Neon Madman (7 page)

‘So did you.'

She looked at me sharply.

‘The first thing you said when you phoned me before was that you thought your husband had been murdered.'

She nodded. ‘Yes, but although I said the words I don't think I really knew what they meant. Not physically meant. I don't even know if I believed them. I just thought something wrong had happened to him. But hearing his voice like that was different. It was as though he was trembling on the brink of some horrible, hurtful thing and desperately wanted to escape.'

‘Could someone have been there with him while he was making the call? Someone who was forcing him to talk to you?'

‘No. I don't think so. But I do think he believed that they might arrive at any moment.'

‘They?'

‘I don't know and he didn't say, but it must be something to do with those people who had a hold on him before.'

‘Mancor?'

‘I suppose so.'

‘Anyway, what did he say you were to do?'

‘He told me to get some money from the bank. Quite a lot of money. Several thousand pounds. And his passport.'

‘Clothes?'

‘No.'

‘Did he say what for?'

‘Yes. He's going to leave the country. He didn't say where to. I don't think he wanted to implicate me more than necessary. At least, that was what he said. The less I knew about where he was and what he was doing the less I could be forced to tell anyone else.'

Great! I thought. That means they could play pretty little games with you for hours on the assumption that you did know and were holding out on them.

I didn't say so. I didn't say anything.

She was talking again. ‘I can't do anything until Monday, of course. Then I have to deliver the passport and money to him.'

‘Where at?'

She shook her head. He really was being cagey. ‘He wouldn't say where he was staying. He said he would phone on Monday morning and tell me where to meet him.'

‘Did he say anything about you going with him?'

The hand on the leg made its first move. It twitched. Just once, but I saw it.

‘No,' she said.

I didn't understand it. It sounded as though that mattered. The last time we had talked about her husband I had got the impression that she wouldn't have cared much if he had disappeared from her life forever. Now
…
I didn't know why exactly, but she was reacting differently. It could be that his fear had communicated itself strongly to her and was getting at her in the same way. Or maybe she saw herself losing a grip on all of his money.

I went back to my drink and rescued it from the carpet. It was nearly empty and I drained what was left in half a swallow. She got up and took the glass from me without asking; she walked out of the room and came back with it refilled. I noticed she had got herself another too and that the level was twice as high as before.

I sat down and looked at her. She was beautiful.

‘What are you going to do?'

‘Just as James says. Go to the bank and draw out the cash, then take it to him with his passport.'

‘Very dutiful.'

‘I couldn't refuse him.' She ignored my sarcasm.

‘What do you want me to do?'

‘I'm not sure. He said I wasn't to talk to anyone about it
…
'

‘But you did,' I interrupted.

‘Now you sound as though you're reproaching me. I needed to tell someone and, besides, you are supposed to be finding him for me.'

‘And now you've found him yourself. More or less. I'll let you have your money back.'

‘No. No.' There was a quickness, a firmness that I neither understood nor trusted. ‘I want you to come with me. To the bank and then to wherever James wants me to meet him. You don't have to come as far as where he actually is.'

‘You're worried about carrying all that money round?'

She nodded her head. I still didn't like it. She shouldn't have been worried by toting round a cool million. The Caroline Murdoch I had talked to before wouldn't have been.

I took my cheque book from one pocket and my pen from another. I opened the book and started writing. I wondered how far she would let me get.

Caroline Murdoch got up and came over to where I was sitting.

‘What do you think you're doing?' she asked, when she could see perfectly well what I was doing.

‘I'm making you out a cheque for the retainer you paid me.'

‘But I've told you
…
'

I let the pen drop between the folds of the book and stood up. There wasn't much space between us. Across it I said, ‘I'm sorry, but there's no way I can carry on working for you if you're not going to level with me. You've paid me too much to do a simple bodyguard job and if you want more than that you're going to have to spell it out good and clear. And you're going to have to tell me a whole lot more about Mancor.'

She took it well. The expression on her face didn't falter. The eyes didn't leave mine. They were her trump card and she was playing them for all she was worth. I only had to lift my arms away from my sides by less than nine inches and I could hold her. She would let me hold her. Now. She wanted something and she knew what she might have to pay to get it. It wasn't something you could let her have back by making out a cheque.

Her eyes still didn't leave me. I knew that I could have her right there in that room if I wanted her. I wanted her all right.

I turned away and made space between us.

‘What's it to be?' I said. ‘Do I carry on writing that cheque and drop it in your lap as I walk out of the room or do you do a little more talking?'

The eyes tried again but for now they'd lost me. She knew and she didn't like it; she didn't like it one little bit. But she sat down anyway and started to tell me some more. She didn't tell me everything still, I was certain of that, but she said enough to stop me feeling a total dupe and enough for me to back down without making it too obvious.

There was no way I could afford to turn down that money. I thought she probably knew that as well.

‘When James wanted to get off the Mancor board he persuaded them that he had valid reasons—as far as they were concerned as well as for himself. If he became involved in any kind of serious financial scandal then he wouldn't be any use to them in the future. As it was, if he could step down out of the limelight then after a while he would be able to go back on the board and things could go on as before.'

I put the glass to my lips but didn't drink a drop. I was listening.

She was talking. ‘Once he was out of it, James wanted to stay out. His career in the city was becoming increasingly successful. There were all kinds of possibilities in the offing. The first trace of scandal would lose every one of them.'

‘So he tried to resist the pressure—that and a little more,' I suggested.

‘What do you mean?'

‘I'm not sure. But if there was a cover up of irregularities in the Mancor group's finances and if those irregularities were as serious as I'm beginning to be certain they were, then he could have tried to turn their blackmailing back on them. It would be a hell of a bluff to make and hope to get away with, but if they as much as half-way believed him, they'd be rattled. To put it mildly.'

I stopped and looked across at her. She was interested in what I was saying, right enough. The left hand was back in her hair and her mouth was turned up a fraction at one corner. In most women you'd never notice that, but on her any deviation from perfection stood out like a fat blue fly on top of a wedding cake.

‘Do I seem to be making sense?'

‘Yes. I think so. James was certainly up to something and there were often phone calls at all hours. Arguments that ended up with James slamming down the phone as often as not.'

‘Do you know who was phoning him? Was it the same person all of the time?'

The waves rippled slightly as the head moved from side to side.

‘I'm not sure. Sometimes he would use a name. Two I remember: Don and Franco. Franco would be Franco Tabor. He was the man at the top. The one who made all of the decisions. He came, to the house once with James. I didn't like him. He had an awful way of leering at you through half-closed eyes. I didn't trust him. He's a dangerous man, I'm certain of that.'

I remembered his name from somewhere and I wasn't able to put my finger on it. Not then, maybe later when I had more time to think.

‘And Don?' I asked, while she was still feeling helpful.

‘Don Allen. He was the chief accountant.'

‘What do you know about him?'

‘Nothing much. I met him once at a party. He was not the sort of man you noticed at all. Fiftyish. Rather fat with dark horn rimmed glasses and wine stains on his tie. I think he drinks quite a bit. On that occasion he did. He even
…
' She paused and looked at me for all the world like a young girl about to confess to something dreadfully naughty that had happened in the dorm. ‘He even put his hand up my skirt. Well, not that far, actually, but he tried. I couldn't believe it. Suddenly there were these fingers rubbing against my tights and when I looked behind me it was him. Don Allen. He didn't even apologise. Just pulled his arm away and moved on.'

‘Did you say anything to your husband?'

‘Of course not. What would have been the point?'

I didn't know. None, probably. I got the impression that he wouldn't be very bothered. But then I could have been wrong. I'm often wrong about a lot of things.

My glass was empty again and I thought it was time to go before she refilled it. I stood in the middle of the room and she came and stood in front of me. Even closer than before. This time she had her eyes begging me to touch her and I knew she wouldn't be frigid or stiff. Not now. She wasn't frightened any longer. I didn't understand that either.

I looked downwards slightly and I could see that her nipples were erect and were pressing through the black material of her dress. She would let me have her because she thought it might be necessary. If I were fat, grubby Don Allen with groping hands she would still let me have her.

I moved around her and went towards the door. She let me get as far as the hallway before she came after me.

‘What should I do?' she asked.

I felt like telling her. I didn't. Instead I told her to ring me if anything else came up, especially if her old man got in touch with her again. I wrote my home number on the back of a business card and passed it across to her. Her fingers rested on mine a fraction longer than was necessary.

‘Scott.' The red lips opened just enough to say the word.

‘Great,' I said with my more sardonic tone. ‘You did it.'

‘What?'

‘You remembered my name.'

I turned around and walked out of the house. I thought as I made for my car that it was getting cooler, but I couldn't be certain.

CHAPTER SIX

It was still warm enough for me to drive with the car windows wound down. I drove slowly, partly since I was still expecting a tail and partly because I figured I had a lot to think about. For a time I reckoned it was a dark green Viva, but when that left my route at Victoria nothing else seemed to pick me up. Which meant I could devote all of my energies to thinking.

By the time I was passing through Trafalgar Square I hadn't managed one relevant thought. I gave up and pushed the button of the car radio.

It was some character who thought he was a close relation of Wolfman Jack only he wouldn't have made fifth cousin twice removed. He shouted and screamed about a lot of stuff in the charts but apart from Gladys Knight and yet another reissue of ‘Leader of the Pack' not much of it was worth the fuss. Then he got into his oldies bit and let us have Lou Christie's ‘She Sold Me Magic'.

I lasted the first sixteen bars then pushed the button hard. The trouble was that she had. Only it didn't have a maker's label that warned you about the fact that a certain time everything changed back to normal.

The horses were white mice; the coach was a pumpkin; the beautiful young girl not only didn't fit the slipper any more she wasn't interested in wearing it. As for me I suppose it was the same old story, only worth half a column on page four: Frog Made Prince For A Day.

All right, it was longer than a day, but maybe that just made the business of finding out it was all over that much harder.

Jesus Christ! How did I get into this?

I swerved across all four lanes of traffic in the Tottenham Court Road and cut up a taxi, four yelling Italians in a Mercedes they'd probably bought from peddling ice cream, and a Morris Minor. I felt a little better.

I managed to stay that way until I got back to my flat. I parked the car and got myself inside. Put some water on to boil and ground some coffee. Then, while the coffee was brewing, I ran myself a bath. I grabbed a pile of newspapers that I'd never had time to read and chucked them on to the bathroom floor where they'd be within reach.

By now the coffee was ready, so I poured myself out a large mug of the stuff and took that into the bathroom as well. A few minutes later I was sitting with warm water up to my armpits, a folded paper in one hand and the coffee in the other.

Every man should afford himself a little luxury and this was mine. It was all the luxury I could afford but I'd made sure it wasn't going to be wasted. I'd taken the phone off the hook.

Half an hour later I knew all about the effects of the hot early summer. In Leeds and a handful of other cities they were about to ration the use of water; racial outbursts in the streets of Southall and other parts of London had resulted in five stabbings so far, with two dead; the prophets of doom were claiming that we would reap the worst harvest for several generations. It had been hot, all right. Oh yes, and England had got the West Indies out for less than two hundred in their first innings and were all set to knock them for a high score tomorrow.

I could hardly wait.

I dropped the papers back and pushed the pile out of the way so that I could get out and get dried. I was feeling much better. Ready for the rest of the coffee, something light to eat like an omelette with a tomato salad, a book to read that wouldn't keep sending me back to the dictionary every other page and some good music on the stereo.

I put on a robe and went into the kitchen. Not until the omelette was cooked did I put the phone back in action. He was very considerate; he didn't ring through until I was on my third mouthful.

It was Robert Pollard and he was still in central London. He'd gone for a meal with a couple of friends after work and wanted to know if I had anything for him. I thought about stalling him until Monday but reckoned I'd have my hands full with the Murdoch thing. I told him that I had something for him and he said would it be all right if he came over and collected it.

I said it would be fine and gave him the directions. The omelette was getting cold and slightly solid by the time I got back to it. I finished it and stuck a Stan Getz record on.

I put my feet up and waited.

He was quicker than I'd anticipated and he looked as if he'd run all the way instead of driving. Which only showed how out of condition he was. All sorts of condition. I poured him some coffee from a newly brewed pot and sat him down.

On the table between us there was a large brown envelope. It had his name on it. Inside it were the typed notes of what I'd seen, along with one set of photographs. I wasn't sure why I was hanging on to the other set, but I was. And I wasn't about to tell him of their existence.

He sipped at the coffee as though he didn't like it but wasn't impolite enough to say so. Maybe he did like it but had other things on his mind. Like what was waiting for him inside that envelope.

‘Is that …'

‘Yes.'

His left hand moved out and touched the brown manilla. Picked it a couple of inches off the surface of the table, then dropped it back down again.

‘I … I want to … I mean before I look … was she? … did she?'

I nodded. ‘Yes, Mr Pollard. She was and she did.'

The hand leapt away from the envelope as though it had suddenly given him an electric shock. He tried to put the coffee down before spilling it and didn't succeed. Brown liquid ran down his fingers and the back of his hand. He looked down at it as though not knowing where it had come from. He wiped at the spilt coffee with a white handkerchief, which he pushed back into his suit pocket.

Both hands went to his head, pushed up through his thinning hair and then came back down and fidgeted with his tie.

‘I don't
…
I don't want
…
'

He swivelled round in the chair so that he was hunched forwards with his back to me—and to the envelope. He began to rock backwards and forwards and a faint mewing sound came from his mouth.

I watched him for a while, then got up and fetched him a glass of brandy. I put it down on the table beside the envelope and then got hold of his shoulders with both hands. This time it worked.

Gradually he stopped moving, then the little mewing sound stopped too. He sat up and turned his head so that he could look at me. I gave him one of my ready-to-wear line of reassuring smiles.

Have confidence in Mitchell. Bring him your problems. Is your wife getting it on the side? Call in Mitchell and soon you can have close-up photographs of her on the job. Then you can enjoy the fun yourself.

Yes, sir, Mitchell is the man for the cuckolded husband to turn to in his hour of need. He'll dispel your doubts and turn them into sickening reality.

Pollard's expression shifted as if he had realised for the first time that I was holding him. I moved my hands away, but without rushing it. I didn't want to set him off again, but neither did I want him to think that I was making a pass at him.

We could safely leave the sexual inconsistencies to his wife.

I got him to drink the brandy, then to pick up the envelope. I thought he was going to take it away without opening it, but no, I wasn't about to be spared that one.

I sat tight as he ran his finger under the flap and anticipated getting him some more brandy, at least. He took out the notes first and read them through carefully, slowly, as though reading a dense company report. When he'd got to the end, he turned back to the top sheet and read them all through again. Only then did he take out the photographs. I watched his face over the top of them, waiting for it to crumble, crease.

It did neither. Nothing happened save that the blood drained out of it and by the time he was on the last print I was looking at the face of someone who might have been dead. In a way I think he was.

He put them back into the envelope and stood up. It took him a long while and I almost thought he wasn't going to make it. When he had he put the envelope in his left hand and held out his right.

It took me a second or two to realise what he was doing. He was going to thank me.

I stood up and shook his hand and listened while he said the words. Then I showed him out of the front door. I could have watched him walk to his car but somehow I didn't want to.

I didn't want to do anything: I went to bed.

Several hours later I realised that I was awake. I levered myself up with one elbow on the pillow and listened. Something wasn't right. It bothered me and it took me a long time to realise what it was. Then I did. It was raining.

The rain was hissing off the concrete path that ran by the flat and singing against the windows. I pushed back the covers and slid myself off the bed. I pulled back the curtains far enough to see through. The rain was heavy and from the look of the ground it had been falling for some time. The air that came through the opening at the top of the window was cooler, fresher than any I had felt or smelt for days.

Yes, it was good.

I moved away and let the curtains fall back into place. I thought I'd better take a leak before I went back to bed. But I never made it.

Something stopped me, turned me round and had me opening the curtains again. I opened the main window and felt the rain on my arms and on my face as I peered out. I didn't mind and anyway I wanted to be sure.

I was sure. I shut the window again but it didn't go away. Parked behind my own car was the Rover that I had seen Robert Pollard in before. From the shape that sat slumped forwards over the wheel, he was still there.

I got dressed quickly, got hold of a torch and let myself out. The rain still felt good and I knew a lot of people would be glad of it; it was going to make a lot of dying things grow but it wasn't about to do anything for Robert Pollard. Not anything at all.

The car door was unlocked and I reached across behind the body and flicked the passenger door open then went round and climbed in. Very carefully, I eased the body backwards on to the leather upholstery. The eyes were still open as though they were looking for something they knew they were never going to find. I couldn't easily see how he'd done it, so I assumed he'd taken some kind of overdose. I looked for the bottle on the floor but it wasn't there. I'd forgotten that he was a methodical man; it was back in his jacket pocket.

Whatever had been in it was all gone. He'd chosen it well. There didn't appear to have been any other reaction. He hadn't thrown up or convulsed sufficiently to make a mess of his clothes. To anyone passing he just looked like a drunk who'd taken a nap at the wheel. Which was why nobody had done anything about him. And that's being charitable.

On the back seat lay the brown envelope. I picked it up with my handkerchief and let the contents slip out on to my lap. Carefully, I extracted the pictures which showed Murdoch's face. These I put into my own pocket. The rest I returned to the envelope and it all went back on to the rear seat.

I looked for a note and couldn't believe it when I couldn't find one. A man like Pollard would surely have left everything nice and tidy at the end. But no. There wasn't any note.

Maybe he wanted to leave something unpredictable at the end of his predictable life. Maybe writing anything would have meant he would have to blame his wife and he couldn't face doing that.

Although he'd done it: and far more powerfully than with words on paper. He left her his own body as a rebuke; the body she had already turned her back on; probably did so night after night after night. Now she could live with it—or try to.

Notes you can burn or tear up and they're easy to forget. Bodies you can burn as well, or bury them down underneath the dark earth but it isn't so easy to forget them. Especially if you were the main cause of their being there.

I left my prints on the car door but made sure they were off everything else. Then I walked back through the rain and let myself into the flat. I poured myself a drink and then poured a glass of brandy for Pollard. I sat down in the half light of the room and drank them both.

After that I phoned the police.

When they came it was in some numbers and quickly. They could have been waiting all night for something like this to happen. The blue lights revolved and revealed the slanting lines of rain and the tyres swished on the roadway.

I picked out the one in charge as soon as he got out of the back of the leading car. I don't know if it was the world-weary yet nevertheless brisk manner of his movement or the appearance of his lightish grey raincoat. Whatever it was, he was walking through my door soon enough. The methodical stuff with the body and the car could be left to those who were best suited to it.

Inspector Jones looked as though he deserved a more interesting name but that wasn't his fault He gave the immediate impression as he looked around the room that he was a policeman who liked as much personal contact with people as he could get. He would be good at talking, good at finding out what he wanted to know; I didn't think that there would be many men better at conducting an interrogation. His concern was with the living rather than the dead: so he had left Pollard's body downstairs in the car and come looking for me.

Well, he'd found me. I filled him in on who I was and showed him the necessary proof. Then I offered him some coffee and was surprised when he said yes. I offered to lace it with something stronger and he didn't say anything. I took it that he wasn't refusing, so I let it have a quick taste of the brandy but I was careful to make sure he could see what I was doing.

He said thanks and sipped it hastily. He put the cup down at a tilt in the saucer and sat back with his legs crossed and his raincoat draped over the back of the chair. He asked me what I knew about the man in the car and I told him. I told him almost everything: I only omitted Murdoch's name.

I wasn't certain why I was doing that, any more than I had been certain why I'd removed some of the photographs from the envelope. But it seemed the right thing to do. I hoped that I wouldn't be proved too painfully wrong.