by Mark Timlin
‘Here he is now,’ said Chrissie.
I thought the boy was going to turn and run at the sight of Dawn and me, but Chrissie said, ‘Don’t worry, Dandy, they’re not here to take you back.’
I wondered where ‘back’ was, but didn’t ask.
Dandy stood and looked at us all. I could see that he was still poised to flee, and I said, ‘Relax. I’m not going to hurt you.’
‘Who’re you?’ he asked.
Chrissie answered for me. ‘He’s a private detective. She’s his tart. They want to talk.’
Dandy went white. ‘Are you from the council? Or me mum and dad?’ he said.
‘No,’ said Dawn quickly. ‘Look, Dandy. Don’t worry. We’re not interested in anything you’ve done. We want some help.’
He seemed to relax a fraction. ‘What kind of help?’ he asked.
Once again Chrissie jumped in. I felt like a ventriloquist’s dummy. ‘About this place.’
‘What about it?’ said Dandy.
‘You live here?’ I asked.
‘What if I do?’
‘You’re here every day?’
‘Don’t tell him until he pays,’ said Chrissie, who now appeared to be Dandy’s business manager. ‘And pass over those cokes. We’re thirsty.’
Dandy came through the gate into the tomb, peeled off three of the cans and tossed them to Chrissie, who caught them one-handed. Good catchers, these girls.
‘Eat your breakfast,’ I said to him. ‘Don’t want it getting cold.’
He nodded, put the last Coke on top of the tomb and unwrapped the parcel. Inside were two soggy-looking sandwiches. Sausage, mustard and ketchup I guessed from the look and smell. A faint puff of steam leaked out from between the slices of bread. Chrissie and Bird popped their cans, and Dandy did the same with his. Malcolm’s was put on the bench for his future enjoyment. Then Bird remembered her manners.
‘Want a drink?’ she asked us. ‘Malc’s well out of it. He don’t want his.’
I shook my head, but Dawn nodded and took the proffered can and opened the top with a hiss.
Dandy picked up one half of one sandwich. The bread flopped damply, and he caught the crust in his mouth. ‘How much?’ he asked through his breakfast.
‘Depends on what you know.’
‘What about?’
‘This place.’
He looked at me bemusedly. ‘What about it?’
‘Who comes here regularly. Anyone funny. Strange. You know.’
He shook his head. ‘Most people who come here are strange,’ he said. ‘It’s not normal to hang out in a place like this.’
‘You do,’ I said.
‘Whoever said I was normal?’ he replied, and bit into his sandwich again.
I wanted another cigarette, but I’d given all mine away, so I ignored the craving. I figured I was wasting my time but decided to have just one more try. ‘OK. I give in,’ I said. ‘But try to think. I’m looking for someone who seems more than usually interested in him.’ I switched my eyes to the tomb on which Dandy’s Coke can was sitting. ‘Not just a fan or a nutter. Someone who can’t seem to stay away.’
‘That fat fucker,’ said a male voice. For a second I couldn’t place it. Then I realised that Malcolm had spoken. I looked over at him and his eyes were gazing up into mine. ‘Friar Fucking Tuck.’
I caught Malcolm’s eyes with mine and said, ‘Who’s Friar Tuck?’
‘Oh, Malcolm,’ said Bird. ‘Not that again. You were stoned.’
He turned in her direction and said, ‘What the fuck do you know?’
‘You’re always stoned,’ she replied.
Before it turned into a domestic, I said, ‘Slow down a minute. Let him finish.’
Bird shrugged huffily, and I said to Malcolm, ‘Come on then, son. Who’s Friar Tuck?’
‘Got any dough?’ he said.
‘Sure.’ I reached into my back pocket and slid a note off the pile that was folded there. It was a twenty. I held it up between two fingers.
‘Give us,’ said Malcolm, reaching out his right hand. It was then that I noticed he had the letters love tattooed on the backs of his fingers. I looked at his left hand. hate. Obviously an original thinker, our Malcolm.
I shook my head. ‘Not until you tell me what I want to know.’
‘It’s worth more than a score,’ he said.
‘I’ll be the judge of what it’s worth,’ I said.
He spat on to the pile of garbage between his feet. What was another little piece of garbage among so much? I thought.
‘Give us a drink?’ he said to Bird.
She passed him her can of Coke and he took a long swallow, then stuck his snout back into the polythene bag with its layer of glue, grey like snot, in the bottom, and inhaled deeply, then dropped that too between his feet.
‘Give us a fag,’ he said to the girls.
Malcolm was beginning to get on my nerves.
Chrissie took my packet of Silk Cut out of her jacket and passed them round. All six of us present took one. Even Dandy, who stuck his under his hair behind his ear while he finished his second sandwich. I lit Dawn’s and mine with my lighter. Chrissie lit hers, Malcolm’s and Bird’s with another match from her book. I wondered if she’d ever heard the superstition about the third light from a match. Probably not. She was too young. Or maybe she just couldn’t care less.
Malcolm looked up at me again and slowly let out a mouthful of smoke, which the breeze, strengthening by the minute as it rushed the yellow clouds towards us, took and dispersed around his head.
‘This geezer,’ he said. ‘Big cunt, fat. Bald on top. Never talks. ’E comes ’ere a lot.’
‘Not lately,’ interrupted Bird.
‘Shut the fuck up,’ said Malcolm. ‘I’m talking.’
Charming, I thought. The mating habits of the young. And for a second I considered my own daughter Judith living up in Aberdeen, and wondered how her first boyfriend would treat her. If she didn’t already have one. Not the way that Malcolm treated Bird, I hoped. Or he’d have me to answer to. Whoever he was.
‘He used to come here all the time,’ Malcolm went on. ‘Never spoke to no one. Just hung about. You remember him, Dandy.’
I looked over at the tall boy, who nodded, swallowed the last mouthful of his breakfast, wiped his fingers daintily along the thighs of his leather strides, took the cigarette from behind his ear and lit it with a disposable lighter he kept in the top pocket of his shirt.
‘Then I come up here one night late,’ Malcolm continued. ‘I was trippin’. ‘Eavy fuckin’ acid. Some cunt brought it back from Amsterdam. It was loaded with bleedin’ speed and I couldn’t sleep. Didn’t want to neither. It was great.’ He smiled at the memory. ‘I wanted to come into the graveyard. See some spooks. I bunked in over the wall and he was here.’
‘Friar Tuck?’ I interjected.
‘That’s right. And he was wearing robes. Long black robes. Normally he wore jeans and a jacket. And he was kneelin’ there.’ He pointed to where the battered bust of Harrison stood. ‘Prayin’.’
‘Bollocks,’ said Bird. ‘You was dreamin’.’
‘No I fuckin’ wasn’t,’ Malcolm insisted. ‘He was here, and so was I. I watched him from over there.’ He gestured towards the gate. ‘I keep tellin’ you it ’appened. Do you think I saw it on fuckin’ video?’
‘Probably,’ said Bird.
Malcolm backhanded her across the face. ‘Don’t tell me what I was doin’,’ he said. ‘No one tells me that. Or what to do,’ he added.
I guessed he said that a lot. People like him do, and I hated to disillusion him, but I did. ‘Don’t do that again, Malcolm,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Hit her.’
‘She’s my bird. I can do what I like with her.’ He paused for a seco
nd, then grinned nastily. ‘Bird. Geddit?’
I goddit.
‘But don’t hit her.’
‘Don’t you give her a whack?’ he asked, looking at Dawn.
‘I try to resist the temptation,’ I replied. ‘Mostly I succeed.’
‘And if you don’t?’
‘It hasn’t happened yet,’ I said.
‘Birds deserve a good ’idin’,’ said Malcolm. ‘Keeps them in line.’
Bird touched her face where the imprint of his hand burned redly against the paleness of her skin.
‘So do some blokes,’ I said.
He looked up at me, and smiled nastily again. He got my message. ‘And who’s gonna give it me?’ he asked. ‘I’m fuckin’ mad, me, when I get goin’,’ and his hand disappeared into the shiny green nylon bomber jacket with the orange lining that he was wearing, and came out holding a Stanley knife with the blade extended.
It was really no contest. One of the first things you learn as a probationary constable is how to take a knife away from someone. Two ways. The nice way and the nasty way. I did it the nice way but with just enough hint of nastiness that Malcolm might be able to form a fist with his right hand some time that evening. If I’d done it like our instructor had shown us one late night in a gym in Hendon, he’d’ve needed microsurgery.
Malcolm knelt in the garbage sobbing, and I tossed the Stanley knife into the undergrowth outside the iron fence.
Bird looked at me with a new softness in her eyes that was almost embarrassing. Dawn noticed and shook her head slightly and smiled.
‘Does anyone else know anything about this Friar Tuck bloke?’ I asked.
‘Just what Malcolm told me,’ said Dandy, who was also looking at me differently.
‘Did anyone else ever see him here at night? Dressed like that? Or any other time, when he behaved differently from normal?’
Dandy, Bird and Chrissie all shook their heads.
‘And he hasn’t been here lately?’
Once again, three negatives.
‘Well, thanks,’ I said, and placed the twenty-pound note in Bird’s hand. ‘Don’t spend it all at once.’ And then for Malcolm’s benefit, if he could hear me from the world of pain he now inhabited, ‘I’ll be back from time to time. See how you’re all getting on. I’ll bring some more cigarettes.’ And I took Dawn’s hand and led her through the gate and back in the direction of the car. By the time we reached it, the threatened rain was just starting and raindrops as big as ten-pence pieces were starting to kick up the dust from the roadway. We got in and I started the engine.
‘I’m glad you hurt that little shit,’ said Dawn. ‘If you hadn’t I was going to scratch his eyes out.’
‘Now that I would like to see,’ I said.
We sat there side by side with the big five-litre motor of the Chevy idling under the long bonnet, holding hands and watching the water stream down the windscreen.
‘What made you ask that?’ Dawn said.
‘What?’
‘About someone of Harrison’s age acting strangely in here.’
‘Because if he isn’t dead, and that isn’t him buried under that bloody great mausoleum, I reckon he might just pop by occasionally to see that everything’s copacetic. Mellow-D. That the place is being looked after and no one’s dug up whatever or whoever is buried there. And if anyone would know, it’d be those kids. They’re there all the time.’
‘But to come back at night, dressed in robes and pray there.’
‘If we can believe Malcolm. He didn’t strike me as one of life’s more reliable witnesses. And he admitted himself that he was tripping. He probably dreamt the whole thing just like Bird said he did.’
‘I don’t like this job,’ said Dawn. ‘It’s too weird, and we’re meeting some nasty people.’
‘It’ll probably get worse before it gets better. Most cases I do are like this. But sometimes you meet other kinds of people. Decent ones. Miss Simmons for instance.’
‘Yes. She was decent, wasn’t she?’
As we were talking, the rain beat down even harder, drumming on the bodywork of the Chevy, and I switched on the wipers, double speed. The glass inside the car was misted up and I turned on the air conditioning.
‘Do you think they’re all right?’ asked Dawn.
‘Who?’
‘The two girls and Dandy. It’s pouring.’
I noticed she hadn’t included Malcolm. ‘Damp, I expect,’ I said.
‘Poor things.’
‘I expect they’re used to it.’
‘That doesn’t make it better.’
‘For a hard woman, you’re as soft as shit,’ I said.
‘Chris Kennedy-Sloane was right,’ she said. ‘You have such a charming way with words.’
I smiled. ‘I know. It was what first attracted you to me, wasn’t it?’
She smiled back. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You were pissed and had far too much money for your own good, and Tracey and I decided that you could donate a little of it to us.’
‘What was that about a way with words?’ I said.
She smiled sadly.
‘Do you want to go back and check how they are?’ I asked. ‘We could give them a lift somewhere.’
She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re right. I expect they are used to being out in all weathers. Dandy must have a shelter somewhere. He’ll look after them. They probably wouldn’t thank us anyway.’
‘Probably not,’ I said, and switched the four big halogen headlights on full beam, put the car into ‘drive’ and pulled away.
‘So what now?’ she asked.
‘How about lunch?’ I said. ‘I’m starving.’
13
We lunched at Camden Lock. By the time we got there the rain had stopped, the breeze had wiped the sky clean of clouds, and the sun was raising steam off the streets. We ate al fresco at an Italian restaurant with a terrace on the first floor, so that I could keep an eye on the motor.
The food was excellent, and when the coffee and brandies had been served, I said, ‘OK, ’Olmes. You’re the great detective. Lay it out for me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Tell me about the case. Frankly I’m confused. I want to hear what you make of it so far.’
‘Starting when?’
‘At the beginning.’
‘Right back?’
‘Right back. And if you miss anything I think is relevant, I’ll interrupt. Maybe between us we can make some sense of this lot.’
Dawn lit a Silk Cut from the new packet we’d bought at an extortionate price from the restaurant and sat back in her seat. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Some time at the end of 1971, Jay Harrison and his girlfriend Kim Major come over to London from America. Things were getting too hot for them over there. He was awaiting trial for obscenity, and everything he touched went wrong. He was getting fat and ugly, and his band was on the skids. The pair of them took a flat in Hyde Park Mansions and proceed to party down. Cool, so far?’
I nodded. ‘They were drinking up a storm, I imagine,’ I said. ‘That seemed to be par for the course for them at the time. And taking a lot of drugs from the state of the photos we’ve seen.’
‘What kind of drugs?’
‘Does it matter?’ I asked.
‘You wanted it all laid out.’
‘Fair enough. Well, according to what I can make out, this pair were the original Furry Freak Brothers. They’d take anything. Anything and everything. Dope. Uppers. Downers. Coke. Acid. Prescribed drugs and smack. Especially smack. That’s what a lot of reports reckoned finished him in the end. The dark drug. The killer.’
‘I’ve never tried horse,’ Dawn said. ‘When I was on the game, that’s what did for a lot of the girls. Before they moved on to crack. But heroin always scared me. Have you done it?’
/>
‘Once,’ I replied. ‘To keep a friend company.’
‘What was it like?’
‘Brilliant. That’s why I only took it once. I knew if I tried it again I’d be hooked.’
‘What was it like?’
‘You really want to know?’
‘Sure.’
I thought about it.
‘It was strange,’ I said. ‘I snorted it. I can’t stand needles. Never have been able to. First of all I puked. Then I was in heaven. No pain, see. We’re all in pain all the time. Even if we don’t know it. It’s part of the human condition. A warning sign. But take some H, and you’re in paradise. No pain. No worries. An excellent feeling.’
‘Sounds dangerous.’
‘That’s half the attraction. But I reckon it’s a coward’s drug. A little pain’s good for the soul. Makes you strong. Anyway, that’s not the point at issue. Harrison is. Go on with the story.’
‘Right,’ said Dawn. ‘Jay Harrison and his girlfriend are having fun in London town. Then one night they go to a party, then back home, where Harrison gets into the bath and croaks. Kim calls the doc who declares him dead… Why no post-mortem by the way?’
‘According to the stories I read, he had been under the doctor’s supervision for heart problems for months. On a daily basis. Hence the supply of prescribed drugs and the lack of a PM. His own doctor was in attendance and signed the death certificate. Everything legal and above board. In those days there were a lot of Harley Street quacks more than pleased to make up scripts in exchange for hard cash. Make up symptoms too. Or else get into the slimming-pill business. Very lucrative. Tenner a prescription. Thirty Black Bombers to get the weight down. Thirty Mandies to get you to sleep at night. So off the punter goes to the chemist, and in exchange for another fiver, he or she gets street-legal drugs worth sixty nicker. And that was when sixty nicker was a fair whack. Not a bad deal, Doll. And the doctor could do a hundred scripts a day and never bother to examine a single patient. Of course that was before the authorities tightened up on prescription abuse. Not that it still doesn’t go on. It does. But not like it used to.’