Thief Taker

by Alan Scholefield

  “Never hit wood with metal.”

  She could still hear his voice saying it as he showed her the wooden mallet.

  “Always use wood on wood.”

  She could see his face in her mind. Thin, with long hair caught back in a pony-tail and an earring in his right ear. He had a strong country accent quite unlike her father’s flat Portsmouth voice and her mother’s upmarket tones.

  How solicitous of her he had been at the beginning! How kind! No one had ever been that kind to her before. Nothing had been too good for her. He’d made the fire and showed her how to cook in the open. He’d fed Nemo and currycombed him and given him water.

  It hadn’t lasted. After a few weeks he had said, “How about you taking a turn?” And soon she had to chop the wood and make the fire and cook the food and make the beds and wash out the caravan — and only then had she been free to do what she wanted to do, which was to paint her pictures.

  Chris had looked after the horse. That was the gypsy side of him. They all loved horses. He used to talk to the horse as though he was another human being. And he’d fondle him and even kiss him.

  God she missed Chris!

  Don’t think about him then. Think about the wood.

  Chop…chop…She piled the split logs against one of the caravan wheels.

  “There,” she said out loud to herself. “Now that’ll last two days, and then I’ll fetch some more.”

  She felt a sudden sense of unease. She straightened up, turned and saw a man standing on the edge of her clearing watching her.

  Chris? Chris?

  A freezing hand closed over her heart.

  But it wasn’t Chris.

  The morning was chilly, with cloud and pale sunshine which flared on the man’s wire-framed glasses, hiding his eyes.

  She took him in at a single glance: the old felt hat and the two coats held on with safety-pins and string, the old torn corduroy trousers, the old army surplus boots, the plastic shopping bag in each hand.

  Gangrel.

  The word leapt into her mind. She had come across it years before in a book of Scottish ballads and had looked it up. She still remembered some of its synonyms: outcast…tramp…vagabond…

  The word itself was frightening. She felt a flutter of uneasy breathing in her ribcage.

  The sun went behind a cloud and she could see his eyes, and his face became human. He wore a dirty beard, marked near the mouth with cigarette smoke, and his eyes were a slatey colour.

  “Good-day to you, missus.”

  His voice was whiney and heavily accented, a mixture, she thought, of Irish or Scottish and something else, but she wasn’t sure what.

  She stood by the caravan, the axe in her hand.

  “You haven’t got a bit of something, missus?”

  “No.”

  “A bit of bread. A bit of stuff.”

  “I haven’t anything.”

  He took a few steps nearer.

  “Fire’s nearly out,” he said. “Oh, yus.”

  He put his hand in one of the plastic bags. She stepped back and raised the axe.

  “See?” he said.

  It was a tin of artichoke hearts.

  “I’ll swop you, missus. For a bit of bread.”

  He looked harmless to Rachel.

  “I’ll give you a bit of bread,” she said. “You wait over there where you are.”

  She went into the caravan and looked for pieces of stale bread. When she came out he was on his knees in front of the fire puffing at the old embers. Soon, with a handful of twigs, he brought them to life.

  “Got any coffee, missus?”

  “That’s my fire! Leave it alone!”

  “A man must have coffee in the morning, missus. Oh, yus.”

  “Were you here before?”

  “Hereabouts.”

  “Were you singing?”

  “Singing?”

  “Yes. Singing.”

  “Sometimes I sings.”

  It probably was him, she thought. He was simple. That was it. He was also old, probably in his sixties, and small — the two coats made him look bulkier than he was — and wizened and frail. There was nothing to fear from him.

  “All right, let’s have some coffee,” she said.

  “Here.” He gave her the artichoke hearts. “A woman gave them to me. Muck! I don’t eat muck!”

  She made coffee and gave him a mug. He dipped the dry bread into it and sucked it into a mouth that was devoid of teeth. She saw that his skin had the grey pallor of ingrained dirt and she decided to throw away the mug once he had gone.

  “You got a horse, missus?”

  “No.”

  “Ain’t going to get far without a horse.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You need a horse for that there caravan. Oh, yus.”

  “I had a horse. It went away.”

  “I could get you a horse.” He tapped his nose. “Contacts in the trade. What’s your name, missus?”

  “It doesn’t matter. My husband’s coming back in a minute. What’s yours?”

  He looked sly. “Jackanory.”

  “Is that your first name or your last?”

  He laughed, hunching his shoulders and hugging himself. “Neither. It’s Rawley…Jackanory…”

  It began to rain, a spring shower, but it was heavy for a short while. Rachel moved into the caravan. Rawley hunched by the fire, rain pouring off his felt hat. She couldn’t let him stay there.

  “Come in here in the dry.”

  “Thank you, missus. Thank you.”

  He sat opposite her on the other bunk. Chris’ bunk. “Nice place,” he said looking round. “I could get you a good price for this. Contacts.” He put his hands to the stove to warm them. “God made this stove. He made everything!” He swung his arm to indicate the caravan, the woods, the earth and sky. “God made you. Are you ready for Him?”

  Rachel was suddenly amused. The axe lay to hand. Rawley…Jackanory or whatever his name was, was even more fragile in close-up. She had nothing to fear.

  “Yes, I’m ready for Him,” she said. “Where are you travelling?”

  “Cardiff. For my things. I left them there. My papers. Oh, yus.”

  “What papers?”

  He looked at her, his head on one side, a cunning expression on his face. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I’ll tell you then. It’s the Bible. I translated it.”

  “You what?”

  “They got it wrong. Through a glass darkly. That’s wrong. Oh, yus. Through a dark glass. And lots more.”

  He looked round vaguely. Most of his actions seemed to Rachel vague and unplanned.

  Some of her early paintings were placed on the small dresser.

  “Rabbits,” he said. “Oh, yus. I know rabbits. Eaten them. In stews. Killed many a rabbit. Ain’t seen no red ones though. Brown ones. Black ones. White ones. No red ones.”

  “They’re special,” Rachel said. “Secret special.” Then the timbre of her voice changed and became almost childlike, and she said slowly, “I’ll tell you a story about Jackanory and now my story’s begun…Do you like stories?”

  “I loves stories…” said Rawley, his eyes shining.

  “This is a story about a little princess.”

  “Oh, yus…”

  “Once upon a time there was a little princess…”

  “…little princess…” he repeated, and then he put his arms around his body, hugging himself, and fixed his slatey eyes on Rachel.

  “…who lived in a big house with her daddy and mummy…”

  “…daddy and mummy…” said Rawley.

  “If you want to hear the story you mustn’t interrupt.”

  “No, no.”

  “Well, anyway, they were rich and handsome and everyone envied them. They were like people in a fairy tale; the king, the queen and the little princess.”

  “…princess…”

&
nbsp; “One night, when she was about six years old, the little princess was having a bath all by herself in the big bathroom in the big house. She often bathed herself because the king said she was a big girl — a big little princess really — and she must learn to bath herself.

  “The king came into the bathroom and brought her a little yellow duck to play with and he played with it too. On top of the water and under the water in my lady’s chamber…”

  “…chamber…” said Rawley, his eyes soft and shiny. “Tickled her in my lady’s chamber. And then he took her out of the bath and began to dry her…”

  “… dry her…”

  “He put her on his lap. And there was the red rabbit! The bunny. My bunny, the king said. Stroke my bunny. Isn’t it a nice bunny? And the little princess stroked the king’s bunny and the bunny was sick. Oops a daisy, the king said. The bunny loves you.”

  “…loves you…”

  “And they did that often, sometimes in the bathroom and sometimes when the little princess had gone to bed. And as she grew older she became frightened of the red bunny. Very frightened. And she told her mummy even though her daddy had said, “This is our very biggest secret. And you are never to tell anyone.””

  “…anyone…”

  “And now my story’s done…I’ll tell you another about Jack and his…?”

  “Brother.”

  “No, not brother. Mother.”

  “What did the little princess’s mother do?” asked Rawley. “Her mother did nothing,” Rachel said. “Nothing! And that’s the whole point, isn’t it? The whole fucking point!”

  “I liked that,” Rawley said. “Oh, yus. I liked it fine. Tell us another story, missus.”

  CHAPTER XVII

  Time: 11.28 a.m.

  Eddie Twyford driving the big Ford Granada, Macrae in front, Silver at the back.

  Route: northbound on the carriageway across Hyde Park. Traffic fairly heavy.

  “I think we’re being followed, guv’nor,” Eddie said.

  Neither detective turned.

  Eddie flicked his eyes up to the rear-view mirror. “Two cars behind us. Small white Mazda.”

  Macrae reached up and repositioned the mirror.

  “Where did we pick him up?”

  “Not sure, guv’nor. I first saw him in the Buckingham Palace Road after we fetched Leo.”

  “Can’t see him.”

  “He’s still there.”

  “OK, check him.”

  There was a sudden surge of power as the big car gathered speed. Eddie pulled out, shot down the middle of the road to the consternation of both lines of traffic, barrelled through the Victoria Gate with the needle flickering on seventy.

  There was a squeal of tyres and they were shooting across the Bayswater Road, round the Royal Lancaster Hotel, back on the Bayswater Road, and gunning the car west towards Notting Hill.

  “Still can’t see him,” Macrae said.

  “About three cars behind.”

  “Slow down, then. Can you see his index number?”

  Silver was looking through the back window. “The Mazda’s turning off. Yeah, I got it.”

  Macrae said, “OK, go back to that underground car park in Queensway.”

  They parked and Macrae told Eddie to radio the Mazda’s index number through to the central computer then get himself a sandwich. He and Silver walked down Queensway.

  “Eddie’s getting to be an old woman,” Macrae said.

  They walked in the direction of the park.

  “You wouldn’t think this was England,” he said.

  Silver saw it through his guv’nor’s eyes: the exotic restaurants getting ready for the lunchtime rush, the Arab and Indian shops, the newsagents where most of the dailies seemed to be in Arabic and German, French and Italian, the pavements jostling with Pakistanis, Indians, Bangladeshis, Hong Kong Chinese, Arabs from the Emirates, Malayans, Egyptians, Nigerians and Ghanaians, and little groups of myopic Japanese with cameras.

  There were also some Brits.

  Over it all hung a mixture of food smells. Silver could identify grilled kebabs, cardamom, curry, and sweet-and-sour. He could also smell the exhaust fumes of expensive cars.

  “I like it,” he said.

  “I didn’t say I didn’t like it, laddie. I said it didn’t seem like England.”

  They turned east along the Bayswater Road, walked about half a mile, entered a small tree-lined crescent and stopped in front of number seven.

  It was a three-storey town house built in the nineteen sixties on land that had once been savaged by German bombs. It reminded Silver a little of Healey’s house in Chelsea; every window was heavily barred, giving it the look of a fortress.

  “This place is becoming an Arab ghetto,” Macrae said.

  “For rich Arabs.”

  “They’re all rich. At least the ones who come to London are.”

  Farther along the crescent, two stretched Mercedes were parked carelessly on the pavement while their uniformed chauffeurs chatted idly to each other.

  Macrae pushed the bell at number seven. A doorphone speaker set into the wall at his elbow clicked into static and a man’s voice said, “Yeah? Who is it?”

  “Detective Superintendent Macrae.”

  “Who?”

  Macrae said it again.

  “What d’you want?” said the voice.

  “I want to see Mr Howard Collins and I don’t like standing on pavements talking to walls.”

  After a moment the door opened a little way on a heavy chain and a hand came out. “Let’s see some ID.”

  “You’ve been watching too much television,” Macrae said. He held up his warrant card. The hand stretched for it but Macrae moved it slightly out of reach. “Just read it. No need to feel. It’s not in Braille.”

  The door opened grudgingly.

  “Mr Collins?”

  “Yeah. I been expecting you.”

  “That’s nice,” Macrae said.

  Howard Collins was a strange sight, Silver thought, even for this part of London. If he had been black and wearing a kente cloth, or brown and wearing a djellabah or his jathika enduma he would have looked natural. But he did not look natural. He was running now to fat but was still powerful-looking. He was in his fifties — trying to look twenty-five.

  He had been using ex-President Reagan’s age-reducing elixir, a hair dye. It had left some of his hair black but the roots grey. It was brushed forward on to his sunlamped forehead, once the home of a flourishing crop of acne. He was wearing a black silk shirt open to his navel and two gold chains round his neck. His trousers were also black and were stuffed into calf-length boots with polished steel toe-caps.

  Behind him what sounded like a large party was in full swing.

  He turned suddenly and shouted, “Turn it down!”

  The noise remained at the same level.

  He said to Macrae and Silver, “Hang on a sec.” They followed him to a large living room furnished in hacienda moderne — wrought ironwork, Moorish knick-knacks, leather pouffes, wall-tiles, floor-tiles, ceiling-tiles, potted pelargoniums.

  A girl of about eighteen in a see-through short nightie was lying on the floor looking at the largest television screen either detective had ever seen.

  “Poco silencio!” Collins shouted above the noise of the screen party.

  “Que?”

  The girl seemed hardly to hear him.

  “Oiga! Juanita! Por favor, doll! Mas fucking silencio!”

  He switched off the set.

  There was a sudden, resounding silence. Juanita, dark, pretty in a sulky Latin way, looked at him as though he had trodden on something nasty and brought in on to the carpet.

  “If you want to watch, go upstairs to the other set. Arriba! Mas television arriba.”

  Juanita rose, stood for a moment backlit against the window while Silver and Macrae studied what she had on offer — which was of high quality — and then she marched out of the room.

  “I dunno…”
Collins said. “What did people like her do before the invention of TV?”

  “Spanish?” Silver said.

  “From Andalucia. Daughter of my gardener out there. Can’t understand a bloody word of what’s happening on TV but watches it all day and night. You know what they say about Spanish cooking: in the north they stew, in the centre they roast and in the south they fry — same with their women. Andalucian women are like fried chillies. Only not so forward in the old brain box, if you get me. Sun’s over the yardarm, you lads want a drink?”

  “No thanks,” Macrae said for both of them.

  “You can watch me, then.”

  He poured himself a vodka and orange. “OK, so what can I do for you?”

  “You said you were expecting us,” Macrae said. “Why?”

  “Christ almighty. Robbie gets his head stove in. I’m his ex-partner. Why wouldn’t I be expecting you?”

  “Do you know a Mr Harris?” Silver said. “Works at the Weyfo — ”

  “Weyford Marina. ‘Course I know him. You been talking to him?”

  “Just a little,” Macrae said.

  “I get you. And what did Mr Curly Bloody Harris have to say?”

  “Is that what they call him? Curly?”

  “It’s what I call him. You’ve seen his hair. So what did he say?”

  “He said you had an affair with Mrs Healey. That Healey found out. That he brought in some heavies to correct the situation. That you ran off to Spain.”

  For a moment Collins looked stunned. “Hang on! Hang on!”

  “You asked,” Macrae said.

  “Anyway I didn’t run. It wasn’t like that.”

  “All right. You made your way slowly to Spain. After that he bought you out.”

  “So you say to yourselves, of course Collins’s got a motive. Revenge for being beaten up.” He paused. Sweat was beginning to bead his forehead and glisten in the V of his throat. “Listen, I know I’ve done some things…well, you know how it is in business…”

  “We’ve never been in business,” Silver said.