I Was Dora Suarez (15 page)

‘Now look,’ said the doorman, ‘if I was to tell you—’

I said: ‘Did Suarez have a boyfriend at all who hung around here in this place? And don’t tell me you’re just the doorman all over again, because that isn’t the right answer at all.’

‘Look, Christ,’ said the doorman, ‘I never noticed her with anyone in particular – anyway, she wasn’t the kind of girl to talk about it if she had.’

‘All right,’ I said, ‘but now mind how you reply, because these
are three really heavy deaths, what this officer and myself are on.’

‘That’s right,’ said Stevenson, ‘and what was your name again?’

I said: ‘No need to ask, I read him – the name’s Margoulis, Johnny, and I make him in the Scrubs one year down to petty thieving, two in Maidstone, which he went down for because he tried to flog the gear he’d nicked from the folks he’d thieved it from. Brilliant, that’s right, isn’t it, Johnny, and so when’s the big match then, like five to seven down at Canterbury, charmer?’

‘What’s past is past,’ the doorman said.

‘It may be over,’ I said, ‘but what’s over still leaves traces, Johnny – like in our records, see what I mean.’ I said in a serious tone: ‘Now you’ve zero interest fucking us about, Johnny, so start telling about Suarez and if and when she met up with anyone more or less regularly in here. Come on, now, be a big boy. You’re just a fat prick and a low gossip for your own interest, you think garbage level just like any grass – and for my money you’re yellow like all grasses, for all your big build.’

The doorman was just starting to say maybe we could meet and like discuss it elsewhere when at that point a very fat man in dark glasses who looked as if he and his dinner jacket had been boiled as a single dish appeared and said: ‘Good evening, I’m Robacci, the owner here.’

Stevenson said: ‘Yes, we’ve already had the pleasure.’

Robacci said: ‘Bother here?’

‘That’s right,’ said Stevenson, ‘in the circles you move, bother’s the other word for the law.’

‘You’ve emptied my place, you two,’ said Robacci, ‘you realise that.’

‘We’d have done it before,’ I said, ‘only we were busy.’

‘You’ve really spoiled my evening,’ Robacci said, ‘and my takings, and I was doing so well.’

‘You should have gone back to Bolivia, then, shouldn’t you, love?’ Stevenson said. ‘I already told you twice.’

‘I could catch the ten o’clock plane in the morning if I liked,’ Robacci said.

‘That mightn’t be quite so easy now,’ Stevenson said. ‘You wouldn’t listen to a warning, would you, you cheeky little man? If you’re clean on Roatta, you can go – it’ll take a wearisome time to establish that, though. On the other hand, if it shows that you’re not clean, forget the splendour of the Andes and start emptying pisspots at the Scrubs, OK?’

‘Let’s get to the point, shall we?’ Robacci said. ‘How much this time? I suppose you’ve been sent over from the top floor.’

‘You’re not reading me at all,’ Stevenson said. ‘I’ve never done a stint with the Bolivian police, but I daresay you need to know a few people in it, I don’t know, don’t care. The difference here is that you’re in London, and it’s us over at the Factory that run the manor and that includes you as long as you’re on it, sweetheart, and we don’t know you at all, and what’s even worse luck for you, we don’t want to.’

‘It’s what the unions call working to rule,’ I said, ‘or in plain English, no deal, do you read?’

‘Christ,’ Robacci said.

‘He usually takes the weekend off,’ said Stevenson, ‘and he certainly wasn’t on tap last Saturday night, Sunday morning, when there were three particularly disgusting murders committed in the space of less than three hours – your co-owner, Felix Roatta, was one of the victims.’

‘I know that,’ said Robacci. ‘We all know it and deplore it. But Felix – he and I were just financially interested in the club together; otherwise he did his own thing, you know.’

‘What I know,’ said Stevenson, producing them, ‘is that I’ve two documents in my hand here, and if you go wrong on either of them, you’re likely to wind up doing twenty years in a British jail. You’re already not young, and by the time you come out you’ll just be a wispy little old man on two sticks and a prayer.’

‘I wish we could just go into my office at the side over there where we could be private and discuss a little serious money for you to drop all this,’ said Robacci. He did not look healthy as he spoke. ‘There must be a rate for it.’

‘No, there isn’t,’ said Stevenson. ‘Two junior officers put in charge of an explosive case like this one, they can’t afford to go wrong over it, and we’re not going to.’

‘So let’s not talk about money at all,’ I said. ‘Let’s talk about Roatta and Dora Suarez.’

‘Yes,’ said Stevenson. ‘This first document I have here is a magistrate’s warrant to search these entire premises.’

‘Look, some of the building belongs on the Parallel lease,’ said Robacci, ‘some of it doesn’t.’

‘We don’t care,’ said Stevenson. ‘This document empowers us to rip the lot out, flats, clubs, mice, vice, uncle tom cobley and all, read it.’

I said to Stevenson: ‘Now show him the other one, why not?’

Robacci said: ‘Before you do, I want to tell you something. Do you know who I mean by Chief Inspector Bowman from Serious Crimes, works out of your house?’

‘Yes, extremely well,’ I said, ‘Mr Bowman’s a glutton for other people’s punishment. Why? Did you want to see him? It could be arranged straightaway.’

‘I should drop that if I were you,’ Stevenson said, ‘for your own sake. A copper’s like anyone else – treat you fine if you’re his side of the counter, smash you one in the face if you’re on the other, and that’s life for you, isn’t it?’

I said: ‘Or is it that you’re alleging improper conduct on the part of a police officer? In which case you are in conversation with two police officers, so bring a charge, why don’t you?’

‘Christ no,’ Robacci said, ‘are you mad?’ He dropped it.

‘Right now,’ I said to Stevenson, ‘show him the other document. Let’s see him respond to a face or four in his own club.’

Stevenson showed Robacci the picture and said: ‘OK, now. Now we’re here in the Parallel with this photo, aren’t we? What night was that, then?’

‘No need to stammer over it, Robacci,’ I said. ‘We’re in the middle of Roatta’s last birthday party here, aren’t we?’

He had to say yes.

‘The girl singing,’ I said. ‘The dark girl with the mike there.’

‘Don’t know her.’

I said: ‘Repeat that, but take all your time, because your answer could affect your long-term future.’

‘I might have seen her.’

‘Don’t tell me people sing in your club in front of your customers without your knowing who the fucking hell they are,’ I said.

‘They came and went,’ Robacci said, ‘you know. Felix looked after that end.’

‘This is the face of one that went,’ I said, ‘and the payment for that is going to be weighty.’ I said: ‘So wring your brains out and put a name to her before you lose your own – because I’ll bury you in the British prison system till the end of time if you don’t; the Factory always finds a way.’

There was a long silence until I said: ‘Silence is not always golden, Robacci, and I’m getting restless.’

Robacci said: ‘Felix could have perhaps told you.’

‘Well, he can’t now,’ I said, ‘so you’re going to have to. After all, you were co-owners in this shithole.’

Stevenson said to me: ‘Look at his face, you can tell he knew her.’

I turned to Robacci and said: ‘When did you screw her last, you fat bag of piss?’

Robacci turned white and said: ‘I never did that.’

‘Oh really?’ I said. ‘Why not? Not pretty enough for you?’

Robacci said: ‘It wasn’t that.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I know it wasn’t.’ I said to Stevenson: ‘We’ll put this one on board.’

Robacci said: ‘What do you mean, put me on board?’

I said: ‘It means a single to the Factory, and there we’re going to press on the pod till you spring the peas.’

He said: ‘You lay a hand on me—’

‘It doesn’t work like that,’ I said, ‘it doesn’t need to.’ I said to Robacci, putting the photograph to him again: ‘And this man,
here, yes, this one, the one running out of that door fast in the corner there by the dance floor under the exit light, who’s he?’

Robacci said nothing.

I said to Stevenson: ‘When people give you a spiel, they’re lying. When they say nothing, they know. It’s like that, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right,’ said Stevenson, ‘anyway in my experience.’

Robacci said: ‘What are you holding me on?’

I said: ‘Anything that’ll hold you for twenty-four hours – because we’ll break this in twenty-four hours. Papers not in order, tax enquiry, known to frequent criminals, Christ, I can think up thirty reasons.’

‘I’ll speak to my consulate!’ he screamed.

‘It’s a funny thing,’ I said, ‘but diplomacy is one of those few areas where Bolivia is rather slow on the draw – bad luck, darling.’ I said to Stevenson: ‘Ring a squad car and get it to roll round and drop this lot off at Poland Street, will you?’

Robacci said: ‘You can’t mean it.’

I said: ‘Well, I said it, didn’t I?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, then, if I said it, I meant it.’ I called over to Stevenson, who was on the phone: ‘When you’re finished there, let’s really get going and take this fucking place apart.’ I said to Robacci: ‘You got the keys? I want all the keys. Because we can kick your doors down, but you can’t kick ours down. Villains all know that, it’s iron rule number one.’

He said: ‘I don’t know if I’ve got them all.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘you’d better have them on you tonight the same as you do every other night, including the ones to the upstairs at the back there going on past the toilets where there’s a door that says top members only, if you ever want your own cell unlocked again. Otherwise we melt our key down, which means you melt with it, OK?’ I added: ‘You still say you only knew Suarez by sight, before you leave here? The man running out of the back, the sporty-looking type? Don’t be too immediate in your answers – take your time for the last time.’

‘I’m telling you what I told you,’ Robacci said.

‘He’s terrified,’ said Stevenson, who had come back from the phone, ‘and frightened men tell the best lies of all and stick to them like shit to a blanket.’

I held my hand out to Robacci, ‘The keys,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to have to go to the Factory for them once they’ve stripped you there.’

Robacci gave me the keys.

The squad car arrived outside. I said to the sergeant: ‘This one, a quickie to the Factory. Hold him for A14, 202, 205, we’ll be over in an hour or less.’

‘What’s the charge?’

‘Sus,’ I said.

Actually, there was another bit on the side here before we went in and searched the upstairs of the Parallel. We did three of us go into Robacci’s office, but we didn’t take Robacci, we took the doorman. Doormen depend on tips, taxi drops and a bob or two from phone numbers, sexual contacts because they’re very low paid; so even if they’re not naturally inclined to it, they have to see too much – they like are forced to eat with their eyes. Robacci once split off down to the Factory in the squad car, the doorman had no further line of defence and he knew it.

Stevenson said: ‘Now we’re not going to be unkind because unkindness in this Christian world of ours I find doesn’t pay off – Johnny, isn’t it? – only don’t be too definite with your answers straightaway, off-the-cuff like that as you did earlier on in the evening when I put you a question, else I might just forget my principles and start to sin, which means there could be like an accident affecting you, not me, which could make you look like a very old, tired and worn-out-looking squash ball that had bounced off too many walls, so that you ended in hospital.’ He smiled. ‘Did you know by the way, Johnny, that squash is one of the police’s favourite games on its day off? Good, well, we’ve got a court over at the Factory in the basement, between the computers and the canteen.’

The doorman didn’t say anything.

Stevenson said:‘Yes, I do love a good game of squash.’ He leaned eagerly forward to the doorman and said: ‘Now I’m not a man of violence, and to prove it, here I am lighting a Westminster filter. On the other hand, this officer and myself have three revolting murders to solve, which means putting an arm on the man, in no time flat, so it’s the old time and motion study, isn’t it? The clock against results. Isn’t it?’

The doorman said he supposed it was.

Stevenson said: ‘It is.’ He took the doorman gently by the elbow and felt the joint. ‘That’s where it always gets broken,’ he said to the listener. ‘It’s always the same place. It’s dreadfully painful, and takes years to heal – in fact there are some doctors who say it never really does. Now you’ve got considerable form, Johnny, but that’s no crime – I daresay that if the Lord God were looking down at the three of us in this office right now, he’d say we’d all got form. Only the thing here is that you’ve seen things go on in this place that we haven’t, so don’t you think you’d better spare us a word?’

‘Yes, look, Johnny,’ I said, ‘we’re trying to start off being kind with you about this for the moment but it’s not really our style on an urgent enquiry, and there are a hundred questions outstanding on these three deaths and we don’t like that at all, of course. So never mind Roatta for the moment, we’ll get back to him – let’s just start off with this poor girl Dora Suarez who was chopped to death in South Ken.’

‘I tell you I hardly knew her.’

‘Steady, steady now,’ I said, ‘you’re gambolling away in front of yourself again, Johnny, you’re just like a kiddie with a little football Saturday afternoon in Battersea Park, the way you play about, you’re not being serious, darling.’

The doorman said: ‘Dozens of scrubbers get in here, so what?’

‘I see you’ve got a problem,’ Stevenson said.

‘Oh yes?’ said the doorman.

‘It’s not only your blackheads that are working against you this time,’ said Stevenson, ‘it’s more that you’re not really cooperating
with us yet. Mind,’ he added, ‘it’s your problem, not ours. Only, where your boot pinches is, where we’ve got one problem you’ve got three or four, which normally add up to as many years in a shady room, OK? Might be Canterbury, and then again it might not, depending.’