Running Scared (15 page)

I met his bloodshot gaze and held it. ‘Do you know,’ I told him, ‘I don’t know which of you makes me want to throw up more – you or Charlie Knowles.’

Parry flushed, then grinned evilly. ‘That old feller been patting your bum?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Dirty old devil.’

‘Well, he’s not the only one living in hopes, is he?’ I snapped back.

Parry straightened up and shook a yellowed fingernail at me. ‘One of these days, you’ll wish you’d been nicer to me, you’ll see.’

‘At your funeral,’ I told him.

‘Very funny. We’ll see who laughs last, eh?’

‘Listen,’ I’d had enough of this, ‘why can’t you and Harford let it be known you’ve got the negs and pics? That would take the heat off the rest of us.’

He shook his head. ‘No way.’

‘Oh great,’ I muttered. ‘Ganesh gets laid out senseless. I could be next, or Hitch or Marco as well, I suppose.’

‘We’ve warned the two cowboys fixing up the washroom. But to lay it on the line, if chummy approaches either of them, they’ll pass the buck so fast, it’ll be a blur. All they did was find a sealed package. They gave it to you and Sleeping Beauty in there.’ He nodded towards the bedroom door. ‘They saw nothing, no negatives, no prints. Not like you, eh? You went running along to the chemist and got the film developed, didn’t you? Not smart, Fran. Take my advice – it’s official – don’t go opening the door to anyone you don’t know, right? If anyone comes here to the shop, or to your flat, or makes any kind of approach, phone call, anything, you let us know straight away. It’s in your interest, remember. Do yourself a favour, Fran. Wise up.’

‘I told you, someone already came to the shop, asking.’

‘Yeah, well, you didn’t give him the right answer, did you? He came back last night. He didn’t get any joy then, either, so he’s got to keep trying.’ Parry leaned forward again. ‘He needs that film.’

‘Who does?’ I countered.

The only reply to that was a spiteful grin. Parry walked to the door. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I’m still not sure whether to put that dummy alarm in my report. Let’s say, I’m holding that as a sort of guarantee of your future behaviour, Fran.’

I told him to get out, but he’d already gone.

I didn’t get the shop open until after three in the afternoon, just in time to sell the day’s
Evening Standard,
a few packets of ciggies and a couple of girlie mags. In between, I had to keep nipping upstairs to check on Ganesh, who was sleeping so soundly I began to worry if I ought to wake him up. He might be in a coma for all I knew.

Everyone who came in the shop wanted to know why we’d been closed earlier. Since several of them had seen the police cars outside first thing, I had to put out some kind of story. I said there’d been an attempted break-in, but the intruders had been disturbed and fled empty-handed. That was true, as it happened.

Every listener to this story told me we’d been bloody lucky. They were right.

At six, I shot the bolts across and went upstairs to check on the invalid. Ganesh, to my great relief, had woken up and was moving around the kitchen in slow motion. I opened up a tin of soup and made toast, but he wasn’t very interested.

‘You ought to see a doctor,’ I said.

But he wasn’t having that. ‘I’ll be fine tomorrow.’

‘Gan?’ I had to mention it. ‘About that dummy alarm.’

He waved both hands, fending off the question and the look on my face. ‘I know, I know.’

‘I’m not blaming you. But you ought to get your family on to Hari. He had no right to leave you here with nothing but an empty mock-up on a wall for protection.’

A hunted look crossed Ganesh’s face. ‘You haven’t let my family know about this, have you?’

‘Relax, of course I haven’t.’

‘Only they’d write to Hari and he’d be back from India on the next flight. He’d say it was my fault. He’d never leave me in charge again. He must never know anything about any of this, Fran!’

‘All right, all right!’ What with the coppers telling me not to talk and Ganesh joining in, I might as well take some kind of Trappist vow and be done with it. I went back downstairs and reopened for business.

I left around eight. Ganesh had promised to go to bed early and I’d promised to be at the shop at seven the next morning to help with the papers. I hoped my rusty old alarm clock did its stuff. Sometimes it just sat sullen and silent. I ought to get a new one, but normally I had no need of a morning alarm. I never seemed to stay in employment long enough.

A thin drizzle was falling. The pavements were wet and the light from bar and café windows threw yellow strips across them. Through the windows I could see the Christmas decorations strung around walls and ceilings, lots of glittering tinsel, paper bells and plastic holly. It looked really festive and made me feel sad. Everyone was getting into holiday mood. People were going out for the evening, hurrying past me, chattering and laughing. They’d stop, study a menu fixed up outside a place perhaps, decide against it and move on, or go in, whichever. They were out to enjoy themselves.

I never went out in the evening. I never went anywhere and the one recent time I had gone, for our staff Christmas dinner, I’d come home and found a body in the basement. Why does this happen to me? Why doesn’t it happen to other people?

I began to think about Coverdale and his unfulfilled wish to talk to me. The more I thought about it, the more uneasy I became. His killers would want to know why he’d been keen to see me. They’d checked the shop because they were thorough. But what they’d decide in the end was that either Coverdale had given me the film – or I’d found it and Coverdale had come round to see me and get it back. This was what probably had happened. Either that, or he’d come to tell me where he’d hidden it and to ask me to get it for him. He wouldn’t have risked returning to the shop in case the guys after him were watching. They were watching him, as it happened, rather more successfully than he’d realised.

So, whichever way you cared to look at it, the villains were sure to reckon I was the link to the negs. The police had embargoed the news that they had them. I was left, staked out like a goat in a clearing, waiting for the tiger. Or even several tigers.

It wasn’t a cheery thought and it made me highly nervous. I kept looking over my shoulder and wondered if I ought to go straight home, or adopt some devious route, designed to throw anyone following off the trail. But if they’d killed Coverdale outside my front door, they didn’t need to follow me to find out where I lived. They knew.

I still kept looking back on principle. So busy was I doing it, that when someone stepped out of a doorway in front of me, I almost collided with them and just about jumped out of my skin when a voice said, ‘Fran?’

‘Oh God, Tig,’ I gurgled. ‘I nearly had a perishing heart attack.’

‘What’s the matter with you, then?’ asked Tig.

I hadn’t wanted to hang about in the street and neither had she, so we took refuge in a nearby café, a narrow-fronted establishment that ran back a long way like a tunnel. It was crammed with marble-topped tables. In the summer, they moved some of the tables out on to the pavement, but this time of year, only a lunatic or a polar bear would sit outside.

Tig and I had retreated to the furthermost end of the room from the door with our espressos.

‘I’m scared Jo Jo will look in and see me,’ Tig had explained, leading the way. She now gave me curious scrutiny. ‘Who’re you trying to avoid?’

‘Don’t ask,’ I said. ‘I’m not allowed to say.’

She shrugged. She didn’t care anyway. She didn’t look any better or healthier since I’d last seen her. The dark shadows under her eyes were worse, the pinched look more pronounced and there was more than fear of Jo Jo in her eyes. There was a deeper fear and it had driven her to seek me out. I waited for her to tell me what it was.

She went at it a roundabout way. ‘I came to the shop yesterday, where you work, Sunday morning. There was an Indian guy there, big bloke. He said you weren’t working, not Sunday. They’d got the builders in. They were working Sunday. They moonlighting?’

‘No, self-employed. Dilip told me you’d been. I hoped you’d get in touch again. Sorry I missed you.’ I sipped the coffee. I was glad of it. My nerves needed settling.

Tig shifted on her wooden chair and it scraped on the tiled floor. ‘Yeah, well, I’m sorry I gave you an earful last time.’ She rubbed her thin hands together. The fingertips were blue and the nails dirty. She needed a bath.

I asked, ‘You sleeping rough, Tig?’

She twitched. ‘Look, did you mean what you said? About doing anything legal?’

‘Ye-es,’ I said, not at all happy.

‘OK, then, I’m hiring you.’ I must have looked as if I’d been hit with a sock full of wet sand because she added irritably, ‘Well, you said you were a private detective and you worked for people who couldn’t get help anywhere else. That’s me. I can’t go anywhere else, so I’ve come to you. I want you to get in touch with my family for me. Like, act as go-between.’

I knew I could only blame myself for this. I’d urged her to go home. I’d offered to help if I could. It had been a spur-of-the-moment thing. If I’d given it any thought afterwards, which I hadn’t, I would’ve decided, with relief, that she wouldn’t take me up on it. And I’d also told her I took on jobs for people. I’d boasted about it, to be frank. Which just goes to show you’ve got to be ready for the unexpected, and if you don’t want to be reminded of something you’ve said, keep your mouth shut.

‘Well?’ She was leaning across the table, her pinched face flushed in anger and her whole attitude a bad case of aggro. People at a nearby table gave us alarmed looks. They probably thought we were about to start a fight on the floor. ‘Or was it just a load of crap?’ she went on. ‘All that what you told me? You made it all up? You’ve never done any jobs for no one.’

‘Yes, I have!’ I was moved to defend myself. ‘I was surprised when you asked, that’s all.’

‘Are you going to do it?’ She leaned back now, fixing me with a very direct stare.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘What do you want me to do? Phone them?’

‘No, go and see them.’ She was fumbling inside her jacket and pulled out a roll of dirty notes secured with an elastic band. ‘See this? It’s my emergency cash. All I’ve got. Jo Jo knows nothing about it. There’s enough there to buy you a day return ticket, rail, from Marylebone to Dorridge. That’s where they live. There’s a train every hour – I checked it out for you. Leaves Marylebone quarter to the hour. Coming back, leaves Dorridge at forty-eight minutes past the hour. Any money left over you can keep for your fee. I don’t know what you usually charge, but this is all I’ve got, so take it or leave it.’

She was going too fast for me and my fee was the least of my worries. ‘Who lives there, your parents? Where’s Dorridge, for crying out loud? It sounds like porridge.’

‘It’s on the way to Birmingham, before you get to Birmingham, just before Solihull. It’ll take just over two hours to get there and the same back, so you’ll have to go early in the morning.’

‘Hey, hold on.’ She’d got it all planned, it seemed, but I had questions to ask.

A streetwalker came in out of the cold. She was just starting the evening stint and was all dressed up nice in a fake fur coat and patent leather stilettos. She wasn’t young, in her forties, a bit blowsy with bottle-blonde hair and too much make-up. The Italian waiter evidently recognised her because he gave her a secretive sort of smile and, without her having to ask, yelled down the café to the guy on the espresso machine, ‘Hey, give the lady a coffee!’

She didn’t pay for it. I guess she’d already paid.

Tig, watching the same scene, said scornfully, ‘Why’d guys pay her? They can pay someone like me half the money and I’m half her age.’

‘Then watch out for the pimps,’ I said. ‘They don’t like competition on the same patch.’ I didn’t mention that the professional tart had certainly taken the trouble to shower before she went to work. Some punters, though admittedly not all, might be put off by Tig’s appearance and the whiff of street doorway.

My companion shrugged again. ‘Well, I’m not on the game now, anyhow. I told you, I don’t do it any more, not unless I’m really skint, you know, and some old feller comes up and asks. They bloody well nearly always are old, the ones who like really young girls.’

‘I know,’ I said, memory of Charlie still fresh.

‘Still – that sort don’t give no trouble.’ Her gaze darkened. She was thinking of her treatment at the hands of the City types who’d gang-raped her.