Come Clean (1989) (7 page)

‘Yes, I’ve written it down for you. But we might have a better starting point. There’s a tale around, I don’t know if you heard it, some street incident up near the Monty
a couple of nights ago.’

‘Ralphy Ember’s place?’

‘Near it. Maybe in it, too. I don’t know.’

‘God, remember the old Monty? Top-drawer membership. Now, Ralphy in charge. What incident?’

‘I haven’t sorted it out properly, not properly at all. The trouble is, this is another place I can’t ask any questions on the spot. Well, obviously, Col.’

‘What incident?’

Lamb looked out to sea. ‘In its bare, uncompromising way, this bit of coast has a kind of beauty, you know. I’ve always thought so.’ Nimbly, he climbed on to the top of the
pill box and gazed out towards the horizon, one hand shading his eyes. ‘Remember that poem from school, Col, about stout Cortez, happening on the Pacific and gazing at it eagle-like from a
peak in Darien?’

‘Yes, you are getting a bit of a gut. Eagle? The mittens are not right.’

‘All his men in a wild surmise, a really wild surmise. Understandable. You don’t find a Pacific every day.’ He climbed down. ‘This information begins, I gather, with an
old lady, sleepless, who looked out of her window late the other night and saw some sort of very serious chase in the street, a young man in what she called “a good serge suit” running
from three or maybe four older men, one wearing a leather jacket, one with thinning grey hair. A car was trying to hold the young bloke in its headlights. She doesn’t know cars but she said a
big old black thing. A couple of the men on foot caught him and started giving real treatment, she thought maybe even a knife, but he broke away and ran again, over towards Shield Terrace, where
the Monty is. He looked hurt at this stage, maybe limping and bleeding, the suit stained. They went out of sight then, and that’s as much as she knows. Col, it’s possible nobody’s
going to find this lad in time for him to say anything. But worth a try.’

‘So what tells you this is your boy?’

‘Not all that much, I’ve got to admit it. Just, he’s not about and it’s the right age and build, and the smart suit. On top, one of Benny’s other lads, a part-timer
called Steve Stevens, uses a black Humber Hawk, it’s his trademark.’

‘A woman sees a knifing and does nothing, asks for no help?’

‘I don’t think she’s sure, Col. And, besides, they hate getting into anything, don’t they? So scared of being called as witnesses, and having threatening visits in their
prized, door-chained little nests from God knows who, to shut them up.’

‘Christ, we can look after people, people who give us information.’

They began walking towards their car. Lamb said: ‘I’d be the first to confirm it, you know that. Could I be better looked after? But these people, especially if they’re old,
Col, they don’t seem so sure. What they want is to stay untroubled, and they get very tenacious of life. Although most admire the police, they aren’t convinced you can really protect
them. Well, they read the papers, I suppose. Their bones are delicate and they have nasty foot problems, so if things did get perilous they can’t make a dash. Their answer is to stay under
cover. The old really love life but they can’t risk seeing much of it, one of those touching paradoxes. I’ve only heard this myself because she told a neighbour and the neighbour spoke
to an acquaintance of mine. Well, you know how information comes. Roundabout, not by the Post Office.’

‘Any pictures of this lad, Justin?’

‘I’m trying.’ He paused. ‘Tell me, Col, do you and yours keep an eye at the Monty?’

‘Off and on.’

Lamb went silent again. Harpur said: ‘You’re bothered about Sarah Iles? Yes, I know she shows up there sometimes, poor lost kid.’

‘Is that what she is?’

‘Along those lines.’

‘I can see it makes things sensitive.’

‘I know about her and so do some others. But not Iles himself. At least, I don’t think so. Who’s sure what that bugger knows? Was she in the club when this happened?’

‘I don’t know. And I told you, I can’t say whether the chase actually got into the Monty. I believe lover boy, Ian Aston, was there. Believe. That wouldn’t signify,
anyway. He’s in the club most nights. As far as I can make out, she just rolls up there to see him when she can.’

‘Yes, I think that’s the arrangement.’

‘Is she –?’

‘It’s sad, but things aren’t right at home. Haven’t been for a long while. You know the sort of picture.’

‘Don’t we all?’

‘Yes, well – She’s a delightful girl, full of grace and vim. We’re all bothered about Sarah. I wouldn’t want her landing herself in anything dark.’

‘Your Francis Garland used to . . . have a stake, didn’t he? It looked a very happy thing.’

‘Francis? Only room for one ego long-term there, I’m afraid. But she’s a grand girl, Jack.’

‘I can believe it. Listen, this Aston –?’

‘Nothing known – like
your
Justin,’ Harpur said. ‘We’ve never been able to work out how he lives. He’s not short of money, has some style. He takes a
job now and then, either selling, or a bit of exterior decorating. Pays his taxes, rarely draws dole. But he couldn’t dress the way he does or drive what he does on his earnings.’

‘Perhaps I’ll make an inquiry or two,’ Lamb said.

Harpur shrugged. ‘If you like. Be careful. Do you suppose that somebody suspected Justin was talking to you, and that’s why he’s been taken out?’

‘Could be. Could easily be.’

More bird cries came from the flats. ‘What’s that one, Jack?’

He looked out over the mud again. ‘Oyster-catchers. Easy: they fly in dozens.’

After dark that evening, Harpur drove up to the address Lamb had given him for Justin Paynter. When Jack said something, you’d better believe it, even if the tip seemed all instinct and
guess, because his instincts and guesses usually turned out more spot-on than supposed hard fact from minor league narks. For a time, Harpur sat in his car and watched the house, a small, old,
pretty, stone-built place with a minute front garden, in a grubby, long road, not far from where Harpur lived himself. No lights showed and all the curtains seemed to be across. He gave it an hour,
keeping an eye on the street around him, as well as the cottage. In that time, there were no callers and all rooms remained unlit. As far as he could make out, nobody else had observation on the
place though plenty of other parked cars stood near, and in the darkness he could not be sure none was occupied. He certainly would not have bet big money on it. Leaving his old Viva, he walked to
the end of the terrace and down a lane, to look at the house from the rear. It backed on to a railway line and had a decaying wooden fence at the end of another small yard or garden. He could see
no light in the house from here, either.

Forcing apart a couple of planks in the fence he pushed into the garden and stood still, watching and listening. A palsied-looking brown cat yawed away from near two bulging, black plastic
refuse bags, one of which had split and dribbled cheerless items on to the rough grass, where rotting cardboard boxes and a scatter of empty beer cans lay. Christ, wasn’t this the life,
though? To think he might have been wasting his time at home with his feet up, or in bed with Ruth Cotton. Instead, here he was, stalking – stalking what? A grass’s grass, or someone
who answered the phone, but didn’t. Thin stuff? He would concede that.

As he picked his way through the garden to what he guessed would be the kitchen window, a sprinter train charged past behind him, obviously sauced by its own publicity. A roller blind was down
but age must have weakened it near the cord and there were a couple of gaping tears. He had no light with him and the room beyond was dark, but he peered through the holes and thought he could make
out, scattered on the floor, broken crockery, a frying pan and some other utensils, as though shelves or a cupboard had been cleared in a rapid, crude search. Perhaps Jack Lamb’s telephone
call to here had come while it was happening.

For half a minute he stood in the shadow of the house, trying to check that he had not been followed. Then, feeling reasonably safe, he tried the kitchen window and a rear door but neither
shifted. Every bugger was security-conscious these days, even villains. It could be a right pain. Luckily, someone had been doing a bit of updating, and a modern lightweight ply door and nonsense
lock had replaced the solid timber and iron bolt which must originally have been in place here. Harpur applied some concentrated leaning, repeatedly ramming his weight against the lock. Soon, he
heard the fragile wood of the frame rip and he gently pushed the door wide.

He felt much better now. For him, it had always been one of the brightest pleasures in police work to enter someone’s property on the quiet and look at gear and possessions, trying to sort
out a story from them. It fiercely excited Harpur to break down privacy, gave him a sense of intimacy with the target, and occasionally a sense of power over him, sometimes even her. A long time
ago he used to consider the pleasure that came from these invasions as like the thinking of cannibals: they wanted to absorb the strengths and virtues of the people they ate, and he wanted to take
over for a while the personalities of the suspects who lived in these entered places, so he could know them thoroughly. That was rubbish, really – just a high-flown, fanciful excuse for
poking his police nose into someone else’s property, often illicitly. A similar sort of eyewash had surfaced recently in a Sidney Lumet film on television,
The Anderson Tapes
, where
Sean Connery, as a big-time burglar, compared the joys of opening a safe with those in seducing a woman. These were evasions, sloppy efforts to romanticize or intellectualize what you would do,
anyway. And what Harpur meant to do, and continue doing, was to pick thoroughly, secretly and skilfully through a possible villain’s private things, hunting a revelation, spinning his
drum.

There had been little pleasure just now in the garden, encircled by muck and debris, badgered by train noise. No matter how close to a property, outside was no fun: more laughs on a rubbish tip.
But actually to penetrate a house, to break through a portal and get within somebody else’s four walls and rooms, reading signs, imagining the life lived there – that thrilled him. At
these times he knew he had picked the right job. He loved the finds, the intrusiveness, the risk. If he had not been a cop, he might, indeed, have fancied burglary, like Connery’s Duke
Anderson; same techniques, same addictive tension. Or maybe psychoanalysis was another possibility, a game where you broke into people’s minds not their homes, and shattered cherished, undue
privacy that way.

He put on no lights yet but could see more clearly now that he had been right and the kitchen was a wreck. As well as the utensils and smashed crockery, a lot of loose tea, cornflakes and the
contents of a cutlery drawer littered the floor. The sink was full of broken crockery, too, as if the cupboard above it had been simply cleared with a few sweeps of the hand. Another cupboard had
obviously been sharply tilted forward for a moment so that everything in it fell out and lay on the tiles; an old pair of scales, baking tins, earthenware casserole dishes and jars. It was probably
crazy to try to read the message of this shambles but he still felt it looked more like a search than simple vandalism. No aerosol trog-speak defaced the walls, and he could not smell or see urine,
or worse. He thought these cupboards had been cleared not just for the sake of destruction but to reveal what might have been hidden in them behind the routine items. The tea had been tipped out of
a tin in case it covered something, and the cereal box emptied for the same reason.

He went along the little corridor to the living room. This, too, had been thoroughly knocked about, or so he thought at first. Then he suddenly realized that, in fact, the damage was confined
almost exactly to about one half of the room, the half nearer him. The far side seemed to have escaped. Had the searcher suddenly despaired of finding whatever it was? Or had he been
interrupted?

The furniture was all cheap and modern and must have been bought bit by bit, maybe from a junk shop doing reclaimed hire-purchase stuff, with no attempt at matching. All Harpur had learned so
far about the occupant of this house was that he did not have much taste, and that he liked tea and could cook a bit. Perhaps his clothes took all the real money. Drawers from a foul, high-gloss
sideboard had been turned out on the worn, would-be scarlet carpet. There were cassettes, holiday brochures, bills, a miniature rum, out-of-date raffle tickets. What struck Harpur as especially
strange was that on the other side of the room stood a bureau, as shoddy and unhandsome as the sideboard, but clearly left alone during the search. Perhaps it was empty. He crossed the room and
opened a drawer. No, it seemed stuffed with newspapers and telephone directories. He opened another drawer. That had clothes in – shirts, ties, a silk white scarf. He stood near the bureau,
looking back across the room, trying to work out why there had been no interest in the bureau. There was a sort of frontier roughly in the middle of the faded carpet; one side, chaos, this side,
neatness, like hell and heaven, and the great gulf fixed between, which he used to hear about from preachers as a terrified child. A small table with the telephone on it seemed to mark the divide
and, after a moment gazing at the room, Harpur stepped to this table and examined the instrument. It was one of those white, plastic, console jobs with a memory device for your half-dozen most used
numbers; press one of the six buttons and it automatically dialled pre-set digits. Five of the buttons had small stickers against them, with names on. He saw ‘Benny’ and
‘Ma’ and ‘Mandy’ for the top three and two sets of initials lower down the panel that meant nothing to him. It was the fourth button that had no sticker at all.

He listened carefully again for any sound in the house or outside and then pressed the unlabelled button. In a moment he heard the number ring out and, after another moment, a deep, cautious
male voice answered, ‘Yes?’