by John Elliott
‘She came from Uruguay, actually. But you were going to tell me about the last time he was here.’
‘Was I? I suppose I was. You make your mind up to do something. It seems simple enough, but then you find it’s not so easy at all.’
‘We both want to know who killed him. Justice.’
‘Not much of it about in this world. Fantasy world, yes. Misdemeanours lead to punishment in the other room down the hall. You, the police, catch those who have already been caught. The rest too easily go unsuspected. Now, I can see in your eyes you think I’m over cynical. So be it. He became quite distraught not long after he arrived, to return to your question. I thought he might have taken something which was getting him on the whizz, unnecessarily agitating his mind.’
‘Was he a user?’
She shook her head ‘Some people popped to stay awake or snuck a line at Halcyon. Augustin, not really. Certainly not a habit. It was just unlike him. Usually he was so settled when he was here. Eventually he calmed down and said he was going to take a break. Change his life. Do something different. I was worried. I asked if he’d been got at by the Moonies or some kind of reprogramming weirdos, but he laughed and told me not to be concerned. “I’m just going to spend quiet days in Bedfont, Mum. Quiet days completely on my own.” I couldn’t make sense of it. It wasn’t as if he had said goodbye, although it turned out to be so.’
Outside the window the rumble of wheely-bins being trundled across the pavement accompanied by shouts and the renewed throb of the rubbish disposal truck made her pause. ‘How he did love to push out his chest and cry, “The Milky Bars are on me.” He looked just like a young Englebert Humperdinck. Of course, they soon reverted to blond kids. The one deviation from the norm wasn’t a success. Thereafter he didn’t get a lot of work.’ She half turned and glanced about her as if a presence hitherto unseen had manifested itself beside the door. ‘They were my family, my real family, Augustin and Blythe,’ she continued, so softly that Hamish had to lean forward to hear. ‘Often we’d be together in here just like you and I doing nothing in particular, and now they’re both dead. It’s hard. It’s very hard to bear.’
Her eyes were clear. There was no attempted handkerchief dabbing. Stoicism, Hamish thought. This time her pain was real. Mrs Joan Oliphant was a much more complex individual than he had anticipated.
‘How did he leave?’ Hamish tried to bring her out of her clearly preferred recollections of Augustin as a boy and back to the last time they had met. ‘Was he walking or driving?’
She looked at him as if he were a particularly dim child. ‘He had a hire van. He often used them when he was shifting equipment. I didn’t note the name of the firm or write down the registration number. Mea culpa. His kiss on my cheek. The last one he gave me.’ She smiled wistfully as if to recapture the moment. ‘Blythe, now was like a little cat,’ she resumed, determined, it seemed, to carry out her promise of telling all. ‘She had her own home and family, but she preferred getting her saucerfuls of food here and warming herself in front of my fire. I knew her mother from the old days. Her father was an ignorant brute. He used to beat her. I saw the welts on the back of her thighs. I put a stop to it right quick. That’s one advantage of my background, Hamish. I could call on people whose names alone inspired fear. He never dared touch her again. She and Augustin would have been perfect together.’
‘Brother and sister?’
‘No. They never saw themselves as that. Nor did I. But young people have their own plans. They see things differently. Exploring the wider world when what they really need and want lies closer to home. You have a steady girlfriend, Hamish?’
‘Really that’s none of your business.’ He shifted back and finding the cushion behind him now extraneous removed it to his side. At this rate she was becoming as intrusive as Pat. Joan Oliphant smiled at his discomfort. ‘I know. We each have our role. Yours is to ask questions and draw conclusions. Mine, well I’m tired of it, for look what it’s brought me.’
Time to regain the initiative, Hamish decided. So far there had been too much tea and sympathetic listening. ‘I understand Blythe sometimes watched you with clients. Did Augustin do the same?’
Joan looked genuinely horrified. ‘What an idea. No. Never. Never considered. Never asked for, and if it had been I would have refused.’
‘Yet he himself liked to spank. Women in his case. There was a brochure for old-fashioned hairbrushes in his flat.’
‘I don’t know where you’re getting this crazy idea from. Someone else suggested it to me. It’s utter rubbish. Yes he was at some of those shoots, but it was the filming he was interested in, not what the subject was. I regret I ever introduced him into it. He wanted to build his proficiency. He needed the money. Anyway, I can’t change what’s happened, but I will keep refuting the lies some people seem to be telling about him.’
Hamish changed tack again. ‘Blythe, though, did take part in your business here. She saw and noted things which became dangerous for someone.’
‘You think she was murdered because of something that happened here.’
‘Don’t you?’
Joan got up and gathered the two now empty mugs and the plate of one uneaten jammy dodger. ‘These are beginning to annoy me. They’re no longer needed here. Back in a mo.’
While she was gone Hamish took the opportunity to stretch his legs. He tried to picture how she must have been with Geraldine. Certainly not this mumsy. Instead she had been poised and in control, and she hadn’t taken at all, it seemed, to Lacenaire.
‘That’s better,’ Joan said when she returned and sat down again in her accustomed pose. Her cardigan had been shed elsewhere. ‘Now, where were we? Ah yes. Blythe and our little games. At first, you know, she thought it rude. Men’s naked private parts and all that. Soon, however, she proved very adept. Almost a natural, if that’s the right expression in the circs. I told her what they wanted, and she played it out well, asking for them to be punished more harshly, commentating on the state of their bums when they did corner time. Humiliation, you see, dear. You don’t mind if I call you dear, do you? Cos I feel we’re getting on like the proverbial house on fire now. A good chat solves a lot of things I always say.’
Hamish did mind, ‘I’m not a confidante, Mrs Oliphant. Remember I’m a police officer.’
‘Oh I do. Roles are my business. Anyway, as I was saying, detective constable, humiliation was what these particular gentlemen callers wanted, and they wanted it witnessed in the eyes of an innocent young woman. The only thing she never properly managed was when I had to wash out a dirty mouth with soap. She always got the giggles. Apart from that they were very appreciative,’ she paused. A serious, almost melancholic, look came over her face. ‘No-one ever asked through it all how I felt. It was always their feelings. Never mine.’
‘Harder! Harder!’ Celia’s gasped exhortations in the upstairs back bedroom at Milly Simpson’s spanking party came back to Hamish. He had hit her again twice in response, but then he couldn’t continue. After a moment she had righted herself and pulled up her pants and left. Neither of them had spoken.
‘It’s why I know Augustin never did what others claim.’ Joan’s words were clear. Celia’s eclipsed. ‘He understood. He was the only one. He understood how I felt.’ She rose. ‘I’ve got a photo of him over in the bureau drawer there.‘
The photograph, when she handed it over, was in black and white, set in a tortoiseshell frame. In the centre, a youngster clad in two tone cowboy tunic, white chaps and Stetson, brandished two toy guns above his head. Several boy and girls, some kneeling, surrounded him. Hamish fast forwarded the grinning childish face onto the decomposed body of the man who now lay in the mortuary cabinet. Joan pointed to the central figure. ‘Not everybody’s been the Milky Bar Kid. That’s something they can’t take away.’
‘You’ve nothing of him later?’
She shook her head. ‘This is when he was truly Sparky. Later, as I’ve told you, he was simply Augustin Cox w
ith all the loss of innocence we all go through. Last time when he told me he was going to make a break, have a fresh start, sitting just where you are now, I offered him money, but he said, “No, Mum, I don’t need it. Don’t worry. I’ll be alright.” Alright. Well, only if you think being killed by some dirty fucking bastard is alright.’
The f-word spilling from these so previously restrained lips was like a rifle crack disturbing the suburban peace of Hornsey, as unaccustomed as if a lady who lunched had suddenly spat olive stones into her Pinot Grigio. The grief and anger were palpable.
‘I need a list of your clients. You do want to see the perpetrator caught. I see that.’
She shook her head. ‘No. Not from me. If you find them out some other way I can’t stop you, but never from me.’
Hamish let it go for now. It was clear her professionalism or her rules of etiquette, whichever she wanted to call them, were too strong to loosen. ‘Some time ago you said there was no need for detection, yet you hired a private detective.’
‘My, you have been doing your research. Yes, I did. I’ve nothing to hide.’
People keep saying this, thought Hamish, but the opposite is the truth.
‘My father, when he was older, had dealings with another up and coming hard case, Micky Rubin. His little bitch of a daughter got into our trade through the woman who now runs Halcyon DVDs. By all accounts Micky went ballistic when he found out. He was in and out of Brixton and the Scrubs when she started. The head of the agency I went to was inside with him, one Norman or Norma Bones, a cross-dresser or a full transvestite I don’t know which. He, she, it was outside there taking photographs. Blythe spotted what was going on. Anyway, I digress the point was they knew Micky.’
‘I don’t see the connection.’
‘Patience, officer, I’m coming to it. Little Miss Rubin, scheming little tart that she is, got her claws into Augustin. He was smitten, silly boy. It took him away from Blythe. It made him miserable. I tried to keep them apart, but it didn’t work. Then, thankfully, she left. No-one knew where and slowly he accepted it.’
‘What was her first name?’
‘Lucy. Like all of us she had a working pseudonym. Lucy ‘Mandy’ Revell. She and her father are where you want to go, Detective Constable Hamish, not my clients. You may have to hurry. With men like Rubin the body count might still go up. Besmirch their warped traditional morality and revenge is the reckoning.’
‘Was Augustin tidy?’ With a sudden flash of inspiration Hamish interrupted her gangland musings.
She looked at him pityingly as if the full fifty pence piece had bypassed him at birth. ‘I’m telling you something important and you ask was he tidy? He was a man. He was young. Tidy doesn’t come into it.’
‘Did he leave anything here? Anything personal?’
‘A camera.’
‘I’d like to take it away as evidence for fingerprinting.’
‘Suit yourself. It’s no use to me. I don’t need things in order to remember him.’ She left the room and returned shortly afterwards with a camcorder. Hamish bagged it and thanked her. ‘You will follow up what I told you about Micky Rubin, wont you? The man’s a menace. I don’t feel safe.’
‘We will. Thank you for your help. We’ll be in touch.’ He got up to go. You’re used to being in control, he thought. It’s your stock in trade, but now two deaths have undermined it and you’re turning to us as an unlikely source of help. He retrieved his shoes and put them on. Silently she showed him to the door. No doubt the next gentleman caller would receive a somewhat different welcome.
*
As he drove back to Feltham, forced by numerous road works onto a more circuitous route, Hamish tried to assess his position between the undoubted attraction of Geraldine on one hand and his professional obligations on the other. For a moment, while halted at yet more temporary Stop lights, he pictured her virtually naked with a croaking Lacenaire on her shoulder luring him onwards like an Irish version of the Lorelei over the slippery rocks of dereliction of duty and into the whirlpool of betrayal of trust. Was the sticky sweetness of sex — after more or less a period of abstinence — heading him for salvation or rather the abyss? No, he answered to his own satisfaction now that he had another Go sign and had set off again through a narrow chicane, it wasn’t just sex. He was falling in love. No, make that he was in love. Whatever else, he had to keep faith with her. In a bizarre way Augustin had brought them together. Augustin now must keep them together.
From the giant hoardings, one after the other by the side of the dual carriageway, first Pat then Jerzy, uncharacteristically solemn, looked down disapprovingly from, in her case, a Land Of Leather chesterfield and in his the driver’s seat of a Volkswagen Polo. Play it both ways. Keep them all happy. But was he up to it? I managed to tidy my flat, he thought. I can do it, he told himself.
Now the road in front was relatively clear he accelerated, making up for lost time. He’d be in Feltham within the half hour. I’ll talk to Jerzy, he said to himself in the mirror. Self expression, after all, was what was wanted. He felt better, but did Geraldine know about her boss’s prison record? Joan hadn’t said what she/he was in for and he hadn’t asked. Dangerous territory perhaps, and Christ, on top of all this there were the grandparents this evening. He gave the accelerator another bit of gun and overtook not one but two Chris Salvesen lorries. Where were the Eddie Stobarts of yesteryear? Families, who needed them? He didn’t. Joan had, in a strange way, which had led to tragedy. Geraldine, now he came to think of it, had hardly mentioned hers. At least, as far as he knew, there were no siblings or over-affectionate aunts to emerge from her past. As a Lorelei she was beautiful, as a rookie detective she was enticing, as a possible abiding soulmate she was irresistible. He just hoped he was up to the task. Sirens blaring, blues and twos flashing, a bunched sprint of traffic cop cars shot past. Somewhere up ahead for someone trouble lay.
Chapter 20
Synchronicity
1. Tales of The Glasgow Empire
‘It’s no the same. Wi’ the prices doon here ye’d hiv to pit in the club for twelve month and cut back on the cairry oots and the fags. Mine’s a hauf an’ a hauf by the way, Hamish. In spite o’ her Ah’m no gonna change the diet.’
‘And yourself, Gran?’
‘Oh, if he’s determined to drink so am I. I’ll have a whisky and lemonade. Small one, mind.’ She looked quizzically at her husband who ignored the hint.
‘Days were a man could get a quarter gill in peace an a gless was a real gless.’
‘Aye, thae days were alright for some, but what was left of the pay packet on the table?’
Hamish left them contentedly squabbling and joined the throng at the bar. They didn’t change. It was as if his grandfather, Peter, had only left Glasgow last week instead of moving south to Stewart and Lloyds at Corby more than fifty years ago. Now here they were in a London Wetherspoons, although technically a Lloyds, on the Charing Cross Road, after a matinee of The Phantom Of The Opera. He waved a tenner, more in hope than real anticipation at a passing member of staff to show his good intent as a customer. He was almost tempted to order the Portuguese or Brazilian concoction Geraldine had drunk at La Perla Escondida for himself but couldn’t quite remember either the name or how it was pronounced. Rather, a pint of Abbot would fit the bill. So far neither Peter nor Aileen had asked him, in his granddad’s phrase, ‘Are ye winching?’ or in his gran’s more discreet, ‘Have you found a nice young lady yet?’ Well, if they did he would be able to answer in the affirmative and let them go back on the coach with a glow: Peter in satisfied machismo that the boy was getting his rocks off and Aileen tentative that at last there was a chance of him settling down. Served at last, he took the drinks in two relays back to the table.
‘Aye the stage machinery fur The Phantom wis state o’ the art. Ah’ll gae ye that,’ Peter said grudgingly, eyeing the whisky level in his glass. ‘The old Empire but. Ye could nae beat it for entertainment. The Moss Empires, Ah’m talking
aboot, Hamish. All over Britain. Slainte!’ Peter raised his English measure of Glenfiddich. ‘Guid tae see ye. Ony big city, as Ah wis sayin’. Twa shows a nicht. First wan six thirty an’ a dram mair Christian than this in the interval. Mind, ye had to look sharp in they days. The boozers closed at nine. Can ye credit it? Nae wunner there were fights twa a penny efter they rang the bell and pu’ed thae metal shutters doon.’
‘Is there any chance of us living in the present?’ Aileen took a dainty sip of whisky. ‘Just the way I like it, Hamish. We’re in London for God’s sake, no stuck at the top of Sauchiehall St. Hamish hasn’t come here to hear you maundering on about Moss Empires and,’ she broke off to watch with raised eyebrows a tall, young Goth woman swathed in floaty black with a multi-pierced visage move by. ‘Anyway, he had to suffer it all before as a laddie.’
‘See whit Ah have to grin and bear. Ye’d think at oor time o’ life there would be a rapprochement, a live an’ let live, but nae chance. It’s the battle o’ the sexes tae the bitter end until the undertaker chaps on the door wi’ his measuring tape.’
‘Peter, you’re going too far.’ In spite of herself Aileen could not suppress a surreptitious chuckle. ‘Let’s declare a truce. We are celebrating, at least as others back home think we’re celebrating. I’ll buy a round. No, Hamish, put your wallet away. Now, if you would be so good to go and get them I’ll retire to the ladies. I see the sign over there.’
‘It’s weel crowded at the meenit,’ continued Peter when Aileen had left, ‘an’ yon punk lassie’s likely tae order the curry bonanza. Stay awhile while her nibs is engaged.’
‘Goth,’ said Hamish eyeing her rear view and thinking of Professor Donald’s acolyte, Sandra. ‘Punks are very rare on the ground these days.’