The Guardian

by Christopher Kenworthy

  “Hello? Luther?”

  “No, it’s Larry’s friend. Do you want this diary or don’t you?” said Carver.

  This time the receiver was not replaced. He could almost hear the man at the other end thinking.

  “Diary?”

  “Yes, Diary,” said Carver excitedly. “Ever such a detailed one. Really quite engrossing. You know?”

  “Say what you mean,” said Sigmund Dark. “And be quick. What do you want?”

  “Well, I think we ought to have a meeting,” said Carver. “Talk over terms. Know what I mean?”

  “I have a feeling I do, yes,” said Sigmund Dark. “How exactly did Larry come to pass away?”

  “He had an overdose of his own merchandise,” said Carver. “Died in my arms. Ever so tragic, really. He was just about to put me onto a really good thing, too. Mentioned sums like a thousand pounds and five hundred pounds just for information. Stuff like that.”

  “Well, I still haven’t heard of anyone called Larry,” said the invisible Dark thoughtfully. “But perhaps we ought to talk, as you say. Where could we meet? Shall I come to see you?”

  “Oooh, no! Not here at my flat,” said Carver. “Can’t I come to your place? I’ve heard ever so much about it!”

  “Really? From whom? Larry?” said Dark slowly. “He must have been very indiscreet. How silly of him.”

  “Can I come and see you? I’ll bring the book with me, and you could be certain of what you’re getting, then.”

  “Perhaps that would be best, yes,” said Dark smoothly. “Very well, my flat, then. Right away now? How long will it take you to get here?”

  “Well, I don’t know where it is, do I? You’ll have to tell me,” said Carver, pencil poised.

  “I’ll pick you up,” said Dark, easily. “Meet me at ... er ... The French Bar in Jermyn Street. How will I know you?”

  “I’ll be wearing a black leather jacket and trousers,” Carver told him, looking at the corpse on the floor. “Very tight. Do you like that?”

  “Be there in an hour,” said Dark, suddenly businesslike, and this time the telephone went down decisively. Carver made to hang up his own receiver, and then thought better of it, putting the instrument instead into the drawer of the table.

  He glanced at his watch and realised that The French Bar would be closed in an hour’s time. Unless it happened to be a club. That would mean he would have to stand out in the road waiting for an unknown man to turn up.

  Anyhow, here was nothing to show that the shrewd Mr Dark was anything more than a former lover, or even a mere acquaintance. The shadowy world where Larry had earned his living was no playschool. Even a man who merely hired Larry for his physical services would certainly not want to be connected with the dead body.

  Still thinking, Carver pulled the dead man’s black leather bomber jacket off the chair onto which he had thrown it, and tried it on. It was, as he had expected, too small for him and stretched tightly over his shoulders and chest.

  With his own black trousers, though, it looked enough like a leather outfit to pass in the dark. So long as it also convinced Dark, he thought, he might well be making a long step forward in his search.

  *

  Jermyn Street in London is the most gentlemanly street in the world.

  If a woman with extravagance in mind should fly to Paris to outfit herself in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, her husband would be well advised to stay home in London and take a taxi to Jermyn Street.

  Within a few steps he will be in a world which he will recognise as his own.

  He will step languidly into Harvie and Hudson to order a dozen or so shirts from a range of shirting which would make a bird of paradise book a table with champagne at the Café Royal and stand by the stage door with roses and chocolates.

  Suitably shirted he might stop by – if he has had the foresight to book an appointment some weeks back – to have his hair manicured into place at Trumpers. Trumpers treat hair like Fabergé-treated emeralds. They also claim proudly to be a gentleman’s perfumers and just by the bye sell some of the finest shaving brushes in the world.

  There are badgers to this day bald because of Trumpers.

  He might decide to protect his freshly fashioned hairstyle from the weather with a hat from Bates, and his feet from the pavement with a pair of shoes from Trickers.

  He might elect to pop into Astleys to pick a perfect briar, or cross the road to select a superb cigar from Dunhills.

  But he would – for courtesy – not light his cigar until he had stepped into Paxton and Whitfield to sniff and select his cheeses, ordered a bottle or two of cologne from Floris, and asked Edwin R. Cooper to despatch a sponge to his bathroom.

  Assuming he made his expedition in the morning, our gentleman might browse among the antiques in Arthur Davidson’s perfectly polished windows before the rigours of the day make him climb the steps to Jules Bar in order to inhale a fortifying gin and tonic.

  Barely half an hour later, his appetite honed, he might cross the road to squander £18 or so on oysters while he waits for his lobster to be flambéed in Wilton’s.

  While he is digesting that he might range thoughtfully through the stubs in his cheque book and reflect that if lobster at £23.85 a throw is a mite expensive, at least he will have spent enough money to counterbalance the grievous bodily harm his wife is doing to the joint account in Paris.

  And if he ran into a comrade or two and wanted to extend the coffee and cognac through the afternoon and into the evening in discreetly leather-and-mahogany surroundings, he would repair to the French Bar in the Jermyn Club where the neighbours wouldn’t dream of overhearing an indiscretion and the staff wouldn’t dare.

  Jermyn Street is to mayhem what the Vatican is to nonconformism.

  So when Carver discovered a severed head nestling among the fronds of the potted palm at the Edwardian portals of the French Bar, he felt a certain degree of shock.

  He stood at the rear of a small crowd gathered round two prostrate forms on the pavement and listened carefully.

  One was headless and messily bleeding into the gutter. The other, dressed in a doorman’s elaborate uniform, appeared unhurt.

  “Fainted when he saw what they threw out of the taxi,” said an interested spectator, when Carver asked for details.

  It was not hard to find out what had happened. Every man in the crowd had his own version, though they differed in the kind of fine detail which becomes important only to an investigating officer. The police, later, would be exasperated.

  In broad outline, however, they agreed.

  The owner of the decapitated body had been making a nuisance of himself earlier in the evening, waving a football scarf, shouting and dancing to the sound of a ghetto blaster as he made his way along Jermyn Street.

  Assuming that he had been separated from fellow revelers, the doorman had twice moved him along into neighbouring streets, despite his loud and abusive complaints. It had been hoped that he might by wandering fall in with his mates again and be swept away.

  On his third appearance, the doorman backed up by two residents had been about to call the police when to their delight a patrol ear had appeared of its own accord, and the trouble maker had been scooped into it and whisked away.

  Hardly had they finished congratulating one another, though, when a taxi pulled up and first the head and then the body of the late night reveler had been shot onto the pavement.

  “Rolled in a plastic sheet, he was. They kept hold of one end of it and let him slide off the other,” said the doorman when he had been revived.

  “What happened to the head?”

  Nobody seemed to know. But Carver, carefully sliding round the rear of the group, had already noted the cabbage shaped mass in the potted palm and realised what it must be. He made his discovery known to the group and watched with interest as they debated whether to disturb it or wait until the police arrived.

  Luckily, St J
ames’s being one of the more desirable districts in London, the local police were careful of their duty and made their appearance suitably briskly. Carver watched while a policeman, his nose pinched with distaste, lifted the head from the palm tree.

  Carver was fairly certain he had never seen the man before, though he realised that the relaxation of the features in death could have thrown him off.

  He hung around in the outskirts of the group until the ambulance had been and gone, and then made his way carefully down through St James’s Square to Haymarket where he had left the Daihatsu.

  There didn’t seem to be much point in attending at the French Bar any more. In the light of the gas flambeaux outside the doors he might not have been able to recognise the face of the victim. But there was plenty of light to see that his headless corpse had been dressed in a tight fitting suit of black leather.

  *

  “Good evening, Lovegod,” said Carver as he opened the door to his hotel room and stepped inside. Lovegod, who was lying full length on the bed, grunted sourly.

  “Good evening be buggered,” he said. “I warned you to leave Larry Manning alone.”

  “Manning?” said Carver. “What about him?”

  “He’s dead,” said Lovegod. “That’s what about him.”

  Carver stopped and stared.

  “Dead? How did that happen? And when?”

  “Earlier this evening, in an alleyway up in Archway. His neck was broken. Roll up your sleeves.”

  “Huh?”

  Lovegod rolled off the bed and was across the room with surprising speed.

  “Sleeves. Roll ‘em up, I want to look at something.”

  Carver, cursing inwardly, did as he was told. Lovegod took first one hand and then the other, pulling the wrists into the light. He grunted, and let Carver’s hands drop.

  “He had marks on his wrists just like those,” he said. “From manacles. And on his ankles. I suppose you have, too?”

  Carver nodded.

  “Soon as I saw him, I thought: ‘Carver’s back.’ I warned you, Carver. Right out loud and in English I warned you. No repeat performances, I said. I can’t take the violence these days. And neither can the Met.”

  “Don’t be dumb,” Carver told him, and crossed to the refrigerated corner bar.

  “You’re out of Scotch,” Lovegod told him. “And room service wouldn’t bring any more.”

  Carver went into the bathroom and returned with a fresh bottle. It was dripping wet, and he dried it with a towel as he walked.

  “I never thought of there,” said Lovegod, crestfallen. “Now, if it had been a firearm, toilet cistern is the first place to look. But a bottle ... normally they’re in the wardrobe. Wrapped in the dirty washing and stuffed in the bottom of a suitcase.”

  He accepted a glass half filled with Old Grouse and refused water and ice.

  “Funny thing about your wardrobe, Carver,” he said. “No dirty washing. All brand new clobber and all pricey. Looks like a Sloane Ranger’s bag after Liberty’s sale. Very unusual jail sentence you just served, Carver. Want to tell me about it?”

  Carver dropped into a chair and swilled his glass so that the ice cubes made music in the quiet room.

  “Nope,” he said, and drank.

  “I’ll finish the sentence,” said Lovegod. “Want to tell me about it here, or shall we repair to my office and talk about it there?”

  Carver peered through the Scotch.

  “You sure you could get me there?” he said quietly.

  “No,” said Lovegod carefully. “But the lads waiting outside could make a damn good try. And whether they got you there this evening or tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, sooner or later they’d find you and get you there. And I don’t think being banged up in the slammer would help you find Irene, would it?”

  “You wouldn’t deliberately hold me up?” said Carver warily.

  “I’d throw away the key,” Lovegod told him. “And kill the man who tried to find it.”

  He meant it, and Carver knew it. At any other time, he would have told Lovegod to stick his key where it would do him most good and sweated it out in the cells. But looming behind him was the memory of the cell in Beirut. He was not sure he could take the confinement again so soon after.

  And Irene needed him.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “The lot, Carver. Where have you been the past two years? What connection has it with Larry Manning? What are you doing now?” Carver gazed at him, dazed. Then he gave a short, deep laugh.

  “Jesus H. Christ, Lovegod, it is surely no wonder your goddamn crime rate is going through the roof. How the hell can you make any connection between where I’ve been the past two years, Larry Manning and Irene?”

  “Teach me different.” Lovegod’s face was like a slab of wood.

  “Okay.” Carver took another pull on his whisky and sank back in the chair.

  “Okay, let’s talk. How much do you know?”

  “You tell me and I’ll tell you where to stop.”

  “Two years ago, I was approached by a man called Downing. He wanted me to find someone. It’s my line of work, so I took it on. The man he wanted me to find was Colin Baily.”

  Lovegod nodded. “Baily the arms man?”

  “Yo. Baily went to Beirut after the deal with the Iranians went bad, so I went after him. Mistake.”

  “Whose mistake?”

  “Mine. Baily was not flavour of the month in Beirut. Not among the Shiites anyway. They were looking for him as well. And they found him.”

  “So when you got there he was dead?”

  “Uh-uh. When I got there he was alive and well, and grinning all over his face. See, I got there just after they picked him up in the hotel and they were taking him out to the truck. Well, naturally I had to take him off them. A guy got wasted.”

  Lovegod nodded and absorbed more Scotch. With any other man he would have treated the story with deep suspicion. It was characteristic of Carver that he would start a street fight with Shiite Muslim militia in Beirut, street fighting capital of the world.

  “And?”

  “I put Baily in a safe house and contacted Downing.”

  “And Downing brought him back and left you there.”

  Carver laughed again with genuine amusement.

  “Downing sent a guy to off Baily, and the guy hit me at the same time. Accident. I was walking down the street to the house when it blew. They scraped enough bits of Baily off the wreckage to be reasonably sure it was him, I gathered.”

  “And you?”

  “I came to in the hospital in Beirut. You seen those films of the hospitals in Beirut?”

  Lovegod had. His stomach gave a nervous flutter.

  “Guy lying on the next plank turned out to be one of the Shiite shits from the street gang I hit. He recognised me, and when he got out, he got a couple of the boys together and they came back and lifted me. Spent the next two years in cellars in the town and countryside with a bunch of other hostages while they tried to make me ‘confess’ to spying. Was in a well once. Only time I got enough to drink.”

  Lovegod took another drink and helped himself from the bottle.

  As he leaned over the table the lamp threw his shadow on the wall behind, huge and predatory like a stooping bear.

  “It was just bad luck, then?”

  “Good luck. I lived. Nobody else did.”

  “And you made some money? How did you manage that?”

  “I went to see Downing in his villa in Portugal, soon as I got out. I charge very high for time spent in jail. Particularly when I hear the guy could have sprung me but didn’t.”

  “And he paid?” Lovegod had no real doubts that Downing had paid. A visit by a vengeful Carver straight from the cellars of a Beirut ruin must have been a sobering experience.

  Carver merely nodded and jingled the ice in his glass.

  “So what happened when you came
back here?”

  “I didn’t come back immediately. I stopped off in Belgium to see a couple of guys I know about a job. Bought myself a car, got some clothes. Ate some moules and chips and drank a whole raft of beers. They make great beer in Belgium.”

  “I know.” There wasn’t much anybody could tell Lovegod about beer, Carver thought, and sat back to see what was going to follow. Behind the economical talk about his time in Belgium, there was a pair of dark eyes, long graceful legs and a laugh which went right down to his toes. Two years in a stinking hole in bomb damaged cellar is a remarkably long time for a passionate man, and Brigitte had been surprised and delighted by the energy of her newfound lover.

  He was not fooled by the big policeman’s relaxed style. Behind that sleepy looking exterior and the random wandering around the room Lovegod’s mind was ticking away like a stainless steel computer.

  “Tell me about Larry Manning.”

  “What can I say to you?” Carver shrugged.

  “Did you kill him?”

  “I haven’t been near Archway all night. My word on it.”

  “I didn’t ask where you’d been. I asked if you killed Larry Manning.”

  Carver gave him a long, level stare.

  “Do you think I did?”

  Lovegod returned the stare.

  “Yeah. In fact, I’m certain you did.”

  “You’re wrong,” said Carver. “And even if you were right, you couldn’t prove it.”

  “I bet your life I could,” said Lovegod. “And I could hold you for months while I try. Want me to try?”

  “Nope. I have to go.”

  “You weren’t in that much of a hurry to get beck to Lynn, though.”

  “I wasn’t in any hurry at all for Lynn. We were never married. Not even screwing. Irene is not my daughter, either. I looked after Lynn, that’s all. While I was in Beirut I decided the time had come to split and let her get on with her own life. I only came back to see they were all right, and make arrangements to see Irene was well looked after.”

  “Quite a shock, then,” said Lovegod. “So you’re just going back to Belgium now?”

  Carter shook his head slowly.

  “I’m going to find Irene. She’s only a kid and she’ll be expecting someone to come for her. Expecting me, I guess. She looked on me like a father and who else should look out for a kid?”