‘John stayed up hoping to see you. He got a star at school today for reading. Jean’s a bit whiny, I think she may be sickening for something. Nothing to worry about.’ The perfect wife does not burden her husband with petty domestic problems. ‘I’ve made something special for dinner, boeuf bourguignon with red wine and brandy in it. Lucky I chose a casserole, it won’t be overdone.’
‘You shouldn’t have troubled. Eggs and bacon would have been fine.’
‘For a starving man coming home after a hard day’s work? I hope I can manage something a bit better than that.’
‘You’re the most angelic wife who ever lived,’ Roger Devenish said with a sinking heart. Sue was an erratic cook at any time, but particularly fallible when she attempted something ambitious. And so it proved now. The beef was certainly not over-done, yet it managed mysteriously to be so hard that it almost bounced off the fork. The sauce resembled mulled wine and brandy, strongly laced with pepper. She herself ate little, but she had piled his plate high, and he was struggling when the telephone rang. He jumped up eagerly. When he came back three minutes later he was looking grim.
‘I’ve got to go out. No use complaining, love, they had to call me. It’s another Karate Killing. Soho this time, in a dirty book-shop. And it’s beginning to look as though my bet about the Clabers is right.’ He looked at his plate and said with relief, ‘Wonderful meal, love, just can’t stay to finish it.’
She was interested enough to forget about the boeuf bourguignon. ‘Why do you say it looks as though you’re right?’
‘The boy who’s been knocked off belongs to another gang. They run the porn shops. The Clabers may be trying to move in.’
‘So they’ve killed the chief of the other lot?’
He patted her cheek, laughed. ‘They don’t kill each other. It’s some poove who’s been done, named Sonny Halliwell. He’s not important, only the method, the good old karate chop.’
The date was the fourteenth of January.
Sonny Halliwell got his first name partly because he looked so boyish, partly to distinguish him from his father Billy, who had been a frightener for a firm of property developers named the Fifth City Company. A frightener’s job is to get unwanted tenants out of houses and flats by making their lives uncomfortable. Billy Halliwell would set trip wires on stairs, empty rubbish in front of doors, rent apartments above and below unwanted tenants to tarts, with injunctions not to worry about noise. After a few weeks of Billy’s attentions most tenants were ready to accept an offer from Fifth City of a small sum of money to terminate their lease.
Billy’s career as frightener ended when he was badly beaten by a group of tenants who resented the electrical devices he had been using to give them shocks when they turned on the landing lights. He emerged from hospital shaky and nervous, in no condition to frighten anybody ever again. There are no pensions among villains, but Billy hung about the Brompton Gaming Club, took messages and ran errands for important people, and scraped a living. His father’s career was a lesson to Sonny, who was not physically equipped for the part of frightener, and in any case disliked violence. He had been employed by Sporting Ventures of Great Britain, which might be called a companion company to Fifth City, as croupier, club manager, and then club director, which meant that he was responsible for all the managers in Sporting Ventures’ eighteen clubs.
Sonny had done very well, but we all have weaknesses, and he had two. He used LSD and on occasions got distinctly wild under its influence, and he was not only queer but sentimental with it, liable to make unfortunate emotional attachments. On the other hand he was honest, a characteristic so rare in his circles that he was bound to rise high. When Fifth City and Sporting Ventures decided to diversify their interests into the field of literature by starting a chain of pornographic bookshops, it was natural that Sonny should have been chosen to look after them. He had been doing this efficiently for three years.
On the day of his death, Sonny made the usual weekly round of the group’s shops in his latest car, an MGB GT. Nothing is easier for the managers of such shops than to put a large part of the takings into their own pockets, since the business proceeds by loan and exchange. A little thieving is customary, but Sonny’s job was to make sure that the managers were not stealing their employers blind. Just before eight o’clock he paid his last call, to Contemporary Books, just off Lisle Street in Soho. He had told his current boy-friend, an actor named Charlie Reynolds, to ring him there at eight-thirty so that they could make plans for the evening. Just after eight-thirty Charlie rang. The receiver was picked up.
‘Sonny, hallo, it’s me.’
‘And who’s me, when he’s at home?’
‘Oh, Sonny, you’re just too much.’ Charlie giggled.
‘You’re altogether too much yourself,’ Sonny replied. The conversation might have continued in this flirtatious way for some time, but Charlie then heard a bell ring. ‘Who the hell’s that?’ Sonny said. ‘The shop’s shut. Just a minute, Charlie.’
What Charlie heard after that proved of great interest to the police. There was a murmur of voices, the words indistinguishable. Then Sonny said, ‘What do you want then, I don’t understand. I’ve told you we’re shut.’
A man’s voice replied, ‘You’re not shut to me.’
A pause, then Sonny said, ‘Oh, all right.’ There was the sound of the door being opened. Sonny said, ‘Well, what–’
‘I want you.’
There was the sound of something being knocked over. Sonny’s voice came high, squealing. ‘What are you doing? You’re not–’ Then a strangled cry and a thud. Charlie called Sonny’s name, and heard breathing at the other end of the telephone. The telephone was replaced, and there was a decisive click.
Charlie spent ten minutes in painful reflection on the trouble he might be causing, both to himself and to Sonny. After that he rang the police.
The shop was like a hundred others. There were girlie magazines in the window, with a sign saying: ‘Full Range of Adult Reading Within. Adults Only.’ Around the walls inside there were more girlie magazines, together with postcards of women. A wooden partition and a curtain led to the inner room holding the hard core stuff. The body lay near this partition, on its side, the face suffused with blood. A rack of books had been pulled down, and copies of Spanking Sessions, I was a Transvestite Mormon, Love Laws of Ancient Greece and similar works lay on and around the corpse. The photographers had gone when Devenish arrived, but fingerprint men were still busy. A red-haired detective-inspector named Morgan, from West End Central, greeted the Chief Superintendent.
‘Sorry we didn’t contact you straight away. Only realised it might be for you when the quack looked at him, whoever did it hit him in the throat first, see. But he was killed by a chop, or anyway a blow on the back of the neck.’
‘What time?’
‘That’s one thing, we can fix the time. I told you he was a poof.’ Morgan’s look conveyed his distaste. ‘He was speaking to a poof friend on the phone when he got it. The shop was shut. The friend heard it on the phone, rang us. I thought you’d want to talk to him.’
Devenish took the piece of paper with the address. ‘This boy worked for Freddy Williams, right?’
‘Had done for years. Never been inside. And he’ll never go in now, that’s for sure.’
‘What makes you think it’s the Clabers?’
‘Williams has had a clear run with this stuff till now. Handled ninety per cent of everything that came in. Most of it’s Scandinavian, a bit from Germany. Four months ago the Clabers fixed up their own sources of supply from West Germany, and opened a dozen shops. A couple of weeks back three of their managers got done, shops smashed up. This will be a comeback. The Clabers don’t give up easy.’
Devenish looked down at the figure on the floor. ‘The shop was shut, that means he opened the door. Must have been someone he knew. You don’t know how much this friend of his heard? Right, then, we’ll ask him.’
‘You’re su
re about what you heard this man say. I want you, you’re certain of those words? Good. Now, the voice. Any accent, foreign, Irish, northern, midlands, public school? Just think.’
Charlie Reynolds’ room was in a part of Fulham not yet fashionable. It contained a bed that served as a sofa, a hanging wardrobe, a curtained-off kitchenette. None of it was in good condition, and at the moment Reynolds himself did not look in good condition either. He was a slight, delicate young man with prominent eyes. His pale face and his very short legs made Devenish feel sorry for him. ‘It just sounded like an ordinary voice. Remember I was hearing it through the phone, not direct. It wasn’t public school. Nor foreign. I suppose I’d call it BBC English, rather rough BBC English.’
‘What age?’
‘Not young. And not really old. Somewhere between thirty-five and sixty. I’ll tell you something else. I only heard a few words, and it’s just an impression. But it was rather as though he were playing a part.’
‘Playing a part?’
‘I was in a telly series once called Drong the Avenger, and Drong had to say things like “Bolts cannot keep me out, bars shiver at my touch.” It was rather like that– “You’re not shut to me.” A bit ham.’ He gave a giggle, cut it off, put a hand over his mouth, made a dash for the curtain.
There were sounds of retching, then a tap running. Charlie Reynolds came back looking even paler. ‘Sorry. The loo’s on another floor, communal, and so’s the bath. Stupid to get upset. It was just that we’d been talking on the phone, making jokes, you know.’
‘You were close friends?’
‘I don’t know what you want me to say. You’re fuzz. People like Sonny and me, you don’t like us.’
‘I’m not interested in your private life unless it affects his killing. I want to know who killed him and why, that’s all. How long had you known him?’
‘Three months. We met at a club off Shaftesbury Avenue called the Carrousel. We knew about each other straight away.’
Love at first sight, Devenish thought, and then asked himself why queers couldn’t feel it just as much as heteros. He knew they could, but why was it so hard to acknowledge? He looked round the shabby room. ‘You didn’t live together?’
‘Sonny’s always lived with his mother and father in Finchley. We talked about being together all the time, but his mother’s ill, and his father is – well, a dead loss was the way Sonny put it. He had to look after them, or so he felt. Sonny was a sweet person, very gentle.’ He dabbed at his eyes. ‘Sorry. Would you like a cup of tea? It would be no trouble to make one.’
‘Thanks.’ Reynolds pulled aside the curtain to reveal a small cooker, sink, and a couple of battered cupboards. While he made the tea Devenish prowled about, looking at the few books and ornaments. A head and shoulders photograph of a fair wavy-haired young man looking pleased with himself stood beside the bed, hardly recognisable as the body on the bookshop floor.
Reynolds came out of the kitchenette. ‘Isn’t he sweet?’
‘He wasn’t in a sweet business.’
‘He never talked about that, I don’t know anything about it.’
The Chief Superintendent was reminded of several wives who had given him similar assurances about their husbands. Often the assurances were true. The teacup had a chip out of it. He sipped from the other side.
‘Acting doesn’t pay too well from the looks of it. Don’t bother to answer. Sonny was a user, right?’ Reynolds’ face seemed to be fixed in a fascinated stare at the teacup. Then Devenish realised that the actor was looking at his thumbs. ‘What was he on?’ Reynolds hesitated. ‘I can get it from someone else, but if I have to I won’t like it.’ He put down the teacup, and the thumbs appeared in their full power.
‘Speed mostly. Sometimes acid. We never used H. And there was never a problem.’
‘You mean you could always get it. At this club, the Carrousel, right?’
‘We could always get supplies. Of course Sonny was well placed, but anyone can if they’ve got money. Sonny wasn’t hooked.’
‘He paid for your habit as well as his own.’
‘That’s not fair.’ The teacup rattled as Charlie Reynolds put it down. ‘It wasn’t something that worried Sonny.’
An implicit reservation struck Devenish. ‘What did worry him?’
‘His family. He wanted us to be together, you see, he’d have paid for a woman to live there all the time and look after his mother, but she didn’t want that. And then–’
‘Yes?’
‘Sonny’s dead now, I wouldn’t have said anything while he was alive. Sonny had an accident. In his car. A TR 6 he had then. We hit another car.’
‘You were with him. What happened to the other car?’
‘It was a Mini. Pretty well a write off.’
‘And the driver?’
‘He was badly hurt. Something to do with his spine. But it was his fault, he crossed when the lights were red for him.
Sonny was on a charge, but when the case came up he was cleared.’
‘You gave evidence?’
‘Yes. And there were two independent witnesses.’
‘When did this happen?’
‘September. The case came up early this month.’
‘Why was Sonny worried, if it was all the way you’ve told it?’
‘I said he was a very sweet person. The whole thing upset him. He hated anybody getting hurt.’
The Chief Superintendent nodded non-committally, got some more details of the accident, and left. When he closed the door Reynolds had picked up the photograph of Sonny and was looking at it forlornly.
The Halliwells lived in a semi-detached house in West Finchley, a house that duplicated all those in the rest of the street, and in the streets parallel on either side. It was midnight and bitterly cold when Devenish and Brewster escorted Billy Halliwell back to his home. Frost gleamed on the pavements, and rimed the windows of the cars that lined the streets.
They had picked up Billy at the Brompton Gaming Club, where he had been drowning his sorrows in whisky. He protested then and he protested now, even as he put the key in the lock.
‘This’ll be the death of his mother, I can tell you that.’
‘We’ve already informed your wife,’ Brewster said. Halliwell shook his head.
‘No, no, I mean having the fuzz in the house.’ Inside the door he raised his voice mournfully as a baying bloodhound. ‘Kathie, my love, are you there?’ There was a bay in reply. ‘She’s in the lounge.’
The lounge contained a three-piece suite, a glass cupboard with silver in it, a range of toby jugs on the mantelpiece. Mrs Halliwell sat in one of the armchairs directly facing the blank eye of the television set. She was very fat. Her balloon head, dark eyes buried in it like currants in a pudding, topped the larger balloon of her trunk. Two surprisingly slim legs looked incapable of maintaining the formidable structure.
‘You’re drunk. Your son’s dead and you get drunk,’ she said to Halliwell.
‘My love, how are you? It’s her heart that’s wrong, you see, it’s the old ticker. And the shock of it – will you be having a drink now?’ He said apologetically, ‘I should have told you, these gentlemen are–’
I can see what they are. Which of you was it spoke to me on the phone?’
Brewster said, ‘I did.’
‘And you’ll be the one they call Thumbs. Well, they’re big enough and ugly enough.’
A gas fire, full on, hissed softly. It was very hot in the room, with an airless damp heat that had its own smell, with which was blended the smell of Mrs Halliwell.
‘There are a few questions,’ Devenish said. She laughed, showing small white false teeth.
‘What’s the use of questions? Sonny’s dead, isn’t he, you haven’t come to say you’ve brought him back to life?’
‘Don’t you want to know who killed him?’
‘We can deal with the one who got Sonny. In our own way and our own time we’ll do it.’
Halliwell
belched and sat down. ‘We can do it all right, don’t worry. We look after our own.’
‘What could you ever look after?’ the woman said bitterly. ‘It was Sonny kept him at that club, though he did nothing but booze and quarrel there. And Sonny paid the rent here too, and lived here, though he’d sooner have been away. He was a good boy, good to his old mum and dad, and now they’ve killed him.’
‘Who’ve killed him?’ Brewster asked.
‘Who’d you think?’ Her little eyes glared at him. ‘If you’ve got anything between the ears you know who did it.’
‘A good boy.’ Halliwell had mysteriously conjured up a glass of beer. ‘A good boy, Sonny was.’
Devenish wiped his forehead, and intervened to check this Pinterian keening. ‘You mean the Clabers.’
‘Who else? Who else would want to kill a boy that never hurt anybody?’
‘He wouldn’t have hurt–’ her husband sought for the telling phrase, and triumphantly found it – ‘a fly.’
‘Except in his TR 6.’
Halliwell looked blearily at his wife. ‘Ah, that was different. Mother of God it was an accident, it wasn’t Sonny’s fault. I mean, Freddy Williams just looked after it for him, didn’t he now? And there was no hard feelings.’
‘Billy Halliwell, you be quiet.’ The fat woman spoke softly, but Halliwell flinched. She got out of her chair, a formidable operation, but one in which she refused help. ‘I’m for bed. I’ll say good night to you, and see you out.’
Devenish got up too. He looked half her breadth and twice her height. ‘I’d like to see his room. I’ll get a warrant if you make me.’ She lumbered towards the door. ‘Mrs Halliwell.’
‘I heard. I’m showing it you. You don’t suppose I’d let you turn my boy’s room over without keeping an eye? You’d plant stuff just to blacken his memory.’
Sonny’s room was at the back. She moved towards it uncertainly on her thin legs, swaying and bobbing like a yacht in a wind. Her husband brought up the rear, murmuring under his breath. When they reached the room she stood beside the door and watched while they went over it.
A Three Pipe Problem Page 6