Get Carter (28 page)

Rain sped past the black windows. The windscreen wipers groaned and whirred. Wind buffetted the car in flurries of whining irritation.

Dark trees flashed by.

I knew the road well. But I’d known it better in the summer. In biking weather. When Frank and I had done the same journey in a morning. Just to spend the whole afternoon on the ochre mud they call a beach. In spitting distance of the gasworks and smelling distance of the fish docks. But it was the journey there that’d made it good. The expectation, the excitement, the dry road crackling under our tires, the warm wind flicking the collars of our open-neck shirts. The elation when we spotted an M.G. or an Alvis or the time when we’d actually found a Lagonda, hood down, parked on the grass verge, empty. We’d stopped and still straddling our bikes we’d carefully scanned the
surrounding woods for any signs for someone who might have been associated with the car. But there’d been no one. So we’d dropped our bikes on the grass and sauntered over and looked around some more before actually touching it. I remembered the marvellous feeling of the mudguard warm from the sun under my palm. Frank hadn’t touched the car at all. He’d just walked round it keeping a couple of feet between him and the car at all times. And then when still nobody had shown up I’d suggested to Frank that we got in, just to feel what it was like to sit in it. Of course Frank wouldn’t. So I’d climbed in and sat in the hot leather seat behind the wheel and ran my hands over the walnut dashboard and I’d felt the thrill of fear as I noticed that the keys had been hanging from the dashboard. I’d just been stretching out my hand towards the ignition when Frank had yelled there’d been somebody coming and I’d jumped out like a scalded cat and we’d leaped on our bikes and pedalled like bloody hell for a couple of miles.

Of course there hadn’t been anybody coming at all. Frank had just put the wind up me to get me out of it. I’d had to laugh, afterwards.

There was a movement behind me. A shoe scraped against one of the rear doors. Nothing happened for a minute. Then there was more movement. The movement became frantic. Lips fought against sticking plaster. Wrists ground against rope and against each other. The movement reached its climax and then there was an exhausted silence.

Trees and hedges began to disappear. The road began to broaden out. Houses sped by more frequently. Sodium street lights regularly illuminated the rain.

I lit a cigarette and rolled down the window and threw the match out. Wind roared in my ears. It felt fresh and good. I left it rolled down and breathed in. Even now I could smell the fish dock.

Storey had very long hair, parted in the middle. He wore a flowered shirt with a high collar, a kipper tie patterned with fleur de lys, a grey herring-bone suit and black boots. Circular glasses with gold rims decorated the end of his nose. I would have said he was about twenty-five at the most.

His room was done out like an A & R man’s office.

On one wall there was an original poster for
King Kong
. On another there was Humphrey Bogart. There was a fruit machine behind his desk that had been painted in pop colours. I wondered if it was one of Cliff’s.

Music thumped from the juke-box downstairs.

Storey looked at me from behind his desk.

“So you know Maurice, do you?” he said.

“I’m surprised you do,” I said.

He smiled.

“The scene has changed,” he said. “The scene has changed.”

I didn’t say anything. Neither did he.

“Well?” I said.

“Well what?”

“Have you got it?”

“Oh, man. Come on. I mean, how much do you want, what quality, when? You don’t think I keep it here?”

“I don’t know where the fucking hell you keep it. Maurice told you what I wanted.”

“No, man. All he said was you’d be over to see me. That’s all. What do you think this is, a supermarket?”

“I haven’t much time.”

“So tell me what you want.”

The record on the juke-box stopped. Voices growled below us.

“I want a syringe. Made up. Two grains at the most.”

“Oh, man.”

“You’ll get more than it’s worth. Provided we don’t have to chase all over the place.”

“But Maurice said …”

“Forget what Maurice said. Have you got it? Here?”

“Oh, come on. Why would I?”

I took some notes out of my wallet and put them on his desk.

He looked at the notes.

“I want a syringe,” I said. “Made up. Two grains at the most.”

I walked along the cobbled street to where I’d left the car. There was the misty smoky taste of the river in the air. The rain had eased off and the wind wasn’t so strong and the sounds of the docks swished and clanked across the night.

I got in the car and stretched over the back of my seat and lifted Margaret’s coat away from her face. She stared up at me from the floor. I dropped the coat back over her face and she began to thrash about again.

I started the car and made a U-turn and began to drive away from the docks.

My headlights stroked the road-sign. M
ALTON
, it said. I knew it very well. Or used to. A village three miles away from Sowerby. Even smaller than Sowerby. Fifty inhabitants at the most, even these days. Only a few lighted windows gave away its existence. I slowed down. There were no street lights. The road curbed and rose as it left the few houses behind. I coasted round the bend and there was a phone box shining like a beacon on the grass verge. I rolled the car level and got out. Wind raced through the grass and rushed through the branches of the great trees that lined the road.

In the phone box I opened the directory and found the name I wanted. I put the four pennies in the box and dialled the number.

I had to wait a long time. Then a man’s voice said:

“Mr. Kinnear’s residence.”

“Ah,” I said. “Could I speak to Mr. Kinnear, please?”

“I’m afraid he’s busy at present. He’s not to be disturbed.”

“Tell him it’s London. That’ll disturb him.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Tell him it’s Gerald and he’s in a hurry,”

“Well why didn’t you bloody well say so?”

I heard the phone clatter as he put it down. Seconds later a door opened and the far-off sounds of the party came over the line like the noise of the sea in a sea-shell. A few minutes later the sound was cut off and then somebody else lifted the phone.

“Gerald?” said Kinnear.

“No,” I said. “It’s Jack.”

The tone changed. He went into his routine.

“Well, Jack,” he said. “I hardly expected to be hearing from you.”

“Thought they’d have picked me up by now?”

He gave me the laugh.

“Something like that. You’ve been a bad lad.”

“I haven’t finished yet.”

More laughter.

“You don’t stand a chance, mate. Even if you go back to the smoke you’re dead.”

“Maybe.” I lit a cigarette. “I suppose you know they’ve picked up Glenda.”

“I know that.”

“And Frank’s daughter.”

“Yes, Jack.”

“Glenda didn’t only work for you, Cyril. Brumby paid her to listen to what you had to say.”

There was a small silence.

“Now that,” he said, “was something I didn’t know.”

“He was the one who got the film to Frank.”

“I wondered about that.”

“He was trying to nail you, Cyril. And he nearly succeeded.”

“Well,” he said. “The things you hear. You wouldn’t credit some of them. Would you, Jack?”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Funny,” he said. “I even heard that Cliff had been picked up by the button men.”

“Funnier still when you think of Cliff and Glenda down there at the button shop together, making themselves comfy.”

“I see your point, Jack,” he said. “But I don’t quite understand your solicitudes.”

“Well, Cyril,” I said, “when Doreen finds out why her dad was knocked over it’ll be like the Luton Girls Choir down there. And they’re not all friends of yours. Those that aren’t’ll enjoy lending their amplifiers to the young ladies.”

“True,” he said.

“So soon there’ll be Eric adding his voice to the chorus, won’t there?”

“Perhaps,” he said. “But after all, I can’t be held responsible for the actions of my employees, can I? I mean, I know nothing of Eric’s activities outside of his working hours, do I?”

“I thought it’d be something like that,” I said. “Even better, though, if Eric was to go on his holidays. Off the scene, like. Then you could even weep on their shoulders, couldn’t you?”

“I must say the idea had occurred to me, Jack. He’s not exactly on display at the moment.”

“And besides, he’s such a cunt.”

“I’m afraid I’m inclined to agree.”

There was a silence.

“Poor old Eric,” he said eventually. “He was really sick when he found out he’d pulled your niece. Really sick.”

“Where would he start from?” I said. “If he was going away?”

“Do you know Mawby?”

“I know it.”

“How well?”

“Very well.”

“Know the brickpits? Near Mawby Ness?”

“I know them.”

“Then you’ll know the brickyard house. Right on the river?”

“Yes.”

“Bloke that looks after the beacons lives there. Friend of ours. I think I’d send Eric down there for a start.”

“And I suppose you’d tell him to hang about until somebody came for him. Somebody in a Morris Traveller, say.”

“Something like that.”

“About what time?”

“Between four and five in the morning. That’d be feasible. If you were talking in terms of tomorrow, like.”

Another silence.

“Of course,” he said, “there’s one thing.”

“Yes?”

“You go home afterwards.”

“This is home.”

“I mean the smoke.”

“Yes.”

Static burst on to the line for a second or two.

“You surprise me,” he said.

“I want Eric,” I said.

“Enough to leave me be?”

“No,” I said. “It’s just that I haven’t time for the two of you.”

Kinnear laughed his laugh and put the phone down.

I went out of the phone box. A car took the corner too fast and straightened up and screamed off up the slight hill.

I got back in the car. There was no movement in the back seat. I started the car and drove slowly away. There was no reason for me to hurry. I’d got all night.