Never Die in January

by Alan Scholefield

  “Not a Weedin” thing. You might just as well put him in a box.” Macrae blenched inwardly at the callousness of her remark but after a moment he thought: What if you had to live with this day after day after day?

  “Mick’s like a vegetable.” As she spoke she wiped her husband’s mouth. She did it automatically as though it was a gesture she had made ten thousand times before.

  Her movement caused the air in the room to stir and Macrae, who had been trying not to notice the rank smell of drains and frying, felt his gorge rise. The two kids were standing in the doorway looking at him.

  “When did it happen?” he asked.

  “I lost count,” she said. “Feels like a million years.”

  He had a suspicious thought. “Was it about the time of the Jimmy Swallow murder?”

  “Some time about then.”

  “He and Jimmy were trying to set up a gambling operation in Camden, weren’t they?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Where did someone like Mick get the finance from for a job like that?”

  “I dunno. He never spoke about his work. He was always on the phone, though. There may have been another bloke with cash.”

  “And the accident, the hit and run, happened around the time of the murder? Before or after?”

  “After.”

  “Just after? A month after?”

  “I dunno. Maybe a month.”

  “He’d seen the police by then? I mean he’d been interviewed about Jimmy Swallow’s murder?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was anyone ever arrested for the hit and run?”

  “No one ever said.”

  “You’d have been told. Does the name Stoker mean anything to you? Gary Stoker?”

  He suddenly saw her expression change. He looked down at Buckle. The thin film of froth had returned to his lips but otherwise he was unchanged.

  “Do you know Stoker?”

  “Listen, I got the kids to see to.”

  “You do, don’t you? D’you think he was the hit and run driver?”

  “Please,” the woman said. “I answered hundreds of questions. It ain’t got anyone anywhere.”

  “But did anyone ask you about Stoker?”

  She shook her head.

  “Listen to me for a wee moment. Your husband’s been totally wrecked. His friend Swallow was killed. Hit with a tyre lever. We think Stoker killed him. And now my guess is that it was Stoker who ran him down in case Mick ever came forward to name him as Jimmy’s killer. You want someone like that left to run around London like Attila the Hun?”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind, just think about what he did.”

  “I got enough problems without — ”

  “Stoker.”

  “Yeah, without Stoker.”

  “The police’ll protect you.”

  “That’s what the coppers said to Mick before the accident.”

  “All right,” Macrae said. “I’ll leave you to think about it. But I’ll be back.” At the door, he said, “By the way, why is he called “Toasties”?”

  “I dunno,” she said. “I never asked.”

  Now, driving home through the misty winter night on the south side of the river, Macrae was caught in a dilemma. If it was Stoker then he had a duty to pass his suspicions on. He began to ponder on an extremely complex double-play: what if he had been suspicious of Stoker right from the start as the killer of Jimmy Swallow? After all, he had arrested him and interviewed him in Hackney when he’d assaulted the PC. Take it a step further. What if he had used Artie as a stalking-horse to get at Stoker? Of course it would only work if he did get Stoker. But it might be worth a try. Cloud the issue. Muddy the waters. He might even come out of it looking good. He’d have to go back to Buckle’s grisly flat. Next time he wouldn’t leave without a statement.

  He found himself in Clapham High Street and on an impulse turned towards Linda’s house. He owed her an apology for the other night. He parked and went up the front steps. The flat seemed to be in darkness. He looked up at Leitman’s flat. It too was in darkness. Coincidence?

  He rang her bell then began knocking on the front door. It was loud in the quiet street. A woman’s voice below him said, “Excuse me, who do you want?”

  “Mrs Macrae.”

  “She isn’t here.” She came up the steps. “Is that Mr Macrae? It’s Irene Isard.”

  “Oh, aye. I was passing. I thought I’d call in.”

  “I’m afraid Linda’s away.”

  “Away?” He made it sound as though it was a criminal offence.

  “Only for a day or two. She went up to Scotland.”

  He frowned. “I’ve never known her go to Scotland. Whatever for?”

  “I think it’s just a little break, Mr Macrae.”

  “Oh, well…”

  “It’s a pity you’ve come all this way for nothing. Can I give you a cup of coffee?”

  Macrae had had enough of people for one night. “No, I must be getting — ”

  “I’m just making one.” She moved so that he was now between her and the open door. “Or a drink. That would be better wouldn’t it at this time? I know I could do with one.”

  Almost imperceptibly, she had been moving him towards the flat doorway.

  He shrugged mentally. An attractive woman…a drink…warmth…

  “Of course you will,” she said.

  He paused, but only fractionally. “Aye. That would be nice.”

  He was taken with her flat. He liked the colours and the warmth. He wondered why he’d never been able to get his own flat looking like this.

  “I went to Spain a couple of times,” he said, “but it’s all concrete now.”

  “We made it like that, now we despise it.” She gave him a whisky.

  “Glenmorangie!”

  “The man I…my husband — my late husband, that is — used to drink it. You’d know it, of course.”

  “It’s the one I prefer. Is something wrong?”

  She indicated her eyes. “No, no. I’ve been cutting up onions.” There was a pause. She sipped her whisky and said, “That’s a lie. It’s just that the day has been…well, bloody awful.”

  He sat back and thought: someone else with a bloody awful day behind them, and wondered if she, too, was about to touch him for money.

  “I’ve spent it with a friend. She’s been having a bad time.”

  He nodded, trying to look interested.

  “I’ve been with her all day. It’s rather sad, really.”

  “D’you mind if I light up?” He held up a packet.

  “Please. I like the smell of a cigar.”

  He lay back, drawing on the thin panatella and sipping the Glenmorangie, and let her words wash over him.

  “Do you know much about battered women?”

  “Me?” He said it as though her question had been an accusation. “No, no, I’ve come across cases but not many.”

  “Well, my friend comes from a background of violence. It started with her father. He battered her mother. And she — my friend that is — lived with her mother in a refuge for battered women when she was a young girl. She was frightened to death of her father. So it was only natural that when she could escape from her family, she did.

  “She had a child. It wasn’t as though she was leaving a baby though. The girl was in her mid-teens and — ”

  “You’ve lost me,” Macrae said.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. My friend had a daughter. When she was about fifteen she left home and went to live in a squat and wouldn’t…would not…come home even though her mother tried and tried. That’s the point I’m trying to make. Because when my friend couldn’t get her daughter to return home…I mean she was on drugs and everything…and the men…God, it was really bad!”

  “You seem very close.”

  “Well, she was my…goddaughter.”

  “What’s the girl’s name?” Macrae said.

  “Gwen. Anyway, Gwen finally killed herself. Sh
e was being battered too.”

  They stared at each other. Macrae had heard many stories told about “friends”. He wondered if this was another, but he was so bloody tired and mixed up and concerned with his own affairs that he didn’t give much of a toss one way or the other.

  “They say some women subconsciously want to be battered,” she said.

  “I’ve heard of it. I’ve never come across it.”

  “My friend’s mother…she was a strange woman. She seemed to prefer the rough side of life. She came from quite a good family but she married a warrant officer who eventually became a major. He put on a good accent and pretended to be someone he wasn’t. Sometimes my friend wondered if her mother wasn’t one of these women. Do you think it’s possible for that sort of thing to skip a generation?”

  “God knows.”

  “My friend wondered, you know, if it hadn’t reappeared in Grace. The one who killed herself.”

  “I thought you said her name was Gwen.”

  “Yes, yes, it is Gwen. What did I say?”

  “Grace.”

  “Did I? I wonder why?”

  Macrae was becoming enmeshed in something he didn’t need. He finished the drink and mashed out his cigar and began the small movements and rearrangements of clothes and limbs that presaged departure.

  But she was up in a flash with the bottle and the taste was there and he thought, what the hell, it was free. All he had to do was lend half an ear.

  “So anyway,” Irene continued. “My friend’s daughter, Gwen, got herself into a situation where she too was being battered. And she killed herself. But then a strange thing happened. She’d written a book — a novel. Except it wasn’t really a novel, it was just what had happened to her and her family. And the manuscript of this novel popped up after her death. And my friend’s been reading it. That’s why she wanted me to come over and be with her.”

  “Oh, aye,” Macrae said, feeling the whisky spread out into his muscles.

  “It’s the most terrible indictment of her mother. She says in her novel that her mother abandoned her, didn’t love her. It’s a terrible thing to read, Mr Macrae.”

  “I suppose it is.” His own children passed briefly before his mind’s eye and he wondered what kind of novel they would write about him.

  “She phoned me up and she was quite distraught and I went to keep her company. And, well, we had a good old cry.”

  Macrae stared at Irene and thought: She’s lying, she’d never use a phrase like that if she was telling the truth. A good old cry? Sounded like someone who’d gone to a weepie at the pictures. But he found he didn’t care.

  “Have you got any children? Oh, yes, of course, you have. Linda told me. You’ve got a daughter.”

  “I’ve got two daughters. And a son. Different wives.”

  “You’ll know how my friend feels then. It’s the guilt. It’s terrible.”

  “Aye. That’s the point about having kids. Doesn’t matter what you do for them — if something goes wrong you’re to blame. And there’s no escaping the guilt.”

  He said it so forcefully that she blinked at him.

  “You know then how she must be feeling.”

  “I can guess.”

  Irene rose and gave herself another drink and, without asking, poured one for Macrae. He did not demur. Manna did not often fall like this.

  What a different scene this was from the one he had just left. That was true underclass; this, on the other hand, was what he could do with a bit of. Warmth. Colour. Comfort. An attractive woman pouring generous amounts of Glenmorangie into splendid cut-glass tumblers.

  He came out of his reverie and saw her staring at him expectantly. What the hell had she asked him?

  Her face softened and she said, “You look all in.”

  “Well, some of the work gets you down a bit.”

  “I’m sure it does. You see people in the raw.”

  “Aye, that’s the truth.”

  “I wish I’d known you when…when Gwen was alive. You might have been able to stop things.”

  “How?”

  “Well, warn the man off.”

  “The police can’t go round sticking in their noses. No, no, we can only act on a complaint or after a crime’s been committed.”

  “By then it’s often too late.”

  He wasn’t going to get into that argument. “Why didn’t she complain if she was being battered? There are women’s organizations. You mentioned one yourself: refuges. Was she married to him?”

  “No.”

  “Then she could have kicked him out.”

  “She wanted to redeem him.”

  “She what?”

  “She wrote it in her book. She said she only felt alive after he had beaten her. When he was begging her forgiveness. She said that was the only time in her life she really felt needed and wanted and above all loved.” She paused. “Sorry.” She dabbed at her eyes. “When my friend read this out to me it was hard to bear.”

  Macrae could take no more. He stood up. “People are responsible for their own lives,” he said. “The trouble is the nanny state has emasculated us.”

  She stood up too. “Are you saying she could have stopped him by acting for herself?” Her voice had become sharp. “Doing what? Battering him back? Killing him?”

  “If it came to that. People kill each other for lesser reasons.”

  “You mean self-defence?”

  “The law would have been on her side. But it would have had to be in the heat of the moment. You can’t plan it. You can’t wait till he’s asleep and stab him or take a brick to his head. The courts don’t like that. They call it premeditated.”

  “And you’re saying that killing someone is better than the police having a quiet word beforehand?”

  “We’re not doctors. We don’t go in for preventative medicine. We can tell you how to lock your houses and your cars and not to walk alone in dark streets, but after that it’s up to you. And if you can’t manage it we’re here to pick up the pieces.”

  “You make us sound irresponsible.”

  “Not all, just some of you. Like your friend.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, she did abandon her daughter, didn’t she? Even if she rationalizes it. Good God, the girl was only fifteen! You dinna know you’re born when you’re fifteen.”

  “What should she have done, then?” Her voice sounded hoarse with emotion.

  “She should have been there. That’s all we can do: just be there — in case. Your friend wasn’t. And her daughter killed herself. Goodnight, and thanks for the whisky.”

  CHAPTER XX

  Stoker had had a big night. A real blinder. He couldn’t even remember half of it. As he drove home to Gospel Oak he got flashes of the action and even though his head throbbed and was painful and his eyes hurt and he felt sick, and even though he knew he was going to feel worse before he felt better — in spite of all these caveats — he’d had a brilliant time.

  He had started off for the fish place in Lisson Grove, just as he’d told Molly he would, but then, half-way there, he’d decided he didn’t want fish and chips or a video or Molly.

  So he’d cancelled the fish and chips and put Molly on hold — he loved that phrase — and he’d gone zooming up West in the Roller. He’d visited a couple of clubs but he hadn’t seen any familiar faces and anyway parking a Rolls in the West End these days was no picnic. You couldn’t leave it in the street in case the yobbos scratched it or slashed the tyres so you had to find good security, and that took time.

  Sometimes he didn’t know what things were coming to.

  So anyway…he’d ended up in the Goodwood. He’d looked round for Macrae but the bastard wasn’t there; which was quite right because the bastard had no right to be there since he wasn’t a member. But the word was out on him and it was just a matter of time before he came crawling to Stoker. Just a matter of time. Still, Stoker didn’t want to meet him socially in a place like this. He wasn’
t absolutely one hundred per cent certain of Macrae even now.

  The shithead.

  Anyway he’d had a couple of drinks and a few games of kalooki and a few more drinks and he’d mixed with some of the hardest men in the business.

  The real cream of the crop.

  These were men who thought nothing of cleaning out whole wings of country houses, or busting open security vans; men who’d done their bird in Strangeways and Maidstone and in the high-security nicks on the Isle of Wight.

  Aristocrats.

  He’d stayed in the club standing his round and flashing his wedge — and he was glad to see it compared well with the wedges of the hard men — till closing time around three-thirty. Then he’d gone home with Terry someone, who’d been inside for armed robbery, and there had been more drinking in his flat in Harlesden and his wife or his girlfriend had rung up a friend and they’d had a party which had ended up four in a bed.

  Then Stoker had been sick and passed out — the hallmark of a really good evening.

  Now it was the middle of the day and he was feeling terrible. But he believed in the old saying: the worse the hangover the better the time.

  The only thing he hadn’t had was a bit of a barney. He liked that. In the early days it had occurred at football matches. You took along a club or a chain and someone shouted “Wheeeeey Chelsea!” and it didn’t matter who you were for — you weren’t for anybody really, only come for a bit of fun — and you hit him in the face and then it started.

  Good days.

  The moment he opened the front door he knew something was wrong. A chair in the hall was lying on its side. He looked into the sitting-room. Molly’s collection of leather-look display books was spilled on the floor, pictures hung awry.

  “Molly!”

  He ran upstairs. She was in the bedroom. Here too the pictures were disturbed.

  She was sitting at the dressing-table applying make-up to a long scratch down the side of one cheek.

  “What the hell happened?” Stoker said.

  “Where were you?”

  “Never mind that now. What happened here?”

  “What d’you think? What’s it look like?” Her tone was angry, bitter.

  “It looks like we was burgled.”

  “Clever boy.”