I Was Dora Suarez (20 page)

‘After Rupt and Drucker and the two of us,’ said Stevenson, ‘he can’t have many rockets left.’

‘I’ll tell you one thing,’ said Bowman, ‘trying to get the truth out of him’s like extracting a molar out of a middle-aged virgin without anesthetic, not easy.’

‘They know you knock them about, Charlie,’ I said, ‘and that doesn’t help really.’

Bowman said: ‘Who’s the little swarthy feller wasting public plastic chairs out with his arse outside your place here?’

‘That’s Scalo,’ I said, ‘ex-boss of the Parallel Club. He makes up
a wheel in Carstairs/Suarez, and that’s not the kind of thing you want to know about at all.’

‘Normally, no, I wouldn’t,’ Bowman said, ‘only tonight I feel like restless, and I’ve got that desire to make people talk to me.’

‘He could have a go at Robacci, I suppose,’ Stevenson said. ‘He’s had a chance to sleep, and Charlie couldn’t do much harm there.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t want this person in the script at all; I explained it all upstairs.’

‘It’s your man Scalo out there that suddenly interests me,’ Bowman was saying.

‘Fuck off,’ I said in a voice like half a ton of ice. ‘Get back to suicidal Japanese millionaires – I’m not hiring, you’ve been told the deal, get lost. You or anyone from Serious Crimes lays a finger on Carstairs/Suarez, just one, and I’ll electrocute you, now shamble the lower cheeks, Charlie. Out.’

‘I’ll tie your scrotum round your neck in a double Windsor!’ he screamed.

‘Put the dialogue on account and leave,’ I said. ‘I’m busy, so why don’t you find something exciting to do, too?’

‘You certainly have a way with detective chief inspectors,’ said Stevenson when Bowman had left, slamming the door in two.

‘It’s because I don’t care,’ I said, and added: ‘Mediocrity always knows when there’s no tit going, pity the poor bastard.’

The phone rang; it was Cryer. ‘I’ve got an interesting one here,’ he said. ‘It’s a million to one it’s anything to do with you, but I still thought it was worth a call.’

‘Go on.’

‘It’s Clapham, not far,’ said Cryer. ‘That’s what made me automatically think of Roatta.’

‘Go on.’

‘I’ve a young free-lance photographer on the strength, lives right there; he wants a job on the paper and he’s going balls out for one with his camera.’

‘Fine.’

‘Well, he sits out evenings, wet or shine, on Clapham Common
North Side, camera always ready for anything.’ He said: ‘You know an area called College Hill?’

‘I’d have to look it up on the A to Z,’ I said. ‘That’s somewhere off Balham/South Circular Road, isn’t it? Lovelock Road?’

‘You’re on it,’ Cryer said. ‘Well, he’s sitting out opposite the 37 bus stop opposite the Grove Mansions block and this man comes past jogging.’

‘You’ve five hundred of them,’ I said.

‘Not with blood on their balls and an extraordinary step like a man bicycling fast, only without a bicycle.’

‘A nut,’ I said.

‘Maybe,’ said Cryer, ‘but I thought I’d just give you a bell, that’s all.’

I said: ‘Your man get any pix?’

Cryer said: ‘A bundle. This jogger intrigued him. Consequently my feller sits out on the same bench for five nights, and the jogger comes past five nights.’

‘I’d like to see the pix, I think,’ I said.

Cryer said: ‘You can. But if it’s the spot-on number, my feller did even better than that because tonight he followed the man home.’

‘Home?’ I said. ‘Where’s home? Where does the mat spread?’ ‘I told you,’ Cryer said, ‘College Hill.’

Suddenly I saw College Hill. I said: ‘Isn’t that where that big rubber factory burned down in ’85?’

‘You’ve got it,’ said Cryer. ‘And that’s where the jogger went. But there’s even more than that. When this free-lance sleuth of mine gets back there, your jogger don’t go in by the front door, but by means of the fire escape – that’s to say what’s left of it, it’s rusted out – races straight up the front of the building and through a high-floor window with no glass in it, and that’s it. No light goes on in the place, so none goes off, does it?’ He added: ‘I wouldn’t have bothered you with it if it hadn’t been for Roatta being topped half a mile away.’

‘How soon can I have those pictures, Tom?’ I said. ‘It’s immediately worth a visit.’

‘Now,’ he said. ‘I’ll have them biked round to you.’

‘You seen them?’ I said. ‘The face of blokey tell you anything? This jogger, little or large?’

‘Not duck’s arse, but small.’

‘Fair or dark?’

‘Dark.’

‘Worn down with luggage at all?’

‘A sports bag.’

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘This sports bag, ask your man if it made a jangling noise at all.’ I added: ‘Another thing, any physical peculiarities? The way he carried himself at all?’

‘I don’t know what I’m looking for the way you do,’ Cryer said. ‘You’d best do more than look at these new pictures.’

I said: ‘Why? Something struck you? Your photographer man?’ ‘Right hand between his legs as he ran,’ said Cryer.

‘He run a bit doubled over then?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Any Bordeaux on his clothing – I mean blood?’

‘You’d better see the pictures,’ Cryer said.

‘I’m waiting for them.’

‘They’re coming,’ Cryer said. ‘By the way, people are saying you’ve been through the Parallel Club like a dose of salts.’

‘That’s right.’

‘And that you’ve nailed two or three – man by the name of Scalo, Robacci, and the doorman, a Greek called Margoulis.’

‘You’re bang up to date,’ I said. ‘We’re putting them through the machinery right now.’

He said: ‘You’re working very closely with Stevenson on this, that’s right, isn’t it?’

‘Neither of us can see any reason not to.’

‘In other words,’ said Cryer, ‘you’re both pretty sure that Carstairs/Suarez and Roatta are connected.’

‘Nothing so far’s told either of us that they aren’t,’ I said. I added: ‘This jogger of yours, did your man shoot him full face?’

‘No,’ said Cryer, ‘he tried everything but he just couldn’t seem to get him full face.’

‘But his pictures are better than the others?’

‘Well, I’ve got the copies in front of me,’ Cryer said. ‘Of course these are shot with a much better lens than yours. I’m looking at your man now. He’s dark, late thirties, Mediterranean origins maybe. He’s wearing funny little thin sports shoes, he’s very high-stepping – funny, that – big shock of black hair, thick grey sports trousers, wool, dark socks, looks like he reckons himself.’

‘Say you met him on a dark night.’

‘I’m not afraid of a battle,’ Cryer said. ‘But since you ask me, I’d rather not.’

‘Why not?’

‘That’s your question,’ Cryer said, ‘not mine.’

I said: ‘Supposing these pictures did interest us, what’s the deal here?’

‘Well, my news editor is getting very interested in this story,’ Cryer said, ‘like really keen.’

I said: ‘Does he know I’m on it?’

He said: ‘Yes.’ He added: ‘It’s not my fault. Things get around, we knew it the minute you were back. The
Recorder
likes your cases. They always turn out differently, the ones you get stuck into.’

I said: ‘We’ll leave it this way, then, usual deal. I’ll feed you the story as and when it becomes fit to sell newspapers.’ I felt my voice crack as I added: ‘I’m going through some sort of personal crisis with this case that I can’t describe, Tom.’

‘What?’ said Cryer. ‘You? A crisis?’

‘All I can say is that I’ve got to be careful not to go over the edge this time,’ I said.

‘For Christ’s sake don’t fall.’

‘In the end we all do.’

‘You’ll find whoever killed Suarez and Carstairs,’ said Cryer.

‘I know,’ I said, ‘but at long last the way lies through myself.’

‘Come round and see Angela,’ said Cryer. ‘Why don’t you ever come round to the house? You remember the Mardy case? Angela said you’d had enough with the Mardy case. I know you’ve got your sister Julie, but still, come and talk to her; she wants you to
come and talk to her – why won’t you ever let any of us help you?’

‘You know me, Tom,’ I said, ‘I can’t. Must I explain? How can I explain? I’m a very lonely man, deep buried, and so I love you from in the earth.’

I rang off.

Cryer’s photographs of the jogger arrived in the hand of a police clerk. I held my hand out and said: ‘Put me a magnifying glass into that.’

‘What? At this time of night?’

I said: ‘You heard me. You’ve got five minutes, four by the time you’ve left this room at the speed you’re going.’

The officer left; he looked irritated and confused.

When I had the glass and had brought up all the detail with it, I thought for a while; then presently I went into Room 202. I said to Stevenson: ‘Here, have a look at these.’ Stevenson was sitting there with Scalo still facing him across the littered desk. Scalo looked tired.

‘Something new?’ said Stevenson. He jerked his head at Scalo. ‘You want me to get rid of him?’

‘No,’ I said. I took a chair round and sat down on Stevenson’s side of the desk. I took one of Cryer’s photographs and spread it out under two ashtrays.

‘What have you got there?’ Scalo said.

Stevenson said: ‘Fuck off.’ He was frowning at the photograph through the magnifying glass. ‘This Japanese film really works right down to the last crab, doesn’t it?’ he said.

I said: ‘Is it the same man as we’ve got in the club snap with Suarez and Roatta there, that’s what I want to know, what do you think?’

‘It probably wouldn’t stand up to a good lawyer just yet,’ said Stevenson, ‘but then on the other hand, we’re not lawyers, and my instinct tells me that it very likely is. These are terrific, where did you get them?’

‘What matters is that here they are,’ I said. ‘Particularly this shot here, I think with your man’s back half to the camera again.’

‘Exactly,’ said Stevenson. ‘Same funny step, same half-turned head, those weird little running shoes – what are they, spiked or something? – the same look of the man running through the door in the club?’

I shoved all the pictures under Scalo’s nose. ‘You’re lost,’ I said. ‘You don’t even know who you are any more. But if you want to buy yourself some open air, do you know this man’s face?’

It was obvious that Scalo didn’t.

I said to Stevenson: ‘For my money it’s the doorman that knows.’

Stevenson shouted: ‘Officer!’

When the duty constable appeared, Stevenson said: ‘Weigh this off back to its cell and bring the Greek back on – Margoulis.’

‘Oh, by the way,’ I said to Scalo, ‘before you go, how far have we got on the subject of the little rats upstairs there? Have you been telling my colleague here everything you know about those rats?’

‘Rats?’ said Scalo obstinately.

I suddenly flew into one of the greatest rages I have ever got into in my life. ‘You miserable fat cunt!’ I yelled at him. ‘There are hundreds of little rats in cages right on top of you at your stinking little club! They must have earned you otherwise they’d never have been there, and now all at once no one wants to know a dickybird about these rats and I have had your fucking ignorance up to here and I will bury you under five foot of cement, you little bastard, if you don’t start bleating about it in under ten seconds, that’s all the time you’ve got, now sing, shitbag.’

‘Yes, now come on, Scalo,’ Stevenson said, smiling, ‘as we are beginning to get very tired of you. Who fed the rats and looked after them? Who picked them out and peeled them? Who tied the string to their tails when they vanished up inside Miss Suarez and others? Who paid that person? Who was he? What did he look like? What else did he do for a living?’

I pushed the photograph over to Scalo, picked up a ballpoint and ringed the face that turned away in shadow towards the door at the edge of the dance floor. I banged my fist down on the photograph and said: ‘Talk, cunt.’

‘I think he probably went with his face shawled into the rooms next to the cages where they had it off,’ said Scalo. ‘I think that went with the kick. But I never employed him, whoever he was.’

Stevenson said: ‘Somebody must have.’

Scalo said: ‘I think that must have been Roatta.’

‘That’s handy, isn’t it?’ said Stevenson. ‘Roatta being dead.’

‘And how much did the club take each time there was a spectacle?’ I said. ‘How much for a little rough-shaved rat up the sphincter? Two hundred? Five ton? A long one?’

Scalo panicked. He swallowed and said: ‘Your last figure’s your nearest.’

I said to Stevenson: ‘This Scalo’s repeating himself – let’s get the doorman up and offer to break him because we’re wasting time and besides I’ve got another idea.’

‘Yes, only before you go,’ said Stevenson, ‘let’s just both listen to the Greek for a moment, I don’t see the harm in it.’ He said to the officer who was bundling Scalo out: ‘Put that one into the cheery room in case we need him back – no point his going back to his cell – and let’s have the Greek on.’ The officer removed Scalo and Stevenson yawned. He leaned back, stretched and said: ‘Hard work, isn’t it?’

‘It’s like trying to drill through concrete with a matchstick,’ I said.

Presently the Greek appeared. I pointed to Scalo’s old chair and said: ‘Park.’

Stevenson said: ‘You look in shit order, you do, really frightful, as if you hadn’t had a tart for a week. What is it then? Corns playing up?’

Margoulis said: ‘Now what do you want?’

‘It’s pictures,’ I said. ‘Lots of pictures. We’re going to turn you into an art critic. Now you’re going to look at these pictures closely, and give a considered opinion here.’

‘I was never a great one for faces,’ Margoulis said. ‘Funny that, but still, it’s like that sometimes, isn’t it?’

‘Not this time it isn’t,’ I said. ‘This time you’re going to find it
isn’t funny at all.’ I picked up the phone and said into it: ‘Are Sergeants Drucker and Rupt in the building? Good, ask them to come up.’

‘You’re in for a lot of wear and tear, Margoulis,’ I said, putting the phone down, ‘On the other hand, you’re a big tough West End club doorman and we know you shit them all.’ I said to the officer: ‘Just fix him in that chair, will you, and let’s have some proper light, I can’t see my finger to pick my nose with right now.’ So the officer placed Margoulis in the chair; then he brought out a big lamp stand with a one-thousand-watt bulb in it and set that up, too, till it faced Margoulis on Stevenson’s desk.