Amphetamines and Pearls

by John Harvey

  We were both on our feet: the gun was on the concrete underneath the Saab. The envelope of money was on the floor of the car. Of all the things, this stupid thought ran through my mind: in the middle of the morning in the West End why was there no one driving in or out of the garage? Then a more sensible thought: where was his partner from yesterday? All the while I was thinking I guess that he was thinking too, but I don’t have an idea what about. He didn’t say.

  He took a step forward and jumped at me with his left arm swinging for my neck. He wanted to push me out of the way and get to the gun. I went with the blow and let him past. Then as he stooped to scoop it up I launched myself at his back. Elbows first, hard into the shoulder blades, knees next, into the base of the spine. His shout was muffled by the ground as he tried hard to bite a chunk out of the concrete.

  I was off him and hauled him up by the collar, so that the force choked on his throat. My fist sank through the flaps of his coat into his belly. A shower of saliva flew from his mouth; his face was grazed deeply along one cheek and a flap of bloody flesh hung away from his lip so that his mouth resembled an old fish that had been gaffed too often. I went in and grabbed hold of the lapels of his coat and moved him back against the wall. Three times I hit his head back against the open brickwork; the third time there was no resistance and I let him slump slowly to the floor.

  I picked the envelope up from the floor of the car and pushed it inside his torn shirt. Then I thought for a moment and pulled it back out. I took out two of the notes and transferred them to my wallet. Expenses for the time wasted. I gave him back the envelope. He didn’t say thank you.

  The gun was heavy and I removed the clip and put it in the glove compartment of the car. The gun I stuffed after the envelope.

  Still no one had driven into the garage. Commiserating with the owner under my breath, I switched on the engine and let the Saab into gear.

  The red dress had been replaced by a blue one, but the smile remained the same. Jane looked at me as though I had crawled in from the latest horror movie; I knew what she meant but I didn’t have the time to do anything about it.

  ‘You look as though you just lost a good fight.’

  ‘Uh-huh. I just won a bad one. Is your Mr Hyphenated-Gordon-Brown in yet or is he still out to a business breakfast?’

  She didn’t laugh: she had taste. But she did get through on the intercom system. He was in. I turned away and headed for the second floor.

  ‘You won’t forget our lunch, will you?’

  I wouldn’t forget but I was rapidly losing my appetite.

  The name above the obligatory dragon read ‘Patrick Gordon-Brown—Recording Manager’. I knocked on the frosted glass and went in. A dark-haired version of Jane was sitting at the left of the room behind a large desk. She was looking longingly at an electric typewriter as though she was about to seduce it; she could have had on Jane’s red dress from the day before but I doubted it. I just hoped they didn’t turn up at the building with them on the same day. Businesses have been known to fail for less.

  I asked for Mr Gordon-Brown and gave my name. She gave it back into a little speaker at the edge of her desk and pointed to the door opposite. I smiled a thank you and she smiled all right back but she wasn’t as appealing as her colleague downstairs. It was when I was opening the door that I realised why: she hadn’t giggled.

  Your friendly neighbourhood recording manager didn’t look as though he was going to giggle either. Thickly striped shirt open at the collar, black, tight trousers, tinted glasses without rims. He held out a well-manicured hand.

  ‘It’s lovely to meet you, Mr Mitchell. Janie said you wanted to talk to me about dear Candi, God rest her soul.’ He offered me a seat, a cigarette and a drink in swift succession. ‘You’re a reporter, are you?’

  I told him that I wasn’t. A photograph of Candi looked at me from behind his desk; the same pose as in the one which had been in her flat. At the bottom corner she had signed it ‘To Patrick, With All My Love’.

  ‘Oh, I see, I understood from Janie in Reception that you were—a reporter, I mean.’ He showed several expensively-filled teeth.

  I told him I was just a friend. Had been a friend.

  ‘I see. A terrible thing, naturally; terrible. To happen at such a time in her career makes it a true tragedy.’

  ‘Why now in particular?’

  ‘She had never really broken big on the American market. All over Europe and Scandinavia she was a big name—Australia, too. But in the States, nothing. Just a big zero. Till the last month or two, that is. One of her singles went to number two in the Billboard and Cashbox charts and the album rose to the mid-twenties. Oh, yes, she was about to take off there all right. We had a whole tour lined up: supper clubs, a few places like the Troubador for the hipper audience, television. And now … nothing.’

  ‘Just money for her memories.’

  He looked puzzled, slightly annoyed. ‘I’m afraid I don’t quite follow.’

  ‘I heard it on the radio this morning. Her new record. Wouldn’t you say that was cashing in?’

  Now he did look hurt. What right had I to make remarks’ about his integrity?

  ‘That single would have been issued regardless, Mr Mitchell. As would the album it was pulled from. And we’re putting that back till next month so that we can redesign the cover.’

  ‘So you can put on a picture of her coffin,’ I suggested. ‘Just to pull in the necrophiliac end of the market.’

  He stood up. ‘So that we can call it a memorial album and use a simple picture of her with a black line round it, if you must know. It will all be very tasteful, I can assure you of that.’ He felt that his dignity and that of his company was restored and he sat down again.

  He even apologised: I had never realised what nice young men worked in the record business.

  ‘Excuse me. I worked with Candi for a number of years and we were very close …’

  I interrupted him and pointed at the inscription on the photograph behind his desk: Yes. I can see that.’

  He turned and half-smiled: ‘Oh that, that is merely show-business talk, Mr Mitchell. Our relationship was merely a working one, I assure you. A very close one, but a working one only.’

  I tried to work out whether he was happy or sad about that fact but I couldn’t.

  I switched tack.

  Did you look after all of Candi’s affairs, or just the recording side of things?’

  ‘Oh, no.’ He took a long cigarette from the box on the desk, offered one to me and when I shook my head replaced the box on the desk. He lit the cigarette with a table lighter in the shape of a dragon: they weren’t about to let anyone forget who was paying the bills. If anyone stepped out of line maybe they just burnt them up: instead of a retirement clock, a full-scale funeral pyre.

  He inhaled deeply and let the smoke float out from slightly parted lips. ‘Oh, no, that wasn’t my job at all. In many ways I wish it had been. I might have made a better job of things for her.’

  ‘I thought you said her career was largely successful?’

  ‘So it was, but something funny was going on with the money side if you ask me.’

  I leaned forward without trying to look too interested.

  ‘And did she?’

  ‘Ask me? No. But I loaned her money from time to time. Quite large sums, too. Not that I begrudge that, of course. Nor did I ask her what she wanted it for.’

  ‘Why couldn’t she ask her personal manager for money? Presumably she’d earned it?’

  He blew a smoke ring thoughtfully towards the ceiling.

  ‘I really haven’t the slightest idea. I don’t even know what sort of arrangement they had. She wouldn’t discuss it with me: not that I tried very hard. She had the same manager as when she started working solo, as far as I know. Some chappie in the provinces somewhere. Had to do almost all
the business by telephone, or letter. Inconvenient at times.’

  Something was becoming clearer. ‘Nottingham?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Do you know him then?’

  Try it, Mitchell. Play your hunch. ‘Howard, you mean?’

  ‘Yes, that’s the name.’

  I sat back in my chair. ‘No. No, I don’t know him.’

  Patrick Gordon-Brown looked bemused. I stood up and held out my hand. He shook it automatically.

  ‘Thank you, you’ve been very helpful. I may drop in on you again some time. Perhaps we could have lunch.’

  I left his office and was half-way through the outer door when he called after me.

  ‘I say! Look! I don’t really know what it was that you wanted.’

  Nor did I when I arrived, but I thought that maybe I did now. I thought of winking at the secretary but decided against it: I would save it for Jane on the way out. You do it too often and it makes you blind: or so my old granny used to say.

  8

  The motorway was crammed full with lorries and idiots who thought they were driving in the Grand Prix but who would never have got round the first hairpin. Show them a length of straight road and they’ll race along it, no matter what. I stopped at the service station for a cup of coffee that tasted as plastic as the cup in which it was served. I left the doughnuts on the counter, begging for a home like fat boys in an orphanage.

  On the last stage of the journey it began to snow. That was almost all I needed. I huddled down into the expensive-feeling seat, plugged John Stewart into the eight-track and got on with the driving. The only trouble with motorways was that you never got slim girls with suitcases and names like July standing by the side of the road hitching lifts. Hell, where did I think I was going anyway? Seattle?

  In real terms it wasn’t long before I hit the Nottingham turn-off, but it seemed like a snowy eternity. Now I knew why I didn’t run a car of my own: I just hated driving. Even one like this.

  I parked the Saab in the multi-storey and crossed the road into the Victoria Centre. Howard was in the phone book, with about twenty-five variations of initial. I cross-checked in the yellow pages and found one under ‘Clubs and Entertainment’. There were two numbers: one for the 250 Club and one which I thought might be a home number. I dialled the latter and there was no reply. I tried the 250 without much hope of success. While it was ringing I wondered whether the number was to do with the location or was the price of fresh air: whatever, no one at the other end of the phone was about to tell me.

  I walked out of the centre and went into a little Turkish restaurant beside the car park. They gave me a fine helping of lunchtime’s moussaka and a local paper to read with my tiny cup of sweet coffee and pieces of turkish delight. I ate the delight, left the coffee and used the wooden stick to pick the remnants of minced lamb from between my teeth.

  The murder was still front page news and there was a picture of the man in charge of the case, a Superintendent Leake. He was standing next to the inspector who had questioned me and taken my statement. Neither of them looked particularly happy, though Leake seemed to have more about him. From the picture he was about fifty and surprisingly short. I wondered how he had got into the police in the first place. I figured if he could make superintendent with his height then he could solve murders. I thought I would go and pay him a visit.

  On the way to the station I called Tom Gilmour. He was in and he was up to his mothering arse in paperwork. His words, not mine. He told me he had found out who the corpse on my stairs belonged to and I tried hard to sound interested. He didn’t say anything more, so maybe the money I had given to Mrs Cook had bought her silence. For a while, anyway. Or perhaps she had been in no fit state to tell them anything very much.

  He asked me where I was and I said that I was in Nottingham and that I was about to go to talk to the officer in charge of the case. He said something not clearly audible at the other end of the phone. I thought about asking him to repeat it, but decided against it. Instead I told him about my morning visit from the hood with the gun. He told me to watch my mothering arse and I told him to look after his own—all that paperwork must be bad for it.

  Superintendent Leake didn’t look as if he used such coarse expressions. He was indeed a smaller man than you might expect in the tallest force in the country, but I guessed he must have compensatory factors. Like, maybe he had a brain that worked. After talking to him for a quarter of an hour I knew that he had and that it worked well. I always knew there must be civilised and intelligent cops somewhere and here was one.

  I showed him my card and licence and he didn’t look at me as though I was a traitor or a fool. He asked me what I knew and I said that it was precious little. I told him about the pressure to keep my nose out and about my conversation with Candi’s recording manager. I said I was going to call on Howard and he raised an eyebrow. He had spoken to him yesterday and got nothing: no facts, no suggestions, not even an impression as to the man’s feelings.

  I asked if anything was known about him. He had no form, but the police had watched his club from time to time. Mainly because they suspected dope was being passed there. So far, though, they had come up with nothing. I promised that if I found out anything useful I would let him know.

  Leake gave me what information he had in return: either he had unearthed very little or he wasn’t being as straight as he appeared. The only prints in the flat had been mine. There were none of Candi’s either, which suggested that whoever had been there before me had wiped the place clean. It also made things look better for me. The bullet was a .32: a small calibre and an unusual one for a professional to use. He asked me if I carried a gun and I looked shocked and said I didn’t but that if I did it certainly wouldn’t be a .32.

  They had got some incomplete prints from the hallway and the stairs, but so far they hadn’t been able to match them with anything. They were now in London at C11 being checked through the system.

  There was nothing more. The interview was over. I thanked him for his time and for being so open.

  ‘There is just one thing which bothers me, Mr Mitchell,’ he said as I stood up.

  I looked at him enquiringly.

  ‘If a man beat you up on the stairs outside the building which housed Miss Carter’s flat and if we presume not too long a gap between that happening and yourself coming round, why did no one see him? My men in the car were outside the flat nearby for a while before they saw you coming out. They say that they saw no one. Certainly, after the murder was discovered by us there were policemen all over the building.’ He took a lengthy pause. ‘It certainly makes you think, Mr Mitchell, doesn’t it?’

  I was out in the street again with nothing much to do. I tried both of Howard’s numbers without any more luck. So I did what I usually do when I have time to kill. I went to see a movie. It was a re-run of Hawks’s ‘Rio Bravo’ and by the time it was over and I had managed to get past admiring Angie Dickenson’s legs, I had picked up a lot of respect for old John Wayne. No matter what difficulties they threw at him he didn’t back down. Of course, he did have a few people helping him. They might only have been a drunk, a cripple and a singing cowboy who looked as though he was only just weaned, but they were there. All I had was a scarred stripper with red hair, a worn out hunch that probably wouldn’t lead me anywhere at all and a thirst. But like I said before, this isn’t a movie.

  It was time to try out the thirst and the hunch on the 250 Club. Like a lot of similar places it was over the top of a large tailor’s. There were posters on the stairs and at the landing a mean-looking brunette took a couple of pounds off me with the expertise of Arnold Bennett skimming the skin from a rice pudding. If you see what I mean.

  A red velvet curtain pushed aside into a small room with a bar at one side. Behind this room was another, about the same size and with a small bandstand at the far end. There were one or two f
ellers at the bar, chatting to the usual brass barmaid. They must all come from the same mould straight to places like this. A small guy in a dark suit was taking drums from their leather cases and setting them up on the stand. Nobody took much notice of me. I bought a pint of bitter for my thirst and a scotch for myself and went and sat in the inner room and watched the drummer putting his kit together. From a speaker over the door came the music of someone who might almost have been Charlie Parker but wasn’t. Just like I might have been John Wayne! I called it as Sonny Stitt left it at that.

  It was quite a bit later that the man I guessed to be Howard came in. There were more paying customers by now, including one or two part-time prostitutes and someone I figured to be a plain-clothes man Leake had sent down to see how I got along. The only thing was, I couldn’t be sure if he was there to watch me or Howard. Both, I supposed.

  Howard was a big man, a fat man. He had his arm round the shoulders of a thin guy carrying a saxophone case and was laughing from underneath dark glasses. It was a sound I didn’t like: slightly unearthly, unnatural. He clapped the sax player on the back a few times, went round behind the bar, goosed the barmaid—or so I assumed from her practised reaction and the customers’ snorts of delight—and poured out a couple of liberal scotches. Then he and Mr Sax disappeared into a room beside the bar which could have been the gents but which was probably the band room.

  I looked round. The drummer had finished setting up and was sitting on his stool reading the Melody Maker. A double bass had been laid on its side in front of the upright piano. Most of the people round the bar seemed involved in a fairly noisy conversation. The guy I figured for a cop was sitting on the edge of the group drinking beer and doing a good job of listening. Above the increased sound the tape had changed to Monk playing Ellington. I waited until he had played the riff at the opening of ‘Sophisticated Lady’ that takes him into the melody, then I got up and headed for the door beside the bar. I hoped that if I moved not too fast and not too slow no one would notice: except for the copper, in case I needed him.