Heartman: A Missing Girl, A Broken Man, A Race Against Time (32 page)

I was told that the charges against me would be dropped if I agreed that the fire at my home was the result of human error and that the deaths of both Ellie and Melia had been a tragic accident. My lengthy investigation into the drug kingpin and his organisation was to be closed. I was ordered to make a statement saying that I deeply regretted pursuing a long-time personal witch-hunt against a local businessman, namely Conrad Monroe. On top of that I had to hand in my resignation, losing the job I’d proudly held for over fifteen years, and get off the island on the next available boat.

The crooked bastards had got it all worked out and I’d had little choice other than to run with my tail between my legs. The alternative would have been to spend the next twenty years in a Bajan prison shacked up with many of the violent criminals who I had probably pinched.

On the long journey at sea, alone in one of the cramped shared cabins of a battered, rusting old freight ship that would eventually bring me to Great Britain, I thought of nothing other than vengeance and much how better I would have felt if I had been rotting away in a cell with Monroe’s blood on my hands. But at night, unable to sleep, the doubts crowded in thick and fast. An ex-copper locked up with mainline crooks: how long could I have lasted inside even if I’d kept my head down and my wits about me? Alone with my miserable thoughts, I continually asked myself whether the twenty-year sentence that I would have received for taking out the men who had murdered my loved ones would have been worth it. The answer was always the same: yes, I’d have happily done that lengthy stretch and been willing to have lived or died in jail if there had been the slightest chance to avenge my kin. Monroe and his minions would have been dead and that would have been the end of it, the score settled. But that was not to be; I had not been able to exact the kind of swift revenge my wife and daughter’s violent deaths had demanded, and the cowards who had murdered them would continue to hide behind the corrupt fellow police officers I had once worked with and be protected by the powerful drug lord who would continue to control them. I had tried and failed to do my duty as an honest police officer and in my failure I had paid the highest price.

Staring blankly into the fire in front of me, I thought about Stella Hopkins: could I save her? Had she already succumbed to the same vicious fate at the hands of ruthless men in the same way that Virginia Landry had? I sensed a tight knot develop in the pit of my stomach, and felt my throat tighten and the my fists instinctively clench as an overwhelming fury ascended from some place deep within me, and at that moment I swore that I would not be as restrained in seeking out those who had snuffed out Virginia Landry’s life so cruelly and that my retribution against them would be merciless.

*

Heavy sleet bounced off the windscreen as I sat in the Cortina across the road from the Speed Bird club and waited. Something I’d learnt many years ago was that patience was a police officer’s best friend and that the ability to attain a sense of forbearance when dealing with the criminal classes was a valuable partner. I didn’t know how far up the club’s owner, Elrod “Hurps” Haddon, was on the lawless ladder of crime or what his involvement with Papa Anansi, Stella and the deaths of two innocent woman was, but patience or not, I was damn sure I was going to find out.

The one fact I did know was that I’d seen old Hurps with the crooked copper who had given me a beating a couple of nights ago sheepishly sitting in a motor in almost the very same spot that I was now parked up in. I glanced at my wristwatch when I saw Elrod hauling his big butt down Grosvenor Road; it was just after seven thirty. My eyes skipped between the sweeping movement of the wiper blades that were knocking the slushy rain onto the pavement as Hurps Haddon fumbled in his coat pockets and finally drew out a big bunch of keys. I quickly got out of my car, pulled the old duffle-coat hood over my head and ran across the street while Hurps was unlocking the front door to the club, and stood close behind him as he opened up.

“How’s tings going, Hurps?” I called out to the burly landlord as the sleet pelted down in the street. He almost jumped out of his skin with surprise.

“Jesus . . . What the . . . Is that you, JT? What the hell you doin’ creeping up on my ass like that? You scared the shit outta me!”

“You look like you just seen the bogie man, Elrod . . . I was just passin’ by an’ seen you ’bout to open up your doors fo’ the night. Though I’d git myself a rum, try to warm up my bones.”

I moved closer towards him, rubbing my hands together and feigning a chill that tonight I didn’t feel.

“We ain’t serving till Dolores gits here, an’ I got my books to account fo’. Why don’t you come back later, I’ll git you a Mount Gay in; you tell that old bitch behind the bar it’s on me.”

He flashed a smile at me, turned and began to walk inside, his hand already on the edge of the frame, ready to slam the door in my face when he was safely behind it. I grabbed hold of the door just above where Hurps’ hand was and thrust the toe of my shoe hard into the back of his knee, bringing him down on to the floor and making him howl out in pain. I pushed my way in, slammed my fist into his neck and the side of his face a couple of times, then kicked his now hunched-up body further into the corner entrance so that I could close the door. Once it was shut, I fumbled around on the wall in front of me until I found the light switch. I flicked it on, then leant down and dragged Haddon off the floor, pulling him down the stairs by the collar of his heavy coat towards his empty bar.

“C’mon, brother, don’t git all mean on me. Now you can git me that drink; all that tussling round outside your gate door has given me one helluva thirst.”

Hurps gasped. “You bastard . . . Where the hell you git off tinking you can knock me ’bout outside my own place? If you got ideas ’bout robbing me, then you don’t know whose money you gonna be messin’ with, you stupid prick!”

“Take it easy, Hurps, only ting I’m interested in taking from you without paying fo’ is that shot o’ rum you just promised me now.”

I hauled his weighty carcass across the small dance floor, then slung him into one of his booths and watched his hefty arms and legs flail about as he desperately tried to right himself in the tired crimson leatherette seat.

“You sit yo’ ass still, while I git the drinks in.”

I strode back towards the bar, opened up the hatch and walked the length of the antique counter to pick up a bottle of Barbadian rum from off of the middle shelf. I noticed the cricket bat that Hurps always kept underneath the cash register in the event he ever had any trouble from a drunken punter. I grabbed for the bat and put it under my right arm, then lifted the bottle to my mouth and pulled off the stopper with my teeth, spitting it out on to the floor, taking a hefty swig as I made my way back towards where Hurps was sitting, rubbing at his aching knee. He looked up at me and at the bat under my arm and decided to get wise with me. It was a big mistake.

“What the fuck you think you gonna do wid that paddle?” he snarled at me. “You think I’m scared o’ you cus you used to run with the police back on that poxy island you got kicked offa? You start gittin’ rough wid me and you gonna wish you never set a foot t’ru my door!”

The sizeable ex-boxer squared up at me in his seat, then thought better of it: tough as he had once been, he was in no fit state to go head to head with me, and he knew it. He’d already seen the look of the devil in my eyes and gambled that his best bet was to make sure his oversized backside remained glued to his chair.

He thought he’d wagered well by not rough-housing with me, but his decision wasn’t going to do him any favours – no way was I going easier on him just because he’d backed down. I took another slug of the rum and sat the bottle down on the bench in front of Hurps, then pushed the curved end of the bat underneath the heavyweight’s massive double chin.

“I want you to tell me what you know ’bout a missing young woman called Stella Hopkins and why you been seen hanging round with the kinda jazzed-up lawmen that like to mix it up with whores and pimps?”

I released the pressure on his flabby gizzard to let him speak.

“I don’t know what the hell you talkin’ ’bout; you a damn’ fool. Why don’t you sling yo’ skanky pig hide outta my place befo’ I—”

He found a little courage and tried to defiantly raise himself up from where he was sitting, but I forced the end of the bat harder into the fat man’s throat, pushing him back down into his chair.

“Befo’ you do what? Start hollering out fo’ that pox-faced ponce who’s got you in his pocket? You hoping he’s gonna come and heave you outta the big pile o’ shit you got yourself into? How long you been in cahoots with ole Papa, Hurps?”

“Cahoots . . . What kinda shit is that? I ain’t got nuttin’ else to say to you, Ellington . . . Crazy talk ’bout me and whores, you stark raving mad . . . Take a hike!”

Hurps stared up at me insolently and lifted his head away from where I held the tip of the bat at his neck, then proceeded to drag a wad of snot from the back of his throat and spat it out in a huge globule of green phlegm at my feet.

“Now that ain’t polite.”

I lifted the bat and smashed it across Hurps’ right kneecap, making the chubby innkeeper scream out in agony. I raised the club above my head and let it hang menacingly above his skull.

“I ain’t fuckin’ about with you, Hurps,” I warned. “What you got going down with Papa Anansi and that bent copper? C’mon . . . I seen you and that crew-cutted blond fucker that calls himself a police officer sitting in the silver wheels he drives about in. You were having it up real good outside o’ the Speed Bird the other night. What was going down?”

“Noth—”

I snatched the bat back sharply, ready to bring the flat side of it around the back of the pudgy liar’s thick head.

“Papa brings his girls in here all the time . . . You know that, JT!”

“Cut with the ‘JT’ shit . . . I ain’t interested in making nice with you no more, Hurps, start giving me someting I don’t already know. Did he ever bring Stella Hopkins down here?”

“I don’t know . . .”

He began to lie to me again, but I was getting real sick of hearing his bullshit. I swiftly carved the bat through the air and slammed it down onto Hurps’ left shoulder blade, snapping his clavicle in two. The old boxer bellowed out an ear-splitting scream that echoed around the basement room and then disappeared into the dark obscurity of the night.

“I’m gonna ask you one last time, Elrod. Did Papa ever bring Stella Hopkins to your club? Now think hard befo’ you speak, because if you keep lying to me you’re gonna end up a cripple. You dig me?”

“You talkin’ ’bout that creepy deaf bitch?”

A smacked-up knee and a broken collarbone and he was still brainless enough to get mouthy with me.

“Oh, you really testing my patience, Hurps.”

I grabbed hold of one of his thick earlobes and yanked him up from where he sat, then heaved him back across the dance floor and shunted him into his precious bar.

“Did he bring her in here?”

I shouted so loudly at him that he covered his head with his arms and curled himself into a ball on the floor. I leant forward and wrenched him back to his feet, taking his jaw in my hand and squeezing it until the veins on either side of his temples looked like they were about to explode. The canny old prizefighter was starting to get the message.

“Yeah, yeah . . . He brought her in here just the one time, some time last month, I think. He was showing her off like some circus freak.”

“And where’d they go to after they left here?”

I squeezed a little harder into Hurps’ jaw and could feel his molars pressing onto the tips of my fingers from inside of his mouth.

“To his shebeen on Richmond Road, I suppose, same place he always takes those girls.”

“Those girls . . . what you mean by ‘those girls’?”

“Fuck it . . . No way, you had all you gonna git outta me, Ellington. You think I’m gonna dig my own grave spilling my guts out to you so that Papa can fill it in when you done with me? Shit man . . . you got another think coming, you think I’m that crazy?”

I took a hard look at the scared face of Elrod Haddon and knew that he was right. In my experience, there comes a point when a man who lives constantly in the company of true malevolence and now facing a new threat will seriously consider what he fears more: the demon he knows or the monster staring back at him. Tonight, for Hurps it was a simple case of the lesser of two evils, and I’d just crapped out. But I had one ace left up my sleeve. If you can’t hurt the skin and bones, hurt ’em in the pocket.

I wandered back round the bar and stood admiring the rows of expensive cut glass and lead crystal that were Hurps’ pride and joy and worth a pretty penny. They were neatly lined up on three shelves between the optics of martini, vodka, whisky and gin.

“This is some snazzy glassware you got here, Hurps.”

I lifted my arm, bat in hand, and brought it down on the first row of finely etched goblets, shattering them across the dance floor and across the back of Hurps’ head and neck.

“Oh you prick!”

I lifted the bat to start on the rest of Hurps’ chalices, to given him a chance to recant his last comment and tell me what I wanted to know. But something inside of my head snapped and I unleashed all my pent-up anger on the rest of the club owner’s precious collection, then started on the bottles of drinks and his beloved aged teak bar. Glass shards, alcohol, optic heads, bent-up metal and splinters of cracked wood were strewn all over the place. I finally flung the bat into the large glass mirror that hung as the centrepiece of the bar, then turned and grabbed Hurps by his lapels and heaved him close to me. The aged boxer finally submitted to the inevitable.

“Papa brings his special girls in here, the ones he picks to visit some white cats out in the sticks. He gets Warren to take ’em out there once they’re boozed up or as high as a kite.”

“Who the hell’s Warren?”

I shook the old prizefighter, bringing him closer towards me, slapping him hard across his face to keep him focussed and scared.