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

by M. P. Wright

  “What’s your relationship to the deceased?”

  Fletcher’s phrasing of the word “deceased” had a heartless finality in its intonation. I thought of Virginia, her body lying cold on some mortuary slab, the elegant life force she’d possessed ripped out by a senseless, violent act. I swallowed hard and answered.

  “I met her in the place she worked; she was a barmaid at the Bee Hive pub in Horfield. I was drinking in there one afternoon, the place was quiet, we got talking, and I asked her to come out with me. Gave her my name and a number she could git a hold of me on . . . She said she might call; she never did, guess I wasn’t her type . . . That’s it.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  Fletcher kept the manner of his questioning light. He’d started to play the game and at this point he didn’t realise I knew that or that I understood the rules.

  “’Bout a week an a half ago, I’d say,” I coolly lied. The detective constable reached into the other Manila file and pulled out a slip of paper, which I recognised as mine. Sure enough, he turned it over to reveal the torn-out sheet from my notepad that contained the contact details I’d given to Virginia Landry.

  “Is this your handwriting, Mr Ellington?” the snotty DC demanded. He spat out my surname when addressing me and clearly wanted to keep our interview on a professional level. I leant over and drew the slip of paper closer to me, scrutinising what was written on it for a moment before answering the jumped-up bobby.

  “Yeah, that’s my scrawl.”

  “Well, the piece of paper that you have just admitted has your handwriting on it was found with a number of other personal effects next to the body of the deceased. Tell me . . . where were you last night?” DI Fletcher asked me the question straight off the bat and caught me off my guard. Not wanting to involve Vic, who was only too well known to the police, I stumbled for a second to reply to his query with the fast-paced certainty I’d previously had.

  “Er . . . I was with my uncle Gabe and aunt Pearl, over at their place in St Pauls. Yeah, me an’ old Gabe we played cards and I drank way too much of his rum. It ended up me sleeping off the booze fo’ a while on their sofa. I woke up around 3 a.m. and made my way back to the digs.”

  “And I suppose these relations of yours can corroborate your whereabouts, can they?” the snide DC interjected. His brashness was starting to piss me off, but I tried not to show it.

  “I’d sure as hell hope so; if not, I’m in a stack o’ trouble.”

  “You ever heard of a local hooker called Jocelyn Charles?” Fletcher asked.

  “No . . . Am I supposed to?”

  My third lie: it was starting to become a habit. I just hoped that the pair of them were buying into it.

  “She was found dead just over a week ago in Montpelier, dumped in undergrowth by the railway sidings with her throat slashed. You ever visit Montpelier, Joseph?”

  It was the detective inspector’s first stupid question, but I went along with his idea of good sport to keep him happy.

  “Not to butcher women I don’t.”

  “Of course you don’t . . . Our man here’s not that kind of fella, far too bright to be hanging around filthy murder sites and women of ill repute. Is there anything you should be telling me, hey . . . Joseph?”

  Fletcher was casting his line out, hoping to get a nibble on his hook. I wasn’t biting and I sure as hell didn’t like the bait. I preferred the idea of keeping my mouth shut, composed and unobtrusive. That was the key to their game: let them get hot under their collars and keep ’em thinking they’d got me on the ropes.

  “What do you do for a living, Joseph?”

  I’d seen this one coming.

  “I used to pack boxes of smokes in the warehouse at Wills’ until I had a falling-out with a foreman on the shop floor. I’m looking fo’ someting that better suits my previous kinda of work.”

  I decided to try a little fishing of my own, see what I could haul in: I’d nothing to lose.

  “And what kind of work would that have been, Joseph?”

  DI Fletcher had took a chunk outta my lure. It was time to reel him in.

  “Your kind . . .”

  I watched as the two copper looked at each other, confused and unable to quite accept what I’d just implied.

  “What . . . you’re telling me that you were a po—”

  I interrupted him before he choked out the word that he could not associate with the man he was questioning.

  “Policeman . . . Yeah, that’s right, man. Sergeant Joseph Tremaine Ellington, Barbadian Police Force, working outta Central station, Bridgetown. And as a sergeant, that made me t’ree stripes higher than your boy there.” I nodded over to the sullen-guts detective constable who looked like the world had just dropped outta his bowels. “Now I don’t know what else you think you got pinned on me, but I’m telling you straight, I don’t knock around with whores and I met that poor girl Virginia Landry as she was pulling a pint o’ stout fo’ me. I asked her fo’ a date, she said she’d think about it, I wrote my name and number on that there scrap o’ paper you got. That was the last I seen of the woman and I sure as hell never murdered her.”

  Those last three statements were fact and it felt good to know that I’d managed to utter a little truth finally.

  DI William Fletcher sat scowling at me from behind his station, trying to weigh up the truth of what I’d just told him. He swallowed hard and drummed the desk at varying speeds with the flat of his hand before knocking his chair backwards as he rose to his feet.

  “Get this cocky bastard back to his cell while I check out his story; give him his bloody clothes and something to eat.”

  The detective inspector stormed out of the interview room, slamming the door behind him, leaving his ill-humoured subordinate to do his dirty work. I grinned at the boyish underling and thought to myself that getting the shit end of the stick was the same the world over.

  31

  The long night spent in the cell had deprived me of sleep as well as my liberty. A constant metallic drip-dripping outside the door, which did not let up during the hours of darkness, became the least of my worries as various new inmates were brought into the lock-up, each adding to the increasingly high levels of intolerable rows as the evening progressed into bedlam. Swearing, screaming, the punching and kicking of cell walls and doors: all contributed to the relentless din, and by the time the change of shift had come on duty and had lifted down the hatch in the pokey to check on me, my head was pounding and every inch of my body ached.

  Earlier, while that entire racket went on around me, I tried to switch off from it and returned my thoughts to the murdered girl Virginia Landry and how the paper with my name had conveniently been found next to her body. It had to be a plant, and I was now certain that Papa Anansi and the crew-cut cop had to be involved in my false arrest. My interfering had thrown a proverbial cat among the pigeons for them. Their paymaster had no doubt demanded that any loose ends should be tied up quickly and they had been very quick in dealing with the thorn in their side that I had become, perhaps less than eight or nine hours since I’d spoken to the terrified girl at her home. I began to realise how stupid I’d been in thinking that my search for Stella Hopkins was just about finding a lone missing deaf, mute girl. Was she just the tip of the iceberg?

  I was obviously uncovering somebody’s dirty linen and they would do anything to prevent it being laundered in public. If Terrence Blanchard was as well connected and powerful as I believed him to be, then perhaps the rough detective grilling me last night was in his pocket too? I don’t know what I’d hoped to achieve by disclosing that I had been on the force back home to DI Fletcher: it was a wild card. With my back against the wall and facing a murder charge, I needed some personal leverage with which to approach the seasoned plain-clothes officer regarding my guiltlessness. Why I chose to tell him about a part of my life that I had until then been trying so hard to forget was perhaps less to do with my belief in the universal brotherhood of pol
icing and the professional camaraderie we might share and more about how desperate I was to show my own integrity and virtue, which derived from my past employment as a copper. Let’s face it: just because I was once a law-enforcement officer didn’t preclude me from committing murder, but I was hoping that the shrewd scar-faced investigator may think twice before judging me and go with his instincts after I’d protested my innocence.

  Apart from knowing that it was Wednesday, I’d lost track of the hours and had no idea what time of day it was when Detective Inspector Fletcher opened the door of my cell and crabbily walked in, bringing his short temper with him. I remained seated on the end of the cold bunk, ignoring his presence, looking at the floor as he lit one of his unfiltered cigarettes and then leaned against the cell wall, staring at me. When he spoke, his deep, booming voice echoed around the stonework of the cramped jail room.

  “I’ve just got off of the phone with a stiffened shirt who runs the nick you used to work in back on that godforsaken place you used to called home: a Superintendent Mackinnon.”

  “Never heard of the man,” I snapped back.

  “No? Well, he sure as hell has heard of you and he wasn’t too happy to hear your name being bandied about by another copper from the better part of four thousand miles away. It looks like you left that island under a bloody big cloud, my son; in fact, from the sounds of things you kicked up more crap back there in the tropics than a cesspit shoveller on overtime. Now this Mackinnon fellow says that he’s just been shipped to his new office from the London Met and that he’s just taken over from your old governor, some bloke called Alexander. That was the name of your gaffer, yes?”

  I nodded at Fletcher in agreement and he quickly carried on with his sermon, not missing a beat.

  “Anyhow your old chief has apparently taken early retirement, lucky bastard. The new superintendent went on to tell me that he knew very little about you and what he did know was from the tales some of your ex-colleagues had been telling him since his arse first hit his chair. Most of them seemed to think that the name Ellington was bad news.”

  When I heard him say that, I immediately went on the defensive, pointing my finger at the preaching detective, about to give him a piece of my mind and my version of events when he raised the flattened palm of his hand, stopping me in my tracks.

  “Now hold on there, mouthpiece, let me finish before you get on your high horse and start spraying the walls with spittle. Mackinnon also went on to say that he’d heard from other officers that you were an honest copper, that you never took a penny on the job, had an even temper with the rouges you pinched and were meticulous in your investigative skills.

  “I asked Mackinnon for something a little more concrete about your background and time on the force. He said that he’d do a little discreet digging around at the station and he’d call me back. Guess what? Just over an hour later he’s back on the blower, full of himself with your big, thick file in front of him. He said that you made very interesting reading. You had an unblemished record with just over fifteen years’ service tallied up, reaching the rank of sergeant and with several commendations for bravery to boot: impressive stuff, Joseph. Then things go belly up when you apparently, for whatever crazy reason, decide to take on a local drug kingpin who may have had some of your high-ranking workmates in his pocket and that you started a one-man war against him and his operation. You made a lot of waves, and because you did, this crook got nasty and tried to take you out at the neck. Only rather than putting you in a box, he ended up killing people close to you. Mackinnon said that you lost your wife and young daughter in a fire at your home, and that before you could seek revenge this mobster had you connected to some trumped-up illegal activities at your station and eventually, from what he can gather, you were given two pretty desperate choices. It was either a lengthy spell in a sweaty Caribbean nick or the chance to get off the island on the next ship out to Blighty. You obviously saw little chance to clear your name or seek retribution for the tragic loss of your kin and took the boat trip out of there. Pretty miserable stuff, son, pretty miserable.”

  Fletcher looked down at me; the hardness in his glare had disappeared. He returned his hand to his jacket pocket and pulled out his cigarette packet, shook one partially out and offered it to me.

  “I don’t smoke . . . but thanks anyway.”

  Fletcher smiled to himself and tapped the cigarette back into its box, returning it to his pocket.

  “The superintendent went on to say that he’d had a word with an old chum of yours from the time when you and this bloke both patrolled the streets of the poxy shanty town you used to call home. This geezer got the wind up him when your name was mentioned and wanted to remain anonymous, even with you long gone and on the other side of the planet. This is on account of possibly getting himself in the muck with some his mates on the job, or perhaps this thug you went up against may still have his digits on some dirty cops where you used to work. This nameless wonder told Superintendent Mackinnon that you had a reputation for sniffing out trouble and that you were often like some mangy dog not wanting to give up a bone when you went up against villains and that you didn’t back down when things got hairy. He also said that for as long as he knew you, you’d never needed to pull out your service revolver in defence of yourself and would do anything to prevent a situation from going bad. He also added that most of the local felons would stay clear of you if they could. He was also of the opinion that he doubted that you were a whore-killer and that you’d more than likely been playing the defender of some damsel in distress or two-bit loser and had perhaps returned to your old ways and gotten involved in things you had no business being mixed up in.

  “So Joseph . . . You tell me, is that what you’ve been up to? You been sticking your big black conk where it don’t belong again? Cos if you have, whoever’s bidness you’ve been prying into has gotten mighty pissed off with your over-curious behaviour and dropped you into a big, steaming heap of monkey shit for your trouble.”

  “Like I said to you in that interview room yesterday . . . I took a chance on asking a beautiful lady fo’ a date. I left my particulars with her. She never rang, wrote or stood on my front doorstep to take me up on the offer. I never saw her again after I walked outta that public house and I never took her life.”

  I stared up into inspector’s eyes, my glare hard, filming over with tears.

  “What my police file says and everyting else you just said ’bout my past is the truth, except fo’ one ting.”

  “Yeah . . . and what’s that, Joseph?” Fletcher asked. The uncertainty in his voice crackled as he waited for my reply.

  “I once pulled my service revolver and used it in my defence. I shot and killed a young kid who was attempting to rob the takings out of a cash register in a liquor store. He was no more than seventeen years old and was high on dope and booze; he had a knife to the shopkeeper’s throat and I knew he was going to cut him up. I blew a hole in that kid’s face the size of a cricket ball. I regretted having to fire my pistol then and I still do to this day.”

  I looked back down at the floor and bit at a hangnail on my thumb. The same feeling of emptiness now gnawed at my gut in exactly the same way that it had on the night I’d taken another human being’s life. I heard the cell door open as the laces from my shoes and the belt from my trousers fell at my feet.

  “I’m going to be keeping a real keen eye on you, Joseph Ellington . . . Now get the hell out of here.”

  When I looked up, the scar-faced detective was gone. I sat staring out of the opened door as I listened to the studs on Fletcher’s soles clip down the corridor and was about to call out “thanks, man”, but my lips would not open nor my tongue form the words to speak. Did I really want to offer up my gratitude to a man who had just taken the darkest moments from my past and spilled them out in front of me so that their cruel memory could inhabit my sentient and leaden soul? I picked up the meagre belongings that my earnest inquisitor had just thrown down in fro
nt of me, got up off of the solid bench and followed after his footsteps, leaving my unwanted and haunting reminiscences in the bleak cell behind me.

  *

  It was after two in the afternoon by the time I was finally released and I walked out of the main doors of Bridewell police station. A heavy fog had dropped outside, making it difficult to see more than six feet in front of me. I walked down the granite-flagged steps into the smog, which smelt of gasoline fumes and chimney smoke, and inhaled the first kind of fresh air I had breathed in over twenty-four hours. I didn’t care about the filthy pollution I was drawing into my lungs, I was just grateful to be out of the clutches of the police.

  I rubbed at my face with the flat of my hands in a desperate attempt to shake off the fatigue as the harsh chill of the winter’s day blew right through my cotton shirt and trousers to the goose-pimpled skin of my upper body and legs. The burning-cold gusts nipped at my sockless feet and I began to shiver from head to toe.

  “Vic said you’d be needing this; that boy was sure right.”

  The familiar, lyrical voice of my uncle Gabe emanated from the murkiness before his physical presence became visible to me. He slowly walked towards me through the pea-souper; his left arm was outstretched and in his hand he held the old navy-blue duffle coat that the kindly reverend had given to me.

  “He said someting ’bout you saying to him that it was lucky. Shit, brother, from the look o’ this old cagoule it don’t look like it can offer you much good fortune. Maybe you shoulda been wearing it in bed yesterday morning, then the police might not a’ been beating in on that gate door o’ yours wanting to sling your ass in the slammer.”