Blood Never Dies

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  The man behind the desk stood up when Atherton came in and surveyed him with a friendly and professional eye. ‘Hello! What can I do for you?’

  ‘Are you Honest John?’ Atherton asked.

  ‘That’s what they call me. You’ve come at a good time – very quiet today. Don’t look so worried! I’ve been doing this twenty-five years and I haven’t lost a customer yet.’

  ‘Oh, I haven’t come for a tattoo,’ Atherton said, unable to disguise a shudder – largely because he wasn’t trying.

  Honest John gave the sort of reassuring smile that could have brought dead puppies to life. ‘What’s up? Afraid of needles?’

  ‘You use needles? I thought they were kissed on by soft-eyed Tahitian maidens.’

  ‘You’re a card, you are,’ said Honest John. ‘What can I do for you, then?’

  Atherton produced his brief and introduced himself. Honest John’s smile faded slightly, but he gave the impression of a man with no shadows on his conscience. ‘I hope nobody’s complained,’ he said. ‘I’m very careful about hygiene and I don’t do minors, faces, or anything obscene.’

  ‘It’s nothing like that,’ Atherton said. ‘Someone suggested you might be able to identify this tattoo – that it might be your work, or if not, that you might know whose it was.’

  Honest John took the photograph of the tiger and looked at it for a long time without speaking, his face unreadable.

  ‘Do you recognize it?’ Atherton prompted.

  ‘It’s one of my designs, all right,’ he answered neutrally.

  ‘And this one?’ He passed over the dragon. ‘We have reason to believe they were done fairly recently.’

  ‘Both done on the same person?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, they’re definitely mine.’ He looked at Atherton with an anxious probing stare, trying to fillet out the nature of the trouble heading his way.

  ‘Do you remember doing them?’

  ‘Funny enough, I do, though it was a while ago. Coupla months, at least. Let me think. Was it – just after Easter, maybe? No, just before Easter, because we were quiet. Get a lot of kids in during the school holidays.’

  Three months ago, then, Atherton thought. ‘Tell me about it,’ he said, pulling up one of the waiting-room chairs to the desk and sitting down expectantly. Honest John sat resignedly on the other side and placed his hands on the desk top, the gesture of a man prepared to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Atherton had seen the same gesture many times in the interview room back at the station, but on this occasion he suspected it was genuine.

  ‘It was quiet, like today,’ said Honest John, whose real name, he told Atherton, was John Johnson. ‘Beginning part of the week’s always quiet. I’ve thought about closing Monday and Tuesday, but I haven’t got anything else to do, really, so I sit in here and do my paperwork, and work out new designs, so if anyone does come in, I’m not turning away trade. Anyway, it was a Monday or a Tuesday morning this man comes in.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Eh? Oh yes. He walked in off the street and I took one look at his clothes and thought, hello, he’s come to the wrong shop. Like you, y’see, he didn’t look the type. Cords and a jacket, he had on, and very nice shoes – most people round here are in jeans and trainers, and a lot of them through my door are covered in piercings. But he was a tall, good-looking bloke. Money coming out of every pore, that’s the way he looked to me. Kind you’d expect to see in Berkshire driving a Range Rover towing a horse trailer, you get my drift?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Atherton. ‘Very graphic.’

  He seemed pleased. ‘I notice things,’ he said. ‘You have to in this trade. You get all sorts – junkies looking to rob you, kids on a dare their mums and dads don’t know about, girls egging each other on, dating couples. You have to give them advice as well as the work. Practically an agony aunt, me.’

  ‘Go on,’ Atherton prompted.

  ‘Anyway, he wasn’t the usual sort of person that comes in, that’s what I’m saying, which is why I remember him.’

  ‘How did he seem? What was his mood like?’

  Johnson considered. ‘Kind of grim but determined, is how I’d put it. He didn’t smile at all, and he seemed kind of – preoccupied, if you like. Following his own thoughts. Not the sort of mood you get a tattoo in, and I half thought he’d back out when it came to it, but he knew his own mind all right. Quite confident. So I show him the books and he picked out the tiger right away. Then he asked for a snake round his ankle. I said everyone had snakes and wouldn’t he like something a bit different. I showed him the dragon and explained how it could wind round, and he liked that idea, and went for it.’

  He ran a finger absently over the design – he had a workman’s hands, not an artist’s: strong, blunt, steady. Hands you’d trust.

  ‘Well, when we get in the back room, he takes off his jacket, and he’s got a short-sleeve shirt on, and I see he’s got no other tattoos – not visible ones, anyway – so I reckon he’s an ink virgin. That’s what we call ’em. Well, it’s a longish job, and you don’t sit there in silence, do you? So I try to get him chatting. He wasn’t big on answers, just yes and no, not volunteering anything. I ask if he’s had a tattoo before and he says no, and gives a sort of look, like as if he wishes he wasn’t doing it now. So I ask what he wants ’em for. And he says, “Oh, just an idea I had”, and then he changes the subject and starts asking me about the trade. He had a lot of very intelligent questions, not the usual daft stuff people generally ask, and I tell you, he got me talking like it was a chat show. It wasn’t until afterwards I thought, he was just stopping me asking him questions. But it was skilfully done.’

  Atherton nodded thoughtfully. ‘Did he tell you his name?’

  ‘No, it never came up.’

  ‘Don’t you take names and addresses of your customers?’

  ‘Not generally. There’s no need.’

  ‘How did he pay?’

  ‘Cash. That’s the usual thing. I gave him my little talk about aftercare and gave him a leaflet, sold him a tub of tattoo goo, took the cash and away he went.’

  Atherton got out the mugshot and handed it to him. ‘Is that the man?’

  ‘Yes, that’s him – but I think his hair was different. Maybe darker. And cut a different way.’ He looked up anxiously. ‘This photo – is he—?’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid he was found dead. It looks like suicide.’

  ‘Oh dear me.’ Johnson seemed genuinely upset. ‘Oh deary me. That nice lad? What a dreadful thing. But why would he do it? He seemed all right. A bit dour, maybe, but not nervous or depressed. The opposite, really – like a man with stuff to do. Who would have thought . . . Did he leave a note saying why?’

  ‘He didn’t leave anything. We don’t even know for sure who he is. All we have to go on is the tattoos – hence my visit, hoping for a name.’

  ‘Oh dear. Well, I’m very sorry I can’t help. But in my line of business people just come in off the street and usually pay cash. You don’t take names and addresses any more than a sandwich bar does.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Atherton. ‘It’s a pity, though. Can you remember anything else about him that might help us?’

  ‘Like what?’ Johnson screwed up his face in thought. ‘I don’t know, I’ve told you what I remember, his nice clothes and—’ Something occurred to him. ‘Wait, yes, there was one thing. I don’t know if it means anything. He’d had his legs waxed.’

  ‘Waxed?’

  ‘To take the hair off,’ Johnson expanded. ‘Like women do.’

  ‘Yes, I know what it means.’

  ‘I noticed because of course it made my job easier.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why he did it.’

  ‘Maybe. It’s unusual though. They were smooth as glass. It looked really unnatural.’

  Unnatural smoothness, Atherton thought. And when something was unnaturally smooth, you couldn’t get a grip on it. Like this case. ‘Well, if you think
of anything else, here’s my card. Give me a ring. Anything, however trivial. You never know what may help.’

  ‘Oh, I will,’ said Honest John. He looked at the photograph again with a sort of reluctant fascination. ‘Can I keep this? I could ask around. I get all sorts of people coming in, and someone may’ve seen him somewhere.’

  ‘Yes, by all means,’ Atherton said. ‘Any help always gratefully received.’

  ‘Waxed legs?’ Slider said. ‘What does that tell us? Why would a man wax his legs?’

  ‘Swimmers and cyclists do it to cut down on resistance. Athletes of all sorts do it,’ Atherton said, ‘because they have a lot of massages, and it can hurt if you’re hairy.’

  ‘He wasn’t muscled enough to be an athlete.’

  ‘Surgeons sometimes wax their arms because it makes scrubbing up easier.’

  ‘But it wasn’t his arms.’

  ‘Well, some men just like the look of smooth skin,’ Atherton tried.

  ‘But he wasn’t still waxed, so it can’t have been that he liked the look.’

  ‘So what do you think?’

  ‘It could have been something he just tried out and didn’t like. Or there was some reason we haven’t twigged. I don’t know. It just adds to his peculiarity.’

  Atherton was thinking. ‘Is there a pattern here?’ he asked. ‘False name—’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘—county cords to visit Honest John, tight jeans and trainers to move into Conningham Road. He’s acting a part.’

  Slider sighed. ‘I thought from the moment I saw him he didn’t fit in at that flat. The tattoos are just a little touch of insanity to add to the mix. If he was your high-flier suddenly gone bust and reduced to a furnished let, why would he get himself tattooed? It’s just too frivolous.’

  ‘I’m losing enthusiasm for that theory,’ Atherton admitted. ‘And the missing keys suggest black-sack man was something to do with it, and did take stuff away.’

  ‘It’s not only the keys,’ Slider said. ‘Freddie Cameron says Williams took some kind of narcotic, but if it was suicide, what did he bring it home in? No suitable bottle or packet in the place. He could have had a pocketful of loose capsules, but where are the capsule cases? And if it was just a powder, he couldn’t have brought it back in his cupped hands, could he?’

  ‘The murderer brought it in and removed the evidence,’ said Atherton. ‘I’m a willing convert to your side. So where do we go from here?’

  ‘We’ve got the pizza to follow up. Still some neighbours to canvass. McLaren’s on car movements in the area at two a.m. Selective circulation of the mugshot – and I think we’ll circulate the tattoos as well. Nothing from Mispers?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Then we just plug on, and hope something comes up before we have to go public.’

  ‘I must say it’s rather peaceful not having the press hanging round and tripping us up every step.’

  ‘Yes, not terribly eye-catching news, nameless man found dead in cheap rental flat,’ Slider said. Over the years he had attended all too many human endings like that, but generally the deceased were either old, obviously poor, or drug addicts. This man wasn’t any of those; but the longer he could keep the press out of it the better.

  ‘It’s going to be a long one,’ he concluded.

  The taxi driver looked exactly like a London cabby out of a movie. He was a spare man of about five foot six, probably in his sixties, with the deeply lined face of a smoker and a smoker’s voice with a Shepherd’s Bush accent. He had a thick, shapeless nose, a chin like a nub of pumice stone, brown-framed glasses and wiry silver hair sprouting from under an old-fashioned flat cap, which he whipped off courteously as he was shown into Slider’s room.

  He gave his name as Harold Barnes.

  ‘It’s about this photograph – sir,’ he added at the last minute, having subjected Slider to a quick analysis.

  ‘Please sit down,’ Slider said, charmed with the novelty. Not many people called him sir these days. ‘Can I get you a cup of tea?’

  ‘Very lovely of you, sir, but I won’t trouble you. I fill up too much I gotta keep stopping, if you get my meaning. And time’s money in our line o’ business.’

  In that case, Slider thought, he ought to get businesslike. ‘You recognize the man in the photo?’ Taxi drivers were one of the usual places mugshots were sent, along with hospitals, social workers and the other police forces.

  ‘Yes, sir, I do. I picked him up in Kensington High Street one morning.’

  ‘Do you live in Kensington?’

  ‘No, I live in the Bush, but I often cruise down that way. Ken High Street’s a good place to pick up fares. It’s a rubbish tube from there, and there’s lots of the sort of people live there that don’t like going in buses.’

  Slider nodded. Behind Ken High Street there were blocks and blocks of Edwardian and between-wars luxury flats, inhabited by wealthy elderly and middle-aged ladies, who had probably never been on a bus in their lives and didn’t mean to start now.

  ‘So you picked him up—?’

  ‘He flagged me down, just about the end of Allen Street – down that end of the south side.’

  ‘And when was this?’

  ‘Oh, a good while ago. Coupla months, anyway.’

  ‘Then why do you remember him?’ Slider asked. ‘One fare among so many?’

  ‘’Cos of where I took him.’ The cabbie gave Slider a cocked and sly look, like a parrot spotting a peanut. ‘He give me the address, and I thought, “Hello,” I thought, “I know your game.” He asked me to take him to Ransom House, Luxemburg Gardens.’

  ‘Luxemburg Gardens – that’s Brook Green, isn’t it? But what’s Ransom House?’

  ‘You not come across it? That’s where they make all them blue films.’

  ‘Porn films?’ Slider said. Something rang a bell in Slider’s mind.

  ‘Not the real rough stuff, I don’t mean. The semi-respectable stuff you can get in the back rooms o’ video shops.’

  ‘How do you know this?’ Slider asked. He didn’t look like the sort of man who watched blue movies.

  As if he’d heard the thought, Barnes said, ‘I don’t go in for that sort of thing meself. Watched a bit of one once, years ago, and it was just embarrassing. Didn’t know where to look. But Ransom House has bin there, ooh, must be twenty years, and I’ve took plenty o’ fares there in my time, so I know what they do.’

  Slider nodded. ‘So you thought he was going there to act in a porn film?’

  ‘Well, he looked about right for it – tall, nice looking. He seemed a bit nervous, too, kind of sitting forward, tense. So I says, to jolly him along, like, “This your first time?” And he looks a bit startled and says, “First time what?” and I says, “Going for an audition, are you?” And he stares a minute like he might be going to say he didn’t know what I was talking about. Then he sort of relaxes and laughs, rueful like, and says, “Yeah, I don’t know whether to hope I get the job or not.” So I says, “They pay good money, from what I hear.” And he says yes, but a bit distracted like, as if he’s thinking o’ something else. Well, that’s all the conversation we has till I drop him off. He pays me, and while I’m putting the money away I see him go in out the corner of my eye, and that’s all I know about it, sir,’ he concluded with something like satisfaction, sitting square and upright on his seat with his cap on his lap and his faded blue eyes looking expectantly at Slider through the lenses of his specs.

  There didn’t seem to be anything else to ask, except, ‘Can you remember any more exactly when this was?’

  ‘Like I said, a while ago.’

  ‘Was it before Easter or after?’

  He thought a moment. ‘Got to be after. When did we have that bit o’ nice weather? Beginning of May, wasn’t it? Might have been then, because it was a warm day, I remember that. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, no jacket. And when I see he was nervous, he was sweating on his upper lip, and I wondered meself if it was the heat or
the nerves, you get me?’

  ‘Yes, I follow. Well, you’ve certainly given us something to follow up. Thank you very much for coming in.’

  ‘Just doing me jooty,’ Barnes said, pleased.

  ‘Ransom Publications,’ Atherton read from the printout, ‘is the publisher of soft-core porn films, their most famous titles being the Office Orgy series, which now number thirteen and have acquired cult status. Not with me, they haven’t,’ he interpolated.

  ‘I’ve heard of ’em,’ Connolly said. ‘Me sister Sheila’s boyfriend and his mates were into that stuff. There was another series before that called College Orgy. That got up to College Orgy Ten.’

  ‘It mentions that here,’ said Atherton. ‘And Hospital Orgy and – what’s this? Can it be? Yes, Shopping Mall Orgy.’

  ‘Great titles!’ said Connolly. ‘I’m guessing here, but would you say imagination’s not their mighty strength?’

  ‘You don’t need imagination,’ Mackay said. ‘It’s all there on the screen.’

  ‘Yeah,’ McLaren growled, and they exchanged a glance. It hardly surprised Slider to learn that tying one on and then watching a blue movie was the way some of his firm relaxed off duty from time to time.

  ‘There was this one, Office Orgy Three I think it was – classic!’ said Mackay. ‘This bloke comes in to mend the photocopier and there’s this couple having it off on top of it, and he says, “You could damage the paper feed like that”. I mean, brilliant or what!’

  ‘Hurr,’ McLaren agreed, with as much machismo as could be expected from a man who has had all the bacon sandwiches in his bloodstream exchanged for yogurt.

  ‘If I may continue?’ Atherton said patiently. ‘Ransom Publications is a branch of the Marylebone Group. And the Marylebone is a property development and management group, with its registered address conveniently in Cyprus.’

  ‘Conveniently?’ Slider queried. It meant they couldn’t make enquiries about it at Companies House.

  ‘Convenient for them, not for us,’ said Atherton. ‘So three months ago our victim waxes his legs – and who knows what else besides – gets himself two tattoos, and about two weeks after that—’