He Died with His Eyes Open (Factory 1)

by Raymond, Derek

  ‘Shit!’ he said, bending down.

  ‘Is it?’ I said, picking some up.

  It was. He giggled on a high, unreal note, but I wasn’t going to bust the poor little sod; I hadn’t the heart unless it came in handy as a means of holding him for something else. I could see he had done some porridge as it was, because it said so on his left arm, which was tattooed ‘Wandsworth I Love You’. But I was investigating a much greater tragedy than Eric. Eric might be all right for as long as anyone with his problems can be. He might even settle down in the country somewhere for a while on some reforming maiden’s money and sit under a tree making cages out of twigs while she uncomplainingly hoed the garden in a glow of sweat, martyrdom and packet soup. On Sundays her middle-class mum and dad would come and gaze at them helplessly for the afternoon while she hoed and he giggled, and then depart in the family motor not looking at each other, but staring wordlessly over the gears. Then one day, for any reason or more likely none at all, the relationship would snap abruptly, perhaps making, if there were some violence, twelve lines of print on page three of the News of the World, accompanied by a smudged photo with the background of weeds and a potting-shed.

  ‘I want you to tell me all about your relationship with your stepfather,’ I said.

  ‘There’s nothing to tell.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t agree,’ I said. I watched him desperately trying to pick his pot up off the floor. He was too idle to get down on his knees for it, but tried to do it bending from his chair. ‘Let’s get back to reality, shall we? Your stepfather’s been murdered. Murdered, do you understand?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I read you.’

  ‘You’d better have a look at this,’ I said. I produced the morgue photograph of Staniland and handed it to him. ‘Particularly as you’re a relative.’

  He looked at it. ‘Christ,’ he said, his voice cracking, ‘is that really him?’

  ‘It was. People like you don’t think about death much, but that’s what it can look like.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ he said. He seemed to have shrunk.

  ‘You wouldn’t know anything about it?’

  ‘Who, me? Christ, no.’

  ‘It’s come as a complete shock?’

  ‘Course it has! Christ!’

  ‘Why did somebody have to die to get you off the hook?’

  ‘He didn’t! He must have gone and done it. He was upset after he broke up with my mother! He was in a state over my half-sister! I never gave him any sweat!’

  ‘Oh, come on, Eric,’ I said woodenly. ‘You can do better than that. I’m going to lean on you now. What did you do with that money?’

  ‘Money! What money? I don’t know what you’re talking about!’

  ‘Yes, you do. He gave you money.’

  ‘I don’t have to tell you that.’

  ‘Yes, you do. You have to tell me everything.’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘Well, we’ll wait together for as long as it takes you to remember. You’ve got a habit, haven’t you?’

  ‘Okay, so you saw the pot on the floor.’

  ‘It’s a more expensive habit than just pot, Eric. What is it? Cocaine? Heroin?’

  ‘Why? Are you gointer bust me or something?’

  ‘I can’t be bothered. If I wanted to I could spend my life busting you pimply marvels. But I could hold you on it, pending another charge, it depends on you. You’d find yourself on remand over at Brixton in no time, and you don’t want to do any more bird, do you? Last time it was just for thieving, wasn’t it, but this time it’ll be more serious; they’ll throw the book at you harder, Eric, a lot harder.’

  ‘Look, if you’re going to bust me, bust me. But I don’t know anything about my stepfather’s death.’

  ‘You’re sticking to that?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘If you’re telling the truth that’s one thing. But if you’re not, Eric, you’re being an A1 prize jerk—you’d be safer telling me the truth. You’d be safer in the nick than you would be on the streets. Have you got a photograph of yourself, by the way?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes, you have. You’ve got a passport, I checked.’ I held my hand out. ‘Give me the passport, Eric. I want the photograph.’

  He rummaged in an overcrowded drawer and finally produced it. I turned to the photograph. It wasn’t a very good likeness, but it would do. I put the passport in my pocket. ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Now, I think you’re lying to me, Eric; I think lies come naturally to you. But what I’m going to do is show this picture around among certain people, and if I find that you’re known to them, God help you, son, do you see?’

  He swallowed. ‘I move around a lot,’ he said. ‘An awful lot.’

  ‘Well, it’s a matter of where,’ I said, ‘and who with. You go down to South London often?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sometimes, though?’

  ‘I go everywhere sometimes. I move around a lot, I keep telling you.’

  ‘All right,’ I said, ‘let’s leave that for now. Let’s go back to that money of your stepfather’s. You spent that money on your habit, didn’t you, Eric? Sometimes it was pot, but more often it was maybe a little heroin if you needed a nice strong kick.’

  ‘I’ve never touched horse!’

  ‘Come on,’ I said, ‘I don’t have to look for the punctures to tell that you shoot up. Your friends call you the Knack, don’t they?’

  ‘Some of them do.’

  ‘What have you got a knack for, I wonder, apart from a needle? Nothing very much, I shouldn’t think. I wouldn’t’ve thought you were into birds very hard, for instance—I’ve heard it said that you’re not all that hot in the sack, Eric. But if you’re turned on the whole time that’s hardly surprising. Spending other people’s money, is it? Come on, talk. I’m beginning not to be very fond of you, Eric, which as far as you’re concerned is bad news.’

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘go easy, will you? I admit I’m muddled and confused. The psychiatrist said it was because I never knew my father.’

  ‘You didn’t do too badly with your stepfather, though. You did as well with him as a lot of kids would’ve done with a real father. You had a decent education, I can tell; you’ve got one of those classless accents that you get in expensive schools these days. Who paid for it, Eric? What school was it, Eric?’

  He told me. It was one of those schools for the delinquent dropouts of the middling well-off to rich. It turned out flops, would-be revolutionaries, drug addicts and trendies by the score; I’d had to deal with its products on other occasions.

  ‘Did your mother help with the fees? Oh, come on, Eric. It’s so easily checked; I’ve only got to ask the school.’

  ‘No, I tell you, he paid for everything.’

  ‘He spoiled you, did he?’

  ‘I suppose you might call it that.’

  ‘You should get your teeth seen to,’ I said absently. ‘People shouldn’t let themselves go like that at your age.’

  ‘Well, my stepfather wasn’t much of an example, always drunk.’

  ‘You didn’t like your stepfather much. Not really, did you? No matter what he’d done for you.’

  ‘He didn’t like me, either.’

  ‘Well, he must’ve a bit,’ I said, ‘otherwise he wouldn’t have given you that five hundred quid, would he?’

  ‘How the hell did you know about that?’

  ‘Don’t bother about the details, I just know you had it. I also know it wasn’t all you had. You had the two cheques, one for five hundred and the other for three. You pretty well cleaned him out, didn’t you?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Yes, you did.’

  ‘Well, if I did, I didn’t know I was doing it.’

  ‘How did you get the money out of him, Eric?’

  ‘What do you mean, get it out of him? I told him I needed it, so he let me have it.’

  ‘Soft touch, was he?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘
You know, Eric,’ I said, ‘I find life so strange sometimes, when I’m talking to liars especially. What you really said to him was, Give, or else. You knew bloody well he couldn’t afford it. You forced him to go to the bank and raise it. You made his life hell for him until he did go to the bank.’

  ‘I didn’t!’

  ‘You’re lying again,’ I said. ‘You’re an absolute chronic liar, Eric. What I really want to know is how you forced him.’

  He didn’t say anything.

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you what I think. I think you said to yourself, he’s a drunk, he’s an easy touch, he’s weak and he’s easily frightened. I think you put the boot in, Eric. I think you took a few other little knackies round with you, and I mean to find out who they were.’

  ‘I didn’t take anybody round!’

  ‘I think you did, and the reason why I think it is because you’ve got no guts. You couldn’t even square up to a middle-aged alcoholic without sending out for help. But you know what they call that in a court of law, Eric? A prosecuting lawyer would call that demanding money with menaces, and it carries five to seven years’ porridge if you go down. You shouldn’t have taken cheques from him, that’s where you went wrong. Because you had to endorse the cheques and it will be very simple to establish that the endorsements were in your handwriting even if you used a false name.’

  ‘I tell you he gave me the money of his own free will.’

  ‘No court’s going to believe that. We’re talking about a murder, Eric, and you’ve got a record, also a motive.’

  ‘Christ, you’re trying to fit me up for this!’

  ‘You fitted yourself up for it. And while we’re on the subject of money, by the way, there’s another three hundred quid still missing. Did you get that as well?’

  ‘No! Eight was the lot. Honestly!’

  ‘I wonder,’ I said. ‘I bet you were into your stepfather every time you got short of moonfeed.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that, I tell you.’

  ‘I think it was. I don’t think you could find any way of raising money except from your stepfather. You haven’t the guts to graft, get a job, work on a building site, anything like that. No. But darling Eric has to have his moonjuice just the same. Only the knack ran out in the end, didn’t it? You couldn’t put the bite on any harder; your stepfather didn’t have any more money. I’ll bet at first you came on like no end of a wag over at the pub, for instance, flashing your stepfather’s money about. That’s how you really came to be called the Knack, wasn’t it? I wouldn’t be surprised if you invented that name all by yourself. God, I tremble with pride for you, Eric; you make me go all gooey.’

  ‘I keep telling you—’

  ‘But you weren’t prepared to try the famous knack on anybody else, were you? No, because anyone with any balls would have told you to fuck off, and you’d have burst into tears, just like you’re about to do with me. You’re like a sinister little boy, Eric; every time the beastly horrid sand-castle falls in you burst out crying and try and kick someone smaller than you are. I bet you think of yourself as the detritus of your society—it’s a good excuse for a wallow in self-pity. But all you are, Eric, is just a wanker. What you did with your mates was start roughing your stepfather up a little, and then it all went too far, didn’t it? Didn’t it?’

  ‘No!’

  He folded up his chair, a ridiculous spectacle in that stupid robe, and gazed at me blearily through his tears. He shook uncontrollably and looked like something nasty that had been shot in the face. ‘He gave it so easy the first times,’ he said. ‘There was nothing to it.’

  ‘And then after that there was more to it, and you lost your temper and then you roughed him up, and then it went too far and everyone had a go and you killed him.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t like that!’ he sobbed. ‘I didn’t kill him, I didn’t, I didn’t. I didn’t get anything out of him the last time. And I was on my own with him and I didn’t touch him—I reckoned I’d about got all I was going to out of him.’

  ‘Maybe he was sober that time,’ I said bleakly. ‘So you tuned him up the second time round, is that it?’

  ‘Well, he sort of fell over, yes.’

  ‘You sort of pushed him around that time until he sort of fell over, you mean.’

  ‘All right, then, yes. But it was really easy before, the first time.’

  ‘Yes, it was easy the first time because he was the kind of man who would give anybody anything if he had it. Your mother told me that.’

  ‘My mother’s just a whore!’ he shouted through his tears.

  ‘Well, true or false,’ I said, ‘you’re the last person to make judgements about people. I believe you not only killed your stepfather, Eric—but look what you did to him. Look at this photo again.’

  ‘I didn’t!’

  ‘How hard did you hit him, Eric? To start with, when he told you he couldn’t give you the money?’

  ‘Just a slap! I don’t know! Just a couple of slaps!’

  ‘Because you were desperate for your moonfeed, and you were skint, and you hated and despised him anyway.’

  ‘Yes, all right, but I didn’t kill him!’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure, Eric.’

  ‘Sure of what?’

  ‘Sure whether my proper course wouldn’t be to search the place and then maybe book you on a hard drugs charge, also grievous bodily harm for a start, and take you across to the Factory so you can repeat what you’ve just told me over there.’

  ‘What, the Factory?’ he moaned. ‘Poland Street? Christ, I might as well top myself and have done with it!’

  ‘Oh, it’s not as bad as that,’ I said, ‘though of course you might get a bit of slap and tickle if you didn’t cooperate. Whereas I’m not going to touch you, so you’ve got this last chance to tell me what really happened.’

  ‘Look, I didn’t kill him, I’ve told you twenty times. I swear it. If only he hadn’t sent me up—’

  ‘And you hadn’t been on moonjuice—’

  ‘No, it was because he sent me up. That’s why I slapped him.’

  ‘Well, I’ve heard he had a sharp tongue,’ I said, ‘and in your case it was well justified. Also I’ve turned up your record, Eric; you seem to have been in trouble with the law since you were in shorts.’

  ‘I’m disturbed, I tell you. What I need’s a psychiatrist.’

  ‘Oh, Lord Longford’ll find you one of those quickly enough, don’t worry. But you maintain that you weren’t sufficiently disturbed to kill your stepfather, just slap him around. Not even on moonjuice, Eric? Or deprived of moonjuice?’

  ‘No, Christ! I didn’t! I couldn’t!’

  ‘It’s frightfully weak, Eric. Frightfully weak. You know, you could go down for this, son.’

  ‘I could never have done all those injuries to him! Don’t you see?’ he screamed. ‘I wouldn’t have had the strength!’

  ‘But nobody’s saying you were alone,’ I reminded him. I got out my notebook. ‘Let’s start by having all their names.’

  ‘I couldn’t! They’d kill me if I squealed on them!’

  ‘I think the best thing in that case, Eric, would be if I took you into custody for your own protection.’

  ‘No! I’d go mad in there! I nearly did last time!’

  I put the notebook away, got up and said: ‘All right. I’m keeping you on ice, Eric. Now being on ice means what it says. You stay in your fridge here. If I come round to find you any time and you’re not here, God help you. If you move out of this pad or, more likely, if you’re evicted, you ring this number and let me know where I can find you.’ I wrote it down for him. ‘It’s ridiculously simple. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I’m very, very serious, Eric. You make one attempt to bolt, just one, and you go straight inside.’ I went to the door, had a thought, and turned. ‘A piece of advice, Eric. I wouldn’t tell any of your mates I’ve been round; they sound heavy. I wouldn’t say anything about this little talk we’ve had to
anyone. Now don’t you think that’s good advice?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Well, take it, then.’

  But I knew he wouldn’t.

  21

  It was called the 84 Club because that was its street number in Crispian Road, on the south side of London Bridge. Derelict or bankrupt warehouses fronted the river; the area was scheduled to be bulldozed one day for new development, and then it would become posh. But I wondered if that would ever happen.

  The 84 was the fifth club I’d tried. I’d been working along the south bank going eastwards, starting at the Elephant. I hadn’t been lucky with the others, and I’d no reason to think that this one would be any different. Still, it had to be checked. The place was got up as a horror museum, with décor done on the cheap. Plastic cobwebs were sprayed around where no spider would ever have had the idea, devils and monsters glowed with twenty-five-watt bulbs inside them, long white bones dangled from the ceiling, etcetera. The only thing that wasn’t simulated was the damp. The company was mixed in there—black and white, like the whisky. It was a powerful blend, and I wondered if the villainous management knew how to handle it. I had an idea it did.

  I stood at the entrance, watching. The floor was packed solid; I smelled the hard liquor and sweat, sex, and one or two other things, such as grass.

  The heavy inside his box said: ‘C’n I help you, Jack?’

  ‘I’m just looking.’

  ‘I know that, Jack,’ he said, ‘an I’m gointer try you with this one again, c’n I help you?’

  ‘Maybe. I’m looking for a bird called Babsie.’

  ‘I don’t care if you’re looking for a razor blade up your arsehole, Jack, it’s members only here.’

  ‘It’s a pity the Tourist Board can’t hear the way you clack on,’ I said. ‘You’d get a lot of coaches here, I should think. Fine old English manners like yours have almost died out in the land.’

  ‘Look,’ he said furiously, when the penny had dropped, ‘do you want me to come out an round an give you some manners right in the mush?’

  ‘Yes, why not?’ I said. ‘If you’ve got a spare face at home.’