Crime Writers and Other Animals (20 page)

‘I suppose not,' she agreed uncertainly.

The bleached hair was another of the personal attributes my former wife had taken against. That and the black clothes. She saw it as a fashion thing. ‘Why do you go round looking like a punk when punks are dead?' She couldn't understand it was more habit, more self, than fashion. After she'd gone I stayed the same out of defiance, some kind of ineffectual revenge maybe.

‘Can I get you a drink?'

She asked for a dry white wine. I had a Perrier with ice and lemon in front of me. Didn't say it was Perrier. Sometimes helped to pretend I was on the vodka and tonic. All depended, really. Wary moments, meeting a client for the first time. Always required a bit of ritual circling, rationing out information, assessing the moment to feed out each new fact.

As I walked back to her, my first impression was reinforced. She was more than attractive. Kind of face a randy Florentine painter might have sneaked into the crowd at a Crucifixion, following some carnal deal with the model. A battered cherub. Brown hair, quite stiff and thick, fringing fanlike over unsettling blue eyes. They were unsettling partly because everything else in her colouring predicated brown eyes; partly because they held, together with innocence, a knowingness which belied that innocence; and partly because they were beautiful. She had owned the dark grey leather coat long enough for it to take on her imprint, its soft curves ghosting her own. For someone like me, she was trouble.

I gave her the drink and returned to my maybe Perrier. ‘Right, what's the problem, Mrs McCullough?'

‘Call me Stephanie. I don't like even being reminded that I've got that bastard's surname.'

I didn't respond to this, but noted the over-reaction. Premature, I thought. She, like me, should still be at the circling stage of our encounter, and she was feeding out too much information too soon. Had to be a reason for that.

‘All right. Then you'd better call me Bram.' I got in before she could say it. ‘And I don't think there are any Dracula jokes I haven't heard. And in fact it is only short for Abraham. And no, I don't know why my parents chose it.'

As usual, the speech had the right effect. All she said was, ‘Ah.'

‘So . . . what do you want me to do for you, Stephanie?'

She moved closer. Her pupils dilated. When they did that, the black almost eclipsed the blue, and the eyes' innocence had the same effect on their knowingness. She looked like something small and fluffy that'd just fallen out of a nest and never heard of pussycats.

‘It's my husband,' she murmured.

‘What is he? Unfaithful? Violent? Criminal? Gay? Missing? I may as well tell you now – if it's infidelity, I tend to think that's just between the two of you.'

‘It's not infidelity. Well, I mean, obviously he's unfaithful,' she added dismissively, ‘but that's not why I need your help . . .'

I let her get there in her own time.

‘The fact is . . . Stuart – that's my husband – is . . . well, I think he's involved in something . . .'

Still let her ride it out.

‘Something criminal. I mean, he is basically a crook. But this time I think he may have got a bit out of his depth . . .'

The eyes appealed, but got no help from me.

‘Look, all right, normally when Stuart's on a job, I turn a blind eye – I'm not that interested in what he does these days, anyway – but I can always tell there's something up because he's, I don't know, kind of cocky. This time's different. This time he's frightened.'

She petered out. Finally, my cue came.

‘What kind of crime is your husband likely to be involved in?'

‘Robbery. Always is, he's not bright enough for anything more elaborate. Isolated country houses. Used to all be in Sussex, but the M25 has widened his range a bit.'

‘Just breaking and entering or are we talking robbery with violence?'

‘He's never looked for violence. Usually tries to do jobs when the owners are away, but, well, occasionally his information isn't all that hot, so there's someone there and . . .' she shrugged, ‘. . . someone gets hurt. But the violence is incidental. Means to an end.'

‘And you reckon he's just done a job?'

She nodded, her face still disconcertingly close. ‘No question. He's flush. Just ordered himself a new BMW. Even bought me something.' She shook a Rolex Oyster out from the shadow of her sleeve. ‘Real thing, not a Hong Kong cheapo.'

‘But you say he's frightened?'

‘Yes. Jumpy when the phone rings. Not sleeping. I find empty bottles of Scotch in the sitting room in the mornings. He's certainly scared of something.'

‘Police? Maybe he's got the wink they're on to him?'

She shook her head firmly. ‘That wouldn't frighten Stuart. Always rather relishes a set-to with the cops. Reckons he can run circles round them.'

‘And can he?'

‘Has done so far.' She looked pensive. When she did that, her top teeth chewed a little on her lower lip. The movement was at least as unsettling as the eyes. I tried not to watch. ‘No, he's shit-scared of something.'

‘You don't think he's ill? Imagining things?'

She let out a little bitter laugh. ‘No way. Stuart wouldn't know what imagination was if it came up and punched him on the nose.'

‘I see.' I sipped the Perrier, deciding that the next drink would definitely be a vodka. ‘And you want me to find out what it is that he's scared of?'

‘No, it's not that. It's . . .'

‘What?'

‘Look, I've a feeling I do know what it is that he's scared of.' Once again, she got no prompts and had to flounder on. ‘I think the last place he hit, big mansion up at Ditchling . . . well, he got a lot of stuff there, but I think the stuff was already nicked.'

‘He cleaned out another villain's place?'

‘Yes.'

‘What makes you think that?'

‘Look, it was a big job, no question, fifty grand's worth at least – I know because of the time he's spent on the phone trying to offload the stuff – but there hasn't been a murmur in the press about it.'

‘Ah.'

‘Papers, TV, radio – nothing. Suggests to me that whoever was hit had reasons not to make it public.'

‘I'll buy that.'

‘Doesn't want a public investigation, with the police involved . . .'

‘But will probably be organizing a private investigation with a lot of muscle involved.'

‘Exactly.'

‘Which would explain why your husband's worried.'

She nodded and drew back, satisfied that her point had been made. The pupils contracted and cunning returned to her eyes.

‘And you don't think he knows who it was he robbed by mistake?'

‘No, I'm sure he doesn't, but the size of the house and the size of the haul suggest it could be someone pretty big.'

‘Right. And you don't think the . . . aggrieved party has actually fingered your husband yet?'

‘I think we'll know pretty quickly when they do identify him.'

‘Yes. Which, given the way news travels in that kind of world, is not going to take too long, is it?'

‘No.'

I drained the Perrier and grimaced, still maintaining the fiction that it might be vodka. ‘What do you want me to do about it, then?'

‘I want you to find out who it was who got robbed and do a deal with them.'

‘To let Stuart off the hook?'

‘Right.'

‘Is that all?'

‘Yes.' She grinned her louche cherubic grin. ‘That's all.'

Considering how quickly I obtained the relevant information, Stuart McCullough was living on borrowed time. It cost me two visits to the right pubs, a couple of rounds of drinks, a couple more rounds of ‘drinks' in folded form, and I knew the names of the other members of his gang, as well as the identity of the villain they had so incautiously robbed.

If they had been looking for massive contusions and internal bleeding, they could hardly have chosen a quicker route to the supplier. The Ditchling mansion they had so breezily cleaned out belonged to Harry Day, a major London villain, nicknamed ‘Flag' Day because of the number of charges the law had tried to pin on him. He was a canny operator, though, who, by employing the right solicitors and bunging the right amounts into the right palms at the Yard, had never actually been inside. But his CV was generally agreed to include robbery with violence, protection rackets with violence, a fairly definite couple of murders with violence and – by way of weekend recreation – violence with violence. Not the kind of big boy a little boy like Stuart McCullough ought to be challenging to a game of conkers.

The only surprise about the situation was that Stephanie's husband wasn't already a mass of multiple fractures. If an outsider like me could get the information that easily, a man with ‘Flag' Day's connections should have been on the ball seconds after the kickoff. But apparently he wasn't; or, if he did know the score, he was taking his time to devise appropriately cruel and unnatural punishments for the perpetrator of this professional insult.

I think actually what was keeping Stuart McCullough out of intensive care was the absence of his accomplices. He'd done the job with two Brighton small-timers who'd taken their cut the next morning and gone straight off to Tenerife with a couple of tarts. If they'd been around, ‘Flag' Day's network would have soon been on to them. Stuart on his own was a marginally better security risk. He had every reason to keep quiet about the set-up, and I felt pretty certain I was the only person in whom Stephanie had confided.

I tried not to think about her. When I did, my thoughts kept spreading like cancer cells into bits of me I didn't want reinfected.

I concentrated on her husband. The thoughts he inspired weren't pretty ones, but they were more the kind I could cope with.

Clearly, if Stuart McCullough was going to evade the attentions of Harry Day in any long-term sense, something had to happen quickly. Day might not be on to him yet, but it was only a matter of time. Brighton suddenly becomes a very small place when a villain starts buying new BMWs and Rolexes.

I had an arrangement with Stephanie that she'd ring me daily for progress reports and that, if I had to phone her home and got through to her, she wouldn't recognize me. I needn't have worried. Stuart snatched up the phone on the first ring as if he were defusing it.

‘Mr McCullough?' I always use my own voice on this kind of conversation. For one thing, I'm no good at disguising it and, for another, it's a myth that anyone's going to recognize a person they've never met by the voice heard on a telephone.

‘Yes?' I could almost hear the sweat popping on his brow.

‘Mr McCullough, I have information that you acquired certain property last Tuesday night . . .'

He didn't deny it.

‘Now that property belongs to my employer . . .'

‘Oh?'

‘And he's far from happy about the situation.' There was a crackle on the line, or it could have been the clearing of a terminally dry throat. ‘My employer's name is Harry Day.' This time the crackle was definitely human. ‘Now,' I lied, ‘Mr Day's not a vindictive man . . .'

‘Really?' Stuart McCullough didn't sound convinced by that either.

‘No. And he also is not the sort of man to want a fuss made about something like this . . . I mean, we don't want the police brought in, do we?'

‘No.'

‘All Mr Day
does
want is the return of his property . . .'

‘Is that really all he wants?' the dry voice croaked. ‘He doesn't want any . . . reprisals?'

‘Oh, come on, Mr McCullough, everyone makes mistakes, don't they? And it's not as if we aren't all in the same business, is it?'

He sounded encouraged by this. A trickle of saliva lubricated his voice. ‘Exactly. Right. Look, I regret it as much as . . . you know, I mean . . . but got to stick together, haven't we?'

‘Sure,' I soothed, and bit my lip to stop myself saying, ‘Honour among thieves.'

‘Good. Good.'

‘So . . . Mr McCullough, if we can make some arrangement whereby the property is returned intact, can I assume you would not be averse to that?'

‘Certainly. No, you tell Mr Day it was just a silly mistake on my part and . . .'

‘Of course,' I purred.

‘Look, er, could I ask who I'm talking to? Or where I can give you a bell if—?'

‘I'll contact you,' I said, and put the phone down.

That was the easy bit. I didn't approach the next phone call with quite the same relish.

‘Could I speak to Mr Day, please?'

‘Mr Day doesn't take calls. If he wants to speak to people, he rings them.'

‘Well, could I give him a number and could he call me?' It wouldn't be my own number. I've got various public phones round Brighton I use for that kind of thing. On this part of the job I was going to keep strictly incognito.

‘I should think that's very unlikely,' the voice replied, silkily insolent. ‘Why should Mr Day want to speak to you?'

‘I have some information about some property of his. Property that was stolen from his house last Tuesday.'

‘Oh yes?' The tone was still cool, but I could hear an edge of interest.

‘Yes, and in fact the person responsible for taking the property does regret what he did very much.'

‘You don't surprise me.'

‘In fact, all he wants to do is get the property back to its rightful owner.'

‘I see.'

‘Do you think Mr Day would be agreeable to that kind of deal?'

‘Hmm . . .'

‘I mean, he does want the property back, doesn't he?'

‘Yes.' The voice made a decision. ‘Call again in an hour.' The line went dead.

When Stephanie rang in for her daily report, I'd got the meeting set up. ‘Crown and Anchor on the seafront. Neutral ground. I've told Stuart. He sounded relieved.'