Hold Back the Night

by Hold Back the Night (retail) (epub)

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I reached for the phone but it rang. It always throws you when that happens but this time I was even more confused. The person who was calling me said her name was Dana, and said it like I’d know who she was. It was a foreign accent.

  ‘At King’s Cross,’ she said. ‘You give me your card. That girl who jumped in front of the train. I saw her with woman, I told you.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  ‘Well, she is here. Now.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The woman. I am using public phone and I see her.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Right outside station.’

  ‘Wait there, please.’

  ‘I will if I can. My man, he doesn’t like me not to work—’

  ‘Please,’ I said. ‘Tell him I’ll pay you. I’ll be fifteen minutes. Please.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can,’ she said. ‘Any man who approaches me, I’ll tell them I’ll bite his fucking cock off.’

  I put the phone down and grabbed my camera. In ten minutes I had cycled down there and found the girl where she said she’d be. When I jogged up to her she shrugged.

  ‘Too late.’

  ‘Fuck,’ I said. ‘Fuck. Why is this always happening to me?’

  The girl’s pimp hovered fifteen feet away, checking us out. The girl glanced at him and pushed a breath through her teeth.

  ‘Can we go somewhere?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘You have money?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘For him. For Bela Lugosi. I have to give him something.’

  ‘I understand, it’s fine.’

  ‘Follow me then,’ the girl said.

  I trailed after Dana as she led me towards the lights at the bottom of the Pancras Road where we stopped. I figured she was taking me to the underground car park across the street where I knew that a lot of business went on. I hoped she’d be able to give me a much better description of the woman she’d seen. But just as we were about to step through the light traffic she stopped.

  ‘There!’

  She was pointing at a yellow Ford Fiesta. I looked at the car and stepped back onto the pavement.

  ‘There!’ Dana said again. ‘It’s her!’

  The car slid past us, before coming to a halt, and then moving on again. I got a good view through the windscreen. A young girl I had never seen before was sitting in the passenger seat. She looked about as old as Natalie was. Then I saw the face of the woman driving the car. She was in her late thirties, quite short, with a round face. I stared at her, only just managing to pull my eyes away before she noticed me. Then I turned my back on her, pretending to sneeze, not wanting her to see me. I did it because I didn’t want her to recognize me, the way I’d just recognized her.

  The Fiesta pulled off up the Pancras Road and I stood, watching it go. Dana had seen my reaction and was saying something to me but I couldn’t hear her. Once again my head was full of people, all demanding my attention. I made them quieten down, stop running around, and line up. One by one. Then they had lined up. I thanked Dana quickly, thrust some notes in her hand and ran off to my bike.

  Forty minutes later I was standing in the living room of the Chortney house, talking to Iris, who had once again backed into her chair and was curled up on herself like an old toenail. Her daughter-in-law was not home, she said, which I already knew; there was no yellow Ford Fiesta parked on any of the streets nearby. It was her who’d been driving it. Once again I apologized for my late appearance, but added that I knew she wouldn’t have gone to bed yet. Mrs Chortney assured me that she didn’t mind in the least. Then I asked her the question that I’d come to ask her.

  ‘The woman who owned the house opposite,’ I said, ‘where the young girl died?’

  ‘Yes.’ Mrs Chortney nodded her head.

  ‘She didn’t make a will, and her house went to her third husband, who moved to New Zealand.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But what I want to know is the name of her son. You said that you didn’t like him. The son from her first marriage?’

  Mrs Chortney frowned. ‘He’d be fifty now.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But do you remember his name?’

  ‘Of course, it was George. I never—’

  ‘George what, Mrs Chortney?’

  ‘George Curtis,’ the old lady said. ‘His name was George Curtis.’

  ‘And your daughter-in-law, she knew him?’

  ‘Yes. And my son. They helped him out at his shop. Kebabs, he sold, don’t know what he does now. I could never stand them.’

  ‘No,’ I said, and glanced up at the mantelpiece where there was a picture of her son, sitting on a palm-fringed beach, the man who had served me the last time I’d been in Curtis’s shop.

  ‘Nasty piece of work that George, ever since he was a nipper. I haven’t seen him for years but I don’t suppose he’s changed much.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘you’re almost definitely right.’

  * * *

  Olly was at his usual place. He followed me to the cash machine where I gave him a twenty. I’d parked on a side street, but while Olly walked off to the kebab shop I pulled out onto the High Street and sat in the Mazda, keeping my eye on the place. After thirty-five minutes Olly came out and sauntered across the road towards me, and I leant over to unlock the passenger door. He got in.

  ‘Well?’ I said.

  ‘Not bad. The hamburger that is. Better than the kebabs.’

  ‘I think you know what I mean.’

  ‘Oh, sorry. Yeah. Only one geezer came in and asked for George.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘I think I saw him. Guy in his thirties, looked like a third-division footballer. He was in and out fast, didn’t buy anything.’

  ‘That’s him.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘He asked if George were about and the bloke behind the counter said no, then asked his name. It sounded a bit weird, that way round.’

  I nodded. ‘Then what?’

  ‘He said his name was Jeffrey. Not Jeff, Jeffrey. Then he shook the man’s hand. I reckon he palmed him something. You reckon they’re pushing from there?’

  ‘And the rest. I don’t know.’

  ‘You want me to go back in?’

  ‘It’s OK. I think I know what to do. Thanks though.’ I pulled out another twenty for Olly, which he hadn’t expected to get, and which I hadn’t actually expected to give him. He took it with a smile, punched me on the arm and disappeared.

  I sat for a while wondering what to do. It was about one a.m., the streets packed with revellers, and I suddenly had a flash of my night in York’s; all those people churning around together in the semi-dark. I found that I couldn’t get anywhere near to understanding it, and the realization made me feel old. I looked at the people walking by, the girls mostly laughing together but most of the men depressed-looking and defeated, in their weekend duds, as if they’d tried to find something and failed. As if there was some sort of secret out there in the pubs and bars that they hadn’t been let in on.

  I wanted to go into the kebab shop and tell the guy my name was Jeffrey, and see what he’d hand me, but I knew he’d be bound to recognize me. Instead, I waited until two men pulled up in an Audi and one of them got out. He was only a couple of minutes in the shop and when he emerged he got back into the driver’s seat and handed his friend what looked to me like a small piece of paper. Then, through the window I saw the passenger hand the driver a book. When he turned immediately to the back I knew it was an A to Z.

  The Audi pulled out and I followed. In less than ten minutes we’d driven down past King’s Cross and up the Pentonville Road towards the Angel. The car took a right at the lights onto Amwell Street, and cruised along until it took another right onto Margery Street, the oneway cut-through used mainly by cab drivers. The car slowed, prowling for a place to park. When it had found one I cruised past, turning my head away. I continued down towards the light
s at the bottom of the street, keeping an eye on the two guys in my mirror. They were getting out of their car. I’d hoped the lights would be red so I could see where the men went, but they were green, and I couldn’t risk being spotted. I turned right, almost straight back on myself onto Lloyd Baker street, and did a circuit back up and round onto Margery Street again, where I parked.

  I looked around, but the men were nowhere. I got out of the car and walked up the street, but couldn’t see any sign of them. Their car was parked at the top end of Margery Street, near the old Merlin’s Cave pub, which was now derelict. I walked past it, and up onto Amwell Street, and then back down, wondering what had happened to them.

  They could have gone into any of the nearby buildings, and I was trying to work out a way of finding out which one it was when I realized that once again I didn’t need to worry. I stepped into a doorway across the street from the Audi and waited. I figured there were bound to be more people coming this way and I didn’t have to wait long before finding I was right. This time it was a black Jeep Renegade, which pulled onto the street and slowed. It parked close to the Audi and three men got out, all in their forties, all looking like they had a few quid. Without looking around or checking any instructions they walked back up the street towards the Merlin’s Cave, They walked down the side of the building, past the boarded up windows, until they were out of sight.

  I waited five minutes. The street stayed quiet. I stepped down from the doorway and crossed the road towards the derelict pub. I walked to the right of it, where I’d seen the three men turn. I was faced with a wooden door, leading towards what I assumed must have been the backyard of the pub, or the beer garden if it had had one. There was no latch so I pushed the door open, walked through it, and found myself in a narrow passageway lit only by some security lights from the builder’s yard next door. I walked to the end. The passageway had been blocked off by some pretty shoddy but effective brickwork and I turned round. There was nothing on my left. All that I could see on my right was a steel security door, the type they put on empty council houses to stop squatters moving in. I stood in front of it listening, but I couldn’t hear anything. The door had no handle, and there was nothing to show that it had been opened in years.

  But it must have been. The door itself was largely in shadow, but when I looked closely I saw that someone had cut a tiny peephole into it, at eye level. I looked round, then knocked, lightly. Then I knocked again. After a few seconds a section in the top of the door, that I hadn’t even noticed, opened a touch.

  ‘Who sent you?’

  ‘George,’ I said. ‘Big George.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Jeffrey,’ I said, hoping that Olly had heard right.

  ‘Wait.’

  The shutter closed. I waited for a minute, and heard some shuffling behind the door. Then it opened again.

  ‘Quickly.’

  The door opened a foot and I slid through it.

  I was at the top of a flight of stairs, at the bottom of which I could hear a faint hubbub, which I could tell was quite a loud noise reaching me through at least one other door. To my left was a heavyset black man, wearing a tee shirt three sizes too small. His face was calm and assured – he didn’t need to assume a menacing expression. In a ring next to Lennox Lewis he may have looked a touch slender, and not in such brilliant shape. Nowhere else. He was standing in front of another doorway, this one covered by a curtain, his legs spread, his hands folded across his chest.

  ‘Fifty.’

  I reached for my wallet and handed him three notes, all twenties, which he passed back through the curtain without looking round. A hand must have taken them because when he pulled his back out it was empty.

  ‘Sorry, no change.’

  I shrugged my shoulders and smiled. A tap came on the steel door. The man ignored it, and then nodded me down the unlit stairs, towards the sound, which was increasingly of whooping, and cheering. Hey, maybe I was in for a good night. All on expenses. I turned away from the guy and took a step forward.

  I walked down the stairs carefully, noting that if I were a health and safety officer I would have demanded a handrail, or at least more adequate lighting. I turned a corner and came to the bottom, where I was faced with another door, guarded by another guy of similar proportions to the first. He didn’t look at me or ask me any questions. Instead, he reached out to the handle of the door, pulled it open for me, and the hubbub I’d heard before turned into real noise. I made to step forward. I was going to walk through the door but there was a man blocking my path.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Come for another inspection?’

  What light there was inside the door had leaked into the stairwell. I saw the shadow of the arm, going up behind me, and I just managed to move to the left before it came down. Whatever the guy was using still made contact with the side of my head though, raking down onto the back of my neck, making me lurch forward into Chortney, who had to take a step backwards. I caught a glimpse, beyond him, and beyond a crowd of people to a stage, lit by a spotlight, a foot off the ground. It can’t have been her, but in that second I could have sworn it was Natalie who was standing on it, her naked arms high above her head. Then the girl on the stage was swamped by people and I couldn’t see her. I made to push myself backwards, into the guy who had clubbed me, but I stopped. My eyes found the gun in Chortney’s hand.

  ‘This way please,’ he said, tucking the gun into his jacket pocket. ‘There’s someone who’s dying to meet you.’

  Part Four

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  They sat me in a booth at the back, Juliet Chortney next to me, her husband opposite, with his back to the empty stage and his hand underneath a jacket on the table, holding the gun. He told me he wouldn’t hesitate to use it, and I had no reason to disbelieve him. The gun had a silencer on it, and getting a body out of there would be easy. They’d just say I was drunk, and no one there would argue even if I was a drunk who was bleeding. Chortney told me to sit back, with my hands on the table, as we waited for George.

  ‘Why not enjoy the show?’ his wife said.

  A tape played an old Dean Martin album and the place, which was already very busy, filled up. If everyone had paid fifty quid, someone was making a lot of money, and I didn’t imagine the bar would be cheap. I looked round for any faces I might know, but apart from the stage the place was very dark, and dense with smoke. I thought I maybe saw a couple of people, but certainly no one who would be likely to help me out. I turned my attention to the stage, which was now empty, except for a trapeze-like structure hanging from the ceiling.

  So. Curtis had keys to the house Lucy had died in, and when his mother died he used the place, knowing that it would be a long time or never before his mother’s last husband came back from Oz to claim it. He put Lee Finch in there, and Lucy too, for whatever purpose. I wondered how many other girls had stayed there, and what had happened to them. I didn’t really want to know the answer to that, but I had the feeling that pretty soon I would do. I kept my eyes on the stage, and it stayed empty for another twenty minutes, during which the bar grew busier and all of the seats were taken.

  But then there was a movement to stage left, as Luke had taught me to call it, and the crowd settled down. After a second or two the music went dead.

  I sat with my hands in front of me, keeping my eye on Chortney and the coat in front of him. Over his shoulder, two men dragged a girl into the centre of the stage and began tying her wrists to the trapeze, about three feet above her head. I say dragged, she was very slight and they didn’t have to put much effort into it. One was the man from the lower door, and the other was smaller, wearing a Kangol fisherman’s hat, with his back to me. The girl looked startled rather than afraid, her eyes wide as new coins, shining in the spot. I was pretty sure she was the girl I’d seen earlier, in the car with Juliet Chortney. She looked out of it, hardly even noticing what was happening to her, but still making a feeble effort to fight the men off
at the same time. It almost looked as if she was badly pretending to resist, but there was something about her that told me she wasn’t.

  Right in front of me Chortney smiled, but didn’t look round. On the stage the two men had finished and the girl was secured to the trapeze, her thin arms high in the air. She stood, panting slightly, as the man in the fisherman’s hat turned and moved towards the front of the stage. Not a man really, just a lad. As he stepped down into the crowd at the apron I saw it was the boy. Lee Finch. He disappeared into the crowd, and I gave myself a gold star for finding him.

  Throughout the auction that was held for her, the girl on the stage remained quiet, finding her position uncomfortable, shifting from one leg to another. She was in her underwear. She didn’t seem to be listening to what was going on. Then, when the auction was over, two masks were thrown into the crowd and when they had found their targets, two men got up on stage wearing them. One of them, a youngish-looking guy in a grey suit, held his arms aloft and the crowd cheered. The other seemed more eager to get on with it. He strode over to the girl and yanked her bra down. That got a cheer too. The guy from the door, who had remained on stage, warned him to be careful, and then stepped back. It wasn’t until the second guy had turned his back on the audience and approached the girl, that she started screaming.

  ‘What have we here then?’

  It would have had to be a loud voice to cut through the noise, and it certainly was. It was pure, cartoon bulldog. George Curtis sat down opposite me, next to Chortney.

  ‘If it’s not Mr Rucker. The private eye stroke health and safety man.’ Curtis laughed, and raised a glass at me. ‘I take it our sanitary conditions meet with your approval this time. Or are you going to report us?’

  I looked at Curtis but didn’t say anything. Curtis put his glass down, leant across the table and hit me, a hard punch full in the face. Juliet Chortney immediately shuffled herself up against me.

  ‘Stop it,’ she said, in a syrupy voice. ‘Leave his nice face alone. At least let him enjoy the show. You are enjoying it?’