Dead Man Upright

by Derek Raymond

  He froze, staring at me. ‘Go very easy with that tongue of yours,’ he whispered, ‘now just be very careful what you say, son.’

  I’m silly. Even when I haven’t got a reason for doing something, I do it anyway. I could just as well have let Bowman walk on into the cell where his worried man was waiting but suddenly, I don’t know what I thought I was doing, I pinned him against the wall instead so that his headgear fell into a dirty dinner plate lying in the passage.

  ‘What the fuck’s the matter with you?’ he shouted. ‘Have you gone mad?’

  I said: ‘You know what I’m talking about, I’m talking about last night, cell two.’ I kicked his hat off the plate and said: ‘Why don’t you buy a new one to get fired in?’

  He dusted himself off and said in a low voice: ‘I’ll have you disciplined, I’ll talk to you later.’

  ‘There’s a lot of paperwork in that,’ I said, ‘and you mightn’t like what crawled out of it, so your best bet is to keep stumm, pretend you’re human and think of your blood pressure.’

  He turned his back on me and walked off towards cell two. The door of the cell next to it was partly open so that I could hear the prisoner in there saying to the duty copper: ‘You wouldn’t believe it, but some fucking chaplain’s just been round. I said you can stuff that three-letter word of yours, because God’s a grass – the only time I ever called the bastard was when I slipped on a roof, and the next thing I knew there was two squad cars down in the street and six wooden-tops.’

  What I had wanted to say to Bowman was, before you beat anyone else to death, how do you think thieves, murderers and suicides spend their time? I wanted to remind him that they spend it daydreaming on burst mattresses in a squat littered with old syringes, walkmen burned out on a trip, dust blowing in on the draught under the door, Fuck The Filth! scrawled in the grime on the window, and other men turning over groaning in bursts of bad sleep on sheets stained with their own semen. I wanted to introduce him to the menace of their dreams, of blurred men in watch-caps coming for them, and what it’s like feeling for the roach you finished the night before. I wanted to tell him about the sunlight rippling across the walls in the morning as the trucks roll down the motorway outside, and of how their heads crack with the thunder of people with nothing to get up for. Why put your feet into trainers with no soles? Why bother to put your jeans on? The pockets wouldn’t hold money even if you had any. That was what I wanted to tell Bowman.

  But it’s no use telling him anything. He reminds me of a sergeant-major I once busted for an act of gross indecency behind Jack Straw’s Castle when I was a young copper on the beat. I didn’t bust the man for what he’d done; I busted him because when I tripped over him he informed me he was a warrant officer and tried to grass his partner. There you had another Bowman – the man with the rank who oughtn’t to have it. I thought about that sergeant-major when I had the pleasure of arresting him: thank God you wear a crown on your sleeve and not on your head, you bastard.

  And that in turn took me back to when I was really small and used to stay with my uncle. I remember one Sunday morning he walked me down in driving rain to The Cricketers pub down Lea Bridge Road and we looked from the thoroughfare across the flats at a place where he said there had been a Nazi ’plane shot down when he was a boy and there was a man who had to run out of the wreck in flames from the petrol. But he had had a few beers by then and went in to see the governor of the place and left me parked by the wooden tables where the trippers sat out in summer with the rain going down my back. I can smell the rain with its promise of spring falling on that big concrete yard still, smell the swollen planks of the tables to this day.

  I’m a solitary man. Sometimes, mind, there’s happiness in solitude, still, it helps to talk to other people sometimes and dig back together to a time when people felt that the past mattered and something good might happen in the future. But when I open the next door I’m sent to and find the dead inside, overturned bottles and tables, bloody, dishonoured, defamed people lying there, I sometimes accept that dreaming and hoping the way I do is absurd.

  Though you never know. A time might come when we all have a direct say in our affairs and until it does, as I tell Frank Ballard and Stevenson the few times we’re together, what we have to do is keep going and talk to real people who have some shitty job of their own to do.

  I’ve come to believe that what we need is a republic. People need to be run by people who like them, not boxed into a game they can’t win by people who can’t lose it. We need a head of state who’s been on the run. An interior minister who’s had the two o’clock knock and done solitary. A minister of agriculture who’s seen a spade fired in anger and done twenty years on the land. A health minister who’s had his life saved through swift transportation to a well-staffed, properly equipped hospital. An interior minister dedicated to dismantling the state with its futile bureaucratic waste and saving real money.

  And a police force that would put an end to the Bowmans of this world.

  11

  I said to Ann Meredith over the phone: ‘I’ve got to see you straight away.’

  ‘Today isn’t convenient.’

  I said, ‘It’ll have to be convenient.’

  I just went on repeating the message until in the end she said: ‘Oh God, all right, then. Where?’

  ‘Your place.’

  ‘Is it about Mr Drury?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is it really that important?’

  ‘It is,’ I said. ‘Particularly for you. And like all important things it won’t wait.’

  ‘You must be able to give some concrete reason.’

  I told her part of one or two things that had been coming up; when I had finished she said: ‘I don’t believe any of it. None of this about Hen. I didn’t before and I don’t now.’

  ‘Nothing’s believable till it happens,’ I said. ‘See you in half an hour.’

  She had to say yes.

  She let me into her ground-floor flat in Maida Vale; I followed her into the sitting-room where I saw a perpetual motion clock on the mantelpiece. It had stopped. ‘We had one of these,’ I said, starting to fiddle with it, ‘back in the days when I was married. It was just the same.’

  ‘Well please don’t play about with that one. So this is all to do with Hen?’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. I forgot about the clock. I found something fat, plastic and brown which growled when I sat on it and passed her the photograph from Records. ‘By the way, here’s a shot of him I think you probably haven’t seen.’

  ‘Well of course it is Hen,’ she said finally, putting it down. ‘Younger, of course. But he looks awful – what a cheap, nasty camera the photographer had.’

  ‘He doesn’t work for Vogue,’ I said, ‘it was taken at Brixton.’

  ‘Brixton?’

  ‘They take one of you at reception. Hen’s done a lot of porridge.’

  ‘How much?’ she said scornfully. ‘Three months? Six?’

  ‘About fourteen years,’ I said, ‘but I’d need my pocket calculator.’

  She swallowed.

  ‘You’re sure you’ve never heard him referred to as Ronald or Ron Jidney?’

  ‘Jidney? What a dreadful name! My Hen? I most certainly haven’t.’

  ‘Well as you can see, we have,’ I said. ‘In fact I’ve brought you some of our reading-matter on him, too. Take a look.’

  She started reading his file, but she hadn’t gone far when she turned white. ‘I just don’t believe this,’ she said. ‘I quite simply do not believe it.’

  ‘The file goes with the face, there’s no mistake,’ I said. I would have been sorrier for her if she hadn’t been so stubborn; even after what Firth and I had told her she was still like a mouse refusing to see the trap for the cheese.

  ‘If you knew my Hen,’ she said, ‘you’d see how absurd . . . ’<
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  ‘You’d better get used to calling him Ronald,’ I said, ‘it’s his real name. Has he been in touch with you since the other night?’

  ‘I wouldn’t tell you if he had,’ she snapped.

  ‘Please don’t be difficult, Miss Meredith,’ I said, ‘it’s your safety I’m talking about. I’m going to have to find Hen, and when I do he and I are going to have to have a very long talk.’

  ‘I won’t have you harassing him! Leave him alone!’

  ‘That’s just what I can’t do,’ I said. ‘If he can explain certain things to me satisfactorily, then that’s the end of it – but if not it’ll just be the beginning.’

  ‘You’ll get no co-operation from me!’ she shouted. ‘I’m going to get him a good lawyer now.’

  ‘Wait till he’s charged first,’ I said, ‘he may not be – but if he is, it will be with a very serious matter, in which case he’s going to need a lawyer badly, and any other help he can get. Meanwhile I want to find him my own way – I don’t want a whole load of press and other idiots galloping all over it – that wouldn’t help you, either. You don’t want to be on page one, do you, that’s where they put the bad news.’

  ‘What are you going to charge him with?’

  ‘That’ll depend on what this lady called Flora tells me, if I can find her. Or Daphne Hayhoe.’

  ‘And what do you expect them to tell you?’

  ‘To start with, that they’re alive.’

  She tried to speak, stopped, started again and finally said, spacing out the words: ‘I repeat, what are you going to charge Hen with?’

  ‘If and when I’ve got the proof,’ I said, ‘it’ll be murder.’

  ‘Who are these people, this Flora and Daphne Hayhoe, for God’s sake?’ she moaned when she had recovered.

  ‘Women who knew Ronald before you did – like the Flora Firth mentioned to you at Thoroughgood Road. I can’t tell you any more – all I want to do right now is keep you out of his way because you’re in serious danger from him. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.’

  ‘You’re making far too much of this.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ I said, ‘give me patience, you’ve read what I’ve just shown you.’

  ‘I still don’t believe it’s the same man.’

  ‘I know you don’t,’ I said, ‘even his photograph doesn’t convince you, and for a supposedly intelligent woman you seem to have a serious problem with your head.’

  ‘Your problem is you know nothing about love.’

  ‘I have to stick to physical evidence,’ I said, ‘and I need your co-operation.’

  ‘I don’t see why I should help you – anyway, I don’t see how I can be any help.’

  ‘It’s easy,’ I said. ‘The first thing you do is a don’t. You don’t stir from this flat from now on, and you don’t let anybody in, either. Not under any pretext until you’re properly guarded; I’ll try and make sure it’ll be a Detective-Sergeant Stevenson. You will do exactly what Sergeant Stevenson says, and you will not answer your phone; Stevenson will do that. You won’t go anywhere near Jidney either, no matter what he says or does, because he’s going to be very angry. Serial killers don’t like being thwarted once they’re locked onto a victim, it threatens them in their ego, so he’s going to try and get hold of you somehow, and he’s a cunning bastard.’

  ‘For the last time,’ she said petulantly, ‘you’re overdoing this whole thing, you’ve completely misread the situation, this is just melodrama.’

  I shouldn’t have done it, but I lost my temper. ‘Listen, you stupid woman,’ I shouted, ‘do you want to go shopping for a shroud? This individual has done fourteen years’ jail, including spells at places which are just another way of saying hospitals for the criminally insane, and I’m telling you that he’s the one most likely to overdo this situation, not me.’

  It took me another quarter of an hour before she said in the end: ‘I suppose I might stick it out for a day or two.’

  ‘You’ll stick it out for as long as necessary.’

  ‘You’ve no authority whatever to say that.’

  ‘Why don’t you ring my Commander, then?’ I said. ‘I’ll give you his extension, then you can have a nice chat with an iceberg.’

  ‘I hate the way you put things.’

  ‘Everybody does,’ I said, ‘but I don’t care as long as I put them clearly.’

  ‘Is your friend Mr Firth going to be helping you too?’ I didn’t answer because I was using the phone. She added: ‘I very much hope not, I get the impression he’s an alcoholic.’

  ‘The Factory came on just then so I let that slide. I got hold of Stevenson and said: ‘Can you drop whatever you’re doing and get over here? I’ve got trouble red-hot here, here’s the address, I know because I’ve started it myself – I’ll fill you in with the details when you arrive. It’s to do with a maniac the lady at this flat here’s got involved with; he’ll be after her, so she needs an eye kept on her while I’m running about catching him.’

  When he had said he was on his way Meredith said sarcastically: ‘Anything else I can help you with now that you’ve messed my life up, Sergeant?’

  ‘No thanks,’ I said. I thought I had never met anyone so obstinately hell-bent on being attacked by a maniac in my life. I held my hand out palm upwards. ‘Except give me your keys to Thoroughgood Road.’

  ‘You mean you’re just going to walk into his flat?’ she shouted. ‘You can’t do that!’

  ‘I know what I can do,’ I said.

  That was the end of it. She sat down in a corner of the room sulking till Stevenson arrived; nothing happened in the meantime. The phone was silent. No watch-caps bobbed up in the geraniums; no one in black rubber sped across the garden.

  I introduced her to Stevenson. As I left I heard her saying: ‘Perhaps that man would be a better detective if people could stand the sight of him.

  12

  I got hold of Firth on the phone. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I think it would be a shit-hot idea if you and I got together right now, so where’s there a pub handy near you? Not the Keys.’

  ‘The Mordred,’ he said promptly.

  ‘I know it,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a lot to tell you, get over there.’

  I arrived first, so I sat in the Mordred having a go at the easy puzzle in the Standard until the sun was blotted out by a shadow on the frosted-glass door which reeled inwards, squawking. Firth came in pulling down his sweater over a shirt that was missing a few buttons; he was also wearing a tie in a bright easy-going pattern of squares that made me feel rather like having a game of chess on it. We found a table under the plastic Guinness mirror, I bought two pints and carried them over; then I passed him what I had on Jidney.

  ‘That’s him,’ he said. ‘See the form he’s got?’ he added when he had read the file. ‘I told you he was good news like a flea in your hat.’

  ‘How right you were,’ I said. ‘We’re onto a nice one here, try this for a start. I’ll bet you never knew that this Darko you people at Thoroughgood Road pay your rent to isn’t your real landlord at all, he’s just the agent.’

  ‘Christ,’ said Firth, ‘do you know who the landlord is, then?’

  ‘Well, yes and no,’ I said. ‘I don’t know Mr Rich of Carat Investments personally, because I’ve never met Mr Cross, Mr Drury or Mr Jidney – not yet, anyway – but I reckon you must be paying your rent to one of them. In fact you could say you were paying rent to four people, and then again you could say it was only one – it doesn’t make much difference really, because here they all are right under your nose.’

  ‘What a bastard,’ said Firth, ‘paying good money to a man like that. Are you sure?’

  ‘I reckon so,’ I said, ‘I believe Mr Jidney, Mr Cross, Mr Rich and Mr Drury are all one and the same person. What’s more, talking of Carat Investments, I’ve been doing some research
there – Carat doesn’t just own Throughgood Road, they’ve got three other properties, two in Fulham and another in Earls Court. None of them belonged to Daphne Hayhoe – you don’t know about her yet – because all her property was liquid, stocks, bonds and cash that she made over to Rich. But your Flora may have been a house-owner, also the other, earlier women he dated. Sooner or later we’ll trace everything back through the land registry, but my bet is it’ll be a waste of time; the track’ll just lead back to Carat and die there.’

  ‘Right now,’ said Firth, ‘what we need is proof that someone’s dead, but listening to you, I don’t think any of the original owners are going to need their houses or money back any more.’

  ‘I don’t either,’ I said, ‘so you can see what we’re getting into, Ronald’s a great one for sleeping partners.’

  ‘I fucking knew it,’ said Firth, ‘and yet I can hardly believe it. Cross? No one would have thought he had a pot to piss in, but he must be a millionaire.’

  ‘Who keeps the lowest profile I’ve ever heard of,’ I said, ‘that’s why I want to talk to him so badly. Are you doing what I asked you?’

  ‘I’m sitting at Thoroughgood Road like a spare prick at a wedding watching what he’s doing if that’s what you mean. He’s out now, or he was when I left. He just goes in and out, nothing extraordinary.’

  ‘That’s going to change right away,’ I said, ‘we’re now going to light a fire under him, we’re going into the whole of this thing at once. It’s risky – still, my career’s not brilliant and you haven’t got one at all, so we might as well have a go.’ I took Ann Meredith’s keys to Thoroughgood Road out of my pocket and threw them from hand to hand. ‘Are you sober?’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to be breathalysed. Why? What the fuck have you got in mind?’

  ‘I hope this doesn’t explode – still, don’t forget it was you that started it all. I’m going to B and E Jidney’s place. I’ll have to – I can’t go into the Factory with nothing. Why, don’t you like it?