Neon Madman

by John Harvey

  I remembered her now as I put the cat’s food into its saucer. I tried to remember her name and I couldn’t. I tried to recall what had happened to the photograph I’d taken of her but I couldn’t do that either.

  I watched the cat eating and was bothered about the photograph. It bothered me more than the dead body of the woman upstairs in her own bath. But before the cat was half-way finished I stopped worrying: neither of them mattered one goddam scrap.

  What did matter was that I was going to call the police. There was no point in sneaking away. If I did that someone would have seen me; would have made a note of the number of my car. Only if I sneaked away. If I stayed there and the cops went around the neighbours asking if they had seen me and when, nobody would have seen me at all.

  I picked up the phone and began dialling. I didn’t dial the police straight away. There were a couple of other things and if I didn’t get them seen to now, my time alone with the telephone might be restricted.

  I called Patrick and dragged him away from the sink. Made sure everything was still all right and scared the shit put of him by telling him to keep himself and his family indoors. I was so convincing he said all right and sounded as if he meant it.

  Next I called Tom Gilmour and he was out. I tried his home number and he was still out. I swore and tried the Murdoch house. A voice answered the phone which definitely didn’t belong to the Chinese houseboy so I guessed that it was Sandy. It was and she said her charge was starting to sit up and take notice and was threatening to teach her to play gin rummy before the day was out. I gave them both my love and put down the phone before they could give it back.

  I tried Tom again at home just for luck and he was there. I didn’t say too much but I did tell him that I had good reason to believe a friend of mine and his family were in danger of being attacked and that if he could arrange to put a man watching the house he might find someone looking remarkably like Charlie about to do someone some very nasty mischief.

  Tom said he would do his best on the condition that I filled him in with the details. I said I would as soon as I could but right now I had another dead body to declare. Then I got the receiver down again fast.

  It was one thing I was good at.

  Inspector Jones wasn’t as easy to find and in the end I had to leave a number and a message that he should ring me about the Pollard case.

  I went back into the kitchen and fooled around with a cona coffee-maker for about a quarter of an hour. Finally I got it to work and while I was waiting for it all to drip through I gave the cat some milk. He started purring as though he wanted to adopt me, which in the circumstances wasn’t as dumb a move as it might have been. He was going to need somebody to look after him and I thought I had a lot of time for cats. I’d owned cats before. They’d all got run over, one after another, just when I’d got to really like them. So I’d stopped having cats: it wasn’t good for them.

  I sat on a stool and drank the coffee and for the umpteenth time asked myself why the Mancor crowd had known where Murdoch was on the Thursday and had been happy to do nothing about him, while on the next day they were apparently anxious to put him away. Right now they were so anxious to catch up with him that it was okay if they terrorised one woman and killed another.

  I choked on my coffee. Closed my eyes and started to run it over again inside my head. They didn’t have to have seen him at the hotel. All they knew was that I was snooping around and showing an interest in him. Which they could have got from the little old lady who ran the place and who was so insistent about Murdoch’s initial. Just like I always did I’d left her one of my little cards in case she thought of anything else she wanted to tell me about or in case she ever wanted some business of her own handled.

  So Big G could have heard Murdoch might be there, could have missed him, but in checking with the manageress picked up on both Marcia Pollard and me. And look what had happened to Marcia.

  I went back to the coffee and tried to pursue the line of thought a little further. It wasn’t easy: I didn’t have the brain for it. It came as considerable relief when the phone went and it was Inspector Jones at the other end.

  ‘Hello, Inspector, this is Scott Mitchell. You remember me, I’m the guy whose clients kill themselves on his doorstep.’

  ‘All right, Mitchell. I remember you all right. What is it now?’

  ‘Well, I’m going in for a subtle change of line.’

  ‘Stop playing around and get on with it.’

  ‘I’m moving into the family business. I’m thinking about going into it in a big way with a firm of tombstone-makers—cheaper to have all the names on the one stone.’

  ‘What the hell are you on about? Have you been drinking?’

  ‘You bet I have. I’ve had two very large brandies and one cup of coffee. It’s not everyday you call round to console a new widow and find she’s taken her mourning a little too seriously.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Didn’t you recognise the number? I’m at the Pollard house and Marcia Pollard is upstairs taking a bath with no water and a five-inch hole in her throat.’

  He swore and slammed down the phone and I went across the hall into the kitchen and poured myself another cup of coffee.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Sunday morning. Only it wasn’t looking peaceful or lazy or any of the other things that Sundays are supposed to be like. From where I was sitting it wasn’t looking anything. All I could see were four walls, a scratched wooden table and two chairs, a metal ashtray that was full to overflowing with butts and ash, a dark green filing cabinet that didn’t look as if it was used any more.

  Police interrogation rooms were no respecters of days: they looked the same seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. The same sounds came out of them if you were walking by. The same monotonous drone of voices; one voice punctuated by long silences; a voice raised in anger; other sounds—dull, thudding sounds, high-pitched, sharp sounds. The door would swing open and a man would storm out, slamming the door so hard behind him that it vibrated inside the frame. Ten minutes later he would have washed his hands, wiping his sweating face, had a couple of cigarettes and maybe some bitter coffee or a quick pull at the bottle he kept in his desk. Then he would yank the door open just as hard and shut it just as hard. Back in the room with the fresh conviction that he was going to make the lying bastard talk this time.

  The next time he came out, another man would take his place. Taller, heavier, the expression in his eyes leaden, shirt sleeves rolled up high around the muscles of the upper arm.

  After that they would take it in turns, never working together. One building up the confidence of the man at the other side of the table, the other knocking it down hard. Let him have a cigarette and a cup of tea and let him know that really you’re on his side. Take out a single strong-smelling Galoise and enjoy it, blowing the smoke full in his face with a sneer, then refuse to let him go outside to the stinking gents.

  Teamwork.

  Jones had begun by himself and after several hours he’d brought in my friend Tom Gilmour. Except that he wasn’t behaving much like a friend. Not any more. He thought I’d been holding out on him and, of course, I had. Jones thought I’d been holding out on him and I had been doing that as well.

  Sunday morning early when you’ve spent the night in the alternating company of two cops who didn’t like you wasn’t at all the way Sundays were meant to be.

  Not that I had anyone but myself to blame. Like they said, I’d withhold vital evidence. I had denied that the other case. I was on had had any connection with the Pollard case. I’d even started off by trying to deny it again.

  Said that I went over to Marcia Pollard’s to find out if she was okay. I’d been feeling sympathetic all of a sudden. For a time they bought it. It was one great stinking coincidence and they didn’t like that but right then they didn’t have any reason not to believe
my story.

  It still looked too fishy. Too odd that I should be around at the right time to find both of them dead. It wasn’t a coincidence that either man liked.

  But after several hours it seemed that they were getting prepared to live with it. Then Tom Gilmour came in with a particularly nasty look on his face and an envelope in his right hand.

  He sat down on the chair so hard that I thought the legs must give way. He held the envelope out in front of my face for several moments as thought it was meant to mean something to me. It didn’t. After all, it was only a plain brown envelope. Nothing written on it and I couldn’t see what was inside it. There had to be millions of envelopes like that so why should I get excited about it?

  Why was Gilmour excited about it?

  I was going to find out. He dropped it down on to the surface of the table and a cloud of ash lifted up into the heavy air. By the time it had settled again I thought I might have reason to know that particular envelope.

  I prayed I wasn’t right and if I was I didn’t like the fact that Gilmour had got hold of it. I didn’t like how he must have got hold of it.

  Only I wasn’t in a position to plead ethics.

  ‘Well?’ he shouted in my face.

  I tried staring back at him but it didn’t do me any good. He simply yelled the same question again and this time when I just carried on looking at him he hit me.

  I’d seen Tom Gilmour hit people before; he’d taken a poke at me more than twice. He seemed to be putting something special into this. Possibly he’d been getting in a lot of practice.

  His open hand had caught me at the side of the face, between the cheekbone and the chin. I gulped in some of the heavy air and then wished that I hadn’t. I moved my head back round to the front and looked at him some more. Then I looked down at the envelope. I wanted to rub my face but I wasn’t going to let him have that satisfaction.

  Not yet.

  One of his fingers tapped down on the still unopened envelope.

  ‘Well?’

  The voice was quieter this time. The blow that followed it was harder. The fist was closed instead of open. I toppled backwards far enough for the chair to go over with a sudden cracking sound. My hands went out to break my fall and I found myself on all fours, staring at a piece of broken chair leg and a pair of shoes. Black shoes. Gilmour’s shoes. Dark grey trousers. Two clenched fists. A face I didn’t want to look at.

  ‘Get up!’

  I got up. I still didn’t want to look at his face. But there wasn’t anywhere else to look. I didn’t like what I saw. Nor did he. He stared at me as though I was already dead, then wheeled around and went back to the other side of the desk.

  ‘Get him a chair,’ he snapped to the uniformed man who was still standing against the back wall.

  The cop left the room and Gilmour started to come back around to my side of the desk. He kept coming until he was standing less than a foot away from me. I looked at his eyes and could read nothing in them. I knew that behind one of my own eyes a nerve was twitching away like some berserk metronome.

  I was still trying to read something in those eyes when his right arm went back then forwards. My mouth opened as the fist rammed into the pit of my stomach. My right hand went forwards and grabbed at his shoulder. It was either that or fall down.

  He looked at my hand as though someone had thrown up all over his best suit. He took half a pace backwards, knocked the arm up into the air with his left and punched me again with his right in the same place as before.

  I did it: I fell down.

  I don’t know at what point the uniformed cop came back into the room but he must have done because when I next looked round there was a different chair standing behind me. Gilmour was back in his seat and the other guy was back in his place by the wall doing a pretty useful impression of all the three wise monkeys rolled into one.

  I got up slowly and eased myself on to the chair. I pulled myself round to the table and rested my arms against it. The envelope was still there; still unopened.

  ‘Open it!’

  I wasn’t going to argue any more. By now there was only one thing that could be in it. One set of things. My ringers fumbled with the flap and I was right: the pictures of Murdoch and Marcia Pollard at the hotel by the river. The ones showing Murdoch’s face. Three days ago. A lot had happened in those three days. At least two people had died. There’d been some very nasty business with knives and a hell of a lot of lying. There was always a lot of lying.

  ‘You know who that is with the Pollard woman?’

  ‘James P. Murdoch. Missing as from the time those pictures were taken at lunchtime Thursday.’

  He looked at me in amazement. ‘You just said it. You said it, you dumb motherfucker! Two simple fucking sentences that you could have said as easily when you were talking to Jones on Friday. Of all the stupid, blind, thoughtless …’

  He looked up at the grey ceiling and then past me at the wall. Then he stood up and picked up the photos.

  ‘You took these out of the envelope you gave to Pollard. When and why?’

  I blinked and cursed the nerve behind my eye which had started up again. ‘When is easy. After I found his body and before the cops got there. Why is more difficult.’

  ‘With you it always is,’ Gilmour interrupted.

  I shrugged my shoulders and carried on. ‘I knew that Murdoch was important and that it wasn’t only his wife who wanted to find him. I told you I’d had a visit from Charlie and Big G. They were interested in Murdoch, too. Somehow I figured that if I could keep the connection between Marcia Pollard and Murdoch clear from your boys that might make it easier for me to operate. I might be able to trace the line from her to Murdoch sooner. As it was …’

  He came round the table again. ‘As it was you left the lines clear between those hoods and the Pollard woman too. If we’d known about it we could have picked her up for her own safety or put a guard on the place. Which would have meant she would be alive now.’

  ‘That’s not necessarily so. It’s possible and nothing more, you know that as well as I do.’

  ‘Possible, as far as Marcia Pollard’s concerned, is at least something. Since yesterday morning, possibilities are the one thing she hasn’t got.’

  He stood over me and I closed my eyes and waited to get slugged again or for him to walk away. He walked away: as far as the door.

  ‘Mitchell! I’ve gone out to bat for you time after fucking time. You use me like paper to wipe your arse on and you keep on doing it and think it’s all right. Well, I’m telling you this. It’s not going to happen again. Not ever.’

  The door opened and then slammed behind him.

  I looked at the guy in uniform. He looked back at me and still he didn’t alter his expression one inch.

  I studied the photographs that Gilmour had left on the table. Looked hard at the man’s face, her face, the man’s face again. Maybe I should have looked at them before. Maybe before would have been too early.

  There was a shot of her looking up into his eyes. He was looking away, not noticing her at all: It was her expression that kept me returning to it. It was nothing like the way she had looked at any of the others. What could you call it? Admiration? Pride? Excitement? Maybe even love?

  And in his face there were other things: determination, strength, the will to win—more than that, the knowledge that to win was his right.

  He was not noticing her at all; looking out in front, forwards, looking into a future in which he felt perfectly safe and secure.

  The door opened and I dropped the photo down on to the desk. Jones came towards me with a half-smile on his face.

  ‘Interesting, aren’t they?’

  I nodded. They were interesting all right. But that wasn’t what he was feeling so happy about.

  ‘I’ve been talking to a man called Allen. Don A
llen. Name mean anything to you?’

  It did. He was the chief accountant for the Mancor group. He had been at the time of the Fraud Squad enquiry.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it means something.’

  ‘He’s down the corridor singing like a bird. He’s coughing the lot. The dirty side of Mancor’s business. Murdoch’s involvement. The bribing of the Fraud Squad men. There’s enough there for half a dozen trials, never mind one. We’ve already picked up Thomas and that bloody great West Indian. Tabor’s made a run for it but he’s not going to get very far.’

  ‘And Charlie?’ I asked.

  He sat back on the chair and crossed his legs. ‘Not yet.’

  I started talking. I told them all about the visit the two heavies had made to my office and about the red flex. I gave them everything else they wanted to know. Everything that was definite.

  ‘And Murdoch?’ I asked later. ‘You haven’t picked up a trace of him?’

  ‘One or two strong leads, you know. We’ll get our hands on him soon. We’ve got questions to ask him. A lot of questions.’

  I nodded and walked towards the door. My statement had been typed up and signed. There was nothing else for me to do. If they tried a charge of withholding evidence they’d either have to admit they got the photos by breaking into my flat without a warrant or prepare to commit perjury on a pretty bare-faced scale.

  As I was opening the door Tom Gilmour walked through, heading the other way. He looked at me but he didn’t see me, just pushed past and on into the station. I stepped out onto the pavement and let the door swing shut behind my back.

  I looked up and down the street: it was still Sunday.