GBH (16 page)

“Perhaps she could have told us all sorts of things he didn’t want us to know.”

“Stupid,” Mickey said.

“You haven’t seen the photographs?”

“No.”

I pushed the envelope across the desk towards him. He took the photographs out and leafed through them, shaking his head.

“Stupid,” he said. “Crude. Not the Ray we all knew and loved. Not his style at all.”

“No,” I said.

Mickey slung the photographs on the desk.

“Stupid,” he said again.

“How do you reckon it?” I asked him.

“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? She calls Ray to say we’re coming over. He tells her to get out of it and join him in Amsterdam. When she gets there, he knocks her off, or has her knocked off, because of things she may know that we don’t, and also seeing as how he’s decided that with the kind of money he’s got stacked up he can in future do better than the Glendas of this world.”

“They’d been together eighteen months. Like we said, it could have been love.”

Mickey shrugged. “Maybe she did it a new way that he’d never come across before. In any case, all good things come to an end, in time.”

“There’s certainly a lot of truth in that, Mickey,” I said.

“So what you want me to do?” he asked.

I shook my head. “At the moment, nothing. James is coming round shortly. I’ll send for you after he’s gone, if I need you.”

He stood up, and looked at the top photograph. “Now if I’d been doing a job like that …”

I nodded. “I know. They wouldn’t even have had to change the sheets.”

THE SEA

O
NCE
I’
M IN THE
bungalow, with the doors locked behind me and a drink in my hand, I sit opposite the picture window and stare out at the broad sky as it changes from late afternoon to early evening and think about the events outside Marshchapel.

Could it have been just what it appeared to be? That she’d got talking to the crossword man and they’d got something started and he was so shit-scared of his missus that the minute even a barman makes a few remarks he calls her up and changes the meeting place and they drive out into the country for a session of al fresco, resulting in a permanent end to the affair?

Just that, that simple?

But what about the Mablethorpe Lesley? What is she playing at, slumming around local Amateur Nights looking like an out-of-season hippy, then appearing in Grimsby all wigged up and well turned-out, like a different person altogether? Maybe she was a different person altogether. Maybe—

I take another deep drink of my scotch, then another.

If only I’d had one more look at her, just to be one hundred percent certain, the way she’d looked the first time I’d seen her, not the way she’d been this afternoon, her body shuddering because of the blanket of flame that wrapped itself around her.

I have to stop thinking like this, or I’ll begin to be like I was the time when I was shown what had happened to Jean.

THE SMOKE

“A
LL RIGHT
,” J
EAN SAID
, “let’s pursue all the propositions to their logical conclusions.”

“You sound more like James every day,” I said.

“Good,” she said. “That means I’m likelier to arrive at a reasonable solution.”

“All right,” I said, “go on. State your case. Or cases.”

“Right,” she said. “From the beginning; it wasn’t coincidental that Ray went when he did, and he didn’t go because he was frightened we were on to him; there was no way he could know; Henry Chapman wouldn’t, Tommy Hales isn’t in a fit state to talk to anyone yet, and Mal Wilson isn’t in a fit state for ever. And why should they? If they knew anything they’d tell us, not Ray. He was responsible for their having to undergo the treatment. And his mother, he’d been setting that story up for a long time. He knew nobody would check it because he didn’t know anybody suspected he was up to anything.”

“He couldn’t be totally sure.”

“Quite. So when Glenda gets the unscheduled phone call enquiry into his whereabouts, she phones him, as he would have instructed her to.”

“Which means she knew what he was up to.”

“Not necessarily. Two alternatives here. If she was in it, she phones him, he tells her to join him quicker than arranged. They hadn’t wanted to go together, to attract that kind of attention.”

“Or?”

“Or she wasn’t in the picture at all.”

“So why does she fly off to Amsterdam?”

“Leaving to one side the fact that a lot of people would fly off to Amsterdam or elsewhere after an enquiry by Mickey on your behalf,” Jean said, “leaving that to one side, I have no sodding idea.”

“There’s what Mickey said,” I said.

“Oh yes. Supposing Ray wants to top her: because he’s fed up with her and she might tell tales or whatever. So, not wanting to agitate the locals, he waits until he’s on foreign turf. So he can get rid of her nice and quiet, without drawing undue attention to himself.”

I get up and go over to the drinks.

“You do see what I mean?” Jean said.

“Yes,” I said. “I do see what you mean.”

“So somebody else had Glenda topped.”

I dropped some ice in my drink.

“If so, the immediate question not being who or why,” I said. “Because there only seems one possibility in that respect. The question is how did they know what was going down?”

THE SEA

I
DRIVE INTO
M
ABLETHORPE
.

The evening paper comes in about a quarter to six.

So I park my car at the foot of the ramp and cross the promenade and walk down the street towards the paper shop. The lights from the arcade flop limply onto the pavement. On impulse, for no reason whatsoever, I drift over to the arcade and into it and get some change and go over to my pin-table and try to beat my previous best. But I get nowhere near. I seem to have lost my touch. All I keep getting is Tilt.

So in the end I give up and go out into the street again.

Across the street, a bit farther down, the double frontage of the newsagent’s is illuminated as if for all the world they’re still using gas mantles inside.

I cross the street and open the door and walk over to the counter and take a copy of the evening paper from off the pile.

“I don’t know about you,” the old girl says as she takes my money, “but I think it’s gone ever so cold this afternoon.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” I say to her. “But now you come to mention it, I suppose it has a bit.”

“Wicked,” she says. “I thought we’d had the last of the winter. We don’t want another season like we had last year.”

“Cold, was it?”

“Cold and miserable. It’s all right for the arcades and the
bingo and the pubs, but we’ve still got stuff out the back from last season.”

“Well,” I say, “let’s hope for a bit of sunshine, eh?”

“Yes,” she says. “Let’s hope.”

I tuck my newspaper under my arm and go out of the shop.

In the South I get the hero’s return from Jackie.

“Well,” he says, “hello stranger. Beginning to think you’d gone into hibernation. Mind you, couldn’t blame you, what with the weather.”

I tell him to take for himself, which he does with a fair amount of swiftness; he must have been dry for the whole week. While he’s getting his and mine, I notice he’s got a copy of the evening paper spread out on the counter, front page upwards. I look at the upside-down picture of the smash-up.

Jackie places the drinks on the counter and clocks me clocking the photograph.

“Nasty, isn’t it?” he says. “Still, there’s a bright side to everything; somebody’ll be getting a visit from the insurance people.”

“Yes,” I say to him. “Everything’s got two sides to it.”

THE SMOKE

“A
PART FROM ANYTHING ELSE
,” I said, “there is too much of Mickey committed to film and tape for him even to begin having nightmares about that kind of a deal; my thirty years would be his thirty years.”

James studied his brandy.

“All we can do is examine the facts.”

“There aren’t any.”

“Well,” said James, “to begin with—”

“To begin with, all else apart, he might be able to do a deal with Farlow and the Sheps. But this is Parsons’s case. And nobody, not even Jack Jones, can do a deal with Parsons.”

“George—” James began, but I cut him off.

“I know what you’re going to say; Jean apart, Mickey was the only one who knew we were having the investigation, the only one who knew we were on to Ray. He phoned her up, we went straight over. But he went to get the car out; he’d got time to make another, quicker, phone call.”

“That is one of the facts, yes.”

“So that the Sheps can take her over to Amsterdam and point her, us thinking Ray did her in, so that Parsons can blaze a trail to our front door. Behind which door is not only Jean and myself, but also Mickey. He gives us all to Parsons, including himself, just for the pleasure of having the next thirty years watching Farlow and the Sheps carve up our
operation, of which, I might add, he’s not exactly a minor shareholder.”

James drank some of his brandy, savoured it.

“That is all so,” he said. “But you are in the middle of an attempt to incriminate you. The biggest piece of evidence at the moment being Glenda, and only you and Mickey knew you were going to visit her.”

“Excepting,” I said, “excepting Ray.”

THE SEA

T
HE NAME OF THE
driver of the transit van is Malcolm Tunbridge, twenty-eight, of Marine View, Mablethorpe. Superficial injuries, released from hospital.

The name of the driver of the Escort was Ernest Emerson, garage proprietor, of High Street, Tealby. A widower.

The crossword-puzzle man’s name was Colin Hewitt, a sales representative, of Western Avenue, Grimsby. A wife survived him.

According to the driver of the transit van, who had been proceeding on his way from Mablethorpe to Grimsby, the accident had been down to the driver of the Cortina. He’d begun to overtake with plenty of time to make it past the transit van before the bend, but the Cortina had seemed to lose power as it drew level with the transit van and then the Escort appeared coming round the bend from the opposite direction, and then there’d been nothing anybody could do. Just before the collision the Cortina had bumped the van and the van had gone on to the verge and finally into the ditch.

The girl, the passenger in the Cortina, had yet to be identified.

Lucky for Malcolm Tunbridge, twenty-eight, of Marine View, Mablethorpe.

I look at the photograph again. In monochrome, the smash seemed to have a greater reality than when I’d actually seen it, the way that black-and-white movies used to appear more
realistic than those made in Technicolor. The blackness of the burnt-out metal looks much starker than it had in fact, made even more like crumbled charcoal by the rough grain of the photographic block. The number plate is diffused by the crudeness of the reproduction, but not enough to blur entirely the numbers and the letters; they’re still the same ones.

I fold the newspaper, photograph inwards, and drain my drink and get up and go over to the bar. Jackie refills us both and I’m just about to go back to my seat when Eddie comes in and makes it to the bar in about five seconds flat, the worries of his showbusiness world appearing to distract him even more than usual, but he’s not distracted enough to prevent him giving me the kind of welcome return I got from Jackie. I pay for his pint and, the formalities over, Jackie says to Eddie, “You’re in a mucksweat, aren’t you?”

“Too bloody right,” Eddie says. “We’ve got a gig at North Somercoates tonight and no bloody transport up to now.”

He nods at the newspaper that’s still lying on the bar.

“Thanks to that,” he says. “Jerry only lends it out for the afternoon, the silly bastard, and now look what happens.”

“It’s not written off, is it?” Jackie says.

“Oh, no, it’s not written off,” Eddie says. “It’ll only need a couple of hundred quid to put it right, that’s all. Which of course we haven’t got right at the moment.”

“So what are you going to do?” Jackie says.

“I’ve been running round trying to organise one,” Eddie says. “I’ve even tried persuading Cyril to let us have one of the Electricity Board ones.”

“Have you tried Grafton at Central Garage?”

“Yeah, I’ve tried him, the mean old sod. He wants fifty quid deposit apart from the hire.”

“Miserable old bugger.”

“Yeah,” he says. “As if what happened to the other van was something to do with me.”

THE SMOKE

J
EAN SAID
, “W
E
’
VE ALREADY
been through that one.”

“I know we have,” I said. “And I’ve been thinking. Supposing when she calls Ray, what better way can he think of to stop us proceeding too immediately in his direction than to do what we’re assuming the Sheps have done: leave Glenda in a showroom window, to slow us down a bit while the Law attempts to take its course.”

“It’s a thought,” said James. “But not one I would consider worth pursuing.”

“All right,” I said. “Let’s hear your contribution.”

“Well,” he said, adding some more brandy to his glass, “I would imagine that the Shepherdsons and Farlow are content to await developments following their initial contribution and leave Parsons to pick up anything else they’ve left around to be collected for your file.”

“Which could be just about anything.”

“Yes,” James said, “but I wouldn’t worry unduly. Even if it comes to you going into court, there’d be no case for you to answer. It would only be circumstantial, whatever was planted. In fact I’d quite enjoy a session with Parsons in the box.”

“Would you?” I said.

James smiled.

“I expect he’s already over there,” I said.

“It would help to know what the items were the Dutch police removed from Glenda’s room.”

“I talked to Pedersen,” I said. “He’s already doing what he can. He got on to his people in the department before Sven had even developed his snaps.”