Boiling Point

by Frank Lean

  ‘I won’t pass out.’

  Total immersion in icy rain, followed by the swampy heat of this room and my disappointment at failure were having an effect, but that was none of Marti’s business. I could dry out on the long journey home.

  ‘Don’t be such a schoolboy,’ she sniggered. ‘I’ll get you something to put on if you’re afraid of me seeing your lovely bod.’ She got up and went into the bedroom which was just round the corner of the L-shaped room, and after rummaging through a very large closet stuffed to bursting with clothes fetched out a long coat. Whatever else she’d left in the North she hadn’t parted company with her wardrobe. There were a lot more clothes there than she’d had when I saw her last.

  She flung the coat at me.

  I threw it back.

  ‘Put it on! You can either take your clothes off and let me dry them, or you can get yourself off to Manchester now. Suit yourself!’

  ‘I don’t need anything from you except an explanation of what’s been going on. You know exactly why Olley and Sam Levy were murdered.’

  ‘Sam Levy!’ she gasped. The colour drained out of her face. ‘Oh, God, no.’

  I stepped over to her. The pupils of her eyes were dilated. She was in shock all right. I grabbed her and led her back to the chair. She started to cry.

  ‘Not Sam! We never should have started this. Damn Charlie to hell!’

  ‘Started what?’ I said eagerly. All thoughts about wet clothes evaporated.

  ‘You’re a bastard just like all the rest,’ she snarled. ‘You want me to talk, don’t you? But Sam didn’t deserve to be killed.’

  ‘I never said he did.’

  ‘What happened?’

  I was stung by her attitude. She didn’t deserve the sanitised version.

  ‘He was tortured to death on Sunday morning for some piece of information or some object. They dragged him through every room in his house so it’s likely his killers thought he had something hidden. There was blood all over the place and nothing was taken.’

  She put her head in her hands and wept bitterly. Brilliant actress or distressed woman? I wasn’t sure which. My instinct said that she was genuine, but then I’d been wrong before.

  ‘It started as a game really,’ she said eventually. ‘Charlie’s family’s the pits, the absolute pits. His brothers make the Addams family look like a Mastermind panel, and their wives! Sweet Jesus, they look like corpses that embalmers have despaired of. Bungalow Billy’s wife’s had her face lifted so often she looks like a starved cat. Her eyebrows are almost at the back of her neck.’

  ‘Who’s Bungalow Billy?’

  ‘The second son after Charlie. Brandon likes to stir up rivalry between him and Charlie, but Billy’s so thick . . . he still needs help tying his shoelaces. That’s why they call him the Bungalow.’

  ‘Nothing upstairs?’

  ‘Yes. I suppose you think all this is funny, but living with them’s a nightmare. Every time you meet one of the wives they run through a little list. “Have you got this? Have you got that? Have you been here? Have you been there?” But most of all it’s about husbands. “When did Charlie speak to Brandon last? Did Brandon ask him this? Did bloody Lord God Almighty Brandon Carlyle ask him that?” If you want to know why I turned to drink you just need to spend an hour or two with them.’

  ‘I see,’ I muttered. ‘You don’t like your in-laws.’

  ‘Stop it, this isn’t a joke! Poor old Sam, he was the nicest of all Brandon’s sneaky friends.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Of course it’s him who’s to blame.’

  ‘Who? Brandon? He killed Sam?’

  ‘No! How would I know who killed Sam? No, I mean that Brandon’s to blame for that family. Without him they’d all have sunk to their natural levels, dossing about in some filthy council flat and scratching their beer guts wondering where their next pint was coming from. All that man knows is how to put one penny on top of another one. That’s all he thinks about from morning till night.’

  ‘You married into them.’

  ‘I had to.’

  ‘Did Brandon abuse you as a child?’

  ‘What do you mean, abuse?’

  ‘Sexual abuse.’

  She started laughing hysterically.

  ‘Sexual abuse? Brandon? Are you insane? I’ve just told you, all Brandon thinks about is making more money. Unfortunately he’s a genius at that. I expect he charged his poor wife for sex. The only thing he thinks women are for is making babies. That was another reason why things got unpleasant.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘No you don’t, do you? Listen, Charlie is the best of that bunch but that’s not saying much, God help me. He’s lazy but he does have a brain of sorts inside his fat head – unlike you, Cunane.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Can’t you understand what I’m saying? Brandon’s over seventy. All his kids except Charlie are total der-brains. Spassers, the lot of them, except Charlie. When Brandon goes they’ll all be back in the gutter in five years. Most of his businesses aren’t even legal, and the ones that are, are just for recycling funny money. What you see of the Carlyle Corporation is just the tip of the iceberg, and there are a lot more like Lou Olley working for Brandon. Oh, yes, they’ll think possession’s nine tenths of the law once Brandon goes. I can see everything going down the tubes. I told Brandon that it was time he let Charlie take a greater part in running things. At first the old miser seemed quite pleased but then Charlie got a bit above himself . . .’

  ‘You mean you got a bit above yourself, don’t you? Is that what it was about that day in the car park?’

  ‘Aren’t you sharp?’

  ‘What were you trying to do, get Charlie to put him in an old folk’s home?’

  ‘Old folk’s home!’ she shrieked. ‘The only way to make Brandon quit is with a bullet in his head.’

  35

  MARTI CLAPPED HER hand over her mouth. She looked vulnerable and silly and sweet and she cried and I put my arm round her and five minutes later I was in bed with her. There’s really no good way of wrapping it up. With some men it’s booze, with others it’s gambling, but show me a pretty face, a few tears and . . .

  It was Marti who brought things back to the subject of Brandon and Charlie.

  ‘Dave, we should have done this as soon as we met,’ she said, which was fairly heart-warming, I suppose. She was on her side stroking my shoulder and I was admiring the view. I knew she was a liar and possibly a murderess, but I was in a state where moralising about my own or anyone else’s behaviour was redundant.

  ‘I wanted you that first day. You really swept me off my feet. I woke up on your sofa and I was trying to work out what I had to do to attract your attention and make you do what rescuers of damsels in distress are always supposed to when I heard your dragon-lady shouting the odds outside the room.’

  ‘Lay off Janine,’ I murmured.

  ‘Did you really kill someone?’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘That’s quick of you, isn’t it?’ she said, giving my shoulder a painful nip. ‘I haven’t killed anyone yet, but it’s not for want of trying. Oh, Charlie’s such a wimp! If he’d had anything about him he’d have had the old geezer certified years ago and then packed his brothers off somewhere where they could drink themselves to death without anyone objecting, but he won’t act. He won’t do anything without me there to push him. He wants the end but he won’t supply the means.’

  I nestled back in the pillows and cradled my head in my arms.

  ‘So just what was your little plan to get rid of Brandon?’ I asked.

  ‘Aren’t you the sly one?’ she whispered. ‘Can’t you think of something more interesting to do than trying to worm that out of me? I can.’

  ‘Listen, honey bun, whoever killed Sam Levy was searching for something – and he seems to have me down as the next on his list. My flat and my office have been broken into and searched. The rather strange solicitor who acted for you
r father did a bunk almost immediately after I paid him a visit. I need to know what’s happening. It concerns Brandon, but how I don’t know.’

  ‘Root of all evil, isn’t it?’ she said, snuggling up alongside me and busying her hands at various little tasks. ‘Money, I mean. Brandon Carlyle has a secret and it’s a big one. He was quite small-time but then he suddenly rocketed into international finance, Mr Big-time Brandon Carlyle. Damn him!’

  Without any warning she sank her teeth into my shoulder. I yelped with pain.

  ‘No gain without pain, Dave,’ she gloated as she pinioned me by the shoulders. ‘Not like my father-in-law.’

  ‘Get off!’ I groaned feebly, suddenly realising why the female black-widow spider is so deadly.

  ‘It’s all in his photo albums . . . There he is . . . posing outside some local alehouse . . . with a bunch of tearaways . . . Mr Small-time Villain . . . Then you turn over the page . . . and he’s in Wall Street, USA . . . rubbing shoulders with billionaires . . . Where did he get the money? . . . Not from Manchester, that much I do know . . . My dad’s involved . . . Get him out of prison . . . He’ll tell you the whole story.’

  In the tiny part of my brain that was still capable of rational thought I realised that I was losing the plot. Mata Hari coaxed military information out of her victims after she made love to them. Marti, on the other hand, was holding a one-sided conversation as she turned my body into a human trampoline. Her words became louder and her voice hoarser as she reached a crescendo. After letting out a piercing yell she rolled off me. I hoped the neighbours were deaf.

  Her unconventional method of relating a story left us both exhausted. We lay together in silence now, a silence that was anything but companionable. I was working out how to extricate myself. Finding out who was responsible for my troubles in Manchester suddenly seemed a lot less important than escaping from the trouble I was in now.

  ‘I’ll bet it’s not like this in Ms Ironpants’ bed,’ Marti said eventually.

  ‘Dead right!’ I snapped.

  ‘She’s a frigid mare, isn’t she?’

  ‘Leave her alone,’ I ordered, remembering loyalty too late.

  ‘I’ll bet you’re like an old married couple,’ she said with a laugh. ‘Stale as last week’s cheese.’

  ‘No, we’re not.’

  ‘She’s a man hater.’

  ‘Better than a man eater!’

  ‘Ha, ha! Still got your sense of humour then.’ She threw her head back and let the laughter rip, the full, throbbing ear-splitter. I lay back helplessly, expecting to hear police sirens echoing the din as they raced through the rain towards us.

  ‘You’re mad!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Dave, I’m not letting you go,’ she said possessively. ‘Stay here with me. Charlie’s persuaded Brandon to come up with some money for me and that’s partly thanks to you. I can set you up in a business or we could go abroad. I speak German, you know. We’ve got the whole EU.’

  ‘No,’ I croaked.

  ‘Yes,’ she retorted. ‘You’ll stay. I can give you everything you want.’

  ‘You can’t,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Is it kids? We can have kids of our own,’ she insisted huskily.

  Then she laced the fingers of her right hand into the fingers of my left and put me into a painful wrist lock. I don’t think she intended it as a joke. I looked at the bedside table for a lamp or something I could belt her over the head with. There was nothing apart from an overflowing ashtray.

  ‘Is this something your dad taught you?’ I gasped through gritted teeth.

  As suddenly as she’d put on the hold she released me. I let out a sigh of relief and massaged feeling back into my fingers. Marti leaned out of bed and lit a cigarette.

  ‘Don’t say you’re a wimp, Dave. I’ve had enough of that with Charlie.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re expecting, but I don’t normally need to use my karate skills when I’m in bed, nor do I need a blood transfusion.’

  ‘Oh, diddums!’ she said, blowing smoke in my face. She was so ridiculous that I almost had to laugh. The smile was a mistake – she was on me again like a tigress. I was ready this time, though, and I managed to elbow her off.

  ‘I thought you had stamina, Dave,’ she protested, retrieving her cigarette from the ashtray. ‘Don’t you want to make love?’

  ‘Yeah, make love not war, but I wasn’t expecting to do three rounds with a tag wrestling team.’

  ‘Oh, poor Dave,’ she said, kissing me. ‘We haven’t done three rounds yet. Stay a bit longer and I’ll tell you how we tried to do Brandon in.’

  ‘Tell me now and we’ll see what happens afterwards,’ I said. Desire for knowledge was a long way stronger than desire for anything else, but I hadn’t bargained on Marti’s little wiles. She started stroking and teasing and touching and kissing and giggling.

  ‘Love first, talk after,’ she chanted over and over.

  ‘You sound like the pigs in Animal Farm,’ I complained. ‘Four legs good, two legs bad.’

  ‘But four legs is good, Dave,’ she giggled.

  ‘I don’t know about Brandon, but you’ve nearly done me in, you mad bugger,’ I muttered, rolling her onto her back.

  ‘Liar!’ she said triumphantly. ‘I knew you had true grit.’

  Afterwards we talked. I was totally drained, almost too tired to work my jaw muscles. Marti seemed to have gained new strength. I tried to keep her talking.

  ‘Do you know what I wanted Charlie to do?’ Marti confided. ‘I wanted him to arrange for Brandon to have an accident with one of those computerised gadgets he’s always playing with. Really neat, that would have been. But of course Brandon has so many CCTV cameras that he spotted the big ape trying to alter the timer on the door controls. That was just before you saw us having our little disagreement at Tarn Golf Club.’

  ‘So that’s what that was about,’ I said.

  ‘Then I did something a bit silly.’

  ‘What, you?’

  ‘Yes, I started visiting my dad in prison. I knew it would annoy Brandon. He’s always discouraged me from having contact with Vince.’

  ‘You and me both.’

  ‘I don’t know exactly how I found out, but as a child I sort of absorbed the idea that Vince was very bad news. Brandon used to freeze whenever I mentioned him. I only twigged that he was scared stiff of Vince when I grew up. Anyway, I thought if I started visiting the old man again, even encouraging him to get himself out of prison, it might make Brandon want to retire to somewhere nice and warm like Australia.’

  ‘So what effect did this have?’

  ‘Brandon exploded. I’ve never seen him so angry. Charlie wouldn’t back me up. That was when I decided to leave him. I know it’s naughty, but I thought if Brandon’s so frightened of Vince then maybe I can get my share of the pie by really getting Vince out. That’s when I thought of you.’

  ‘Thanks a bunch.’

  ‘I’d heard Brandon rave about your father from time to time. You were there. It all seemed to click into place.’

  ‘How nice for you.’

  ‘Anyway, it worked. Brandon had been all for cutting Charlie and me off without a penny after the stunt with the door controls but after I went to Armley Jail with you he changed his tune. He came over all soft and agreeable then.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Who can say? There must be money involved. That’s the first love of his life. I know my dad knew Brandon before he went inside. I can remember both Brandon and Sam Levy from when I was a very small child. Uncle Sam, that’s what I used to call Levy. It was a big joke to them. “Do a dance for Uncle Sam,” they’d say or, “Tell Uncle Sam how much money your dad’s got,” and then they’d both start laughing.’

  ‘I see where you get your sense of humour.’

  ‘Sam practically lived with Brandon. They’d go in this room together and lock the door for hours. Brandon would come out and he’d sing silly little ditties . . . “Sam, Sam, the memory man, boi
l his head in a frying pan,” is one I remember.’

  ‘Whatever it was Sam remembered, his memory must have failed him at the end,’ I said grimly. ‘He couldn’t tell his killers what they wanted to know.’

  ‘Brandon would never have done any harm to Sam. Are you certain it wasn’t just a robbery that went wrong?’

  ‘Leah’s pearls were left untouched in an open box. What sort of thief ignores that kind of loot?’

  ‘She was a bit of a pain, was Leah. Always scowling, found life a bit hard, she did. She treated Uncle Sam as though he was her son. I used to think he was.’

  ‘Get back to Vince and Brandon,’ I suggested.

  ‘It’s funny. When they put Dad away I suddenly went from being a child surrounded by friendly adults to someone who had no one. It was as if I’d got leprosy or something.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘They didn’t want to know me. My mother, Brandon, Sam, Leah, all my father’s friends; they all went out of my life. You can’t imagine what that’s like.’

  ‘No, I suppose I can’t.’

  ‘I went wild.’

  ‘You still are.’

  ‘The last time I ran away from the children’s home in Leeds the social workers took me to see Vince in prison. Nice of them, wasn’t it? Real confidence building. I thought they were going to lock me up in the cell with him. Anyway, Dad said he’d phone somebody and get me fixed up.’

  ‘And did he?’

  ‘The very next day Brandon Carlyle turned up with a brace of lawyers. That long streak from Rochdale, Almond, was there.’

  ‘He calls himself Devereaux-Almond now.’

  ‘That was after he got the yacht and joined the golf club. Anyway, Brandon took me away. I was never out of sight of a member of the family for months after that. I don’t know how it happened but I calmed down and I’ve been with them ever since, one way or another.’

  ‘Clyde Harrow wants me to get you to say that Brandon sexually abused you as a child.’

  ‘Clyde Harrow as in game shows and TV comic news? What’s it got to do with him?’

  ‘He wants to discredit Brandon.’