by Mark Timlin
He looked at me. ‘I saw something of her, of course. She wanted news of Jay. It was impossible for them to meet, or even speak on the telephone. We all agreed on that.’
‘Did she get the insurance?’
‘Yes.’
‘When?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘Come now, Jules. You must. There was the doctor to be paid, and the undertaker. And a hundred and fifty thousand dollars was a hell of a lot of money in those days. Did the cash come through quickly, or was it delayed for legal reasons? I mean, let’s face it. The whole deal was iffy to say the least.’
‘I don’t think there was much delay.’
‘Give me a clue. A month? Three? Six? Longer?’
‘A month or two.’
‘And she collected all that money, and only had to pay out fifteen grand sterling in bribes?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Then tell me, brother, how come just three months after Jay Harrison allegedly died, she had to leave the flat in Hyde Park Mansions because she couldn’t afford to pay the rent?’
24
The words dropped into the conversation like stones into a stagnant pool and sent out ripples that would have repercussions I couldn’t possibly anticipate right then. If I’d’ve known what was to come I wonder if I would still have said them, or kept my big mouth shut. You work it out for yourself. I’m sick of trying.
Jay Harrison’s great head turned towards Julius, then back to me, and I saw his hand grip Dawn’s harder until her skin went white. ‘That’s impossible,’ he said.
‘No,’ I replied. ‘It’s the truth. We’ve been to see the old lady who took over the tenancy of the apartment three months after you were supposed to have died. That’s how we found out where you were. Kim left some photographs of you, her, Bubbah Jules here, and Billy Sayer, all getting cosy at some party or other, at the flat. The old lady kept them all these years in case she came back. She didn’t know Kim was dead. I found some people who were around at the time and they identified Julius and Sayer. By coincidence, one of them had seen your boy here on the Tabernacle’s TV show. Otherwise I never would have found you. Man, it’s a fact. Ask my wife.’
Dawn nodded, withdrew her hands from Jay Harrison’s grip and began to massage some life back into them.
Harrison turned and looked at Brother Julius again. ‘That can’t be right,’ he said. ‘You always told me that she was OK for money.’
Julius Rose looked uncomfortable, licked his lips and said, ‘I didn’t know.’
‘Bullshit,’ I interjected. ‘You had to know. You were too closely involved.’
And then I got the first real inkling of what had happened all those years ago, and vocalized it. ‘How about this then, Jules,’ I said. ‘You’ve got Jay stashed away down in the country. You’ve got Kim Major up here in London, scared as shit that she’s going to get busted for giving Billy Sayer an overdose. You’ve got a coffin buried in Highgate Cemetery with Sayer’s body in situ, and good old Kim gets a cheque for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars free and clear. I bet that was more than you’d make in ten years peddling dope round Notting Hill Gate. She’s a spaced-out smackhead and you’re her supplier. One night, as if in a dream, God comes to you and says, “Julie baby, I want you to start a church for me. But we need some dough to get it started.” Maybe things were getting too hot for you on the drug scene. Maybe you really did see yourself as the second coming. Who knows? But I reckon that you put some pressure on Kim. What did you tell her? “I’ll take care of the cash, babe. Pay the bribes to the good doctor and the undertaker that’ll keep you out of Holloway jail, and maybe invest a little in a tabernacle I fancy opening. God said it’ll be all right.” Was that it? Did you rip her off? She couldn’t speak to Jay because you had him safely under lock and key in some location out of town. And I bet you had someone keep him high as a kite, didn’t you, son?’
By the look on Julius Rose’s face I knew I was close.
‘That was it, wasn’t it? I bet it was a nice mixture of heroin and psychedelics. With maybe a few downers in there somewhere just to sweeten the mixture. A little cocktail to keep Jay docile, so’s you could get on with the business in hand. On something like that he wouldn’t know if it was Wednesday or Christmas, would he?’
I looked at the wreck that Harrison had become and I felt desperately sorry for the man.
‘How long did that go on for? A long time I bet,’ I said. ‘Years? How many years, Jules? Up until quite recently I imagine. So meanwhile you bled the dough out of the poor bitch, and she had to move out of her flat. Where did she move to? Somewhere you could keep an eye on her and feed her the drugs she needed? Was that the deal? You’re a regular little chemist, aren’t you? And all along you’re telling Jay that everything was hunky-dory. That she was doing fine.’
Brother Julius was shaking his head in reply, but he was starting to sweat. I was on another roll by then, and I pushed it as far as it would go.
‘And maybe, just maybe,’ I went on, ‘a few months later you give her an overdose of her own. Was that it? Did you consider her a danger to your grandiose plans? Was she opening her mouth too wide about what had happened? Was the guilt getting to her? Was it simpler to kill her, than to let her blow the whistle on herself, and you, and Jay? Did you do to her what she’d done to your mate Billy?’
Julius was shaking his head faster, and drops of perspiration were flying off like rain. ‘For pity’s sake,’ he said.
But I didn’t feel any pity for him. ‘Nobody would suspect, would they, Jules?’ I pressed. ‘She was just an accident waiting to happen. Everyone knew that. A terminal loser who’d just buried her old man, and was pushing the envelope of her existence every miserable day that she lived. Just another poor fucking messed-up drugs casualty at the arse end of the alternative society.’
I paused, then, with as much disgust as I could muster in my voice, I said, ‘Was it your idea? Or did God tell you to do that too? Send her to heaven a few years before her time so that she couldn’t blurt out what had happened one dark and moonless night to someone who might actually pay attention to what the poor, pathetic junkie had to say? Did you kill her, Jules? Did you?’
I don’t know if all that I’d surmised was true, or even only part of it. But as I finished speaking, I saw that the blood had drained out of Julius Rose’s face, leaving it grey and damp, and I knew that I wasn’t far off the mark. He licked his lips again and said, ‘That’s ridiculous.’ But his words carried no conviction.
‘Is it?’ I asked. ‘I don’t know so much.’
‘No.’
‘And when you had to give the sad news to Jay after she died, I bet you were real solicitous. I bet you told him that God’s will had been done, didn’t you?’
‘Is it true, Julius?’ said Jay Harrison. ‘Tell me the truth.’
‘And shame the devil,’ I said. ‘Isn’t that how it goes?’
Julius leapt to his feet and, ignoring the gun I was still holding, lunged at me. I whacked him on the jaw with the barrel and he fell back on to the bed, clutching at his head.
‘Stupid,’ I said. ‘I keep telling you.’
The room was silent, except for Julius Rose’s whimpering as he cradled his damaged face in his hands.
‘What are we going to do now?’ asked Dawn after what seemed like an eternity.
‘Get Jay out of here. I’ll give Kennedy-Sloane a call. Tell him what’s happened. He can get on to Lifetime in LA and tell them. Then I think an interview with a copper friend of mine is in order. Jay here should make a statement to the authorities as soon as possible. What do you reckon, Jay?’
‘Whatever you think I should do.’
‘That’s it then. And we’ll take Brother Julius with us. I reckon the Old Bill would love a little chat with him too. Whaddya say, Jules?’
Brother J
ulius said not a word in reply. And as far as I was concerned, his silence was as much a confession as if he’d admitted everything.
25
‘Come on then, people,’ I said. ‘We’ve got to get out of here without running into any of the Brother’s strong-arm boys.’
I went to open the door and took my eyes off Jay Harrison and Brother Julius for just a split second.
Bad mistake. I was caught wrong-footed as Harrison turned, picked up Brother Julius in his big arms and slammed his head against the wall so hard that his cranium put a dent in the plaster.
‘Jay,’ I shouted, and grabbed at his shoulder. It was like a gnat trying to get a full nelson on an elephant. He was nothing like the skinny young man in the poster I used to have. Under the fat that covered his body was hard muscle, and plenty of it.
He bashed Julius Rose against the wall again, and the sound of his head connecting with the plaster for the second time was like that of a melon being dropped from hand height on to a stone floor. I still had the gun in my hand, but I was hardly going to use it. Not even to whack Jay Harrison on his head. I wanted him conscious. There was no way that Dawn and I could drag his bulk through the corridors of the church and out to the car.
At that moment she decided to get into the act. ‘Stop it,’ she cried, and slid between Harrison and Julius. ‘Stop it now.’
Surprisingly, the big man did as he was told and dropped Julius to lie awkwardly on the narrow bed. Dawn put her arms round Harrison and held him tightly. He embraced her back.
‘Nice work,’ I said as I examined Brother Julius’s body. The side of his head that had hit the wall was unnaturally flat and when I touched it it felt like papier-mâché, and I could feel the blood seeping through his hair. I rubbed my fingers on my jeans and felt for a pulse at his wrist. There was none.
‘You’ve killed him,’ I said to Jay Harrison.
Harrison looked at me over Dawn’s shoulder. ‘He deserved it,’ he said back, which might have been true, but didn’t help a lot. ‘I loved Kim,’ he went on. ‘She wasn’t much, but she was mine. He lied to me all these years about what happened to her.’ He looked down at Julius Rose’s still form. ‘All this time he used me. I was worth more to him dead than alive. And he pretended to be a man of God. How could he have done that?’
‘Yes, Jay,’ I said. ‘But can we save the philosophical questions ’til later? Right now I think we’d better get out of here before someone comes looking for the preacher man. This is a right fucking mess.’
I checked the corridor outside. It was empty, and deathly quiet. I didn’t know where everyone was. I was just glad they weren’t in this part of the building. I returned the Glock to the waistband of my jeans under my jacket at the back. I figured that the sight of a loaded gun might alert even members of Julius’s tabernacle that something was up.
We walked through the halls and down the stairs and didn’t see a soul until we came close to Brother Julius’s office where four geezers were standing together where the corridor dog-legged towards the foyer and the main entrance. Three of them were long-haired and shaggy, dressed for the best part in faded denim, the other was tall, dark-haired, about thirty-five, wearing a tailored leather jacket and black canvas jeans, giving the rest what looked like a serious pep talk.
They didn’t look much like religious acolytes to me. More like a rock band’s road crew, and the one who was giving them the bunny looked familiar, although for a moment I couldn’t think from where.
And then I remembered. He was the ice cream in the spangled jacket who’d clocked me a few days earlier at The Virgin Mary’s charity concert for distressed swordfish. Now, what the fuck was he doing here?
Then I found out. He saw me coming, said something to the other three, and before I could as much as reach for the gun under my jacket I was looking down the barrels of four extremely large and lethal-looking automatic pistols.
Shit, I thought. What now?
26
There was a door half open, opposite where we were all standing, and the dark-haired geezer gestured to it with the barrel of his automatic. Dawn, Jay Harrison and I went in. The four guys with guns followed. Inside was a general office with several desks, chairs and a row of dark green filing cabinets down one side. It could have been the office of any small-time commercial company but for the religious prints, framed on the walls. The dark-haired geezer shut the door behind himself. There was a silver key poking out of the lock. He didn’t turn it.
Mistake.
He hitched one buttock up on the corner of the nearest desk and said, ‘You’re Nick Sharman.’ He had an American accent, and his voice was slightly familiar.
I nodded.
‘Mrs Sharman, I presume.’ To Dawn.
Her turn to nod.
Then he looked at Jay Harrison. ‘And who have we here?’ he said.
Harrison said not a word in reply.
‘So you found him?’ said the Yank.
‘Who?’ I asked.
‘Don’t be clever. I’m Lamar Quinn.’
That threw me a bit. ‘I thought you were in Los Angeles,’ I said. ‘Talking to Kennedy-Sloane on a daily basis.’
‘I use a portable,’ said Quinn. ‘I can be anywhere in the world.’
‘Satellites,’ I said. ‘What will they come up with next?’
Quinn ignored me. ‘Jay Harrison,’ he said instead, looking at Harrison hard. ‘My, but you’ve changed some. But you’re still in there, aren’t you? Well done, Nick. I may call you Nick, mayn’t I?’
‘Call me what you like,’ I said. But don’t call me late for breakfast, I thought. The stupid things you think when you’re being covered by four high-powered automatic weapons.
‘So that’s why you were so keen to get a progress report on what we’d found,’ I said. ‘You were just round the corner, waiting. You cunning old fox, you. I knew I shouldn’t have told Kennedy-Sloane what I knew until I was sure.’
‘But you were right.’
‘Didn’t do me much good though, did it?’
‘The guys and I were impatient,’ said Quinn, with a shit-eating smirk. ‘Sorry.’ He didn’t look it.
I looked at the three blokes with him. Rednecks one and all. I didn’t recognize any of them. The biggest had a tattoo of a tarantula on his massive right forearm. Scary. I wondered if he had a tattoo of a little old lady on the other. The little old lady who swallowed a spider, that wiggled and wriggled and tickled inside her. Just one more idle thought while I wondered what the hell to do next.
‘Search them,’ Quinn said to Tarantula. He stuffed his automatic into the waistband of his Levi’s, under his heavy stomach, and carefully walked round the back of Dawn and Jay Harrison and me, being careful not to get into the other three’s line of fire. He started by searching me, and turned up the Glock within ten seconds, which he tossed to Quinn who caught it easily in his left hand and stuck it into his waistband. Shame. I always liked that gun. Tarantula frisked me further, and found nothing more, then moved over to Dawn whom he gave a particularly close search, concentrating on her breasts and finishing by sticking his right hand under her crotch for a lot longer than was necessary, until I saw her grit her teeth hard from the pain, but she didn’t make a sound.
‘Leave her,’ ordered Quinn. ‘We’re not here for that.’
I looked at Tarantula who looked back at me with a sneer. One day, I thought.
Tarantula finished by giving Jay Harrison the once over. ‘They’re clean, boss,’ he said when he had finished. He was American too, but I didn’t need to hear his voice to know that.
‘Well,’ said Quinn, when the man with the spider tattoo had rejoined him. ‘This is perfect.’
‘What now?’ I asked.
‘Now, I’m afraid, Jay Harrison has to become what the rest of the world has thought he was for all these years.’
&n
bsp; ‘Dead, you mean,’ I said.
‘Precisely.’
‘And why’s that?’
‘Come on, Nick,’ said Lamar Quinn. ‘You can do better. Why do you think?’
‘Money, I suppose,’ I said. ‘The well-known root of all evil.’
Quinn nodded.
‘Which is why you’re here?’
Another nod.
‘You’ve been doing a little injudicious dipping into Jay’s royalties. Is that it?’
‘Very good,’ said Quinn. ‘Very good indeed.’
‘And not hard to work out. But you’ll never get away with it.’
‘That sounds like a line from Hawaii Five-O.’
Which it probably was, and none the worse for that. Some of my best lines come from trash TV of the seventies. I’ve made a study of it.
‘You’ll have to kill all three of us,’ I said.
Quinn shrugged.
‘And when certain people start asking awkward questions, won’t it be strange when they find out that you were in the country when it all happened?’
‘We’re not,’ said Quinn. ‘Not officially. We came in with The Virgin Mary party. She’s on Lifetime Records too. It wasn’t difficult to arrange for the four of us to hitch a ride. Two 747 loads of band, crew, hangers on, costumes and equipment. Lots of room to get lost in. The planes taxied straight up to the limos and buses that brought us to London. No passport checks. No customs. With a star of her magnitude it’s easier for the authorities to let us straight in. No hassle. If we bring a few illegal substances with us, so what…’
‘Or a few illegal people,’ I finished for him.
‘Precisely,’ he said. ‘Your government doesn’t want to cause an international incident by letting any over-zealous official in a uniform upset her creative flow. The Virgin’s bigger than God at the moment.’
‘Be careful what you say here,’ I said. ‘You never know who might be listening. This is where God hangs out, or hadn’t you heard?’