BLOOD DRUGS TEA (A Dark Comedy Novel)

by Saunders, Craig

  After the news we talked for a little while longer but Harry seemed embarrassed about having opened up. Eventually she made her goodbyes and said, “I should give this some thought. Thanks for the lunch. Will you be alright?”

  I thought about saying no, getting her to look after me, but then I’d made lunch and if I could do that and get dressed she must realise that I’m not that bad.

  “No,” I said. “I’m not feeling too bad really. I’ll just lay on the couch and get some rest.”

  “Try to get some sleep. You look like you didn’t sleep a wink last night. I’d better be going.”

  She pecked me on the cheek. I could feel it afterward. It felt cool on my skin.

  She seemed to feel better as she left. She didn’t look as tired. As though talking about it had lifted a weight from her shoulders. She didn’t seem to think so but I felt I’d made a right dog’s elbow of lunch. Perhaps I was just putting myself down. There was after all light at the end of the tunnel.

  I didn’t spare a second thought for Joe. Not really. He was big enough to shoulder his own problems.

  *

  The afternoon wore on. I didn’t do anything. It was gone one. I changed the channel and caught the end of the local news again. Different channel, different news. Nothing about the crime. I felt bleak after lunch with Harry. There was just so much to think about. I couldn’t think straight and I felt a little bad for Joe. Only a little. The larger part of me wanted Joe and Harry to split up. I wasn’t even sure she felt anything for me but at least I’d have the chance to take her out. Wine and dine her. I’m sure she’d like that. I know I would. The Bistro. That’s where I’d take her. It was a classy place. Wood everywhere and candles in bottles on the table. Italian food and good red wine. Perhaps after a few drinks I’d look more attractive to her. I was beating myself up and feeling ugly at the same time. I put the thought away for later.

  The adverts came on.

  There was something about some dog charity on the telly. Save the dogs from depredation.

  To my mind, charity is like buying draft excluders for a castle, it’s a stupid exercise. What you need to do is build a proper castle in the first place, not cover up the cracks with fluffy snakes. I figured they should put them all down.

  *

  Time passed and things took a turn for the worst. And I’d thought today would be a good day. I knew deep down I should have been encouraged. After all I’d had lunch alone with Harry and she’d talked about splitting up with Joe. I still didn’t feel right though. The day felt oppressive. And it just kept getting worse.

  The phone rang and I hooked a toe under the receiver to pick it up. The phone just fell on the floor and I had to lean over to pick it up. Pain flared in my back. The stout wasn’t working. I’d have to have another joint.

  “Jake? Jake?”

  “Yep. Pill. I just dropped the phone. How are you doing? Are you not working again today?”

  “Yeah, I am, but I just found out something you need to know. I thought I’d give you a call as it’s lunchtime.”

  “What’s your news?”

  “Well, I’ve been asking around. I’ve found out something interesting. The girl was a user right? This guy who works here, my dealer, he knows her. He doesn’t do anything heavier than the occasional pill but he knows her from a friend of his who does smack. It turns out she came to him with a friend once. The guy was pissed. I mean you don’t just tag along with someone else to pick up your smack. It turns out this was a Thursday night. I reckon the girl picked up on Thursdays and pretty much kept her habit to herself. She’d had a heavy habit and kept it to herself for must’ve been years. Guy said it was a long-term thing. His friend couldn’t describe the girl she came with but she wore a red coat and had black hair. He said she’d been pretty but in a haggard way.”

  “When was this?” I said excited. The girl we’d chased last night had a red coat. I couldn’t tell her hair colour under the orange glow of street lamps but even from a distance I’d been able to tell it was dark.

  “A couple of months ago. The guy only remembered ‘cause the girl had been on the news. He was worried the police would hunt him down.”

  “I don’t think the police are looking into the user angle. But they should talk to him. What’s his name? I’ll pass it onto Johnny.”

  “No way, man. You pass this on he’ll know it was me. No can do.”

  I sighed. “Alright, Pill. When are you coming over?”

  “I’ll be over tonight but I’m not done yet.”

  “What else is there?”

  “I’m not sure about this but I heard from a dicky bird that one of your friends has been seen with the girl, too. I was in the pub lunchtime, just asking the barman if he’d known the girl, you know, it’s local so he might have seen her. And lo and behold, he had.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Joe.”

  “Joe?” I was thinking maybe Reb, he was slightly shady, but Joe? Why would Joe have been out with the dead girl? Why hadn’t he told us about it? He didn’t even seen cut up or surprised at her death. It hadn’t affected him at all.

  “Yep, Joe.”

  “But he didn’t say anything.”

  “I wonder why,” said Pill. “I mean, do you know where he came from? His history? Any idea why he was on the boats in the first place? Was he a drifter? I heard about the kind of guy that kills people, I was watching some programme on that police stereotyping, or whatever that’s called. He’s intransigent, isn’t he? Wandering proclivities, tender grasp of reality, dislike of women… He’s a serial killer.”

  This is bad. I know this is bad right from the first thought. Joe had known the girl and hadn’t said anything. It wasn’t like he hadn’t recognised the name on the news, he seen her for Christ’s sake. Joe.

  “Don’t tell anyone else yet, alright Pill?”

  “Why not? There’s something fishy going on here.”

  “Yeah, there is, but Harry doesn’t need to know yet. I’ll ask Joe about it. There’s got to be some sort of explanation.”

  “Fine. I don’t like it but you’re the boss.”

  “Thanks, Pill. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Later.” He hung up.

  Joe. I wondered what to say to Harry. I elected for nothing for now.

  Tracey had been seen out buying on a Thursday night. I know she was a smack head but she seems to have been fairly smart about it apart from one night when she brought a friend. This friend had a red coat on. A bit of a coincidence. I wondered. I really needed to find the girl in the red coat. But I didn’t see how. Not unless Pill found out something more. He’d ask around. No doubt someone would know something.

  I would hate lying to Harry but then I did it everyday when I didn’t tell her how I felt.

  Joe, I thought. Things were getting complicated.

  *

  12. Tie me up

  I smoked some cigarettes for a while, adding to the protective coating of tar which was saving my paintwork from erosion. I wanted to think Joe had nothing to do with it but I couldn’t deny it. Joe was erratic. But a killer? I didn’t think so. He’d never acted out before.

  Well, apart from the Norwegian lady. But that was just a story, surely?

  I made a pot of coffee and thought over what I knew so far. I was suffering from the sleepless fugue and couldn’t get my mind to work properly. The only thing that made sense to me was that the girl I’d chased knew something I needed to know. I thought maybe Pill could find out who the girl was but I wasn’t holding my breath. I didn’t want to go down the Joe angle. My mind wouldn’t let me.

  The soft hiss of the percolator ended and I poured myself a cup of thick coffee. I added cream and sugar. Harry wasn’t the only one who collected free things. I had a drawer full of creams from pub coffees. I saved them, as I preferred the taste of them to milk in coffee. I had brown sugar in it too. I would call it Demerara but that’s for ponces. Like menus that tell you exactly what’s in your
dinner. Instead of bacon and eggs they can’t help themselves calling it pan-fried free-range chicken eggs with flame grilled Danish bacon. Sometimes the short explanation is the best. I don’t want to know what’s in my dinner. I just want dinner. Straight up with no pretensions. You can’t even get a decent pub grub these days without terms like sauté and filleted showing up on the menu. Whatever happened to a decent mixed grill and gammon with pineapple? That’s what makes England great. Not the other bits either. Those little add-ons that turn a pretty decent England into the shambles that is Britain. Scotland and Wales don’t want to be tagged on either, just let them go. They’re foreign anyway. Not that there’s anything wrong with foreigners. I just don’t see the need to annex them all the time. Leave them be, I’m sure they’re just as proud of their country as I am of mine.

  It was time to find out what the other side knew. It was time to call Johnny. Harvey was nice enough but Johnny and I go back to the beginning. I’d met him researching for a police novel I was going to write. I decided I didn’t need the money that badly, but he’d been more than willing to talk to me when he thought I was a writer.

  I called and found out that he was in at the Bridgeport police station. I said I’d go down and see him. I rang for a cab and waited.

  Apart from being a fairly decent person, for a cop, Johnny’s also gay, although not like Reb. Johnny’s not camp (well, neither is Reb, but Reb’s definitely fatter on the gay scales). You can’t be camp and a policeman. Johnny was the strong quiet type. An interesting character, full of subtle charm. He had a small scar on his cheek from a punch with a ring on the fist that carried it. It made him look tough, and I guess he was.

  When I arrived I told the duty sergeant that I was there to see Johnny Markham and he didn’t ask about what. He just nodded and said ‘alright Jake.’ I got on with some policemen (I’ve never seen a policewoman at the Bridgend police station), although most didn’t take to me as a rule. I guess I must have a weak face. Police love to pick on the weak. Come to think of it so do I. After all, what kind of idiot goes around picking on the strong?

  I was ushered through to the interview room. Johnny greeted me and I helped myself to coffee on the way. I got a few dirty looks but nothing I couldn’t handle. I didn’t let the atmosphere get to me.

  “Well,” said Johnny before we sat down. “Have you come up with anything?” He had good eyes. Surrounded by wrinkles. I guessed they would be good for piercing stares. But he saved those for suspects. I felt honoured. I’m not sure I’d stand up to scrutiny under those eyes.

  “Yep, you?”

  He laughed. He had a good laugh and lines creased around his eyes when he used it. I felt myself warming to him as I always did. “You first.”

  “Right,” I said. “You ready for this?”

  “All ears.”

  “OK. She was seeing someone called James Tamerlain six months or so ago. He’s a bit of a dork and doesn’t really seem like a cold-blooded murderer.”

  “How do you know it was a cold-blooded and not a hot-blooded murder?”

  “The note.”

  “Yeah, I keep forgetting about that. It doesn’t give us much to go on, does it? I mean who leaves a note?”

  “Just enough to show it was a murder, eh?” I said. I still wasn’t sure about the note. It didn’t fit. It was a TV kind of thing to do. Or a serial killer thing to do. But then serial killers just don’t throw people off multi-story car parks. Poor form, the serial killer fraternity would just laugh at them and poor scorn on their mediocre efforts.

  “Yeah, OK.” He took a sip of his coffee and put it down on the table between us. “What else?” he asked as he made a finger steeple under his chin. The scar on his cheek was white.

  “She had some sort of secret life on Thursdays every week.”

  “We know that. Do you know what she got up to? Certainly wasn’t aerobics. The aerobics teacher said she’d already talked to the police when I got there. You’re not impersonating police officers now are you?”

  “Nope, she made the assumption.”

  “Yeah, I can see why she’d think you were a cop.” He rolled his eyes.

  “What else?”

  “We know she had a friend.”

  “A girl, wears a red coat?”

  Hmm, interesting. “How do you know that?”

  “Let’s just say I know.”

  I let it go. “What do you think of all this?”

  He made a show of thinking about this. “I think we need to find out where Tracey was for three hours. To do that we need to know where she went ordinarily. My guess is it’s got something to do with Thursday nights. You know she was a user? Well she picked up Thursday nights and with this girl. We’ve got to find the girl.”

  “How do know she picked up Thursdays?”

  “We rousted a couple of dealers. One of them rolled over. How do you know?”

  “We found out from a friend.”

  Johnny left this. Other policemen would have tried to play hardball but Johnny knew we were straight as we could be.

  “Well, I found something out.”

  “What?”

  “You sure you want to hear this? It’s about one of your friends.”

  Oh-oh I thought. “Yeah,” I said cautiously. I picked at an imaginary piece of lint on my shirt.

  “Joe.”

  “Joe?” I said blankly. “What’s he got to do with anything?”

  “He’s got form. He beat up a girl once. We know he knew the girl.”

  “What do you mean he knew the girl? I know he didn’t know the girl. He would have said something.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Johnny. “I know he’s your friend but we’re going to have to bring him in.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said. “Joe’s not involved. You know Joe. How can you think that? You’ve made a mistake, is all.”

  “No mistake,” said Johnny softly. “We’re going to have to talk to him.”

  “This is ridiculous. A mistake.” Pill said he’d been seen with the girl but now it turns out Joe was a girl beater. It didn’t make sense. Joe was tough but I’d never in all the years I’d known him seen him get violent.

  “Sorry,” was all Johnny could say. I secretly found myself wishing that Joe did actually have form. Harry wouldn’t want to know him. It would make things smoother between Harry and me. With no Joe in the way…I had to stop thinking like this.

  “Well,” I said. “If you’re going to bring him in the least you can do is let Harry know. What’s he done, anyway?”

  “He broke a girl’s jaw. He was committed. Spent three months inside, on a psychiatric ward. He was suffering from delusions at the time. She’d come onto him, so she said in her original statement. And he’d battered her. It took three weeks before we could get the statement, mind. He did a right job on her jaw.”

  “Well, he’s a big man,” I said weakly. This was bad. With that kind of form and knowing the girl as well Joe would look good for this. I didn’t think he’d be able to sweet talk his way out of it. I couldn’t see Joe sweet talking anyone anyway.

  I felt bad because part of me was hoping it was all true. It must have been true. There was no reason for Johnny to lie to me. I felt slightly sick.

  The police are helpful sometimes, but I got the impression that Johnny was looking at me funny on this one. Something about guilt by association. I guessed he knew more than he was letting on but with my knowing Joe and all he probably felt it was wrong to let me know. Most times the police know I watch the cases and they’re pretty forthcoming. I guess a bit of free help from a well meaning citizen and all that.

  I sometimes get questioned, too. The tough guys don’t believe I’m a well meaning citizen. I get questioned because, get this, they are making enquiries and they find out I don’t work. Immediately I don’t fit the norm and they hunt me down. Take a tip, if you ever want to be a killer, fit in. Actually, all the killers have figured it out. It’s just that cops are a little
slow. They still think killers were all abused by their mothers and have sloping brows. Sounds like a top tip. Killers! Confuse cops by having a job and a wife. They’ll never figure it out.

  Johnny had little else to tell me. We talked for a while but it was obvious he was holding back. But then I didn’t, couldn’t, tell him about the ring or the fingerprint. How I thought the fingerprint had been a woman’s. He’d never talk to me again if he knew I’d taken evidence away from the scene of a crime. He probably thought I was too close to Joe to be trusted on this. He was wrong though. I didn’t feel very close to Joe after he’d said that. I suddenly felt like I didn’t know him at all. Well, nobody really got close to Joe but I was as close to a friend as he’d got.

  I wasn’t going to get anything else out of Johnny. I made my excuses and left.

  I wondered if I should call Joe or if Joe would have to find out the hard way. I decided I owed it to him. I’d call him and give him a heads up when I got home. I needed a drink first though. It was five o’clock.

  *

  13. Slapper

  I sat nursing a pint in my local, the Partridge.

  It had started raining again outside – it had been raining on and off all day. The light in the Partridge matched my mood, thick and treacly. Rain ran down the windowpanes but I couldn’t hear it. It was quiet and there were a few old men at the bar thinking their pickled thoughts. The way of old men everywhere I guess. The thoughts come slower when you’re that age, and sitting in a pub all day no doubt didn’t help matters. I felt lonely, abysmal and wished someone would come along and give me a hug. Preferably Harry, but Pill would do as a near second. Just listening to him talk is like an aural hug.