Brighton Rock (12 page)

‘I’ve told you, Mrs Arnold, the case is closed.’

‘That’s what you think,’ Ida said. She rose to her feet; she summoned Phil with a jerk of the chin. ‘Not half it isn’t,’ she said. ‘I’ll be seeing you.’ She looked back from the door at the elderly man behind the desk and threatened him with her ruthless vitality. ‘Or perhaps not,’ she said. ‘I can manage this my own way. I don’t need your police’ (the constables in the outer room stirred uneasily; somebody laughed; somebody dropped a tin of boot polish). ‘I’ve got my friends.’

Her friends—they were everywhere under the bright glittering Brighton air. They followed their wives obediently into fishmongers, they carried the children’s buckets to the beach, they lingered round the bars waiting for opening time, they took a penny peep on the pier at ‘A Night of Love’. She had only to appeal to any of them, for Ida Arnold was on the right side. She was cheery, she was healthy, she could get a bit lit with the best of them. She liked a good time, her big breasts bore their carnality frankly down the Old Steyne, but you had only to look at her to know that you could rely on her. She wouldn’t tell tales to your wife, she wouldn’t remind you next morning of what you wanted to forget, she was honest, she was kindly, she belonged to the great middle law-abiding class, her amusements were their amusements, her superstitions their superstitions (the planchette scratching the French polish on the occasional table, and the salt over the shoulder), she had no more love for anyone than they had.

‘Expenses mounting up,’ Ida said. ‘Never mind. Everything will be all right after the races.’

‘You got a tip?’ Mr Corkery asked.

‘Straight from the horse’s mouth. I shouldn’t say that. Poor Fred.’

‘Tell a pal,’ Mr Corkery implored.

‘All in good time,’ Ida said. ‘Be a good boy and you don’t know what mayn’t happen.’

‘You don’t still think, do you?’ Mr Corkery sounded her. ‘Not after what the doctor wrote?’

‘I’ve never paid any attention to doctors.’

‘But why?’

‘We’ve got to find out.’

‘And how?’

‘Give me time. I haven’t started yet.’

The sea stretched like a piece of gay common washing in a tenement square across the end of the street. ‘The colour of your eyes,’ Mr Corkery interjected thoughtfully and with a touch of nostalgia. He said, ‘Couldn’t we now—just go for a while on the pier, Ida?’

‘Yes,’ Ida said. ‘The pier. We’ll go to the Palace Pier, Phil,’ but when they got there she wouldn’t go through the turnstile, but
took
up her stand like a huckster facing the Aquarium, the ladies’ lavatory. ‘This is where I start from,’ she said. ‘He waited for me here, Phil,’ and she stared out over the red and green lights, the heavy traffic of her battlefield, laying her plans, marshalling her cannon fodder, while five yards away Spicer stood too waiting for an enemy to appear. Only a slight doubt troubled her optimism. ‘That horse has got to win, Phil,’ she said. ‘I can’t hold out else.’

2

Spicer was restless these days. There was nothing for him to do. When the races began again he wouldn’t feel so bad, he wouldn’t think so much about Hale. It was the medical evidence which upset him: ‘death from natural causes’, when with his own eyes he’d seen the Boy. . . It was fishy, it wasn’t straight. He told himself that he could face a police inquiry, but he couldn’t stand this not knowing, the false security of the verdict. There was a catch in it somewhere, and all through the long summer sunlight Spicer wandered uneasily, watching out for trouble: the police-station, the Place where It had been done, even Snow’s came into his promenade. He wanted to be satisfied that the cops were doing nothing (he knew every plain-clothes man in the Brighton force), that no one was asking questions or loitering where they had no reason to loiter. He knew it was just nerves. ‘I’ll be all right when the races start,’ he told himself, like a man with a poisoned body who believes that all will be well when a single tooth is drawn.

He came up the parade cautiously, from the Hove end, from the glass shelter where Hale’s body had been set, pale with bloodshot eyes and nicotined finger-ends. He had a corn on his left foot and limped a little, dragging after him a bright orange-brown shoe. He had come out in spots, too, round his mouth, and that also was caused by Hale’s death. Fear upset his bowels, and the spots came: it was always the way.

He limped cautiously across the road when he was close to Snow’s: that was another vulnerable place. The sun caught the great panes of plate-glass and flashed back at him like headlamps. He sweated a little passing by. A voice said, ‘Well, if it isn’t Spicey?’ He had had his eyes on Snow’s across the road, he hadn’t
noticed
who was beside him on the parade, leaning on the green railing above the shingle. He turned his damp face sharply. ‘What are you doing here, Crab?’

‘It’s good to be back,’ Crab said, a young man in a mauve suit, with shoulders like coat-hangers and a small waist.

‘We ran you out once, Crab. I thought you’d stay out. You’ve altered.’ His hair was carroty, except at the roots, and his nose was straightened and scarred. He had been a Jew once, but a hairdresser and a surgeon had altered that. ‘Afraid we’d lamp you if you didn’t change your mug?’

‘Why, Spicey, me afraid of your lot? You’ll be saying “sir” to me one of these days. I’m Colleoni’s right-hand man.’

‘I always heard as how he was left-handed,’ Spicer said. ‘Wait till Pinkie knows you’re back.’

Crab laughed. ‘Pinkie’s at the police-station,’ he said.

The police-station: Spicer’s chin went down, he was off, his orange shoe sliding on the paving, his corn shooting. He heard Crab laugh behind him, the smell of dead fish was in his nostrils, he was a sick man. The police-station: the police-station: it was like an abscess jetting its poison through the nerves. When he got to Frank’s there was no one there. He creaked his tortured way up the stairs, past the rotten banister, to Pinkie’s room: the door stood open, vacancy stared in the swing mirror: no message, crumbs on the floor: it looked as a room would look if someone had been called suddenly away.

Spicer stood by the chest of drawers (the walnut stain splashed unevenly): no scrap of written reassurance in a drawer: no warning. He looked up and down, the corn shooting through his whole body to the brain, and suddenly there was his own face in the glass—the coarse black hair greying at the roots, the small eruptions on the face, the bloodshot eyeballs, and it occurred to him, as if he were looking at a close-up on a screen, that that was the kind of face a nark might have, a man who grassed to the bogies.

He moved away: flakes of pastry ground under his foot; he told himself he wasn’t a man to grass: Pinkie, Cubitt and Dallow, they were his pals. He wouldn’t let them down—even though it wasn’t he who’d done the killing. He’d been against it from the first: he’d only laid the cards: he only
knew
. He stood at the head of the
stairs
looking down past the shaky banister. He would rather kill himself than squeal, he told the empty landing in a whisper, but he knew really that he hadn’t got that courage. Better run for it: and he thought with nostalgia of Nottingham and a pub he knew, a pub he had once hoped to buy when he had made his pile. It was a good spot, Nottingham, the air was good, none of this salt smart on the dry mouth, and the girls were kind. If he could get away—but the others would never let him go: he knew too much about too many things. He was in the mob for life now, and he looked down the drop of the staircase to the tiny hall, the strip of linoleum, the old-fashioned telephone on a bracket by the door.

As he watched, it began to ring. He looked down at it with fear and suspicion. He couldn’t stand any more bad news. Where had everybody gone to? Had they run and left him without a warning? Even Frank wasn’t in the basement. There was a smell of scorching as if he’d left his iron burning. The bell rang on and on. Let them ring, he thought. They’ll tire of it in time: why should I do all the work of this bloody gaff? On and on and on. Whoever it was didn’t tire easily. He came to the head of the stairs and scowled down at the vulcanite spitting noise through the quiet house. ‘The trouble is,’ he said aloud, as if he were rehearsing a speech to Pinkie and the others, ‘I’m getting too old for this game. I got to retire. Look at my hair. I’m grey, ain’t I? I got to retire.’ But the only answer was the regular ring, ring, ring.

‘Why can’t someone answer the bloody blower?’ he shouted down the well of the stairs. ‘I got to do all the work, have I?’ and he saw himself dropping a ticket into the child’s bucket, slipping a ticket under an upturned boat, tickets which could have hanged him. He suddenly ran down the stairs in a kind of simulated fury and lifted the receiver. ‘Well,’ he bellowed, ‘well, who the hell’s there?’

‘Is that Frank’s?’ a voice said. He knew the voice now. It was the girl in Snow’s. He lowered the receiver in a panic and waited, and a thin doll’s voice came out at him from the orifice: ‘Please, I’ve got to speak to Pinkie.’ It was almost as if listening betrayed him. He listened again and the voice repeated with desperate anxiety, ‘Is that Frank’s?’

Keeping his mouth away from the phone, curling his tongue in
an
odd way, mouthing hoarsely and crookedly, Spicer in disguise replied, ‘Pinkie’s out. What do you want?’

‘I’ve got to speak to him.’

‘He’s out I tell you.’

‘Who’s that?’ the girl asked in a scared voice.

‘That’s what I want to know. Who are you?’

‘I’m a friend of Pinkie’s. I got to find him. It’s urgent.’

‘I can’t help you.’

‘Please. You’ve got to find Pinkie. He told me I was to tell him—if ever—’ The voice died away.

Spicer shouted down the phone. ‘Hullo. Where you gone? If ever what?’ There was no reply. He listened, with the receiver pressed against his ear, to silence buzzing up the wires. He began to jerk at the hook: ‘Exchange. Hullo. Hullo. Exchange,’ and then suddenly the voice came on again as if somebody had dropped a needle into place on a record. ‘Are you there? Please, are you there?’

‘Of course I’m here. What did Pinkie tell you?’

‘You got to find Pinkie. He said he wanted to know. It’s a woman. She was in here with a man.’

‘What do you mean—a woman?’

‘Asking questions,’ the voice said. Spicer put down the receiver; whatever else the girl had to say was strangled on the wire. Find Pinkie? What was the good of finding Pinkie? It was the others who had done the finding. And Cubitt and Dallow: they’d slipped away without even warning him. If he did squeal it would be only returning them their own coin. But he wasn’t going to squeal. He wasn’t a nark. They thought he was yellow.
They’d think
he’d squeal. He wouldn’t even get the credit. . . a little moisture of self-pity came pricking out of the dry ageing ducts.

I got to think, he repeated to himself. I got to think. He opened the street door and went out. He didn’t even wait to fetch his hat. His hair was thin on top, dry and brittle under the dandruff. He walked rapidly, going nowhere in particular, but every road in Brighton ended on the front. I’m too old for the game, I got to get out, Nottingham; he wanted to be alone, he went down the stone steps to the level of the beach; it was early closing and the small shops facing the sea under the promenade were closed. He walked
on
the edge of the asphalt, scuffling in the shingle. I wouldn’t grass, he remarked dumbly to the tide as it lifted and withdrew, but it wasn’t my doing, I never wanted to kill Fred. He passed into shadow under the pier, and a cheap photographer with a box camera snapped him as the shadow fell and pressed a paper into his hand. Spicer didn’t notice. The iron pillars stretched down across the wet dimmed shingle holding up above his head the motor-track, the shooting booths and peep machines, mechanical models, ‘the Robot Man will tell your fortune’. A seagull flew straight towards him between the pillars like a scared bird caught in a cathedral, then swerved out into the sunlight from the dark iron nave. I wouldn’t grass, Spicer said, unless I had to.. . . He stumbled on an old boot and put his hand on the stones to save himself: they had all the cold of the sea and had never been warmed by sun under these pillars.

He thought: that woman—how does she know anything—what’s she doing asking questions? I didn’t want to have Hale killed; it wouldn’t be fair if I took the drop with the others; I told ’em not to do it. He came out into the sunlight and climbed back on to the parade. It’ll be this way the bogies will come, he thought, if they know anything; they always reconstruct the crime. He took up his stand between the turnstile of the pier and the ladies’ lavatory. There weren’t many people about: he could spot the bogies easily enough—if they came. Over there was the Royal Albion; he could see all the way up the Grand Parade to Old Steyne; the pale green domes of the Pavilion floated above the dusty trees; he could see anyone in the hot empty mid-week afternoon who went down below the Aquarium, the white deck ready for dancing, to the little covered arcade where the cheap shops stood between the sea and the stone wall, selling Brighton rock.

3

The poison twisted in the Boy’s veins. He had been insulted. He had to show someone he was—a man. He went scowling into Snow’s, young, shabby and untrustworthy, and the waitresses with one accord turned their backs. He stood there looking for a table (the place was full), and no one attended to him. It was as if they doubted whether he had the money to pay for his meal. He thought of Colleoni padding through the enormous rooms, the embroidered crowns on the chair-backs. He suddenly shouted aloud: ‘I want service,’ and the pulse beat in his cheek. All the faces round him shivered into motion, and then were still again like water. Everyone looked away. He was ignored. Suddenly a sense of weariness overtook him. He felt as if he had travelled a great many miles to be ignored like this.

A voice said, ‘There isn’t a table.’ They were still such strangers that he didn’t recognize the voice, until it added: ‘Pinkie’. He looked round and there was Rose, dressed to go out in a shabby black straw which made her face look as it would look in twenty years’ time, after the work and the child-bearing.