‘Get off the line!’ screamed Sixsmith.
But it was too late, even if Butcher did get off the line immediately, which, being the bossy type, seemed most unlikely. He could hear footsteps on the stairs. Blue was returning. Sixsmith prayed he’d have Whitey. He grabbed the client chair and stood behind the door. He doubted if he had the strength or the skill to knock a man built like Blue unconscious but he could surely incommode him long enough to grab the cat and run like hell.
The door opened. He swung the chair up high. A voice said, ‘Christ!’ Another more familiar voice said, ‘Miaow!’ and into the room rushed Whitey, skidding to a halt at Sixsmith’s feet and stretching up to claw his knees in a one-cat chorus of outrage, delight, and hunger.
The chair was beginning to feel heavy. Sixsmith set it down and the cat used it as a springboard to reach his shoulder, where he continued his purring protest in Sixsmith’s ear.
‘Well he seems glad to be back,’ said Detective-Inspector Yarrop, sucking at a long scratch in the ball of his thumb.
Two uniformed constables pushed past the Drug Squad inspector and rushed to the washroom, skidding to a halt when they glimpsed the retching Grey.
‘Bloody hell,’ said one of them. ‘He doesn’t look too clever.’
‘What’s up with him?’ said Yarrop to Sixsmith.
‘I don’t know,’ said Joe. ‘Something he ate, I think.’
He glanced fearfully at the doorway and said, ‘Where’s the other?’
‘Helping with inquiries,’ said Yarrop. ‘I think this one better have an ambulance. Don’t want talk of police brutality, do we?’
One of the constables picked up the phone, listened, said, ‘You too, lady,’ depressed the rest and dialled 999.
Joe went to his filing cabinet and found an old packet of pork scratchings which he scattered on the floor. Whitey jumped down and began to Hoover them up.
‘He’ll give himself indigestion,’ said Yarrop.
‘How did you get here?’ asked Sixsmith.
‘You owe DS Chivers for that,’ said Yarrop. ‘He gave us a bell and told us what you’d told him. The descriptions put me in mind of a couple of old chums, so I set off to see you and got here just in time to see Big Phil taking a cat out of the boot of a car.’
‘Big Phil?’
‘Philip Froggat. The thinking crook’s heavy. He’s got the beginnings of a brain, which is more than you can say for Tiny here.’
‘Tiny?’ said Joe looking at the belly-clutching bulk of Mr Grey.
‘Timothy Orrel. Tiny Tim. He dreamt a thought once but woke up and spat it out. Now, Mr Sixsmith, why don’t you tell me the history of your relationship with these pleasant fellows?’
Joe coughed the lot, including what Butcher had told him. If she’d broken client confidentiality, that was her business. All he wanted was to contribute everything he could to the very worthy cause of getting Blue and Grey banged up as long as possible.
Yarrop was a good listener. When Joe finished he said, ‘Could have saved yourself a lot of grief by coming to us sooner.’
‘I got badly advised,’ said Joe.
Oh yes? Ms Butcher, I presume. That figures. But don’t sulk for ever, Mr Sixsmith. She’s a feisty lady. I’d rather have her with me than against.’
Joe looked at him in surprise.
‘You on an incentive bonus for being nice, or what?’ he asked.
Yarrop laughed.
‘No. I just reckon if I make allowances when people go too far for what they believe, they might do the same for me.’
An ambulance bell had been growing louder. Whitey, who didn’t care for loud noises, made one, and Joe opened his drawer. Still protesting, the cat got in.
‘Hungry?’ said Joe. ‘Hang about.’
A quick search through the other drawers produced some boiled sweets and a soggy poppadom which he dropped in alongside the cat before closing the drawer.
‘I reckon he was better off kidnapped,’ said Yarrop.
Two ambulance officers, one male, one female, came into the room carrying a stretcher.
‘This him?’ said the man, looking down at the groaning Grey.
‘Guess,’ said Yarrop. He turned to one of the constables who’d brought Grey out of the washroom and said, ‘I need a run-off. That place usable?’
‘If you don’t breathe, sir,’ said the man.
Yarrop went in. The ambulance officers were checking Grey’s pulse and respiration.
‘Severe abdominal pains, is that right?’ said the woman.
‘That’s what he complained of,’ said Sixsmith. ‘What do you think it is?’
‘Ruptured appendix, burst ulcer, bad takeaway, anything,’ said the woman. ‘Ready, Sid?’
Expertly they manœuvred Grey on to the stretcher. In the washroom the toilet flushed, water gurgled in the basin, then the toilet flushed again, and Yarrop came out drying his hands on his handkerchief.
‘That place needs a Government health warning,’ he said.
‘I keep it clean,’ protested Joe. ‘This guy’s just been sick in there.’
‘Maybe. But it’s you that’s responsible for the soap. Now that was really disgusting. How’s our boy doing? He don’t look like he’ll be a burden on the taxpayer long.’
His prognosis seemed well founded. Grey was convulsing and gasping for air, like a drowning man going down for the third time.
‘Come on, Sid,’ said the woman urgently. ‘Let’s get him out of here.’
Joe said, ‘Inspector, what did you do with the soap?’
‘The soap? Flushed it down the pan, didn’t I? A man could catch beri-beri off something like that.’
‘Oh shoot,’ said Joe Sixsmith.
CHAPTER 19
Troubles are like Alps, you get over one and there’s another waiting. Joe Sixsmith had never climbed an Alp, but he knew where to go for his next bit of trouble.
Pausing only to buy Whitey a placatory takeaway from the Sun-Never-Sets Gourmet Emporium next to the abattoir on Twist Road, Sixsmith made his way to Mr Nayyar’s shop.
The firemen had finished picking through the ashes but Nayyar was there now. He looked up as Joe appeared in the empty doorway.
‘Please be careful,’ he said. ‘The firemen say pieces can still fall. They are coming back shortly with equipment to make all safe. I think I will take the chance to see if anything is worth saving, but there is nothing. See, the heat was so tremendous, all the cans have exploded.’
He thrust a burst and blackened can under Joe’s nose.
‘A bad business,’ said Sixsmith.
‘Very bad. Such wickedness, to come back again and finish off the job like this.’
‘Still, you saw them this time,’ said Sixsmith.
‘Oh yes.’
‘And you’re sure it was the same pair, the ones shop-lifting the other morning?’
‘Definitely,’ said Nayyar. ‘I looked out of my window and there they were, clear as daylight.’
‘You couldn’t have been mistaken?’ said Sixsmith.
‘No! It was them, definitely. Why are you asking me these questions, Mr Sixsmith?’
Joe looked at the narrow lined face and sighed.
‘You’ll have to swear to it in court,’ he said. ‘On the Koran or whatever it is you lot swear on.’
‘Us lot, as you call us, are as honest as any other lot, and our oath is just as binding. You think I cannot swear it was these two who set fire to my shop? Oh yes, believe me, Mr Sixsmith, I can swear that on any Holy Book you care to put before me!’
He spoke with such a persuasive vehemence that for a moment Joe almost doubted the evidence of his own eyes.
Then his mind caught the form of words. Jesuheretical, as that fine Baptist, Auntie Mirabelle, described all forms of Romish doubletalk.
‘I believe you, Mr Nayyar,’ he said. ‘And I’d swear to it too. Those two definitely set fire to your shop. But not last night. The first time, but not the second.’
‘Because I saw them somewhere else at the time you say you saw them here. And I can swear to that too.’
Nayyar’s face had smoothed into the blank of a market trader when the bargaining takes an unexpected turn. The bright brown eyes regarded Sixsmith with shrewd calculation. It was not what Joe had hoped to see. There’d been a chance Mr Nayyar was genuinely mistaken, that he really had seen a young white couple running away and mistaken them for Ellis and Sickert. It would have been a natural mistake. We see what we expect to see, what we want to see.
But the proper reaction now would have been bewilderment and indignation, not this cool assessment.
There was worse to follow.
The burst can fell from Nayyar’s hand, sending up a puff of grey ash which clouded their feet and the facial blank began to fracture. Sixsmith saw what was coming and he didn’t want this either. All he wanted was for Nayyar to back off from his positive identification far enough for it to be unlikely the police would proceed against the kids. He didn’t want to be the shopkeeper’s confidant. A trouble shared was a trouble too many for a man with cash flow problems. There was no money in hearing confessions, not unless you were a priest. Who’d said that? He had! To Andover all those years ago; three days, to be precise, but it felt like years. His mind totted up all the other people’s troubles he’d taken on board since then, and all of them freeloaders except for Gwen Baker. And he wouldn’t be surprised if her money turned into frogspawn when she found out Meg Merchison was out of danger!
He said, ‘Please, Mr Nayyar, all you have to—’
But it was too late. The man’s eyes and voice were full of tears and his hands grasped Joe’s arm as he said pleadingly, ‘You must understand me. Mr Sixsmith, you are a kind-hearted man, I can see that, and you too know what it is to be treated as second-class citizen, I am sure. I try to make a living, give a service, harm no one. All I want is to look after my family. So I put up with many things, little things mainly, some not so little, but I put up with them, telling myself, these people are the few, the ones who make jokes, speak threats, scratch my car, scrawl insults on my door. They are drunk or feeble-minded. They yell, “Go home, Pakky, you do not belong here,” but they are the true foreigners in this society. This is what I tell myself, my family.’
He paused and Joe tried to break away, saying, ‘That’s a good point of view, Mr Nayyar. Give and take’s the best way forward.’
‘Oh yes. Give your dignity, take all their crap!’ blazed Nayyar, his grip tightening as his anger dried up his tears. ‘You saw yourself how much I take, even letting them steal from me rather than cause trouble. But that does not stop them from trying to burn my shop. Even then, I say nothing. You were here, you saw I made no accusation. I think: I have no proof, and I think: The damage is not so great and I have good insurance. Yesterday morning I ring my insurance company and they send their assessor round. Later I hear that these two, the shop-lifters, have been taken into custody by the police, and I think: This is after all a good country. Then in the afternoon the insurance man rings me. He says that they will pay for the door which is burnt, and the floor covering also, but not its full value as it is old. The rest, they say, that is water damage caused not by the fire but by the fire brigade, and I must pursue a claim with them!’
‘That’s bollocks,’ said Sixsmith. ‘They can’t get away with that. They’re trying it on!’
‘Oh yes. Trying it on,’ said Nayyar bitterly. ‘I am their customer for more than ten years, no claims, prompt payments, and now they try it on. But listen to me. I go straight round to the insurance office and demand to see the manager. He tells me very politely, very reasonably, that I should realize that in the light of this attack, I must expect my premiums to go up. I say: Why? He says: You are very high risk, Mr Nayyar, this has now been proved. In fact, he says, you are lucky that we insure you at all! I grow very angry and I leave before I lose my temper. I think that nothing can be worse than what I have just heard, till later that same afternoon I heard that the police have let these two criminals go because they do not have enough evidence!’
It occurred to Sixsmith to suggest that if Nayyar had been willing to give evidence against them a day earlier for shoplifting, all of this might have been avoided. But he doubted if the man was in a listening mood. Also he was still hopeful of making a break before the confession—or rather self-justification—reached its forecastable climax.
‘It’s been a truly terrible experience for you, I can see that,’ he said. ‘But you’ll think about what I said, won’t you? Now I’ve got to rush, urgent appointment …’
But Nayyar had gone too far to let him go before he had administered absolution.
‘So you see how things are, Mr Sixsmith?’ he said, half aggressive, half pleading. ‘I am in the right but I suffer. I pay my premiums but they will not pay me. We know who the criminals are, but they are set free. So I decide, if the law cannot help me, I must help the law. This time they will not be able to say the damage is not all caused by the fire. This time they will not be able to say there is no witness to the culprits. I send my family away, I make my prep …’
‘Mr Nayyar,’ interrupted Joe urgently, ‘I don’t want to hear this. I can’t afford to hear it. You can’t afford to tell me it. In fact, I’m glad I’m a bit deaf in one ear, ’cos I think I’ve probably misheard most of what you’re trying to tell me. Which means I’ve got nothing to tell the police, have I? Except that I know where Glen Ellis and Suzie Sickert were when your fire started, and it wasn’t here. But I won’t need to tell them that, will I? Not after you tell them you might have been mistaken, because you were naturally so upset at seeing everything you’d worked for, everything you possessed going up in flames. Thank God for insurance, eh, Mr Nayyar? They won’t be able to get out of it this time, not unless there was any doubt about how it started.’
He broke free from the shopkeeper’s grip.
Nayyar said softly, almost contemptuously, ‘I thought you would believe in justice, Mr Sixsmith.’
‘Oh I do,’ said Joe sadly. ‘That’s always been my trouble. Goodbye, Mr Nayyar. And good luck.’
In the car Whitey had finished the takeaway and was chewing the polystyrene container.
‘All right, smart ass,’ said Sixsmith. ‘You’d have let him fit up the kids and rip off the insurance company, right? Well, maybe you’re right, the kids had it coming. But guilt ain’t transferable, at least not in law. You start saying, “Well, he did it once, so no matter if it wasn’t him this time, it’ll come out even in the end,” you stop having law. What you’ve got is Judgment Day when everything goes in the balance, and Luton’s not ready for that yet, not by a long chalk.’
‘What about the insurance company, don’t they have rights too?’ said Whitey, though to an insensitive auditor it may have sounded like a cross between a yawn and a burp.
‘Companies don’t have rights, they have responsibilities,’ said Joe. ‘They don’t meet them, they’re fair game. All they had to do was pay up and be nice. If an ignorant kid tells you you’re rubbish, that’s nothing. If a big insurance company does, that’s official. So what’s Mr Nayyar supposed to do?’
‘Keep the peace and obey the law,’ said Whitey.
‘Pardon,’ said Joe.
But this time all he heard was a yawn tailing off into a post-prandial snore.
Sleep seemed a good idea. There hadn’t been much of it around the Sixsmith lifestyle in recent days. He thought of going back to the office, but even his wrecked flat would be more comfortable than his office chair and also there was less chance of being disturbed by clients. Not that there was much chance of that in the office either. The only real client he’d had recently was Gwen Baker and he still felt guilty about pocketing her money.
So home it was. Things hadn’t got any better. The place was still a wreck, the council hadn’t sent a man to mend the lock. He’d need to have a word with t
he Major about that. But his eviscerated bed looked inviting.
He pulled the phone plug out of the wall, stripped to his pants and singlet, and plunged into the ruined mattress.
Sleep swallowed him up. He felt its darkest depths washing around him, then he was into happy oblivion.
Some time later he floated up into the luminous level where the wrecks of reality decay into dreams, and was not surprised to find the dead Tomassettis waiting for him. Once more they rose from the table, their hands before their faces, singing in tuneful chorus as they rearranged themselves as he had found them.
Only this time he recognized the song. It was ‘Sweet Mystery of Life,’ and in his dream, he dreamt he knew the meaning of it all.
A voice said, ‘If you’re both dead, I hope the cat went first, otherwise we could have problems with the will.’
He opened his eyes. At the foot of the bed stood Butcher carrying a newspaper and a four-pack of Guinness. He pushed himself upright with a groan and realized that Whitey was lying next to him, his legs sprawled wantonly, his head dangling over the side of the bed.
‘Practising for the Death of Chatterton, is he?’ said Butcher.
‘Hey, man, don’t go intellectual on me,’ said Joe. ‘What was that you said about wills?’
‘I said that I hoped the cat died first …’
Whoomph! There it was again. That sudden flash of understanding which made him forget his embarrassment at being caught in his Y-fronts.
‘That’s it!’ he cried, now wide awake. ‘That’s why the Tomassettis’ bodies were arranged the way they were! When it came down to it, Andover realized it had to be made perfectly clear what order they’d died in. His wife had to die last so he could kop the lot!’
Butcher frowned and said, ‘It’s not so simple. I mean, who’s to say if death was instantaneous in any case? You can get the same problem in car accidents. I’d need to look it up but I think the assumption is …’
‘Andover’s not a lawyer. He’d think like a normal person. No, I’m sure I’m right. And there’s something else …’
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