by Joe McNally
‘To hell with this,’ I said and swung my leg off the sofa. Her pink heroin bag rested by her side. I grabbed it. Her face froze, open-mouthed, as I sat back again clutching the bag. She reached out. ‘Give me that.'
‘Shut up.’
She stared at me, knowing she’d pushed me too far, just as she’d done in the car that afternoon.
‘I need it.’ Pleading now.
‘Too bad.’
Unzipping the bag, I took out a thumb-size, half-full phial of clear liquid. ‘Where did you get it?’ I asked. The nightdress hem tumbled to her knees as she stood up quickly, clutching her drink. ‘Give me it.’
The tone was strident. Her free hand reached toward me.
‘Was it part of Greene’s supply or did you bring it with you?’
‘It’s mine! Give it to me!’
Rolling it on my palm, I said, ‘It’s not yours. If it was yours, you’d have used it in the car in the woods and saved yourself a long drive. It’s Phil Greene’s, or it was Phil Greene’s. Where was it hidden?’
She lunged at me. Clutching the phial, I pushed her away. Losing her balance, she lurched backwards and landed awkwardly on the bunk, splashing her drink on the green cushion. Struggling forward she tried to get up again.
‘Sit still,’ I said. ‘Or I’ll pour this down the sink.’ She glared then threw her glass at me. It hit the panel behind me, but didn’t break.
Charmain sat clutching her drawn up knees and staring out of the small window into the darkness.
‘Where’s the rest of the supply, Charmain?’
She ignored me. She began rocking slowly, back and forth. I got up and went to the sink. Unscrewing the lid, I tilted the phial. ‘Where’s the rest of it?’
She stopped rocking and stared at me wide-eyed, unbelieving.
‘Don’t! There isn’t any more!’
‘I don’t believe you.’ I tipped it until it was horizontal. ‘Where is it?’
The horror-stricken face had me almost convinced she was being truthful. But I had to make sure. I let out a trickle and she screamed and ran toward me.
Falling to her knees as she reached me, she hammered on the dirty tiles with her right fist.
‘Please, please, please…that’s all there is! I need it…for tomorrow!’ She was sobbing, staring at the floor, she wouldn’t look up at me.
She stopped hammering and pushed her forearms under her forehead and rocked back and forth on her knees like some demented jockey. ‘Please, please, please…’
Screwing the cap onto the phial, I helped her up. Standing in front of me with bloodshot eyes, tear-stained face, runny nose and flakes of dirt in her hair she seemed utterly dejected and beaten.
Reaching for her limp right hand, I brought the open palm up and placed the phial in it. She gazed at me like a grateful animal newly relieved of pain, and two big tears spilled. Opening her arms, she slumped forward, head on my chest, and pulled me toward her. I put an arm round her waist then gently stroked the hair at the nape of her neck.
I felt, as much as heard, her deep sigh, and her warm tears soaked through my shirt.
It took Charmain a while to calm down. She’d dry her eyes and try to smile and say she was fine then burst into tears again. But at least the spite was all out of her. She looked apologetic and extremely sorry for herself, though the feminine wiles still worked as she decided the troubles were ours rather than hers.
‘What are we going to do?’ she asked, sipping a fresh drink.
I could play that way too.
‘Before we can plan anything I need to know more about Howard and his business…and his connections.’
She nodded and after some gentle prompting, told me how she’d met Howard at Sandown three years ago when she’d backed a winner with him. Okay, he was much older, but he had money and big cars and nice houses. She wasn’t embarrassed about admitting she was a gold-digger.
She said Howard kept his business affairs to himself. Very few people visited him at home and when they did, he’d never discuss things in front of her. All had been fine for the first two years. He’d taken her out, bought her jewellery, and treated her well. It started going wrong when Harle came along.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
She shrugged and stared at her feet. ‘We became lovers.’
‘You and Harle!’ I hadn’t meant to sound so incredulous but when I thought of them together…Harle’s small greasy slyness and her, well, I suppose beauty was too strong a word, but she was very attractive, though when it sunk in that she’d slept with Harle she seemed a lot less so. Maybe I was just jealous. And mad with myself. The girl I’d thought too gorgeous to even approach at school falling for the likes of Harle…At least she’d taken Stoke for money.
She caught the tone in my voice and looked hurt, then defiant. ‘He was good in bed,’ she said, almost accusingly.
‘You don’t have to explain to me.’
‘It sounded like I did.’
‘My bad manners showing again. I’m sorry.’
She pouted and drank. ‘You men think sex isn’t important to a woman…well, to some of us it is. I didn’t love Alan, didn’t even care all that much for him, but he was brilliant in bed.’ She drank again, angry, then repeated, ‘Brilliant.’
I stayed silent, waiting for her to get it out of her system.
‘Howard was impotent,’ she said, staring at her empty glass. ‘From the day we were married. It terrified him.’
I bet it did. It went a long way toward explaining his crazy jealousy and manic over-protectiveness of her. ‘Did he know you were sleeping with Harle?’
She nodded. ‘I think he did, but he’d never have challenged me. He was too afraid of the truth.’ She spoke quietly, with no hint of satisfaction.
‘But not too afraid to make sure Harle never saw you again.’
She stared, unblinking, into her empty glass. I filled it with what remained in the bottle.
‘How did you meet Alan?’ I asked.
‘Howard introduced us at a party. He kept calling Alan his boy, his best boy.’
‘When was this?’
‘New Year’s Day. We’d been to Cheltenham.’
‘What was Alan doing for him? What was the connection?’
‘I don’t know. I assumed he was just a friend, or maybe a hanger-on. I didn’t ask questions.’
‘Didn’t Alan tell you anything?’
‘Sometimes he’d ramble on when he was drunk about how rich he was going to be, how everything was going to work out.’
‘Drunk or high?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Was he injecting?’
Tilting her head back, she closed her eyes. ‘What does it matter? Alan’s dead…What’s the point?’
I let it rest for a while. ‘You know Alan rode for a very rich owner?’
She nodded.
‘Nobody seems to have met this guy Perlman. Didn’t Alan talk about him?’
Wearily she shook her head.
‘Did he ever even meet him?’
‘I don’t know.’ She sounded very tired.
I changed tack. ‘Alan was injecting. I only asked you to see if you knew.’
She nodded.
‘How often?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did he offer you any?’
She hesitated. ‘He didn’t offer…I asked if I could try it…he didn’t want me to.’
She gazed down and fingered her glass.
‘But you talked him into it?’
She sighed deeply. ‘In the end… I tried my first fix the week he disappeared.’ She seemed to be going on a downer again. I kept up the questioning. ‘Was Greene injecting, too?’
‘No.’
‘You seem pretty definite.’
‘He wanted to stay clean. He’d seen Alan’s behaviour when he needed a fix. Phil Greene didn’t want to do anything that would stop him being champion jockey.’
‘You seem to kn
ow a lot about his personal ambitions.’
She leaned forward far enough to sip her drink then lay back again. ‘Phil had a crush on me.’
‘And?’
‘He agreed to help me after Alan disappeared.’
‘You mean he agreed to get heroin for you?’
She nodded.
‘Who paid for it?’
She stared at me, looking hurt but too tired to raise any real fire in her voice. ‘What the hell does that mean, Malloy?’
I shrugged. ‘Heroin costs a lot of money. I just wondered who paid for it.’
‘I paid. All right?’
‘Okay.’
She settled again, closing her eyes. ‘How did you meet Phil?’ I asked.
‘Howard brought him home for drinks after Alan disappeared.’
‘Did Alan know Skinner?’
‘They were connected in some way, but Alan didn’t like him.’
‘Phil Greene was connected to Skinner too, wasn’t he?’
‘I think so.’
‘They were at your house together last week.’
She didn’t comment. ‘So, we’ve got Alan and Phil and Skinner and Roscoe and Howard, all connected in some way, Alan and Phil more than anyone else because they’re dead, murdered, by your husband.’
I wasn’t sure how she’d react. Deep down she must have known Stoke was behind Harle’s death and I suspected she knew he’d engineered Greene’s. I watched her. She didn’t even blink.
‘Charmain, did you hear what I said?’
She nodded.
‘Am I right?’
‘Aren’t you always?’ she murmured and turned her head away.
‘When did Howard find out about your heroin habit?’
She stared into the fire. ‘A couple of weeks ago, when Phil brought the stuff. I had no money. I gave him my watch to pay for it and to get some more. He said he’d wait for payment but I told him to take the watch. He shoved it into his pocket. Last week, when he came with Skinner to see Howard he accidentally pulled the watch out. It fell on the floor, right at Howard’s feet. Howard bought me that watch as a wedding gift.’
She drank.
‘Phil gave him some stupid story about finding it outside in the driveway and Howard pretended to believe him. Later, he punched the truth out of me.’
I looked at her. ‘As much motive as Howard would have needed to kill him, I’d say. He probably also knew that Greene had been drinking with me and had talked too much.’
Charmain’s chin dropped onto her chest. Maybe the realization of the part she’d played in the deaths of Harle and Greene was beginning to sink in. She seemed drained but I needed the answer to one more question.
‘Charmain,’ her head stayed down. ‘Do you know what Skinner’s working on at Roscoe’s yard? Is he making heroin or horse dope or what?’
She shook her head slowly, still not lifting it. I persevered. ‘He’s using the head lad’s cottage, working on something secret. It could be the key to all this to Harle’s and Greene’s deaths…Charmain?’
She was sobbing again in that soft way she’d wept when I’d taken the heroin from her. I went across and stood above her, my hands on her shoulders. ‘Charmain, please tell me what Skinner is doing at Roscoe’s?’
She leaned forward, throwing her arms around my waist, weeping. ‘I don’t know! I don’t know! Oh, Eddie, what are we going to do?’ She forced me to take a step back as she stood up and cradled my face in her hands.
I stood holding her for what seemed a very long time then her tear-stained face tilted and her big sad eyes drew me in. As she arched her neck, her pink swollen lips parted showing the tip of her tongue and she closed her eyes and kissed me, long and wet and warm.
She swept the cushions off the bunks and arranged them on the floor. Pushing at the shoulder straps of the nightgown, she wriggled out of it and, bending gracefully, slipped her panties off. She knelt, pulling me down with her and we kissed again as she undressed me. Unresisting, I let her lead, still wanting, childishly, to believe she was doing it because, deep down, she loved me, but knowing it was a reaction to what we’d been through tonight. A crazily overheated libido was one of the after-effects of coming safely through danger.
Mine was as hot as hers.
She was also doing it because she hoped to gain control, as she’d tried to do with Stoke and Harle and probably Greene. She lay flat now and pulled me alongside her. ‘Oh, Eddie, this is what you wanted, isn’t it?’ This is what you were dying for when you came into my bedroom…and when I was in the car…This is what you wanted in the woods…isn’t it, Eddie…isn’t it?’ She was moaning softly.
Maybe it’s what I wanted, but it’s not what I’m going to have, Charmain, not when you’ve been with scum like Stoke and chancers like Harle and idiots like Greene. I don’t play fourth in a field like that.
I’d rather try to remember you the way you were.
Then Jackie’s image loomed in my mind, Jackie the traitor, and my vengeful streak showed through.
Why shouldn’t I have sex with Charmain? I could tell Jackie about it and watch her face…How does it feel to be betrayed, Jackie?
I watched Charmain, writhing, moaning, longer and louder, ‘Now, Eddie…please…come on!’ And I let her go and slowly and silently got to my feet and stood over her, looking down.
She lay still, staring at me, quizzically at first then her eyes focused on mine and she saw how much, at that moment, I despised her and she seemed to crumple as she turned on her side drawing her knees up, her hands covering her face as the tears fell. ‘You bastard,’ she murmured softly through her weeping, ‘you dirty, rotten bastard.’
And I stood there for a minute surprised at my feeling of triumph. I’d just paid her back for ignoring me at school, for not wanting me when we met again, for all she’d ever done to me or could do to me in the future.
It was illogical and unfair and childish, and I knew I was a bastard. But I felt good.
68
Plagued by nightmares I awoke after little more than an hour’s sleep. Charmain still slept. The sun was up but the boat felt cold. I made a mug of coffee and took it outside.
On the untrodden grass bordering the towpath, the dew lay heavy. The cars we had driven, mine parked half on the road and half on the towpath by Charmain, were also wet with dew.
The cars would be spotted if any of Stoke’s cronies were out searching and I decided to take them into the village.
I went to get my jacket. It would be best to move them now while the area was quiet. Anyway, I had to phone DS Cranley for an update.
Charmain was sleeping when I left. I locked the door and took the key.
It was after 7 a.m. when I parked the second car, probably a bit early to catch Cranley, but I spotted a phone box so it was worth a try. He was at his desk.
‘Where are you, Malloy?’ he asked.
‘A little place in the country.’
‘Where?’
‘I can’t tell you. I might not be here after today. I’ll let you know where I am as soon as I’m sure it’s going to be reasonably permanent.’
‘That’s not good enough. I want a full statement from you about last night.’
He was being remarkably polite. ‘Fine, I’ll call in at the station.’
‘When?’
‘As soon as I can.’
‘Malloy!’
‘Sergeant, look, tell me you’ll pick up a bookmaker called Stoke for questioning and I’ll come to the station right now.’
‘For questioning on what?’
‘For at least three of the murders that you and I have been fighting about since we met. Those were his two guys you picked up last night. They were out to add me to their list.’
‘They’re claiming you abducted them.’
‘Oh, come on, Cranley! Even you can’t believe that?’
‘I’m not saying I do.’
‘Look, arrest Stoke. I can get people to testify if he’s safely loc
ked up.’
‘Come and see me, Malloy, then we’ll talk about it.’
‘I can’t! Not now. I told you that.’
‘Then it looks like I’m going to have to let your two friends here go.’
I heard a click. ‘Cranley! Cranley! You bastard!’
Charmain was up when I got back, spooning coffee as the kettle whistled. The covering of make-up didn’t completely hide the dark rings round her eyes but she looked reasonably bright. It was hard to tell if she’d had her first fix of the day.
‘Coffee?’ she asked.
‘Please. Black, no sugar.’ I sat on the bunk.
‘Just as well. There’s no milk.’
She brought it and sat opposite me, clasping her cup. ‘Where’ve you been?’
‘I took the cars into the village.’
She looked puzzled.
‘In case Howard’s got a search party out.’
She sipped. Neither of us spoke for a minute. She seemed almost friendly and was acting as if last night hadn’t happened.
‘Do you think Howard will know I’m with you?’ She asked.
‘I hope so.’
‘Why?’ She looked nervous.
‘Because I need him to come looking for us.’ My stomach heaved as I said it. I was afraid.
‘Jesus.’ she said, quietly, and I knew she was scared too. ‘Then what?’
‘I don’t know. I’m still thinking.’
She sipped her coffee. I blew on mine. We were silent again for a minute then she spoke, gazing over the rim of her cup at the floor. ‘How long will it take him to find us?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It might be days,’ she said.
‘Maybe.’
‘Or even a week.’
We looked at each other.
‘I don’t think I could stand that,’ she said, ‘just sitting here knowing it could be any minute or it could be days and days.’
I nodded. I didn’t think I could stand it either.
‘What do you think he’ll do when he gets here?’ she asked.
‘Charmain, I don’t know yet. I’m trying to plan something.’ I felt irritable though she didn’t seem to notice. I went to the window. The hedge by the towpath blocked the view of the road and made me start worrying that Stoke might already be on his way and I wouldn’t even see his car pull up.