Blood Sympathy

by Reginald Hill

  ‘Got a fag?’ she demanded loudly. The WPC shook her head.

  ‘What about you, Sambo?’ she said. ‘I’ll have one of yours. I’m not proud.’

  ‘Sorry, I don’t smoke,’ said Joe.

  She was studying him with a frown on her face. She’s remembering her ‘dream’, he thought.

  He turned to Doberley and said, ‘What time was it, the fire?’

  ‘Just before midnight. Nayyar was just on his way to bed. He was dead lucky, managed to get down the stairs and out of the back before the fire took hold. After that, write-off.’

  ‘And what do the kids say?’ asked Joe.

  ‘You’ll love this. They were screwing round at her mum’s flat! Great alibi, huh? Here, this’ll slay you. Chivers looks them straight in the face and says, Any witnesses? Dead pan, not a flicker. Any witnesses? Hang about here and I’ll see if I can get you that cuppa.’

  He went away.

  Joe went towards the seated girl. She looked up at him defiantly.

  He said, ‘Suzie, it’ll be OK.’

  ‘What?’ She looked at him blankly. ‘What you know about anything?’

  ‘Please, sir, you shouldn’t be talking to her,’ said the WPC.

  ‘I’m sorry. I just wanted her to know it’ll be OK.’

  The girl shook her head as if there was something there she was trying to dislodge.

  ‘You wasn’t really there … no, that’s stupid … stupid …’

  ‘Sixsmith, what the hell are you doing here?’

  It was Chivers who’d just emerged from the room Ellis had been taken into.

  ‘Wants to see you, Sarge,’ said Doberley, returning with a cup of tea.

  ‘That for me? Thanks,’ said Chivers, taking the cup. ‘Listen, Sixsmith, whatever it is, it had better be good and it had better be quick. I can spare two minutes, tops.’

  That made Joe’s mind up. Mr Nayyar’s fire would have to go on the back burner, so to speak. It was going to be hard enough to persuade Chivers to offer assistance as it was, without the added disincentive of cocking up a nice cut and dried case.

  To his credit, Chivers listened without interrupting. But when he did start speaking, it was clear he wasn’t feeling very helpful.

  ‘So you thought you had a quantity of smuggled smack in your possession and you didn’t try to hand it in?’ he said incredulously.

  ‘Well, it was … I mean, I thought it was in the bull, and like I say, I mislaid it …’

  ‘So now it’s not even in your safekeeping, it’s floating around God knows where, and still you told no one?’

  ‘I told …’ Sixsmith hesitated. Pissed off though he’d been with Butcher over her reaction to Whitey’s disappearance, implicating her in ignoring the law was a poor return for all her past help.

  ‘I told no one,’ he concluded. ‘Because I wasn’t sure. And in fact when I found the bull again and ripped it open, I realized I’d been wrong. There is no heroin, Sergeant, that’s the point. But there are two thugs who think there should be some and reckon I’ve got it.’

  ‘So what do you want me to do?’

  ‘They’re criminals. Arrest them?’

  ‘Criminals? What’s their crime?’

  ‘They’re dope merchants, or at least they’re employed by dope merchants,’ cried Joe indignantly.

  ‘But you’ve just told me there is no dope,’ said Chivers. ‘You want me to arrest two men for asking you to give them something that doesn’t exist?’

  ‘With menaces! They’ve asked with menaces.’

  ‘To your cat, you say. You got any proof they’ve got your cat?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Anything in writing which indicates they’ve got your cat?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Any witnesses to anything to prove they’ve menaced you or your cat at all.’

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ said Sixsmith. ‘Look, they ransacked my flat …’

  ‘You reported this?’

  ‘Well, no …’

  ‘Sixsmith,’ said Chivers, ‘you’re wasting my time. Perhaps that’s why God put you on earth, to waste my time, though I think it’s more likely He looks down at you in that so called PI’s office of yours and thinks that maybe He wasted His time in creating you at all.’

  Sixsmith felt a great surge of rage sweeping up his body but he held it in check. He said very quietly, ‘Please, Mr Chivers, whatever you think, they’ve got Whitey and they say they’ll hurt him if I don’t give them something I haven’t got. They’re coming to see me in twenty minutes. I’m asking for help. I’m asking for advice.’

  Chivers shook his head in exasperation but for the first time there was a touch of sympathy in his voice as he replied, ‘I’d like to help, even though you’ve brought most of this on yourself. But what do you want me to do? If I come along and talk to these guys, what do you expect me to say? They’ll deny everything, natch. And with no evidence, they’ll stroll away free as the air. And if they have got your cat and he hasn’t just gone for a wander, what then? All I’ve done is give them good reason to put it in a bag and chuck it in the river.’

  His analysis of the likely outcome of police involvement was so like Joe’s own that all quarrel was knocked out of him.

  He said, ‘I’ve got to go.’

  Chivers said, ‘Play for time. I’ll have a word with DI Yarrop in the Drug Squad, see if he knows anything about this pair. No names, you say?’

  ‘I just think of them as Blue and Grey. Big men. Very broad, but they fit into some kind of white mini. One thing. You know that traffic wardress, the one with the jaw and the metal tooth? They frightened her off.’

  ‘Good God,’ said Chivers, looking impressed for the first time. ‘In that case, you take good care of yourself.’

  ‘I thought that was what we paid the police for,’ said Joe Sixsmith accusingly.

  CHAPTER 18

  They were prompt.

  And they were polite, knocking at the door before coming in.

  Joe, who was beginning to feel quite expert on Mr Blue and Mr Grey, took little comfort from this initial courtesy. He got the impression the two thugs had been quarrelling about how they should deal with him, and Blue was asserting his ascendancy by this artificial politeness.

  This was confirmed when Blue suspended his buttocks over the client chair and said brightly, ‘All right if I take the weight off my feet, Mr Sixsmith?’

  Grey sneered widely, broke wind noisily and noisomely, took out a pair of nail scissors and began manicuring his left hand.

  Blue said, ‘Sorry about him, Mr Sixsmith, but he can’t help it. Now, you know what we’ve come about so let’s not mess around … Jesus Christ!’

  A shard of nail had flown off Grey’s thumb and hit him in the eye.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ snarled Blue, ‘either stop that or sod off and do it in the bathroom. And if you can get rid of whatever’s died in your gut at the same time, that’d be a bonus!’

  For a moment Joe thought Grey was going to return the aggression and a small hope flickered that perhaps they would come to blows. But finally Grey satisfied himself with an obscene gesture with the scissors before lumbering into the tiny washroom like an angry bear into its cave,

  ‘Right,’ said Blue. ‘While things is peaceful, where is it, Mr Sixsmith?’

  If the brilliant idea was going to come it had to come now.

  It didn’t. So Joe fell back on his old stand-by, and told the truth.

  ‘I found the bull,’ he said. ‘That’s what I was doing on Hermsprong last night. But there wasn’t any heroin in it. Nothing but kapok. I can show you the kapok.’

  ‘No heroin? You’re telling me there was no heroin? But that can’t be, Mr Sixsmith. We know there was heroin.’

  ‘Of course there was, in the beginning. I’m not arguing about that. But Bannerjee found it in the bottles and got scared and flushed it away down the lavatory.’

  Blue nodded, and Joe began to hope he was at
last getting through.

  ‘Yeah, we know that too,’ he said. ‘Leastways, we know that’s the line Bannerjee’s pushing. He’d like us to think that all them rats and crocodiles and things that live down the sewers at Luton airport are swimming around high as a 707 on two kilos of top grade smack. It’s a very good story, Mr Sixsmith. It’s also a very sad story.’

  ‘It’s the truth,’ said Joe, hope beginning to fade.

  ‘Truth.’ Mr Blue sucked the word like a slice of lemon. ‘That’s what makes it so sad. Funny thing, is truth. Me, I’ve had to ask a lot of people a lot of questions, and when they’re lying and telling me things I don’t want to hear, truth can be a door they can get out of. But when they’re telling me the truth and I still don’t want to hear it, then it’s a bare corner in a narrow room, you understand what I’m saying, Mr Sixsmith?’

  Joe understood. The truth wasn’t going to set Whitey free. Only the heroin was going to do that. The heroin that, according to Butcher, was now polluting the Med, though according to what Blue seemed to have heard, it had probably just been recycled into Luton’s domestic water supply.

  As if to underline this rather odd disparity, a sound came from the washroom. Mr Grey was having a pee. This might be the best chance he had for flight. Except that without Whitey flight was pointless, the situation remained unchanged. Somehow he had to get Whitey here, grab him, then run like hell. It wasn’t a very subtle plan, not even by Joe Sixsmith standards. On the other hand, he couldn’t see anyone around selling a better one.

  He laughed lightly. ‘Ha ha.’

  Mr Blue said sympathetically, ‘Something stuck in your throat, Mr Sixsmith? Go take a drink of water when barrel-bladder’s finished in there.’

  Joe decided to abandon the light laugh and said, ‘OK, you win. Let’s stop messing around. I know where the dope is. Give me my cat back and I’ll tell you.’

  He listened to himself on that instant interior playback which is the source of all embarrassment and didn’t blame Blue for looking unconvinced. Assertion wasn’t going to be enough. He needed detail.

  He said, ‘What happened was this. Bannerjee did get scared, that was true. The thought of being caught with all that crack on him really snarled him up. He knew he didn’t have the bottle to walk through Customs with it. But he’s a businessman, he likes money, and the thought of just dumping something worth more than half a million snarled him up too.’

  Inspiration dried. He hoped it might sound like a dramatic pause.

  Mr Blue said pleasantly, ‘So what did he do? Wrap it up in a parcel and post it?’

  Joe looked at the man with admiration. They’d got this the wrong way round. It should be Blue doing the lying, he was so much better at it. On the other hand, never kick a gift horse in the teeth.

  ‘Oh, you knew about that all the time,’ said Joe, trying to sound both disappointed and puzzled. ‘So what’s all this in aid of, then?’

  For the first time he saw uncertainty in Blue’s eyes.

  ‘You’re losing me, Mr Sixsmith,’ he said. ‘Which is a good way to go about losing, first, your cat, and after that your teeth, bollocks, and toenails, not necessarily in that order. Know all about what?’

  Joe added surprise to his range of inflections.

  ‘About Bannerjee posting the stuff back to the UK, of course.

  ‘Are you pulling my plonker?’ grated Blue, leaning forward and fixing Joe with a gut-liquefying glare.

  ‘No!’ cried Sixsmith, not having to dig deeper into his range of voices to find one which expressed sheer terror. ‘I’m being straight, cross my heart and hope to die. He just parcelled it up and posted it back here. He reckoned that the Customs couldn’t check on all incoming mail so there was a fair chance it would get by.’

  Blue considered this, never taking his eyes off Joe, who was glad the man had given him an excuse to look terrified.

  ‘So where’d he address it to?’ asked Blue. ‘Here, was it? Are you trying to tell me he posted it to you?’

  ‘Oh no. Definitely not. He’s not stupid. He chose somewhere nice and busy, lots of people, lots of mail, somewhere he could easily check out to see if there was anyone watching before he picked it up.’

  This sounded so good to Joe, he couldn’t believe Blue wouldn’t buy it. But the man’s face was still the same sceptical mask.

  ‘Yeah? And where was that?’ he asked.

  Joe’s inspiration ran dry beyond all hope of irrigation. Also, he might not be the world’s greatest liar, but he knew better than to go beyond the point of checkability.

  He said, ‘No.’

  ‘No what?’ said Blue, like Auntie Mirabelle reminding him to mind his manners.

  ‘No, I’m not telling you any more. Not till I see Whitey.’

  ‘The cat’s OK, Mr Sixsmith. You give us the goods, we give you the cat, that’s the deal.’

  ‘But I can’t give you the goods,’ exclaimed Joe. ‘They’re not here yet. You’re going to have to watch and wait till the Spanish PO comes through. It might be days. So I want to check out Whitey, give him his vitamin tablets, see if his nails need clipped. There’s a hundred and one things you got to do with a cat if you’re keeping him shut up for any length of time. And I’m telling you, anything happens to Whitey, anything at all, and the deal’s off. So when do I get to see him?’

  Blue looked at him speculatively for a long moment, then said, ‘OK. But if you’re pissing me about, my son, I’ll put that beast through the mincer and feed it to you in teaspoons. You gonna stay in there all day?’

  He rose and kicked open the washroom door. Grey was standing over the basin, combing his hair in the cracked mirror. How could such an unattractive creature be so vain? wondered Sixsmith. I bet even his mother reckoned he was homely!

  ‘Get yourself out here,’ said Blue. ‘Keep a close eye on Mr Sixsmith. I’m going to the car to get the cat.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Hey, bring me that tube of mints from the glove compartment. My gut isn’t feeling so good.’

  ‘You live on fried egg sarnies, what do you expect?’ said Blue scornfully. ‘I won’t be long.’

  He left. Grey collapsed into the vacated chair, rubbing his stomach. He belched explosively and said, ‘Better out than in.’ It was debatable, thought Joe. Not that he wanted to debate it. He wanted to work out a very clever plan for overpowering the two of them when Blue returned with Whitey, then escaping with the cat. But the sight of Grey slouching before him was not conducive to deep thought.

  He said, ‘I need to go to the lav.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Grey glanced into the washroom to confirm there was no window, no other door. ‘OK. Go.’

  Sixsmith went in and pushed the door shut behind him. He sat on the toilet and applied his mind to the problem, but found his new surroundings didn’t exactly inspire deep thought either.

  What he needed was a weapon. Or a miracle. He looked around but saw nothing to suggest the imminence of either. It would have been nice if Grey had left his Swiss Army knife, but all he’d left were nail clippings on the rim of the basin and black hairs floating around the grubby water he hadn’t bothered to empty away.

  Nail clippings. Hair. Water he’d washed in …

  Sixsmith found he was thinking of the books he’d looked at in the reference library; of Gwendoline Baker and Gerald the Hyphen; of a light plane crashing and a raven-haired woman writhing in agony …

  He looked at himself in the mirror and mouthed, ‘That old black magic has me … Hey, Joe man, you must be going crazy!’

  But why not when there was nowhere else to go?

  He picked up the lozenge of soap, dipped it in the dirty water and began squeezing it till it was pliable as putty. Then he moulded it into the shape of a little fat man. He was good with his hands, it was only his head he sometimes had problems with, and while he couldn’t claim any real resemblance between Grey and the poppet taking shape under his fingers, it at least had his proportions. Anyway, what was it that Gwen Baker had sa
id? It’s not the likeness that counts, not even the scraps of human matter, but the intensity of hatred you focus through the doll.

  How much did he hate Grey? he wondered as he pressed the black hairs into the doll’s head and the nail clippings into its arms.

  He feared him, that was true, but hate? He let his mind slip from the thug sitting out there in his office to Whitey. Somewhere his cat was being kept a prisoner. Perhaps in the boot of a car. Perhaps with his head muffled so he couldn’t make himself heard. He would be hungry, thirsty, frightened. He might have fouled himself, which was the ultimate degradation for a member of a race to whom cleanliness was next to catliness.

  And this man and his mate were responsible for this. And if they didn’t get what they wanted, they’d have no compunction about destroying Whitey as painfully as possible …

  Hate him? ‘Oh yes, you bastard,’ breathed Joe Sixsmith. ‘I really hate you!’

  And he took a pin from his lapel and drove it into the poppet’s gut.

  Then he pressed his ear to the door and listened.

  Nothing. What the hell do you expect? he asked himself mockingly. This old black magic ain’t for you, Joe boy. Better just stick to singing about it …

  At this moment the door burst open flinging him back against the wall, and Grey staggered in, his face the same colour as his suit, and collapsed on his knees before the toilet, groaning and retching.

  ‘Oh shoot!’ said Joe.

  He didn’t want to believe he was responsible for this, he didn’t want to believe anything about it. He pulled the pin out of the poppet. Grey groaned. There was a hole in the soap. Joe squeezed it with his thumb to smooth it over. Grey doubled up and jetted vomit into the pan.

  Sixsmith turned away. On his desk, the phone rang. He grabbed at it. This was a line to help for Grey. For himself. For Whitey.

  ‘Hello!’ he yelled.

  ‘Sixsmith? Butcher. Now listen to this. Andover gets everything his wife left. And she shares with her sister everything their parents left, with the rider that if one of the sisters should die before the parents, the surviving sister kops the lot, all of which makes the order of all their deaths of the essence. Let’s assume …’