‘Well, drop it, whatever it is,’ he said, ‘there’s a new lead on the Southall killing, they’ve asked us to check it out and everyone’s tied up except you.’
‘But I am tied up,’ I said. I told him about Jidney.
‘We’ve never even heard of this, how did you get on to it?’
‘Firth. It started with his asking me to go up and see him for a chat.’
‘Firth?’ said Crowdie, ‘he’s just an old pisspot.’
‘Firth had his eyes open,’ I said, ‘and he sent for me because I’m a mate of his. I’ve just been checking it out, and it’s kosher.’
He said: ‘But you say this Jidney’s an old man?’
‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘but that doesn’t mean he’s finished his life’s work. He’s got another woman lined up right now; Stevenson’s watching her.’
‘What?’ said Crowdie. He exploded. ‘You mean you told Stevenson to drop his work on your own initiative and sent him off on a case that doesn’t even officially exist? What’s the matter with you? Are you sick in your fucking mind or something?’
‘All right,’ I said, ‘get Stevenson back, then, and we’ll just sit here bleating about the rules all day while the Meredith woman gets killed. This Jidney’s into her really hard, he’s lined her up, and he’s not the kind that likes being interrupted.’
‘That’s not the point,’ said Crowdie, ‘we work to a timetable here.’
‘I know,’ I said, ‘but murder doesn’t.’
‘Well I’ve heard it all now, haven’t I?’ he said. ‘I don’t know why the rest of us don’t just leave you to run the place one-handed.’ He started coming on like Cryer. ‘Have you got any evidence? Anything to go on at all?’
I told him how I had broken into Jidney’s.
‘Oh that does it,’ said Crowdie, ‘I’ve never heard anything like it – for sheer bottle, nothing like it! Well, you can forget your pension – you might as well clear your desk out and piss off home. Wait till Bowman hears about it, he’ll do his pieces, he hates your guts.’
‘I know he does,’ I said, ‘that’s why I’ve come to see you.’
‘You B and E this Jidney without a warrant, you’ve no body, you’ve got the square root of fuck-all, what else haven’t you got?’
‘I haven’t got peace of mind over it,’ I said.
‘Look,’ said Cruddie, ‘I couldn’t take you off Southall if I wanted to, I haven’t the authority.’
‘They don’t need me over at Southall,’ I said. ‘You know that – you could send any experienced detective. Anyway, this Jidney thing, I’m not dropping it.’
‘What the hell am I going to do?’ said Cruddie.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Being an inspector brings terrible problems, it must be a nightmare.’
‘See this ashtray here?’ said Cruddie. ‘Mind I don’t clobber you with it.’
‘All right,’ I said, ‘don’t worry – I’ll take it upstairs. I’ve done it before.’
‘You’re never going to Jollo with it,’ said Cruddie in disbelief, ‘that really proves you’re mad.’
But I had already picked up the phone to talk to Jollo; instead, though, I found myself straight through to the Voice. I heard someone his end of the line say: ‘Who’s that on the phone?’ and the Voice replying: ‘The only man I know who thinks Placido Domingo’s a bullfighter.’ To me it said: ‘Before you start I wanted to talk to you – how did you deal with the Harvist brothers? I forget.’
‘The Harvists?’ I said. ‘Why bring that up? That’s old history, this is about something brand new.’
‘Never mind that,’ said the Voice, ‘just refresh my memory about the Harvists.’
I couldn’t think why he was bothered about it. ‘I went at it like an old woolly,’ I said, ‘just looked round till I found a loose strand called Gary and pulled on it. He was only a runner for them, but they trusted him with interesting messages.’
‘You didn’t go around arresting everyone in sight?’
‘No, that was what Bowman wanted to do.’
‘Never mind him. You pulled the man Gary in, didn’t you?’
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Look, it’s not the first of April, what’s this about?’
‘Just tell me what I want to know.’
‘OK, there was just Stevenson and me – we put Gary under the lights and said: “Now you know how this works. An hour from now you’ll have told us everything you know right down to next week’s six easy draws.” He said: “Will you arrest me when I’ve done that?” I said: “Of course not, Gary, don’t be stupid.” He said: “But I want you to arrest me.” “I know you do,” I said, “but I don’t want you safe, I want it so that if you repeat what you’re going to tell us to your folk they’re going to hurt you, and if I find I’m not getting information from you it’ll be me giving you a hard time.”’
‘There was some mess, wasn’t there?’
‘Not if you think of the one we cleared up.’
‘Did Gary survive?’
‘No sir. The Harvists decided he had to go so there was an accident with a truck, but that way we got the Harvists quietly instead of rushing about with warrants like teeny-boppers with a credit card.’
‘All right,’ said the Voice, ‘now what this is about, your name came up at a meeting.’
I knew what that meant. It meant the Voice had brought it up.
‘And we discussed posting you away from A14. This endless battle of yours with DCI Bowman has got to stop.’
‘I wouldn’t agree to a transfer I’m afraid,’ I said.
‘Why not? You weren’t with A14 for the Harvist case, but you handled it satisfactorily just the same.’
‘Yes, we mopped them up,’ I said. ‘The Harvists are out of the nick now, doesn’t time fly? I had a phone call from Johnny Harvist reminding me only the other day – friendly, I don’t think.’
‘Why does it matter to you, leaving A14?’
‘It suits me here.’
‘I wish it suited your colleagues.’
‘It suits some of them. I agree there are the others.’
‘So do I,’ said the Voice. ‘But this transfer, it’s another department, you’d be co-ordinating operations. It would be a challenge with more pay, and it’s dangerous.’
‘All police work’s dangerous,’ I said, ‘and I don’t care about pay.’
‘Christ!’ said the Voice. It was the only violent word he ever used; he was said to be a mild-mannered man with a large family who lived near Basingstoke and went to church. ‘This is to do with terrorists.’
‘Terrorism is an armed lunatic in a bedsit to me.’ I said, ‘and always will be.’
‘Terrorism is what I tell you it is,’ said the Voice.
‘See if this is terrorism,’ I said. I told the Voice about Jidney, beginning with Carat Investments, then about breaking into Jidney’s flat, right down to my having left Stevenson with Ann Meredith in her flat. I told it about the painting, the photograph album, the six-digit number and the cassette; I also told it about Jidney’s fourteen years’ form and the kind of offences he had gone down for.
‘What was on this cassette? Have you run it through?’
‘I haven’t had a chance yet.’
The Voice said: ‘There’s enough crime waiting to be solved here without your finding more of it on your own – you’re part of a team, we have our priorities, we have to tackle work according to the manpower available. Things have to go through channels, they have to wait.’
‘Jidney doesn’t know anything about channels,’ I said, ‘and this matter’s very serious; it’s sudden and it won’t wait. It came to my attention through this conversation I had with Firth; I’ve checked it out and I’ve got to act on it.’
The Voice was silent, then it said: ‘Now you listen to me. I take into consideratio
n that sometimes I’ve made exceptions over the way you handle inquiries, and that sometimes I’ve roasted your balls off. What I’m telling you now is that the police isn’t there simply to control a bunch of self-opinionated maniacs like you – at the moment it suffers from a very poor public image owing to cases of wrongful arrest and conviction, also of police corruption. All the press and the public are waiting for now is just one more balls-up, so might I just distract your attention from events at Thoroughgood Road and remind you that we have a general election coming up, and that a review of the police is high on the agenda. That means that if I get one dud result in the coming weeks my head’s very likely to roll – and if it does, Sergeant, I shall create my own mayhem here, in which you will not be spared.’ He added: ‘As for Stevenson, you’d no right to send him off like that, and he’d no right to go.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I also know I haven’t got a body and Inspector Crowdie’s upset about it. But what I am saying is that I’m putting myself on the line here – all I need is the assistance of one other officer, Sergeant Stevenson, and I guarantee I’ll have Jidney parcelled up in three days. If I fall down over it I’ll take the rap, but I’ve got to be taken off the Southall case.’
‘I often think you’d be better off as a private detective.’
‘No. I need the warrant card, it saves time.’
‘You really think you and Stevenson can nail Jidney in three days?’
‘All we’ve got to do is find him and bring him in before he kills anyone else.’
The Voice was silent for so long this time that I wondered if it had rung off, but in the end it said: ‘All right, then, seventy-two hours.’
‘I’ll go over and tell Stevenson, then.’
‘Yes, but keep me informed,’ said the Voice, ‘because if you drop me in the shit over this, I’ll crucify you.’ The phone went dead, and I left the building thinking about what used to happen to the early Christians when Nero got hold of them.
15
I went over to Maida Vale and told Stevenson everything. I explained exactly what I had got him into; then I produced Jidney’s video. I said to Ann Meredith: ‘Can we use your video machine here? Otherwise we’d have to get one in.’ She looked as though she were about to sneer something like making yourselves at home, aren’t you, but she was indignant instead.
‘What do you want it for?’
‘It’s a video Sergeant Stevenson and I have got here,’ I said. ‘We’d probably better watch it just him and me together if that’s OK.’
‘Well, I can’t very well say no, can I?’ she said, ‘but mind you don’t ruin it, it’s brand new. Though I must say, I really can’t understand what you’re both doing watching videos while I’m cooped up here.’
‘If you’d just wait outside while we run it through.’
‘It really is the limit!’ she shouted. In the end we calmed her down and got her out; she stormed into her bedroom and slammed the door.
‘She’s not the easiest person to mind, is she?’ I said to Stevenson.
‘You’ve screwed up her love life,’ said Stevenson, ‘that’s what she doesn’t appreciate.’
I put the cassette into the machine. ‘I don’t know what we’re going to see when we run this,’ I said, sliding the cassette into the machine, ‘but I think it’s odds-on it’s going to be nasty.’
‘Well the machine won’t flinch, whatever it is,’ Stevenson said, ‘it’s Japanese.’
I pressed the play button and a small, bare area, brilliantly lit, appeared on the screen. The place was built of stone, with an arched ceiling, and it was damp; a narrow rhomboid box that served one purpose only projected from the foot of the frame. Against the far wall a naked woman with her feet towards us lay bound by her wrists and ankles; she was middle-aged, around fifty, and I knew her at once – her painted eyes had already stared past me in Jidney’s place.
‘Looks like a vault,’ I said.
‘I come from a family of gravediggers,’ Stevenson muttered, ‘and it is a vault. Who’s the woman? Do you know her?’
‘I know who she is,’ I said. ‘Or was.’
‘Now, Flora,’ said a naked man who had his back to us in a cajoling voice. ‘Flora.’
The camera closed up to show her face – grey lips parted, eyes bright and terrified. They saw something we couldn’t, they switched away from the camera and then she screamed.
‘It’s what we agreed, Flora,’ said the man’s voice. A noose of rabbit-wire dangled between her face and ours; it was fine wire and it caught the light. The woman started to speak, but she was so frightened that nothing she said made sense. The man made comforting noises several times trying to calm her down but gave up in the end and said savagely: ‘Get where I want you, you cow!’ She shook her head violently, but he was passing the noose round her neck anyway and pulled sharply. When the wire was deep into her neck he jerked it again; her face swelled and her cheeks reddened with congested blood, then darkened. The film went dark too.
When the screen brightened again we could see that things had been happening in the meantime; Flora didn’t look intact any more. She had fatally changed, and other things about her had changed too. She was now badly cut across the breasts – they were open and half-severed by sweeping gashes which had left rivulets of blood wandering across her ribs. Her head lay sideways and looked wrong on her neck, yet her lips, thickened and purple, were still moving, trying to talk. There also was her aggressor. I could see it was Jidney now. His head was half-turned to the camera; he was squatting on her and spreading her legs apart; he had a huge erection which he exhibited to her, turning her head this way and that with his hand in her hair so as to force his penis into her mouth.
I stopped the film and turned to Stevenson. ‘We’ll have to watch all this somehow.’
‘It’s OK,’ he said, ‘my stomach’s where it ought to be, just.’ He broke off. ‘Do you hear something, it was the bedroom door opening, wasn’t it? For Christ’s sake let’s not have any interruptions, wait a minute.’ He went to the door and called out: ‘Miss Meredith? Are you all right?’
‘Of course I’m all right,’ she shouted back impatiently from the corridor. ‘What are you doing in there? Are you going to stay in there all afternoon watching movies?’
Stevenson said calmly: ‘Just wait where you are for now, we’ll be out in a minute. Don’t come in here till we tell you, that’s all.’
‘Why not?’ she shouted through the door. ‘What are you watching?’ When we didn’t answer she said: ‘Is it anything to do with Henry?’
Stevenson just said: ‘We really won’t be long now, Miss Meredith.’
I shut the door, spotted a key in the lock and turned it. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘let’s get on with it.’
I restarted the machine. Jidney was on top of Flora on the stone floor now, with the rabbit-wire round her neck. Her eyes were popping out of her head and glazed; she was barely alive. He was penetrating her, biting her simultaneously in the breasts and they were both screaming, Jidney with his mouth full of blood. Then he pulled the wire so tightly that her neck, leaving nothing but a dark crease where the noose vanished, looked like a child’s balloon at the nozzle end where you tie the string. ‘Not so fast, not so fucking fast, you bitch!’ he gurgled, enraged, and she died as he came, flopping in just one spasm; when it was over he rolled off her, then turned back on his hands and knees and began to play with her body, making noises. All at once he dropped her, and whirled round at the camera from his squatting position. ‘Why don’t you move any more?’ he screamed. His lips lay back in a snarl along his teeth, spit flew off his bottom lip: ‘Why don’t you fucking move?’ The woman’s body shuddered in his grip. He turned to an airline bag beside him on the floor and took an eighteen-inch knife out of it. He lined the knife up along the crease the wire made in her neck and cut; in four strokes the head was off. He took t
he head by the hair and held it up to the camera; then there was no more film.
Stevenson said nothing for a while. He had turned a bad colour, pearl shading off to green round his mouth. After swallowing a few times he muttered: ‘All right, let’s just talk, have you any idea how many he’s done?’
‘It could be as many as sixteen,’ I said. ‘Or more even, I don’t know.’
‘We’ve got to find Jidney,’ said Stevenson. ‘That vault, the bodies. What are you going to do?’
‘I’m taking this to Jollo now,’ I said, rewinding the cassette.
‘What about Meredith? I can’t watch her round the clock single-handed.’
‘I know you can’t,’ I said, ‘she’ll have to be moved.’
I called her in. ‘Well?’ she said. ‘What did you see on the film? I imagine I’ve the right to know.’
Instead of answering her I said: ‘Would you mind going upstairs with Sergeant Stevenson and packing everything you think you might need for a few days?’
‘What?’ she said. ‘Where am I going? Isn’t it all right if I just stay here and don’t let anyone in?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m afraid not.’
She blew up. ‘You don’t mean to say I’m under arrest on top of everything else?’
‘Of course not. We’re taking you into custody for your own protection.’
‘What are you talking about? I know I only work part-time, but what about my job? What are my employers going to say?’
‘We’ll explain to your employers.’
‘Where are you taking me?’
‘To a safe house,’ I said, ‘but it’ll take time to arrange, meanwhile you’ll have to stay in a police station, probably Poland Street, I don’t know yet.’
She said: ‘I don’t understand what’s happening, I still don’t believe any of it.’
All Stevenson said to her politely was: ‘I’ll help you pack.’
16
Firth rang in and said: ‘Jidney’s left here in his motor – just himself and an airline bag.’
I held Firth while I rang Stevenson to tell him that, but I wasn’t too worried about the bag, not with Stevenson at Maida Vale. ‘He’ll get short shrift at Meredith’s and he’ll be back,’ I said when I got back to Firth.
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