by J M Gregson
The lady was impressed; he heard her passing on the gist of the information to her neighbour on the other side a few minutes later. Mark had never really understood Animal Farm and 1984 when he read them at school, but it was useful to have a good memory for facts, however you acquired them. He finished his burgundy as the waiters began to serve the dessert.
The American opposite him had wanted to see the London Eye, and Mark Rogers dutifully drew his attention to it as it moved back into view. ‘Originally the Millennium Wheel,’ he offered usefully, ‘but it became the London Eye by popular usage.’ Americans were usually impressed by democracy, so long as it didn’t interfere too much with government.
‘They tell me you get a great view from up there,’ said the American.
It was exactly what Mark had wanted him to say. ‘An excellent view indeed. It doesn’t compare with this one, of course, which is much more extensive and rotates every twenty-two minutes, but it’s the best one most people are allowed to see. This one is only available to a privileged few, I’m afraid.’
‘I guess so. Sure is a shame, that.’ But the man didn’t sound very regretful to be thus privileged.
Dusk fell pleasantly over the scene as the coffee and mints arrived. Mark pointed out the now illuminated neo-Gothic face of the St Pancras hotel and the roof of the newly restored station. Mark’s American visitor was much taken by the vast arched-glass roof of the new terminal for the Eurotunnel trains, whilst his female neighbour received the information that a compelling statue of John Betjeman, the late poet laureate, was a centrepiece of the station.
It was, all in all, a pleasant and successful evening, Mark Rogers decided as he followed the BT guests into the lift and descended to ground level. He even enjoyed the cooler air outside as he strolled the two hundred yards to the hotel where he was to spend the night. He had booked in and unpacked his overnight bag earlier, so he had nothing to do now but unwind, undress and retire for the night.
It was twenty past eleven. Samantha wouldn’t be asleep yet. She was probably reading her usual chapter of her novel before switching off the bedside light. She answered as soon as the phone rang. ‘Just thought I’d report in for the night. Try to convince you I wasn’t with a London tart.’ Mark lay back naked on the top of the bed, enjoying a little coolness on this warm city night.
‘How’d it go?’
She even sounded genuinely interested as she made the routine wifely enquiry, he thought fondly. ‘Well enough, I think. Good food and a wonderful summer evening helped. And I didn’t have anyone like that Boadicea who wanted to clean up television that I got last time. Buf I’m glad it’s over. You can’t relax when you’re conscious that you’re really on duty.’ It didn’t do to make these junketings sound too attractive, when you were speaking to a wife coping with two lively kids on her own.
‘See you tomorrow, then.’
‘I’m looking forward to it already!’ Then, as an apologetic afterthought, he asked, ‘Did anyone from work ring?’ It was always best to be prepared, if there were problems.
‘No one from work. Some odd bloke who didn’t give his name rang this evening.’
‘What time?’
‘About eight o’clock, I think. I was trying to get the kids to think about bed at the time. He wouldn’t give me his name.’
‘What did he want?’
‘He wouldn’t say. He said that it was about money. That you’d know who it was and he’d be in touch again shortly. Who was it, Mark? He sounded an odd sort of bloke.’
‘No idea, love. Might even have been a wrong number, if he wouldn’t say who he was and what he wanted.’
But as he put the phone down, Mark Rogers’ face would have told any unseen observer that this was no wrong number call.
‘This is harassment.’
The old whine, coming right at the beginning of today’s exchanges. That was good, DI Rushton told himself. It showed that the subject was scared and defenceless. ‘No harassment, Mr Chivers. You are here on a voluntary basis, helping the police with their inquiries, just as all good citizens should.’ Darren Chivers, this creature of the night, this man who operated best and was most at home in semi-darkness, instinctively avoided the bright sun of midday. There was no sun here, but the harsh fluorescent light above his head seemed to him like a stage spotlight, seeking him out pitilessly and illuminating every movement of his shifty face.
He picked out one of Rushton’s words and tried to force contempt into his repetition of it. ‘Voluntary! That’s a fucking joke, that is, and we all know it!’
But in the pitiless, all-revealing box of the interview room, he couldn’t bring off the degree of scorn he wanted.
Detective Sergeant Hook gave him a grim smile. ‘We’re playing it by the book, Darren. We could have seen you in your den, maybe opened a few drawers, done a little search of the place, if we weren’t being careful about the rules.’
‘You can’t do that without a search warrant.’ But if they did it, what defence would he have to offer? A brief might make something of it, but courts weren’t sympathetic to people like Darren Chivers.
Chris Rushton didn’t trouble to disguise his contempt. Anyone involved in flooding the streets with crack and heroin excited his detestation, even small-time pushers like this man. ‘We could get a search warrant easily enough, if we wanted one, Chivers. We might do just that if you don’t cooperate with us today.’
‘I am cooperating, aren’t I? Joining the pigs in their sty is cooperating.’ Darren tried to scrape up a little confidence to bolster his hostility.
‘We’ve pulled in four users in the last month who say their supplier is Gary Peters. Your little joke, I suppose. But an expensive joke. It’s led us to you. It’s why you’re here now.’ He allowed himself a crafty, self-satisfied smile, in spite of his vulnerability. ‘You should be out there looking for this sod Peters, instead of harassing innocent citizens like me.’
‘We know that Gary Peters is you, Chivers. It probably seemed a clever idea to you when you thought of it, a little joke at our expense. But it’s the reason that you’re sitting here now. Obstructing the police in the course of their inquiries, when a wiser man would be trying to get himself off the hook.’
‘I ain’t obstructing no one.’ The denial came automatically. Darren had no idea whether or not it was justified.
‘What were you doing in the supermarket car park on Friday?’
He tried not to be thrown by this sudden switch. ‘Going about my lawful business, I expect. Even people like me have to eat, you know.’ He had been following a possible victim for his other trade, but they couldn’t possibly know that. ‘Behaving suspiciously, I was told.’
‘You were told wrong, then, weren’t you?’
Bert Hook gave him a grim smile. ‘Not much sign of assistance from you yet, is there, Darren? Not much sign yet of the information which would stop us throwing the book at you.’ He leaned forward until his face was within two feet of the thin, apprehensive features on the other side of the small, square table. ‘You can help yourself if you’ve got the sense to do it, Darren. We’re not really that interested in putting small fry like you behind bars. But we need names. Names of your suppliers.’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘Can’t or won’t?’
‘I can’t. 1 don’t know who supplies me.’ He added too late, ‘Who used to supply me, I mean. I’m not doing drugs any more. I’m not using and I’m not supplying.’ His lips set in a thin line, as if showing determination would make it true.
Bert Hook glanced down at the thin, wasted arms, then up into the scared, crafty face, saying nothing for a moment. Chivers dropped his folded arms back to his sides, as if he feared the burly man might seize his wrists and roll back the sleeves of his shirt to reveal the evidence of needle damage on the skin below. ‘You and we both know you’re concealing information, Darren. The best thing you can do is stop dealing from this moment and never start again, but I don’t think
that’s going to happen. Do you?’
‘I’ve already stopped.’ Chivers leaned forward, at once sly and pathetic, truculent and vulnerable. ‘I can take advice, even from coppers, when it suits me! I don’t deal any more. So you’re wasting your time this morning. And mine too.’ He jutted his thin chin at them in a pitiful attempt at aggression.
It was Chris Rushton who finished the interview. ‘I don’t believe you when you say you can tell us nothing, Chivers. I don’t for a minute believe you’re going to stop dealing. Well, we shall be watching and waiting. We’ll have you, and when we do, we’ll hang you out to dry. Your failure to cooperate today has been noted.’
The two officers sat together in the interview room for a moment after Chivers had scurried from the room and the station like a fleeing rodent. ‘How much do you think he does know?’ asked Rushton.
Hook shook his head disconsolately, feeling the flatness which always followed an unproductive interview. ‘Maybe the name of his immediate supplier. Maybe not even that. He’s small fry - a user who’s turned dealer to feed the habit. The drug squad aren’t interested in people like him. They want people higher up the chain - the people who supply him and the tier beyond that.’
They nodded their agreement, then mentally shook their heads at the hopelessness of the task. The real barons of this multibillion pound industry, the people who supervised the importation of huge quantities of illegal drugs, were often not even UK residents. It was relatively easy to apprehend people like Darren Chivers, even to secure custodial sentences for them after repeated offences. But that solved nothing. There was a constant stream of men and women ready to replace him as small-time dealers, eager to seize their share of this lucrative but vicious trade, until they in turn were arrested.
Back in the privacy of his den, Darren Chivers tried to bolster his confidence. He had told them nothing. The pigs had come to the trough and found it empty. He had been too clever for them. But they’d be watching him now, so he’d better remain clever. He’d be careful. He wouldn’t deal in the coming weeks - certainly not in his usual sites.
He’d better play up his other source of income, for a while longer yet. But that had its dangers too. The room was stifling, in the middle of the June day. He reached up over the sink and banged open the window whose hinges were stiff from lack of use. No cooling breeze came in from the still, sun- filled day outside. He resented the brightness, longed once again for the night which was his natural metier. ‘Darkness visible’, that’s what he needed; he liked that phrase.
He was a natural loner, content with his own company, he told himself. But with the busy world outside bustling forward in the heat of the day, Darren Chivers felt a hopeless isolation dropping around his thin shoulders.
Five
It was a large, high-roomed stone house, set in what had once been extremely large grounds. It must have been very grand in its Victorian heyday. The modem extensions had still left acres of space around the buildings and many of the residents were sitting in the gardens on this sunny June day, which was made only more pleasant by the soft southerly breeze.
Superintendent John Lambert made his way slowly towards the main building from the visitors’ car park, wondering exactly what he was going to say to his old chief. Early-stage Alzheimer’s, the manager had told him when he rang. Too early yet to be certain how effective the new drug they were trying was going to be. Mr North was one of their friendliest residents - they didn’t call them patients, and she’d be glad if he’d bear that in mind when he came to visit. No, she hadn’t realized that Mr North had once been a chief inspector in the police. It would be on his file, of course, but they treated everyone the same here. She had found it worked out best when residents regarded their time at Westcott Manor as a fresh start.
Jack North wasn’t one of the people enjoying the gardens. The young woman in a nurse’s uniform in the reception area told Lambert that he was in his room, that he might find him ‘a bit vague’ today. She seemed to look at Lambert rather curiously, as if wondering why he was here, but that might have been his imagination. Perhaps they didn’t get many visitors other than relatives. Or maybe he was exciting interest by his own awkwardness. John Lambert had never been a good hospital visitor and, though he reminded himself again that this was not a hospital, he found himself already ill at ease here.
He scarcely recognized his old chief when he saw him. North was sitting in an armchair, looking down at his hands. His thin white hair was neatly combed, but the alert eyes Lambert remembered had sunk into his head. They were watery, pale, diminished, almost the unseeing eyes of a blind man. They looked up at Lambert as he shut the door behind him, but there was no recognition in them.
‘It’s been a long time. Jack,’ said Lambert. He was wondering already if he should have come here.
He sat down in a chair opposite the man who had once controlled his destiny, who had shaped his career when he was a detective sergeant hacking his way through the CID jungle. North was looking at him still, registering now a little curiosity, a puzzlement that might turn into panic if his damaged brain was not given something to fasten on. ‘We used to work together,’ said Lambert desperately. ‘I’m John Lambert. You were good to me, Jack. Showed me the ropes, prevented me from putting my foot in it. I had a lot to learn, then, I can tell you.’ He laughed, a rattling, artificial sound, trying to soothe this tense, diminished creature, to induce relaxation by a shared hilarity in a dim, half-remembered comradeship.
‘John Lambert.’ The slack mouth repeated the name carefully, like a dutiful child trying to please.
‘You were a big man in those days. Jack’ There was no reaction from the lined grey face. ‘You were a bit of a bastard at times, if I’m honest!’ Lambert wondered if he should have used that familiar police word in this place. He heard himself laughing again, a hollow, mirthless sound.
‘A bit of a bastard.’ For the first time, he had a reaction. North seemed pleased, though it was a muted, uncertain pleasure. ‘I was a bit of a bastard.’ He smiled, then said with a sudden, startling clarity, ‘You could be a bastard in those days, you know. You can’t now. You have to be person - no, pol ...’ His voice trailed away and he lifted both hands to his face in frustration.
‘Politically correct. That’s right, Jack. That’s what you have to be nowadays, politically correct.’
Jack North nodded, seven, eight, ten times. ‘I was a copper.’
‘You were, Jack. You were a good copper, too. One of the best.’
‘One of the best.’ The brow furrowed, the brain tried to take in the idea and build on it, but wasn’t able to do so. ‘One of the best. Was I?’
‘You were, Jack. Taught me a few things, I can tell you.’ A few things to do and a few things not to do, thought Lambert. Jack North had been as straight as a die himself, but he’d sometimes taken short cuts you could never risk nowadays. ‘You had a big team. Jack, in the old days.’ He wished he had more experience of this, wished he had asked Mrs North for a little more guidance when he had acceded to her request to come here.
Amy North was a tiny, bright-eyed woman, with head and hand movements as quick as a sparrow’s in pursuit of food. She was a little wizened now, but mentally as sharp as she had been twenty years ago. That had made Lambert less prepared for the frailty he was desperately trying to deal with now. Amy came here every day. Perhaps she didn’t realize just how far her husband had degenerated. More likely, she didn’t wish to acknowledge the decline in the man she loved, even to herself. Lambert was diverted for a moment by a surge of admiration for the courage of that tiny, uncomplaining woman, who should have been enjoying a serene old age after a blameless life.
‘You were a good detective, John.’
Lambert was startled from his reverie by the words, by the pleasure in the old face opposite him at a sudden opening of a door to a room in the past.
‘You didn’t let things go, John. You got Bruce Nixon.’
A name Lambert
had almost forgotten himself. A man who had been in prison for repeated burglaries when they’d pinned a murder on him. A man the police machine had earmarked as a petty criminal and as a result almost overlooked as a potential killer. A man who had helped Lambert to make Inspector when the Promotion Board considered him a few months later. ‘You supported me on Nixon, Jack. We got him together.’
Bruce Nixon. The eyes had brightened a little as North recalled the name, but apparently the memory did not extend beyond that, for he was looking at Lambert as if he were a stranger once more. He said uncertainly, ‘Mother’s dead. Did your sister tell you that?’ He had lost his bearings again, thought now that this visitor was his brother.
Lambert said gently, ‘I worked with you, Jack. I’m not your brother. We were detectives together, not so long ago.’
‘Detectives, yes. I remember that.’ There was a long pause and then he said, ‘Was I any good?’
‘Yes, Jack, you were very good.’ But was North trying to exorcize some ghost, some moral breach which gnawed at his conscience, some wisp of guilt which troubled him still, in this moving coma where thoughts surfaced and then sank again without completing themselves?
Lambert looked out of the window at the gardens and the people sitting and strolling in them. The world outside seemed to him to be moving on, whilst he was trapped in this limbo where ideas came and went but nothing moved forwards.
The young woman who had directed him here brought in a tray with a pot of tea and biscuits and spoke kindly to Jack North, who nodded back at her with a small, secret smile.
‘She’s a good girl,’ he said to Lambert as if she had already left the room. ‘Amy isn’t able to do as much as she could, you see. I make allowances for her, but she doesn’t do as much as she should. What do you think about it?’
‘I think Amy’s very good to you, Jack. You need looking after and she brought you to this nice place so that you could have the care you need. She comes and sees you every day.’ Lambert walked across to the chest of drawers and picked up a picture of Jack and Amy North on their wedding day, thinking how recent it must seem to Amy and this shell of her husband, how impossible it would have been for the smiling, vigorous man and the small laughing woman in the brilliant white dress to foresee that it would end like this.