by M. P. Wright
Linney was on the defensive and a little shaken by my questions, so I continued.
“Maybe so . . . but seeing as you said she barely left her house, its seems pretty damn strange to me that the only time she’s been seen was with hookers and a man like Papa in a clip joint.”
The councillor was shuffling uneasily in his seat and was tapping his index finger repeatedly on top of the dashboard. He’d lost some of his controlled composure, but I knew he was still holding out on me.
“You ever had problems with the police, given them cause to have you followed or me beaten up?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Why would the police need to follow me?”
Again, he was answering my questions by asking me one in return. I tried to remain calm, but his evasive manner was getting the better of me again.
“Is anybody into you fo’ anyting?” I asked abruptly.
“Into me, whatever do you mean?” the councillor snapped back at me in an equally abrupt manner.
“Blackmail, someting in your past you want left alone, perhaps somebody you gone an’ upset in a bidness deal, that kinda ting?”
“Of course not . . . What about the prostitute you questioned – can’t you buy more substantial information from her other than the tittle-tattle she told you about seeing Stella in a house of ill-repute?”
“Well, I could if she was alive. She was found with her throat cut the day after I spoke to her. Jocelyn was one of Papa’s girls, Mr Linney. I think it got back to him that I’d been talking to her, and she ended up being murdered fo’ her troubles.”
“Dear God . . .”
Linney slumped back into his seat, and for the first time since we’d met looked vulnerable. He put his hand to his mouth and gently rubbed at his chin while he thought. I remembered how before our meeting this evening I’d told myself that I needed to come away from my reluctant employer knowing more than he did and thought now was the time to chance my arm and see if I could get him to give me a little more.
“Does your wife know I’m working fo’ you, that I’m trying to locate Stella?”
“She does not . . . nor does she need to. The last few weeks have been trying enough for my wife. I would not wish her to be upset any further with the news that I have had to employ a disgraced former colonial police officer because our own constabulary appears not to be taking the child’s disappearance seriously.”
If he’d wanted to put me in my place, he’d done so with all the malice of a man who saw those in his hire as nothing more than foot soldiers. I considered myself told and bit into my bottom lip. I didn’t so much mind him calling me disgraced, it was the “colonial” remark that made my guts twitch. I wanted to smack him in his arrogant, self-satisfied mouth, but thought better of it and kept to my original plan to needle something extra out of the bastard. I had the weaker hand but it was time to play my best card.
“Stella was seen leaving the shebeen with a white guy, who may or not have been a copper. I’m waiting on a telephone call to help me find out who the man was and where he may have taken her. Now if I’m right, a lot of what may be going on revolves around whores and local law who are getting kickbacks from pimps like Papa Anansi. That means he can carry on selling sex and illegal booze without any worries. How Stella fits in to Papa’s set-up, I don’t know. But none of it looks good. Now, befo’ I start dragging my already bruised butt any further into your shit, do you have anyting useful you wanna tell me other than that you consider me a disgraced cop and only fit for shining your wife’s shoes with a rubbing rag?”
Linney was silent. He stared hard into my eyes, his body tense, clearly unused to being spoken to by one of his paid hands in such a manner. I waited to see if he was a better gambler than me or if he was going to fold. I didn’t have to wait for long. I watched as he reached into his inside pocket and pulled out the now familiar brown envelope. It wasn’t what I was hoping for, and its contents were of little help in aiding my understanding of the bizarre inquiry that I had gotten myself mixed up in. It did make my empty wallet smile, though.
“I think you’ll find this more than covers my commitment to support your endeavours to locate Miss Hopkins. Much as it may gall you, Mr Ellington, your naive questioning implying that my private life may be secretly in the gutter is way off the mark. I consider myself to be better judge of character than perhaps you’ve given me credit for. Now, continue with your investigation promptly, as I have instructed you. I’ll expect to hear from you in due course. In the meantime, try not to ask the kinds of questions that see those answering them dead on a mortuary slab the next day. It may lead you into places you don’t really want to be, don’t you think?”
He suddenly looked forward, indicating our meeting was over. I leant across and grasped the door handle and pushed it open, letting in a cold breeze that felt as harsh as the alderman’s tongue. He let me out, and I thought that I was financially better off, but none the wiser.
As I walked away, I heard him start the engine of his car and reverse before driving up alongside me, the window of the driver’s side door partially wound down.
“And Mr Ellington . . .”
I stopped and turned towards him as he looked disdainfully at me through the gap he’d made by winding down his window.
“Should any of your snooping around happen for some godforsaken reason to lead back to me, I shall deny that you ever existed. Are we clear on that? Goodnight.”
“Oh yeah . . . I got it, all right.”
I let him drive away thinking that he thought he had once again outmanoeuvred me. But the nervous expression on his face after I mentioned Papa Anansi’s name told me they had a shared history somehow and that Earl Linney’s judgement of character was not as astute as he thought it was. And neither was the company he perhaps secretly kept.
16
I made the short journey back to St Pauls in the knowledge that Earl Linney and Papa Anansi were in some way connected. I just couldn’t get a handle on how they were.
A day without food had left me feeling drained. I drove back into Bristol with the burning feeling of hunger in my belly and pulled over on Host Street, got out and ran across to Grace and Robert’s fish saloon at the foot of Christmas Steps and ordered myself cod and chips. I ran my cold hands across the stainless steel and glass cabinets that were home to the crisp, golden-covered food, warming them on the hot metal top as I waited for it to cook.
Arriving back at my digs wasn’t the welcoming pleasure that I wished it had been. The rooms were cold and there was always the musty smell of damp that I had never smelt until arriving in Britain. Like snow, damp’s not something you get a lot of on Bim, even in winter. I went into my kitchen, grabbed a plate and ignited one of the hob rings on the oven, and placed the wrapped fish and chips and the plate inside to keep them warm while I filled the kettle with fresh water, let it boil and made myself a mug of coffee.
Turning the light on in my living room I was surprised at first to see my newly acquired sofa. I dropped my hat and coat onto the arm of my chair and walked across to the rusty electric fire and switched both bars on. I knelt down to my meagre record collection and pulled out Ray Charles’s The Genius Hits the Road, blew the dust off of the vinyl, put it on to the Dansette’s turntable, gently placed the stylus onto the second track and walked back into the kitchen to dish up my supper to the soulful strains of “Georgia on My Mind”.
The lounge was starting to warm a little by the time I returned with my meal. I sat down on the surprisingly comfortable settee that till recently had belonged to good old Mrs Walker. I smiled to myself as I thought of Carnell Harris skipping, his big old gut flopping around as he jumped about in his futile attempt to lose weight. I then remembered the kind-hearted oaf’s thoughtful gesture in loaning me his car. Without his wheels, today would have been far more hassle and I’d have been a lot colder than I already was.
I kicked off my shoes and moved my toes around inside my socks in front of the fire while I
ate my fish and chips from the plate on my lap. As a child I’d caught fish from the sea and in the rivers surrounding my home. My first experience of eating this very English delicacy had been one of delight and revulsion in equal measure. Fish back on Bim was cooked fresh and simple. The use of batter to cover it before frying here in Britain was something I had not been used to and it took a while for my palate to adjust to the sometimes greasy texture of the flour-and-water coating on the fillet. Tonight, none of that mattered. I was so hungry I’d have eaten the damn thing with its head and scales still attached. I wolfed down my meal with all the cheerful abandon of a gluttonous gourmand.
I looked at my watch, which said it was just after seven thirty, and put my empty plate on the seat next to me, then closed my eyes. The room was starting to warm a little from the fierce, white-hot elements of the electric heater. I quickly drifted off to sleep as Ray Charles sang me a lullaby.
*
I was woken just after eleven by a repetitive, irritating knocking at my door.
I pulled myself off of the sofa and looked down the hall, wondering who the hell it could be. Through the stained-glass panels I could make out the slight figure of my elderly neighbour who lived downstairs. I opened up to find the old woman dressed in a long purple flannel dressing gown, a hairnet drawn over her thinning grey locks. Before I had chance to speak, she snapped at me like I owed her money.
“Mr Ellington . . . I have been hammering away at your door trying to get you to hear me for the last five minutes or more. There’s a coloured gentleman downstairs, says he wants to speak to you.”
“Is that so, Mrs Pearce? I’m sorry, you caught me dozing. I’ll be right down. Thanks very much. Did the gentleman asking fo’ me say who he was?”
I tried to keep things polite, choosing to forget her earlier “coloured” remark.
“He didn’t need to, Mr Ellington. It’s your fat halfwit friend with the van. He’s singing to himself out in the snow on my front porch. Do you know what time it is? Some of us would like a little undisturbed dozing of our own. Goodnight.”
“Yeah, goodnight, sorry you were woken.”
I followed her along the landing and down the stairs, listening to her mumble to herself, and went to let Carnell in as the nosy old crone watched me through the crack in her own door.
I could hear him whistling outside, and when I let him in he still continued to purse his lips and blow on, as if he been sent as some kind of late-night musical alarm call.
“What . . . ?”
My annoyance at being waken was now greater than my neighbour’s earlier displeasure. Carnell stopped his racket, unsure why I had greeted him in such a bad mood. Rather than ponder on the matter for to long, he thankfully got to the point.
“Evening, JT. Vic asked me to come round say you need to git your ass round to him at his office at Cut Man’s.”
“Since when did Vic have an office at Cut Man’s gym?”
I was as confused as I was tired.
“Ever since Vic and Cut decided to go into the import and export bidness,
I suppose. He says that important call you been waiting fo’ came through and you need to git a buzz on.”
The streets were quiet as I followed Carnell’s van round to Cut Man’s, parking the car at the rear of the gymnasium. I made my way up the fire escape and called out to Vic as I worked my way towards the front of the building. I found my cousin in the stock room that I’d last seen housing his knocked-off rum. He was sitting on the edge of an expensive teak desk, complete with a green baize ink pad and black Bakelite telephone. A high-backed leather office chair was tucked underneath the polished tabletop. Against the walls were a series of ex-army grey metal filing cabinets. A picture of Queen Elizabeth II adorned the back wall. I felt as if I’d just entered a very low-rent part of the Houses of Parliament.
“Hey, JT, so what you think?” Vic held out his hands, his huge open palms welcoming me to his new domain.
“Where the hell did you git all this stuff, Vic?”
I turned round full circle in front of him as I asked the question, taking in again the newly refitted storage area.
“Oh, I pick this shit up from all over, man. I got Cut Man in on a percentage of some of my bidness ventures. He obliged by renting me this office at a minimal cost.”
“How much is minimal cost?” It had to be too good to be true.
“You think I pay that stinky fat old goat in her majesty’s legal tender?” He nodded back at the royal portrait. “Fuck no! He gits a piece of whatever I’m shipping t’ru his door. He don’t like it, he can go stick his big sweaty head up his fat old ass.”
He laughed to himself as he walked round to the back of the desk, pulled out the plush executive chair and sat in it, reclining and rubbing his hands together before he spoke to me again.
“OK, we on at the shebeen, brother. I got the call from that skanky doorman ’bout forty minutes ago. He got two honkies that reek o’ Bristol’s finest in there at the minute. They waiting on Otis to arrive with a tasty piece o’ skirt, then he says they move on real quick. We need to be outta here pretty lively to be on their tail. Find out where they taking the cock-rat to?”
“Thanks, Vic, but there’s gonna be no ‘we’ tonight, brother. Look, I stood in this very same spot over a week ago and told you I had no right to be dragging you into trouble you had no place being in. You done enough fo’ me, man, and I’m grateful, I really am.”
“I ain’t letting you—”
I interrupted him before he could finish. Earl Linney’s bad habits were clearly rubbing off on me.
“I got myself into all o’ this crap. I need to git myself out of it.”
I smiled back at him before turning and walking away, seeing a look of disappointment and worry on his face. I closed his new office door behind me not giving him the chance to wear me down and change my mind, something I knew I could have easily done.
17
Richmond Road was covered in a heavy layer of frost that glistened on the tarmac and pavements. The tiny sub-zero filaments of ice were picked out by the glow of the amber streetlights as I sat waiting, my body dropped low in the driver’s seat of the Cortina, which was parked far enough away up the street so as not to be obvious that I was staking the place out. I’d been watching for any sign of the crew-cut copper and his date to leave the shebeen for the better part of half an hour and the interior of the car now felt like a mobile fridge. It was after twelve thirty by the time the guy I was after finally showed his face at the front door, ushered out by Clarence Maynard, who I could see even at this distance was wearing a large Elastoplast strip across the bridge of his nose.
The honky copper leaving was the same guy who had beaten me with the slapjack after my meeting with Linney at Clifton. He waited at the foot of the steps as I watched Papa Anansi come to the entrance with a tall young black woman, perhaps in her late twenties. Papa lifted his right arm, the palm of his hand outstretched in a greeting, towards a parked car on the opposite side of the road. The girl cautiously made her way down the steps and placed her hand around the hooked arm of the awaiting plain-clothes cop. They walked quickly across the road towards the waiting vehicle, its headlights on, engine running, rear door already opened for the woman to get in. I waited for the copper to join them in the passenger seat before turning on my ignition and letting them get a little way ahead of me before beginning to tail them.
The roads were quiet, with little traffic at such a late hour; following them wasn’t going to be easy. If I sat on their bumper I’d be spotted from the off, so I hung back and kept my foot off of the gas. Their car, a grey 1962 Mark Five Jaguar made its way out of St Pauls, through Bristol and out south along the coast road, where a little more traffic helped me out, stopping my quarry from picking me out as I was shadowing them. After around thirty miles the Jag began driving inland towards Taunton, taking me further into the wintry Somerset countryside, and a whole world away from my terraced digs and t
he bleak suburban housing.
I’d been driving for years back home, but had rarely been behind the wheel of a car since arriving in Britain and I felt a little rusty. The week’s heavy snowfall and the icy roads were making it increasingly difficult for me to get a handle on manoeuvring the car in the kind of cold weather conditions that I’d previously only ever seen in picture books. After being on the road for over an hour my confidence improved, and I settled into the flow of handling the car on the iced-up roads.
I was now going east and the occasional road sign told me I was over twenty miles from Yeovil. It seemed I was driving further into the remotest edges of the county – probably closer to the back end of beyond than I realised.
I was still travelling a good stretch behind them, but they would’ve had to be blind to have not seen me tagging along by now. There had been few other cars on the roads for the last half an hour and the country lanes meant that my headlights could easily be seen. As I continued to stalk the Jag further along increasingly small country lanes, signposts were telling me I was heading towards an unusually named village called Cricket Malherbie. The car in front was seemingly oblivious to me and I carefully hung behind it to see where I ended up.
The Jaguar made its way through the tiny village and out towards further open countryside with me in tow. I noticed large piles of snow had been ploughed off the road and into the hedgerow as I held back to let them get a little further ahead of me. I saw the red double brake lights of the Jag flash on and I pulled up, watching as it then swung right into a driveway. I turned both the lights and engine of the Cortina off and sat in the dark for a moment, watching the rear lights of the Jag disappear in front of me up the drive towards a large, well-lit country house. I restarted my car, keeping the headlights switched off, and turned back, driving the two hundred yards or so into the village and parking up at the side of the village church. I grabbed my torch from off of the back seat, then pulled on the leather gloves I’d borrowed from Vic, got out and made my way through the snow, back up the country lane towards the driveway.