Bottled Spider

by John Gardner

  ‘And I agree with you,’ she said, sensing that Abelard was somehow criticizing her.

  Tommy Livermore came back to the car about half-an-hour later, gave some instructions to Molly Abelard and nodded Suzie out of the back. ‘Bring your case, I’m taking you home,’ he told her, and together they went into the building and up to her floor.

  In the flat he went from room to room, checking cupboards, looking behind curtains, his body tensed, electric, ready for violence. When he was satisfied he climbed out on to the fire escape and softly called down to Ron Worrall below. When he opened the window they could hear sounds of revelry coming from one of the flats below.

  Finally contented, Dandy Tom came in and closed the window.

  ‘There’s nobody skulking around out there, and I’ve got a couple of traffic cars coming up, so you’ll have two hairy great policemen at the front and two at the back. We’ll wait until they arrive. Don’t let anyone in unless you’re sure you know them.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Guv, I’m not letting anyone in, even if I do know them.’

  He nodded, and looked serious. ‘I don’t have to tell you again, but I want you to know how deeply sorry I am that this has happened to you. Try to sleep. Tomorrow we’ll take a look at the photographs, put faces to names, okay? Nine o’clock’ll be early enough. Billy Mulligan’s in charge of the office. Fourth Floor.’

  ‘Right, Guv, it’ll be fine, Guv. We’ll get him.’

  He stretched out his arms and put a hand on each shoulder. Once more, she thought he was going to kiss her. Wanted him to kiss her. Wanted him dreadfully.

  Where do the noses go?

  But he just squeezed her shoulders, said, ‘Sleep well. Lock the door after me,’ and went.

  She’d love to be given the opportunity to fall asleep to the sound of Dandy Tom giving her a lecture on the habits of the Greater London Cat Burglar.

  Time is the most precious commodity.

  *

  Golly had drunk too much ginger wine. He always did at Christmas and he now felt content, safe and warm sitting in his mum’s house with one of his mum’s Christmas dinners inside of him. Good cook, Mum.

  ‘Read out the motto in your cracker, Golly.’

  ‘I en’t no good at reading, Mum. You know that. I got me paper hat on.’

  ‘Come on, Golly. You try. Read it out.’

  ‘They’re not mottoes this year, Mum. They’re riddles.’

  ‘Go on, Golly, read it out.’

  He had the little slip of paper between his fingers and was able to focus on the words, trying to make sense of them — ‘Qu-est ... Quest-ion. Question. Where do they ma-ake. Make. Where do they make. The mo-st mo-tor ho-rns. Where do they make the most motor horns, Mum?’ Ah. He chuckled with glee. ‘Give up? Give up, Mum?’

  ‘Give up, right, Golly? I give up?’

  ‘Hong Kong. Hong Kong, Mum. I don’t understand it.’

  ‘Honk-Honk, Golly. Like the noise a horn makes.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Hah. Oh, yes. What’s yours, Mum?’ Golly had a selective sense of humour.

  ‘Where do they make telephones? That’s it, Golly. Where do they make telephones?’

  ‘Dunno. Give up.’

  ‘Tring.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tring, Golly. It’s the name of a town: Tring. Telephones, tring-tring.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Have some more nuts, Golly.’

  ‘Yes, I will. That’s what Mickey Mangle says — “Roll on Christmas and we’ll all have some nuts.” They have a laugh at that, but I don’t understand it.’ He took another swig of ginger wine, and his mum said hadn’t he had enough? And Golly cheeked her, said he’d never had enough.

  After a while she said: ‘It’s good having you here for Christmas, Golly.’

  ‘Yeah, it is, isn’t it? Got to go tomorrow, Mum.’

  ‘Oh, not so soon. What’ll I do with all this turkey?’

  ‘You’ve got our Kath coming round tomorrow night, Mum. Coming round with Keith Whatname, the boyfriend.’ He giggled at the thought of Kath having a bloke.

  ‘Well, it’s be nice to have my whole family around me. All of you.’

  ‘This Keith’s not family.’

  ‘No, but you are, Golly. You must know how much I care for you.’

  You are the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet.

  ‘Yes, Mum, but I got to go back up the smoke.’

  ‘Going by train are you, Golly?’ Resigned to it.

  ‘No, I got a lift. Got to meet someone. Going tomorrow night.’ I’ll walk, he thought. I’ll walk at night. Keep off the main roads. I’ll find my way. Walk all through the nights. I’ll be there by Saturday, easy. Saturday. When I get back to London I’ll search for her: for the lady policeman. If I can get her before Emily Baccus comes to me again, I’ll put it right.

  ‘I’ll make you some turkey sandwiches, then. Pack you a picnic. Turkey and tongue sandwiches I’ll make for you.’

  ‘Don’t forget the mustard then, Mum. I likes a bit of mustard on a turkey sandwich.’

  ‘Course you do, Golly.’

  ‘And, Mum, I never been here, right? I never been here this Christmas. You never seen me, you don’t know where I am. You don’t even know my name, Mum, right?’

  *

  Suzie was done in. She looked in the mirror and felt like ‘cheese at fourpence’ — as her mother would say. Who would have thought a bright, beautiful, happy day like this would end with such desolation?

  She didn’t have much to eat in the flat: the end of a loaf of bread she’d bought on Saturday; one egg; a couple of rashers of bacon in the cold cupboard, and a handful of potatoes. She didn’t feel hungry but knew she must have something to eat as she’d had nothing since a very quick and snatched breakfast. In the end she had a long bath and did herself egg and bacon and a handful of chips.

  Around ten her mother rang to say they had got home in good time and the children had settled in.

  ‘We’ll be eating turkey for weeks,’ Helen Mountford said. ‘Cold turkey.’ They had just been sitting down to their Christmas meal when the telephone called them to Overchurch, and Suzie had insisted they take Charlotte’s turkey and the ham back to Newbury with them. ‘Don’t care if I never see turkey again,’ she said.

  ‘Children are most adaptable,’ Helen said now. ‘Little Ben has settled down so well. He didn’t seem to have a care in the world when I was bathing him tonight. Laughed away and gave me some wonderful smiles. Lucy’s quiet, but she was as good as gold going to sleep. Did you say you bought her that bear?’

  ‘She still likes it then?’

  ‘Mr Gherkin’s wonderful. He’ll be a favourite for a long time.’

  They had both said all they had to say to one another, but Suzie stayed on the line for the sake of human contact.

  ‘Vernon with you?’ Suzie asked.

  ‘Tomorrow. He’s staying the night with a friend in Andover. The police won’t let him stay in Falcon Cottage. Why is that, Suzie?’

  ‘Still a crime scene, Mum. We have to be careful. Preserve everything just as it was.’ I don’t want to talk about this. ‘I never want to see the place again. Hope Vernon gets rid of it. Sells up and moves.’

  Finally they said goodnight and Suzie made herself some cocoa. The milk had been delivered on Monday so it was fresh. She was carrying it through when the telephone rang again.

  ‘Suzie, I’m so terribly sorry.’ It was Shirley Cox and they went through a couple of minutes of polite conversation before she came to the real point of her call.

  ‘Got something for you,’ she lowered her voice. ‘Pip Magnus.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I was in yesterday morning. Clearing my desk.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think someone higher up should know this. Superintendent Sanders, or Chief Superintendent Livermore.’

  ‘Well, you’ll see Mr Livermore yourself, tomorrow. You’re joining us aren’t you?’
<
br />   Tomorrow. Nine o’clock’ll be early enough. Can’t wait to see him. Dandy Tom.

  ‘I think it’s got to be someone with a bit of history, like yourself.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I was clearing up my desk, Christmas Eve. Pip Magnus was in and he took a call from Big Toe.’

  ‘And?’

  He said to the caller, ‘Right, Guv. Yes, we’ve got them here. Don’t worry. See you bright and early. They’ll think it’s Father Christmas come for his mince pies and glass of ginger wine.’

  ‘He said this in front of you?’

  ‘Didn’t know I was there. He was lording it, sitting in Big Toe’s office.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘I’ve only just heard. The Balvak brothers. They were arrested just after seven o’clock this morning. Possession of firearms with no certificates. Receiving stolen goods. Seems as though Big Toe came back early with a search warrant. Went down into the Cut with Pip Magnus, Dougie Catermole and an army of uniforms, and brought the Balvaks out, charged them first thing this morning, but of course nobody’s going to hear their side until tomorrow at the earliest. So —’

  ‘Thanks, Shirley. I’ll tell Mr Livermore in the morning. He already knows about the weapon —’

  ‘It’s weapons now, Skip. A damn great Colt and a German Luger.’

  Suzie thanked her for the call and said she’d see her tomorrow. In her bedroom she drank her cocoa, then cried herself to sleep and entered the dark world of dreams she would never remember. The Balvaks really had no relevance now.

  The telephone shrieked like a child in pain, then became the rattle of the bell. Suzie swam up from the black, dark depths of sleep, fumbled for the light switch, saw her alarm clock. It was half-past five and she could tell it was morning only by the feel of it. Then there was momentary relief. It isn’t real, she imagined. Charlotte’s not dead, they’re ringing to tell me it’s all a terrible mistake.

  ‘You awake now? Suzie?’ he said at the distant end. ‘It’s Tommy Livermore. I’m getting everyone in. We’ve got a break. At least I think it’s a break. Need you here. The car in front of your place is ready to bring you in. Right?’

  Twenty-Two

  It was twenty-past two in the morning when Golly sat bolt upright on his mum’s front-room couch and knew he had to leave. They’d only got to bed an hour ago but now he was wide-awake. He often had these sudden flashes of insight. They came, he was convinced, from a higher source. Higher even than Emily Baccus, who told him who to kill and where. And these sudden convictions were always right.

  He got out of the made-up bed on the couch and went through to waken up his mum before he started to dress. His mum complained no end, but he couldn’t help that. He had to go, and his mum had more sense than to argue with him. She knew Golly and his fancies of old, so she just got on with it and made him the turkey and tongue sandwiches, didn’t forget the mustard, boiled him an egg as well, and put in a little screw of greaseproof with salt in it. Golly couldn’t abide a hard-boiled egg without salt. In the end she did two eggs. She was lucky, out here in the country she could get eggs easily. In London they were as scarce as hen’s teeth. Or as hen’s eggs, come to that.

  In all Mrs Ailsa (Beaky) Goldfinch — the Mrs was purely a courtesy title — had completed the food preparation within the half-hour and Golly was on his way out into the cold night. She came to the door, leaning on her stick, to see him off.

  ‘And don’t you forget, Mum. I never been near here. You never seen me for months. Never heard from me. I never write, because I can’t. You don’t know where I’m living at now. I’m a bad son, right?’

  ‘I don’t even know your name, Golly, if I ever knew it.’

  ‘Well, don’t you suddenly remember it, Mum. Don’t you even dream of it. And make sure that our Kath keeps her lips buttoned up, and she’s not to go blabbing to this bloke, what’s his name?’

  ‘Keith, and how would I know your name, Golly? Nobody ever calls you by your proper name, Adam.’ She laughed loudly and Golly felt the anger fizz up in him like one of those damned silly indoor fireworks they had from the crackers last night. He saw red.

  ‘Come on, son. Come on Adam, give your old mum a kiss goodbye.’

  *

  The car did the short trip to Scotland Yard in what could have been record time as there was nothing on the road. Usually at this hour of the morning the rubbish collection lorries and the street cleaners were about. A smattering of people would be going to work. But on Boxing Day morning London was deserted.

  ‘The Chief Super said we had to bring you in at the speed of light,’ the uniformed driver said. ‘Told us we could use the gong if necessary.’

  ‘We were sorry to hear about your trouble, miss,’ the sergeant added a shade sanctimoniously.

  ‘No need to call me miss,’ she snapped. ‘I’m a sergeant, just like you.’

  ‘Not quite like me.’ He didn’t actually laugh but it was meant as a witty riposte — one-up against the WDS.

  A skeleton staff worked at the Yard over Christmas but they were expecting her, which probably meant there was very little going on throughout the remainder of the building, apart from Dandy Tom’s investigation.

  Tommy Livermore had set up the murder office in the conference room behind his own private office as head of the Reserve Squad, on the fourth floor. In fact Dandy Tom’s private army was the Reserve Squad, and for the first time Suzie realized what a large army it was. Later she would know all their functions: the smattering of uniformed men and women who contained people at crime scenes, or sometimes accompanied detectives as a kind of walking badge of office, the long arm of the law itself. Then there were the experts, the people trained by the book and by experience as detectives, each with his speciality from forensics to ballistics, from knowledge of confidence tricks to burglary methods. And of course there were the people who watched and waited, insinuated themselves into space close to a suspect and became part of the furniture, biding their time. Or watched over those at risk because of the sensitivity of some case or other, these people who lived like coiled springs, ready to unwind in a moment and leap into action, arrowing in at the speed of light, coming to the aid of those less fortunate.

  The conference room had two long tables running down either side, with a shorter one across the far end — like a high table at a formal dinner. Half-a-dozen people were manning the telephones at the right hand table, while Dandy Tom sat like the guest of honour at the high table itself. He had two telephones in front of him and a blotter in a green and gold leather holder, notebooks, pencils and a couple of thick reference books. Sergeant Billy Mulligan sat on his right side and Molly Abelard on his left. They had managed to get the heating turned up and Abelard, being a cold-blooded creature, had stripped off her jacket. In shirtsleeves she proved to have a better figure than Suzie imagined. The uniform didn’t do much for her. The removal of the jacket unveiled tight breasts like small Nazi helmets.

  Directly against the back wall a tall map of the United Kingdom rose as high as the picture rail. Mounted on a larger board, the map had pink ribbons pinned to a number of place names, and the ribbons stretched out to photographs and cards lined with typed information. She spotted Ealing Common and Camford in the London area, and Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the North East. This had to be a detailed walk around the extent of the piano wire murders Dandy Tom had revealed to her on the way into London.

  We’ve been playing this close to the chest.

  He hasn’t been to sleep, she thought. Doesn’t show, because he’s shaved and changed his shirt and suit, but he’s been up all night and he’s got a fire going in his belly. As she entered the room, Abelard looked up, saw Suzie and spoke to the Chief. In turn he caught her eye, smiled and told Abelard to take half-an-hour off or something similar because she got up and left the table.

  On her way out, as she reached Suzie, Abelard said, ‘You’re to sit on the left hand of God, Sergeant Mountford. And the best of luck to
you. He’s in a filthy temper.’ When she reached the chair vacated by Abelard, Dandy Tom was talking on the telephone, leaning back in his chair with his gold fountain pen hovering close to his mouth. He’d start tapping at his teeth any minute, she thought. Mulligan winked at her in a big-brotherly fashion and the Chief Super gave her a smile and raised a hand in greeting. Her hand came up automatically to tidy an imagined unruly strand of hair — her nervous habit, she thought.

  ‘Yes,’ Tommy Livermore said into the telephone. ‘Yes, I understand all that but we do need people over there if you wouldn’t mind. This is a man suspected of several appalling murders ... Yes ... At least eleven, possibly more. No, probably more ... Yes, sir, thank you very much.’ He put down the handset and turned to Sergeant Mulligan. ‘Billy, chief constables don’t like being woken in the early hours of Boxing Day, even when it’s as urgent as a graveyard. Hello, Suzie with a zed.’

  She wasn’t imagining it, there was that same electric spark between them even though he was talking to someone else. She had felt it the first time they had met in the foyer of that terrible block of service flats in Marylebone, and on every subsequent occasion she had been with him, or even spoken with him on the telephone. A girl can’t be that wrong, surely? A girl knows, doesn’t she? I can’t have got the signals mixed that badly.

  ‘They after doing it now, Guv?’ Mulligan had a way of speaking out of the corner of his mouth, like an old lag, trained to converse in secret during the exercise periods observed by hawk-eyed screws who’d have you on report if you coughed.

  ‘He says there’ve been people out watching the place front and back for the past hour. And it appears they’ve taken my advice. They’re not going in until daybreak. Though I doubt if they’re going to have the bodies there much before daybreak anyway. Everyone needs time to recover from a day off.’

  ‘And Abelard’s gone to Rupert Street?’

  Dandy Tom gave him a nod. ‘And Abelard’s gone to Rupert Street, Billy.’