Never Die in January

by Alan Scholefield

  “Nice, innit?” Stoker said, embracing the garden-room. There were two VDUs to the left of the desk.

  “I liked it when Mr Gorman had it,” Macrae said, emphasizing the word “mister”. Two could play at this game.

  ““Reuters”,” Stoker said, pointing to one of the VDUs. “The other’s the Extel.”

  He pressed a remote-control button and one of the screens changed. “Dow Jones whatsits.” He pressed again. “American long bond in Far East trading.”

  “What’s the point of it all?”

  “The point? The point is I can see what the money-markets are doing. That’s the point.”

  “But how does that help you?”

  Stoker frowned. “You gotta know what the money-markets are doing if you’re a player.”

  “But that presupposes you can read, Stoker. You can read, can you? I didn’t know that. I always thought — when I thought about you at all, which wasn’t very often — I always thought you were illiterate. Now you tell me you can read. I’m glad about that, laddie. In Scotland we have a great respect for education.”

  Stoker said, “Have your fun, Mr Macrae.”

  “Get on with it, you miserable shit.”

  “Right, Mr Macrae. Fine.”

  He opened a drawer and took out a large brown ledger. His finger travelled down the columns. “Yeah, here it is. George Macrae. Three thousand quid.”

  Macrae had guessed it had something to do with the money and now his large head dropped slightly further forward. “What’s that got to do with you, Stoker?”

  “We don’t like bad debts. Stands to reason.”

  “You’re running the business, are you?”

  “Didn’t Mrs Gorman explain? You were with her long enough.”

  “Her business manager. Is that it?”

  “That’s a way of puttin’ it.”

  “Come on, Stoker, you know bugger-all about business. Your idea of a takeover is to stick a gun in someone’s ear and take his money.”

  “The simple methods are the best methods, Mr Macrae.”

  “Let me tell you something, you little turd — ”

  “Hold on, Mr Macrae. There’s no call for that. I don’t insult you. Please do me the same favour. And I know what you’re gonna say. You’re gonna tell me that the last time you came here Mr Gorman said he was wiping out the debt; that he didn’t want you upset about it.”

  “That’s right, Stoker, that’s what he said.”

  “Money for your daughter, wasn’t it? Didn’t she want to go round the world or somethin’?”

  “Leave her out of it!”

  “Anything you say, Mr Macrae.”

  “You’ve put Molly up to this! She’d never have thought of it in a million years.”

  “She’s far too kind-hearted for business matters. I’ve told her that before.” He took an audio cassette from the drawer, turned to a line of cupboards behind him, opened one, and Macrae saw a cassette deck.

  Stoker slipped in the tape and pressed the PLAY button. There was the noise of a door closing, then Artie’s voice saying, “Hello, George, come on in”

  Macrae felt his back hair rise. It was not only hearing the dead man’s voice. He knew exactly when and where this had been recorded. It was the last time he had seen Artie.

  Stoker ran the tape forward. “We can get over the chit-chat.” He looked at the counter and restarted the tape. “Listen to this.” Artie’s voice said, “Affairs, George. Getting them in order. That’s what I want to talk to you about.”

  “Artie, I know what you’re going to say and I — ”

  “George, you haven’t a clue what I’m going to say. I wanted to see you to tell you that I don’t want the three thousand — ”

  Stoker ran the tape on and Artie’s voice said, “I told you when I lent you the money: three thousand isn’t heavy for me…” Stoker stopped the tape. “Who’d have thought Mr Gorman would put it all on tape? But he did. In his last months he put everything on tape. Kind of insurance, see.”

  Macrae was staring at the cassette deck.

  Stoker said, “We want the money, Mr Macrae.”

  Macrae didn’t miss the emphasis on the word “we”.

  He looked at the tape cassette in Stoker’s hand. “You want it?” Stoker said. “You can have it. It’s only a copy.”

  “You can go and get fucked,” Macrae said.

  “That’s bluff. You know it. I know it.”

  “I don’t give a toss what you call it. I haven’t got three thousand quid and even if I had there’s no way — ”

  “Oh, it ain’t three thousand. There’s been interest, see. We’re looking at six, George, and risin’.”

  Macrae stood over him. He felt a surge of powerful anger go into his hands. He wanted to lean over and take Stoker by the throat and squeeze the life out of him.

  “I know what you’re thinkin’, George.”

  “Do you?”

  “Course I do. I’d be thinkin’ it meself.”

  “As long as you know.”

  “Yeah. And at any other time I’d be right worried. But I’ve got insurance now, George. I’m sure we can work things out. Even if you ain’t got the money. Payment in kind, so to speak.” Macrae laughed. It was not much of a laugh. “You must be out of what passes for your mind, Stoker.”

  He turned on his heel and walked out of the room and down the garden.

  “Think about it, George,” Stoker called after him.

  Stoker stood at the drawing-room windows watching Macrae climb into the Rover.

  “Shithead!” he said.

  Molly joined him.

  “Look at him!”

  Macrae was wrestling with the car, trying to get out of a tight space. Behind it was a gold Rolls-Royce. Suddenly Stoker gripped the curtains. “If he touches the Roller it’s another grand.”

  But Macrae managed to get out without damaging any other vehicle and disappeared down the street in a haze of blue smoke. “Calls himself a copper. Can’t even drive properly.”

  “He always had someone to drive for him.”

  “The Jewboy?”

  “No, not Silver, an older man. Drove him for years and years. Gary…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Gary, listen, I don’t like doing this to George. He was a good friend to Artie. They went back a long way; to when George was on the beat and Artie was a bookie’s runner.”

  “You can’t be “good friends” with coppers.”

  “I know that. It’s just — ”

  “You’re not scared of Macrae, are you?”

  “I respect him. And you’d better too. There’s something about him. He’s not like other coppers. He’s unpredictable. And he’s got brains even though he doesn’t show them.”

  “So’ve I.”

  She turned away so he wouldn’t see her expression.

  He pinched the soft skin under her arm.

  “You’re hurting me!”

  “Nah…I wouldn’t hurt you.” He pinched again. “Get us a drink.” She rubbed her arm, then opened a can of Foster’s and poured herself a large vodka on the rocks. “For Christ’s sake take something with it. Orange juice. Tomato juice. Something.”

  “I like it like this.”

  “I don’t like to fuck drunks. Never did fancy it.”

  “You’ve got a nasty mouth, Gary.”

  He showed her the tip of his pink tongue. “You said you liked it.”

  She turned away. “You’ve changed. You weren’t like this when Artie was alive.”

  “It’s you that’s changed. Come here.”

  Reluctantly she moved towards him. He caught her hand and pulled her down on to the sofa with him. Her miniskirt had ridden up and he slipped his hand between her thighs.

  “Not here,” she said.

  “Yeah. Here. Now.”

  “They can see us through the windows.”

  “Who?”

  “People in the houses opposite.”

  “Let t
hem. Do ‘em good.”

  He unbuttoned her blouse and began to stroke her breasts. He kissed her. It was like switching on a power supply.

  “You changed your mind?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “You want to?”

  “Yes.”

  “Really want to?”

  “Really want to.”

  He pushed her away and got up. “Keep it warm,” he said. “I’m just going out to buy a packet of fags.”

  She watched him go out of the house and along the street. He was walking slowly, as though he had all the time in the world. Slowly she buttoned her blouse and straightened her clothes. Then she lit a cigarette from his packet on the coffee table. Her hands were shaking. She sat smoking and looking at the wall. How had things got like this, she wondered.

  Macrae was hardly conscious of where he was. He saw a parking space, pulled up and parked. He was in Camden Town and he wanted a drink. He went into the nearest pub, an anonymous place with fruit machines and canned music. He ordered a large Scotch, downed it, ordered another, and took it to a table. He lit a panatella and sipped the Scotch.

  What happened next?

  Well, in the movies the scenario might go something like this: you set Stoker up and killed him. Simple. Indeed, Stoker himself had said the simple methods were the best methods.

  A bullet between the ears and who’d know or care?

  Molly would know and care.

  So shoot Molly too.

  And then the bank manager who was holding the original tape — or was it a lawyer? — would know and care. So kill them.

  Macrae had no particular moral inhibitions about the thought of lawyers or bank managers dying violent deaths, it was just that the number of those who might know and care would increase exponentially to the point where whole families, then whole professions, might have to be removed.

  So…Stoker couldn’t be killed, indeed couldn’t even be frightened off, since he was the one who was doing the frightening.

  The alternative was to pay the money. Six thousand quid. He didn’t have it or any prospect of getting it.

  He took out his pen and notebook and started to jot down the names of people who might lend him six thousand. At the end of ten minutes he had jotted down just three names. He stared at them. Slowly the knowledge crept over him that they were all villains of one sort of another.

  There wasn’t an honest man among them.

  Was this what his life had become?

  He bought another large Scotch and nursed it. This was the dangerous one. This would give him the taste, the need. If he wasn’t careful, this was the one that would drop him into the old familiar abyss where the next drink wasn’t measured out in a bar but poured out from his own bottle in his own house.

  You can’t afford a binge, he told himself. Not with people like Stoker about.

  The third alternative, the one that sat just on the edge of his conscious mind, hardly bore thinking about. Payment in kind, Stoker had said. And Macrae knew exactly what that would mean. He’d be on the payroll. First the six thousand would be wiped off “for favours received” — small things at first like getting information from the police computer or looking the other way when something untoward happened on his manor.

  But then would come the hard cash. Monthly. In an envelope. Handed to him in a men’s lavatory or a car park in Surrey.

  He’d be a bent copper.

  Stoker would bend him.

  The fact was there wasn’t anything he could do at the moment except wait and see.

  CHAPTER VII

  “My name is Irene,” the woman said.

  She was standing on the steps leading up to the front door of the house and had pressed Linda Macrae’s bell. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I wanted to introduce myself and I heard you come in.”

  “The garden flat!” Linda said. “So you moved in today? I saw the lights. Won’t you come in?”

  “No, really, I — ”

  “Please, I was about to make some coffee.”

  “That’s kind of you,” Irene said. “Only a minute.” She entered the flat. “What a lovely room.”

  It was a large room running from the front of the house to the rear and patterned with shadows made by spotlamps on greenery.

  Irene followed her into the kitchen. Linda said, “I was just about to come downstairs to see if there was anything you needed.”

  She looked at her new neighbour while she poured boiling water into the filter. She was about her own age, with a sallow skin and eyes that were almost black. Her hair, which glinted and shone in the lights, was pulled back. She wore glasses and a shapeless fisherman’s sweater, which covered her body down to her thighs. There was something…something not quite right about her, Linda thought, but couldn’t tell what it was.

  “Moving is so awful I don’t know why we do it,” Irene said.

  “Where have you moved from?”

  They took the coffee into the sitting-room.

  “I’ve lived in so many places.”

  She leaned back in the chair and put the mug of coffee down on the table. Her gestures were smooth, elegant; her hands were beautiful, strong and finely kept, the nails immaculate, not too long, not too short. They shone like her hair.

  They seemed so out of keeping with the casual way she was dressed that Linda had to remind herself that she had only moved in that day.

  Her face behind the glasses was sensual, her body supple, languid. She gave the impression of being a dancer but she was not lean enough. Then Linda suddenly thought of Egypt. She had been there on holiday once. Irene reminded her of a belly-dancer, sinuous and supple, fleshy without being fat, with a full body and full breasts.

  They talked amiably for a while, discussing the usual formalities: which dairy delivered milk in this street, which newsagents the papers. Linda began to relax. If you had to have neighbours then Irene looked like a good prospect. David above and Irene below. Then abruptly she thought, oh-oh; three loose cannons in the same house.

  “Sorry?” She had missed Irene’s last question.

  “I was asking about my predecessor. Did you know her?”

  “Not really. By sight, of course, but I hardly saw her. Her name was Grace.”

  “Nice name.”

  “It didn’t do her much good.”

  “Oh?”

  “Well, for one thing, she’s dead.”

  “Yes, the estate agent mentioned that.”

  “Gerald?”

  “Is that his name?”

  “Gerald Masters. Of Marshall and Masters.”

  “Did you get your flat through him?” Irene said.

  Linda nodded. “He has most of this area. He’s into property as well. Buying and selling.”

  Irene drained her coffee and made as though to rise. “I must — ”

  “There’s no hurry. This is my self-improvement hour. I don’t mind missing it. More coffee?”

  “Half, then.”

  Linda poured it from the filter and added cream. Irene helped herself to sugar, then said, “What did Grace die of?”

  “We were never quite sure.”

  “We?”

  “David…Mr Leitman. He lives upstairs. He’s away at the moment. All I know is an ambulance came for her one morning.”

  “Strange, isn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “Life in a big city. Or maybe I should say death. People live in capsules. No one cares what happens to them.”

  “We cared.” It was sharply said, for Linda felt resentful at the implied lack of feeling. “We tried several times to befriend her. She didn’t want us. It was sad because she seemed so alone. But she must have had her reasons.”

  She was remembering the last time. The noises had been louder than before. Not the noise of the music, that hadn’t bothered her for she had only to turn hers up to drown it. No, it had been the noise of violence that had caused them to investigate. She and David had stood in the front hall listeni
ng to the noise in the basement.

  “This is bloody terrible,” he had said. “I’m going down.”

  She had gone with him in case her help was needed. It took Grace some time to answer the bell. She was painfully thin with a large-eyed, pre-Raphaelite beauty, sad and tormented. Her face was marked, her lips were swollen, and she had been weeping. “Yes?”

  David said, “We heard…well, noises. We wondered if you were all right.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Linda had sensed a man in the background but had not seen him.

  “Are you sure?” Linda had said.

  “Yes, I’m sure.” The subtext was: “Why don’t you mind your own business?”

  Grace had closed the door and that had been that.

  Now Linda repeated, “She didn’t want friendship. She wanted to be left alone.”

  “Perhaps you only thought she wanted to be left alone.”

  “No we didn’t only think that! We tried. We were worried about her. She wasn’t very robust and I think she was being…This is ridiculous. I mean I really don’t know what went on. And I don’t really know why I’m discussing it with you. We thought the obvious thing; that she was being beaten up by her lover. We didn’t think she was married because I noticed she never wore a ring.”

  “Isn’t it amazing what goes on in the name of keeping one’s nose out of other people’s business? If we stuck our noses in more often — ”

  “It sounds as though we were unsympathetic. We weren’t. She as good as told us not to interfere.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply anything.” Irene smiled. Linda felt the warmth. She felt the irritation begin to dissipate.

  “It’s not your fault,” Linda said. “It’s guilt, I suppose. We should have been able to do something. Anything…”

  “Did you see the marks?”

  “Of the beatings? Not really. On the few occasions I saw her in daylight close up her hair almost covered her face. You know it all happened in a short period. She was only here a couple of months.”

  “And what happened in the end?”

  “I’d already left for work when the ambulance came. Mr Lehman — he’s a writer so he’s home all day — he saw the ambulance.”

  “I wonder who phoned for it.”

  “Yes, we wondered too. Then we heard it was the milkman.”