Blood Substitute

by Margaret Duffy

  ‘Carry on, I’ve nothing to hide.’

  Greenway took a deep breath and I sensed that we would get no further with our suspect at this stage.

  There was another knock on the door.

  ‘What?’ Greenway yelled.

  His assistant’s head came around the door. ‘Inspector Rahjeed craves admittance, sir. Sorry, his words.’

  ‘Send him in,’ said Greenway. Then, ‘Who?’

  Inspector Rahjeed came in.

  ‘They said you were dead,’ Hellier said disgustedly. ‘Or is that the other one?’ he scoffed.

  Patrick drew up a chair and sat down. Even with the brown skin dye he looked wan and had limped a little as he crossed the room. When he spoke it was in his normal voice.

  ‘I don’t have to remind you that I’m the person who saw you when you’d just lit a match and made sure a box containing petrol-soaked newspapers had ignited before you bolted, locking the stage door virtually in my face. I saw you in the light coming in from outside and I shall get enormous pleasure in testifying against you in a court of law. Right now you’re the only one in the frame for this crime so it’s in your own interest to tell us everything you know about Lazlo Ivers.’

  Stone cold. He had not so much as looked in my direction. I did not need to be told that if ever there was a moment not to show emotion it was this. I bit back the tears of sheer relief and concentrated on the thought that after a lightening visit to our hotel to shower and change he must have witnessed at least the second part of the interview courtesy of mikes and the one-way glass partition situated behind where Greenway and I were sitting.

  ‘So it’s three of you now, is it?’ Hellier shouted. ‘Three against one. This is when you start putting the boot in, eh?’

  ‘He’s right,’ Greenway said. ‘And it’s against regulations. I shall go and get myself a cup of tea.’ And with another wink in my direction, he left the room.

  Our suspect did not appear to be relishing the result of his protest.

  Patrick gave him a jolly smile. ‘I don’t need boots,’ he said. ‘The question we really need answering is why you lit that match just because Ivers told you to.’

  ‘I’ve already explained why. He was spitting mad with me for mentioning his name and said he’d kill me if I didn’t do as he said.’

  ‘You only had to go to the police. You would have been given protection.’

  ‘His sort find you wherever you are. You can’t hide for the rest of your life.’

  ‘Explain to us why you didn’t go to the police when you first realized the preservation group had been taken over by a bunch of crooks.’

  ‘For the same reason.’

  ‘You’re still lying. You’re actually in the pay of this man.’

  ‘Go to hell!’

  ‘When a Detective Chief Inspector from Avon and Somerset Police arrested you at your house he had in his pocket a search warrant that he genuinely forgot to mention to you. I’ve just had a call from him and it appears that a team working with him from the local nick have discovered five thousand pounds hidden under the floorboards in your bedroom. I’d like you to explain that.’

  ‘Perhaps I don’t trust banks,’ Hellier said after nervously licking his lips.

  ‘You’ll have to do better than that.’

  ‘Ivers asked me to look after it for him.’

  Patrick turned to me with a sigh. ‘He’ll get life for this.’

  I nodded. ‘And get mashed by Ivers anyway when they’re banged up together after we’ve caught up with him and his hoodlums shortly.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Patrick agreed musingly. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

  ‘Eh!’ Hellier exclaimed. ‘They don’t do that! Do they? Put you in the same prison? They can’t!’

  ‘It’s your decision,’ Patrick said with an off-hand shrug.

  In the long silence that followed I was expecting at any second that he would turn up the pressure, switch to that inexplicable mode, stare at the other man and exude that threat. But he did not, half turning his back to Hellier and saying to me, ‘Fancy a drink later?’

  ‘I’d like that,’ I said.

  ‘And then a meal perhaps?’ with a winning, come-hither smile.

  ‘That too,’ I agreed.

  He just carried on sitting there, blatantly flirting with me without saying a word. This was not all acting; the smile said it all. Thank God you’re all right and I love you to bits.

  ‘What about me?’ Hellier said in a small voice.

  ‘Oh!’ Patrick said, giving every impression of having been so involved with lustful thoughts that he had forgotten all about the job in hand. ‘Well, you could turn Queen’s Evidence, co-operate and then be put somewhere nice and safe from Ivers and soon, no doubt, be tucking into a hot meal. As I said just now, it’s entirely up to you. The evidence against you is overwhelming.’

  ‘OK,’ Hellier said after another long pause. ‘But send in that other bloke. I don’t trust you not to turn nasty.’

  ‘Before I go I want that mobile phone number. And don’t tell me you can’t remember it. It must be engraved on what’s left of your soul.’ He pushed a note pad and pen across the table.

  Hellier wrote and shoved it back.

  ‘Is that correct?’ Patrick asked. ‘Because if it isn’t I shall be right back.’

  ‘That’s the number,’ the other muttered.

  ‘I shall also return if you refuse to tell my colleagues all you know,’ Patrick said grimly. ‘And next time I shall stay until we’ve wrung you dry of every last bit of information. Is that understood?’

  ‘We can’t have fallen very far,’ Patrick said to me outside the interview room after we had sneaked a kiss and a quick cuddle, after which I had given him the important details of what Miss Dean had found out. ‘All the rungs my weight was on gave way at once and that was it. I must have hit my head on the ground and knocked myself right out. They wanted to keep me in for observation and all that rhubarb but were quite glad when I opted to go as soon as I felt able to.’ He added, echoing Carrick’s remark, ‘The place was like a battlefield.’

  ‘What about Kennedy?’

  ‘He’s definitely being kept in. They were sending him down to X-ray as I left because he was in a lot of pain, probably from broken ribs. He had at least recovered consciousness after being given fluids. A couple of blokes in shades, at a guess from F9, were trying to get to speak to him but the medics were having none of it and sent them packing.’

  ‘Did you manage to speak to him?’

  ‘Not really; his mouth was too dry for him to say anything and he didn’t really know what was going on. I just shook his hand as I left and told him I’d check up on him later.’

  ‘Did he know you though?’

  ‘No, hardly surprising in the circumstances and the way I look now.’

  ‘You still smell of smoke.’

  ‘So do you – but I still fancy you enough to take you out for a drink sometime.’

  ‘But I’d only just handed over to you. What the hell did you do to him?’ Greenway said when we had relayed the news.

  ‘Nothing,’ Patrick answered. ‘He’s been a loner all his life and sometimes the feeling of isolation is unbearable.’

  The SOCA man shook his head, not understanding.

  ‘What d’you want me to do about the mobile number he gave me?’

  ‘What do you want to do with it?’

  ‘Phone, pretend I’m Hellier and ask for the wages owing to me for burning down the cinema. He’ll suggest a meeting place and be all ready to gun down his now useless henchman. Ivers can’t know that Hellier’s been arrested unless he’s got someone permanently watching his house, which seems highly unlikely. We grab the bastard plus whatever mobsters turn up with him.’

  ‘There’s an awful lot of conjecture in there,’ Greenway pointed out. ‘First, I think I’d prefer to try to find an account address for the number. And, don’t forget, all Ivers has to do is send someone
round to Hellier’s place to put a bullet in him now only to find that the house is crawling with cops.’

  ‘He could well do that. But he’d wait until dark. You could make sure all searches have been completed by then and everything was looking normal.’

  Eyeing him dubiously Greenway said, ‘You’re sure you can fool him into thinking you’re Hellier?’

  Patrick took his mobile from his pocket and waggled it, one eyebrow raised questioningly.

  ‘OK then, phone.’

  This he did, first going into a corner of Greenway’s office and facing into the right angle of walls in order to muffle his voice. I walked over very quietly behind him to listen in.

  ‘It’s Syd,’ said Patrick, loosely pinching his nostrils in order to mimic Hellier’s flat, somewhat adenoidal tones. ‘The whole place went up a treat, them with it. They’re raking over what’s left looking for bodies now. When do I get paid?’

  I could hear the high-pitched, hissy sort of voice on the other end of the line but not what was said.

  ‘Sometime next week’s not good enough,’ Patrick said. ‘I’ve put myself right on the line for you and you owe me.’

  More hissing.

  ‘I need the money. I can go to the cops, you know.’

  ‘Do as you’re bloody-well told, you little disease!’ came over loud and clear.

  ‘I’ll be at home tonight, waiting. If you don’t come up with the goods I’m off round to the nick first thing in the morning. It was all for nothing anyway – I’ve just found out you’ve lost your bid to make a mint of money in the area as it’s just been granted funding to be restored.’ Blustering and slurring his voice as though he had been drinking Patrick finished by saying, ‘So that’s what you are, a real loser.’

  ‘You ought to be on the stage,’ Greenway commented wryly. ‘I just hope it wasn’t too over the top.’

  Patrick sat down rather suddenly. ‘Any chance of some tea and a sticky bun?’

  When I had despatched Patrick to SOCA’s somewhat upmarket canteen I discovered that Miss Dean had come to the conclusion that most of the information on the CDs involved business ventures – as she had already said, probably legitimate ones to soak up gains from drug-dealing, in other words, money-laundering – records of trading with other criminal outfits and a register of monies received, or not, from small businesses like restaurants, a protection racket. They were all neatly listed under various headings, the place names she had also told us about. There was a lot of it.

  ‘I can come back tomorrow if you like,’ she said to Greenway as she was leaving to be taken to the safe house. ‘There’s still quite a bit to do on the names of people side of things, but now I know that most are anagrams I should be able to sort it all out for you. Unless it’s another anagram there might be a woman involved, Lil’s Here or Lil Here features in what one must assume is recent information.’

  Greenway told her that he would be most grateful if she carried on.

  ‘It has to be S. Hellier,’ I said when the door had closed behind her.

  Rubbing his hands gleefully Greenway said, ‘That’s him as good as in the slammer then.’

  ‘So what’s the plan for tonight?’ I asked briskly.

  ‘The plan is, Ingrid, that you’ll be somewhere else,’ he replied, and, excusing himself by saying that he had to conduct a briefing, left me.

  ‘I expect he thinks you’ve done enough for one day,’ Patrick said, infuriatingly, when I had run him to ground together with what remained of his sausages, bacon, eggs, baked beans, tomato and fried bread. Oh, and black pudding.

  ‘Look, I’m not going back to the hotel to chew my fingernails to the bone while you’re setting yourself up as bait!’

  ‘I agree that after all your efforts it’s frustrating for you not to be in at what will hopefully be Ivers’ arrest,’ he said peacably. ‘But do you really want to hide in a cupboard all night in Hellier’s place? You said yourself that it’s a fleapit. And it’s not as though I’ll be unprotected – undercover cops’ll be everywhere. Why don’t you go and see if you can talk to Robert Kennedy? If he’s fit to receive visitors he’ll be more likely to give you info that we can use and you can ring Greenway, not me, with anything immediately relevant.’

  ‘He’s not going to talk to me with his F9 cronies hanging around.’

  ‘He might. It’s his last case, remember.’

  ‘I take it he’s been given police protection.’

  ‘Of course, there’s an armed guard.’

  Greenway was right, of course: after a big dose of smoke I had done more than enough for one day and my stamina did not seem to be as good as it once was. You are getting older, I told myself, if not old, and took a taxi back to the hotel where I intended to put my feet up for half an hour before going to see Kennedy. I had fleetingly seen Greenway again before leaving the building and he had called to me not to worry as Patrick would be only one of several experienced, and armed, personnel who would be waiting for Ivers and any henchmen with whom he might turn up.

  I had a snack in the little bistro just off the hotel reception area and then went up to our room where I slept like something dead for four and a quarter hours.

  Eighteen

  Waking with a jerk I saw that it was now eight forty-five. I tumbled off the bed and went into the bathroom where I splashed cold water over my face, cursing my carelessness in not phoning reception and asking to be called. For, surely, it was now far too late to expect a hospital ward to admit visitors.

  It was, but apparently in this particular patient’s case an exception would be made as he had requested that only family and friends, their names to be referred to him first, be admitted. No one, so far, had come and I got the impression that the nursing staff felt sorry for him. The answer came back straight away and after having had my identity checked – I had expected this and had my passport with me – by the armed minder on duty in the corridor that led to the private room, possibly part of an isolation wing, I went in.

  Still host to drips and monitoring devices Kennedy looked worse, if anything, than when we had found him, the bruising on his haggard face awful to see and now visible because he had been cleaned up. The only positive difference was the ironic smile on his face.

  ‘There, and I thought I’d be safe with that proviso,’ he croaked.

  I pulled up a chair and sat down. ‘You could have refused me entry,’ I pointed out, nevertheless experiencing a pang of pity for him.

  ‘Just don’t talk about the job, there’s a good girl.’ He coughed raspingly and took a sip of water.

  ‘There might be a rather long silence then as the only other thing we have in common is James.’

  ‘Oh, I wasn’t expecting him to be along,’ Kennedy said roughly.

  ‘No, he can’t because right now he’s on duty at SOCA’s HQ while everyone’s co-ordinating a sting operation to grab Lazlo Ivers.’

  ‘You have been busy,’ he said sarcastically.

  ‘I hope we don’t have a bad case of sour grapes here.’

  He gave me a wide, mirthless grin. ‘One of the big bosses going out in a blaze of glory. Only it was a real fire and the great man got himself banged up in a shit-house instead.’

  I nodded. ‘After surviving a savage beating and severe dehydration by being as tough as nails.’

  ‘You could have had that put on my headstone,’ he jeered, only to set himself coughing again.

  ‘You’re just like him, you know,’ I shot back. ‘James, I mean. You’ve got the same brand of what Patrick calls real buggerence.’

  He gave me a sour look.

  ‘Do you know about Sydney Hellier being arrested?’ I asked, damned if I was just going to sit there in an awkward silence.

  ‘The weird bloke who started the preservation society for the old cinema? No.’

  ‘He was the one who lit the match. Which is ironic when you think about it. I take it he really did want to save the place originally.’

  ‘He
was easily persuaded it was a lost cause though. Just a couple of hundred pounds under his nose worked like a charm.’ He chuckled. ‘A man of cast-iron principles.’

  ‘Several thousand pounds were found under the floor in his bedroom.’

  ‘Ivers must have been giving him so much a week to keep an eye on the cinema and run errands for him.’

  ‘Were you one of the men who first went with Ivers to see him?’

  ‘Yes, I was. You have to go everywhere, to get as much evidence against them as you possibly can.’

  ‘Tell me about Ivers.’

  ‘What do you want to know except for the fact that he’s raving mad, and bad, bad, bad?’

  This, I saw, was right from the heart, it had to be for a boiled-in-the-wool Scotsman to show that much emotion. I told him about the scarecrows and how my comments to Patrick about my nightmare must have been picked up by the mikes at Slaterfords.

  ‘That’s how he works. He spreads fear. The way he walks when he’s on a job, the way he talks. It’s not just to disguise himself: it’s to terrorize any witnesses. They have nightmares too, he’s coming to get them. They refuse to testify against him.’

  Baldly, I asked, ‘Why didn’t you get your own initials carved on you?’

  Kennedy did not even blink. ‘Because I broke free and killed one of his filthy henchmen when he’d just got started. Ivers panicked and thought he might run out of time and breathing minders. That made it worth it, seeing the fear in the bastard’s eyes.’

  I touched a hand that was free from medical hardware. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t apologize,’ he muttered.

  ‘Do you know if Lazlo Ivers is his real name?’

  ‘He bragged to me – when he had thrown me in that bloody john to die – that he had any number of stolen identities but that was the one on his gas bills.’

  ‘So why are SOCA still struggling to arrest him?’

  ‘Are they?’

  I sat back in my seat and gazed at him. ‘F9 are still behaving like clams then. Surely inter-departmental rivalry isn’t as bad as that?’

  Slowly, he shook his head.

  ‘There’s something you’re not telling me.’