘He should remain what he is, an efficient strong arm man.’

‘Who was the other man in the house?’ I asked.

‘What other man?’ he asked back.

‘I thought you knew everything.’

‘Some things I know, but prefer not to divulge. You must do some work for your income.’

My income, that was a joke.

‘Why do you think they just didn't kill me like they did Terry?’

‘Ask the elusive fourth man.’

‘Was it you?’ I was stabbing in the dark.

He smiled his cold, hard smile again. ‘I can assure you that if it were,’ he said, ‘they would certainly kill me out of hand. I am no friend of Bright and his cohorts.’

So there I stood, with my mouth open, none the wiser. I felt I had to keep probing, asking questions. ‘What about Terry? Who killed him?’

‘Surely, even you must have worked that one out.’

‘My friends from the squat?’

He nodded. ‘Well two of them anyway. The blonde man Lynch, with the help of Winston.’

‘Why haven't I heard any more about it?’

Once more the smile flashed as warmly as a refrigerator door opening. ‘No one has,’ he said. ‘The investigation is making very little progress. I wonder why?’

That smile again.

‘But why did they have to kill him?’

‘I think that Southall was probably a better detective than you are. I know that he was trusted by the young drug users in the neighbourhood where he worked. Obviously someone talked to him that night. Someone else must have contacted Lynch. Drugs can buy much. Sex, information, power,’ he shrugged again. ‘Lynch and Winston went to the club that Southall was visiting. I assume they followed him home and killed him.’

‘How do you know so much?’

‘I told you drugs can buy information. What I'm not told, I deduce. Why don't you try it some time?’

I felt just like the fool I'd proved to be, unless he was lying. But why should he bother? For that matter, why should he bother to tell me so much right then. I knew he wanted to use me to clean out the Bright firm. He obviously had me well sussed. Stupid I might be, but I was tenacious. If he knew half as much about me as he pretended, he knew nothing short of killing me was going to stop me getting to the bottom of the matter. He was going to aim like a gun and walk away from the mess, clean and green. What was worse was that he was right. We both knew it would work.

‘What about the threats to my family?’ I asked.

‘Not guilty again,’ he replied. ‘I think Bright has started to panic. The organisation is beginning to fall apart since you began poking around.’

‘So I've done some good in my own blundering way?’

‘You have unwittingly helped me up to a point, I must admit. But that point is past. The Bright organisation had been tainted by it's own corruption. Soon I will be able to pick up their business. You are of no further use to me, and besides, people are apt to die when they come into contact with you. That is why I am telling you all this. I do not want you meddling further with things that concern me. Do you think I'd waste my time otherwise?’

Liar, I thought. Of course you would. Especially if the pay-off was me getting George out of your hair for good.

‘What happens now?’ I asked.

As I spoke, with the corner of my eye, I saw a dark coloured car pulled up and join the others outside the crematorium.

Talk about being late to someone else's funeral.

I looked back to David as he spoke again.

‘Now, Mr. Sharman. You forget everything you know about Patricia and me. You return to your seedy little life and pick up the pieces that remain. I go onwards and upwards.’

‘I meant to Patsy.’ I said.

‘She will be very rich,’ said David. ‘Travel the world, have loves and adventures. She is a very privileged young woman.’

‘Bollocks!’ I cut in. ‘She'll be dead within a year. Just look at her. You have to keep her as high as a kite, or else she'll blow it. I bet she can hardly function now. What happens when she gets so high the only way is down?’

I grabbed her by the wrists, and pushed the bangles up her arm. She didn't resist. I guessed she was used to being pulled about by men. David moved slowly towards me and the barrel of the Ingram dug painfully into my side. I didn't stop. I checked both arms. They were clear of tracks.

‘Where are you injecting her?’ I demanded. ‘Between her toes or under her tongue, to keep the meat fresh for the punters?’

Patsy looked from one of us to the other.

‘I spoke to Steve, Patsy,’ I said, addressing her now. ‘Your friend the punk from Brixton. You used to go to gigs with him, remember?’

‘Steve,’ Patsy said dreamily. ‘He's nice. He never tried to touch me.’

In her world that probably was her definition of nice.

‘Yes, Steve,’ I said. ‘He told me you never took heroin. Come with me Patsy. I'll get you clean and you can start again.’

The machine gun twitched in David's hand against my body and I could feel the presence of the chauffeur behind me.

‘Sharman,’ David hissed. ‘You've been lucky so far, but don't push your luck beyond its endurance. We're going to leave now, Patricia and I. Your argument now is with George Bright. Leave us out of it.’

He bundled Patsy into the car. I could feel the Colt hard against my back in the waistband of blue jeans, but I knew I had no chance against the M10 in a gun-fight. Let alone the back-up gun the driver held.

‘Move away from the car,’ David ordered.

I backed away slowly.

He began to get into the car himself. Then he turned and looked at me. ‘Remember,’ he said, ‘the machine always demands a sacrifice.’

Then he climbed into the Rolls-Royce and sat next to Patsy. I saw him tuck the Ingram neatly under the passenger seat. Then the rear window hummed up, hiding the pair from my view. The chauffeur was still eye-balling me. He ducked in behind the wheel, started the car, put it into gear and let it glide silently away from me. I stood in the driveway and watched it go.

As I stood, the left hand passenger window slid down again and I saw Patsy's hand emerge. She threw the red rose back towards me. The driver kept his window open and the barrel of his pistol rested on the frame of the door as he drove one handed. That's the only problem with bullet proof glass. It works both ways.

On one side of the narrow tarmac, just before it turned into the main road, stood an old chestnut tree. Its branches swept low towards the ground, and its trunk was thick and covered with gnarled bark. On the other side, set slightly back on a grassy knoll, stood a family mausoleum. It had once been white but was now weather-stained and falling into disrepair.

As the Roller slowed to make the turn, all hell broke loose.

From behind the tree stepped the blonde man, Lynch, who had knocked me unconscious in the Brixton squat. He tossed something heavy and hard through the driver's window. From where I stood it looked like a cricket ball. Then I heard a muffled explosion, and smoke and flame billowed from the front of the car. I realised with true horror that it had been a hand grenade.

I estimated that the car weighed nearly two tons, and it only shook slightly on its heavy suspension from the blast. It rolled across the road and stalled against a gravestone depicting a heavenly host of angels, Victorian style, heavy and ornate. The gravestone was pushed out of the earth, but held the weight of the car.

The other white man from the squat, Flared Trousers, or Grant or what the hell his real name was, ran from behind the mausoleum. He was carrying what I assumed to be the sawn-off that had raised a scar on my head. I decided that they really did take turns with the weapons. He poked the shot-gun through the open rear window of the car, from where Patsy had thrown the flower, and fired twice in quick succession. The sound of the shots echoed through the cemetery and a murder of crows flapped from the trees where they had been roosting. I had frozen in the act of picking up the rose from the ground. Grant reloaded the sawn-off, carefully picking up the spent cartridges that ejected. Lynch drew a pistol from his jacket pocket and fired at me. I heard the bullet zip through the air close to my left hand side. I stood paralysed with horror. I wanted to turn and run but couldn't move. Lynch fired again and the bullet dug a groove in the roadway behind me. I couldn't let him keep shooting at me without retaliating. I pulled my .38 from the belt of my jeans and fired back three times, snap shots, double action, hardly taking aim.