Brighton Rock (10 page)

‘I’m just a business man,’ Mr Colleoni softly explained. ‘I don’t need to see a race. And nothing you might try to do to my men could affect me. I’ve got two in hospital now. It doesn’t matter. They have the best attention. Flowers, grapes. . . I can afford it. I don’t have to worry. I’m a business man,’ Mr Colleoni went expansively and good-humouredly on. ‘I like you. You’re a promising youngster. That’s why I’m talking to you like a father. You can’t damage a business like mine.’

‘I could damage you,’ the Boy said.

‘It wouldn’t pay. There wouldn’t be any faked alibis for you. It would be
your
witnesses who’d be scared. I’m a business man.’ The raisin eyes blinked as the sun slanted in across a bowl of flowers and fell on the deep carpet. ‘Napoleon the Third used to have this room,’ Mr Colleoni said, ‘and Eugenie.’

‘Who was she?’

‘Oh,’ Mr Colleoni said vaguely, ‘one of those foreign polonies.’ He plucked a flower and stuck it in his buttonhole, and something a little doggish peeped out of the black buttony eyes, a hint of the seraglio.

‘I’ll be going,’ the Boy said. He rose and moved to the door.

‘You do understand me, don’t you?’ Mr Colleoni said without moving; holding his hand very still he kept the cigar ash, quite a long ash now, suspended. ‘Brewer’s been complaining. You don’t do that again. And Tate. . . you mustn’t try tricks with Tate.’ His old Italian face showed few emotions but a mild amusement, a mild friendliness; but suddenly sitting there in the rich Victorian room, with the gold lighter in his pocket and the cigar-case on his lap, he looked as a man might look who owned the whole world, the whole visible world that is, the cash registers and policemen
and
prostitutes, Parliament and the laws which say ‘this is Right and this is Wrong.’

‘I understand all right,’ the Boy said. ‘You think our mob’s too small for you.’

‘I employ a great many people,’ Mr Colleoni said.

The Boy closed the door; a loose shoe-lace tapped all the way down the passage: the huge lounge was almost empty: a man in plus-fours waited for a girl. The visible world was all Mr Colleoni’s. The spot where the iron hadn’t passed was still a little damp over the Boy’s breast.

A hand touched the Boy’s arm. He looked round and recognized the man in a bowler hat. He nodded guardedly. ‘Morning.’

‘They told me at Frank’s,’ the man said, ‘you’d come here.’

The Boy’s heart missed a beat: for almost the first time it occurred to him that the law could hang him, take him out in a yard, drop him in a pit, bury him in lime, put an end to the great future. . . 

‘You want me?’

‘That’s right.’

He thought: Rose, the girl, someone asking questions. His memory flashed back: he remembered how she caught him with his hand under the table, feeling for something. He grinned dully and said, ‘Well, they haven’t sent the Big Four, anyway.’

‘Mind coming round to the station?’

‘Got a warrant?’

‘It’s only Brewer been complaining you hit him. You left your scar all right.’

The Boy began to laugh. ‘Brewer? Me? I wouldn’t touch him.’

‘Come round and see the inspector?’

‘Of course I will.’

They came out on to the parade. A pavement photographer saw them coming and lifted the cap from his camera. The Boy put his hands in front of his face and went by. ‘You oughter put a stop to those things,’ he said. ‘Fine thing it’d be to have a picture postcard stuck up on the pier, you and me walking to the station.’

‘They caught a murderer once in town with one of those snaps.’

‘I read about it,’ the Boy said and fell silent. This is Colleoni’s doing, he thought, he’s showing off: he put Brewer up to this.

‘Brewer’s wife’s pretty bad they say,’ the detective remarked softly.

‘Is she?’ the Boy said. ‘l wouldn’t know.’

‘Got your alibi ready, I suppose?’

‘How do I know? I don’t know when he said I hit him. A geezer can’t have an alibi for every minute of the day.’

‘You’re a wise kid,’ the detective said, ‘but you needn’t get fussed about this. The inspector wants to have a friendly chat, that’s all.’

He led the way through the charge-room. A man with a tired ageing face sat behind a desk. ‘Sit down, Brown,’ he said. He opened a cigarette box and pushed it across.

‘I don’t smoke,’ the Boy said. He sat down and watched the inspector alertly. ‘Aren’t you going to charge me?’

‘There’s no charge,’ the inspector said. ‘Brewer thought better of it.’ He paused. He looked more tired than ever. He said: ‘I want to talk straight for once. We know more about each other than we admit. I don’t interfere with you and Brewer: I’ve got more important things to do than prevent you and Brewer—arguing. But you know just as well as I do that Brewer wouldn’t come here to complain if he hadn’t been put up to it.’

‘You’ve certainly got ideas,’ the Boy said.

‘Put up to it by someone who’s not afraid of your mob.’

‘There’s not much escapes the bogies,’ the Boy said, grimacing derisively.

‘The races start next week, and I don’t want to have any big scale mob fighting in Brighton. I don’t mind you carving each other up in a quiet way, I don’t give a penny for your worthless skins, but when two mobs start scrapping people who matter may get hurt.’

‘Meaning who?’ the Boy said.

‘Meaning decent innocent people. Poor people out to put a shilling on the tote. Clerks, charwomen, dustmen. People who wouldn’t be seen dead talking to you—or to Colleoni.’

‘What are you getting at?’ the Boy said.

‘I’m getting at this. You aren’t big enough for your job, Brown. You can’t stand against Colleoni. If there’s any fighting I shall come down like a ton of bricks on both of you—but it will be
Colleoni
who’ll have the alibis. No one’s going to fake you an alibi against Colleoni. You take my advice. Clear out of Brighton.’

‘Fine,’ the Boy said. ‘A bogy doing Colleoni’s job for him.’

‘This is private and unofficial,’ the inspector said. ‘I’m being human for once. I don’t care if you get carved or Colleoni gets carved, but I’m not going to have innocent people hurt if I can help it.’

‘You think I’m finished?’ the Boy said. He grinned uneasily, looking away, looking at the walls plastered with notices. Dog Licences. Gun Licences. Found Drowned. A dead face met his eye staring from the wall, unnaturally pasty. Unbrushed hair. A scar by the mouth. ‘You think Colleoni’ll keep the peace better?’ He could read the writing: ‘one nickel watch, waistcoat of grey cloth, blue-striped shirt, aertex vest, aertex pants’.

‘Well?’

‘It’s valuable advice,’ the Boy said, grinning down at the polished desk, the box of Players, a crystal paperweight. ‘I’ll have to think it over. I’m young to retire.’

‘You’re too young to run a racket if you ask me.’

‘So Brewer’s not bringing a charge?’

‘He’s not afraid to. I talked him out of it. I wanted to have a chance to speak to you straight.’

‘Well,’ the Boy said, standing up, ‘maybe I’ll be seeing you: maybe not.’ He grinned again, passing through the charge-room, but a bright spot of colour stood out on each cheek-bone. There was poison in his veins, though he grinned and bore it. He had been insulted. He was going to show the world. They thought because he was only seventeen. . . he jerked his narrow shoulders back at the memory that he’d killed his man, and these bogies who thought they were clever weren’t clever enough to discover that. He trailed the clouds of his own glory after him: hell lay about him in his infancy. He was ready for more deaths.

PART THREE

1

Ida Arnold sat up in the boarding-house bed. For a moment she didn’t know where she was. Her head ached with the thick night at Sherry’s. It came slowly back to her as she stared at the thick ewer on the floor, the basin of grey water in which she had perfunctorily washed, the bright pink roses on the wallpaper, a wedding group—Phil Corkery dithering outside the front door, pecking at her lips, swaying off down the parade as if that was all he could expect, while the tide receded. She looked round the room; it didn’t look so good in the morning light as when she had booked it, but ‘it’s homely,’ she thought with satisfaction, ‘it’s what I like.’

The sun was shining; Brighton was at its best. The passage outside her room was gritty with sand, she felt it under her shoes all the way down stairs, and in the hall there was a pail, two spades, and a long piece of seaweed hanging by the door as a barometer. There were a lot of sandshoes lying about, and from the dining-room came a child’s querulous voice repeating over and over, ‘I don’t want to dig. I want to go to the pictures. I don’t want to dig.’

At one she was meeting Phil Corkery at Snow’s. Before that there were things to do; she had to go easy on the money, not put away too much in the way of Guinness. It wasn’t cheap living down at Brighton, and she wasn’t going to take cash from Corkery—she had a conscience, she had a code, and if she took cash she gave something in return. Black Boy was the answer: she had to see about it first thing before the odds shortened: sinews of war, and she made her way towards Kemp Town to the only bookie she knew, old Jim Tate, ‘Honest Jim’ of the half-crown enclosure.

He bellowed at her as soon as she got inside his office, ‘Here’s Ida. Sit down, Mrs Turner,’ getting her name wrong. He pushed a
box
of Gold Flake across to her. ‘Inhale a cheroot.’ He was a little more than life-size. His voice, after the race meetings of twenty years, could hit no tone which wasn’t loud and hoarse. He was a man you needed to look at through the wrong end of a telescope if you were to believe him the fine healthy fellow he made himself out to be. When you were close to him, you saw the thick blue veins on the left forehead, the red money-spider’s web across the eyeballs. ‘Well, Mrs Turner—Ida—what is it you fancy?’

‘Black Boy,’ Ida said.

‘Black Boy,’ Jim Tate repeated. ‘That’s ten to one.’

‘Twelve to one.’

‘The odds have shortened. There’s been quite a packet laid on Black Boy this week. You wouldn’t get ten to one from anyone but your old friend.’

‘All right,’ Ida said. ‘Put me on twenty pounds. And my name’s not Turner. It’s Arnold.’

‘Twenty nicker. That’s a fat bet for you, Mrs What-ever-you-are.’ He licked his thumb and began to comb the notes. Half-way through he paused, sat still like a large toad over his desk, listening. A lot of noise came in through the open window, feet on stone, voices, distant music, bells ringing, the continuous whisper of the Channel. He sat quite still with half the notes in his hand. He looked uneasy. The telephone rang. He let it ring for two seconds, his veined eyes on Ida; then he lifted the receiver. ‘Hullo. Hullo. This is Jim Tate.’ It was an old-fashioned telephone. He screwed the receiver close into his ear and sat still while a low voice burred like a bee.

One hand holding the receiver to his ear, Jim Tate shuffled the notes together, wrote out a slip. He said hoarsely, ‘That’s all right, Mr Colleoni. I’ll do that, Mr Colleoni,’ and planked the receiver down.

‘You’ve written Black Dog,’ Ida said.

He looked across at her. It took him a moment to understand. ‘Black Dog,’ he said, and then laughed, hoarse and hollow. ‘What was I thinking of? Black Dog, indeed.’

‘That means Care,’ Ida said.

‘Well,’ he barked with unconvincing geniality, ‘we’ve always
something
to worry about.’ The telephone rang again. Jim Tate looked as if it might sting him.

‘You’re busy,’ Ida said. ‘I’ll be going.’

When she went out into the street she looked this way and that to see if she could see any cause for Jim Tate’s uneasiness, but there was nothing visible: just Brighton about its own business on a beautiful day.

Ida went into a pub and had a glass of Douro port. It went down sweet and warm and heavy. She had another. ‘Who’s Mr Colleoni?’ she asked the barman.

‘You don’t know who Colleoni is?’

‘I never heard of him till just now.’

The barman said, ‘He’s taking over from Kite.’

‘Who’s Kite?’

‘Who
was
Kite? You saw how he got croaked at St Pancras?’

‘No.’

‘I don’t suppose they meant to do it,’ the barman said. ‘They just meant to carve him up, but a razor slipped.’

‘Have a drink?’

‘Thanks. I’ll have a gin.’

‘Cheeryo.’

‘Cheeryo.’

‘I hadn’t heard all this,’ Ida said. She looked over his shoulder at the clock: nothing to do till one: she might as well have another and gossip awhile. ‘Give me another port. When did all this happen?’

‘Oh, before Whitsun.’ The word Whitsun always caught her ear now: it meant a lot of things, a grubby ten shilling note, the white steps down to the ladies’, Tragedy in capital letters. ‘And what about Kite’s friends?’ she asked.

‘They don’t stand a chance now Kite’s dead. The mob’s got no leader. Why, they tag round after a kid of seventeen. What’s a kid like that going to do against Colleoni?’ He bent across the bar and whispered, ‘He cut up Brewer last night.’

‘Who? Colleoni?’

‘No, the kid.’

‘I dunno who Brewer is,’ Ida said, ‘but things seem lively.’

‘You wait till the races start,’ the man said. ‘They’ll be lively all right then. Colleoni’s out for a monopoly. Quick, look through the window there and you’ll see him.’

Ida went to the window and looked out, and again she saw only the Brighton she knew; she hadn’t seen anything different even the day Fred died: two girls in beach pyjamas arm-in-arm, the buses going by to Rottingdean, a man selling papers, a woman with a shopping basket, a boy in a shabby suit, an excursion steamer edging off from the pier, which lay long, luminous and transparent, like a shrimp in the sunlight. She said, ‘I don’t see anyone.’

‘He’s gone now.’

‘Who? Colleoni?’

‘No, the kid.’

‘Oh,’ Ida said, ‘that boy,’ coming back to the bar, drinking up her port.

‘I bet he’s worried plenty.’

‘A kid like that oughtn’t to be mixed up with things,’ Ida said. ‘If he was mine I’d just larrup it out of him.’ With those words she was about to dismiss him to turn her attention away from him, moving her mind on its axis like a great steel dredger, when she remembered: a face in a bar seen over Fred’s shoulder, the sound of a glass breaking: ‘The gentleman will pay.’ She had a royal memory. ‘You ever come across this Kolley Kibber?’ she asked.