Green Light
Page 11
“Touch I and I yells for the fuckin’ doctor.”
“Not with half a dozen bandages down your fucking throat, you won’t.”
Sutton looked around and found a small grey-green stool under the window. He drew it up next to the bed. Beyond the milk-white curtain Sutton could hear the slap of slippered feet and the dim sound of voices. As he sat there someone shouted and people scurried, either toward or away from the disturbance. Sutton relaxed, but he didn’t have long.
“You’re Bobby Rice,” he said. “I know about you. I know you’ve done time. What I don’t know is why you attacked me. Maybe you could tell me.”
Bobby tried to shrug.
“You won’t get I to fucking tell ee nuthin’.”
“Bobby,” he warned.
“You can’t fucking doohs nuthin’ to I,” he whispered savagely, indicating the curtain with a flick of his head, and all the doctors waiting on the other side of it to help him if he should cry out.
“Are you sure?”
Sutton moved quickly. Bobby’s leather jacket was at the foot of the bed and he grabbed it and managed to stuff it into Bobby’s mouth before he got out a syllable. Sutton pushed down on his injured shoulder. The pain must have been quite intense. All those bruised tendons...Bobby bucked against his hold on him, hitting out with his free hand, but Sutton caught it and held it. It vibrated in his grip like a live wire.
“Make a sound and you’ll be chewing on bits of your nose,” he whispered to him harshly. “If you don’t fucking answer me I can make it hurt. I mean really hurt. Yes?”
Sutton took the leather jacket out of his mouth. Bobby was breathing hard. He didn’t move. His eyes followed him as he sat back down on the stool.
“Now,” Sutton said, still holding the leather jacket bunched in his hand. He waved it menacingly. “Why on earth would you want to go to my place of residence and try to hurt me? I can’t understand it.”
Bobby didn’t answer.
His eyes did not move from his face.
“Bobby?”
Bobby opened his mouth to shout for help. Before he could, he found himself choking on leather.
Sutton pulled on the arm in the sling. Bobby screamed behind the leather jacket.
“Are you going to talk?”
He had released the tension on the injured arm, but had not removed the jacket.
Bobby stared at him, blistering hate in his eyes, and then nodded.
“Now. Answer my question, big man.”
“You’ve been fuckin’ with my sis,” he said.
“I haven’t.”
“Nobody fucks with my sis ‘cept I,” he said, and smiled nastily. “She told I so I came round to spark you out.” Uncertainty clouded his vision. “You’re quick for a big fucker.”
“I’m glad you approve.”
“She said you was a soft asshole,” he said, and stared up at the ceiling. “Fuck.”
“I’m sure you’ll be alright in a couple of weeks.”
He rolled his head on the pillow; his neck must be hurting him.
“When I is, I’s comin’ to fuck you up,” he said.
Quickly, Sutton once more stuffed the jacket into Bobby’s mouth. The edges of a shout were all that escaped. It wasn’t loud enough to bring someone running. But still, Sutton wouldn’t have much longer with him. He could feel the time slipping away.
“Come back and I’ll fucking destroy you,” Sutton said. “But I won’t just fuck up your arm this time.”
He shoved a little harder with the leather jacket, then took it out of Bobby’s mouth.
Bobby was breathing hard; his face was red; he was sweating.
“I’s got me self a good couple of mates that’ll hold you’s down as I kick the livin’ shit out of you.”
“You didn’t let me finish,” Sutton said, leaning close. “I won’t just fuck you up. I’ve got some guitar strings at home. But I don’t play guitar. Come round, and I’ll show you why I have them. When you’re on the pavement and you’re out cold I’ll slip a string out of my pocket, unravel it, and very slowly and very carefully I’ll push it into your side, at just about where your ribs are. You won’t feel it because you’ll be unconscious. I may need a bit of feeling about before I find the spaces between your ribs, but once I’m passed them it’s plain sailing to your heart. One stab of a string and your heart stops. Just like that. Tears the muscle, and your heart’s just one big muscle. When they examine you it’ll just look like your heart gave out. It works. I’ve done it before. What song will they play at your funeral, Bobby boy? Wonderwall maybe?”
Bobby was looking at him very carefully.
Sutton sat back down on the stool, and watched him.
“Was it your sister’s idea?”
Sullenly, he said, “what?”
“To send you.”
Bobby looked reluctant to reply.
“You don’t have the luxury of not answering, Robert.”
Sutton laid the bunched up leather jacket on the bed next to him.
Bobby stared at it like you might stare at a dangerous snake.
“It was Lise,” he said.
“Lise?”
“My cousin.”
“Lisa.”
“Yeah. Suze didn’t want me to do nothin’. It was Lise suggested I go see you.”
“To what end?”
“Huh?” He looked confused.
“What would you it achieve, you coming to see me? Assuming you’d been successful, of course.”
Bobby paused and then with bright hate said, “I fuckin’ told you, ‘cause you’s been fuckin’ with she. Gettin’ involved with her shit. I was going to stop ee. Bust up one of your knees. Or both of ‘em. Put ee out of action for a spell.”
“So why should Lisa care?”
“’Cause we’re family, dickhead.”
Sutton gave him a back handed slap across the mouth. Bobby grunted with surprise, not pain; he hadn’t put enough power into it to make it hurt.
“Watch your fucking mouth.”
Bobby’s eyes flickered. Fear. For the first time.
It warmed Sutton to see it.
“What did Lisa say to you. Exactly.”
Bobby sighed angrily.
“She said that you’d been threatenin’ Suze. And Danny. She said that you was tryin’ it on, big time. That you wasn’t stoppin’. That you was goin’ to mess up this business thing they’s sortin’.” He sighed again. “Man, if I was on my fuckin’ feet...”
“I’d just kick your ass again.”
“Fuck you, babbers,” he spat.
Sutton got up. Bobby must have seen something on his face because he started shouting for the doctor. Sutton hit him. He was of a type. The aggression circuit in the brain is always switched on. There is only one way to deal with them. Bobby’s nose felt very wet and yielding under his knuckles. He went out like a light. Sutton got up and moved to the curtain. To cover himself, he leant out and shouted, “nurse! Nurse!”
A big black woman in a blue nurse’s uniform stopped and ran toward him.
“He started shouting gibberish,” Sutton said, indicating Bobby’s unconscious form in the bed, “and then he just went unconscious. What’s wrong with him?”
She rushed to get a doctor and he went in the opposite direction. Nobody followed him. Outside it was still raining, but he didn’t feel it. All he felt was the adrenaline, hot, coursing through his veins.
At least he knew where he had to go next.
He just didn’t know why.
*
CHAPTER 15
It wasn’t yet late when Sutton knocked on Lisa Rice’s door.
The house was old, and starting to show its years. The location in Cotham was pleasant, and although Sutton knew how she had got the property, wondered how she could afford it…and admiring all the work that had to be done, realised that she couldn’t, not really. It wasn’t necessarily decrepit,
but there was a long list of reparations: wooden frames needed to be painted, cracks needed to be sealed, doors needed to be replaced.
“Who is it?”
A rough voice. An accent.
“Your cousin sent me.”
A pause.
“Bobby?”
“He’s in the hospital.”
A fumbling at the locks.
The door opened.
Too late, Lisa realised her mistake. She had been given a general description, perhaps, and he fit enough of it to instil caution.
“Open the door,” he said, pushing on it.
“Fuck off –“
The door was warped in the frame, and coupled with the resistance from Lisa, felt like he was pushing a bus up a hill. A muted squawk as he widened the crack. Sutton put his shoulder against it and pushed it all the way. He was rougher than he meant to be and she fell back on the floor, surprised. Her big doughy breasts wobbled almost comically inside the dirty white top she wore. A squashed little fish mouth turned down at the edges as much as it could.
“What the fuck is you doing!” She screamed.
“Shut up.”
He shut the door. She made no move to regain her feet.
“Get up.”
When she didn’t move fast enough he took her arm and yanked her upright.
“Fuck off. That ‘urt.”
“Good. Get the fuck in there.”
He indicated the living room. She looked at him closely, studying him, knowing he was serious, knowing something was wrong. She went, but couldn’t help and put a little rebellious swagger in her walk.
Washing everywhere, and the same slight stain of yellow over everything; like a poker den for men who liked to gamble without their wives finding out. Cigarettes. Lots of them, over a long period of time.
She sat down and lit one, more for effect than anything. It enraged him all the more, but he controlled it. He sat on the arm of the armchair opposite her. He leaned forward.
“Do you want to play a game, Lisa?” He asked pleasantly.
“Fuck off,” she said. “You lay one more fuckin’ hand on I and I calls the fuckin’ pigs.”
As charming as her cousin.
“The game is, I ask you questions and you answer. Simple as that. The only rule is you have to answer truthfully. You see, there are things that I know, and things that I don’t know, but you of course don’t have any idea what I do or don’t know. I may decide to try and catch you out just by asking a question I already know the answer to. Yes? Do you understand?”
She looked at him as if he had gone mad.
“But if I catch you in a lie,” he said darkly, “all the rules are off.”
“You is fucked.”
“Question number one: are you close to your cousin, Suzanne Rice?”
She shrugged.
“Yes or no, Lisa.”
She waited a moment before answering.
“Yes.”
“Were you having an affair with Terry Douglas?”
She hesitated again.
“Yes.”
“Did Suzanne know about the affair before Maggie found out?”
“What sort of fucking question is that? I-“
“I didn’t say these questions had to make sense. Answer it.”
“Yeah. She knew.”
“Did she tell Daniel?”
“I don’t-“
“Yes or no. Did she tell Daniel?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay,” he admitted, “you may not know the answer to that one. But I know you know the answer to this one: did Suzanne get Bobby to send you to see me?”
Lisa’s eyes shifted away guiltily.
“She asked you to,” he said. “Why?”
Lisa shrugged.
“She said you was tryin’ to fuck up Danny’s plans for the business.”
She shrugged again.
“Alright. Did Daniel kill Terry Douglas?”
She looked shocked.
“No, it was that homeless guy, that whatshisface-“
“Don’t lie to me, Lisa,” he hissed. “Suzanne pretty much confessed that Daniel murdered his father. I want you to tell me what you know.”
She hesitated and her mouth worked. She stared at him.
“It wasn’t either of them, it was that homeless twat-“
He got up and hit her. The cigarette went flying out of her mouth. She squawked like an angry seagull.
“Don’t you fucking hit I-“
“You’ve got no options here, Lisa,” he said. “You’re up to your fucking neck in this. If I go to the police with what I know and you get pulled down with Daniel and Suzanne I somehow don’t think they’ll drop the accessory to murder charge just because some somebody from nowhere slapped you about a bit.”
He could see her working it around in her head. Maybe it was the thought that she really hadn’t had anything to do with any murder that brought her round, or maybe it was because it hadn’t seemed like murder until just now, until he had told her that it was. The mind is funny like that sometimes; sometimes you don’t see things until somebody else shows you it.
“Did Daniel kill Terry?”
Had Suzanne gotten Lisa to send Bobby to see him because of his threat about the murder of Daniel’s father? If Daniel had killed him, then attention – even in the form of false evidence – could be enough to get the police to look harder at the murder than they had done. And they would do anything to prevent that.
“I don’t know,” she stormed.
He hit her again. He left a satisfying red mark on her cheek.
“You fuck.”
“Were you here with him that morning? Were you two fucking?”
Bright hate in her eyes as she stared at him. And something else…maybe sorrow.
He continued, “did he get a phone call? That morning? Did someone lure him out to that place?”
“No. They didn’t need to.”
“What?”
She rubbed her sore cheek.
“He had an appointment with that estate agent. He had to be there at eleven.”
“Who knew about the appointment?”
“No one.”
He slapped her again.
She cried out.
“Wrong. You knew. Who else?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who else?”
“Suze. Suze knew.”
Sutton hesitated.
Suzanne knew where Terry was going to be, and what time he was going to be there. Had he been wrong? Had Suzanne killed her father-in-law, not Daniel?
“Did Suzanne kill Terry?”
Lisa looked shocked, and it seemed genuine.
“No!”
“She knew where he was going to be. She could have set it up.”
“No, it wasn’t she –“
“How do you know? You were here. How do you know where Suzanne was? Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t Daniel at all, maybe it was –“
“Terry was here with I before he got murdered,” she said, avoiding his eyes. “And Suze was here too.”
He frowned.
“She came by or...?”
“No, she...” Lisa shifted on the sofa. “She came here with Terry. We was all here together.”
Lisa met his eyes and he understood. He saw it all in his head, three sweaty bodies tangled together in the upstairs bedroom as the morning sun angled through a gap in the half drawn curtains, the sounds of grunting and moaning, flesh slapping against flesh, the air filled with the rich rancid smell of perverted coitus.
“How long had it been going on for?”
Lisa shrugged. She seemed curiously ashamed of it.
“Three months. I...couldn’t get enough. Nors could Terry. Or Suze.”
He thought for a moment.
“Did Daniel know?”
Lisa looked at him.
“I don’t
fuckin’ reckon so,” she said, as if he was stupid. “He wouldn’t be with Suze now if he did.”
“Lucky Maggie didn’t catch all of you here together when she came round.”
“Suze was upstairs in the cupboard. I thought Terry was gonna tell Maggie about it just to fuckin’ rub her nose in it, he was so mad. You should have fuckin’ heard the two of thems arguing. It was like the Friday Night Fights.”
“So Suzanne was here when Terry went off and got murdered.”
Sullenly, exaggerating the word, she said, “yes.”
“How long for?”
“About an hour. Spose.”
“So did Daniel do it?”
“I don’t know.”
“What was Terry’s relationship with his son like?”
“Huh?”
He made an angry frustrated gesture in the air with one hand.
“Did Terry ever talk about Daniel? About how they got on?”
“No. He didn’t say nothin’ to I.”
“I suppose you didn’t talk much.”
*
Sutton got back to his flat at around half past three, just as the sun was giving way to the darkness of another storm. He called Angela to apologise for not showing up at lunch, but she didn’t answer. He left a message. Like a fool, he didn’t suspect anything was wrong.
His thoughts were preoccupied with trying to determine how to connect Daniel to his father’s murder. Of course it all hinged on how psychotic Daniel was. He had plenty of motives: an unsatisfactory father-son relationship; frustrated ambition; the dissolution of an empire that his father almost seemed to be giving away for free. And then there was the affair, not just with one Rice, but with the two of them. Had Daniel known? Sutton wondered…but in the end he didn’t think so. As Lisa had said, would he still be with the same woman – the woman he was going to marry – if he had known? It seemed highly doubtful.
He sat on the sofa and wondered what to do next. At that point, his injuries were beginning to announce themselves, like dinner guests, intent on lingering long after they were welcome: his shoulder and neck muscles felt stiff and swollen, and there was a fast growing lump just above his temple on the left side that he couldn’t remember receiving. His ribs stung when he took a deep breath. Fuck you, Bobby Rice. His only relief was in the knowledge that the rugby-headed brother was probably in more pain than he was.