Jack Carter's Law (27 page)

Peter takes a sip of his drink and then looks at us all in turn, looking for a reflection of his reason.

“Well, I gave her a seeing to, didn’t I?” he says. “Same as anybody would.”

I look at him for a few moments. Then I turn away and walk over to the bedroom door and open it and the minute I open it there is a broken sound that is hardly loud enough to be called a sob.

At first I can’t see her. Then I hear the sound again and I realise it’s coming from the far side of the room, beyond the bed. I walk round the bed end and Lesley is lying
on the floor between the side of the bed and the wall. She has her face buried in the remains of her sweater. There are three or four bruises on her back but that is nothing to what I find when I turn her over. Her bottom lip is split completely and three of her top teeth are missing. One side of her face is the colour of charcoal and will soon be turning deep purple. She draws her knees up to her chest and tries to turn back to the position she was in before. I let go of her and stand up. Con is standing behind me and he looks down at the girl for a moment then he turns round and strides for the bedroom door. I hurry after him but I’m not quick enough to stop him taking hold of Peter and start putting a few on him. I drag Con off him and stand between the two of them.

“There’s no time,” I say to Con. “If there was time for that he wouldn’t have come back from Eddie’s.”

It takes a minute or two but finally Con manages to relax himself. I turn to Peter who by now is looking at his reflection in the long dark window and straightening himself up.

“Fucking bog Irish,” he says. “What about a few choruses of ‘Mother McChree?’ ”

I shake my head and as I do that there’s a scream from the bedroom and I go through and see Mallory standing at the end of the bed and instead of Lesley being curled up face down she is shuffling herself across the carpet and into the corner and staring at Mallory as if he’s about to take up where Peter left off. Mallory stoops down and stretches out a hand but she screams again and wriggles like a spitted eel and Mallory pulls his hand back as if he’s just been burned.

He straightens up and away from her and looks into my face and says, “Did it have to take that much?”

I don’t answer him.

“Or did you need the practice?”

“Getting brave in your old age, aren’t you, Derek?” I say to him. “And believe me, it is your old age.”

Mallory sits down on the end of the bed and at the same time Con comes into the room carrying a sponge and a towel.

“A good-looking piece like that,” he says to himself as he crosses the bedroom to where Lesley is. Mallory also seems to be talking to himself.

“She must have given you the lot before you got that far,” he’s saying. “There was no reason for her not to. No reason. She’d already got what she’d been offered.”

Con is now kneeling next to Lesley and beginning to go to work on her like a trainer and although she’s
staring at him the way she stared at Mallory she seems to be accepting Con’s ministering. But my observation of this touching scene is beside the point. What I’m concentrating on are the words that are coming out of Mallory’s mouth.

“Hang on,” I say to Mallory. “What are you going on about? Peter gave her the seeing to.”

“Of course,” Mallory says. “That’s why he’s here.”

“She tried to get out of it. You heard what happened.”

Mallory’s hearing seems to start functioning again.

“What?” he says.

“The girl made a break. Peter brought her back.”

Mallory looks at me and I look at him and I get the weird feeling that Mallory’s expression is a precise mirror image of my own because his jaw is low with disbelief and his eyes are reflecting my own furious concentration.

I walk over to him and sit next to him on the bed and take hold of the front of his coat.

“Now then,” I say to him. “What are you talking about?”

He starts to shake his head and I start to shake the rest of him.

“What she was offered,” I say to him. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Mallory raises his arms and gently places his hands on mine and the way he does it causes me to stop shaking him and let go. Beyond his shoulder I can see that although Con is still dabbing away at Lesley’s face he’s focusing his concentration on Mallory and myself. Mallory passes a hand across his eyes and then slowly heaves himself up off the bed and walks out of the bedroom and then comes back carrying his briefcase. He stops in front of me and opens the case and takes out a Manila file tied up with crimson ribbon. He puts the case down on the bed and unties the crimson ribbon and riffles through the file until he finds a small white letter-size envelope. He looks at it for a moment and then he throws it onto the bed. I stretch out my hand and pick up the envelope. It isn’t sealed so I flick open the flap and take out the contents of the envelope.

There are about a dozen postcard-size photographs and a cellophane packet containing some negatives. I look at the photographs. They are photographs of a man and a woman and they are doing all sorts of imaginative things to one another. For instance, in one photograph the girl is lying on a bed and has her wrists handcuffed together and the man, still fully dressed, is taking her clothes off, but not in the usual way; the clothes are being torn to shreds. Perhaps the man in the photograph is in a hurry. In another of the photographs the man is pushing the girl’s face down into the quilt and in his free hand he is holding a thin cane with which he is beating the girl’s bottom. And in another photograph the girl is kneeling on the floor, her hands now cuffed behind her back, and the man is sitting on the bed and grasping bunches of the girl’s hair and pulling her down on him. The photographs are literally six of one and half a dozen of the other because half of them involve a reversal of roles in which the girl has the cane and the man is wearing the handcuffs and it is the girl who is pulling off the man’s clothes, not tearing them, of course, because the suit is an expensive one and the shirt is handmade. And as I go through the photographs I am struck by my familiarity with the man and the woman and with their surroundings. Which is not surprising, as the bed I’m sitting on features prominently in most of the photographs and the girl is at present having her face repaired by Con McCarty.

Mallory sits down beside me on the bed.

“Walter’s insurance,” he says. “They had me set it up. The girl, this place. Everything.”

Con stands up and walks round to our side of the bed.

“What’s going on?” he says.

I look up at Con and then I hand him the photographs. He glances at the first one and then his eyelids flicker and he looks at me for a moment then moves on to the next photograph.

Mallory says, “You know what Walter’s like. He wanted to have the edge. He was going to let him see the prints after Christmas, to let him know there was never any point in crossing Walter and Eddie at a later date.”

While Mallory’s talking Con begins to laugh, quietly at first, but the further he gets through the photographs the louder his laugh becomes and his laughter attracts Peter who appears in the doorway, holding his drink. Con continues laughing and Peter drifts over from the doorway and looks over Con’s shoulder and then, like Con did, he shoots a quick glance at me and then maneuvers himself into a better position to see the photographs. Eventually Con stops laughing long enough for him to get some words out.

“Jesus Christ,” he says. “What was it I said the other night? You can walk on the water?”

“I don’t get it,” Peter says, taking the pictures from Con. “This is—”

“We know,” I tell him. “We fucking know.”

“Jack the fucking Lad. All the time we’ve been charging all over the place and it was here. Right here.”

“We didn’t know that, did we?”

“Oh no, we didn’t know that, did we. But you’re Jack Carter, aren’t you? And Jack Carter knows every fucking think there is to know, doesn’t he? Or so he’s always saying.”

“Shut it.”

“And the other thing, what was it? We’ll be safe here. He won’t be back. Supposing he’d come back for another session? Jesus fucking Christ.”

“All right. I know. Now shut it.”

“Supposing she’d shopped us? Supposing she’d given us to him?”

“Well, she didn’t get the chance, did she? And besides, she didn’t know what was going on. She’d no reason to connect us with him.”

I get up off the bed and go out of the bedroom and start making myself a drink. Con follows me out.

“I mean, this is really one for the
Guinness Book of Records
,
this one. Jack the Lad. Shacked up with all we need to sort the situation and he doesn’t fucking know it.”

I take a sip of my drink.

“Well, we know now, don’t we?” I say.

Peter comes out of the bedroom, still looking at the photographs.

“I don’t get it,” he says. “What’s Hume doing with this slag?”

--

Hume

I
DRIVE ROUND AND
round the island where the tube station is and after the second time I see Hume standing near the newsstand and after the fifth time I’m sure Hume has stuck to the conditions so I slow down and pull in to the curb, not quite coming to a standstill, and almost immediately Hume steps forward and opens the door and gets in and I pull away from the curb. I cross into the outer ring of traffic and take the first left and then some more lefts until I’m back on the roundabout again and this time my left turn is exactly opposite to the first one I took. Neither of us says anything to each other. Hume takes out his cigarettes and lights one up and I light up one of my own and I carry on driving until we’ve almost finished our cigarettes and then I pull into a side street just behind the Earls Court Road and park underneath the light of a streetlamp. After I’ve switched off the ignition I roll my window down and throw out my cigarette.

We sit there in silence for a few minutes and then Hume says, “So what’s your deal?”

“My deal?” I say, all innocent, looking forward to the next five minutes.

“Don’t shoot shit,” Hume says. “You call me up and tell me you can give me the Fletchers, so you want to make a deal. You want me to leave you out of it. And while I’m lifting Gerald and Les you’re over the sea to Skye.”

I don’t say anything.

“You make me sick,” he says. “All you fucking heroes. Underneath it all you’re all the fucking same.”

“I suppose you’re right, Mr. Hume,” I say.

“Don’t come it,” he says. “You’re in no position to give me that kind of crap.”

I don’t say anything.

“I really want the Fletchers,” he says. “Lifting them will do me no end of good. But the thing is I’d like to take you just as much. Only you’re not quite so famous as the other two. That’s the only reason I’m even considering your scabby little deal.”

“I realise that,” I say, lighting up another cigarette. Then, almost as an afterthought, I say, “Oh, by the way. Eddie Coleman asked me to give you his Christmas card.”

I take the envelope containing a single photograph out of my inside pocket and hold it out to him, not looking at him, as if I’m doing just what I described: delivering a Christmas card.

Hume is as motionless as a block of ice.

“Yes,” I say. “I saw Eddie earlier. Said if you liked the card he’d let you have some more of the same so’s you could send them round to your friends.”

Hume still doesn’t say anything but he reaches out and takes the envelope from me and looks at it without opening it.

“What is this?” Hume says at last.

I shrug. “Why not have a look and find out?”

Hume suddenly jerks to life and rips the envelope off the photograph and holds it at an angle to catch the light from the street-lamp and then when he’s finally managed to believe his eyes he keeps staring at the picture as if in some way his staring will change what he sees in front of him.

“I thought the handcuffs were a nice touch,” I say to him. “Special issue, were they?”

Hume makes a noise like a mad elephant and starts going to work on the photograph, not able to decide whether to crumble the picture or tear it to bits and his fingers alternate madly between the two actions. When he’s finished he lets the remains of the photograph drop to the floor of the car.