GBH (13 page)

“I’ll see what I can do,” Collins said.

“Too bloody right. And don’t come back until you’ve done it.”

“I ought to say Farlow’s been fanning the flames with Parsons.”

“Of course he has. That’s what he’d do, wouldn’t he? I don’t pay you to tell me that either.”

Collins stood up.

“I’ll be in touch,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, “but if you decide to use the post, put a first-class stamp on it, will you?”

THE SEA

I
SIT IN THE
car, on the other side of the promenade, opposite the caravan park. There is no sign of life whatsoever.

After the show finished and she’d won, she’d gone backstage, got out of her gear and disappeared. Eddie’d told me that. He’d also told me he’d asked her where she lived, on my account.

So I’d made my excuses and left, as the Law says about the obscene exhibitions they’re forced to attend all in the line of duty.

I’d got in my Marina and driven straight down the promenade to the caravan park and I’ve been waiting here ever since, but either I didn’t beat her to it or she’s gone elsewhere.

I light a cigarette and consider my stupidity, why I hadn’t thought of it before; not the fact that she was almost certainly the same girl as the one in the bar in Grimsby. That I couldn’t have realised, not until I’d seen her up on the stage. No, it’s not that, it’s the possibility that has come to me since; the possibility that she could be Press.

It came to me while I was watching her doing her act in the Dunes, while I was wondering what possible reason there could be for her Mablethorpe disappearance, in both senses of the word, and her appearance in Grimsby.

If I hadn’t been entirely out of my mind the previous evening, and what I can remember is indeed a fact, then it all fits. And if it was so, she’d been clever. She hadn’t immediately
tried to pick me up. She’d done the opposite; even to rejecting what she’d imagined was my advance in the arcade, then just being around, creating a bit of interest.

And when she’d appeared at the bungalow, even then she’d started off by playing it cool; but when she’d seen the state I’d been in, my final collapse had made it even easier for her; she hadn’t even had to pretend to be seduced. She hadn’t even had to steal the photograph of Jean. All she’d had to do was to have taken out her little pocket camera and take a little snap of it, along with one or two of me, dead to the world, and the bungalow’s interior, to make up a set together with the daytime ones she’ll have taken of the exterior of the bungalow and me going in and out of it and walking up and down the beach.

I can just see the headline:
MY NIGHT OF LOVE WITH MISSING PORN KING
. And the outline: “How could I ever have imagined that a casual evening’s sex would lead to …” Etcetera.

I wonder which of the Sundays it would be. The idea sounds more like one of Craig’s front pages than the others.

Anyway, even if I’m wrong, she’s not from the Law; if I’m right, the last thing Farlow and the others want is it splashed all over the front pages that I’m not dead or living in Australia. The last thing they wanted was that. That would mean they’d have to reopen things they won’t want reopening.

As for the others, well, like I say, I wouldn’t be sitting here in my motor considering things.

Of course, I realise, after Eddie’s discreet enquiries she’s probably halfway down the motorway by now. But for that, she’d probably intended sticking around a day or so more, so that we could have been photographed together.

But if I’m right about her, she’s got enough. And if she’s gone there’s nothing whatsoever I can do about it. It’s only
half-past nine now: I could be all over the breakfast table by tomorrow morning.

Unless she’s not clocked. Unless. All I can do is to sit here and hope she hasn’t. And isn’t.

THE SMOKE

I
ASKED
P
ARSONS IF
he’d like some champagne. To my surprise he accepted.

“Well,” I said, sitting down. “I won’t ask you what I can do for you.”

“No,” Parsons said.

He drank some of his champagne.

“Very nice,” he said.

“We like it,” I said.

“We?” he said. “Oh, you mean you and the wife.”

“That’s right,” I said.

“To you and the wife, then,” Parsons said.

This time we both drank.

“Anyway,” I said, “I’m in no hurry, but we may as well get down to it.”

“Yes,” Parsons said. “Why don’t we?”

I allowed him his pause for effect.

“I realise I’m not on my patch—”

“We both realise that,” I said.

“Yes. But Ray Warren and Glenda Hill were.”

“Were?”

“Let’s just say they’re not there at the moment.”

“You can say what you like. Because whatever you’re going to say will be a waste of breath.”

“Very probably.”

“So why come all the way over here to waste it when you could be wasting it in familiar surroundings?”

Parsons smiled. It was the kind of smile an RSM gives to a new arrival of squaddies.

“I realise that Ray and Glenda are probably cemented up in some City redevelopment by now,” he said, “but that won’t stop me trying to trace the cement back to you.”

“Feel free,” I said. “I’m not stopping you.”

“No,” he said.

“I mean,” I said, “I don’t have to remind you of all the thousand bits of luck you’re going to need to build even half a case that even then would depend entirely on association.”

“Yes, I know,” he said. “I know all about that. Actually, although Ray and Glenda are central to my being here, it’s one of the side effects I’m really here about.”

“Really? And what would that be?”

“ ‘What’ is correct. When one’s talking about Collins.”

“Collins?”

“I don’t like Collins talking to me.”

“You’ll be surprised to know that makes two of us.”

“I don’t like him coming over to my branch and suggesting holidays in the sun, etcetera.”

“You should take them; then you’d have more chance of finding Ray and Glenda.”

“That’s what you’d like me to believe.”

“Whether you believe it or not makes no difference whatsoever.”

“Quite,” Parsons said. “However; Collins. Don’t send him over again.”

“I won’t; not now you’ve told me how stupid he’s been.”

“Yes, he has, hasn’t he? That’s always surprised me about you and him.”

“He’s not always been stupid.”

“Not always; but ultimately.”

“You have to be very stupid to have his kind of bank balance. If you wanted to be that stupid you could have one yourself.”

“I know. I should never have taken the Mensa tests.”

“Resign. Take the money instead.”

“I can’t,” Parsons said. “That’s my great trouble in life.”

He finished his champagne.

“Like some more?” I said.

He stood up and put the glass down on the table-top.

“No, thanks. I’ve got to be going. I just dropped in to tell you about Collins. What I felt about him.”

“You could have phoned.”

“I would have,” he said. “But I wanted to see you. Extra motivation and all that kind of thing.”

“Well,” I said, “any time you feel like being motivated …”

“Thanks. I’ll do that as soon as possible.”

After he’d gone I picked up the phone.

THE SEA

T
HE MAN WHO TAKES
care of the caravan site lives in a low box by the site’s entrance. There are a lot of caravans but only one or two of them are illuminated.

I knock on the door of the caravan-site man’s house. He’s a long time answering. Yellow light from the hall behind him mingles with the sound of the TV and drifts into the night air.

He doesn’t ask me what I want. In fact, he doesn’t say anything at all. So I tell him.

“Could you tell me which is Lesley Murray’s caravan?”

“Lesley who?”

“Lesley Murray.”

He thinks about it.

“What’s he look like?”

“It’s a she. Lesley. Young bird.”

He shakes his head.

“No.”

“You certain about that?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t have to check your book?”

He shakes his head again.

“There’s only three vans occupied at the present. Weekenders.”

“She couldn’t be staying with any of them?”

“No, I know them all. They’re all regulars. Retired people. Their own vans. I’d know if she was with any of them.”

“Well, she did say that this was where she was staying.”

He looks at me.

“She’s shot you a line, then, hasn’t she?” he says.

“You’re absolutely certain she couldn’t be on here without you knowing?”

“No, I’m checking all the time. Hippies are always trying to get into them, the bastards.”

“Well,” I say, “that’s that, then.”

“Yes,” he says. “Better luck next time.”

“Thanks.”

He closes the door.

I go back to the car and get in and drive back to the Dunes. Although the show’s over, the audience and most of the performers are still there living it up, being entertained by numbers from Eddie and his group.

I fight my way through to the bar and when Howard gets me my drink I get him to give me a couple of quidsworth of two-bob bits then I go into the lobby in the vain hope of getting James on a Saturday night. At this moment he’s probably in his box, halfway through his hamper, halfway through the full production of
The Ring
.

But I dial his number anyway and of course he’s not in.

And it’s not a clever idea to phone O’Connell myself.

So I put the change in my pocket and go out of the Dunes and back along the mini-promenade and get in my Marina and reverse and point it in the direction of Grimsby.

There’s one or two possibilities I may as well pursue until such time as I can raise James and ultimately O’Connell. For instance, if she’s been sent up here the way I think she has, there’s the possibility she may have been staying at one of the town’s two decent hotels or its new motel. And following that, there’s the possibility that she might be still hanging around; they might have shipped the stuff down earlier today, the original intention maybe being to wait until she’d progressed in her
relationship with me until they printed. But if there was a possibility I tumbled, they might have told her to clear out of it and satisfy themselves with what they’d got. And another possibility being that she hasn’t necessarily tumbled to me having clocked her for what she is; after her charade at the Dunes, just to keep up appearances, she could easily clear off to her hotel and relax the remainder of the weekend, not knowing, of course, I’ve already clocked her in Grimsby.

But everything is academic. If the material is with the paper, then all the thoughts in the world won’t make any difference; the bungalow is blown. I’ll have to stay in Grimsby tonight before entering into any of my other contingency arrangements.

For the moment I’ll just fill in the time between now and James.

THE SMOKE

“I
DON
’
T THINK
,” J
AMES
said, “that at this stage we should do other than consider the possibility.”

“Why not?” I said. “Why not do it, and get it over with?”

“Because there’s no
need
, George. That’s why not.”

“There’d be nothing to it.”

“Oh, I know that.”

“Well then. One more Christian Soldier marching on a little too far.”

“Look, George,” James said. “There is no reason so to do. Ray and Glenda are not permanently missing, so, to begin with, he’s not going to discover their mortal remains, is he? He has to begin with those, doesn’t he, otherwise where can he go?”

I didn’t say anything.

“I mean,” James said, “he can be fitted up any time; the machinery is just waiting to be switched on. Why use it when we don’t need it? Remember the energy motto. Save It.”

I lit a cigarette.

“It’s Collins you should really be concerned about,” said James. “Parsons wouldn’t have came to see you if it weren’t for him.”

“I know,” I said.

“But that doesn’t mean to say,” James said, “that you should go tearing into him, either.”

I didn’t say anything.

“With the earlier business, and Farlow and the Sheps getting their balls burnt, things are very delicately balanced at the moment. We don’t want to add Parsons and/or subtract Dennis and get the scales tipping in the wrong direction, now do we?”

“No, we don’t, James,” I said. “But I don’t see what harm there’d be in fitting up Parsons. Christ, it’ll come to it eventually.”

“You’re absolutely right,” James said. “But just wait for something to give it cause. Let it happen in the natural order of things.”

THE SEA

S
HE
’
S NOT BEEN AT
either of the hotels, so I go to the motel.

At the desk, I pursue my usual enquiries, and although the money makes the desk clerk eager to help, she hasn’t been there, either.

So after I’ve been established in my room and ordered a tray carrying a bottle and a glass, I don’t use the phone by the bedside. Instead I go down into reception and try to get James on one of the pay phones. There’s still no reply.

I didn’t think there would be, not unless the midnight movie’s something he wants to see. I ring him at four more regular intervals; the fourth time I get through.

“It’s me,” I tell him.

“Yes,” he says.

“I may have had a visitor.”

“What kind?”

“Journalistic.”

“That’s a pity.”

“It looks like Sunday stuff. It could even appear tomorrow.”

“Oh dear.”

“If I’m right, I can’t go back to where I am. So I want you to phone O’Connell now. He’ll still be at the paper and he’ll know what all the other front pages are going to be by now.”

“Yes, I’ll do that.”

“Get him on the phone but don’t talk to him there; get him round to your flat.”

“I think I’ll be able to do the job properly.”

“And if there’s nothing in tomorrow’s, give him anything he wants to find out whatever he can. It might even be one of the daily rags. If there’s anything, he’ll know about it.”