by Adam Carter
“Can I help you?” I asked with far more disdain than I had intended.
“Vodka,” she purred, suddenly in my flat without having actually pushed past me. “Straight.”
I watched as she wandered into the living room and gazed about as though she was a prospective buyer. I was left holding the door, staring and wondering not only who this woman was but who the hell she thought she was. Then I realised I was still being the doorwoman and slammed it shut before marching back into my own living room.
“Who are you supposed to be?” I barked. “And I don’t have any vodka, Miss Slinky-McSlink.”
She regarded me with curious, even amused eyes. “No vodka? My dear, how do you live?”
I did not grace that particular comment with an answer.
The woman had slipped into an armchair without having been asked, and I half expected her to strike up a cigarette held in one of those long, thin black things ladies of elegance always used to use. I could not imagine this creature was sincere in anything she was doing, and I found she was laying the Russian accent on a bit too thick to be real. I had a sudden reminder of what I had discussed with Wentworth: that Mr Polinski had a Russian-sounding name. That this woman was somehow connected with the case was obvious even to me, although whether it was a connection in a good way remained to be seen.
“I have whisky,” I said as calmly as possible, telling myself my fists were not clenching at my side so tightly my fingernails were drawing blood.
“Whisky,” the woman said with nose-twitching disdain, turning her head as though she was to spit that vile substance from her tongue. “The drink of devils, Miss Corrigan. The sweet, brown turgid waters of the sewer. Vodka is the purity of life. There is no deception in so clear a drink.”
“Arsenic.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Arsenic is clear as well. Arsenic in vodka would kill just as invisibly as arsenic in whisky.”
“But at least I would die in ecstasy.”
She had a strange comprehension of ecstasy, but it was hardly my place to say how a woman got her kicks. “Well the point’s moot anyway,” I said, “since I don’t have any vodka. And, come to think of it, I’m fresh out of arsenic too.”
“Then your whisky will do fine, Miss Corrigan.”
I fixed the drink she didn’t want and made myself one. We both took it neat for no particular reason, and I took a seat opposite her, eyeing her as calmly as I could while I tried to figure out just what she wanted. “You have me at a disadvantage,” I said.
“You are referring to my hidden gun?”
“Uh, no, I meant I don’t know your ... You’ve brought a gun into my flat?”
“No, dear.” She even laughed in that outrageous accent and I suddenly wished I actually had some arsenic after all. “It is the joker in me.” She extended a hand, palm up, fingers down, as though she expected me to kiss it. “Rowena Silvers.”
As a compromise between kissing and slapping the hand, I gripped it in a firm shake. Miss Silvers looked at her hand as I released it as though it had caught the plague and I began to consider that this woman wasn’t quite the act I had taken her to be. There was a chance, perhaps not an amazing one, but a chance nonetheless that she was one hundred per cent authentic.
Which would mean she was either a stuck-up cow or a loon. Possibly both.
“This might be a dumb question,” I asked, “but who are you?”
“Tsk, Miss Corrigan. Dumb is having no ability to speak. Stupid is what you mean.”
I knew what she was doing and I wasn’t rising to the bait. “And you are?”
Silvers gently shook her whisky beneath her nose, inhaling the aroma while she smiled my way like a cat contemplating the lock of a birdcage. “You are unnerved by me, Miss Corrigan.”
“I’d probably be less on edge if you stressed a v now and then and called me comrade.”
“I could miss few words if make you feel better.”
“Now you’re just being annoying.”
“No, I being – how do you say? – pedantic.” Her smile deepened. “That is way you expect foreigners to talk, dah? We ask how to say word before saying it anyway.”
“Just tell me who you are or I phone the cops right now.”
I pulled my phone from my pocket and thumbed through to Carl’s number. The only chance I had of actually phoning him was if she did indeed pull a gun on me, although she understood the threat well enough: I was through playing games.
“You will not phone the police,” Silvers purred, relaxing in her chair and crossing her shapely legs. She even sipped at the whisky, although I could tell by her grimace that she didn’t much like it. I took a strange level of satisfaction in that discovery.
“I won’t?” I asked. “Sort of thought I might myself.”
“The police are not doing much about Anthony, Miss Corrigan.”
“Anthony?”
She stared at me with only the faintest hint of amusement. “Mr Polinski?”
“Oh.” I had always assumed Mr Polinski must have had a first name, but I had not really put that much thought into what it might have been. I did not want Silvers to realise this, although my hesitation must have already shown her everything she needed to know, even if my face hadn’t.
“The great detective,” she said, raising her glass.
“I never said I was a detective,” I snapped. I don’t know why, but this woman was getting under my skin. She had turned up at my front door, invited herself in, ordered a drink and so far hadn’t even told me who she was. In fact I had only her word to go on that Anthony was even genuine. Maybe she had simply made it up, pulled it out of the air. I had no idea, and it would have helped some if she just got around to telling me who she was.
Perhaps she wanted me to guess.
“You think the police aren’t doing anything,” I said, “so you’ve come to me. How did you know I was looking into it?”
“I saw you talking with the detective. You seemed to care.”
“So you want me to find the killer instead.”
She shrugged. “I think you have a better chance, Miss Corrigan. Whoever killed Anthony was a professional. The police are not going to catch him. But they will not be watching you, so perhaps you have a chance.”
“And maybe I’ll get myself shot along the way as well.”
“Perhaps. But you are already looking into the murder, so perhaps I am here only to offer a helping hand.”
“You have information for me?”
“I don’t know.”
I took a deep breath. “All right, let’s come at this again. Who are you? I mean, who are you to Mr Polinski?”
A sly smile took her face once more. “It is a poor detective who cannot see that.”
I refrained from telling her once more that I never claimed to be a detective. “You’re his wife?”
She tutted. “Anthony’s family are all back home. Nyet.” Her eyes flashed to show she was mocking me again.
“His bit on the side then,” I said, and her eyes lost some of their flash so I pushed as hard as I could. “His wonton, his paramour, his strumpet ...”
“I understand the term, yes.”
“... his trollp, his hoochie, his fancy woman ...”
“I think I ...”
“... his scrubber, his quean, his courtesan ...”
“Miss Corrigan!”
I stopped, my point well made. Rowena Silvers was seething, her fingers clutching the glass so tightly it was clear she wanted nothing more in that moment than to smash it over my head. I considered pushing her further but figured I had made my point well enough.
“You have a wide vocabulary,” Silvers said slowly, “for a subject you consider so disreputable.”
It was almost an accusation, so I felt she could do with another dose. “I got a few left, doxy, so you might want to think about getting to the point of your visit.”
She did not relax, and I could see I had at last got
to her. However, she had indeed come to me for a reason and she was about to storm out before she got around to telling it to me.
“Anthony did not know bad people, Miss Corrigan. He did not deal in bad people’s things. He was a quiet man who liked to know things, but that was his job. His friendliness brought him customers and his customers brought him money.”
“His friendliness brought him hussies as well,” I said and received a glower. I hid my victorious smile with my own glass. “Sorry. Last one, I promise.”
“Anthony,” Silvers continued with an air of someone who wanted to wrap things up as quickly as she possibly could, “did not mix with undesirables. No one would have wanted him dead.”
“Well someone sure did.”
“No one,” she repeated emphatically, her eyes almost trembling.
It was at this point I realised what a complete cow I was being. If what Silvers had told me was true, and I had no reason to doubt her word, she and Mr Polinski had been lovers. Regardless of the morality of such a thing, regardless of my own personal feelings, the two had been lovers. And by the very definition of the word it likely meant Silvers had loved him. She had come to me knowing the police were doing precious little to find his killer and all I was giving her was cheap whisky and abuse. She was trying to be strong, perhaps playing up on the whole mysterious Russian woman line because it helped her to cope with what had happened. The woman was grieving and she was angry and more than likely she was also terrified that whoever had killed Mr Polinski was coming after her next. In fact, until someone figured out who had killed him and why we had no idea who might be the next target.
I think she must have seen some of this realisation in my face, because her eyes hardened and she sat up just that little bit straighter. She did not want sympathy from me, not after everything I had said to her. I couldn’t blame her for that and resolved not to make any further mention of her being Mr Polinski’s other woman. If nothing else I was dishonouring his memory with my childish behaviour.
Knowing she would not want an apology, I pressed on with what mattered to both our hearts. “I haven’t been able to find any enemies either,” I said. “I’m thinking you have something else you wanted to tell me though.”
“Yes.” She was making no pretence any longer of even drinking the whisky, and to be honest I couldn’t blame her. The bottle had been a present from Carl last Christmas and I reckon he’d only bought it for me because he knows I loathe the stuff. “There is someone you should talk to, someone who might know something.”
“Who?”
“Anthony has always run his shop himself. He makes ... made little money, just enough to tide himself over. I was always telling him he should hire a shop-hand, but he always tells me it is too expensive. He was a tight man, my Anthony, but a hard-worker. I had the feeling no one would ever meet his standard and it would be more stressful for him to hire than to not hire.”
Some of that fit in with what I knew about the man, but then again his face for his customers was going to be vastly different to the face he showed his friends.
“And then suddenly,” Silvers continued, “this boy appears. I’m not good with ages, especially with boys. He might have been late teens, early into his twenties. No older than that though.”
“Who was he?”
“Nathan. That was all I get out of Anthony. I asked who this boy was, what he was doing here, and Anthony tells me he is here to help look after the shop. I ask Anthony why do you have someone to look after the shop when you have always refused before? And he tells me not to ask.”
“Did he usually confide everything in you?”
“My Anthony kept no secrets from me. I was his secret, as you so love to point out. You do not keep secrets from the mistress.”
Mistress; there was one I hadn’t thought of.
“So who was he?” I asked. “This Nathan. Did you ever find out anything about him?”
“No. He was simply there one day. He stayed in the shop working for about two weeks. And then Anthony is killed.”
“And where’s this boy now?”
“I do not know. He has vanished.”
“So you think this Nathan was the one who shot him?”
“I do not know. I am not a detective.”
Nor was I, but I didn’t state the obvious. “Is there anywhere you think he may have gone?”
“If I knew that,” she said almost angrily, “I would not be sitting here drinking this awful whisky with a woman whose hobby is to look up naughty words in the thesaurus.”
I barely registered her reaction, for my mind was already working ahead. I could not understand why Mr Polinski would have taken a violent youth under his wing. Perhaps he thought he was doing the community a favour, perhaps he was being coerced by this Nathan. But why would Nathan wait two weeks to shoot him? And why would he shoot him and not rob the shop while he was there? Just because this youth had entered the scene, it didn’t stand to reason he would shoot Mr Polinski for no reason.
Who was he?
“Do you know what he looked like?” I asked.
Silvers shrugged. “I saw him twice, maybe three times. I do not know; I am no good with faces. He had gel in his hair, I remember the shine. Otherwise I do not remember much.”
“Do you remember his skin colour?”
“White, I think.”
It was rubbish as descriptions went, but I didn’t want to push her; not after the way I had been treating her. “This is good information,” I said, quickly searching for some paper and a pen. I scrawled down my phone number. “I want you to contact me if you think of anything else, or if you happen to see this Nathan again.”
“Why would I see him again? He is coming to kill me you think?”
“Maybe he didn’t kill Mr Polinski at all. Maybe he ran away after the shooting because he was scared.”
“Maybe pigs like crispy bacon.”
I did not like to point out that they probably did: pigs would eat anything. “Leave this with me, Miss Silvers,” I said in as reassuring a tone as I could manage. “I’ll find out what happened to your Anthony, I promise.”
It was a promise I had extreme doubts of fulfilling, but one to which I would fight to keep regardless.
With a lead at last, at least I had something to go on.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Detective
Since there was nothing immediate I could do about things, I slept on the information Silvers had given me. By the morning I had something of a plan, although not an especially good one. Mr Polinski’s shop still seemed the best place to search for clues, although I could not think how many this Nathan would have left. I spent much of the night trying to work out whether I had seen the youth myself; if he was working in the shop there was every chance we had been there at the same time. Not having expected seeing him I certainly had never looked for him; and I was sure if I had seen someone even stacking shelves I would have asked Mr Polinski about it. Why he would employ someone and not put them to work did not make a whole lot of sense to me, yet that was nothing new with this case. I even began to wonder whether Silvers had made up this Nathan to hide her own guilt, but that was ridiculous. I had never seen Silvers before and she would have no reason to approach me with lies and expose herself. An alternative was that Mr Polinski had been lying to Silvers. Perhaps what she had told me was true, insofar as she knew things. Perhaps it was Mr Polinski who had been lying to us all the entire time.
Anthony. I had to remind myself that Mr Polinski had a first name, just like everyone else. If I had not even known that little about him, I could not comprehend why I thought I was such an authority on him.
Heading out of my flat, I just made it to the street when I saw Carl standing there. At first I thought it was a coincidence, but then I noticed he had his irked face on and that always meant he was in his snooping mode. And Carl in his snooping mode had been known to hang around street corners for hours.
“Hey, Carl,” I sai
d as I walked past him towards where I was parked. “Was just off out, so if you want something make it quick.”
“We need to talk.”
“Sure. Just talk quickly.”
I had my door open by this point and was slipping behind the wheel. Carl was around the car and sliding in from the other side before I could stop him. I sat silently, knowing he would get around to telling me what he wanted eventually.
“You’re not going to drive?” he asked.
“Where would you like me to drive to?”
“I don’t know. Wherever you were headed should be fine, Lauren.”
So that was his game. He had somehow discovered I was muscling in on his turf and he didn’t like it. Carl had never liked me doing things he did, always because he was afraid I was going to end up doing them better. That wouldn’t stop him subjecting me to them so he could show me how good he was at them. We had a strange relationship, me and Carl, and it’s a wonder it lasted as long as it had.
“If you have something to say, Carl, then it’d be doing us both a favour to just come out and say it.”
“Fine.” He angled himself so he could face me, which meant his arm was bent against the seat, making him look very uncomfortable. I had half a mind to floor the accelerator just so I could see him fall everywhere. But I wasn’t a teenager so I didn’t. “You’re investigating the murder,” he said, not even asking it as a question.
“Yes.” I didn’t see any sense in lying to him.
“Why?”
“Because you said you wanted help.”
“Not from you.”
I looked at him then and my eyes must have been filled with venom because he visibly quailed.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, but still did not back down. “I just ... Lauren, this is a dangerous business.”
“I don’t see why. This isn’t TV, Carl. Detectives don’t get shot at every two minutes.”
“Why didn’t you just go to the media like I asked?”
“Maybe because you asked.” He seemed to genuinely not understand what I was saying and I felt disgusted I had ever let this man touch me. “Carl, you always have to control everything, don’t you? Well you don’t control me and I don’t even see why you think you can. I don’t know whether you noticed, but we’re not together any more. I’m not sure we were together even when we were together.” I realised I was rambling, which, I’ve already said, is something I do when I’m angry. It only made me angrier, and I knew given half a chance it would only make my rambling worse. I needed to get to the point and maybe Carl would even listen this time. “I have to do this for Mr Polinski,” I said, trying to summarise in my own head my reasons. “I have to bring him some peace.”