The Roar of the Butterflies

by Reginald Hill

  On the fence was a sign, Fly Tippers Will Be Prosecuted. The good people of Luton like the good people of most other towns in England cannot see a hollow of any size from a ditch to a canyon without wanting to chuck their unwanted household rubbish into it. Joe sometimes felt that if ever he reached the end of the world and looked over, the first thing he’d see would be an old fridge. A few years ago, tipping at Leck’s Bottom had become such a health hazard that the Council had moved in, cleared all the rubbish out and erected the fence and the warning sign. But there is nothing your true-Brit fly-tipper likes more than a challenge, and despite the fact that the Council had its own efficient bulk-waste collection service and easily accessible landfill site, and though the fence was kept in good repair, hardly a week passed without some devotee of the sport hacking his way through with a pair of wire cutters, then dragging his defunct TV or washing machine twenty yards or so across rough boggy ground in order to drop it into the old lock basin.

  Joe found such a hole now and made his way through it.

  As well as being a great dumper, your true-Brit is a great scavenger, which explains the Empire, both what got taken out and what got left behind. Everything removable from the lock machinery had long since vanished, leaving only the huge basin which Nature herself had filled with murky water of a consistency somewhere between gumbo and grits, with none of the nutritional values of either.

  Joe stood on the crumbling concrete edge and looked down. The surface was black and gave no reflection. He knew what he was looking for but didn’t have much hope of finding it. The Audi had come down here, of that he was almost certain. And when it reached the Hoo car park, nothing remained in its boot. Except a patch of oil, which suggested to Joe that before coming to collect Steve Waring’s belongings, Colin Rowe and his companion had already picked up the foldaway scooter.

  Something as heavy as that would probably have been sucked into these dismal depths within minutes. But a bin bag with its fairly broad surface area, containing what Joe guessed would be the relatively lightweight contents of Waring’s wardrobe and drawers, might stay close to the surface for some time.

  He almost didn’t spot it because the black plastic so closely matched the colour of the water. But there it was. At least he guessed that there it was. The only way of confirming the contents was to fish it out and there was no way he was going to attempt that. The sides of the basin were vertical and slimy. Man on his own who fell in there might as well sing ‘Goodnight Vienna!’, exhale his last breath and dive deep to get it over with quickly.

  But it wouldn’t be much of a problem to return with some kind of grappling iron and haul it out, then take its contents along to Mrs Tremayne and get that formidable lady to confirm they belonged to her errant lodger.

  On second thoughts, that might not be so easy without official backing. Mrs Tremayne didn’t strike him as a natural-born witness.

  In any case, a witness to what? Suppose he even managed to get her to identify Colin Rowe, what did that prove? With King Rat in the background, and that ingenious lawyer, Arthur Surtees at his side, Rowe would probably be able to come up with some tale to explain his behaviour.

  Whereas he, Joe Sixsmith, the People’s gumshoe, couldn’t come up with anything to positively link Waring doing a bunk to the case against Chris Porphyry. Should have spent more time trying to trace Waring, he told himself. Station, airport. But you needed more clout than he had to do that kind of thing properly. Besides, he’d only been on the case since yesterday!

  And you spent most of that time reckoning it was going to take a miracle to rescue the YFG! he accused himself.

  Well, way things stood, that seemed about right. With the Rules Committee meeting only hours away, things were as bad as they could get.

  A noise behind him made him turn, and he saw that yet again he’d been wrong.

  Things had just got worse.

  Coming through the hole in the wire fence was Stephen Hardman.

  ‘Afternoon, Joe,’ said the man. ‘All alone? What happened to your pet gorilla?’

  ‘He’s around, never you mind,’ said Joe. Then he called out, even to his own ears not very convincingly, ‘George, my man! You there?’

  Hardman laughed.

  ‘Good try. But he’s not coming. I followed him down to Sullivan’s Gym and saw him start on a training session which looked likely to keep him occupied for a good few hours. Nice mover for a big guy.’

  He sounded laid back, but Joe registered that Jurassic had scared him enough to make him want to be sure he was out of the picture before coming after his prey once more.

  But how did he know where I’d be? he wondered.

  One way to find out.

  ‘How’d you know where I’d be?’ he asked.

  ‘Sat at the top of Lock-keeper’s Lane till I saw you drive by,’ said Hardman.

  That signified…something. Man should be able to work out what if he had time to sit and have a good ponder.

  But pondering was for a comfy chair with a pint of Guinness in your hand. Standing here in Leck’s Bottom with the lock basin behind you and in front of you a guy who’d tried to pull your goolies off last time you met, pondering anything but how the shoot you were going to get out of here wasn’t on the agenda.

  Hardman, who’d been slowly approaching, had halted only a few feet away. One leap forward, one hard push, and Joe could feel himself toppling over backwards into the foul depths of the basin.

  Except all the guy wants to do is put me on my back for a few days, he reminded himself. Didn’t push me over the balcony rail when he had the chance but pulled me back to safety. OK, he did it by grabbing my goolies, but as Aunt Mirabelle always says, it’s the thought that counts.

  Then he recalled his own subsequent analysis along the lines: PI getting a kicking, no one’s fussed; PI’s brains splattering over the pavement, even DS Chivers would take notice.

  But PI vanishing without a trace…

  He knew from experience that when someone goes missing without any immediate evidence of foul play, it takes the cops forever to take an interest.

  But what was there in this affair that would make offing Joseph Gaylord Sixsmith Esquire a possible option?

  ‘So what are you doing here, Joe?’ the man asked, sounding almost friendly.

  How to answer? Lying wasn’t his strong suit. He didn’t have the O-levels. To sound really convincing he had to tell the truth, which in this case, he concluded hopefully, might just set him free.

  ‘Don’t rightly know,’ he said. ‘Got this idea this is where you and Mr Rowe must have come this morning after you drove off from Mrs Tremayne’s.’

  ‘And why should we do that?’

  ‘Thought maybe it was to get rid of Steve Waring’s things you’d just picked up.’

  ‘Yeah? And why would we want to pick his things up? And if we did, why would we want to get rid of them?’

  What was it with all the questions? wondered Joe. Hardman didn’t strike him as the conversational type. Action first, ask questions later, if at all, that was more his line. Which meant maybe the questions were someone else’s line.

  No prizes for guessing whose.

  And if King Rat was asking the questions, Joe had an uneasy feeling that his future wellbeing might depend on the kind of answers he gave.

  He couldn’t think of a lie better than the truth, so he stuck with it.

  He said, ‘I reckoned, maybe you paid him off or frightened him off and you didn’t want anything left lying around to make people start asking, where’s he gone then? So you paid him up to date at Mrs Tremayne’s and put his gear in a bag and came down here to dump it.’

  It was funny. It was the truth he was speaking, but somehow hearing himself say it out loud made him see how feeble it was.

  Other possibilities began to swirl around in his mind. Like, what if Waring was a loose end they’d thought they’d got tied up till he’d come bumbling along? And when it looked like he was taking
an interest, they wouldn’t know it was only because he couldn’t see anything else to take an interest in. No, they’d think he must have a reason, and suddenly they started thinking maybe they’d better tie up their loose end a bit tighter.

  He quickly put the lid on such speculations.

  Keep it simple, Joe, he urged himself. Play it dumb. You’re a poor, over-stretched PI who don’t know shoot! Which was the truth of it because you couldn’t call some foolish idea slowly rolling over in the murky basin of his subconscious knowing.

  But those cold eyes, focused unblinkingly on his face, felt as if they had the power to penetrate beyond the bewildered openness of his expression into those dark depths he was trying to ignore.

  The wise words of his guru, Endo Venera, came into his mind.

  You find yourself on the wrong end of a gun, you gotta put yourself one step ahead of the guy holding it, which means seeing where he is going and letting him think he’s one step ahead of you.

  No gun here, but there might as well be one. Best he could hope if Hardman tried to push him over the edge was to delay matters by grabbing hold of the guy so that if he went, they both went. But he didn’t doubt that Hardman had a dozen easy moves to dislodge an overweight under-fit middling-aged PI.

  But playing it dumb didn’t mean you had to come on like the village idiot. If, as he thought, he was in the situa -tion because King Rat thought he was smart, then he had to act smart, but not so smart as they were!

  He said, ‘Hey, I was wondering, this guy in Spain I was meant to be watching, he wouldn’t be Waring using another name, would he? All fits: get him out of the country, then get me out there to watch him. Kind of neat trick I can see Mr King pulling.’

  Hardman stared for a moment then laughed.

  ‘Joe, it’s true what they say about you. You’re a lot smarter than you look.’

  Was this mockery because he’d been fooled? Or was it a genuine compliment, meaning Good try, but now I’m going to kill you?

  A few more seconds should tell.

  Then a phone rang. Not the Hallelujah chorus but the theme from Star Wars, for God’s sake!

  Hardman took out a phone, glanced at the display then said, ‘Yeah?’

  He listened, looked at Joe, said, ‘Yeah, that’s right.’

  He listened again for some time, then said a third and final, ‘Yeah, I think so.’

  A final period of listening, and he said, ‘OK. Will do,’ and switched off.

  ‘Joe,’ he said. ‘Nice talking to you. That was Mr King.

  Needs me elsewhere so I’ve got to love you and leave you, Joe. Listen, I wanted to say, sorry about that business in your flat earlier. Mr King was pissed at you letting him down about the Spanish job, so he asked me to go round and make it clear, and I got a bit carried away. But he’s over it now. He says if I see you to tell you, no hard feelings. But he’d like his stuff back, you know, the tickets and the euros. You got them with you?’

  ‘In the car,’ said Joe.

  ‘I’ll pick them up now then.’

  Together they walked back towards the fence. With every step Joe took away from the lock basin, Leck’s Bottom assumed a different aspect and began to feel like a very good place to be alive in.

  When they reached the Morris, Joe dug out the green file and handed it over.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Hardman. ‘One thing more, Joe. Don’t know what it means myself, but Mr King says he’d heard on the grapevine that some little job you were doing out at the Royal Hoo Golf Club was going to turn out OK for your client. So all’s well that ends well. Mr King says he’s really impressed by what he’s heard about the way you handled things there, and he looks forward to employing your services again some time in the future. Could mean you’re a made man if Mr King puts the word around, capisce?’

  Capisce? and Star Wars as his ring tone? This guy was a joke, thought Joe. But he decided to laugh later.

  ‘Tell him I’m truly grateful,’ said Joe. ‘Truly, truly.’

  He didn’t have to try and fake it. His gratitude was real. But it was limited to that phone call which had taken the decision away from Hardman.

  Who clearly took it as going a lot further.

  ‘Glad to have you on board again, Joe,’ he said. ‘Live well.’

  He walked away towards his own car, a Mazda RX-8, bright red naturally, parked twenty yards further back.

  Now would have been a good time to ponder. Better still would have been to ponder in the company of Butcher, and of Beryl, and even of Merv, and see how much their disparate views overlapped with his own assessment of what all this meant.

  But this was one of those dreadful times in a PI’s life when time didn’t permit him to spread the burden. He had to act as if he was absolutely certain, which to a man whose genuine absolute certainties often turned out to be completely wrong was not a pleasant prospect.

  As the Mazda drove away, he took out his mobile.

  His first call was to Directory Enquiries. He asked for the number of the Royal Hoo and a few moments later he heard Bert Symonds’ voice say, ‘Royal Hoo Golf Club’ in a tone that would have got him a butler’s job anywhere.

  ‘Bert,’ he said. ‘This is Joe Sixsmith. Listen, are the Bermuda Triangle there?’

  The steward didn’t pretend not to know who he meant.

  ‘Yes, out on the terrace with everybody else. It’s another scorcher.’

  ‘Not where I am,’ said Joe, glancing round at the dank shades of the Bottom. ‘Bert, I need a favour. Any phone calls come through for the Triangle, like someone asking one of them to ring back urgently, don’t pass it on.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘Just had a call for Mr Latimer,’ said Bert finally. ‘Was on my way to give the message when you rang.’

  ‘Don’t. Specially if the message is to give Mr King a bell.’

  Another silence.

  ‘How’d you know that?’

  ‘Never mind. Will you help me?’

  ‘It’s my job if Mr Latimer finds out,’ said the steward.

  ‘Who’d you rather rely on for your job, Tom Latimer or Chris Porphyry? Is he there, by the way?’

  ‘Oh yes. Toughing it out. You know the Rules Committee are meeting tonight?’

  ‘Yeah, no problem. That’s all fixed.’

  ‘You mean…’

  ‘Never mind that. I’ll explain everything later. Will you help?’

  ‘OK, but I…’

  ‘Good. Is Mr Postgate on the terrace?’

  ‘No. Too hot for him. I imagine he’s at home in the shade.’

  ‘You got his number handy?’

  ‘Sure.’

  After Joe had noted it down he said, ‘One last thing. Can you tell Mr Porphyry discreetly that I’ll be on my way shortly? See him in the car park in say half an hour. OK?’

  ‘OK. But if this goes wrong, Joe, you’d better be able to afford a well-paid assistant, because I’ll be on your payroll, believe me!’

  Joe switched off. That had been close. If the Triangle hadn’t been on the terrace, held incommunicado by the Hoo rules on mobiles, or if Bert had already delivered King Rat’s message, then his plan would be worthless. On the other hand, he’d have had plenty of time to try to put some flesh on the very skimpy bones of his theory before he made a call to the one man in Luton he really didn’t want to piss off.

  But needs must when the devil drives, and rehearsing in his mind the tones of absolute certainty, he turned to his phone again.

  He didn’t need to ask Enquiries for the number this time.

  When the phone was answered he said, ‘Hi. My name’s Joe Sixsmith. I’d like to speak to Detective Superintendent Woodbine, please.’

  Last Breakfast

  Joe stood outside No 15 Lock-keeper’s Lane and rang the doorbell with some trepidation.

  To his relief it was the boy Liam who opened the door.

  Joe glanced at his watch. It was half past three.

  Joe said, �
�Hi, Liam. Back from school already?’

  ‘Exams,’ said the boy lugubriously. ‘You want to see Mum?’

  Not if I don’t have to, thought Joe.

  He said, ‘Just wondered, that morning Steve left, did he actually eat his breakfast.’

  ‘Yeah, Steve always ate his breakfast,’ said Liam wonder-ingly. ‘He really liked Mum’s cooking!’

  Recalling the burnt offering he’d seen on his previous visit, Joe understood Liam’s wonderment, but he wasn’t sure the boy had fully understood the question.

  ‘Don’t mean generally,’ he said. ‘I mean, that specific Wednesday morning, did he definitely have breakfast before he went?’

  Now the boy understood him.

  He turned away and yelled, ‘Mum! It’s for you!’

  Then he vanished up the stairs.

  Oh shoot! thought Joe, his heart sinking not only at the prospect of renewing acquaintance with Mrs Tremayne but because he already had his answer.

  She emerged from the kitchen in a puff of vegetable steam. Presumably she was preparing her returning lodgers’ evening meal. It did not surprise Joe that she belonged to that old-fashioned school of landladies who thought that vegetables could never be boiled too much.

  Her face was already flushed from the heat of the kitchen, but irritation at the sight of Joe slapped on another coat of puce.

  ‘What?’ she demanded.

  ‘Mrs Tremayne, quick question then I’m out of here. Did you cook breakfast for Mr Waring the morning he left?’

  She hesitated, obviously debating whether an answer or a slam of the door would get rid of Joe quickest.

  Then she glanced up the stairs and said, ‘What’s he been saying?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Joe. ‘He’s a good lad. I can see that.’

  ‘He says you’re a private detective.’

  ‘That’s right. And all I’m doing is asking a question that the police might want to ask.’