Dirty Weekend

by Alan Scholefield

  ‘He uses people,’ Richard had once said of him.

  It was true, she thought. But people always used people. Who were they supposed to use? And now she was going to use Jack.

  She felt flutterings of guilt and pushed them aside on the tide of another swallow of whisky. She hadn’t suggested it, that was one thing. She had begun the sentence but hadn’t finished it. Jack had suggested it. She had objected.

  Anyway, what was she getting into such a fuss about? He was her husband’s partner. His oldest friend. He was asking her to dinner. Helping to alleviate the loneliness of the Easter weekend.

  That was all.

  She shivered. No, it wasn’t all. She knew exactly what she was planning to do. It was called adultery.

  Chapter Eight

  Cannon Row is one of the oldest police stations in London, and now, after the changes in the Metropolitan Police Force of the last fifteen years, it is probably the most important.

  In its complex of new and old buildings it lies strategically near the Houses of Parliament, near New Scotland Yard – now no longer so much an investigative bureau as an administrative one – and its kingdom stretches from the River Thames in the south, to Harrow Road in the north, and takes in virtually the whole of central London.

  It is part of the ‘new’ police force, the one that has replaced the Met of old. In the shake-up famous names like the Murder Squad have disappeared. Now, if you rape someone in Pimlico, beat someone half to death in Piccadilly, or plunge a knife into a black TV journalist’s stomach in an underpass near the Thames, it isn’t ‘Superintendent Bloggs of the Yard’ who is called in but ‘Eight AMIP’ – the Area Major Incident Pool.

  London has been divided into eight crime districts; Cannon Row operates the one at the very centre of the very heart of the capital.

  On this cold March night its charge room was full to overflowing with derelicts and vagrants, street kids, dossers, meths drinkers – much to the horror of the station officer.

  All the interview rooms and many of the offices had been taken over to interrogate this flotsam. In one, Macrae and Silver were questioning a young white male of indeterminate age.

  ‘What’s your name, son?’ Macrae said for the fourth time.

  The boy did not reply. He was cleaning his fingernails with a matchstick.

  ‘You’ll tell us sooner or later.’

  ‘Piss off,’ the boy said, matter-of-factly, and Silver looked across at Macrae. Sometimes he reacted and sometimes he didn’t. It just depended.

  The boy was of medium height. Silver would have put his age anywhere between sixteen and eighteen. It was difficult to place him for he had a young–old face. Just looking at that face Silver knew it had seen more of life than he would ever see or ever want to see.

  He was wearing a heavy, padded combat jacket in camouflage browns and greens, a pair of jeans and Nike trainers. His head was shaved and he wore two earrings in one ear. His skin was reddish from the winds of winter, his eyes were pale blue and the whites were flushed with red.

  ‘You know what we do with little boys like you?’ Macrae said.

  ‘I bet you’ll tell us.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll tell you,’ Macrae said.

  The room was sparsely furnished with a table and two chairs. The boy was sitting at the table. Macrae was looming over him, his foot on the other chair. Silver was standing with his back to the wall.

  ‘We put you over our knees and give you a good spanking. That’s what we do with little boys.’

  ‘You like spanking boys? I usually charge a tenner for that.’

  Macrae paused. Then, almost wearily, he turned his heavy, bull-like head towards Silver and said, ‘You have him for a while, laddie.’

  He went out and Silver sat down at the table. In contrast to Macrae, he was of medium height and slender. His dark hair sat closely on his skull and his brown eyes were set wide apart. He did not look like a policeman, that is if there is any stereotype of what policemen look like. He had a lithe, cat-like, movement. He might have been anything at all, a doctor, an actor, but his girl, Zoe, had always thought of him as a fencer; a foil to Macrae’s blunt weapon.

  ‘Gi’ us a fag.’

  ‘I don’t smoke.’

  ‘Scared of the Big C?’ The boy had a heavy Scottish accent.

  ‘That’s right. I’ll get you one if you like?’

  The young man pursed his lips and blew Silver a kiss. ‘You’re the soft one, are you?’

  ‘You’ve been seeing too many movies.’

  ‘Ah, come on! He wants to put the boot in, you can see that. You offer a fag. And isn’t it usually a cup of tea as well?’

  ‘What’s your name?’ Silver said.

  ‘What’s his?’

  ‘Detective Superintendent Macrae.’

  ‘Macrae. I’m a Scot too.’

  ‘I’d never have guessed.’

  ‘Sarky!’ And again he pursed his lips in a camp gesture. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Sergeant Silver.’

  ‘I knew a bloke called Silver once. Jewish. You Jewish?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘That makes us the same.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Well, ethnic minorities. Jews are an ethnic minority. So’re Scots. Or they are in this bloody town. Anyway, I didna know Jews became coppers.’

  ‘They don’t.’

  ‘Why you, then?’

  ‘It’s a long story. But we’ll have plenty of time to talk about it.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘He’ll keep you here.’

  ‘But what for? I hav’na done anything.’

  Macrae came back. He had a mug of tea in his hand and sipped at it.

  ‘Hey!’ the boy said. ‘You’re a Scot. Me too.’

  Macrae ignored him. ‘Name’s Rattray,’ he said to Silver. ‘Called the Rat for obvious reasons.’

  ‘How long you going to keep me?’ the boy said. ‘You got nothing to hold me on!’

  ‘Go and get some tea, laddie,’ Macrae said to Silver. ‘And you can bring some for him.’

  Now there was only Rattray and Macrae. Something changed in the Rat’s eyes. It wasn’t much but it was significant and Macrae noticed.

  Macrae sipped at his tea and said, ‘Have we got it right? Is it Rattray?’

  ‘Get lost!’

  It was said with an attempt at bravado but just missed. It was as though his earlier behaviour had been supported by Silver’s presence, as if it had been a performance for Silver’s benefit.

  Macrae put his tea down on the scarred table-top and said, ‘There’s only the two of us. No need to show off now.’ And he hit him. He half rose and swung at the same time. He used the flat of his right hand and caught the Rat in the face, lifting him from the chair as it crashed over backwards. The boy landed halfway across the room.

  Blood was pouring from his nose. Macrae sipped again at the hot tea, replaced it on the table, and crossed the room. He caught Rattray by the shirt and slammed him against the wall.

  ‘The thing is I haven’t time to play your silly games,’ Macrae said. ‘Time is money and we’re running out of money. That’s what they tell me. Oh, did you not know the police force is run by accountants these days? Well, it is. So we’ve got to be super-efficient. Now, in the name of efficiency I’ve used the flat of my hand on you. Super-efficiency means my fist. What’s it to be?’

  The blood was running down Rattray’s face and dripping on to his shirt.

  ‘Just you think about it, son. You’re a rent boy. I know that. But if I take my fist to you it’s going to be weeks before one of your clients’ll look at you sideways. And you may never look as pretty as you do now.’

  Macrae balled his fist and drew back his arm. The boy became a boy. He suddenly looked terrified.

  Silver came in. Macrae ignored him. The blow was already shaped in his head. Silver managed to get the tea on to the table. ‘For God’s sake!’ he said, and caught Macrae�
�s arm.

  ‘Tea,’ Macrae said, shrugging Silver’s hand away as though it had never touched him. ‘Just the thing.’

  Silver felt a familiar surge of anger and apprehension. ‘What happened?’ he said.

  Macrae turned to look at him. After a moment he took the cup from Silver and placed it in front of Rattray.

  ‘I told our young friend how pressed we were for time and he decided to cooperate. Isn’t that so, son?’ Rattray did not reply. ‘They call you the Rat?’

  Silver gave him his handkerchief and the boy began to clean his face. ‘Yes?’

  ‘What’s your first name?’

  The boy looked across at Silver. ‘Can you get that fag?’

  Macrae pulled out a packet of slim cigars and gave him one.

  ‘First name?’

  ‘James. Jamie.’

  ‘Age?’

  ‘Eighteen. Seventeen and a half.’

  ‘All right, Jamie, they . . .’ He pointed vaguely in the direction of the charge room where the other derelicts were. ‘They say there was a coloured kid and a girl dossing in that underpass. They say you knew them. Let’s start with that.’

  *

  Detective Chief Superintendent Leslie Wilson was in his early fifties. He had a thin, sharp face, thinning grey hair and eyes that never rested on one place for more than a split second. When he was young he had been called ‘Shifty’ Wilson.

  He was a neat man, vain about his clothes. At one time, before it was disbanded, he had been attached to the Murder Squad. When the pressure became heavy he had been known to go to his desk, take out polish and brushes and give his shoes a right going over.

  He also had a tidy mind and the ability to file things away in his mental computer and recall them at will: arcane facts about suspects, ages of people he’d arrested in 1969, their middle names, hair colour, telephone numbers, car numbers.

  In later years, he had been able to turn that talent towards administration, and now he was the boss of Cannon Row.

  Forty-five minutes earlier he had been fetched from his home just as he was preparing for bed. He was not in the best of humours but he hid that now as he looked across his desk at George Macrae.

  Of all the men in the Metropolitan Police, including Commanders, even Deputy Commissioners, Macrae was the one around whom Wilson trod most carefully. Like most people, he respected Macrae. He liked him and disliked him in about equal measures and was always somewhat apprehensive in his presence.

  They had known each other for many years, had started together, come up through the ranks together, and survived together. That forged links. After a few drinks it was easy to grow sentimental, easy to forget the problems that Macrae posed.

  Even though Wilson had known him for a long time, even though they had worked closely together on the Murder Squad, gone out together with their wives, spent Christmas at each other’s houses, Wilson still did not know what Macrae would say or do at any given moment in any given situation.

  Like his police work, his life was unorthodox. The word ‘messy’ had sometimes been used and Wilson knew that the top brass would have liked to see Macrae on the early retirement list. Wilson had always fought for him, for Macrae was what was known in the trade as a good thief-taker. His success rate made Wilson look good.

  It wasn’t something that either man was in doubt about. Macrae knew Wilson benefited from his expertise and his success; Wilson knew that Macrae benefited from his, Wilson’s, ability to cover for him when his behaviour became just a little too unorthodox.

  They knew each other’s weaknesses and strengths; they knew they had to work out – and had worked out – a raison d’être. It was a symbiotic relationship – a word Macrae would have known, not Wilson. And lastly they both knew that if Macrae had toed the line over the years, he would now be sitting behind Wilson’s desk, or indeed a somewhat grander desk with a grander title.

  ‘This is a bugger, George,’ Wilson said. ‘Always happens before a holiday weekend.’

  Macrae was standing with his back to the room, looking at the car park that glistened wetly under the sodium lights.

  ‘How’s the . . . um . . . the family?’ Wilson said.

  The word was used advisedly, for with two ex-wives and three children between them, picking out the different relationships and inquiring after the separate individuals, would have taken time.

  ‘They’re OK,’ Macrae said. ‘Beryl?’ Beryl was Wilson’s wife. She was small and plump and blonde and went to bed, so the word was, with creamed hands thrust into cotton gloves.

  ‘Not best pleased,’ Wilson said. ‘She’d just got off to sleep. Anyway. What’ve you got?’ He looked down at an early report. ‘Have to tell you I’ve never heard of him, this TV chap.’

  ‘Nor had I,’ Macrae said. ‘He’s on at breakfast time.’

  ‘Ah. Never watch the box then. It’s a bloody bad place, Hungerford Bridge. For muggings, I mean.’

  ‘I don’t think it was a mugging.’

  ‘Oh?’ Wilson’s eyebrows rose slowly making crease lines on his thin forehead. ‘Man on his way to Waterloo Station on a bad night? Just the sort of time and place.’

  ‘He wasn’t on his way home. At least it doesn’t seem like it. He lives in Sussex. Near Chichester. If he was taking a train he’d leave from Victoria.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, George, you’ve got it down here. If it’s not a mugging then what . . .?’

  ‘That’s just the report they’ll base the press release on. Gives me time.’

  ‘George, he’s a T-bloody-V personality! They’re next to the royals. Anything happens to one of them and it’s page one. You got to be extra specially careful on this one. And for God’s sake you’ve got “black” here.’ He tapped the sheet in front of him.

  ‘Well, he is black.’

  ‘So what? If he was white you wouldn’t put white. Our masters are bloody paranoid about race at the moment. Every time some black brother complains about police harassment it’s all over the papers, and questions in the House, and the Commissioner has a gastric attack. The word is cool it. Don’t make anything out of it. You don’t need to call him black because people will see his pictures on TV and in the papers and they’ll know . . .’

  ‘I think he was stabbed by a black.’

  ‘Oh, shit!’

  Wilson opened the top drawer of his desk, scrabbled about, closed it, opened another. ‘You got something to smoke?’

  ‘I thought Beryl made you give it up?’

  ‘Only at home.’ He took a slim cigar from Macrae and drew on it heavily. ‘What are you telling me, George? Black murders black. It’s not a mugging. Are they family? Friends? It’s not drugs, is it?’ There was real apprehension in his voice now. Everyone knew about the crack wars in Washington and Los Angeles. Everyone expected something similar in London.

  ‘Relax, Les. Not as far as we can tell.’

  ‘What do you know about this Henry-bloody-Foster anyway?’

  ‘Not a lot so far, but we’re checking. He must have been pretty bright to get where he got.’

  ‘And pushy,’ Wilson said. ‘You don’t get anywhere just by being black and bright. All right, so he wasn’t mugged. What was he doing there at that time of night? It’s too late to be going to the Festival Hall or the National Theatre. I suppose he could have been coming back.’

  ‘Only if he left at the interval.’

  ‘Well, whatever he was doing there, someone stuck a knife into him on the bridge.’

  ‘Not quite on the bridge, Les. A place underneath it. The sort of place dossers and street kids find. I suppose you could call it a shelter.’

  ‘What about this other black? The one who stabbed him. You got a name?’

  ‘Calls himself Huntsman. But that doesn’t sound like a real name. He’s a kid.’

  ‘Got a description?’

  ‘It’s down there.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Black and green track suit. A green bean? Oh, beanie. One of those woollen ha
ts?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘Mid teens. A year either way.’

  ‘Jesus, they get younger all the time!’

  ‘There’s a girl too. He and the girl shared this doss. Called Gail.’

  ‘Huntsman. Gail. They’re getting pretty fancy. In my day it was Bert and Sally. Anyway, she shouldn’t be too hard to pick up.’

  ‘She could be anywhere by now.’

  ‘Could be he was stabbed somewhere else and his body was hidden there.’

  ‘G. D. did the examination. He doesn’t think so. Anyway, this place is almost at head height. You’d need a couple of strong blokes to lift him.’

  ‘What d’you think, George?’

  ‘A couple of the dossers say Foster had come to the bridge and was asking for the kid.’

  ‘Maybe he’s his long-lost son.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘What about Foster’s family?’

  ‘There’s a wife in Sussex. She’s being told tonight. I’ll go down and see her.’

  ‘If Silver can come up with the suspect’s address that’ll make a difference. We can’t have this kid running around with a knife. What’s he like, George?’

  ‘Who, Silver? Why?’

  ‘I dunno, you and Silver . . . It’s just, well . . . he doesn’t seem quite your cup of tea. I’ve always wondered about him. I mean a Jew. And with his education. He’s over-educated, really. What the hell does he want in the Met?’

  ‘To be Commissioner.’

  ‘Oh.’ Wilson smiled. Then frowned. ‘You serious?’

  ‘That’s what his mother wants.’

  Wilson was still bothered by the report in front of him. ‘The media are going to be all over us on this. One of their own, et cetera.’

  ‘Fuck the media.’

  ‘For God’s sake, George, be your age. And that reminds me, there’s something I’ve been meaning to mention.’

  His eyes touched Macrae’s face briefly then flitted away to the window, a chair, the desk.

  ‘I think I know what’s coming.’

  ‘Seniority.’

  ‘Thought so.’

  ‘Look, I’ve got to write you up. You know as well as I do you could hold down a Chief Super’s job but I’ve got to have something positive from you, George. You’ve got to show willing. That you want it.’