The Serpent's Sting (29 page)

‘I'm sorry, Mr Power,' she said as she drew her skirt around her waist. ‘You seem like a nice man, but there's a war on, and we do what we have to do. I apologise for touching your private parts, but it was considered necessary. I hope you understand. I think you should pull up your underpants now.'

With a jolt, I yanked them up and pulled the sheet up to my chin.

‘What the hell just happened?'

The bedroom door opened again, and James Fowler entered.

‘I can answer that, Will. Thank you, Carol. Well done. You can go.'

‘Thank you, Mr Fowler.'

Carol left the room without looking at me.

‘I imagine you're a little confused just at the moment,' Fowler said. ‘You won't like what I'm going to tell you, and I think you should get dressed before we talk. When you're ready, come to the kitchen. There's good whisky there.'

I was in a state of shock, and incapable of making any pieces of this puzzle fit. I wasn't angry or frightened. I was numb. I dressed, and walked down the corridor to the kitchen. James Fowler was there on his own, seated at a filthy table, with a bottle of whisky and two glasses. Both glasses had been filled generously.

‘Sit down, Will. There are, of course, several men within earshot, so don't be tempted to attack me.'

I sat and gulped a mouthful of whisky. It was expensive stuff, of the type that had become unattainable since the beginning of the war.

‘You look dazed still. I'll make this brief. What just happened in the front room is for us a sort of insurance policy against your refusing to co-operate with Intelligence, either now or in the future. We have every confidence that you're about to become a very successful actor, and I'm sure you appreciate the little lift we gave you in the papers today. We think it would be most useful to have access to someone who enjoys great public support and affection. We're doing our best to leverage you into that position. As I said before, Will, we are grateful for the work you did up north. We know you dislike us intensely, and we know that you wouldn't willingly do our bidding.'

As the whisky flowed through me, rage began to percolate through my blood. Fowler read this in my face.

‘Stay calm, Will. You have nothing to gain by losing your temper.'

‘What was that bedroom farce really in aid of?'

‘Well, we like to have people in various positions of influence on whom we can call should the need arise. Your feelings about Intelligence mean that an appeal to your patriotism would fail. We needed a decent bargaining chip. Forget those drawings. A few pornographic sketches wouldn't do. Those drawings could be of anyone. We needed photographs of you that would blow up your career with the efficiency of a five-hundred-pound bomb. It's a tawdry business, and we all feel ashamed to be blackmailing you in this way, but difficult times demand difficult measures. No one will see those photographs, I promise you that. The film won't even be developed unless you force our hand.'

‘And how would I do that?'

Fowler took a sip of whisky. He was trying to be elegant. He succeeded only in being effeminate.

‘We don't know how you might be useful to us in the future, Will. As a famous person, you'd be a good propaganda candidate, of course, but your fame will allow you to move in circles where we don't have any people placed.'

‘You want me to spy for you?' My voice dripped with contempt.

‘Oh yes. Undoubtedly. You became one of our spies the moment the first flash bulb went off. We might never call on you again; but if we do, you will do as you're told.'

He paused to take another dainty sip.

‘That's all in the future, Will. It's the present we're interested in, and I'm afraid we need you now. We want Albert Taylor, and we think you're our best chance of finding him.'

‘Why?'

‘One thing you need to get out of your head is the silly notion that Geraldine Buchanan is working for us. She isn't. She led Taylor to you because she thought you might be on to her. She would have been pretty pissed off at having to leave her acting job, which was a great cover for her other, less acceptable, activities. He had a bit of fun with you on Christmas Day, and probably thought that you weren't any sort of threat. No offence, Will. I'm just surmising here. However, when he got a look at that portrait Geraldine did of you, he would have seen something that made him an angry man. He would have seen that his girlfriend actually liked you. There's real feeling in that picture. She's not a bad artist, and Albert isn't a stupid man. Maybe he found out that you fucked his girlfriend and didn't pay. That's not on. That's not business; that's personal. Then you keep showing up at the house, as though you know something. And you do know something. You know that Geraldine Buchanan killed Anthony Dervian. So what does Albert do? He plants the body in your house. Awkward. Except that nothing happens. There's no result, no mention in the papers that William Power has been arrested on suspicion of murder. Instead, there you are on the front page of the papers, a hero. Congratulations, by the way. We were genuinely impressed at how you conducted yourself after being shot at.'

‘Not shot at. Shot.'

‘That did it for us. That's when we really knew we wanted to secure your services. Albert Taylor will come looking for you. That's as certain as the sun rising.'

I took another slug of whisky, and was overcome with a sudden drowsiness. This incident had been so shattering that it had exhausted me far more thoroughly than I'd thought it had. James Fowler's voice began to sound as though it was coming from very far away, and my vision blurred. Unable to prevent myself from falling asleep, I realised as my head fell forward onto the table that I'd been drugged. In the seconds before consciousness fled, I experienced a muted spike of outrage.

I woke in my own bed. It was close to midnight, and I had a headache. Pinned to my shirt was a note from James Fowler.

‘Sorry about the Mickey Finn. We thought it was the most efficient way to wind up the evening. The headache won't last long. James.'

I'd lost control of almost every aspect of my life. Even my career, which I'd believed I'd been organising, was being stage-managed by other people. Every attempt to take charge of my destiny had been thwarted by corpses, women, criminals, and Intelligence agents — although the distinction between a criminal and an Intelligence agent was purely academic.

I went to the bathroom to splash water on my face. There was light under Brian's door, so I knocked and opened it simultaneously. Brian was lying on his bed, fully clothed.

‘How long have you been home?' I asked.

‘Half-an-hour or so. Why?'

‘So you weren't here when James Fowler and his merry men carried me, unconscious, to my bedroom?'

He sat up.

‘You're kidding. They found you passed out somewhere?'

The perverseness of Brian's thinking never failed to appal me.

‘No, Brian. I was unconscious because they made me unconscious.'

Before he could interject with another annoying misreading of my words, I gave him a no-holds-barred summary of my evening, right down to Carol's judiciously placed hand on my cock. His eyes became wide with wonder, and he began to resemble the small boy he used to be.

‘I know I've said this before, Brian, but if you're working for these people, now would really be the time to tell me.'

‘I'm not even going to dignify that with an answer.'

‘Did Cloris tell you that I called round to Drummond Street?'

‘I haven't seen Cloris today.'

‘She slammed — well, closed — the door in my face.'

‘She probably doesn't like you. You don't get on with Peter, and I imagine that most of what she knows about you she's learned from him. There was also the unfortunate way you first met.'

‘That didn't seem to bother her at all. I thought she handled it very well, and I liked her for that.'

‘Her brother's death has changed everything for the Gilberts, Will. She thought she was all right at first, because she didn't get along with him very well, but both she and her father have begun to unravel over it. Mother has been magnificent. The funeral's on Monday. Did I tell you that?'

‘No, Brian, you didn't tell me that.'

‘John Gilbert's body has been released to the family. They were told that yesterday.'

‘So there's been a cause of death?'

‘Yes. Peter isn't satisfied, according to Cloris. No suspicious circumstances. The body showed no signs of violence — no bruising — and it was flooded with heroin. Accidental overdose is the polite conclusion, but suicide is suspected.'

‘So how did he end up in the cemetery?'

‘The autopsy revealed something we couldn't see. Underneath his shirt sleeve, a syringe was dangling from a vein in his arm. He'd chosen that spot deliberately — no one knows why — and pumped himself with a lethal dose. That's what Peter can't fathom. How could his son hate him so much, and how could he miss this, how could he not notice?'

It was politic to say nothing at this point.

‘Something about this stinks,' Brian said. ‘The connection between John Gilbert and the Fitzgibbon Street house can't mean nothing. I don't believe in that kind of coincidence.'

‘Neither do I. John Gilbert and Geraldine had been …' I steeled myself to say it, ‘intimate. James Fowler insists she's not working for them, and although I hate to admit it, I might have been wrong about her being an agent. She was an actress who bolted when she thought I was investigating her, and she is essentially a prostitute. I have nothing against prostitutes per se, except when they want to blackmail me and when they have lovers who want to kill me. This is, as Portia says to Shylock, the predicament in which I now stand.'

‘Where to from here, Will? This is turning into a proper fiasco.'

‘I don't know. The one thing I do know is that I'm not going to be the bait in a trap set by Intelligence. I can't tell you how much I hate those bastards.'

‘They've got you by the short and curlies, and they've got photos of your short and curlies to prove it.'

‘You're not really helping, Brian, and you've used that line before.'

He looked sullen, as if his hilarious joke had gone unappreciated. My mention of Portia must have been in response to a deep, unconscious thought. Portia was a woman, dressed as a man. Brian was a man who could dress convincingly as a woman. Albert Taylor was a man who sold women for sex.

‘Every night,' I said, ‘outside Camp Pell, there's a huddle of whores who wait for soldiers to emerge and pick them up for the evening. The authorities must be aware of it, and they're turning a blind eye to it.'

‘The coppers will have been paid off.'

‘Probably. Given that Taylor's girls work out of Parkville and Carlton, I'd imagine a couple of them would be posted on that beat.'

‘But they're not going to take us to Taylor just because we ask them to.'

‘No, they're not. We need to give them a reason to take us to Taylor. We need you, Brian.'

He sat up quickly, the muscles of his face forming a comically sceptical expression.

‘Am I going to be enthusiastic about your plan, Will?'

‘I very much doubt it. Consider this, though. It's daring, and requires that you be daring. This is the sharp end of private-inquiry work, Brian. This is where discreet inquiries just won't cut it.'

‘Stop buttering me up and get to the point.'

‘I want you to wear a disguise.'

‘As a Yank soldier?'

‘As a woman.'

Brian cocked his head on one side.

‘I wonder if you're serious.'

I hadn't thought my idea through, so it evolved as I spoke it.

‘We both know from our experience up north that you have a previously unknown and unexplored talent — the ability to pass convincingly as a woman. Perhaps calling it a talent is a bit grand. Your features under the influence of make-up are curiously ambiguous. I look grotesque in lipstick. You look, well, pretty. Slap on a wig and a skirt, and away you go. The voice is a difficulty. However, I'm suggesting that you offer Albert Taylor something a bit more exotic than he currently traffics in.'