Rudolf looked at me as though I’d asked him to expose himself to his mother.
“Yeah, there’s a few, man. Why’s that?” He had some kind of bemused expression on his face.
“Why do you think, pigbreath? I wanna invite them to come dancing with us.”
Mickey pushed himself upright from the cooker as he spoke. Rudolf shuddered in his seat.
“Just want to ask about Phipps. I won’t use your name,” I said.
Rudolf looked at Twinky almost pleadingly, as if she could impart any guidance or wisdom to him. She gave a noncommittal shrug and went back to twirling the split-ends of her hair around her fingers.
“Okay, man, there’s a cat named Simeon, lives at number 15, round the corner. They stayed there a coupla nights after the shooting thing. Don’t tell him I mentioned his name.”
I nodded. Mickey walked towards the front door. I followed.
“I’m serious, man, don’t mention my name to Simeon. You said you’d not use my name. You promised, right?” He sounded scared.
“Promise? I just said I wouldn’t use it. That’s not a promise.”
We left Rudolf feeling most aggrieved at his lot in life.
Number 15 was a short stroll away. The same guy we’d passed earlier was in the same position and his eyes followed us as we walked. As we drew parallel with him, he nodded and the next second a car started and drove away in the opposite direction. The area seemed to be populated with people either looking to buy or sell drugs of some kind.
We located Simeon’s house. The front door was badly charred, almost as if someone had tried to burn it down. The letter box was bent out of shape and the button of the doorbell was hanging by a wire. There was a small front garden containing an overflowing waste bin and there were a considerable number of empty containers, wrappers and bottles surrounding it. I could hear music. Sounded like rap, a genre I particularly despised because of its racist and misogynistic overtones.
“Ol’ Phippsy certainly knew the best addresses, eh?” Mickey said sarcastically.
I knocked on the front door. Twice. A man eventually answered. He stared blankly at us.
“What?” His tone was not inviting.
“DS McGraw, looking for Simeon.” I flashed my ID card at him.
“He’s kind of indisposed at present.” The man smirked as he spoke.
“Is he in the house?”
“Oh yeah, man, he’s in alright.” He grinned.
“He’s not indisposed, then, is he?”
I walked past the man and into the hallway, to be met by the all-pervasive aroma of marijuana. The smell was rich and intense. If we stood here long enough we could get stoned simply breathing.
“Which room?” I asked the man.
“He won’t like you barging in.” He raised his eyebrows. “Do I really look like I give a fuck whether he’ll like it or not?” I replied somewhat brusquely.
“No, you don’t.” He sounded annoyed. “Top of the stairs, first on the right.”
I went up the stairs. Mickey followed. At the door I could hear a woman moaning in some kind of assumed ecstasy and there was a sound of bedsprings squeaking. We both laughed.
“It ain’t gonna be your day, Sim,” Mickey said. He rapped on the door.
“Fuck you want, man? Told you not to disturb me,” a voice called out.
“Police. Open up,” I said formally, trying not to laugh at Mickey’s smirking.
The squeaking stopped. I could hear muffled voices and the sound of frantic scurrying around in the room. A few moments later the door opened and we were confronted by a black male, around mid to late twenties, hastily buttoning up a pair of jeans. He had the disturbed expression men frequently wore when experiencing coitus interruptus. He was bald, about six foot and rake thin. His ribs protruded to such an extent they resembled xylophones. He could be a poster boy for the after-effects of a starvation diet. I showed him my ID.
“Need to talk to you. Can we use your room?”
“Be easier to talk downstairs. My room’s kind of occupied.”
“I don’t blush, honestly, and I promise not to look,” Mickey said, not quite managing to keep a straight face.
Simeon looked as though he wanted to take a swing at Mickey, which would have been a big mistake on his part. He realised this and nodded.
“Let’s go downstairs, eh?” I offered.
Simeon sat in an armchair and stared at us. We were in the front room and it wasn’t an advert for the Ideal Home Exhibition. It was cold and smelled musty with mould and damp growing on the walls and there was something looking like dog shit lying on the floor in the corner. Simeon seemed oblivious, probably still thinking about what he was missing upstairs. He lit up a smoke.
“How’d you get onto me? Who told you about me?”
“Guy out there on the corner,” Mickey said before I could say anything. “I asked if he knew someone called Simeon around this area and he directed us here.”
“Yeah, but how did you actually get hold of my name?” “Well, you know how it is, people talk about things and someone we talked to knew you and pointed us in your direction.”
Simeon seemed satisfied with that explanation.
“So, what you wanna know?”
He slung a long leg over the arm of the chair and slouched down.
“You know Louis and Paulie Phipps, don’t you?”
He nodded. “Yeah, ’course I do.”
“How long you known Louis Phipps?”
“Since he moved down this way. Probably a few years or so.”
“You close friends?”
“Me and Louis are tight, man.” He raised his clenched left fist to make a point.
“Let’s see, Phipps is a known drug seller but he has to get his stuff from somewhere. From the smell here I’m guessing it’s you. You the candyman, Sim? You supplying for others to sell?”
He looked nervous. One moment he was in the throes of passion, the next he’s being quizzed about his friends and selling drugs by police.
“Look, Sim, just answer a few questions as best you can and we’ll forget how much dope there has to be here to be this pungent. Sound fair?”
He exhaled. “Alright,” he muttered.
“Good. I wanna know what you know about Phipps’ recent movements. You know, what’s he been doing, where he’s been hanging out, who with, things like that. Can you help us out?”
“Why should I?” He sounded petulant.
“Well, let’s see,” I mused. “I can see dog shit on the floor. What would the public health inspector make of that? And I do believe I can smell marijuana; let’s bring Drugs Squad in. The woman who’s upstairs. Go see if she’s older than 16.” Mickey grinned and stood up.
“Okay, okay, man.”
He looked directly at us for the obligatory few seconds. “Louis’s into all kinds of bad shit, man. He sells dope, does the odd robbery, gets into the occasional fight. He’s a piece of work, ol’ Louis.” He sounded almost proud.
“I know most of that. What I particularly want to know about is a car theft he did recently.”
“He went to court for that. Got a suspended.”
“Yes, but as well as stealing the car, there were two bags in the car and they seem to be unaccounted for. What do you know about that?”
Simeon started to look out the window. He nodded for a few moments and took a deep breath.
“I don’t know anything about that,” he finally replied.
“Really?”
“Yeah, really, man. I don’t know anything about no bags. I know he boosted a car, but that’s about it. Don’t know anything else.” He shook his head.
That he was lying was as obvious as the ribs sticking from his chest. He looked nervous, as if he was scared.
“Look, I’ll level with you. Louis’s in a little trouble just now about those bags.”
This was true. I didn’t mention the trouble had produced fatal consequences.
“So I nee
d to know where they are or, if not, what was inside and what Phipps did with them.”
Simeon pursed his lips and looked between Mickey and me. He sighed.
“Phipps said he’d stolen this flash new motor. He gave it to the guy who’d asked him to do it and, when he’d taken what he wanted, left the car. Louis dumps the car but gets nicked a bit later.”
“Back up a moment. You say the car was stolen to order?” “That’s what it seemed to be from the way Phipps described it.”
“Who asked him to do that? Who was Phipps doing this for?”
“Never said.” Simeon shook his head. “Just said someone asked him if he wanted to earn some easy bread. All he had to do was to go to this car park near Waterloo and boost a motor and take it someplace. He does that but when the guy comes for it, he just took some stuff from a bag. Still paid him for his troubles. Phippsy dumps the car and got busted soon after.”
“He say why this guy wanted the car?”
“Nope. He didn’t say why, at least not to me.”
Curious.
“What did he say about the two bags?”
“One was a woman’s handbag. Just had the usual shit women carry with them everywhere. The other one was a briefcase. Had lots of papers and apparently quite a number of photographs.”
“Photographs?” I repeated.
“Yeah.”
“Of who or what?”
“He didn’t say; just said there were a number of files in the bag and, in one of the files, there were a lot of photographs.”
“Did he say anything about the files, about what was in them, anything like that?”
“Not really. But he did say it was gonna make him and his brother rich.”
“How?” Rudolf had said something similar just now.
“Never said. Just said the guy in the photos would pay a lot of bread to get them back. He said they were explosive.”
“How did Phipps know that?”
“From the man who got him to boost the car. Said something about the bag containing something that would be very valuable.”
What could Phipps have stumbled upon?
“Think back. What else did he say about the contents of the bag? Anything you can remember would be a big help.”
“I can’t think of much else, man.”
“Was there anything in the handbag to indicate who it belonged to?”
“Yeah, and Phipps got in touch with her. Found a phone number in the bag. Said he’d talked to some woman on the phone but she told him he’d regret it if he didn’t just give it all back.”
“What, she threatened him?”
“Just swore loudly at him. I could hear it from where I was. She was no lady, man.” He laughed.
“Did he ever meet this woman?”
“Never mentioned it if he did.”
Fortunately I knew who she was.
“Were the bags in plain sight?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“Were the two bags clearly visible when he stole the car? You know, lying on the back seat out in the open where anyone could see them?”
“No. Louis said they were hidden under the front seat. Yeah, I remember now. Louis said the guy who wanted the car looked at one of the bags, took something out and put them back. He said he didn’t want the car. Louis dumped the car but kept the bags. Thought there might be something worth his while in one of them, which is where he found the photos and the other shit in there.”
“I don’t suppose he told you what he did with them, did he?” I asked again, more in hope than expectation.
“No, man, he didn’t.”
“Could he have stored them somewhere?”
Simeon shrugged. “Dunno, might have done but I wouldn’t know where.”
I looked around the room. It looked no better on a second viewing. Simeon sounded like an educated man. Why would he choose to live like this? Mickey was standing, looking out the window at something I couldn’t see.
“Why did he tell you all this? Surely if he’d stolen something this valuable, from the sound of it, he’d keep it to himself,” I wondered out loud.
“He owed me money for some dope I supplied him with. A fucking lot of dope, man. He sold it all but I never saw the bread. He comes round here and says he’s onto something that’s gonna make him rich and, if I can wait a little while, he’ll get me all I was owed, with more on top.”
“And you believed him?”
“He was really excited about it. He was always talking shit about how he was gonna do this and that but he was high about this one, man. I sort of gave him a little time to get rich and pay me and I’m still waiting.”
Just don’t take a deep breath, I thought. From his expression, Mickey thought the same thing.
“Anything else you can tell me about Phipps and this mystery person who’s going to make his dreams come true?”
“Not really, that’s all I know about it.”
“Did Phipps tell you someone took potshots at him and his brother recently?”
Rudolf seemed to know about this. What did Simeon know? “Oh yeah, he did.” Sim suddenly seemed more alive. “Came here a few nights back and asked if he could crash down here as someone had just fired at him and he didn’t wanna go back to his place in case the guy knew where he lived. I asked what it was about and he said something about some American coming up to him in a pub and saying he was going to kill ’em both. Straight up, man, that’s what he said.” Simeon’s voice was sounding slightly higher.
“Did he say why this guy said that?”
“No. Louis said he didn’t believe it at first but, when this maniac appears across the street and takes a shot, he realised the guy meant it. In fact, come to think of it, I ain’t seen Louis since he stayed here just before last weekend. He hiding someplace from this guy?”
“I’ve no idea where Phipps is right now.”
This was true. I didn’t know where his dead body had been taken.
“Guns. Trying to prise money out of people? What’s Louis Phipps got himself into?
“I don’t know, man, but this sounds like some heavy shit to me.” Sim sounded concerned. “I think he’s got a gun but it’s mainly for show, y’know? Carries it around ’cause it reinforces his belief he’s some big time dealer. I don’t think he’s ever used it.”
“So, you don’t know what Phipps stole from the car or why it was going to make him rich.”
“I don’t, man.”
“Would you have any idea where he might have put the bags? If they’re going to earn him a lot of money, presumably they’d have to be put somewhere safe. You know where?”
“You’ve already asked me that once. ’Fraid I don’t. He never told me. He lives near here. You can look there if you want.”
I was thinking we’d not get much else out of Simeon when the door opened and a girl wearing just a large baggy pyjama top entered. She was white, very thin and looked around 16. I hoped she was older. Even with the baggy top, it was obvious she was flat chested. Coupled with her cropped blonde hair, she looked androgynous. Her eyes suggested she’d been chemically stimulated earlier and was still coming down. Two skinny bodies like these in sexual congress would be almost combustible, like two pieces of kindling wood rubbing up to each other.
“Who you talkin’ to, Sim? You coming back up?” She sat on the edge of the chair.
“Guys are police,” he replied nodding towards us.
“Who are you?” I asked the girl.
“Name’s Belinda.”
“Beauty and the Beast,” Mickey said. “Shouldn’t you be at school?”
“I left school last year. I’m nearly 19. I’m a university student,” she said matter-of-factly.
I wondered if she knew anything.
“Do you know a Louis Phipps?” I asked.
“That’s your creepy friend, isn’t it?” She looked at Simeon. “I know who he is but I don’t know him. He’s just someone used to come here once in a while but I tried
not to be around when he did. His brother was cute but a bit of a wimp.”
“So you don’t know anything about him or what he’s been up to.”
“I’m sorry, no. What’s he done this time?”
“Usual stuff. We’re just following up a lead about him.” Mickey and I rose from our seats.
“Thanks for your time. Sorry we came at an, er, inappropriate time.”
“Where do you go to college?” Mickey asked the girl.
“University of Greenwich. Simeon’s my psychology tutor, aren’t you, Sim?”
“Sure am, baby,” he replied with a satisfied grin on his face, patting her naked thigh.
“You’re a psychology lecturer and have a sideline selling drugs,” Mickey stated flatly. “Does your Faculty Head know about your extra-curricular activities?”
“Hey, come on, man, I told you everything.” Simeon looked very worried.
“You just keep this conversation to yourself and maybe he’ll never know.” I smiled. Simeon agreed that silence was indeed a virtue.
We thanked them for their cooperation and left. Walking back to the car I thought about what we’d heard from Rudolf and Simeon in the past hour.
“One-to-one tutoring has certainly changed since I left King’s,” I said as we got into the car.
In the last ninety minutes I’d learned that Louis Phipps believed he’d stumbled onto something that was going to make him rich. Both Rudolf and Simeon had said this. I’d also learned that Phipps had stolen the car after being paid to do so, but the instigator had not wanted the car after perusing the contents of the bags, whereupon it appeared Louis Phipps had helped himself to the two bags and, so far as I could tell, they’d not materialised. Phipps was now dead, and it wasn’t too hard believing that whatever was in those bags had been responsible for the deaths of him and his brother. But, from everything I knew about them, the Phippses were just run-of-the-mill street punks who dreamt of the big league but would never get there as prison or unrealistic dreams would get in the way of this aspiration.
It all kept coming back to the bags. Yet they’d hardly been mentioned in the transcripts of his arrest interview, and it also mentioned that Phipps had said he’d seen the bags in plain sight. But Simeon had just told me Phipps had said the bags were hidden under the front passenger seat. He’d also alluded to the fact the car had been stolen because the brothers were paid to do so. Mullins had told me the woman whom the car was registered to had initially been upset at the loss of the car but had become almost unconcerned about the missing bags. It all added up to something not adding up.
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