Amphetamines and Pearls

by John Harvey

  I mean, any stranger could mistake it for the gents.

  Not once you got inside you couldn’t.

  It was a small room, no bigger than a large cupboard. A naked light bulb hung dimly from the ceiling. The sax man was sitting on a wooden chair, slumped down and with his jacket on the floor by his feet. His left shirt sleeve was rolled up and in his right hand he was holding a plastic syringe. The needle had pierced the vein just below the centre of his arm.

  He had his eyes shut tight and was biting deep into his lower lip. He didn’t open his eyes when I came into the room and shut the door quickly behind me. There was a key on the inside and I turned it damned fast. I had the key in my pocket and my gun nestling in my hand before fat-boy knew what had hit him. I tell you, there are times when I’m good and when I’m good you had better watch out!

  Howard didn’t speak but the front of his gut began to tremble slightly, like a gigantic jelly. Maybe it didn’t like the fact that a Smith and Wesson .38 was pointing straight at it from a distance of less than two feet.

  I looked for the expression behind his glasses but could see nothing there. There was no sound for several minutes except for an intake of breath from the guy who was shooting up. I saw his finger ease on the end of the syringe and his head lowered; his eyes blinked, then opened. And he found himself looking at me standing there with a gun. Strange trip.

  He looked as though he was going to speak; at least his mouth opened and closed a few times. In case he was I told him to shut up. It was Howard I wanted to talk to.

  ‘Okay, we’ve only a little time before someone comes and knocks on this door and wants to know why you’re taking so long getting fixed. So listen hard and answer fast if I ask you a question. Got it?’

  He nodded and looked across at the junkie in the chair. I eased his face round gently with the barrel of my .38.

  I was beginning to enjoy this more and more.

  ‘I’m the guy who found Candi’s body. That wasn’t all that I found. I also found a few things in a shoe-box that whoever had cleared out had carelessly left behind: and they sure weren’t shoes. As I was leaving someone slugged me and took the things back. Maybe you know what was in that box. Maybe it even found its way back to you. Am I getting warm?’

  Whether I was or not, Howard certainly was. The sweat quietly ran down his forehead and behind his glasses; it ran down his sideboards into his neck; it sprang out in the palms of his podgy hands.

  ‘Now all that means Candi was hooked. Whether she was mainlining or not I don’t know because I didn’t have the sense to look for the marks at the time. But a quick check with the path. lab report will turn that up. But perhaps she was still taking orally, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.’

  I paused for breath and pushed his stomach with the end of the gun. The vein to the right of his forehead leapt out into sharp relief. The sweat flowed more freely. He was surely as scared as all hell and it wasn’t for no reason.

  ‘Okay. I’ll tell you my version of the story. You were Candi’s manager. She trusted you and you got her hooked on dope. Then you sold it to her. The deeper she got hooked the more you sold. You were taking a percentage off her earnings for managing her and then another percentage after that for feeding her habit. She was getting so little herself she borrowed money from her recording manager and from Christ knows who else besides.’

  I grinned at him and waved the gun in his face.

  ‘How does that grab you so far? Shall I go on? ’Cause now we come to the part where it becomes a little less clear and this is where I want your help. Several things could have happened at this point; things that could have caused someone to get so annoyed with Candi they wanted to put her out of the way. She might have been into someone for a lot of money and not look as though she was going to pay it back. She might have tried to turn her back on the whole thing—the singing, the dope, everything. She might have been trying to get back at you in some way; maybe even blackmail.

  ‘Now, which of those ideas do you like?’

  I fanned him with my gun again but it didn’t seem to cool him down. The sax player was still sitting on his chair, as though he didn’t believe it was all happening. I let the barrel come to rest alongside the fat man’s temple.

  ‘There isn’t much time but don’t think you can stall me for long. Which of my little ideas do you like best? Tell!’ The gun was making a dent in the skin and I knew that he was going to call my bluff. Despite all that shaking blubber and all that sweat, he knew that I wasn’t going to use a .38 in there with a crowd of people outside and no other way out.

  But I had hit more home chords than were comfortable and he knew it. I was thinking what the hell to do next when there was a bang on the door from the outside. A voice shouting above the music and the chatter to find out if Howard was all right.

  For the first time he spoke: ‘Sure. We’re on our way out now.’

  I looked at his glasses and wished I could see behind them. Next time I would.

  ‘All right. I’m going out of here behind you and I’m leaving the club. But I’ll be back to see you again and you won’t know when it’s going to be. If anyone tries to follow me tonight or to get to me in any way then I’ll use this. I’m fed up with being pushed around and taken for a patsy. Okay?’

  He nodded. I turned to the guy on the chair.

  ‘You’d better put that thing away and roll your sleeve back down. There’s a law against that sort of thing, you know.’

  I walked past the copper at the bar without a glance. I waited outside to see if he was going to follow me: or if anyone else was. When nobody emerged in five minutes I called down a taxi and went to collect my car from the car park. I had an appointment with Maxie.

  9

  Rain had filled the air and washed the streets. There was a newness, a freshness that had no place where I was walking. My feet carried me along a path that could only lead to death: my own and how many others I could not reckon. It was an inescapable path yet a bitter one—bitter with the reek of cordite and the sharpness of broken promises. A street lined with nightmares and tainted with death. This rain was a liar and a cheat and I cursed it as I turned the corner towards the arcade.

  It was nearly three and I was late: the lights inside the arcade were dimmed; the place was deserted except for a grey tabby rubbing its leg against the leg of one of the pin tables. I bent to stroke it and its back reared as it jerked its head away and spat. I moved past it and on towards the door.

  The light showed dimly over the woodwork. I knocked twice and the sound was lost in the blankness of the moment. After a few seconds waiting I tried again: this time I thought there was a faint scuffling sound from the other side of the door. The handle refused to turn to my grip.

  Time to use a little force, I said to myself and then the scuffling grew louder and began to scratch at the wood. I stood quite still: my hand was on the butt of my .38 and I watched as something applied pressure to the handle of the door. A long pause followed by a faint but distinct click and then the handle itself began to turn.

  My gun in my right hand, I stepped across the face of the door and yanked it open—fast. Falling from the dying light of the room, something collapsed into the space directly in front of my feet. Something large, something that might have been a bundle of old clothes and sacking: but for the remains of a human head which landed nearest to my toe. Something that was Maxie—or what was left of Maxie.

  I knelt among the unswept grime and cradled that mewling thing in my arms. The already swollen leprous face was now a morass of congealed blood and opened flesh. I knelt and held him because he was still human and because that made him more important to me than the cat which moved silently behind me.

  Maybe.

  Or maybe it was because there was life somewhere within his beaten form and I wanted to get the information that I needed as long as there was
the slightest chance.

  I lifted the body and carried it into the room, banging the door closed with my foot. I laid him on the table and fetched water from the filthy sink in the corner: I took out my handkerchief and began to clean away his face.

  When I had done what I could I went out of the arcade and walked back to the car. From the compartment under the dashboard I took the half-bottle of scotch I had bought to keep me company on the cold journey home. There was enough left—I hoped. I took the bottle back and started to force the contents down Maxie’s throat through the torn purse of his lips. After a while he began to cough and splutter and hold his body against the racking pain.

  I leant my head close to his face and had to inwardly clench myself to keep it there.

  ‘Maxie. Can you hear what I’m saying? Can you see who it is?’

  His eyes showed nothing at the back of their slits but he managed to nod his head. I went on.

  ‘You had something for me. Tell me what it was?’

  No movement of the head this time: no acknowledgement.

  I shook him not too roughly by the shoulder nearest to me.

  ‘Maxie! The information! I need to know. Now.’

  His head rolled away from mine and I pulled it round again to face me. There was a cut below his left eye which was like an over-ripe plum that has been bitten into by the sharp beak of a bird. I closed my eyes for a second and put my mouth closer to his ear.

  ‘Look, Maxie. The drugs. Where would I get a nice steady supply of drugs; all clean and without danger? Where, Maxie? Come on, you know where, Maxie.’

  Once more the rolling away of the head: once more the pulling back. Each time more desperate: each time fiercer. Knowing that time was running out—Maxie’s time. My time. Time.

  ‘Maxie! For Christ’s sake!’

  I raised him from the surface of the table and supported him with one arm, while I tried to get more whisky into him. He gulped and choked and most of it slobbered back down his face, stinging him as it ran through his sores.

  Then the puffed balls that were his eyes seemed to grow more aware. The hold I had on him tightened; the hole beneath his nose tried desperately to form words. I put the side of my head to his face and listened.

  ‘Scott … you … you’ve got to get me to … doctor … too late oth … erwise … there’s no ch—’ He broke off as a pain cut through the length of his body: his hands went to his chest and the hole that was his mouth opened wide. I held him to me: I was sure he was dying and so was he.

  But it passed this time and he made another effort to speak.

  ‘Doctor … now … now Scott … dying.’

  ‘Okay, Maxie, I’ll take you to the doctor. But first tell me about the drugs. The drugs, Maxie! You just tell me and then I’ll put you in the motor and we’ll go to the doctor.’

  He said nothing, whispered nothing. I just prayed he was still listening.

  ‘You said it was getting more difficult. You said that someone else was moving in. Someone big. Who, Maxie, who?’

  ‘East End … running stuff for some—uh! my chest! like a strap across me! … I don’t know who … they use the muscle … knocking small boys out …’

  I shook him hard.

  ‘I know that, Maxie, I know all that. You gave me that before. What I want now is names. Names, Maxie! If you want to get to that doctor give me some names!’

  He spoke again but the sound was getting more and more feeble every time.

  ‘Don’t … know … names … young feller … moustache long hair … a nigger … big as houses … big as—ooh! pain! it was him as done … as done me …’

  The sound trickled off into a constant moaning.

  I lifted his head and held it in front of mine.

  ‘You must know more than that, Maxie. More than if you want help.’

  He slumped back and I felt as though he was slipping away from me. I looked at the whisky bottle—it was empty.

  ‘Maxie!’

  I pulled back my hand and slapped him hard across the face. Twice: across and back. The mouth-thing opened slightly. I bent my ear to it.

  ‘Don’t need … no help … no doctor … now.’

  I shook him. I pulled him upright. Shook him again. Laid him back on the table. Listened for a pulse that no longer beat.

  I went over to the sink and washed my hands; took up the whisky bottle and put it in my pocket; used the handkerchief smeared with his blood to wipe any of my prints from the tap, the table and the door. From the dirt and grease of his clothing they would learn nothing. Using the handkerchief, I closed the door on Maxie’s body.

  The cat was still in the arcade. It sniffed its nose up in the air as I came out of the room. Slowly, gracefully, it walked towards me and went to rub itself against my leg. I swung back my foot and kicked at it, kicked at it as hard as I could. Then went out into the wet streets.

  By the time I got home it was too late to go to bed, too early to do anything else. I made coffee and couldn’t drink it. Everything I touched or tasted had the feel, the stench of decay. I ran a bath and lay in it and tried to think.

  Candi was hooked on something: from the things I found in her flat it was probably something like amphetamines or barbiturates. She was hooked and she was broke, probably from having to pay for whatever she was hooked on. Then somebody killed her. It could have been because she was refusing to pay up any more; it could have been because she was threatening to bite back on her source of supply and whoever that was got scared. It could have been something else altogether. But suppose it was something to do with the drugs. What then?

  I knew that Howard was involved with drugs in some way, but if he was pushing then he had to get his supply from somewhere. And if someone was moving in on the market and trying to get it sewn-up, they wouldn’t stick to London. They would move out into the provinces as well. Which made it very likely that Howard had been squeezed out. Besides, I couldn’t see him killing anyone himself and if Cook was typical of the kind of no-hope help he hired then he wouldn’t get anyone to do it for him. No. It was far more likely to be someone from outside. Someone from this mob. Maxie had said an oversize Negro and a young moustache. The Negro I had certainly seen and from his looks and from the way he had dealt with Maxie, I couldn’t imagine him using a little .32 on Candi. He wouldn’t even have been able to hold it between his fingers.

  But a young, long-haired moustache. There were hundreds and hundreds of them and they all looked alike. How could you tell one from the other? Until you knew one, of course.

  I thought about dear John, opening the door with a servile smile and a gun bulging through his jacket. John with the trust of Mr Thurley with an ‘ey’.

  Altogether too smooth, Mr Thurley with his Eton and Guards airs and graces and his library full of unread leather-bound books. Bought by the yard. Bought from where? What had Vonnie said about Martin’s little business venture?

  I had to talk to Vonnie again. And to Thurley.

  But before I talked to either of them I wanted to speak to Tom Gilmour. There was some more information I could do with and which he might have.

  The water in the bath was growing steadily colder and a light scum had formed across its surface. It was time to get out: I should have got out sooner.

  10

  Tom Gilmour’s office had the air of a room where things happened: I didn’t think it would be wise to query what too many of them were. When you spent your life dealing with petty hoods and larger villains, it didn’t pay to be over-gentle. So if the blinds were pulled down once in a while and the door was locked, what did it matter what went on inside? As long as the course of justice was being pursued.

  It mattered if you were the one sitting on this side of the desk. It mattered if you were the one they suspected, the one they needed to talk, the one they thought was withholding informat
ion.

  ‘You had no idea who that mother with his skull bashed in on your stairs was?’

  Gilmour looked sharp even at this hour of the morning, when I am usually only working on half-cylinders. He looked sharp in his American-style suit and with his eyes cutting the space between us. Not a man to treat without caution; not a man to lie to.

  ‘No idea,’ I lied.

  He rolled a pencil around the blotter on his desk. A new blotter, virgin white: perhaps he didn’t write much; perhaps it was stationery day. Perhaps he was a very particular man. He spoke carefully. I listened the same way.

  ‘He was a man called Cook. A small-time guy, a grafter with not much sense and very little in the way of know-how. But he might have had something in the way of guts.

  ‘You were right when you said you had seen him around. He was tailing you all right. We don’t know who put him on to you, but we do know it started straight after the papers leaked it that you found Candi Carter’s body. Or maybe before that—maybe it was after the murder but before the news hit the streets. Now that’s a whole new ball game.

  ‘If Cook was put on to you before the morning that means whoever hired him knew you were there because they were there themselves. Or they knew someone who was—someone who would want to tell them about your being there. If that was so, it makes it look good for you as far as the murder is concerned, but it leaves us wanting very much to find out who hired Mr Cook.’

  Gilmour got fed up with rolling the pencil; he pushed his chair back against the wall and stuck his feet out on to the desk. He crossed them on top of his nice new blotter. This morning he just didn’t care.