Hell Is Always Today

by Jack Higgins

  “What happened to the old lass, then?”

  “I told her to go to bed. It’s late.”

  He glanced at the clock. “You’re right. I’ll have to be off soon.”

  “No hurry. You’ll stand a better chance later on.”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  He was suddenly tired and with the whisky warm in his stomach, contented in a way that he hadn’t been for years. It was pleasant there by the cheerful fire with just the one lamp in the corner and the solid, comfortable furniture. She gave him a cigarette and lit a paper spill at the fire for a light.

  He took one of the easy chairs and she sat on the rug, her legs tucked underneath her. The Gunner smoked his cigarette slowly from long habit, making it last, and watched her. Strange, but he hadn’t felt like this about a woman before. She had everything a man could ever want—a body to thank God for, a pleasant face, strength, character. He pulled himself up short. This was beginning to get out of hand. Trouble was it had been so damned long since he’d been within smelling distance of a bird that probably one of those forty-five-year-old Toms from the back of the market would have looked remarkably like the Queen of the May.

  She turned and smiled. “And what’s going on inside that ugly skull of yours now?”

  “Just thinking how you’re about the best-looking lass I’ve seen in years.”

  “Not much of a compliment,” she scoffed. “Not when you consider where you’ve been lately.”

  “Been reading up on me, have you?”

  She shrugged. “I caught the final newscast on television. You’d plenty of competition, by the way. There’s been a woman murdered earlier tonight on the other side of Jubilee Park.”

  “Another of these Rainlover things?”

  “Who else could it be?” She shivered and added slowly, “When I was alone in the kitchen earlier I got to thinking that maybe that man out there in the yard…”

  “Was the Rainlover?” The Gunner shook his head emphatically. “Not a chance. The fact that he’s seen off this poor bitch earlier is proof enough of that. They always work to a pattern these blokes. Can’t help themselves. The chap who jumped you had something a damned sight more old-fashioned on his mind.”

  She frowned. “I don’t know, I was thinking that maybe I should report it to the police.”

  She hesitated as well she might. Her father had left mother and daughter a business which was worth in cash and property some fifteen thousand pounds yet he had never considered himself as anything other than working class. His daughter was of the same stubborn breed and had been raised to obey the usual working class code which insisted that contact with the police, no matter what the reason, was something to be avoided at all costs.

  “And what were you going to tell them?” demanded the Gunner. “That Sean Doyle, with every copper for miles around on his tail, stopped to save you from a fate worse then death, so you fed him and clothed him and sent him on his way rejoicing because you figured you owed him something?” He chuckled harshly. “They’ll have you in a cell in Holloway before you know what’s hit you.”

  She sighed. “I suppose you’re right.”

  “Of course I am.” With some adroitness he changed the subject. “So I was on the telly, was I?”

  “Oh, they did quite a feature on the great Gunner Doyle.”

  “Free publicity is something I can always use. I hope they mentioned I was the best second-storey man in the North of England.”

  “Amongst other things, including the fact that you were the most promising middleweight since the war, a contender for the crown until women and booze and fast cars got in the way. They said you were the biggest high-liver the ring had seen since somebody called Jack Johnson.”

  “Now there’s a compliment if you like.”

  “Depends on your point of view. The commentator said that Johnson had ended up in the gutter without a penny. They seemed to be drawing some kind of comparison.”

  There was a cutting edge to her voice that needled the Gunner and he said hotly, “Well just for the record, darlin’, there’s a few things they’ve missed out like the way I cut so badly that refs used to stop fights I was winning because they’d get worried about the blood pouring all over my face. In that last fight with Terry Jones I got cut so much I was two weeks in hospital. I even needed plastic surgery. They took my licence away so I couldn’t box any more. Any idea how I felt?”

  “Maybe it was rough, Gunner, life often is, but it didn’t give you a licence to steal.”

  “Nay, lass, I don’t need any excuses.” He grinned. “I had a few sessions with a psychiatrist at the Scrubs first time I got nicked. He tried to make out that I’d gone bent to get my own back on society.”

  “What’s your version?”

  “Chance, darlin’, time and chance, that’s what happened to me. When the fight game gave me up I’d about two hundred quid in the bank and I was qualified to be just one thing. A bloody labourer. Anything seemed better than that.”

  “So you decided to try crime?”

  “Not really. It just sort of happened. I was staying in the Hallmark Hotel in Manchester, trying to keep up appearances while I tried to con my way into a partnership with a bloke I knew who was running a gambling club. When the deal folded, I was so broke I couldn’t even pay the bill. One night I noticed a bloke in the bar with a wallet full of fivers. Big bookie in from the races.”

  He stared into the fire, silent for a moment and as he started to speak again, she realised that in some strange way he was re-living that night in every detail.

  “He was staying on the same floor as me five rooms along. There was a ledge outside my window, only about a foot wide mind you, but it was enough. I’ve always had a head for heights ever since I was a kid, always loved climbing. I don’t know, maybe if things had been different I might have been a real climber. North face of the Eiger and all that sort of stuff. Those are the blokes with the real guts.”

  “What happened?” she said.

  “I worked my way along the ledge at about two in the morning, got in through his window and lifted the wallet and him snoring the whole time.”

  “And you got away with it?”

  “No trouble at all. Just over six hundred nicker. I ask you, who’d have gone labouring after a touch like that? My fortune was made. As I said, I’ve always had a head for heights and that kind of thing is a good number. You don’t need to work with anyone else which lowers the chance of getting nicked.”

  “They got you though, didn’t they?”

  “Twice, that’s all, darlin’. Once when I fell forty feet at the back of the Queen’s Hotel in Leeds and broke a leg. The second time was when I got nicked at that new hotel in the Vandale Centre. Seems they had one of these electronic eyes switched on. The scuffers were in before I knew what hit me. Oh, I gave them quite a chase over the roofs, but it was all for laughs. I’d been recognised for one thing.”

  He yawned and shook his head slightly, suddenly very, very tired. “Better get moving I suppose. You don’t want me hanging round here in the morning.”

  The cigarette dropped from his hand to the carpet. She picked it up and tossed it into the fire and the Gunner sighed, leaning back in the comfortable old chair. Very softly Jenny Crowther got up and reached for the rug that was draped over the back of the settee.

  As she covered the Gunner, his hand slid across her thigh and he said softly, “Best looking lass I’ve seen in years.”

  She didn’t move, aware that he was already asleep, but gently disengaged his hand and tucked it under the rug. She stood there for quite a while looking down at that reckless face, almost childlike in repose. In spite of the scar tissue around the eyes and the permanently swollen cheekbones, it was handsome enough, a man’s face whatever else he was and her thigh was still warm where he had touched her.

  Perhaps it was as well that sleep had overtaken him so suddenly before things had taken their inevitable course—although she would h
ave had no particular objections to that in principle. By no means promiscuous, she was like most young people of her generation, a product of her day and the sexual morality of earlier times meant nothing to her.

  But loving, even in that sense, meant some kind of involvement and she couldn’t afford that. Better that he should go after an hour or two’s sleep. She turned off the light and went and stood at the window, her face against the cold glass, rain hammering hard against it, wondering what would happen to him, wondering where he would run to.

  10

  Narcia Place lay in an area that provided the local police force with one of its biggest headaches. The streets followed each other upon a pattern that was so exact as to be almost macabre. Sooty plane trees and solid terrace houses, once the homes of the lower middle classes on their way up, but now in multiple occupation due to an influx of immigrants since the war. Most of the whites had left. Those who found it impossible stayed and hated.

  It was almost 12:15 when Jack Brady arrived in a Panda car provided by the local station. The whole street was dark and still in the heavy rain and when he rapped the old-fashioned cast-iron knocker on the door of number ten there was no immediate response. The driver of the Panda car vanished into the entry that led to the back yard without a word and Brady tried again.

  It was at least five minutes before a window was pushed up above his head and a voice called, “What the hell you think you’re playing at this time in the morning?”

  “Police,” Brady replied. “Open up and be sharp about it. I haven’t got all night.”

  The window went down and the driver of the Panda car emerged from the entry. “Any joy?”

  “Just stuck his head out of the window,” Brady said. “Get round to the back yard, just in case he tries to scarper.”

  But there was no need for at that moment, the bolt was drawn and the front door opened. Brady pushed it back quickly and went in. “Harold Phillips?”

  “That’s me—what is this?”

  His feet were bare and he wore an old raincoat. Brady looked him over in silence and Harold swallowed, his black eyes flickering restlessly. He looked hunted and was very obviously scared.

  Brady smiled in an avuncular manner and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you, son. I understand you’re engaged to be married to a Miss Grace Packard?”

  “That’s right.” Harold went very still. “What’s happened? She been in an accident or something?”

  “Worse than that, son. She was found dead earlier tonight in an alley called Dob Court on the other side of Jubilee Park.”

  Harold stared at him for a long moment, then started to puke. He got a hand to his mouth, turned and fled into the kitchen. Brady found him leaning over the sink, a hand on the cold water tap.

  After a while Harold turned, wiping his mouth with the back of one hand. “How did it happen?”

  “We’re not certain. At the moment it looks as if her neck was broken.”

  “The Rainlover?” The words were almost a whisper.

  “Could be.”

  “Oh, my God.” Harold clenched a fist convulsively. “I had a date with her tonight. We were supposed to be going dancing.”

  “What went wrong?”

  “I was late. When I turned up she’d got involved with another bloke.”

  “And she went off with him.” Harold nodded. “Do you know who he was?”

  Harold shook his head. “Never seen him before, but the landlord seemed to know him. That’s the landlord of The King’s Arms near Regent Square.”

  “What time was this?”

  “About half-eight.”

  “Did you come straight home afterwards?”

  “I was too upset so I walked around in the rain for a while. Then I had a coffee in the buffet at the railway station. Got home about half-nine. Me mum was in bed so I took her a cup of tea and went myself.”

  “Just you and your mother live here?”

  “That’s right.”

  “She goes to bed early then?”

  “Spends most of her time there these days. She isn’t too well.”

  Brady nodded sympathetically. “I hope we haven’t disturbed her.”

  Harold shook his head. “She’s sleeping like a baby. I looked in on my way down.” He seemed much more sure of himself now and a strange half-smile played around his mouth like a nervous tic that couldn’t be controlled. “What happens now?”

  “I’d like you to come down to Central if you wouldn’t mind, just to have a few words with Chief Superintendent Mallory—he’s in charge of the case. The girl’s father is already there, but we need all the assistance we can get. You could help a lot. Give us details of her friends and interests, places she would be likely to visit.”

  “Glad to,” Harold said. “I’ll go and get dressed. Only be five minutes.”

  He went out and the Panda driver offered Brady a cigarette. “Quite a technique you have. The silly bastard thinks he’s got you eating out of his hand.”

  “Glad you noticed,” Brady said, accepting the cigarette and a light. “We’ll make a copper out of you yet.”

  There was a white pill box on the mantelpiece and he picked it up and examined the label. It carried the name of a chemist whose shop was no more than a couple of streets away. The Capsules—one or two according to instructions—it is dangerous to exceed the stated dose.

  Brady opened the box and spilled some of the white and green capsules into his palm. “What you got there?” the Panda man demanded.

  “From the look of them I’d say it’s what the doctor gave my wife last year when she burnt her hand and couldn’t sleep for the pain. Canbutal. Half a dozen of these and you’d be facing your Maker.”

  He replaced the box on the mantelpiece, a slight frown on his face. “Tell you what,” he said to the Panda driver. “You go and wait for us in the car and bang the door as hard as you like on the way out.”

  The young constable, old before his years and hardened to the vagaries of C.I.D. men, left without a word, slamming the door so hard that the house shook. Brady went and stood at the bottom of the stairs, but heard no sound until a door opened and Harold appeared buttoning his jacket on the way down.

  “What was all that then?” he demanded. “Thought the house was falling down.”

  “Just my driver on his way out to the car. I think the wind caught the door. Ready to go?”

  “Whenever you are.” Harold took down his raincoat and struggled into it as he made for the door. “Fame and fortune here I come. Who knows, I might be selling my story to the Sunday News before I’m finished.”

  With an effort of will, Brady managed to stop himself from assisting him down the steps with a boot in the backside. Instead he took a deep breath and closed the door behind him with infinite gentleness. He was beginning to feel sorry for Harold’s mother.

  It was chance more than anything else that led Miller to The King’s Arms after leaving Joanna Hartmann’s flat. His quickest route back to Central C.I.D. took him along Lazer Street and the pub stood on the corner. It was the light in the rear window which caused him to brake suddenly. The landlord would have to be interviewed sooner or later to confirm the circumstances of Grace Packard’s meeting with Faulkner and Morgan, but there was no reason why that couldn’t wait till morning.

  The real truth was that Miller was more interested in the disturbance that had taken place, the trouble with the girl’s boy friend which Faulkner had hinted at. “Nothing I couldn’t handle,” he had said. The sort of phrase Miller would have expected from some back street tearaway, indicating a pattern of violence unusual and disturbing in a man of Faulkner’s education and background.

  He knocked on the back door and after a while it was opened on a chain and Harry Meadows peered out. He grinned his recognition for they were old friends.

  “What’s this then, a raid?”

  Miller went in as Meadows unchained the door. “A few words of wisdom, Harr
y, that’s all.”

  “Nothing stronger?”

  “Only if you’ve got a cup of tea to put it in.”

  “Coming up.”

  Miller unbuttoned his coat and went across to the fire. The kitchen was large, but cluttered with crates of bottled beer and cases of whisky. It was warm and homely with the remains of the supper still on the table and the old sofa on the other side of the fireplace looked very inviting.

  “See you’ve got another killing on your hands,” Meadows said as he came back into the room with a mug of tea.

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “Late night news on the radio. Not that they were giving much away. Just said the body of a woman had been found near Jubilee Park.”

  “Dob Court to be precise.” Miller swallowed some of his tea, coughing as the whisky in it caught at the back of his throat.

  “Dob Court? That’s just round the corner from here.” Meadows looked grim. “Was it anyone I knew?”

  “A girl called Grace Packard.”

  Meadows stared at him, the skin tightening visibly across his face. Quite suddenly he went to the sideboard, opened a bottle of brandy and poured a large dose into the nearest glass. He swallowed it down and turned, shuddering.

  “She was in here earlier tonight.”

  “I know, Harry, that’s why I’m here. I understand there was some trouble.”

  Meadows helped himself to another brandy. “This is official then?”

  “Every word counts so take your time.”

  Meadows was looking a lot better as the brandy took effect. He sat down at the table. “There’s a bloke called Faulkner comes in here a lot. Only lives a couple of streets away. He was in here earlier tonight with a friend of his, a solicitor called Morgan. Nice bloke. He handled the lease of this place for me when I decided to buy last year.”

  “What time did they come in?”

  “Somewhere around half-eight.”

  “Who else was here?”

  “Nobody. Trade’s been so bad in the evenings since this Rainlover business started that I’ve had to lay off the bar staff.”