The Day of the Jack Russell (Mystery Man) (7 page)

‘Professionally, yes.’

‘He buys books from you?’

‘No, he hired me to track some people down.’

‘Track them down. What are you now, a bounty-hunter?’

‘No, just their addresses.’

‘And you did that?’

‘Yes.’

He nodded. He took a BlackBerry out of his inside pocket. He spent four minutes trying to find something on it. When he eventually looked up he said, ‘This would be James Collins and Ronald Clegg?’

‘Sounds like them.’

‘Anything you want to tell me?’

‘About what?’

‘Anything.’

‘Nothing I can think of.’

‘You met them. You were in their house.’

‘Nope.’

‘You’re sure about that?’

‘Positive.’

‘Yet your van was spotted right outside. It’s a distinctive van.’

‘Yes. Well. Like I say, I was trying to track them down.’

‘But you never met them.’

‘No.’

‘And you still maintain you never went inside their house.’

‘No, I didn’t. What’s all this about?’

‘Why don’t
you
tell me what it’s all about?’

‘That’s just stupid.’

‘Do you think murder is stupid?’

‘Murder.’

‘Murder.’

‘Murder murder?’

‘Murder murder.’

‘Billy Randall?’

‘Billy Randall.’

‘I thought maybe it was some kind of scam – time share, or something.’

‘It may be yet.’

‘He’s murdered . . .?’

DI Robinson glanced at his BlackBerry again. The page he was looking at had disappeared.

‘Jimbo Collins and Ronny Clegg,’ I said, helpfully.

‘He didn’t necessarily murder them, though they have been murdered. He’s what we call a person of interest. He’s in custody. Between you and me, we think he may have hired someone to take them out.’

‘Seriously. God.’

‘Someone like you.’

I smiled, and waited for him to. But he did not.

‘Get away to fuck,’ I said.

He remained stony-faced. ‘He hired you.’

‘To find those guys.’

‘You were spotted outside their house.’

‘Outside.’

‘You sent him an e-mail saying the job was done.’

‘It was done, I found them.’

‘And you charged him two thousand pounds.’

‘That’s what I charge.’

‘To find two guys who’re in the Yellow Pages.’

‘They aren’t in the Yellow Pages.’

‘Yes they are. Jim and Ronny, Painters and Decorators.’

‘Not in mine.’

It was behind me, on a shelf under the sign that read
This is not a fucking library
.

‘That,’ said DI Robinson, his head tilted sideways to read the spine of the directory, ‘is eight years out of date.’

‘So’s your face.’

He blinked at me. ‘Excuse me?’

‘I’m sorry, but this is ridiculous.’

‘Two thousand pounds is a ridiculously large amount to find out a couple of addresses. But it’s probably just about enough to hire a low-rent hit man. The market around these parts has crashed, there’s a lot of un employed killers out there. And it’s a world you seem quite comfortable in.’

That was it, then. He was bitter at my success, and now that an opportunity had come along, he was deter-mined to have his revenge.

We stared at each other.

Then I thought, no, that’s stupid; I helped solve the case, but he had the satisfaction of arresting the killers and putting them away. He wasn’t serious. He was winding me up.

I studied him for a telltale sign: a glint in his eye, the slight widening of his firmly set lips, a subtle rise of an eyebrow; but he was good, as good as a cop should be. But I knew.

‘You nearly had me there. This is the plot of the novel you want to write. You’re funny. Okay. Fine. Got me, got me good.’

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

Just a steely look, and: ‘We believe Billy Randall is at the very least an accessory to murder. The problem, my friend, is that we can find nothing to link him to the actual murder scene. Which is more than we can say about you, and your DNA.’

‘That’s impossible,’ I said.

‘So’s your face,’ said Detective Inspector Robinson.

He didn’t arrest me.

That’s not how he works.

He puts information or misinformation out there and then watches and listens and sees how you deal with it, what you do once he’s gone, who you talk to, who you phone or e-mail, if you empty your bank account and head for the airport. And he did have my DNA on record. But there was no possibility that he’d found a match in Jimbo and Ronny’s house unless he’d planted it there himself.

Or unless Alison had.

I sat and thought about that for a while. Was she so bitter and twisted over my lack of interest in her baby that she would actually seek to implicate me in a murder? She was, after all, evil to the core, and a practising witch. I drummed my fingers on the counter. One night, while we were still together, we sat in her apartment and watched a DVD. She’d given me carte blanche to choose one and I’d rented
Presumed Innocent
, the Harrison Ford movie based on Scott Trurow’s book. It is one of those few adaptations that not only does an acclaimed book justice, but actually improves upon it. It’s about a bitter wife murdering her husband’s mistress and then framing him for it. Could I have been the unwitting architect of my own demise? Had Alison scooped up a handful of my DNA and hurled it around Jimbo and Ronny’s house before cold-bloodedly murdering them?

I needed more information. I surfed on to the
Belfast Telegraph
’s website. The headline read:
Christmas Horror
. There were photographs of Jimbo and Ronny, arms around each other, cans of Harp beer in hand, at a party. They looked several years younger than in the pictures of them I’d forwarded to Billy Randall. There was no mention of Billy Randall, and, crucially, no reference to me or the No Alibis van or Alison. It said the murder scene was a bloodbath. They had been beaten with a blunt instrument.

I mixed up a pint of Vitolink. It was important to keep my levels high. I took my antipsychotic pills, and my bipolar pills, and my fibromyalgia pills. My antihistamines. My blood pressure pills. My cholesterol pills. My antidepressants. My hormones. Taken together, they would keep me going until lunchtime, when I would have to take my full list of medications. Alison has never really appreciated the fact that any one of my ailments could kill me at any time. She believes that I am something of a hypochondriac. She is wrong about most things. If my doctor was not prevented from doing so by the Hippocratic oath, he could tell her a thing or two about the condition of my bowels and liver and heart and blood and veins and head. He could tell her that I am just one of those people who has to live with life-threatening illness. He could tell her that he once prescribed me a placebo, which I turned out to be allergic to. Alison had no need to plant my DNA at a murder scene if she wanted revenge; she had no need to do
anything
. I was a dead man walking, or limping, already. I probably wouldn’t see New Year’s. I once asked my doctor straight out how long I had left, and he said, ‘How long is a piece of string?’

I rest my case.

The clue is in
piece
.

If he was meaning longevity, he would have said how long is a
ball
of string.

A piece of string is what a cat plays with.

I am also allergic to cats.

DI Robinson had accused me of being a low-rent hit man and then had the nerve to ask for a discount on a signed copy of Dave Goodis’
Dark Passage
before he left. I refused the discount, but did knock thirty pence off because there was a slight tear in the cover.

Low-rent?

There was nothing low-rent about me.

Many’s the time Alison had said the very opposite, complimenting me by saying I was high-maintenance.

If I was any kind of a hit man, I was an expensive one, cool, calm and efficient.

I shouldn’t have said that last bit out loud, which I tend to do when I’m alone.

Walls have ears, and, sometimes, listening devices.

I spent an hour sweeping for bugs and dust mites. Thinking, thinking all the time. Dark thoughts. I hated being accused of things I hadn’t done. Why did everyone pick on me? I just tried to help people, but it almost always backfired. Why couldn’t they leave me alone? I should close down the detective business. And the store. I should go home and look after Mother and never go out except for milk. I stopped brushing, chilled by a sudden thought. The medication I was on occasionally caused blackouts. I don’t mean fainting, but periods where I just couldn’t remember what I’d done. What if I really had killed Jimbo and RonnyCrabs? What if I’d forgotten to take my anti psychotic medicine and become . . . psychotic? What if I’d gone round there late at night and beaten them to a pulp with my mallet? Maybe I was just being paranoid. Maybe I’d forgotten to take my anti paranoid medicine. Sometimes it is difficult to keep track. I take something to help me with that. I checked my pulse. It was racing. I took a couple of settlers. I made up another pint of Vitolink. It was barely lunchtime but it was almost black outside. There was hail. My doctor says I’m the first patient he’s had with Seasonal Affective Disorder who gets depressed by all four seasons. He says his nurse calls me Frankie Valli.

Breathe.

Breathe deeply.

Relax.

I tried yoga once, but got tendonitis.

Breathe.

Across the road, Alison’s jewellery store had reopened with a sale and was busy with customers. I knew she was there, but with the rain-streaked windows on both our shops it was difficult to get a proper look at her. However, I was pretty certain she was keeping an eye on me and nervously wondering why the police hadn’t dragged me away yet.

The phone rang.

‘Shows how much I know,’ a male voice said.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I was just saying to the plod here, shows how much I know. I said to myself, I’ve got one phone call; who am I gonna call? My lawyer, my wife, my mistress, my children, my accountant?’

‘I’m sorry, but who is this?’

‘And turns out I didn’t say it to myself, but I said it out loud, sometimes I do that, and the plod says that that’s not true, that you’re only allowed one call, it’s not the dark ages, you can have as many calls as you want as long as you’re not, like, ordering pizza or anything.’

‘I . . .’

‘So you’re not top of my list, I called my wife, I called my lawyer and now I’m calling you. Third isn’t too bad, bronze medal.’

‘Is it about a book?’

‘No. It’s me. Billy Randall. You heard what—’

‘Billy?’ My knees felt weak. They
are
weak, generally, I have a problem with my cruciate ligaments. Weak
er
. ‘Yes . . . yes . . . I heard . . .’

‘So we should have a chat.’

‘Yes. No. It’s not really any of my—’

‘They’re letting me out of here. We should go for a coffee.’

‘Yes. No. I’m kind of busy. If you send me an e-mail, I’m sure—’

‘There’s a Starbucks across the road from you; say I see you there at three?’

‘I . . .’

‘Looking forward to it. I could just murder a frappuccino. Or you could do it for me.’

He laughed suddenly, then abruptly hung up.

I stood with the receiver in my hand, and my shirt stuck to my back.

I stared at the phone.

Billy Randall, having not yet settled his bill, was still theoretically my client. He and I were implicated in a double murder. He wanted to meet in my favourite coffee house. I didn’t like it, I didn’t like it one bit. I didn’t know what to do. I needed help. Advice. Another settler. I drained the Vitolink. There was nobody I could phone. Not DI Robinson, not Alison; the way my luck was running, even the Samaritans would rat me out. Nobody I could trust. Nobody I could lean on. Not one human being in the entire civilised world I could reach out to.

Then Jeff arrived.

‘Fucking hell,’ said Jeff, ‘fucking hell.’

‘Helpful,’ I said.

‘And
did you
, like, blank out and beat them to death with your mallet?’

‘No!’

‘Because the odd time you have blanked out in here you haven’t remembered what you’ve done.’

‘And did I kill anyone? You, for instance?’

‘Not exactly, no.’

‘Not exactly? What did I do?’

‘You rearranged the bookshelves.’

‘I rearranged the bookshelves.’

‘Yes. But the point is, you didn’t remember, then flew into a temper and accused me of doing it.’

As I recalled, they were rearranged out of sequence, i.e. they were normally alphabetical but someone had rearranged them into different categories of crime fiction – serial killers, cosies, pulp, golden age, etc. It’s an impractical way of displaying books; there are too many that belong in several categories. Yet Jeff was convinced I had done it.

Which was worrying.

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
would have been infinitely less interesting if Dr Jekyll had merely reclassified his medical texts rather than hacked people to death, but I would have settled for that. The import ant thing, I suppose, was that while there
might
be evidence that I blanked out from time to time, there was absolutely none that it ever led to violence.

Jeff reached under the counter and took out my mallet and meat cleaver and jackknife and claw hammer. I asked him what he was doing. He said he was checking for bloodstains and brain matter. I took them off him and replaced them, although checked myself as I did so.

‘What,’ I asked, ‘am I going to do about Billy Randall?’

‘Wear a wire.’

‘Wear a wire.’

‘In case he says something, not so much to incriminate himself, but something that might get you off the hook.’

‘But what if I say something that incriminates
me
?’

‘But you say you haven’t done anything.’

‘But I could say something that might be read in a different way to what I mean. Sometimes I—’

‘Slabber. Okay. But
we’ll
have the tape. We can just edit it out or lose it.’