Fell Purpose (10 page)

‘Yes, and I’d bet my last biccie he’s dealing, but we’ve never been able to nail him for it. He can spot a ringer too easily, and he seems to know by instinct when we set up a surveillance, and just melts away. But I know for a fact he supplies his mum. Well, who else’d do it? Lilian – Lilly – Atwood’s her name. She’s a big user.’

‘Not Carmichael, then?’

‘I don’t know that she ever married Michael’s dad. He
calls
himself Carmichael, but anyway what’s in a name, as the Bard says. Atwood’s her third, the one after Carmichael. He’s inside now – Atwood is – doing a ten stretch for armed robbery. He was the one that was around while Michael was growing up. Her first one, O’Dade, he’s dead, killed in a pub fight donkeys’ years ago. That was about my first case when I came to Woodley Green. Old Lilly was quite a looker in those days, not that you’d know it now. She’d already started drinking too much and putting herself about when O’Dade snuffed it. Then she had this brief thing with Carmichael. Could have gone respectable at that point – he was a rep for a paper company, Bowman’s of Bracknell. But he took off when she got in the club. He’d seen the future and it didn’t work. Then not long after she had young Michael she fell in with Atwood. That was her downfall. He’s a nasty, violent piece of shit. In and out of chokey, drunk more often than not, belted her and the kids – she had three more by him, one whenever he was out. They’re in care, now. First she went on the sauce, and now she’s doing drugs. She’s hanging round the pubs most nights, bumming for drinks.’

‘Prostitution?’ Slider asked.

‘She used to make quite a living that way. When she’s not monged she’s one of those women they call lively – which means she’s noisy, got a foul mouth and she laughs a lot – but there’s a lot of men on the Woodley South don’t ask for more. But she’s not often straight enough these days to make a living at it. It’s low-level stuff now. She’ll do it down an alley or in a car for the price of a wrap. We’ve taken her up for soliciting a few times – more to move her on than in hope of a prosecution. But she’ll do it anywhere with anyone. They call her Lilly the Pink. I’ll leave you to work out why.’ He paused a beat, and added in conclusion, ‘Not too much of a surprise that young Michael went wrong.’

‘He’s still living there, is he, with his mother?’

‘You tell me,’ Sweyback said, scratching delicately at his pate. ‘I haven’t seen him about as much the last few months, but he’s still there sometimes. Bringing her the doings, I suppose. Who knows where these youngsters hang out nowadays. It’s not like when we were kids – they all sleep on each other’s floors. Anywhere’s home. To be frank with you, if he’s not on my radar I’m not worrying about him. He’s the kind of lad that, when he finally goes over, it’ll be big trouble for everyone. You know some kids just potter along being a low-grade nuisance, and in some ways they’re the worst because you can’t do much about ’em. But there’s others marked out for glory, as the Bard says, and they eventually go down hard for something really big. Carmichael’s that sort. He’s a storm brewing, he is. A disaster waiting to happen.’

‘Is he violent?’

‘Quick-tempered, I’d say. Quick to take offence. And handy with his fists. Well, with a dad like Atwood it’s not surprising. That’s all he’s known – when in doubt, lash out. He’s been in a lot of fights but we’ve never had him for anything more than that. And being a fighter’s kept him out of the gangs, which is one blessing: the only thing we’ve got over
them
is they’re all pig stupid, and someone like Michael could pull ’em together into a real menace, if he was interested. What’s your interest in him, by the way?’ He gave in at last to the curiosity that had been burning him for the last ten minutes.

‘We think he might have known our latest murder victim.’

‘Oh, that girl on the Scrubs? I saw that in the papers, wondered if it was yours. You fancy him for it, do you?’

‘Haven’t got that far. But he was going out with her at one time.’

‘
Was
he? Sinning above his station, eh?’

‘Did he have a reputation that way?’

‘What, for girls? They couldn’t get enough of him.’

‘And did he smack them around?’

‘Never had any complaints against him. Of course, he grew up seeing it at home, and often they repeat what they know. But he never had to force anyone, I can tell you that. Good looking, leery sort of lad. Always had a girl on his arm. But I’ll say this – I can see him killing a girl in a temper, if she got across him the wrong way.’

Slider nodded. ‘It looks like that sort of murder.’
Except for the tights
, he thought uneasily. The tights were a real thorn in the woodpile, as Porson might say. ‘Well, thanks a lot, Duggie. You’ve given me quite a graphic picture of him. A great help.’

‘Murder, eh?’ Sweyback said thoughtfully. ‘Well, I said when he went, he’d go big. Are you going round his mum’s house?’

‘Yes, in the hope that he might be there. What does she do, by the way?’

‘Drugs? Well, she’ll do anything she can get. Dope, coke. Scag – she smokes that. Booze when she can’t get anything else. Haven’t seen the boy around lately but he comes and goes, and you might get something out of her about where to look. Probably a good time to catch her,’ he added, looking at his watch. ‘After she wakes up and before she goes looking for the next fix.’

‘Right,’ said Slider.

Sweyback rose to his feet and extended a hand like a ham for Slider to shake. ‘If I spot him around, or if one of my snouts spots him, shall I tug him for you?’

‘That would be grand,’ Slider said. ‘Thanks a lot, Duggie.’

‘No trouble. Us old ’uns have got to stick together. There aren’t many of us left.’

The Woodley South was as depressing as he had known it would be – a wasteland of mean houses, boarded-up windows, broken fences and dying hedges, trampled front gardens full of junk, the rotting corpses of dead cars that the boy vultures were taking a long time devouring. Slider had brought Fathom and McLaren with him in case of trouble – Fathom because he was big and meaty, and McLaren because he was tough and whippy and quick in a fight. He collected them from the Woodley Green canteen where they had been wiling away the time he was with Sweyback. McLaren, at least, had understood that the purpose of the canteen stop was not to fill up the tea-tank – though he had managed to take on board a cheese roll and a massive chunk of coconut cake, and was now finishing a giant Mars Bar in the car while Slider drove.

But he said, ‘I got it from one of the woodentops in the canteen that Lilly Atwood’s shacked up with a black bloke at the moment.’

‘Don’t slobber chocolate down my neck.’

‘Sorry, guv. Anyway, this bloke’s half her age, name of Leonard McGrory, Lennie, local Reading lad, got a bit of form, TDAs, shoplifting, possession, and done time for malicious wounding – he knifed some dealer that was trying to stiff him. Got six months for that. God knows what he’s doing with Lilly the Pink, but maybe it’s got something to do with Mike Carmichael, if he
is
dealing.’

‘Well done,’ Slider said. ‘Always useful to know what we’re facing. What did you find out, Fathom?’

‘I didn’t know we were supposed to be finding stuff out,’ he said, a touch sulkily.

‘He spent the time smoking too much and watching me,’ McLaren said.

‘I didn’t know we were on duty,’ Fathom complained.

‘You’re always on duty,’ Slider said. ‘And if you don’t know that finding stuff out is your job, you shouldn’t be in the CID.’

‘Sorry, guv.’

‘Mind you, watching McLaren eat is always an education. But if he can eat and work, you can watch and work. You should have got chatting to someone.’

‘Lazy, that’s his problem,’ said McLaren, who had raised inertia to an art form.

If anyone was going to criticize Slider’s troops, he’d do it himself. To balance the books he said to McLaren, ‘If you applied to women the expert attention you apply to food, you’d have to become a Mormon.’ McLaren was famous in the firm for not having had a date for years. He slowed the car. ‘This is it. What a name for a road like this – Applelea.’

‘This used to be called the Orchard Estate when it was first built,’ McLaren said. ‘Bloke in the canteen told me it was all farmland, orchards and stuff, up to the sixties. So they gave all the roads farmy names. Gawd ’elp us.’

Slider had noticed. Apart from Applelea they had passed High Garth, Hay Wain, Cherry Orchard Lane, Plum Tree Lane, Tithe Road, Orchard View, and Blossom View. A rural paradise, care of central government post-war planning. As McLaren so aptly observed, Gawd ’elp us.

Number fourteen was just as tatty and desolate as its neighbours, but it was obviously inhabited: all its windows still had their glass and all were curtained. The curtains in the downstairs window were drawn shut, rough-looking red cloth hanging slightly askew, though the upstairs ones were open. There was a sheet of hardboard nailed over the glass portion of the front door, and the house number was missing, though a paler outline in the dirty paint showed where it had been. They walked cautiously up the path, and when they neared the house they saw that the front door, though pulled to, was not completely shut. The wood of the frame, however, was not splintered. It had not been jemmied or kicked in: it must either have been left open deliberately, or had been pushed carelessly by the last person in or out, who had not checked that it had latched.

Slider pushed it cautiously, and it swung back. A narrow, dark hall led straight back to a kitchen, whose open door revealed a scene of dirty crockery, fast-food boxes, and general rubbish in greater amount than you would have thought possible in a room that small. The stairs, narrow and steep, were to the left. To the right was the single downstairs room, whose door was slightly ajar, enough to see it was dark inside, the curtains closed and no light on. Pop music was sounding in there at medium volume from a radio station. The carpet underfoot and up the stairs was filthy with footmarks and spillings, and in the air was a smell of dirt, feet, fat, hashish and rancid garbage.

That living-room door had the look of a trap to Slider. Had they seen him coming, and were luring him in? But he thought of Lilly the Pink and her half-age shack-up. People like that rarely showed cunning. They just reacted belatedly when something came at them. A movement from the kitchen caught his eye and he could tell from the sharpness of the chill down his neck how tense he was. A rat was sitting on top of the heap of plates and cardboard boxes on the draining board, working on a Kentucky Fried Chicken bone. Slider forced his shoulders to relax. He wished the rat no ill. Anyway, it was the only one in this house who was doing any clearing up.

There had been no sound or movement anywhere, so indicating for Fathom to stay by the door, in case there was anyone upstairs, and for McLaren to keep close, he pushed the living-room door all the way open. Even in the dim red light filtering through the curtains he could see well enough to pick out a scattering of cheap furniture, a television – turned off – and a sofa bed in the pulled-out position taking up most of the room. The floor and other surfaces were a mess of clothes, fast-food boxes, bottles, glasses, empty beer cans, overflowing ashtrays, and general litter. The radio was sitting in the hearth of the boarded-up fireplace. The smell in this room was intensified by the addition of bodies, sweat and stale cigarette smoke.

And two people were asleep in the bed, tumbled together with a grubby sheet to cover their modesty. One of them was snoring throatily, interspersed with an occasional wet gulping snort, like a pig enjoying apples.

Slider positioned his men, stepped to the window and pulled the curtains. He half expected an explosion of movement from the bed, but all that happened was that the tangled heap stirred and grunted, and after a moment the male half of it sat up blearily, rubbing its head with one hand and scratching under the sheet with the other.

‘Wassappenin?’ It rubbed its eyes, and then registered Slider and McLaren. ‘Wassgoinon? Who the fuck are you?’ Belated alarm widened the eyes, and he began fumbling about under the pillow.

Slider suspected a weapon under there, and said sternly, ‘Stay still. We’re the police. We just want to ask you a few questions.’ He went on fumbling. ‘Don’t do it, son. You’re not in any trouble – yet. Let’s keep it that way.’

But it was cigarettes that came out. At the same time, the female half mumbled itself awake – or half awake, at any rate. She turned over on to her back, frowning against the light, smacked her lips and groaned. ‘Whafuck’s going on? Put the light out.’

‘Wake up, Lil,’ the man said urgently, jabbing her ungently. He was sitting up, covered from the waist down – always thankful for small mercies, Slider thought – and from the undeveloped nature of his bare chest he looked to be no more than twenty. He was of West Indian stock, with longish hair, tattoos on his upper arms – a spider in its web on the right and a ghost on the left – and rings through both eyebrows and the left nostril.

Lilly dragged her eyes open, and then sat up slowly, instinctively pulling the sheet up with her to cover her breasts. She looked at Slider carefully, and then yawned widely. The yawn turned into a prolonged and hacking cough, which nearly dislodged the sheet, after which she wiped her nose on her fingers, her fingers on the bed, and said, ‘Can’t you fuckers leave me alone?’