Read Hell Is Always Today Online
Authors: Jack-Higgins
Hell Is Always Today (2 page)
It had started to rain in the late evening, lightly at first, but increasing to a heavy, drenching downpour as darkness fell. A wind that, from the feel of it, came all the way from the North Sea, drove the rain before it across the roofs of the city to rattle against the enormous glass window that stood at one end of Bruno Faulkner’s studio.
The studio was a great barn of a room which took up the entire top floor of a five-storey Victorian wool merchant’s town house, now converted into flats. Inside a fire burned in a strangely mediaeval fireplace giving the only light, and on a dais against the window four great shapes, Faulkner’s latest commission, loomed menacingly.
There was a ring at the door bell and then another.
After a while, an inner door beyond the fireplace opened and Faulkner appeared in shirt and pants, a little dishevelled for he had been sleeping. He switched on the light and paused by the fire for a moment, mouth widening in a yawn. He was a large, rather fleshy man of thirty whose face carried the habitually arrogant expression of the sort of creative artist who believes that he exists by a kind of divine right. As the bell sounded again he frowned petulantly, moved to the door and opened it.
“All right, all right, I can hear you.” He smiled suddenly. “Oh, it’s you, Jack.”
The elegant young man who leaned against the wall outside, a finger held firmly against the bell push, grinned. “What kept you?”
Faulkner turned and Jack Morgan followed him inside and closed the door. He was about Faulkner’s age, but looked younger and wore evening dress, a light overcoat with a velvet collar draped across his shoulders.
He examined Faulkner dispassionately as the other man helped himself to a cigarette from a silver box and lit it. “You look bloody awful, Bruno.”
“I love you too,” Faulkner said and crossed to the fire.
Morgan looked down at the telephone which stood on a small coffee table. The receiver was off the hook and he replaced it casually. “I thought so. I’ve been trying to get through for the past couple of hours.”
Faulkner shrugged. “I’ve been working for two days non-stop. When I finished I took the phone off the hook and went to bed. What did you want? Something important?”
“It’s Joanna’s birthday, or had you forgotten? She sent me to get you.”
“Oh, my God, I had—completely. No chance that I’ve missed the party I suppose?”
“I’m afraid not. It’s only eight o’clock.”
“Pity. I suppose she’s collected the usual bunch of squares.” He frowned suddenly. “I haven’t even got her a present.”
Morgan produced a slim leather case from one pocket and threw it across. “Pearl necklace…seventy-five quid. I got it at Humbert’s and told them to put it on your account.”
“Bless you, Jack,” Faulkner said. “The best fag I ever had.”
He walked towards the bedroom door and Morgan turned to examine the figures on the dais. They were life-size, obviously feminine, but in the manner of Henry Moore’s early work had no individual identity. They possessed a curious group menace that made him feel decidedly uneasy.
“I see you’ve added another figure,” he said. “I thought you’d decided that three was enough?”
Faulkner shrugged. “When I started five weeks ago I thought one would do and then it started to grow. The damned thing just won’t stop.”
Morgan moved closer. “It’s magnificent, Bruno. The best thing you’ve ever done.”
Faulkner shook his head. “I’m not sure. There’s still something missing. A group’s got to have balance…perfect balance. Maybe it needs another figure.”
“Surely not?”
“When it’s right, I’ll know. I’ll feel it and it’s not right yet. Still, that can wait. I’d better get dressed.”
He went into the bedroom and Morgan lit a cigarette and called to him, “What do you think of the latest Rainlover affair?”
“Don’t tell me he’s chopped another one? How many is that—four?”
Morgan picked up a newspaper that was lying on a chair by the fire. “Should be in the paper.” He leafed through it quickly and shook his head. “No, this is no good. It’s yesterday evening’s and she wasn’t found till nine o’clock.”
“Where did it happen?” Faulkner said as he emerged from the bedroom, pulling on a corduroy jacket over a polo neck sweater.
“Not far from Jubilee Park.” Morgan looked up and frowned. “Aren’t you dressing?”
“What do you call this?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Who for, that bunch of stuffed shirts? Not on your life. When Joanna and I got engaged she agreed to take me exactly as I am and this is me, son.” He picked up a trenchcoat and draped it over his shoulders. “I know one thing, I need a drink before I can face that lot.”
“There isn’t time,” Morgan said flatly.
“Rubbish. We have to pass The King’s Arms don’t we? There’s always time.”
“All right, all right,” Morgan said. “I surrender, but just one. Remember that.”
Faulkner grinned, looking suddenly young and amiable and quite different. “Scouts’ honour. Now let’s get moving.”
He switched off the light and they went out.
When Faulkner and Morgan entered the saloon bar of The King’s Arms it was deserted except for the landlord, Harry Meadows, a genial bearded man in his mid-fifties, who leaned on the bar reading a newspaper. He glanced up, then folded the newspaper and put it down.
“’Evening, Mr. Faulkner…Mr. Morgan.”
“’Evening, Harry,” Faulkner said. “Two double brandies.”
Morgan cut in quickly. “Better make mine a single, Harry. I’m driving.”
Faulkner took out a cigarette and lit it as Meadows gave two glasses a wipe and filled them. “Quiet tonight.”
“It’s early yet,” Morgan said.
Meadows pushed the drinks across. “I won’t see many tonight, you mark my words.” He turned the newspaper towards them so that they could read the headline
Rainlover strikes again
. “Not with this bastard still on the loose. Every time it rains he’s at it. I’d like to know what the bloody police are supposed to be doing.”
Faulkner swallowed some of his brandy and looked down at the newspaper. “The Rainlover—I wonder which bright boy dreamed that one up.”
“I bet his editor gave him a fifty-pound bonus on the spot.”
“He’s probably creeping out at night every time it rains and adding to the score personally, just to keep the story going.” Faulkner chuckled and emptied his glass.
Meadows shook his head. “It gives me the shakes, I can tell you. I know one thing…you won’t find many women on the streets tonight.”
Behind them the door swung open unexpectedly and a young woman came in. She was perhaps nineteen or twenty and well made with the sort of arrogant boldness about the features that many men like, but which soon turns to coarseness. She wore a black plastic mac, a red mini-skirt and knee-length leather boots. She looked them over coolly, unbuttoning her coat with one hand, then sauntered to the other end of the bar and hoisted herself on to a stool. When she crossed her legs, her skirt slid all the way up to her stocking tops. She took a cheap compact from her bag and started to repair the rain damage on her face.
“There’s someone who doesn’t give a damn for a start,” Faulkner observed.
Morgan grinned. “Perhaps she doesn’t read the papers. I wonder what the Rainlover would do to her?”
“I know what I’d like to do to her.”
Meadows shook his head. “Her kind of custom I can do without.”
Faulkner was immediately interested. “Is she on the game then?”
Meadows shrugged. “What do you think?”
“What the hell, Harry, she needs bread like the rest of us. Live and let live.” Faulkner pushed his glass across. “Give her a drink on me and I’ll have a re-fill while you’re at it.”
“As you say, Mr. Faulkner.”
He walked to the other end of the bar and spoke to the young woman who turned, glanced briefly at Faulkner, then nodded. Meadows poured her a large gin and tonic.
Faulkner watched her closely and Morgan tapped him on the shoulder. “Come on now, Bruno. Don’t start getting involved. We’re late enough as it is.”
“You worry too much.”
The girl raised her glass and he toasted her back. She made an appealing, rather sexy picture sitting there on the high stool in her mod outfit and he laughed suddenly.
“What’s so funny?” Morgan demanded.
“I was just thinking what a sensation there would be if we took her with us.”
“To Joanna’s party? Sensation isn’t the word.”
Faulkner grinned. “I can see the look on Aunt Mary’s weatherbeaten old face now—the mouth tightening like a dried prune. A delightful thought.”
“Forget it, Bruno,” Morgan said sharply. “Even you couldn’t get away with that.”
Faulkner glanced at him, the lazy smile disappearing at once. “Oh, couldn’t I?”
Morgan grabbed at his sleeve, but Faulkner pulled away sharply and moved along the bar to the girl. He didn’t waste any time in preliminaries.
“All on your own then?”
The girl shrugged. “I’m supposed to be waiting for somebody.” She had an accent that was a combination of Liverpool and Irish and not unpleasant.
“Anyone special?”
“My fiancé.”
Faulkner chuckled. “Fiancés are only of secondary importance. I should know. I’m one myself.”
“Is that a fact?” the girl said.
Her handbag was lying on the bar, a large and ostentatious letter G in one corner bright against the shiny black plastic. Faulkner picked it up and looked at her enquiringly.
“G for…?”
“Grace.”
“How delightfully apt. Well, G for Grace, my friend and I are going on to a party. It occurred to me that you might like to come with us.”
“What kind of a party?”
Faulkner nodded towards Morgan. “Let’s put it this way. He’s dressed for it, I’m not.”
The girl didn’t even smile. “Sounds like fun. All right, Harold can do without it tonight. He should have been here at seven-thirty anyway.”
“But you weren’t here yourself at seven-thirty, were you?”
She frowned in some surprise. “What’s that got to do with it?”
“A girl after my own heart.” Faulkner took her by the elbow and moved towards Morgan who grinned wryly.
“I’m Jack and he’s Bruno. He won’t have told you that.”
She raised an eyebrow. “How did you know?”
“Experience…mostly painful.”
“We can talk in the car,” Faulkner said. “Now let’s get moving.”
As they turned to the door, it opened and a young man entered, his hands pushed into the pockets of a hip-length tweed coat with a cheap fur collar. He had a narrow white face, long dark hair and a mouth that seemed to be twisted into an expression of perpetual sullenness.
He hesitated, frowning, then looked enquiringly at the girl. “What gives?”
Grace shrugged. “Sorry, Harold, you’re too late. I’ve made other arrangements.”
She took a single step forward and he grabbed her arm. “What’s the bloody game?”
Faulkner pulled him away with ease. “Hands off, sonny.”
Harold turned in blind rage and swung one wild punch that might have done some damage had it ever landed. Faulkner blocked the arm, then grabbed the young man’s hand in an aikido grip and forced him to the ground, his face remaining perfectly calm.
“Down you go, there’s a good dog.”
Grace started to laugh and Harry Meadows came round the bar fast. “That’s enough, Mr. Faulkner. That’s enough.”
Faulkner released him and Harold scrambled to his feet, face twisted with pain, something close to tears in his eyes.
“Go on then, you cow,” he shouted. “Get out of it. I never want to see you again.”
Grace shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
Faulkner took her by the arm and they went out laughing. Morgan turned to Meadows, his face grave. “I’m sorry about that.”
Meadows shook his head. “He doesn’t change, does he, Mr. Morgan? I don’t want to see him in here again—okay?”
Morgan sighed helplessly, turned and went after the others and Meadows gave some attention to Harold who stood nursing his hand, face twisted with pain and hate.
“You know you did ask for it, lad, but he’s a nasty piece of work that one when he gets started. You’re well out of it. Come on, I’ll buy you a drink on the house.”
“Oh, stuff your drink, you stupid old bastard,” Harold said viciously and the door swung behind him as he plunged wildly into the night.
Detective Sergeant Nicholas Miller was tired and it showed in his face as he went down the steps to the tiled entrance hall of the Marsden Wing of the General Infirmary. He paused to light a cigarette and the night sister watched him for a moment before emerging from her glass office. Like many middle-aged women she had a weakness for handsome young men. Miller intrigued her particularly for the dark blue Swedish trenchcoat and continental raincap that gave him a strange foreign air which was hardly in keeping with his profession. Certainly anything less like the conventional idea of a policeman would have been hard to imagine.
“How did you find Mr. Grant tonight?” she asked as she came out of her office.
“Decidedly restless.” Miller’s face was momentarily illuminated by a smile of great natural charm. “And full of questions.”
Detective Superintendent Bruce Grant, head of the city’s Central C.I.D., had been involved in a car accident earlier in the week and now languished in a hospital bed with a dislocated hip. Misfortune enough considering that Grant had been up to his ears in the most important case of his career. Doubly unfortunate in that it now left in sole charge of the case Detective Chief Superintendent George Mallory of Scotland Yard’s Murder Squad, the expert his superiors had insisted on calling in, in response to the growing public alarm as the Rainlover still continued at large.
“I’ll tell you something about policemen, Sister,” Miller said. “They don’t like other people being brought in to handle things that have happened on their patch. To an old hand like Bruce Grant, the introduction of Scotland Yard men to a case he’s been handling himself is a personal insult. Has Mallory been in today, by the way?”
“Oh yes, but just to see Inspector Craig. I don’t think he called in on Superintendent Grant.”
“He wouldn’t,” Miller said. “There’s no love lost there at all. Grant’s one satisfaction is that Craig was in the car with him when the accident happened which leaves Mallory on his own in the midst of the heathen. How is Craig?”
“Poorly,” she said. “A badly fractured skull.”
“Serves him right for coming North.”
“Now then, Sergeant, I was a Londoner myself twenty years ago.”
“And I bet you thought that north of High Barnet we rolled boulders on to travellers as they passed by.”
He grinned wickedly and the night sister said, “It’s a change to see you smile. They work you too hard. When did you last have a day off?”
“A day? You must be joking, but I’m free now till six a.m. As it happens, I’ve had an invitation to a party, but I’d break it for you.”
She was unable to keep her pleasure at the compliment from showing on her pleasant face and gave him a little push. “Go on, get out of it. I’m a respectable married woman.”
“In that case I will. Don’t do anything I would.” He smiled again and went out through the swing doors.
She stood there in the half-light, listening to the sound of the car engine dwindle into the distance, then turned with a sigh, went back into her office and picked up a book.
Nick Miller had met Joanna Hartmann only once at a dinner party at his brother’s place. The circumstances had been slightly unusual in that he had been in bed in his flat over the garage block at the rear of the house when his brother had arrived to shake him back to reality with the demand that he get dressed at once and come to dinner. Miller, who had not slept for approximately thirty hours, had declined with extreme impoliteness until his brother indicated that he wished him to partner a national television idol who had the nation by the throat twice-weekly as the smartest lady barrister in the game. It seemed that her fiancé had failed to put in an appearance, which put a completely different complexion on the whole thing. Miller had got dressed in three minutes flat.
The evening had been interesting and instructive. Like most actresses, she had proved to be not only intelligent, but a good conversationalist and for her part she had been intrigued to discover that her host’s handsome and elegant younger brother was a policeman.
A pleasant evening, but nothing more, for a considerable amount of her conversation had concerned her fiancé, Bruno Faulkner the sculptor, who had followed her north when she had signed to do her series for Northern Television and Nick Miller was not a man to waste his time up blind alleys.
Under the circumstances her invitation was something of a surprise, but it had certainly come at the right moment. A little life and laughter was just what he needed. Something to eat, a couple of stiff drinks and then home to bed or perhaps to someone else’s? You never knew your luck where show people were concerned.
She had the top flat in Dereham Court, a new luxury block not far from his own home and he could hear cool music drifting from a half-open window as he parked the green Mini-Cooper and went up the steps into the hall.
She opened the door to him herself, a tall, elegant blonde in a superb black velvet trouser suit who looked startlingly like her public image. When she greeted him, he might have been the only person in the world.
“Why, Nick, darling, I was beginning to think you weren’t going to make it.”
He took off his coat and cap and handed them to the maid. “I nearly didn’t. First evening off for a fortnight.”
She nodded knowingly. “I suppose you must be pretty busy at the moment.” She turned to the handsome greying man who hovered at her elbow, a glass in one hand. “Nick’s a detective, Frank. You’ll know his brother, by the way. Jack Miller. He’s a director of Northern Television. This is Frank Marlowe, my agent, Nick.”
Marlowe thawed perceptibly. “Why, this is real nice,” he said with a faint American accent. “Had lunch with your brother and a few people at the Midland only yesterday. Let me get you a drink.”
As he moved away, Joanna took Miller’s arm and led him towards a white-haired old lady in a silver lamé gown who sat on a divan against the wall watching the world go by. She had the face of the sort of character actress you’ve seen a thousand times on film and television and yet can never put a name to. She turned out to be Mary Beresford, Joanna’s aunt, and Miller was introduced in full. He resisted an insane impulse to click his heels and kiss the hand that she held out to him, for the party was already turning out to be very different from what he had imagined.
That it was a very superior sort of soirée couldn’t be denied, but on the whole, the guests were older rather than younger, the men in evening wear, the women exquisitely gowned. Certainly there were no swinging young birds from the television studios in evidence—a great disappointment. Cool music played softly, one or two couples were dancing and there was a low murmur of conversation.
“What about the Rainlover then, Sergeant Miller?” Mary Beresford demanded.
The way she said sergeant made him sound like a lavatory attendant and she’d used the voice she kept for grand dowager parts.
“What about him?” he said belligerently.
“When are you going to catch him?” She said it with all the patience of an infant teacher explaining the school rules to a rather backward child on his first day. “After all, there are enough of you.”
“I know, Mrs. Beresford,” Miller said. “We’re pretty hot on parking tickets, but not so good on maniacs who walk the streets on wet nights murdering women.”
“There’s no need to be rude, Sergeant,” she said frostily.
“Oh, but I’m not.” Behind him Joanna Hartmann moved in anxiously, Frank Marlowe at her shoulder. Miller leaned down and said, “You see the difficulty about this kind of case is that the murderer could be anyone, Mrs. Beresford. Your own husband—your brother even.” He nodded around the room. “Any one of the men here.” There was an expression of real alarm on her face, but he didn’t let go. “What about Mr. Marlowe, for instance?”
He slipped an edge of authority into his voice and said to Marlowe, “Would you care to account for your movements between the hours of eight and nine last night, sir? I must warn you, of course, that anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence.”
Mary Beresford gave a shocked gasp, Marlowe looked decidedly worried and at that precise moment the record on the stereogram came to an end.
Joanna Hartmann grabbed Miller’s arm. “Come and play the piano for us.” She pulled him away and called brightly over her shoulder to Marlowe who stood there, a drink in each hand, mouth gaping. “He’s marvellous. You’d swear it was Oscar Peterson.”
Miller was angry, damned angry, but not only at Mary Beresford. She couldn’t help being the woman she was, but he was tired of the sort of vicious attack on the police that met him every time he picked up a newspaper, tired of cheap remarks and jibes about police inefficiency from members of the public who didn’t seem to appreciate that every detective who could be spared had been working ninety to a hundred hours a week since the Rainlover had first killed, in an attempt to root him out. But how did you find one terrifyingly insane human being in a city of three-quarters of a million? A man with no record, who did not kill for gain, who did not even kill for sexual reasons. Someone who just killed out of some dark compulsion that even the psychiatrists hadn’t been able to help them with.
The piano was the best, a Bechstein grand and he sat down, swallowed the double gin and tonic that Marlowe handed him and moved into a cool and complicated version of “The Lady Is a Tramp.” One or two people came across to stand at the piano watching, because they knew talent when they heard it and playing a good jazz piano was Miller’s greatest love. He moved from one number into another. It was perhaps fifteen minutes later when he heard the door bell chime.
“Probably Jack and Bruno,” Joanna said to Marlowe. “I’ll get it.”
Miller had a clear view of the door as she crossed the room. He looked down at the keyboard again and as he slowed to the end of his number, Mary Beresford gave a shocked gasp.
When Miller turned, a spectacularly fleshy-looking young tart in black plastic mac, mini-skirt and knee-length leather boots stood at the top of the steps beside the maid who had apparently got to the door before Joanna. A couple of men moved into the room behind her. It was pretty obvious which was Bruno Faulkner from what Miller had heard, and it was just as obvious what the man was up to as he helped the girl off with her coat and looked quickly around the room, a look of eager expectancy on his face.
Strangely enough it was the girl Miller felt sorry for. She was pretty enough in her own way and very, very nubile with that touch of raw cynicism common to the sort of young woman who has slept around too often and too early. She tilted her chin in a kind of bravado as she looked about her, but she was going to be hurt, that much was obvious. Quite suddenly Miller knew with complete certainty that he didn’t like Bruno Faulkner one little bit. He lit a cigarette and started to play—“Blue Moon.”
Of course Joanna Hartmann carried it all off superbly as he knew she would. She walked straight up to Faulkner, kissed him on the cheek and said, “Hello, darling, what kept you?”
“I’ve been working, Joanna,” Faulkner told her. “But I’ll tell you about that later. First, I’d like you to meet Grace. I hope you don’t mind us bringing her along.”
“Of course not.” She turned to Grace with her most charming smile. “Hello, my dear.”
The girl stared at her open-mouthed. “But you’re Joanna Hartmann. I’ve seen you on the telly.” Her voice had dropped into a whisper. “I saw your last film.”
“I hope you enjoyed it.” Joanna smiled sweetly at Morgan. “Jack, be an angel. Get Grace a drink and introduce her to one or two people. See she enjoys herself.”
“Glad to, Joanna.” Morgan guided the girl away expertly, sat her in a chair by the piano. “I’ll get you a drink. Back in a jiffy.”
She sat there looking hopelessly out of place. The attitude of the other guests was what interested Miller most. Some of the women were amused in a rather condescending way, others quite obviously highly indignant at having to breathe the same air. Most of the men on the other hand glanced at her covertly with a sort of lascivious approval. Morgan seemed to be taking his time and she put a hand to her hair nervously and tilted her chin at an ageing white-haired lady who looked her over as if she were a lump of dirt.
Miller liked her for that. She was getting the worst kind of raw deal from people who ought to know better, but seldom did, and she was damned if she was going to let them grind her down. He caught her eye and grinned. “Anything you’d like to hear?”
She crossed to the piano and one or two people who had been standing there moved away. “What about ‘St. Louis Blues?’” she said. “I like that.”
“My pleasure. What’s your name?”
“Grace Packard.”
He moved into a solid, pushing arrangement of the great jazz classic that had her snapping her fingers. “That’s the greatest,” she cried, eyes shining. “Do you do this for a living?”
He shook his head. “Kicks, that’s all. I couldn’t stand the kind of life the pro musicians lead. One-night stands till the early hours, tour after tour and all at the union rate. No icing on that kind of cake.”
“I suppose not. Do you come here often?”
“First time.”
“I thought so,” she grinned with a sort of gamin charm. “A right bunch of zombies.”
Morgan arrived with a drink for her. She put it down on top of the piano and clutched at his arm. “This place is like a morgue. Let’s live it up a little.”
Morgan didn’t seem unwilling and followed her on to the floor. As Miller came to the end of the number someone turned the stereogram on again, probably out of sheer bloody-mindedness. He wasn’t particularly worried, got to his feet and moved to the bar. Joanna Hartmann and Faulkner were standing very close together no more than a yard from him and as he waited for the barman to mix him a large gin and tonic, he couldn’t help but overhear their conversation.
“Always the lady, Joanna,” Faulkner said. “Doesn’t anything ever disturb your poise?”
“Poor Bruno, have I spoiled your little joke? Where did you pick her up, by the way?”
“The public bar of The King’s Arms. I’d hoped she might enliven the proceedings. At least I’ve succeeded in annoying Frank from the look on his face. Thanks be for small mercies.”
