Running Scared

by Ann Granger

  Tig had been in a funny mood since getting up. She hadn’t said much although from time to time she’d looked as though she was about to speak, but then thought better of it. I couldn’t blame her for being unsettled. I could only guess at how she must be feeling. The Quayles would probably be horrified when they saw her but even after only a few days with me, she was looking a lot better and taking more trouble with her appearance. She’d combed back her hair and secured it with one of those big spring grips. It suited her. I wondered if my hair would ever grow that long and how many months it would take, starting as it did from near zero.

  She was standing in the open doors of the Chiltern Lines Turbo, studying me carefully in the way she had. I’d got used to it, mostly, but it was still unsettling.

  ‘Something you’ve forgotten?’ I asked.

  Indecision flickered across her face before she seemed to take a deep breath and to have made up her mind to say something. ‘Fran—’ she began. Someone pushed past her and she moved aside, back into the carriage. When she reappeared something, some resolve, had gone out of her. ‘I was just going to say, thanks.’

  ‘No problem,’ I said. But it occurred to me that wasn’t what she’d been about to say and I wondered, if the other passenger hadn’t intervened, if she’d have spoken out loud at last what had been on her mind since breakfast.

  ‘You didn’t get much of a fee,’ she went on. ‘When I get some more money, I’ll send you some.’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ I told her. ‘We’re quits. You’ve given me Bonnie.’

  There was a whistle down the platform, a warning buzz from inside the train and with a pneumatic hiss, the doors slammed together. Tig, on the inside, waved at me as it drew out. I waved back.

  ‘Just you and me then, Bonnie,’ I said to the terrier. She jumped up and wagged her stumpy tail. ‘You know, we’re going to have to get you a proper lead,’ I went on. ‘This piece of string doesn’t do anything for either of us.’

  I rattled homeward on the bus with Bonnie sitting on my knees, attracting much admiration and petting, and looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. In the small hours of the morning, I’d thought out what I was going to do next. Not having the encounter with the Quayles looming over me had freed up my mind considerably.

  I went to the flat first, collected the magazine, and the photo Joleen had unearthed for me, and made my way to the shop.

  Hitch was there, leaning on the counter. ‘Hullo, darling,’ he greeted me. ‘What’s this then?’ He meant Bonnie. He stooped to scratch her ears. ‘This is a Jack Russell, this is.’

  ‘It’s a dog,’ said Ganesh disagreeably. ‘And they’re not allowed in the shop. I’ve got a sign outside that says so.’

  He was right. A yucky thing it was too, a picture of some soulful animals and the legend ‘Please Leave Us Outside’.

  ‘If I let you bring that one in,’ Ganesh went on, ‘I’ll have to let everyone bring their dogs in. Loads of people round here have got dogs and some of them are big.’

  Ganesh, you’ll have gathered, isn’t a dog-lover. Shop hygiene rules aside, he just doesn’t like them and they don’t like him. I leave it to you to work out which dislike sparked the other. All I know is, perfectly placid dogs, which had been rolling at the feet of little children moments before, would turn into snapping, snarling throwbacks to the wolf as Ganesh approached. Even Bonnie, catching the tone of his voice, made a soft growling noise in her throat.

  By way of distraction, I asked after Marco. Hitch informed us he’d gone to the continent for a few days’ holiday. I asked where.

  ‘Amsterdam,’ said Hitch. That made sense. Though his being away in the clouds half the time would’ve dulled my pleasure in Marco’s company, I was still sorry we hadn’t made it even to first base. I had fancied him.

  ‘Catch rats, them little dogs,’ said Hitch cheerfully, bringing things down to earth. ‘Bloody good rat-catchers. Couple of people down our street, when we was kids, kept terriers like that. We used to pull up the manhole covers and drop the tykes down the sewers. They had a great time down there chasing rats. Then we had to squeeze down after em to get em back. Catching them was a job and a half down there. It was dark and stinking, all you could do to breathe. Had to watch where you put your feet, too. Do you know, a lot of them sewers are Victorian? Lovely bit of brickwork, wonderful workmanship, real skill.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Kids don’t have fun like that no more. It’s all telly and computers stuffing their heads with rubbish. They learn nothing. They don’t take no healthy exercise.’

  I explained that Bonnie wasn’t used to being left alone and for today at least, I’d had to bring her. I took her into the storeroom and tied her up. She didn’t seem to mind that and settled down happily on some flattened cardboard, with a clean plastic container of water, home from home.

  When I went back Hitch and Ganesh were wrangling over payment of the bill for the new washroom. Ganesh wanted to write a cheque: Hitch wanted cash.

  ‘It’s easier, is cash,’ wheedled Hitch. ‘I can just stuff it in me back pocket. Cheques I’ve got to put through the books. I’ll have to charge you VAT.’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ said Ganesh, ‘that your turnover requires you to register for VAT. Not unless you’ve been putting in new washrooms from here to Battersea. I’ve got to put it through our books to show Hari what I’ve spent.’

  In the end, Hitch took the cheque, though he clearly didn’t have any confidence in such a method of payment. He trailed away looking as if Ganesh had given him a wad of Monopoly money.

  ‘I told you to watch out if you were going to deal with him,’ I reminded Ganesh.

  Ganesh replied loftily that he could take care of business matters, thank you. He wasn’t without experience.

  It was time to dent his smugness. I unrolled the magazine and opened it out flat on the counter.

  ‘What is it?’ Ganesh peered at it suspiciously. ‘Do we sell that one? It looks like one of those Sunday supplements to me.’

  ‘It is. Just look at the photos, will you? Any of them mean anything to you?’

  Ganesh scanned the pages, hesitated at Grice’s picture, then moved on. After a few moments he sighed. ‘I know what you want me to say, Fran. You want me to tell you that this one –’ he tapped Grice’s pic – ‘is a bit like the chap in those photos Coverdale left in the old washroom. I agree, there is a faint resemblance, but that’s all there is. Don’t start leaping to conclusions. You know what you are.’

  I ignored that. I took out the print from the chemist’s and put it beside the one in the magazine. ‘Look again. Imagine him with bleached hair and perhaps four or five years older.’

  Ganesh gasped and jabbed a finger at the print. ‘Where did you get that?’

  ‘It was in the darkroom waste bin, down at Joleen’s place. Never mind how I got it. Look again and be honest.’

  ‘It looks like him,’ agreed Ganesh sulkily. ‘But I’d better be wrong and so had you. From what it says here, he’s bad news.’

  ‘Coverdale’s body in my basement’s already told me that,’ I retorted.

  Ganesh closed the magazine and leaned his palms on the counter. ‘So what are you going to do? Move house?’

  ‘How can I? Talk sense. What I’m not going to do is spend my time jumping out of my skin every time someone walks up behind me, stay frightened to go down alleys, and sleeping with the light on. This has got to be settled. I’m going to take this down to the copshop and see what Harford and the others have to say.’

  ‘You’re mad,’ said Ganesh simply. As I walked out, he added on a panicky note, ‘Hey, don’t leave me here with that dog!’

  ‘You’ve got to get over this phobia of yours,’ I called back. ‘I won’t be long.’

  ‘Hullo,’ said the desk officer when I walked into the station. ‘You again?’

  Honestly, there are professional safe-crackers, muggers, even streetwalkers, who see less of the inside of the nick than I do, thoug
h I only get as far as the front desk, and occasionally an interview room. I’ve not yet been tossed in the cells. Give it time.

  I told him I wanted to see Inspector Harford or, failing that, Sergeant Parry.

  ‘Can’t be done,’ he said. ‘They’re in a meeting. Know it for a fact. Saw ’em all going up there ten minutes or so back and they gave out they wasn’t to be disturbed.’

  ‘What, all of them?’ If they were, it had to be something important and I’d got a funny feeling crawling up my spine.

  ‘You tell them,’ I said, ‘that Fran Varady is out here and I know who the man in the photos is.’

  ‘What man in what photos?’ he asked, being a simple bluebottle who didn’t get taken into the confidence of CID.

  ‘Tell ’em!’ I instructed him. I sat down on an uncomfortable bench by the wall and picked up an ancient copy of Police Review lying there. It was that or a dog-eared copy of the Sun. From the corner of my eye, I saw him lift up a phone.

  When he put it down, he called across, ‘The inspector will be down in a minute or two.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said, calm and collected. The biggest mistake I could make now would be to storm in there ranting and demanding protection. I was a member of the public and I didn’t have to do anything or go along with anything they’d dreamed up, if I didn’t want to.

  There was a clatter of feet on stairs nearby. Harford rounded the corner, face flushed and, contrary to his usual crisp business appearance, a little dishevelled. He jumped down the last three steps and marched over to me.

  ‘What’s all this?’ he asked disagreeably. So we were back in that mode again, were we?

  ‘Jerry Grice,’ I said.

  His face turned white. He glanced over his shoulder towards the desk and the officer manning it who was stirring his coffee.

  ‘Don’t say names like that out loud!’ Harford hissed, stooping over me. He straightened up and recovered some of his aplomb. ‘I think, in the circumstances, you’d better come upstairs and join us. We’re just discussing that matter and we meant to call you in, anyway.’

  ‘Oh, were you?’ I asked sarcastically.

  He retorted in like tone. ‘Yes. So you’ve saved us the bother, haven’t you?’

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was a meeting all right. The tribal chiefs had gathered for a powwow and the air was suitably thick with smoke. There must have been a dozen or so people in the room, perched on table corners, or leaning against walls, amid a litter of polystyrene cups, sweet wrappers and overflowing ashtrays. Most were men, two or three women and at least one who’d have doubled for either. I recognised Parry amongst them, and a couple of the others whom I’d seen before, but not a thin-faced man with grey hair and a grey complexion to match. He was the only one seated at a desk and everyone else hovered around him.

  ‘This is Fran Varady, sir,’ said Harford to him. To me, he whispered, ‘Superintendent Foxley.’

  His manner indicated I was being accorded an audience equal to that with a Chinese emperor. I wondered if I was expected to fall down and bang my head on the floor in obeisance, or merely retreat from his presence backwards. Well, I wasn’t one of those struggling up the police promotion ladder. I was a free spirit and felt this was the moment to underline it. Apart from which, I’d choke if I had to stay in this foul atmosphere longer than a few minutes more.

  ‘Do you think,’ I said to Foxley, ‘we could have a window open?’

  There were looks of shock and bewilderment on all faces. They were quite unaware of the fug.

  ‘Open it,’ said Foxley without looking round. Some minion obeyed, creating a gap finger-thick, through which some of the haze began to seep.

  ‘Sit down, Miss Varady, won’t you?’ Foxley offered and, again, an underling pushed a chair forward. ‘Your arrival is perhaps timely. Can we offer you some coffee?’

  I’d drunk their coffee on previous occasions and declined politely. I could see Parry in the background. When I’d walked in, his ginger eyebrows had shot up to meet his hairline. They hadn’t far to travel. Now he was engaging in an elaborate pantomime, asking what on earth I was doing there.

  ‘What’s the matter, Sergeant?’ asked Harford tersely, catching a particularly extreme example of Parry’s mugging.

  Parry mumbled some reply and buried his face in a cup.

  ‘We’ve been having a case conference, as you can see,’ Foxley went on to me. He didn’t show surprise at my refusing the coffee. He probably understood and sympathised. ‘We are not yet in a position to make an arrest with regard to the murder in your basement, but we’re closing in.’

  Closing in? Coppers said things like that in the old black-and-white movies I watched late at night. After someone says it, old-style black police cars race through deserted streets, sounding sirens fit to bust and alerting every villain for miles around that they’re on their way. I had hoped police methods had advanced since then. Possibly the methods had – lots of technical wizardry and forensic leads – but not the approach.

  Harford, standing behind and to one side of my chair, cleared his throat and said, ‘Miss Varady believes she’s made a discovery, sir.’ He sounded nervous.

  ‘Miss Varady knows she has,’ I corrected him. I pulled out my magazine and opened it. They all leaned forward, peering at the page of mugshots. I tapped the relevant one. ‘Jerry Grice,’ I said. ‘That’s the guy in the snapshots, isn’t it? Give or take a bottle of bleach.’

  Someone at the back of the room said, ‘Shit.’ Another said wearily, ‘Bloody press.’

  Parry turned purple and his eyes bulged at me.

  ‘I told you not to muck about—’ he began.

  Foxley glanced over his shoulder and Parry fell silent. ‘Yes, Miss Varady, that’s right,’ the superintendent said evenly. ‘And you understand I’m sure, why we don’t want to advertise the fact that he’s the man we’re after.’

  ‘I understand,’ I said. ‘But I don’t like being pegged out as decoy.’

  He raised sparse eyebrows. ‘Did we do that? I wouldn’t say so. We have been keeping a friendly protective eye on you, I admit that.’

  ‘Rubbish!’ I retorted robustly.

  Since Foxley was clearly the big cheese round here, my attitude was causing ripples of emotion round the room. I detected, on different faces, disapproval, anticipation and even glee. Parry looked about to faint.

  ‘Someone tried to break into my flat the other night and if I hadn’t had a dog on the premises, he’d have got in.’ I did my best to sound like an outraged citizen. The very least they owed me was an apology.

  The superintendent merely looked irritated. ‘An oversight.’ I dismissed this with, I hoped, visible scorn. ‘You bet it was an oversight. So, from now on, you include me beforehand when you want to use me. Otherwise,’ I added on a brainwave, ‘I’ll take my case to the Police Complaints Committee.’

  Parry turned aside towards the window to hide his reaction to this. His shoulders were twitching. I didn’t know whether from laughter or despair.

  Foxley didn’t snarl ‘Feel free!’ though it obviously hovered on his lips. Instead he gave a strained grimace and advised me that we hadn’t got to that stage yet, surely?

  I wasn’t going to push the point, to tell the truth. But it did no harm to let them know I was seriously displeased.

  Foxley had got the message. He leaned his elbows on his desk and placed the tips of his fingers together. ‘I sincerely hope that you won’t let a misunderstanding damage what I hope could be a profitable collaboration. The fact is, Miss Varady –’ this was accompanied by his bleak smile. He was doing his best to be charming, but he wasn’t cut out for it. I awarded him a point for trying – ‘the fact of the matter is, we need your help. Now, of course, you don’t have to say yes. You don’t have to do anything unless you decide to help. It’s your decision and no pressure will be put on you. But I’d be grateful if you’d just let me explain.’

  Had Ganesh been there, he’d have tol
d me to say no, and get out of there as fast as I could. But I reckoned it would do no harm to listen. A bit of police goodwill wouldn’t come amiss. ‘Go on, then,’ I said.

  Foxley launched into a seamless narrative which led me to believe he’d done this sort of thing before. I wondered briefly what had happened to others, such as myself, who’d been talked into helping in just such circumstances.

  ‘Your magazine article will have told you why we’re after Grice. He’s been giving us the runaround but the net is closing.’ (Did he, too, watch old films?) ‘We believe that Grice will shortly be arriving in this country. There is an underworld rumour to that effect. We have it from a normally reliable source.’

  I wondered about the ‘source’. Say what you like, the professional grass earns his money. He probably wouldn’t be in the business if the police didn’t have some hold over him, but all the same, it’s a risky enough trade to undertake in whatever circumstances. Rumbled and he’s done for. His body is washed up and deposited on a Thames mudflat. The river police go out and scoop it up and add it to the statistics. If anyone enquires, and it’s unlikely anyone will, a dozen people will testify to how depressed the late unlamented was, and how he’d spoken frequently of ending it all.