by Mike Ripley
Zaria lived just up Eastern Avenue – let’s face it, half the world lives up Eastern Avenue – in Redbridge, in one of those huge roadside vicarage-like houses that has had to be turned into a rest home for the elderly because no-one else could afford to pay the rates. Well, if they could, they wouldn’t live on Eastern Avenue. Zaria was a day nurse, not an inmate.
***
The journey there and back took no more than ten minutes once I’d got Armstrong fired up.
Armstrong is my wheels. He’s a black London cab, of the traditional FX4S design, world famous on T-shirts, cheap souvenirs and postcards. Even with a mileage clock that stopped at about 190,000 miles, he still runs to perfection, never gets clamped or a parking ticket, and blends beautifully into the city background. They’re becoming even easier to pick up once de-licensed nowadays, thanks to the invasion of the upstart Metrocabs, which drive like a Panzer, look like an undertaker’s second-best hearse and give the punters a ride that makes them think they’re in a telephone-box on castors. Not that I’m biased, of course.
If Armstrong has a disadvantage, then it’s that he hasn’t got a passenger seat. So Zaria sat in the back, opened the glass screen and whispered frantically in my right ear all the way home.
Mostly she quizzed me about the burglars, and I said they’d tried to get in through the bathroom window and one of them had put a foot through it, probably coming from the roof next door, and I generally made out that there was a whole gang of footpads up there lying in wait for Santa Claus. It wasn’t until we got to Redbridge Station that she thought – and I could almost hear her thinking – about the envelope and the fiver I’d given her.
‘It’s not drugs, is it?’ she said suddenly. ‘I didn’t think you did drugs, and I won’t handle them.’
‘It isn’t, I don’t and you’re not,’ I said, but I was only sure of one out of three. ‘But it is valuable and it might just be what those guys on the roof were after.’
She swallowed this, or seemed to. Thankfully she was still half asleep.
‘Well … if you’re sure … I’ll post it tomorrow in my lunch-hour.’
I pulled up outside the rest home she worked at and reached through the window to open the back door for her, the way real mushers do without getting out themselves. She leaned in and pecked me on the lips. ‘You’ve got my number?’
I bit my tongue and simply said: ‘Sure, I’ll bell you tomorrow or Tuesday latest. Okay?’
‘Not the mornings, remember. They tend to sleep in the afternoons.’
‘Got it. See yer.’
I watched her until she’d unlocked the side door of the big house and turned on a light. You can never be too careful these days. The residents could have been waiting to mug her with a Zimmer frame.
She waved and I did a U-turn – taxis are ace at that – and headed back to the nightmare in the bathroom. Why me? Other people have spiders in their tubs.
En route, I spotted a litter-bin on a streetlamp and I screeched up to it, jumped out and deposited the hollow copy of the Great Duke’s book.
If I’d known then what I knew later, the envelope would have gone in with it.
Hassle, hassle, hassle.
I suppose my call went through to Wanstead nick, but I didn’t ask. The copper on the receiving end took the details twice, and I didn’t blame him. You don’t often get people ringing up in the middle of the night to say they’ve found a body in the bath. Well, not on Sundays anyway. I promised I wouldn’t touch anything, having no intention whatsoever of going anywhere near the bathroom again. I hadn’t anything left inside me to throw up.
The first two were traffic cops, and they were on the street cruising for the house number, no sirens out of deference to the ratepayers, within five minutes.
I made sure I looked as if I’d just got out of bed and dressed in a hurry – hence no socks and the sweatshirt – and went down to front garden to wave them in.
The one who took the lead looked big enough and mean enough to relish a ruck if there was a chance of one. His colleague, smaller and older, made sure he was going to be second going into any dark places.
‘A break-in, is it, sir?’ asked the big one, tightening his black gloves like he’d seen on television.
I did a double-take before I realised he’d been talking to me. I wasn’t used to uniforms calling me ‘sir.’ Come to think of it, even when the taxman wrote to me, he spelled it c-u-r; which is why I never wrote back.
‘Er … I’m not sure, officer. There was a guy on the roof and then suddenly he was in the bath.’
The big one looked down at me as if I’d just crawled out from under.
‘The bath? Did you say bath? Or bathroom?’
‘Both. He ended up in the bath which, in this house, is actually in the bathroom.’
Watch it, watch it. That lip of yours will get you into trouble one day.
‘There’s a window in the roof,’ I said quickly. ‘More a skylight, really. He fell through that. He actually landed in the bath itself.’
Quite convenient, really, thinking about the blood.
‘I don’t even know he was trying to break in,’ I added lamely.
‘Odd place to go for a midnight stroll, sir,’ said the older one sarkily.
I didn’t tell him I knew people who did much weirder things than that.
‘And just how did he get up there?’ The big one looked up at the night sky, seeking inspiration. Then, looking at me: ‘Have you called an ambulance?’
‘No. It didn’t seem … necessary. You see, he brought most of the glass with him and sort of … slit his throat.’
‘You haven’t touched anything, have you, sir?’ The older one moved forward to take command now that it was clear the Apaches weren’t waiting in ambush.
‘Not bloody likely,’ I said, then wished I hadn’t.
‘Get the gloves, Dave.’
The big one looked slightly disappointed, then trotted back to their car and took a black shoulder-bag out of the boot. They came into the hallway before opening it and taking out rubber surgical gloves. Since the Aids scare, that was now standard operating procedure. It hadn’t crossed my mind, but I was grateful now that I’d been too busy throwing up to examine the body too closely.
‘Right, sir, lead on,’ said the smaller one.
I turned on lights as we went upstairs.
‘Lived here long, sir?’ One of them asked as we got to the landing.
‘I don’t actually live here at all,’ I answered honestly. (Rule of Life No 5: always tell the truth; not necessarily all of it and not all at once.) ‘I’m house-sitting for a friend of a friend; well, a cousin of my landlord, actually. I’ve been here about five days.’
‘And where are the owners?’
I noted that he’d forgotten to say ‘sir.’
‘Pakistan. Until after Christmas.’
‘I see. And where exactly do you live?’
‘Hackney.’
‘Hah! Bandit country,’ said the big one from behind us.
I let that one go as we’d got to the bathroom, and I opened the door and stood to one side to let them in. I could feel the cold draught from the hole in the roof, but I had no intention of getting any closer.
‘Oh, sweet Jesus!’ I heard one of them say, followed by a retching sound choked back in the throat.
‘Fuck-ing Ada!’ shouted the other.
Then the big one appeared in the doorway, ashen-faced and wide-eyed.
‘Why didn’t you tell us the floor’s covered in puke?’ he said angrily, hopping on one foot.
‘Oh yes. Er … sorry.’
By 4.00 am I had a houseful of them. A brace of ambulance men, assorted uniformed beat coppers, two plainclothes men and a white-haired, white-coated pathologist who chain-smoked Players Navy Cut. He looked pretty fit for 75,
but for 51, which is what he probably was, decidedly rough.
I made a gallon or so of tea until I ran out of milk, then a pot of black coffee, and pressed every cup and mug in Sunil’s fitted kitchen into service.
The extra vehicles in the street, with their flashing blue lights, had brought some of the neighbours to their doors or bedroom windows, and one of the uniforms was designated to go and ask them if they’d seen anything. From what I could see, peeping out from behind the lace curtains in the living-room, nobody was admitting to much.
The two plainclothesmen disappeared for about half an hour in their Ford Escort and returned from the other end of the street. Why walk round the block when you can drive?
They hadn’t said much to me apart from announcing themselves as Detective-Sergeant Hatchard and Detective-Constable White, and even when they got back inside, Hatchard talked to the pathologist while White went off for a snoop around, as policemen do.
I took a mug of coffee up to the pathologist so I could earwig what was going down. He nodded his thanks as he took it and flipped another cigarette butt into the toilet. Before it had hissed out, he was lighting another.
‘Thanks,’ he croaked. ‘Four sugars?’
‘Absolutely,’ I said, with the conviction of knowing I was going to live longer than he was.
‘Whatderwannaknow?’ he asked Hatchard.
‘Whatever you’ve got,’ said the Sergeant, his hands deep inside his overcoat pockets.
They didn’t seem to mind me hanging in there, but it was getting a bit like the ocean liner scene in the Marx brothers’ Night at the Opera. Two uniforms were trying to put an extendable ladder up to the skylight – God knows where it had come from – over the bath without actually having to look at the body. Another civilian was trying to set up a camera and tripod to photograph the scene, and everybody was trying to sidestep the vomit on the carpet.
‘If the fall didn’t break his neck,’ said the pathologist in a cloud of smoke, ‘then the massive blood loss and shock did. There’s a piece of glass the size of your fist in his neck. Damn near took his head clean off.’
I could have told him that, I thought, but kept quiet.
‘Foul play?’ asked Hatchard.
‘No Sex, Please, We’re British!’ said the pathologist.
‘What?’
‘That’s as foul a play as ... Oh, never mind.’
The pathologist raised his eyes to the ceiling. I didn’t think it was bad for off the cuff, but he’d probably used it a zillion times before.
‘Unless someone dropped him from a helicopter,’ he said patiently, ‘then I think it fair to assume he was clambering across the tiles and slipped, though God knows what he was doing up there. If it was suicide, then it was a bleedin’ elaborate way of doing it and he changed his mind halfway down.’
He looked at the puzzlement on my face and the blank unemotion of Hatchard.
‘Does this house have red pantiles?’ he asked me.
‘I dunno,’ I answered truthfully. Why the hell should I look at the roof except to see if there was a satellite TV dish? (Come to think of it, I had and there wasn’t.)
‘Bet it has,’ he said, nodding to himself. ‘Yer man here –’ he jerked a thumb at the bath ‘– lost most of his fingernails trying to hang on. What he’s got left have got red plaster and dust under them.’
‘So he wasn’t wearing gloves,’ said Hatchard to himself.
‘Pretty amateur burglar if that’s what he was.’ The pathologist looked at his own hands and stripped off his surgical gloves, dropping them into a plastic bag. ‘I’ll organise the meat wagon once David Bailey here’s finished.’ He nodded at the photographer and flipped another butt into the toilet, then pressed the flush. ‘Another day, another half-dollar,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Nice to have a fresh one for a change.’
I suddenly realised why he smoked so much, and felt queasy all over again. I was afraid I was going to heave.
‘Time for us to have a little chat, sir,’ Hatchard said to me.
I was afraid of that too.
‘Name, please sir?’
Here we go.
‘Angel.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Angel – as in on top of your Christmas tree,’ I said before anyone else could say it. Sometimes, I hate Christmas.
‘First name?’
‘Roy.’
‘Is that your full name?’
‘Won’t it do?’
‘Full names now save time later on.’ I noticed he’d soon dropped the ‘sir’ as well.
‘Fitzroy Maclean,’ I admitted, not relishing the idea of ‘later on’ one bit.
‘Fitzroy Maclean Angel … bloody hell …’ came a voice behind me. It was the other detective, White, who had come into the living-room far too quietly for my liking. I knew somebody else who could do that, but he had four feet.
‘And you don’t actually live here?’
‘No, I’m house-sitting.’
‘New one on me, guv,’ said White, slumping in an armchair.
‘It’s like baby-sitting while the owner’s away.’
‘To keep the break-ins to a minimum, I suppose,’ said Hatchard drily.
‘I never said I was any good at it,’ I offered.
‘And just who is the lucky owner?”
‘A man called Sunil.’
‘First name or last?’
‘Er ... I don’t know.’
Hatchard put down his notebook and ballpoint and reached for a cigarette. I’d given up about three weeks earlier, but I was ready to beg from him. Bodies in the bath I could stand. Answering questions like this was really stressful.
‘He’s a friend of my landlord – the landlord of the place where I live. In Hackney.’
‘Exactly where in Hackney?’ Hatchard asked patiently.
‘Nine Stuart Street. Flat Three.’ My heart sank as he made a note of it.
‘And your landlord’s name?’
‘Nassim.’
‘Nassim what?’
Oh dear. He wasn’t going to like this either.
‘Nassim. No, really, Nassim Nassim. We did ask his surname and he said it was too difficult, and we had to stick to Nassim. So ...’
Hatchard shook his head slowly.
‘His address?’
I said I wasn’t sure, but I gave them a phone number that I knew to be Nassim’s office above a leather warehouse in Brick Lane. I felt I ought to try and phone him at home to tip him off – if I got the chance.
‘The uniformed officers said you told them you heard a noise, got out of bed, went to the bathroom and then dialled 999. That’s it, is it?’
‘Apart from throwing up, yeah.’
‘You didn’t touch anything?’
‘No way.’
‘And you were alone in the house?’ This out of left field from Mr Nasty Policeman.
‘Yes,’ I said, looking at Hatchard, Mr Nice Policeman, instead.
‘These your knickers, then?’
White flung the pair of lemon panties he’d had scrunched up in his coat pocket on to the arm of the chair I was sitting in.
‘Not my shade.’ I knew Zaria had forgotten something. ‘OK – look, I had a young lady here earlier – last night, that is. I didn’t think the owner would approve, so I said nothing, but she’d gone home by then. Went home in a taxi.’
Did I lie? But the last thing I wanted was them chasing Zaria and her telling them about the package she was posting.
‘Honest –’ I floundered. ‘She was gone. She never saw Billy. God knows, I wish I hadn’t.’
‘Billy?’ they said together. Good, they’d already forgotten about Zaria.
‘Yeah, the bloke in the bath. Billy Tuckett.’
They looked at each other. This wasn’t
in their script, actually having information volunteered.
‘There was no identification on the body. Did you take it?’ asked Hatchard, leaning forward.
‘No, I told you, I didn’t touch him. But I could see who it was.’
‘And you knew him?’ This from Mr Nasty.
‘I used to. We were at university together, but I haven’t seen him in – what – ten years? He hadn’t changed much.’
Except for being much deader than I remembered.
‘Why didn’t you tell us who he was?’ asked Hatchard. White just sat there looking flabbergasted.
‘You never asked,’ I said.
Well, had they?
Chapter Two
Why did I tell them it was Billy Tuckett? I’ve wondered since myself. But they would have found out; slow they might be, stupid they ain’t.
Putting me and Billy together ten years back would probably never have occurred to them. Why should it? But I knew that somewhere down the line there would be some formal identification or an inquest where, with my luck, I’d run across Billy’s mum and the cat would be out of the bag, to coin a very sick phrase. That would look bad, and even Plod would put two and two together and make five. It’s much better to give them two and one and let them make four. It’s called damage limitation.
I’d met Mrs Tuckett only twice; once when she drove Billy down to university at the start of a term and once when she turned up to see him get his degree. (A lucky third if I remember, but I couldn’t recall in what, just the class. My, but we’re snobs at that age, aren’t we?) I had a nasty feeling she’d remember me, because she was the sort of woman who would remember somebody offering to drink Newcastle Brown Ale out of her shoe on Degree Day. And when she’d driven Billy, a pimply second-year, up to my hall of residence at the start of his fourth or fifth term, I’d been on hand to help them unload her Mercedes estate car. Actually, I’d been waiting for somebody else, but I just happened to be on hand and I couldn’t just stand there and watch her struggle with all those boxes, suitcases, typewriters, bicycles, stereo systems and so on. I remember I looked at the pile of Billy’s goods and chattels, which were supposed to fit inside a 12-by-six-foot room, and saying: ‘I came with a Sainsbury’s carrier – and I had trouble filling that.’ And Mrs Tuckett had shrieked with laughter, because she probably was the sort of woman who laughed loudly in pubs, but would never intentionally hurt anyone, and who would be cut to the marrow when she heard of her only son’s death.