Heartman: A Missing Girl, A Broken Man, A Race Against Time (24 page)

The way she asked the question made me realise that there was a stronger person hidden away than inside of her and that made me feel a little less anxious for her well-being.

“I don’t think I have any choice, from the sounds of tings . . . but just make sure you do as you said and be on the next train you can and git yourself long gone fo’ a while. Next time we speak, with any luck your life should be returning back to the way it was.”

I shot her a look that exuded the kind of confidence I knew she need to see, even if my insides couldn’t back up the outer sureness of my conviction. I took the handle of the sitting-room door in my hand and opened it slightly before turning back to Virginia Landry and smiling at her.

“Watch your back. You take care now . . . yes?”

“I’ll be careful . . . I promise. Thank you, Mr Ellington.”

“It’s Joseph . . . Call me Joseph.”

I nodded my head in farewell and walked out into the hall and made my way towards the front door to leave.

“Joseph . . .” Virginia Landry called after me weakly. “There’s someting I forgot to tell you, it’s about the young girl that was there with me, the one that never spoke down in that godawful place I was taken to.”

“Yeah . . . what’s that?”

“While those men held her in front of me, she was clutching hold of some sort of child’s cloth toy. Had it clasped to her chest like she would never let it go . . . no matter what.”

I stared down at the floor thinking for a moment, remembering the photograph I’d found back at Stella Hopkins’ place of a young child sitting on a man’s lap with the toy rabbit in her tiny hand. I shook my head gently from side to side as I thought of the man and the little girl in the picture, then swung open the front door and, without looking back or saying another word, I walked out into the street, closing myself off from the damaged soul inside and wishing there was more I could have done for her.

I walked back to the car, my guts churning and my head filled with the horrific images that had just been revealed to me. From its telling I felt dirty and selfishly craved the memory-purging burn of a stiff drink to flush away my thoughts of the women’s misery. I got into the Cortina and sat numb for a moment before sticking the key in the ignition and driving away, unaware of the two men who’d been on my tail since I’d left my digs earlier that morning who sat part hidden, parked in the driveway of a house across the road.

*

Before heading back to my place I stopped off at Cutman’s gym and left a message with its sweaty proprietor for Vic to meet me at the Speed Bird club later that night. I knew Vic would turn up, but I knew that arranging a get-together with my unpredictable cousin had to be based on the understanding that he’d turn up when he was good and ready. Vic didn’t believe in rushing for anybody unless you happened to be female, attractive and inviting him into your bed.

By the time I pulled up outside of my place on Gwyn Street it was after two thirty and I was nursing a headache and in a sombre mood. After grabbing the bags from the boot of the car containing the new clothes I’d bought myself, I trudged up the eight wet stone steps of the large Victorian two-storey property that I was still failing to call home. I opened up and came face to face with my elderly neighbour, Mrs Pearce. She had the kind of darkly welcoming expression on her face that you only see when calling on the services of an undertaker and it made me wish I’d chosen the pub to go back to rather than my pokey, cold rooms.

“Mr Ellington . . . I’ve had to take in a parcel for you.”

She looked towards me like I wasn’t there, refusing to make eye contact and shuffling nervously where she stood, keeping her distance in case she’d maybe catch something off of me.

“You have?”

I was as surprised to hear the news as she was put out in having to tell me it. I rarely received letter post, let alone a parcel.

“Just wait there.”

I did as I was told and watched as the mean-spirited old woman went back into her flat to retrieve my mail and returned a few moments later holding it cautiously at arm’s length in front of me. The expression on her face had gone from mildly disgruntled to deeply annoyed as she held a small package with the tips of her fingers.

“Is somebody sending you food parcels from wherever you came from?”

“Food parcels? No why?”

She was starting to get my back up. My head pounded and I just wanted to eat two aspirin, knock back the remaining half-bottle of Vic’s rum and sleep for the rest of the afternoon.

“Well, whatever is wrapped up in that box has gone off. I couldn’t have it stinking my hallway out, so it’s been sitting in the yard since it was delivered by a coloured gentleman this morning.”

“Coloured gentleman . . . so not the postman then?”

“Do you see any stamps stuck on that box, Mr Ellington? It was hand-delivered. I was out scrubbing down the front when he arrived. He asked if I’d seen you; I said that I hadn’t; he asked would I take it in and see that I gave it to you as soon as you returned. That’s what I’m doing now.”

She stuck out her arms towards me again with a violent shove, commanding that I unburden her of her responsibility. I took the box from her and my nostrils got a hit of the offending smell that she was wittering on about.

“Well, I’m grateful Mrs Pearce . . . Thank you.”

She snapped around on her heels and returned back to her now odour-free dwelling. I began to climb the stairs to my room when she shouted up to me.

“Just you see to your own deliveries in the future, Mr Ellington, I’m not your paid servant you know.”

I ignored her comment while thinking to myself that in the eyes of my neighbour, the only form of domestic servitude she’d truly approve of would be me being the toiling minion doing her bidding.

I dropped the bags containing my new clothes onto the floor in the hall and took the parcel into the kitchen, leaving it on the draining board. I took off my coat and hung it on the back of one of the dining chairs, then went into the bathroom and grabbed a couple of aspirin from the medicine cabinet. I filled up a glass of water from the kitchen tap and knocked back the two tablets, then took out the sharpest knife I owned from my poorly stocked cutlery drawer and carried the lightweight package over to the kitchen table and sat down. The parcel was no more than ten inches long and neatly wrapped in brown paper, held together with carrier’s string around its centre and with my name and address clearly printed across the top in blue ink. I cut the string and wrapped it around my hand, then threw it into the grey bin by the sink. I tore the paper from around the box and took the blade and cut along the Scotch tape that sealed the two adjoining lids of the packet and opened it up. A strong, overpowering smell of decay hit me, instantly making my eyes smart and my head jolt back. I peered back into the opened box: inside was a black velvet cloth, bunched up at its edges and tied with a short length of dark-red ribbon. I lifted the cloth out of the box with my finger and thumb and placed it on the table, then pulled at the ribbon drawstring to release the corners, letting it unfurl in front of me. There, splayed out across the sable fabric and carefully positioned either side of a chicken’s foot, were two pieces of human flesh. I had little doubt they were the bloodless, severed ears of Clarence Mayfield.

“Mr Ellington!”

It was my name being called from outside on the landing that broke me from an almost trance-like state as I stared at the sheared-off remains of the dead doorman. Mrs Pearce was screeching for me with all the vocal ferocity of a distressed jay whose fledgling had just fallen out of its nest. I quickly grabbed the cloth from off of my kitchen table and gingerly picked up the dismembered ears and chicken’s foot and dropped them back into the box, and stashed it out of plain sight in the cupboard under the kitchen sink. Then I went out onto the landing and stretched over the banister of the staircase and looked down to where my elderly neighbour stood just as the old woman hollered out for me again.

“Mr Ellington, are you there?”

“Yeah, I’m here . . . What’s the problem?”

“The problem is that I’m doing your donkey work for you again. You have a gentleman caller at the door.”

If it had been either Vic or Carnell down there, old Mrs Pearce would have reluctantly let them in and they’d have come straight on up to me. The fact it wasn’t immediately made me edgy.

“OK, thanks, Mrs Pearce, I’m on my way down, I’ll take it from here.”

I ran back into my kitchen and picked up the knife from table, then slid it through my belt, covering it with my shirt tail. As I walked nervously down the stairs towards the front door, I could hear the old girl mumbling to herself as she went back into her room. I reached the bottom step to find that she’d closed the front door on whoever it was calling on me; my fist clenched as I uneasily walked across the austere lobby and opened up.

“Your housekeeper seems a little tetchy this afternoon, Mr Ellington.”

Earl Linney stood in front of me, his impatience at being kept waiting outside etched on his irked face. He didn’t wait for me to ask him to come in and strode through into the hallway, then turned on me like a rabid dog.

“You better have some damn news for me,” the old Jamaican snapped.

“And it’s good to see you too, Mr Linney . . .”

I flashed a false grin towards my cantankerous employer. My headache continued to throb, and I was in no mood for the sarcasm and short temper of the alderman.

“I’m not here to make pleasantries and small talk with you, Ellington, just tell me what you’ve found out. I haven’t heard from you in days. What the hell’s been going on?”

He’d stopped addressing me as mister, so I assumed it was all downhill from there.

“You best come on up; we can talk with a little more privacy then.”

I cocked a sneer at Mrs Pearce, who I could clearly see was eavesdropping from a gap in her door. I made my way back up to my digs and could hear Linney following, his laboured gasps and heavy-footed gait buffeting the wooden panels of the stairs as we climbed the flight of steps. I waited at the top, then gestured with an outstretched arm for my crabby guest to enter my cold flat. I showed the alderman into my austere sitting room.

“Excuse me a moment. Why don’t you take a seat?” I went out to my kitchen, pulled the knife from my belt, returned it to the open cutlery drawer, slammed it shut and then called out to Linney.

“You want a drink?”

I tried to offer my hospitality in a civil tone, but it probably failed to convince.

“No. I have a meeting in Bristol at four thirty. Let’s get straight to the point: what have you got for me?”

When I returned to my unwelcome caller, I found he had decided to remain standing and was rubbing his hands together with his back towards my electric fire, which was switched off. I smiled to myself as I sat down in my armchair, thinking where to begin.

“A lot has happened since we last spoke and I’ve gone and opened up a big can of worms looking fo’ Stella. What I’ve found out ain’t pretty, but since you paying fo’ this you better brace yourself.”

“I’m not a weak man; don’t underestimate me, Ellington.”

“OK . . . I followed the information I got from Jocelyn Charles, the murdered prostitute, back to the shebeen on Richmond Road. I grilled the doorman of the place, a guy named Clarence Mayfield. He finally coughed up that he knew of some ‘special’ girls who didn’t normally work the streets and were perhaps being taken from the shebeen and delivered to some place out in the Somerset countryside. Mayfield contacted me the next time one of these girls was taken out there; that was last Saturday night. I hung around outside the joint and waited. Sure enough, a woman left with a big white dude: he turned out to be the copper who beat me with a slapjack after our private meeting up on Clifton downs. They got into a car all cosy and I followed it fo’ over sixty-odd miles to a crazy-named place near Taunton, called Cricket Malherbie . . . You ever heard of it?”

“No . . .” He barked out his reply and nodded at me to go on.

“I trailed them a short way outta the village to an old country house that’s owned by some legal big shot called Terrence Blanchard . . .”

“Terrence Blanchard, are you sure?”

I’d suddenly got Linney’s full attention. The alderman look startled and took a seat on my tatty sofa, looking up and waving his hand towards me to continue.

“Yeah . . . I’m sure. I had it confirmed to me by the local village padre. He gave me the rundown on who this Blanchard was and what he did. You know him?”

“Yes . . . We’ve met on a number of occasions at the council chambers. He’s the chair on the planning committee. I believe his family were prominent landowners and he still has substantial ownership of a number of land banks in and around the city. We had a disagreement some time back when I tried to buy land he owned in Bishopston for a housing project. I believe he scuppered the negotiations when he realised I’d be creating council housing for black folk like you, Ellington.”

I assumed by his “like you” jibe he meant anybody who didn’t bow down to his high and mighty posturing.

“What do you think the connection is between Blanchard and these ‘special’ girls that are taken there?”

“Well, I’m pretty sure he ain’t having ’em over fo’ tea and cakes.”

“Don’t be so bloody flippant . . . just tell me all you know . . . the facts!”

Linney rested himself back into my settee and exhaled deeply in irritation, waiting for me to go on.

“Well, I took a look around the outside of his place, I couldn’t see inside or who was in there. I heard loud music and at the rear of the building there was a lot of cash tied up in the flash vehicles his visitors had parked up behind the plush mansion he owns. I tried to get a closer look, but I met up with Blanchard’s security.”

“Security, by that you mean you were seen?”

Linney leant forward, agitation in his voice.

“No . . . I was attacked by a dog.”

I waited for Linney’s impatient annoyance to erupt a little more. I was starting to enjoy myself a little.