Romeo's Tune (1990)

by Timlin, Mark

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Fox, ‘but I’ll have a word with him in the morning.’

  ‘That makes me feel heaps better,’ I said drily.

  Fox took out his cigarettes.

  ‘I suppose you want one of these?’

  ‘Does a bear shit in the woods?’

  He tossed me a filter-tipped and I dropped it straight onto the floor. ‘Clumsy,’ he said.

  ‘I suppose you wouldn’t be if you’d just seen your wife cooked to a crisp?’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  I scrabbled for the cigarettes on the dirty lino.

  ‘Here, have this one,’ he said.

  He handed me a lit cigarette and I took a grateful drag though my hand was shaking so much I could hardly hold it.

  ‘So tell me,’ he said. ‘I want to know everything that happened here today.’

  For the first time I tried to piece it all together. But I didn’t tell him everything. Some of it I kept like a dirty secret festering in my head.

  29

  What would he know anyway? He wasn’t exactly my confidant, even though we had some information in common. He knew about Bright, but not even everything about that. He didn’t know about Cat and as I told him he grimaced. I told him about Jo and how we’d fallen in love, but I didn’t tell him her real name. I didn’t tell him about McBain or Mogul either, but it all fell into place in my head as I told him what I wanted him to know.

  ‘So who did it?’ asked Fox when I’d finished.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I lied. ‘You tell me, you’re the copper.’

  ‘Do you know your problem, Sharman?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘You tell me.’

  ‘It’s simple. Nobody likes you.’

  ‘Thanks Danny,’ I said. ‘So what are you going to do about it?’

  ‘Find out who killed her, or rather who wanted you dead.’

  ‘Go on, then,’ I said.

  ‘First tell me what all that other business was about.’

  ‘What other business?’ I asked innocently.

  ‘That business with Stott.’

  ‘He thought I was putting the black on you, Danny.’

  ‘What for?’ he asked.

  ‘To get away with murder.’

  ‘Yes I guessed that, but what did he think you had on me?’

  ‘That’s what he was trying to find out with the toe of his boot.’

  ‘And what did you tell him?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ he asked.

  ‘You know me better than that, Danny.’

  ‘That’s good, Sharman. I like that.’

  ‘Are you patronizing me?’ I asked.

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘Well, don’t.’

  He stood and looked at me for a long time and lit another cigarette. That time he didn’t offer me one so I knew I was in his bad books. He drew in the smoke and exhaled.

  ‘I suppose you’re thinking about going after this lot alone?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Whoever did this. And now you’re patronizing me.’

  ‘I don’t know who did it, Danny, and that’s a fact.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I’m not a suspect am I?’ I asked.

  ‘Not at the moment.’

  ‘So.’

  ‘So what?’ he asked.

  ‘So go and find who the fuck blew her away.’

  ‘All right Sharman, I will, but don’t try and do my job for me.’

  ‘OK Danny, I won’t.’

  ‘Keep in touch and. . .’

  ‘... don’t leave town.’ I finished his sentence for him. He smiled a bleak smile. ‘Something like that,’ he said, and left in a cloud of expensive aftershave.

  Somehow I got through the next few hours. The emergency services and the police and the newspaper reporters and TV cameras came and went. Another doctor tried to get me to go to hospital for treatment for my burns and cuts and bruises, but I refused. He stood close to me and shook his head over the tragedy and spoke in a whisper that I couldn’t hear for the buzzing in my head. When I just stood and said nothing in reply he went away.

  I knew most of the coppers who arrived and hung about leaning on their cars and smoking cigarettes, but only one or two acknowledged me. I liked that fine. The uniforms taped off the area with ribbons of orange and white tape that rippled in the breeze like bunting at a fun-fair. More detectives asked me questions but Fox had put the word around and soon they left me alone.

  The Golf was covered in foam and stunk like a charnel-house. After it had been photographed from every angle it was run up onto a low-loader, covered with fireproof tarpaulin and driven off. I had to turn away to hide my grief as it left. The press and TV hung around like vultures looking to pick at a fresh carcass. They flapped around me for awhile but after I threatened to send one particularly pushy little photographer home wearing his camera up his arse and one or two of the friendlier old acquaintances from the force made threatening noises, they gave me a wide berth and settled for snapping photos from a distance like snipers picking off the enemy.

  Eventually I was free to go, but where? I ended up in a strange pub somewhere in South Norwood. It was a rough-looking bar, but it served alcohol, so who cared? No one could have looked rougher than me, anyhow. I was battered and singed, my clothes were a mess. The barman refused to serve me at first, but I held a tenner between the thumb and forefinger of my good hand and eventually he came across with the booze. I sat on a stool at the end of the bar and the rest of the customers gave me a wide berth. I drank and drank but didn’t even begin to feel drunk. I could still see the Golf exploding and hear the brittle clatter of metal and glass landing around me.

  I kept drinking until the pub shut and I left. Later, about three a.m. I think, I remember sitting in a graffiti-splattered shelter somewhere near where I lived talking to another creature of the night. He had a bottle of pear Thunderbird and he shared it with me. The smell of the cheap wine made me want to be sick. It brought back the smell of cooking meat from the car. I left him and vomited down a garage door and splashed my shoes. I felt so damn lonely that I couldn’t stop sobbing. I was cold and sick and felt like nobody in the world gave a damn, and that’s the worst feeling there is. I wanted Jo so much I could almost feel her there with me. But it was no good. I wasn’t so far gone that I didn’t remember I’d never see her again.

  I went back home but the smell of her there was so strong and the telephone was ringing so I just picked up a packet of her stale Chesterfields and went straight back out again and walked around some more and smoked until my throat was sore and I was so exhausted that I headed back to the office for no good reason except it was there.

  30

  The following dawn came late and misty and there was a chill so deep that I felt as if the skin on my face would crack into little pieces like broken china and fall into my lap. There was a chill in my insides too that had nothing to do with the weather. It went deeper and colder than any thermometer could register.

  I sat in the wreckage of my office and the wreckage of my life like an ancient mariner keeping watch. Only I had nothing to look out for now. Not any more.

  The last of the reporters had fled in the early hours. There was one patrol car parked up by the station, windows steamed solid. The bright ribbons had turned grey in the late winter muck and flapped listlessly, rimed and heavy with ice in the freezing wind.

  I hugged myself for warmth but there was none to be had. I sat there all morning long as the rubber-neckers and the death groupies came and went. None of them dared venture to my door. I ignored the telephone. I had no one in the whole world I wanted to talk to. Not right then, though I knew that there were calls that would have to be made, sooner or later. I didn’t buy a paper. I didn’t eat or drink or even take a piss. I just sat.

  Algy came by about eleven. He was dressed for the weather in a huge sheepskin flying jacket that must have wiped out ha
lf a flock, and thick cords over ornamental cowboy boots. He looked like double Biggies with hair.

  He pushed open the remains of the door and crunched through the broken glass to where I was sitting. He swept the litter on my desk to one side and perched on the edge, casting a great shadow over me. I just sat looking out of the window as if he wasn’t there.

  ‘You look like fucking shit,’ he said. I said nothing in reply. ‘I heard it on the news this morning, and it’s all over the papers. I’m sorry. I knew you’d be here.’

  ‘Nowhere to go,’ I said through lips that felt like cardboard.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘Listen, I’m not very good in situations like this, but I really am, sorry I mean. She was a decent person.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I replied, although I didn’t know what I was thanking him for.

  ‘You can’t sit here forever,’ he went on.

  ‘I don’t intend to.’

  ‘Are you hurt?’

  I held up my hand. ‘Not a lot,’ I said. ‘Not as much as I should have been. Not as much as she was.’

  ‘There’s blood all over your shirt, and it looks like you’ve got a right shiner coming.’

  ‘I had a visit from the local constabulary. You know, making enquiries.’

  ‘They don’t think you had anything to do with it, do they?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘But they did think I was putting the black on an old colleague of mine.’

  ‘And were you?’

  ‘Fuck off. Of course not. I helped the geezer get promotion. It’s just that we have an understanding that not everyone understands. If you get my drift.’

  ‘Not really,’ he said.

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ he said.

  We sat in silence for a bit longer. It was getting colder and I ached all over.

  ‘Can you hold a glass?’ asked Algy after the silence got unbearable.

  I looked at him, past him, through him. ‘Do what?’

  ‘You heard. I think you need a drink and a friend.’

  I felt the tears at the back of my eyes. ‘I don’t need anything or anyone,’ I said.

  ‘Bollocks, Nick. You can’t do anything sitting here looking at the street. It feels like twenty below in this fucking room. Are you trying to freeze yourself to death? Like some kind of fucking martyr?’

  I didn’t answer again. I was into significant silences that day.

  ‘McBain sent some supplies,’ said Algy after a bit longer.

  ‘But he couldn’t come himself?’ I asked.

  ‘You know what he’s all about. He sent me instead, not that I wouldn’t have come anyway.’

  ‘Well, thanks for that at least,’ I said. ‘What supplies?’

  He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a transparent vial about two inches high. It was full of white powder and crystals mixed. He rolled it across the desk towards me.

  ‘Take a hit on that and see,’ he said.

  ‘The Bill are outside,’ I warned.

  ‘Fuck ’em.’

  I picked up the container and shook it. The crystals shifted and rustled like snow in one of those paperweights with the little house inside. ‘Coke?’ I asked naively.

  ‘It ain’t Persil.’

  ‘I haven’t used this stuff for years.’

  ‘So, you look like you could do with a snort.’

  ‘I’ve got a lot of things to do.’

  ‘Like what? Sit here and feel sorry for yourself? If you’ve got to do something, do a line of that fucking charlie.’

  I opened the top of the little tub and dipped the tip of my finger in. It came away lightly powdered with white. I tasted the bitter powder and got the freeze. I poured a pile on to the web of skin between the thumb and forefinger of my left hand, and looked at Algy. ‘Here goes nothing,’ I said and snorted the coke up one nostril, only losing a tiny proportion on to the desktop. The hit was fast and effective. I felt as if someone had squeezed my neck in a clamp and my eyes began to water. ‘Cheers,’ I said.

  ‘Gimme,’ said Algy, and took the bottle. He pulled a Swiss Army knife from his pocket, the kind that makes tool boxes redundant it’s got so many gadgets, opened the big blade and dipped it into the cocaine. Carefully he lifted the pile of powder on the edge of the blade and stuck it up his nose. He snorted.

  ‘It’s good for what ails you,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Have another go.’

  I used the knife too and had a massive hit.

  ‘Let’s get pissed,’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’ I said. The drug was making me feel better.

  We picked our way out of the office and on to the cold street.

  ‘I have to make a phone call,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I want to speak to her family.’

  He didn’t comment.

  ‘I’ll call later,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘Where do you fancy?’ was all he asked.

  ‘Somewhere away from here.’

  ‘The car’s round the corner.’

  The car, as he called it, was the Bentley Continental with the personalised number-plate. Close up it looked as if it had been driven too hard for too many years. But the inside was warm and rich and it felt good. Algy fired up the engine and slipped a T-Rex album into the tape machine and we both went back to the coke. We took a hit each and I bummed a cigarette and dragged the smoke deep down as Algy pushed the huge car into the traffic flow.

  ‘Who did it?’ he asked after a bit.

  ‘How the fuck do I know?’

  ‘Anyone after you?’

  ‘The line forms on the right.’

  ‘You working on anything heavy?’

  ‘Only your case.’

  ‘I thought as much. Oh Jesus Christ.’ He hit the steering-wheel with a hand like a hog’s leg.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said ‘Jesus Christ.’

  ‘You think it’s the Divas.’

  ‘It might be. Or some dope dealers I ran into last year -you know all about them. Or maybe some people who were involved with the dealers, but in porn, not drugs. Or any-fucking-body. I don’t know yet, but I will.’

  ‘Be careful. These people are serious.’

  ‘I think I realise that, Algy,’ I said. ‘I saw Little Jo burn to death in front of my eyes last night, and you tell me they’re serious.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I told you I wasn’t much good in situations like this. I’m only trying to help, honest.’

  I looked at his big ugly face all crinkled up with remorse and I realised that I could do with all the friends I could get, whatever I said to the contrary. How the hell was Algy supposed to know how it felt to see someone you loved, someone who’d come along and been just right, die in front of you? And not be able to help one stinking bit. I put my bandaged hand on his massive sheepskin-covered arm.

  ‘I appreciate it, Algy. Really. It’s just been one of those nights. I knew they were serious when they killed Cat. I should have done something then. But I’d just met Jo and nothing else seemed important.’

  ‘Someone killed your cat?’ Algy asked.

  ‘Yeah, my cat. Someone hung the poor fucker and kicked the shit out of her kittens, bar one.’

  ‘Shit Nick, your fucking cat.’ Somehow, on top of everything else, this information seemed to affect Algy the most.

  ‘And I’m telling you Algy,’ I went on. ‘Some fuckers are going to die for all this.’

  ‘Like who?’

  ‘Me, probably,’ I said.

  We tanked up to town through Waterloo and Covent Garden and we didn’t say much, just listened to the T-Rex tape and then some Husker Du.

  Algy beat a Gold GTI to a parking meter and the driver got out to give us a piece of his mind. We crawled out of the Bentley and stood looking at him. He was just out of school and thought his pinstripe gave him some authority. He looked back at the pair of us, Algy in his battledress and me, filthy and white-faced, sniffing like a Hoover on overdri
ve, with a day’s growth of scrubby bristle, my suit all wrinkled and scorched. Blood caked on my collar and a dirty bandage slowly unravelled off one hand. Then he clocked the wheels. A twenty-five-thousand-pound motor car, filthy and mud-streaked with both flanks as battle-scarred as a combat veteran.

  Algy got straight to the point. ‘Fuck off,’ he said. ‘Or I’ll fuck you up the arse.’

  The yuppie gathered his dignity around him and clambered back into the Golf, which I felt would somehow never be the same to him again, and drove off.

  ‘Wanker,’ said Algy. We got back into the Bentley and snarfed up the last of the coke. ‘There’s another gram in the dash,’ he said. ‘You do like this shit don’t you?’

  I nodded and opened up the glove compartment. There was another tub of Charlie and half a dozen ready-rolled joints in a tin box with a red cross on the top.

  ‘First aid kit,’ explained Algy.

  ‘Doesn’t it ever worry you?’ I asked. ‘Driving around in this heap with all these drugs on board. Don’t you ever get paranoid?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s every boy’s dream.’ He lit a joint as if it was a Silk Cut and stashed the rest of the drugs in a zippered pocket in his jacket. ‘Got any change for the meter? I’m all out.’

  I searched my pockets but none was to be found. I shook my head in reply.

  ‘Fuck it,’ he said. ‘I’ll get some in the pub.’

  We fell into the first boozer we saw. ‘What do you want?’ asked Algy.

  ‘Give us a pint,’ I said.

  The place was half empty and we got served quickly. We found a table and sat down. I swallowed half my pint in one gulp and all of a sudden I felt shitty again. I thought I was going to have a weep and I sloped off to the gents. I stood in the cold little room and leant my head against the tiles. I looked in the mirror and hated what I saw. The blood on my shirt collar was black and evil-looking like dried mince. I pushed back into the bar and slumped down in a chair next to Algy.

  ‘I’m going to have to do something about this shirt,’ I said. ‘There’s a shop I go to just round the corner. I’ll nip round and get one.’

  ‘Suit yourself. Got any dough?’

  ‘A few quid, but I’ve got some plastic.’