Heartman: A Missing Girl, A Broken Man, A Race Against Time

by M. P. Wright

  “What the fuck are you wearing on your back, man? You look like you some damn down-an’-out. Git yo’self sharpened up next time you wanting to hook up with me.”

  He slapped hard down on the table and laughed out loud as I stared at him, shaking my head. He reached down into his jacket pocket and pulled out another small bottle of Babycham and again cracked off the top with his teeth and raising it in a toast to me.

  “Cheers, brother.”

  The room filled with laughter as I turned away from Vic. I yanked at the hooded collar of the tatty duffle coat that the Reverend Southerington had given me, drawing it around my face, putting my head low down with embarrassment as I strode quickly out of the club, making a mental note to go buy myself some new clothes the first chance I got.

  21

  Clarence Maynard lived in a run-down Victorian tenement that resembled the kind of slum hovels I’d once patrolled around back home. It was the last property in a row of eight and stood out as a rathole even in the dark.

  I was sitting in the Cortina parked across the road from the house, which stood in darkness, apart from the gentle orange glow of a street light that illuminated part of the gable end of the building and also exposed a slim alleyway that I assumed led to the rear of the house.

  My fingers gently drummed on the steering wheel as I thought to myself how to play things with Maynard. Vic’s brute force and blackmail had worked for him a few nights ago in getting the big man to cooperate with us and his threat to disclose to the outside world Clarence’s carnal interests in children was a motivator for the doorman to toe the line and spill his guts. If I was to achieve anything tonight and obtain the information needed to find the woman who I’d followed out to the Blanchard estate, I would need to be a little more subtle and take a different tack with the big guy.

  I got out and walked round to the boot of the car, opened it up and rummaged around until I felt the cold touch of a metal tyre iron, pulling it out and hooking it inside my belt, hidden from view by my newly acquired duffle coat. If my subtlety idea didn’t work then I’d have to resort to something a little more basic to get what I wanted.

  One way or another, Maynard was going to talk to me: it was as simple as that. I’d become tired of being given the runaround and was in no mood for any bullshit, so it was important to make sure Clarence knew I meant business. Closing down the lid of the boot, I made my way across the road towards the shabby house and its unwelcoming façade of grey stucco.

  Stepping over an empty milk bottle on one of the three granite steps that led up to the paint-peeled front door, I peered through a small circular glass panel in its centre to check if anyone was home, but struggled to see anything. The dark curtains across the large front window obscured any further chance of observing if someone was inside the house.

  I decided to take a look around the back of the place and climbed over a small red-brick wall that separated the building from the street, and stood peering in the blackness down the covered entry towards the other end, which was made visible by a low shaft of light that gave a dull glow at the bottom of the alleyway. I carefully made my way down the passage and came out into a small yard. The dull glow that lit the outside was coming from the kitchen window; I took a peek through the filthy net curtain inside. Hung from a ceiling rose, a single light bulb was burning away with no shade covering it, and again no one appeared to be about.

  Directly opposite the window stood the back door, which I could see was slightly ajar. I opened it up wide and walked on in. Inside, the house stank of the funky stench that only comes with the daily smoking of weed. It permeated every fibre of the place and reminded me a little of Carnell’s place, but unlike the Harris’s home, which was spotlessly clean, this joint was a shit box. Leftover uneaten food stood on a chipped blue ringed plate on the draining board, and the sink was piled high with used pans and dishes that sat in dirty water, its surface covered in a floating layer of light-yellow fat that clung to the sides of a grimy old red washing-up bowl. Three separate ashtrays, each almost over flowing to their brims with the butts and roaches of marijuana joints, were left on the dining table and on the shelf of an old Welsh dresser. On the back wall, next to what looked like a small walk-in pantry, stood an old electric cooker, its hob covered in the grime of spilt food.

  Approaching the pantry slowly I was greeted by the familiar but unwelcome rank fragrance of death, which had been until now masked by the powerful and lingering aroma of ganja. The experienced voice of ten years’ policing spoke out to me from inside my head warning me to forget it, to back away and to get out of the damn place, but I’d never been too good at listening to my own advice back then and wasn’t about to start now. I took hold of the handle of the door, then looked down at my feet and saw the pool of dark blood that was seeping slowing underneath. I steeled myself before opening it up.

  Inside the pantry, his hands and arms bound by thick rope to one of his own kitchen chairs, were the naked remains of Clarence Maynard, his head viciously dragged back, revealing the gapping cavity of his slit throat and exposing the severed trachea. His fast-flowing blood had quickly drained out of his body and after running down his bare chest, legs and tightly tied ankles had filled up the floor space around him and then settled at his unshod feet before slowly leaking out further across the linoleum of the kitchen floor towards me.

  I stared at what remained of the big bouncer’s face, which was barely recognisable as belonging to the man I’d come up against with Vic forty-eight hours or so earlier. Both his ears had been cut off, and his forehead, cheeks and chest were covered in numerous deep lacerations cut by the same sharp blade that had almost severed his head from his body. I fought off the urgent desire to throw up and concentrated on the gory sight in front of me, looking on the blood-soaked floor for his amputated ears, which were nowhere to be seen. I dropped to my haunches, slowly scanning the back of the large cupboard, double-checking and taking care not to stand in the dark-red body fluid creeping towards my shoes.

  “Well, he sure as hell ain’t looking too hot.”

  The shock of Vic’s voice from behind gave me a scare, and I cursed out loud as I spun around to face him.

  “Jesus Christ, Vic! What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I don’t remember and at the minute I don’t care. You really think I was gonna let you come out to this crap shack on your own, just what kinda brother you take me fo’, JT? Shit . . . looks like somebody gone and cut Clarence there a new ass’ole.”

  Vic moved closer towards me and the corpse and stood directly over where I was crouched, a large smile on his face.

  “Damn, and from now on he’s sure gonna struggle to listen to Jimmy Ruffin, that’s a fact!”

  “Give a rest, Vic. What a fuckin’ mess this is.”

  “Yeah, mess is one word fo’ it. Personally I think it couldn’t o’ happened to a nicer guy. He wants to count his blessing: least whoever chopped him up didn’t scalp him too. He goes to his grave knowing nobody messed with his oiled-up quiff.”

  Vic started to laugh, expecting me to join him. When I didn’t, he looked at me like a confused teenager who’d just been scolded by his parent before returning his gaze to Maynard’s body.

  “You think this bastard didn’t have this coming to him, all that nasty stuff he’d been getting up to over the years? Come on, it was only a matter o’ time, man.” Vic was still staring at Clarence as he spoke to me.

  “I don’t think this has anyting to do with Maynard’s involvement with underage boys, Vic, this is someting more than vengeance, this is—”

  Vic interrupted me in mid sentence.

  “What the fuck is that sticking outta his mout’?”

  We both moved in closer, standing on tiptoe to avoid the blood, leaning our bodies over towards the heavily butchered face of the dead bouncer. Protruding ever so slightly out of the right-hand corner of Clarence Maynard’s barely opened mouth was what looked like a piece of black ribbon. Vic leant ac
ross my shoulder, balancing on the balls of his feet, and reached over to pull it out. Maynard’s jaw had locked and Vic struggled to draw the foreign object free. He looked over at me, a smile on his face, before speaking quietly.

  “You take hold of his chin and pull down those big lips so I can drag out what he’s got stuck between his teet’.”

  I blew out a long breath of air, then, doing as Vic had told me, I put my thumb flat onto Maynard’s chin and gently pushed down onto his jaw, opening his mouth as I did.

  Vic carefully withdrew the dark ribbon; attached at the end of it, coated in saliva and blood, was a chicken’s foot. We both stepped back, watching our feet as we did, taking care not to stand in the leaking red juice all around us. Vic watched my nervous reaction to the superstitious significance of the rooster’s appendage, its meaning to those who either practised or believed in the dark religion we had both grown up around, and swung the bird’s foot close to my face, knowing it would further unsettle me.

  “What . . . Tell me you ain’t scared o’ this shit, JT? Just a bunch o’ old bitch’s horseshit, it don’t mean a damn ting unless you want it to.”

  “I’m not so sure, Vic. I think somebody out there wants everyone to know that he had one big blabbermouth.”

  “If that’s the case, whoever cut this boy up was aiming fo’ Clarence to be found by one of us. You tell me how many honky coppers gonna know ’bout voodoo and how to connect this tatty piece o’ hen’s hoof and that dead fool’s loose tongue?”

  Vic was right. Bristol and the south of England was hardly a hotbed of knowledge for the practising of an ancient West African religion. Whoever had rammed the fowl’s foot inside the dead man’s mouth clearly knew about the practice of voodoo and the violent threat associated with it. Perhaps they would have hoped that the police would finally issue a statement to the press informing the public of their findings, or that word would have been leaked out onto the street by a none-too-discreet bobby and that the news would then filter through the Caribbean community across the districts of St Pauls and Montpelier. But perhaps it was hoped that Clarence Maynard’s butchered remains would be found by a person who knew exactly what the true meaning of the hen’s foot warning really meant – somebody like myself.

  “Vic, put that damn ting back inside his mouth,” I snapped at him.

  “The hell I am . . . Fuck knows what’s been in that creepy brother’s mout’ befo’ now. You want it back in there, you do it, fool!”

  Vic tossed the chicken’s foot across the kitchen towards Maynard’s body. I watched it bounce off of the dead man’s chest and fall into his bloodstained lap. Vic sucked air through the gap in his front teeth while glaring at me before speaking again.

  “Come on, let’s git the fuck out here . . . This place is starting to give me the creeps!”

  “Just hold on . . . I wanna take a quick look around the place.”

  “Jesus, JT . . . Why’d you wanna look around this craphole fo’? Place stinks like a slaughterhouse. We don’t need to be found in here by anybody, especially the police. If you gotta nose around, just make it quick, will ya?”

  I opened the hall door, flicked on the light switch and made my way down into the front room, which was in pretty much the same filthy and dilapidated state as the kitchen and stank just as bad. The bare wooden floor was strewn with old coffee mugs and empty bottles of beer and rum. A half-dozen large church candles, the wax almost burnt down to the tiles, sat in the hearth of the rusting black fireplace, its grate piled high with ash. A pair of moth-bitten, deep-purple velvet drapes were drawn tightly across the front window, keeping the world shut out. Not that the world would have given a damn about this place and that’s probably just how Clarence Maynard had liked it. I walked across to the living room door, opened it and went out into a tiny hallway and the steep uncarpeted stairs to the rooms above. I again flicked on another light and made my way quietly up them. At the top, the bathroom door stood wide open. A cracked single-pane mirror caught my reflection as I walked in. Ignoring the image that bounced back at me, I took a look in the bath tub, which had a tidemark round it that looked like it had been drawn on by a six-inch charcoal stick. Unflushed dark-yellow piss stagnated inside the toilet bowl, and I retched at the rancid fumes it gave off as I walked out.

  The landing led towards a further single room, its door closed. I opened it up and was immediately taken aback by the heavy aroma of incense, stale sweat and a cruel, never forgotten aroma that brought me right back to Barbados’s Glendairy Prison on Station Hill and the men who were penned up inside it.

  I felt for another light switch in the semi-darkness, finally locating it on the side wall beside the door frame. I clicked it down: nothing. I turned and walked back to the top of the stairs, calling Vic. He wandered into the tiny hallway, looking impatiently up at me.

  “Ain’t you done yet? I’m getting sick of staring at that ugly stiff back there in the kitchen.”

  I ignored his whining.

  “Vic, grab me one o’ those candles in the hearth back there; light it and bring it on up to me.”

  “You want me to mash you up a coffee while I’m at it?”

  “Just do it, fo’ Christ’s sakes.”

  I walked back to the bedroom and waited.

  Vic brought the lit candle up to me, held high in front of him, its wick flickering in front of his face, his tongue stuck out at me, eyes bulging, a gurgling noise coming from his throat. He once again resembled the child I’d grown up with, trying to spook me, just as he had always done each Halloween.

  “Stop fuckin’ around and give me that,” I snapped.

  “OK . . . Take it easy, brother; you don’t wanna go upsetting ole Clarence downstairs; you be looking round his boudoir like this in the dark, it’s gonna upset that unsettled spirit o’ his.”

  He raised his eyebrows repeatedly, a massive grin on his face as he did.

  “Just shut up fo’ a minute, let me take a look in this pit.”

  I walked into the bedroom, the light from the landing bulb and the candle flame offering me the chance to see a little better now. A stained double mattress was pushed up against the skirting board of the far wall, its bedding and pillows littered around the floor. A Red Stripe Jamaican beer poster was sellotaped above it; clothes and shoes were thrown all over the place.

  “Hey . . . Joe Friday, check out this shit behind you,” Vic called over to me.

  At first I thought it was going to be another one of his lame pranks until I turned and saw what was facing me. Tucked in neatly against the wall where an old fireplace had once stood was a small handmade wooden altar for the practising of voodoo. It was really nothing more than an old chest of drawers that stood at around four feet in height and was draped in a white linen cloth.

  A series of small unlit black and white candles were positioned on the top along with a number of small porcelain saucers, which held oils and herbs, rotting vegetables, dead flowers, old bones, coins, silk handkerchiefs, feathers and beads. Twelve brightly painted bottles containing God knows what also adorned the shrine. A large child’s rag doll, undressed and with its hair pulled out, was at the centre of the altar next to a sepia-toned photograph of an elderly woman, which had been turned upside down and had a cord tied around its middle, hiding the mouth of the subject. Small red stones and shards of broken glass were scattered all around the base.

  “Looks like Maynard had a ting going with the loa, JT.”

  “Sure looks like it,” I replied quietly, my eyes drawn towards the doll at the middle of all the paraphernalia.

  I knew that loa are spirits, which can be good or bad, and that those practising voodoo believe these entities to be sacred: some are revered, others feared. A worshipper’s altar represents the crossroads between reality and the spirit world and draws the loa towards it. I also knew that it’s considered highly disrespectful to touch, add to or take anything from an altar, and that the penalty for committing such an act against these unwritten
spiritual laws was to risk the awakening of the all-consuming wrath of the loa. I was about to tempt fate by breaking two of the three laws.

  “Here, hold this fo’ me a minute, Vic.” I passed the candle to him, walked over to the altar and reached for the doll, picking it up carefully so as not to disturb anything else. It was nothing to look at, but for some reason my gaze had been guided to it and I found my gut instinct had paid off as I gently squeezed at the torso of the toy and felt something hard inside. I turned it over, lifted the flap of cloth in its back and pushed three of my fingers inside the stuffing and pulled out a small pocketbook no more than three inches in length.

  I pushed the stuffing back into the doll and placed it exactly where I’d found it, back into the centre of the altar.

  Vic and I walked out onto the landing. He blew the candle out and shut the bedroom door behind him while I opened up the pocketbook and began to read its contents.

  At the top of each page was written a date, starting in the June of 1963. Below were a series of names: women’s names, surname first, followed by Christian; then on the far right-hand side of each page behind a faint margin an amount of money allocated to each woman. None of the names were recognisable to me, but for Vic it was a different matter. He snatched the book out of my hands and ran his big index finger down each row of names, flipping over the pages and shaking his head, tutting to himself as he did so.

  “JT, you got the names o’ more whores in this book than there were on the streets o’ Sodom. From the looks of it ole Clarence was taking himself a piece of each o’ these girls’ action and then passing it on to his boss, Papa.”

  “How you know these ain’t Papa’s girls in the first place?”

  Vic smiled at me and winked before answering.

  “See this initial by each of the payments: HSD . . . That, my man, has to be Hoo Shoo Dupree.”