Running Scared (28 page)

‘Coverdale’s body in my basement’s already told me that,’ I retorted.

Ganesh closed the magazine and leaned his palms on the counter. ‘So what are you going to do? Move house?’

‘How can I? Talk sense. What I’m not going to do is spend my time jumping out of my skin every time someone walks up behind me, stay frightened to go down alleys, and sleeping with the light on. This has got to be settled. I’m going to take this down to the copshop and see what Harford and the others have to say.’

‘You’re mad,’ said Ganesh simply. As I walked out, he added on a panicky note, ‘Hey, don’t leave me here with that dog!’

‘You’ve got to get over this phobia of yours,’ I called back. ‘I won’t be long.’

‘Hullo,’ said the desk officer when I walked into the station. ‘You again?’

Honestly, there are professional safe-crackers, muggers, even streetwalkers, who see less of the inside of the nick than I do, though I only get as far as the front desk, and occasionally an interview room. I’ve not yet been tossed in the cells. Give it time.

I told him I wanted to see Inspector Harford or, failing that, Sergeant Parry.

‘Can’t be done,’ he said. ‘They’re in a meeting. Know it for a fact. Saw ’em all going up there ten minutes or so back and they gave out they wasn’t to be disturbed.’

‘What, all of them?’ If they were, it had to be something important and I’d got a funny feeling crawling up my spine.

‘You tell them,’ I said, ‘that Fran Varady is out here and I know who the man in the photos is.’

‘What man in what photos?’ he asked, being a simple bluebottle who didn’t get taken into the confidence of CID.

‘Tell ’em!’ I instructed him. I sat down on an uncomfortable bench by the wall and picked up an ancient copy of
Police Review
lying there. It was that or a dog-eared copy of the
Sun
. From the corner of my eye, I saw him lift up a phone.

When he put it down, he called across, ‘The inspector will be down in a minute or two.’

‘Fine,’ I said, calm and collected. The biggest mistake I could make now would be to storm in there ranting and demanding protection. I was a member of the public and I didn’t have to do anything or go along with anything they’d dreamed up, if I didn’t want to.

There was a clatter of feet on stairs nearby. Harford rounded the corner, face flushed and, contrary to his usual crisp business appearance, a little dishevelled. He jumped down the last three steps and marched over to me.

‘What’s all this?’ he asked disagreeably. So we were back in that mode again, were we?

‘Jerry Grice,’ I said.

His face turned white. He glanced over his shoulder towards the desk and the officer manning it who was stirring his coffee.

‘Don’t say names like that out loud!’ Harford hissed, stooping over me. He straightened up and recovered some of his aplomb. ‘I think, in the circumstances, you’d better come upstairs and join us. We’re just discussing that matter and we meant to call you in, anyway.’

‘Oh, were you?’ I asked sarcastically.

He retorted in like tone. ‘Yes. So you’ve saved us the bother, haven’t you?’

Chapter Fourteen

It was a meeting all right. The tribal chiefs had gathered for a powwow and the air was suitably thick with smoke. There must have been a dozen or so people in the room, perched on table corners, or leaning against walls, amid a litter of polystyrene cups, sweet wrappers and overflowing ashtrays. Most were men, two or three women and at least one who’d have doubled for either. I recognised Parry amongst them, and a couple of the others whom I’d seen before, but not a thin-faced man with grey hair and a grey complexion to match. He was the only one seated at a desk and everyone else hovered around him.

‘This is Fran Varady, sir,’ said Harford to him. To me, he whispered, ‘Superintendent Foxley.’

His manner indicated I was being accorded an audience equal to that with a Chinese emperor. I wondered if I was expected to fall down and bang my head on the floor in obeisance, or merely retreat from his presence backwards. Well, I wasn’t one of those struggling up the police promotion ladder. I was a free spirit and felt this was the moment to underline it. Apart from which, I’d choke if I had to stay in this foul atmosphere longer than a few minutes more.

‘Do you think,’ I said to Foxley, ‘we could have a window open?’

There were looks of shock and bewilderment on all faces. They were quite unaware of the fug.

‘Open it,’ said Foxley without looking round. Some minion obeyed, creating a gap finger-thick, through which some of the haze began to seep.

‘Sit down, Miss Varady, won’t you?’ Foxley offered and, again, an underling pushed a chair forward. ‘Your arrival is perhaps timely. Can we offer you some coffee?’

I’d drunk their coffee on previous occasions and declined politely. I could see Parry in the background. When I’d walked in, his ginger eyebrows had shot up to meet his hairline. They hadn’t far to travel. Now he was engaging in an elaborate pantomime, asking what on earth I was doing there.

‘What’s the matter, Sergeant?’ asked Harford tersely, catching a particularly extreme example of Parry’s mugging.

Parry mumbled some reply and buried his face in a cup.

‘We’ve been having a case conference, as you can see,’ Foxley went on to me. He didn’t show surprise at my refusing the coffee. He probably understood and sympathised. ‘We are not yet in a position to make an arrest with regard to the murder in your basement, but we’re closing in.’

Closing in? Coppers said things like that in the old black-and-white movies I watched late at night. After someone says it, old-style black police cars race through deserted streets, sounding sirens fit to bust and alerting every villain for miles around that they’re on their way. I had hoped police methods had advanced since then. Possibly the methods had – lots of technical wizardry and forensic leads – but not the approach.

Harford, standing behind and to one side of my chair, cleared his throat and said, ‘Miss Varady believes she’s made a discovery, sir.’ He sounded nervous.

‘Miss Varady knows she has,’ I corrected him. I pulled out my magazine and opened it. They all leaned forward, peering at the page of mugshots. I tapped the relevant one. ‘Jerry Grice,’ I said. ‘That’s the guy in the snapshots, isn’t it? Give or take a bottle of bleach.’

Someone at the back of the room said, ‘Shit.’ Another said wearily, ‘Bloody press.’

Parry turned purple and his eyes bulged at me.

‘I told you not to muck about—’ he began.

Foxley glanced over his shoulder and Parry fell silent. ‘Yes, Miss Varady, that’s right,’ the superintendent said evenly. ‘And you understand I’m sure, why we don’t want to advertise the fact that he’s the man we’re after.’

‘I understand,’ I said. ‘But I don’t like being pegged out as decoy.’

He raised sparse eyebrows. ‘Did we do that? I wouldn’t say so. We have been keeping a friendly protective eye on you, I admit that.’

‘Rubbish!’ I retorted robustly.

Since Foxley was clearly the big cheese round here, my attitude was causing ripples of emotion round the room. I detected, on different faces, disapproval, anticipation and even glee. Parry looked about to faint.

‘Someone tried to break into my flat the other night and if I hadn’t had a dog on the premises, he’d have got in.’ I did my best to sound like an outraged citizen. The very least they owed me was an apology.

The superintendent merely looked irritated. ‘An oversight.’ I dismissed this with, I hoped, visible scorn. ‘You bet it was an oversight. So, from now on, you include me beforehand when you want to use me. Otherwise,’ I added on a brainwave, ‘I’ll take my case to the Police Complaints Committee.’

Parry turned aside towards the window to hide his reaction to this. His shoulders were twitching. I didn’t know whether from laughter or despair.

Foxley didn’t snarl ‘Feel free!’ though it obviously hovered on his lips. Instead he gave a strained grimace and advised me that we hadn’t got to that stage yet, surely?

I wasn’t going to push the point, to tell the truth. But it did no harm to let them know I was seriously displeased.

Foxley had got the message. He leaned his elbows on his desk and placed the tips of his fingers together. ‘I sincerely hope that you won’t let a misunderstanding damage what I hope could be a profitable collaboration. The fact is, Miss Varady –’ this was accompanied by his bleak smile. He was doing his best to be charming, but he wasn’t cut out for it. I awarded him a point for trying – ‘the fact of the matter is, we need your help. Now, of course, you don’t have to say yes. You don’t have to do anything unless you decide to help. It’s your decision and no pressure will be put on you. But I’d be grateful if you’d just let me explain.’

Had Ganesh been there, he’d have told me to say no, and get out of there as fast as I could. But I reckoned it would do no harm to listen. A bit of police goodwill wouldn’t come amiss. ‘Go on, then,’ I said.

Foxley launched into a seamless narrative which led me to believe he’d done this sort of thing before. I wondered briefly what had happened to others, such as myself, who’d been talked into helping in just such circumstances.

‘Your magazine article will have told you why we’re after Grice. He’s been giving us the runaround but the net is closing.’ (Did he, too, watch old films?) ‘We believe that Grice will shortly be arriving in this country. There is an underworld rumour to that effect. We have it from a normally reliable source.’

I wondered about the ‘source’. Say what you like, the professional grass earns his money. He probably wouldn’t be in the business if the police didn’t have some hold over him, but all the same, it’s a risky enough trade to undertake in whatever circumstances. Rumbled and he’s done for. His body is washed up and deposited on a Thames mudflat. The river police go out and scoop it up and add it to the statistics. If anyone enquires, and it’s unlikely anyone will, a dozen people will testify to how depressed the late unlamented was, and how he’d spoken frequently of ending it all.

‘Grice needs to recover that strip of negatives and any prints made from it, Miss Varady,’ Foxley said. ‘His hired help has bungled the job. He can’t afford another body in a basement. Above all, you see, he seeks to avoid publicity. Pictures in magazines, murder reports on the evening news, police enquiries such as the one set in motion by Coverdale’s death, all these things are anathema to Grice. Successful big-time crooks, you have to understand, view themselves as successful businessmen. It irks them that they make the money but can’t spend it except in the society of underworld characters. They want out of that world. They’re social climbers. They long to be on the Town Hall invitation list. They hanker to join the world of Rotary dinners and mornings on the golf course. In a word, they want to be legit. A respectable businessman is probably how Grice is passing himself off somewhere and the worst thing that can happen to him is that his new friends learn the truth, depend on it. It makes him vulnerable now in a way he wasn’t when he was just a villain. He’s displaying an Achilles’ heel, you might say.’ Foxley paused and then asked me, ‘You know what that is?’

Prat, I thought. ‘Yes, I do know,’ I said aloud, crossly. ‘I went to a good school, you know. Achilles’ mother dunked him in the river Styx to make him invulnerable but forgot about the heel she held him by.’

‘That a fact?’ asked Parry, looking interested. ‘I didn’t know that. You’d think the poor little bugger would’ve drowned.’

Foxley gave him a dirty look and me an only slightly less dirty one. ‘Your education wasn’t wasted then, I see.’

He scored a hit, if only he knew it, but I wasn’t going to let him see it.

Foxley regained his position effortlessly. ‘To return to Grice. He’ll try negotiation. To put it bluntly, he believes you have the film Coverdale hid – or you are in a position to obtain it. We are confident he’ll offer to buy it off you.’

Oh, they were, were they? ‘What if I tell the truth and say you lot have what he wants?’ I asked.

His smile grew wider but no pleasanter. ‘In Grice’s world, people don’t speak the truth. Why should he believe you? We haven’t released any statement about the photographs. They are worth money. You could take them to a newspaper. They’d pay you well. Probably that was what Coverdale intended to –do. Why should you not do the same? Grice will make you a pre-emptive bid, that’s all.’

‘An offer I can’t refuse,’ I said caustically.