Junkyard Angel

by John Harvey

  I went back and waited within sight of the front door. I didn’t know how long he would be, but if he’d gone for what I thought, then it wouldn’t be too long.

  It wasn’t.

  A little over half an hour later he came out. The door opened just enough to let him through and no more. I couldn’t see anything or anyone else.

  I let him get a good start and began to tail him back to wherever he was going. It was tedious and boring, but it might be necessary. Besides, I was used to it. Much of my job consisted of the same dull routine. Only interrupted by the odd blow to the back of the head, the boot in the guts.

  Still you carried on, following up leads that seldom went where you expected them to. You kept chasing them down and somehow, somewhere you found yourself with something useful. Not often. But it did happen. And it was better than standing still.

  We caught a bus back towards the centre of town; my mind on him, his mind on who knows what.

  He got off the bus and on to a tube and I watched him through the windows of the communicating doors. His eyes closed, he sat with his head back against the woodwork at the top of the seat. After a couple of stops, he lifted his head and looked at the map of stations opposite. Satisfied, he put his head back and closed his eyes again. His right hand went into his overcoat pocket and stayed there. As though he had something he wanted to keep safe.

  I held on to the strap and watched over him, as though watching a sleeping child.

  We got off the train at Camden Town and I followed him up the escalator. At the top he went through his hesitation routine, took a few paces to the right, checked, went to the left, then left again to the row of telephones. I stood at the bookstall and shielded my face with a newspaper while he dialled a number.

  The girl’s death was already off the front page and I turned over to find it near the foot of page five. There was nothing new. Except, of course, that the police were confident of making an early arrest. Chief Inspector Hankin was anxious to talk to a man named Trevor Warren, who was believed to have been staying at the flat where the girl’s body had been found. He was in his twenties, with dark curly hair and a pale complexion.

  He pushed his coin into the slot and started talking. After a while, he stopped talking and listened. He listened for several minutes. Without saying anything else he hung up.

  When he came out of the phone booth and crossed the station forecourt towards the far exit, Trevor Warren seemed a very worried looking young man.

  4

  I followed him as he turned left and jogged across the busy road, overcoat flapping loosely around the bottoms of his legs. He hurried along the pavement, head down, hands in pockets. Every now and then he would stop an instant and shoot his head round nervously, like a bird.

  I guessed that whoever he had spoken to on the phone had told him that the police were looking for him. He was probably seeing dark blue uniforms in every other doorway and behind every curtain.

  What he didn’t see was me: I could follow my own mother into the john and still she wouldn’t know.

  We passed the Catholic church, the bakery and then the railway station. He stopped to buy a paper; stood on the island in the middle of the road, thumbing through it. He found the column he was looking for. I watched him read it. I watched him carefully.

  His skin couldn’t have gone any paler, but his eyes seemed to widen then set up a feverish blinking; his head began a series of tiny shakes from side to side, the curly hair bobbing to a spastic rhythm of its own.

  He tried to fold the paper. There was no way that he was going to make it. It took on a life of its own, the pages curving out of his hands at will. Finally, he pulled his fingers away from it and let it fall slowly, crazily to the ground.

  The wind peeled off page after page and moved them across the road, wrapping them round car wheels as they went.

  He stood there and looked after it, helplessly. The hands began to shake now. He jammed them deep into the pockets of his coat. Closed his eyes. Swayed slightly.

  I stood in the shelter of a shop doorway and watched him going to pieces. It was getting cold. I wished he would do something, move somewhere else.

  Then he did. He turned and walked down the steps of the Gents that was underneath the road island. I wasn’t immediately sure what to do, but I decided that I’d wait for him to come back up. For a while anyway.

  He must have found a lot to do down there. Perhaps they had a good standard of graffiti. I wouldn’t know. I was just waiting in the doorway of a dry cleaner’s, getting progressively colder and more fed up with hanging around.

  Ten minutes. That was long enough for any man. For any man who had looked as though he was in a hurry to get somewhere. For any man who had something in his overcoat pocket that he had made a long journey to collect.

  I crossed over to the island and stood at the top of the steps. I couldn’t see anything and I couldn’t hear anything either. I started to walk down the stairs. Half-way down I heard a cistern begin to flush and then one of the door bolts being pulled back. I hurried back to the top and over to my cleaner’s. The amount of time I’d spent in their doorway, they could have given me the full works right down to my pants.

  I turned my head away as he got to the top of the steps and looked around. Even at a half glance I could tell that he was feeling better. The twitching had stopped and his eyes were steady in his white face. Something had done him a lot of good. For now.

  He carried on his way and I waited the usual time before picking him up again. This time it wasn’t far. He turned into a block of small flats and went into the first of four entrances. I hoped he would wait for the lift.

  He did. I matched its speed on the stairs and was ready when it stopped on the fourth floor, flattened back against the wall on the flight below.

  There were two doors on each floor and he rang the bell at the one I couldn’t see. I edged up higher. There didn’t appear to be any answer. I wondered what he would do, whether there was supposed to have been someone there to let him in. But it didn’t make any difference. When it was obvious that no one was coming, he fished in his pocket for a key and unlocked the door.

  Which meant that he was almost certainly now in the flat by himself.

  Which meant that it might be a good time to go visiting. There were some questions I wanted to ask and I figured that I had waited long enough to ask them. It seemed that the only person Trevor Warren was going to lead me to was Trevor Warren.

  And if I could find him, then so could the cops. I’d rather he answered my questions than theirs. I didn’t know if he would see it the same way, but I thought it was a good time to find out.

  I went over to the door and rang the bell. Of course, there was a good chance that he wouldn’t answer the door. Not with the nervous disposition he seemed to have: But some of the nerves had been calmed, and, besides, he could have been expecting someone.

  Whatever the reason, he opened the door.

  Not far, but far enough for me to push my big foot inside so that he couldn’t slam it shut in my face. If he didn’t like my face. He stared at it; recognised it. No, he didn’t like it.

  Well, it was a point of view. Lots of people haven’t liked it. From time to time they’d tried ways to change it. Usually none too subtle at that. The subtle ones had been those who had tried to change what was behind it. Instead of the bunched fist, the soft kiss that sought to suck out your brain.

  Warren was still trying to shut the door on it. I didn’t think I was going to let him. I rocked myself back a little then crashed my shoulder hard against the door.

  He went backwards across the tiny hallway as though he’d had a sudden electric shock. He was still sliding down the wall when I was inside with the door shut behind me and my hand on the lapels of his jacket,

  ‘Hello, Trevor,’ I said. ‘Nice of you to remember me.’

>   I helped him through the fiat into the room on the left that looked as though it was going to be the living room. It was. There was a moquette settee in the centre and the springs were starting to sag. When I dropped him down on it, he hardly bounced at all.

  ‘What … what … ?’

  It was the best he could do. At the moment. He was going to need a little help and it was going to be my kind, not his.

  I stared down into those frightened eyes: all the terror that be had been feeling earlier had returned. They were wide, wide and dark. There was a fear reflected in them that I was certain was more than a fear of me, more than a fear of the cops, more than anything I had yet worked out.

  I didn’t like it.

  I didn’t like it but that didn’t matter.

  I said: ‘We’ve got to have a little talk, Trevor.’

  He gulped in some air and stared back up at me. Then the blinking started again.

  I got nearer to him and put out my right hand towards his face. He flinched and his eyes clenched tight shut. But I didn’t hit him. I took his jaw in my hand and held it, firmly but gently. His skin under my hand was smooth, smooth and cold. Like a child.

  ‘You know the police are looking for you?’

  He nodded. Only fractionally, but it was enough.

  ‘They won’t be gentle with you Trevor. You see these plasters on my face? They paid me a visit. They wanted to ask me some questions. Now, you wouldn’t like that, Trevor, would you? You wouldn’t like that at all.

  He shook his head. The smooth skin slid back and forth underneath my fingers.

  ‘How … how did you know … ?’

  Again the question didn’t finish; I finished it for him: ‘Where you were?’

  The eyes said yes, that was it.

  ‘I followed you, Trevor. This afternoon, I followed you.’

  ‘No!’

  He tried to pull his face away but my fingers gripped the bone of his jaw, gripped it and pushed up against his gums.

  ‘Yes, Trevor, I know where you went. I’ve got a good idea what you went there for. The police might like to know as well. I might have to tell them. Unless you tell me what I want to know first.’

  I relaxed my grip and he closed those dark eyes and sat further back on the settee. His arms were by his sides, hands clenched tight.

  He looked up. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘I want to know about the flat that you were living in. Who else was living there? Who the girl was who was dead when I arrived? Who killed her? Who the girl is who was in the photograph? Who the man is who calls himself Hugh Blagden? I want to know a lot of things.’

  He thought about that for a minute or two while I watched him, then he said, ‘What will you do then? Will you help me to get away?’

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t feel like lying.

  He knew that I wouldn’t help him. He started to shake again. He pushed himself forwards and when he spoke again his voice was louder, more shrill.

  ‘You’ll use me,’ he said. ‘Use me like everyone else tries to and then let the police have me. Well, I won’t play that game any more. I won’t!’

  And then he surprised me. He launched himself at me, head first into my stomach. The charge caught me off balance and I went back towards the wall, tripping over a small coffee table as I did so. He swung a punch that missed me by several feet, then ran for the door.

  He almost made it. His hand was on the chrome handle when I grabbed him, with my left arm tight around his neck. My other hand chopped down on the fingers that were closing on the handle. He shouted out and I hit him again, this time in the kidneys. I felt him go limp against my arm and swung him round.

  I threw him at the settee. He didn’t bounce this time either. Just flopped there like a bundle of old clothes.

  I went back over to him. He was breathing heavily and trying to massage his side where I had punched him. A trail of mucus was slowly running down from his nose, curving over his upper lip like the path of a wayward snail.

  I said, ‘That was very silly, Trevor. I thought we were getting along fine.’

  He glanced up at me for a second, then looked down at his feet again. I didn’t want him thinking about his feet, I wanted him thinking about the other night. And fast. Something told me it wouldn’t do to hang around too long.

  I said, ‘Trevor!’ and when he looked up I hit him. Not too hard. Enough to jerk his face sideways and stop him getting lost in his own thoughts.

  I wiped the wet from his face off against my trouser leg.

  ‘Now, Trevor, are you going to be a good boy and tell me what I want to know?’

  He raised his head slowly, frightened of being struck again. But I didn’t need that any more; neither did he. He said it so quietly that I could hardly hear him, but he said, ‘Yes.’

  I relaxed my muscles.

  And then I heard the door open behind me. I don’t know who I was expecting to see standing there, but it wasn’t anybody that I had ever seen before. I did recognise what was in his hand: it was a Smith and Wesson .38. I didn’t like the look of it. Not at all. Especially the way it was pointing: straight at my stomach.

  From behind I heard Warren standing up, saying something which might have been, ‘Don’t.’ I wasn’t thinking about that. I was concentrating on the man in the doorway: the eyes: the finger on the trigger. He was going to use it.

  He knew that.

  I knew that.

  I was too far away to hope that I could jump at the gun before he could fire. Not a chance that way. Not a chance. I jumped.

  I was somewhere in mid-air, arms outstretched, when the gun went off. I must have got pretty close because the sound filled my ears to the point where they should have punctured and the heat of the blast seemed to scorch my cheek.

  Then I was aware that something solid had slammed into me. Hard.

  In a second that was split down the middle like cracked glass I had two thoughts: one that I was dying; the other was a sudden vision of her, whom I thought I would never think of again—sitting in a window wearing a white night dress, cornfields beyond.

  Nothing.

  Both thoughts, in their separate ways, were lies.

  The gun may have been aimed at me when it came round the door, but I was not its target. Why should I be? I didn’t know anything. Trevor Warren had known a great deal. It had brimmed out of his eyes.

  His knowledge had frightened him: it had killed him.

  I sat on the carpet and looked across the room at his body. The bullet had flung him past the end of the settee into the corner of the room. He was lying on his back, legs thrust upwards at odd angles against the stained oak drinks cabinet. I got up, gingerly, and walked over to take a closer look.

  Whoever the guy was with the gun he had known his business. He had missed the centre of the forehead by no more than a couple of millimetres. The face looked more like a death mask than ever. There wasn’t even a trace of blood upon it. I knew that would be at the back, where the slug had made its exit, taking with it a lot of brain and not a little bone.

  I could have lifted his head forwards by the hair and made sure. I didn’t want to.

  I wanted to get out. Now. The cut at the front of my head where I dived into the edge of the door had started to bleed again. I would have a bump there big enough to balance the one at the back. I felt like Punch, after a particularly bad night with Judy. Any Judy.

  And no way was I going to call the cops this time. I could imagine Hankin’s reaction if I told him I’d come up with a second stiff in a couple of days. He’d have me inside so fast it would be yesterday.

  I went round wiping my prints off everything I might have touched. After I’d touched a few more things for luck. But my luck was out. Again. Nothing there would point me in any direction I wanted to go.

 
I shut the outside door behind me and went.

  5

  The girl in my dream was beautiful: in dreams they usually are. She was standing close, close enough for me to feel the tips of her nipples against my bare chest. One minute I looked at her and she was a wonderful milky white colour; the next she was shiny black. It didn’t bother me. My lusts admitted no prejudice.

  A mouth came up to kiss me. I met it and the tongue pushed against mine, thick and strong. My hands slid up her body seeking the points of her breasts. Diamonds in my hands.

  We stopped kissing and she moved away. Black with close-curled afro hair. She became he. Back again. Then white again. A face I remembered but I couldn’t be sure from where. I placed my hands around it lovingly; with the index finger of my right hand I began to stroke her forehead. The end of the finger sank through the skin, deep, deep, in over the knuckle. I tried to release it. The face moved up towards mine, mouth closing on mine, the softness of the insides of her lips.

  I pulled my mouth away, pushed against her head with my left hand trying to free my finger. Finally it slid from the hole. I thought that the skin would close over behind it, but it didn’t. It remained, a deep hole drilled between dark eyebrows.

  As I stared at it, a purplish goo started to ooze out and run thickly down her face. It crossed her slightly parted lips and I saw the little pink tongue slide out and lick it. Not once: several times.

  I closed my eyes and kept them shut tight: even when I realised that the phone was ringing.

  I reached out and mumbled something into it that sounded vaguely like my name. Whoever it was at the other end sounded surprised when I said that I was in bed, trying to sleep. Apparently it was half past eleven in the morning. I wasn’t impressed.

  I told him to hang on. I dropped the phone on the bed and opened my eyes for the first time. The digital clock on the cupboard told me that he was right. I rubbed my eyes with the backs of my hands, careful to avoid the cuts and bruises that were making my face look more like an ice hockey rink every day.