Heartman: A Missing Girl, A Broken Man, A Race Against Time (13 page)

I picked up the Cortina from outside of Pearl and Gabe’s, reminding myself as I started up the engine that I needed to pay them a visit real soon after not turning up for dinner last Wednesday evening. I drove the two miles out of St Pauls into the centre of Bristol, parking up close to the city’s cathedral on Deanery Road, and found a phone box to make my call to the alderman.

The red iron and glass-framed phone box stank of piss and lord knows what else as I dialled the second of the two numbers on the slip of paper that Linney had given me. It rang six or seven times, before the pips sounded in my ear to tell me that my call was being answered. I pressed a coin into the slot to pay and was then greeted by a woman’s voice.

“Hello, Bristol 8424.” A warm, richly lilting Caribbean voice, which was akin to my own deceased mama’s, threw me off kilter for a moment and I stood silent for a moment. “Bristol 8424, can I help you?” the woman repeated.

“Can I speak to Mr Linney please?”

This time it was my turn to hear silence on the other end of the line. She finally replied, but had lost the warmth in her lyrical expression.

“Who’s calling, please?” Her tone had become more cautious, suspicious even.

“My name’s Ellington.” I kept it short and sweet. She didn’t sound like the kind of woman who wanted to get into a deep and meaningful conversation with me.

“I’ll just get him for you. One moment please.” I heard her put down the phone and walk away in heels onto a hard wood floor while I continued to stand in the cold with the smell of urine wafting up my nostrils. A few seconds later I heard a door close in the background before the alderman finally came to the phone and greeted my call with a disposition that was as chilly as the weather outside.

“Mr Ellington. I had expected to hear from you a little sooner.” Linney was his usual brusque self. It was good to hear that he’d missed me.

“Is that so? Well, I’m sorry ’bout that. I took a day’s bed rest after we last met and I’ve been chasing my tail in the snow doing what you asked me to,” I replied sourly.

“And you have reliable information for me?”

He was still keeping it to the point and his blunt manner towards me was really starting to wind me up.

“Yeah, and this job has brought me nuttin’ but grief up to now. We need to meet, today.”

“We do?” he asked, then fell silent again.

I wasn’t in the mood for any more of the councillor’s taciturnity. Thankfully, my growing ill-temper with the man was fortuitously held back when Linney finally spoke, giving me another of his to-the-point commands. I played along.

“Do you know Dundry Hill? I’ll meet you on Downs Road as you leave the village at four thirty sharp.”

He was about to do his favourite trick and have the last word, but I interrupted him, speaking back down the telephone before he had a chance to cut me off.

“Why in the name o’ hell you wanna meet up there I don’t know. But I’ll be there, Downs Road, four thirty on the dot, and Mr Linney . . .”

“Yes?” He snapped back at my audacity, surprised to be outmanoeuvred by such a hasty retort. I could hear his impatience on the other end of the line. I held off a moment longer, giving him a taste of his own medicine before I finished my sentence.

“Just make sure nobody knows you’re coming to meet me, and bring your wallet with you!”

I dropped the receiver into the cradle, smiled to myself and pushed open the door, taking in a noseful of clean air as I got out.

I needed to kill a little time before meeting Earl Linney later that afternoon, and my brief, uneasy telephone conversation with the man had left me feeling irritated and in need of a pint. It was a short distance up to the Hatchet Inn, which was busy with Saturday lunchtime trade. A group of men were crowded around the bar in a semicircle, each of them wearing a red and white scarf displaying their proud allegiance to Bristol City football club.

I pushed my way through them and waited patiently for the overworked barmaid to catch my eye and finally serve me. I ordered a pint of stout and the last cheese and onion cob, which sat on a covered plate next to a tired piece of pork pie on the back of the bar. A sign above the food read “Freshly Made”, though I wasn’t convinced and it didn’t give me a lot of confidence in my forthcoming lunch. But I was hungry, so I took my chances.

I paid up and found myself a seat in the snug area, took off my hat and coat, and quaffed over half of my drink before sitting down. I took a bite of the roll and wished I hadn’t. I dropped the stale sandwich onto the plate and pushed it across the table away from me, then washed the fusty taste out of my mouth with my ale. While I drank, I went over in my mind all that had happened in the last few days and the things I would tell Linney and, more importantly, what I was going to keep to myself. He knew more than he was letting on about Stella, so I had to play the wily old fox at his own game, gain some ground and try to come out of our next meeting knowing more than when I went into it. But it wasn’t going to be easy.

Alderman Linney had depicted Stella as a mild-mannered mute with little family and few friends, and who was rarely ever seen out, except to attend work or church, and she never ventured far from home. But then the last time she had been seen anywhere other than her usual haunts was by local hooker Jocelyn Charles in an illegal drinking dive with one of the nastiest pieces of work in the area, and she had left on the arm of a suspected crooked copper. So far I’d had the crap beaten out of me and nearly been run down by a police car, and Jocelyn had been found dead in a ditch less than twenty-four hours after giving me the information. I could now end up as a key suspect in her murder and I still didn’t know what the hell was going on.

I sat, thinking how I could play things with Linney, my drink in my hand, swilling the last inch of beer around the bottom of the pint tankard. I lifted it to my mouth and sank the last of the dark, toffee-tasting liquid and then stared down into the bottom of the empty glass. The memory of my first meeting with the well-connected politician came back to mind and I wished I’d never set eyes on the man or taken a penny of his lousy money.

The escarpment of Dundry Hill rises to over seven hundred feet and normally forms a green backcloth for the whole of the south of Bristol. Today those emerald downs were covered in a white blanket of snow, and my journey to meet Linney was hampered by the icy roads and my inexperience at driving in such treacherous conditions. Back home, we call Barbados Bim, and we don’t see too much snowfall on Bim. I shook all thoughts of my place of birth out of my head and concentrated on my driving. By the time I reached Dundry village and our meeting point, dusk was falling and the alderman was already waiting for me. He was sitting behind the wheel of his Austin Cambridge, which was parked on the side of the road with the car bonnet facing an impressive view that looked out across towards the city in the dimming light. I reluctantly got out of my car, pulled my coat collar up around my face and trudged through the snow towards Linney’s vehicle. As I got a little closer he flung open the passenger side door and impatiently called out to me.

“Come on, man. I’m losing all the heat in here with this damn door open for you.”

It was the kind of friendly greeting that really had me warming to him. I didn’t rush to get in, and when I finally did, I sat opposite him, rubbing my chilled hands vigorously before cupping them together and blowing warm air through them. Linney was dressed in a thick plaid winter coat, with a beige felt fedora hat neatly positioned on his head, so the peak fell over his right brow. I looked out through the partially misted-up windscreen at the lights that shone up from the buildings and homes below us.

“Quite a sight, even at this time of the day, don’t you think?”

His congenial question to me was unexpected, and despite the diminishing light I continued to hold my gaze on the view beneath us, unsure what to say. Linney went on talking, unfazed that I had not replied to his question.

“I intend to build houses down there. Lots of them, and I’m building them for those who are currently living in run-down properties that barely survived the Blitz. You got six, seven members of a family all sleeping in a one-bedroom tenement, and who can’t afford to pay the extortionate rents asked by greedy landlords, probably similar to your own, Mr Ellington.”

Linney was on his soapbox and, like all politicians, he wasn’t eager to get off.

“Did you know in between November 1940 and April of the next year the Nazi Luftwaffe dropped over 920,000 tons of bombs down there? They destroyed 82,000 homes and killed nearly 2,300 people. On the fourth of January 1941, Bristol suffered its longest raid: over twelve hours, they say. They even dropped an eight-foot bomb that never exploded. The disposal teams, who I’m told dug down over twenty-nine feet to retrieve it, nicknamed the monstrosity Satan. Amazing, don’t you think, that a city can suffer such devastation, and return from the brink of destruction to such glory?”

“Oh yeah, I’m seeing all that glory, brother, glowing down there in them streets right now. What’s your point?” I said sarcastically.

The old man went on, ignoring my question.

“On the thirteenth of February 1945, I was stationed at RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire, and part of the ground crew that loaded up some of the 4,000 tons of explosives that were dropped on Dresden in Germany over two nights of savage bombing. We tore the heart out of that city just as the enemy did to Bristol. I wonder if they managed to find an unexploded shell like they did down there and gave it a demonic title.” Linney was quiet for a moment before looking at me and continuing. “My point being, Mr Ellington, that we all need to give evil a name, don’t you think?”

He didn’t give me the chance to answer him.

“Now let’s hear this reliable information you have for me.”

I told him how I’d been followed by the mystery fellow after our previous meeting and about my subsequent beating by him with the slapjack and how I suspected that he was a member of the Bristol constabulary. Then there were the details of the sighting of Stella at the shebeen and my chat with Jocelyn Charles at the Speed Bird club. I needed to keep on my toes with Linney and quickly fired off my next question to him, aware of how the old man liked to play a game of cat and mouse on his terms.

“You know a man named Otis Grey, most people call him Papa?”

“No, never heard of him. Should I?”

The alderman was quick to make it clear he wasn’t acquainted with the Jamaican pimp. But it was too late: the look on his face had told me different.

“If you did, it would explain a lot. He’s the kinda man who has a fairly limited social circle. You’re not gonna meet him at the Rotary Club or Gospel Hall. Ting is, Stella was seen with him shortly before she went missing.”

“And you think this Otis Grey or whatever he’s called may have something to do with her disappearance?”

For the first time I saw Linney’s cool demeanour waver. His nerve unsteadied at the mention of Papa’s name, despite claiming he’d never heard of him.

“Could be, but I hope not fo’ Stella’s sake. From what I know of him, he’s bad through and through. He’s exists in the kinda world your Stella has no place being in. But it’s why she was with him that’s puzzling me. You t’row any light on that? Do you know if Stella had ever visited places like the shebeen?”

“Not to my knowledge, and as you only have the word of a two-a-penny call girl, it would be highly unlikely in my opinion. I’d treat Stella’s supposed sighting there very suspiciously.”

Linney was on the defensive and a little shaken by my questions, so I continued.

“Maybe so . . . but seeing as you said she barely left her house, its seems pretty damn strange to me that the only time she’s been seen was with hookers and a man like Papa in a clip joint.”

The councillor was shuffling uneasily in his seat and was tapping his index finger repeatedly on top of the dashboard. He’d lost some of his controlled composure, but I knew he was still holding out on me.

“You ever had problems with the police, given them cause to have you followed or me beaten up?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Why would the police need to follow me?”

Again, he was answering my questions by asking me one in return. I tried to remain calm, but his evasive manner was getting the better of me again.

“Is anybody into you fo’ anyting?” I asked abruptly.

“Into me, whatever do you mean?” the councillor snapped back at me in an equally abrupt manner.

“Blackmail, someting in your past you want left alone, perhaps somebody you gone an’ upset in a bidness deal, that kinda ting?”

“Of course not . . . What about the prostitute you questioned – can’t you buy more substantial information from her other than the tittle-tattle she told you about seeing Stella in a house of ill-repute?”

“Well, I could if she was alive. She was found with her throat cut the day after I spoke to her. Jocelyn was one of Papa’s girls, Mr Linney. I think it got back to him that I’d been talking to her, and she ended up being murdered fo’ her troubles.”

“Dear God . . .”

Linney slumped back into his seat, and for the first time since we’d met looked vulnerable. He put his hand to his mouth and gently rubbed at his chin while he thought. I remembered how before our meeting this evening I’d told myself that I needed to come away from my reluctant employer knowing more than he did and thought now was the time to chance my arm and see if I could get him to give me a little more.

“Does your wife know I’m working fo’ you, that I’m trying to locate Stella?”

“She does not . . . nor does she need to. The last few weeks have been trying enough for my wife. I would not wish her to be upset any further with the news that I have had to employ a disgraced former colonial police officer because our own constabulary appears not to be taking the child’s disappearance seriously.”

If he’d wanted to put me in my place, he’d done so with all the malice of a man who saw those in his hire as nothing more than foot soldiers. I considered myself told and bit into my bottom lip. I didn’t so much mind him calling me disgraced, it was the “colonial” remark that made my guts twitch. I wanted to smack him in his arrogant, self-satisfied mouth, but thought better of it and kept to my original plan to needle something extra out of the bastard. I had the weaker hand but it was time to play my best card.