“Forgive him?”
“For raping you.”
“You mad or something?”
“That’s his latest explanation.”
Her laugh was harsh and desperate. She couldn’t speak.
“For the light going out,” I explained.
“I’ve told you about that.”
“So you have. He doesn’t seem to appreciate it. Maybe he’s not keen on having been set up as Henry’s next victim.”
“But Henry was dead!” she cried, in a kind of choked hysteria.
“That’s very true.” I shook my head. “But you wouldn’t have set him up if you’d known that. So how can Larry be pleased?”
Suddenly she fell into a chair, literally fell, though with such accuracy that she must have aimed herself. Her hands covered her face, but her shoulders did not move. She was holding back the tears. When she looked up, though, her eyes were moist. Some of the fear had gone from them and all I could detect was misery, and longing…
“All I did,” she whispered, “was put off the light. I had it in mind…yes, you’re right there…had it in mind that Henry should know. But I didn’t, not truly, intend him to take it out on Larry, because I wasn’t thinking of it like that. Don’t you see, it was a sign to him. Just to tell Henry that I couldn’t go on living with him, that I’d found someone…”
“But you’d found people before,” I suggested.
“Not…the same as Larry.”
“And Henry would know that, just from the light going off? Don’t tell me this was the first time you’d been in bed…”
“You don’t understand! You’re being deliberately stupid.”
“Not deliberately. But maybe it’s stupid, just to be listening to you.”
“No…I’m sorry. But listen. Please!”
I smiled. Anything less would have broken her into tears. “I’m listening.”
“The other times, he suspected. Well, knew really. But never actually proved. This was going to be different. You see now?” she demanded fiercely. “I was telling him.” She reached out a hand for my arm. It was important that one person should understand.
“Couldn’t you have simply told him?”
“Henry! You couldn’t tell him anything.”
“But he danced attendance on you. He dutifully got rid of all your superfluous love affairs. Anything you asked, and he’d have done it. If you’d asked him to put up his gun, he’d have — ”
“I did ask him to put up his gun.”
“But that was only because you were afraid for Larry.”
“No!” She snatched away her hand. “No,” she went on more quietly. “I gave you the wrong impression.”
“He wore the waistcoat you bought him. To please you.”
“But I couldn’t have told him,” she insisted. “Oh, I don’t know why I came here.”
She knew very well why she’d come. It was I who didn’t. She was obviously leading to something.
“Perhaps you came to tell me why you put out the light.”
“I’ve told…” She controlled herself. “As a sign.”
“Like a candle in a window?”
“To Henry, and to Larry. Both.”
“To Larry too?”
“But now he refuses to understand it.”
I wasn’t going to stand there all evening with her hand darting for my arm and then away again. My leg had been walked on too much. I wasn’t very patient with her.
“How d’you know that, if you won’t even speak to him?”
“It’s why I won’t. He’s so…aggressive about it. He seems to think ” She shook her head, unsure how I’d take this. “He thinks that I’ve landed him in trouble by putting out the light, spoilt his alibi.”
“His alibi for what?”
“I don’t know. Another woman…”
“That’s no longer acceptable. I’m coming round to the idea that you know very well where Larry was.”
“I don’t! You just will not keep to the point.”
“The point being your love life?”
“And you’re cynical.”
“What can you expect?”
“I thought you’d help me.” She looked up into my eyes. There was such pleading…“I thought, maybe, you’d see him. Explain to him.”
“I’m not a marriage counsellor.”
“We’re not married.” She gave me, then, a small, weak smile. “Say you will.”
“You’ve refused to speak to him. All you’ve got to do is lift the phone next time it rings, and arrange to meet him.”
She sighed. “I’ve only got to mention the light, and he goes wild.” Her eyes then offered me the compliment. I was a big man, a man of the world. All womanhood admired me in that single glance. “But from you…”
“Are you completely stupid?” I demanded. “Can’t you see that the light switch doesn’t matter anymore? This is a serious business, not some romantic trappings to a girlhood dream. What it means is that he didn’t have an alibi. And Sarturo wants the murderer of his son. Just at this moment Larry’s in the lead, and I don’t know how much more time I’ve got to sort it out. So you go to him. You go and see him and forget your pretty little manoeuvrings for a minute. You tell him that I’ve got to know. The police have got to know.”
“You think I’d tell him that!”
“If he means anything to you, yes. Tell him — if he was involved with that robbery — to go to the police and admit it.”
“But they’d…”
“Yes, they’d get it all out of him. All the details of his mates and where they hang out. But he’d be safe.”
“Ha!” she said in disgust.
“And maybe they’d get something out of it on Sarturo, just enough to justify a raid.”
“Oh my God, you think I’d do that? I wouldn’t live…”
“Well then, you’ve got something to offer. Because it might be for Larry’s life you’re offering it. Think about that. Maybe then you can forget about light switches and get down to a bit of reality.”
“I can see I’ve wasted my time,” she said, getting to her feet and clutching the handbag.
“You’ve wasted mine.”
“Don’t trouble to show me out.”
I sat down. I watched her walk to the door. “Think about it,” I said. It sounded very much like an entreaty to me. “And don’t waste too much time because I’m very tired, and I don’t think I can hold out much longer.”
But the door had closed. The house was silent. I wondered miserably whether I was progressing at all.
“Are you all right, Mr Coe?” asked Mrs Perkins.
“A bit tired.”
“She’s upset you. I knew I shouldn’t have let her in.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s just a young lady with her priorities mixed.”
Though come to think of it, she’d hardly had the opportunity to get anything into proper perspective, living with Henry Saturn and his peculiar code of morality. I could have wept for Berenice.
“I’m just going out for a pint,” I said.
“What about your case?”
I managed a weary smile. “Nothing valuable. But I may need it.”
I went to the Potted Shrimp because that was where I was known to go. I didn’t expect a personal approach, but perhaps one of the customers observed me arriving. I don’t know. But a quarter of an hour later the barman gave me a shout.
“Call for you, George.”
The phone was just round the corner, in the little connecting corridor to the lounge. I took it up.
“You’ve got it?”
“I’ve got it,” I said.
“Then we’ll meet tomorrow — ”
“No,” I snapped. “Tonight. I don’t care where or how late. But it’s got to be tonight.”
There was a pause. “Very well. Tonight.”
He gave me directions. I said impatiently, “Yes, yes,” though I was not sure how I’d reach there. I just wanted to get it
over.
“And send somebody I’ll know,” I said harshly, and he agreed.
I sat down to the rest of my pint, and pain throbbed through my thigh. But it didn’t matter anymore. I could have walked out of there, right then, and gone to Sarturo…
But I slowly finished my drink, levered myself up, and limped out.
The only one I would know had to be Larry.
CHAPTER XI
When you’ve got a document case containing a phone book worth £25,000, it’s a bit degrading having to borrow a couple of quid from your landlady. Especially when she thinks you’re worth five hundred to the police. I told her I didn’t know how I’d pay her back, but she insisted on a fiver.
You see, I was down to less than a pound, and I couldn’t see how I was going to get to this place at one in the morning other than in a taxi. There, if not back. The man had said go out of town on the north road and along the bluff until I got to a right turn marked: lorries turning. Down there I’d find a dump. That was why they were turning, but they wouldn’t be doing it at one o’clock, so all I’d got to do was wait in there, the far end, and meet their messenger.
Nobody had said that he would be there at one, and it was raining, and I was cold. I sat on an old oil drum with the rain pattering around me, alert at every passing sound of a vehicle, and depressed when it did pass. Time went on. Perhaps I was being vetted silently from the shadows and from atop the high sides of the old quarry. I could feel the eyes. My old mac is like blotting paper. I passed the time reciting Omar Khayyam.
He came at twenty to two. The moon had risen and was trying to push through the racing clouds. I could just see that it was a small van, but that was enough. He was driving in on his sidelights. I stood up, my stick digging into the softening surface and the document case clutched in my other fist.
The van stopped. As I’d been waiting so long, my eyes were used to the dark, and now the moon burst free and I could see that the van was blue. The heads blasted on at me, impaling me. I stood with my eyes shut, unwilling to lose the accommodation, then they went off again. I opened my eyes as the van door flew open. He climbed out.
I saw clearly that it was Larry. My legs were suddenly weak. I began to move forward, and gently, engine barely moving over and with not a light on, I saw the police car edging in behind the van.
He must have heard the engine because he whirled round to face it. I had betrayed him, but I was glad it was Larry I had betrayed.
Then he began to run, ridiculously because there was no way out, towards the side of the quarry. His way was blocked by massed piles of rubbish. He scrambled for them, and suddenly the night was alive with gunfire. Little stabs of light flicked out from the upper edges of the quarry, stabbed down at the small figure lurching around for escape. Lights snapped on as the police car leapt into life. But he hesitated, tripped, and spun around, then fell back. The gunfire continued for two or three seconds. The heavies were unsure of their weapons, their aim, but under such a concentrated fire it was obvious that he had to be hit. I was shouting and jabbing forward with my stick, hopping in a mad attempt to gain momentum. Then all was silent as the car came to a halt.
In the silence there was a single, piercing scream.
The headlights were concentrated on Larry, where he lay. I fought my way towards him. Grace had him in her arms, clutching for the remains of his life. I thought she’d gone insane, furious with him for dying now, at such a time. She clutched him to her, shaking him and calling his name. “Larry! Larry!” When I got there she was crouching in the mud, swaying backwards and forwards. I could barely see his face. But he was dead. Larry was dead, some stray, hooligan bullet having caught him above the left eye.
Grace was weeping. She looked up as I touched her shoulder.
“George,” she whispered, “He’s my son.”
*
We sat in the back of her car, she and I. Three policemen were standing outside in the rain, waiting for the squad and the ambulance, somewhat quiet and thrown off balance by an inspector who could weep. Two of them were getting very wet, because their capes were covering Larry’s body.
Grace was sitting quietly now. Gradually the efficient officer was taking over from the mother. She was dabbing her eyes only occasionally. She threw back her head and stared through the cones of light. There was now no sign of the moon. The car had been moved, so that she should not have to stare at her distress.
“I’m sorry, Grace,” I said awkwardly.
“Sorry George? What does that mean? Are you unhappy that my son’s been killed? You hardly knew him. Or are you apologising?”
“I suppose I’m apologising. For not understanding about him, really. Why wasn’t I told? That’s what I want to know.”
“Because I wasn’t sure of you,” she said dully.
“Are you now?” I asked in disgust.
“Has anything happened to make it any different?” she demanded. “Don’t expect me to make deep decisions, not now. Give me time.”
I watched her light a cigarette. In the brief flare of her lighter her face was grim and determined. No sign of tears now. She appeared to relax a little, and began to speak. Softly. Almost unemotionally. I was something she used to exercise her reason on, pushing the words at me as though the marshalling of them into some sort of order helped to thrust back the pain. But the lack of feeling in her voice, though she may not have realised it, flayed me more than her bitter anger would. She destroyed me quietly.
And all I could do was listen.
“If I’d been his father, perhaps things would have been different. But his father died — you’ll remember him in the county police, a super — his father died when he was eleven. I went on. I had to make something of myself, if only to lay the foundations for Larry. But perhaps it seemed strange to him. I don’t know. Perhaps you can understand. I was an inspector when he came in as a cadet, and I rather assumed he’d be proud…” She turned to me with a slight frown, not venturing too deeply into her emotions. “Why should he have been uncertain? He didn’t seem to try. I don’t understand.”
I thought I did. He could have called his father ‘sir’ with pride, stood stiffly in front of his desk and striven to please. Could he have done this with his mother, whom he’d probably loved on a different plane?
“Young people are difficult to understand. Perhaps it was a phase.”
“But he did want to help, George. I see that now. After six months he dropped out of the force, and I thought the end of the world had come. He seemed…to go to pieces. Around the town with the sort of scum it’s my job to skim off. I thought I’d lost him. And then one day he came to me — he wasn’t even living at home then — with some information that led to an arrest. I suppose he was offering something. Perhaps it was his apology. But we built it up from there, Larry in the background, my own personal informer.” She gave a gentle shake of her head. “You were so scathing in your attack on women police, weren’t you?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t keep saying that.”
“I’ll say what I damn well…”
“No. I blame myself.”
“Don’t do that.”
“I should have trusted you. Then this wouldn’t have happened. George, we had it all laid on. Larry was on the edge of things. He wasn’t actually in on the robbery — ”
“He wasn’t? But I thought…”
“They used him to keep you busy. It was just unlucky the night guard was you”
“At one stage, Berenice said she thought he’d gone to see another woman,” I mumbled, annoyed that I’d missed it.
She looked at me strangely, and I realised that Larry had not confided everything to her. She obviously knew nothing about the lights and my theories. “He did,” she said. “He came to see me. The robbery was on, and I was keeping a careful eye on things…”
“You let it happen?”
“I was confident…No, I didn’t allow it to. I wasn’t sure of the night. Larr
y wasn’t, that is. That woman — Berenice — came to his room. It’d been arranged that she’d come every night for a week. She came to his room and he told her he had to go out. He wanted to feel out the situation, but the gang was too quick and too smart and I missed them. But I wasn’t too worried, George. Any time I could have walked in on them and recovered the stuff. But that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted Sarturo.”
“He makes it impossible…”
“Yes. He does. So many people have tried to get him, but it always works out that there’s nothing to charge him with. But Larry wasn’t my only child, George. There’s a girl. Christine. Two years younger than Larry. She’s in a mental home now. Her brain’s wrecked by drugs. George, it’s all I’ve ever wanted, to get Sarturo. I was waiting for the handover. Then I’d have — ”
“No,” I said, “you wouldn’t.”
“I’d have had him, George.” It was almost an entreaty — for me to agree with her. But I couldn’t allow her to go on believing it.
“He doesn’t work like that, Grace. Never did. Other people handle the cash, other people receive the drugs, and other people distribute them. He’s only there as a guiding genius.” I laughed shortly, intending the scorn to reach her. “Genius! Grace, he’s not worth your trouble now. He’s getting old and his crowd’s seedy. And he’s nothing.”
“But I want him. And now…and now I feel I’ve lost him.”
“It doesn’t follow.”
“I didn’t know what you were doing,” she explained. “You’d set yourself up in opposition to Sarturo, and I couldn’t see round it.”
It took immense effort to bring out a tone somewhere down the middle. “If only you’d told me. Hell, I spoke to Larry several times. There was no hint.”
“There wouldn’t be,” she said with gentle pride.
“And all I wanted to know was where he’d been that night. Take it from there, and I’d have seen my way clear to the…end. Grace, I was under pressure. I set this up. It was all I’d got. And you were right. When it came down to it you were dead correct about not knowing right from wrong. When your nerves are stretched tight — and there’s so little time — you’ve got to do something.” She was looking at me strangely. My voice had become unsteady. “Grace, you could have told me. One word and…Jesus, Grace, it needn’t have happened.”
A Glimpse of Death (David Mallin Detective series Book 7) Page 12