East of the City (23 page)

‘Yeah?’

‘Sometimes you’re just a big girl’s blouse.’

A peace offering. I pushed him in the back and he snorted.

The kennels were back maybe a hundred yards from the house. As we walked, Tubs told me what he’d heard at the track down in Wimbledon earlier that night. He’d been drinking with one of the owners after the last race, the bloke mentioned Doug Aston being on holiday. Tubs’d pricked up his ears when the owner said the man Doug left looking after the place kept ducking out of sight whenever anyone came. The owner told Tubs all he ever saw of the guy was the flash of red hair as he disappeared.

‘Then I remembered,’ Tubs said now. ‘Pike used to work for Doug Aston, way back.’ I almost walked straight into Tubs as he stopped. ‘Up there,’ he said.

The kennels were lined up like army barracks, one long low block after another. There were more kennels than I remembered, Doug Aston must have been doing okay.

‘The shack’s in the middle,’ Tubs said. ‘Fuck knows how we get past the dogs.’

‘I’ve got a question. If Eddie Pilke’s there, what do we do, arrest him?’

‘You said you wanna speak to the guy.’

‘I do.’

‘Then we’ll speak to him.’ Tubs started forward again. ‘Jesus.'

The smell, that was another thing I’d nearly forgotten. Fifty or more dogs kennelled up, and no matter how often the place was cleaned out, the smell of dog piss, food and detergent hung over everything. Not a bad smell, if you were used to it. It reminded me of Dad, and all those Sundays back when I was a kid. It got stronger as we went up the rise. Soon we were on a cement footpath that criss-crossed between the kennels.

You could hear some of the dogs snuffling now, whimpering a little, winning Derbys in their sleep. You could see the shack too, where Eddie might be, just thirty yards on.

Tubs turned to say something, missed his footing, and stumbled off the path. A dog barked. Tubs froze. One second, two, then another bark. Tubs swore and stumbled into the deep shadow by the kennel. The barking and yapping came from all directions now, the sound of paws scratching at the kennel doors. I dived after Tubs as a light came on in the shack.

‘Fucked it,’ Tubs said to me, apologizing.

My back pinned to the kennel wall, I watched the lit window of the shack. A head appeared and the window flew open.

‘Shudup!’ the bloke shouted. You couldn’t see if it was Pike or not. ‘Bloody mongrels. Shudup!’

The dogs kept right on with it, barking their brainless heads off. After a moment the window slammed shut, and Tubs said to me, ‘You reckon he’ll come out?’ He took a step toward the path, then the light in the shack went out.

‘Wait,’ I said. ‘If he sees us, he’ll bolt.’

We huddled down, crouching in the shadow. The barking was nearly deafening now, the dogs going frantic. A few seconds later another light came on in the shack.

‘If there's a door out back,’ Tubs said, ‘he could be boltin' right now.'

It made sense what Tubs said, we could be missing our chance staying put here. So I stood and headed off along the wall, with Tubs right behind.

At the end of the kennel block we paused again. There was twenty yards of open ground to the shack door.

‘Ready?’ I said.

Tubs nodded, puffing like he’d already done five miles. I pushed oif the wall, stepped out from the kennels and only got tive yards before I was hit fair in the eyes by the light. Blinded, I put a hand to my eyes, swearing. The dogs went quiet for a second, surprised by the sudden blast of daylight.

‘Fuckin’ security light,’ Tubs said. He grabbed my arm and hauled me on toward the shack. And now the dogs went absolutely nuts.

‘Hang on.’ I blinked, my eyes refocusing.

Tubs let go my arm and grabbed the doorhandle of the shack. The door was locked. ‘Pike!’ he shouted.

I said, ‘He’s not going to open it.’

Tubs turned sideways on to the door. He gave one of the glass panels a sharp tap with his torch, the broken glass went tinkling onto the floor inside. Then he reached through carefully, I heard the lock clunk. The door opened. He looked back at me. ‘What if it isn’t Pike?’ he said.

But before I could say anything we heard movement inside. Tubs shoved the door wide open and we went in. He flashed his torch up and down, found the light switch and hit it. An unfurnished room. Hanging from pegs on every wall there were muzzles and leashes, and between these, a few old photos of dogs. Some standing at the victory dais, others crossing the finishing line. On a bench at the back, a row of combs and brushes. Feed barrels along one wall.

‘Pike?’ I glanced at the open doors to the left and right. ‘It’s Ian Collier. I need to speak to you.’

No answer. Going through the door on the left, I hit the light, calling his name again. It was almost as bare as the first room, a big work-table in the centre and shelves lined with food supplements, pills and powders for the dogs. A pile of boots in the corner. No stairs, and no door out.

‘Ian!’

Tubs’d taken the other door, I found him waiting for me in there. This room had furniture, a sofa and a couple of chairs. Standing behind the sofa, Tubs nodded to the rear. I went over. There was a kitchen out back, and when I stuck my head through I saw that the kitchen door was open. ‘Shit.’ I crossed the kitchen and stepped outside and I knew straight oif it was hopeless. Kennels, then open ground, and every inch of it in darkness. If it was Pike we’d seen, he’d done a runner. We weren’t going to find him, not tonight.

Back inside, Tubs was climbing the stairs, I went up after him.

‘You think it was Pike?’

‘It was Pike,’ he said. ‘We fuckin’ blew it.’

The stairs went straight up into a sitting room, a few armchairs and a king-sized TV. Another set of stairs went from there up into the loft. Tubs flicked through the old newspapers in the magazine rack. He asked me, should we be looking for something. I told him anything that proved I didn’t kill Sebastian might be handy. He laughed, kept flipping through the papers while I went into the next room. A bedroom this one; two beds, but only one of them had been used, the duvet was a crumpled heap on the floor. I glanced out the window just in time to see the path where we’d walked, and the kennels. Then the security light went out. The dogs paused in their barking.

‘Ian, the yard light went off,’ Tubs called from next door.

‘Timer. It must be three minutes or something since we triggered it.’

The dogs howled again. Tubs opened a window and shouted at them to shut the fuck up.

Off the bedroom there was a small bathroom, it looked like it hadn’t been cleaned for a while. There was a razor on the sink, and a can of shaving cream. I went back to the bedroom. This was where we’d seen the light come on, when Tubs fist set the dogs barking. Pike, or whoever it was, must have been sleeping in here.

It was this window he’d thrown open to shout at the dogs. Then he’d gone next door. Turned that light on.

‘Ian, you know anyone called Nigel Chambers?'

I stopped in my tracks. Tubs appeared in the doorway, thumbing a business card, turning it over, inspecting it. ‘WardSure, he said. 'That was Sebastian’s company, right?’

Tubs gave me the card. The WardSure name, address, phone and fax numbers were printed there. In the middle of it all, ‘Nigel Chambers, Associate Director’, in golden letters. I sat down on the end of the unmade bed, held the card between my fingers and stared at it.

‘Where was this?'

Tubs thumbed over his shoulder. ‘Sittin’ on the telly.'

I looked some more at the card. ‘Tubs, when the guy stuck his head out the window, could you see him?’

‘Same as you did.’

‘His face?’

Tubs thought for a bit then shook his head. He pointed at the card. ‘What are you thinkin’ now, maybe it was this geezer, not Pike?’

I shrugged. He asked me who Nigel Chambers was and I gave him a brief description.

‘So, the guy's got a house of his own. Why sleep here?’

‘Had,’ I corrected Tubs. ‘Recently repossessed.’

Tubs said I was being too fancy, that the guy who’d bolted out the back door was Eddie Pike, Tubs was sure of it. He screwed up his nose. ‘I can smell the little bastard,’ he said.

I flicked the card. ‘Explain this.’

He smiled. ‘Maybe Eddie was applyin’ for a job?’

A last look at the card, then I pocketed it. I was lost. Again. If I poked around a bit more, I told myself, I might find a perfectly logical reason for Nigel's business card turning up in such an unlikely place. But as I got up off the bed, I guess I knew that the whole thing was running right away from me. 2 a.m., and I was standing in a house we’d broken into, and the guy who’d been there was gone. Nigel’s card meant something, but I didn’t know what, and in the kennels outside the dogs were still going crazy.

‘Look around,’ I told Tubs, stepping past him.

‘For what?’

I went up the stairs to the loft.

There was a large trapdoor, I unbolted it and heaved it open. When it hit ninety degrees it locked into place, and I walked on up. A big room, windowless, the rafters all exposed. There was a piece of string dangling behind me, when I tugged it and a single bulb lit up. Very dim. Cardboard boxes were piled along the edges of the loft where the rafters came down to the floor. Crouching, I went and opened a few, but it was just old clothes, back copies of the
Greyhound Life
, race cards, and more dog photos. Other people’s dreams. I backed out to where I could stand again, then carried on down the centre of the room.

The light from that bulb hardly reached to the far wall, and by the time I got to the bits and pieces of furniture down there I was straining my eyes to see. Half a dozen chairs, some kind of desk, and a few framed pictures stacked together and propped further back against a rafter. Other people’s junk. I reached over to the desk and tried to open the drawers but they were locked. And when I ran my hand over the locks, I couldn’t find a key. Then my foot touched something, there was a metallic clinking sound. I bent and picked up the slim wooden box. The lid opened on a hinge, and turned the box to catch the light behind me. Knives and forks. I took out one knife, the blade and handle were both a dull silver colour, and heavy. The handle thickened at the bottom into some kind of crest, onion-shaped, imitation rich-man’s cutlery. I dropped it back in the box.

Hopeless. Wiping my hands together I returned to the stairs. I’d had enough. In a few hours I was due in court. I’d speak to Clive Wainwright in the morning, but in the meantime I just had to get some sleep. I pulled the trapdoor closed after me, bolted it, then went to fetch Tubs.

He was sitting on the unused bed, feet up, browsing through a girlie magazine. The cover girl was smiling, hands cupped under an enormous pair of knockers.

‘Let’s go.’ 

He swung his legs down to the floor saying, ‘I found this under the mattress. You still gonna tell me it wasn’t Pike?’

‘Right now, I don’t care.’

‘Ian.’ When I looked back, he dropped the girlie mag and picked up a big white envelope from the side table. He handed it to me. ‘I found this under the matress too.'

I asked him what it was but he didn’t answer, just nodded to the envelope.

I turned the thing up, jiggling it by one corner. The edge of a photo appeared. Colour. I pulled it right out and some negatives came along with it. When the negatives hit the floor, Tubs scooped them up and studied them, holding them up to the light.

He said, ‘Sebastian looks like he’s enjoyin’ himself.’

I stared at the enlarged photo, too stunned to answer.  I just couldn’t take my eyes off the picture.

A bed and two naked people, one of them Sebastian. They were going at it hard. Sebastian had hold of the woman’s ribcage, his eyes were closed, the muscles of his neck standing out, you could see he was pumping for all he was worth. And underneath him the woman, her head tilted back, mouth open, her lips pulled back over her teeth like she might be in pain, but you just knew that she wasn’t.

I sat down. I wasn’t dreaming.

I heard Tubs say, ‘Don’t s’pose you know the tart.’

A mane of blonde hair. Bright red lipstick. And firm tits that I saw now were a little lopsided. Oh yes, I knew the tart all right. The tart was a colleague of mine. Her name was Justine Mortlake.

F
or a long time Clive Wainwright gazed at the photo, not even touching it. He just left it where I’d put it, on his desk. Finally he said, ‘What do you want me to do?’ Then he looked up. ‘Has Allen seen this?’

‘No.’

‘Planning to show him?’

‘Oh, sure. I’ve got a great snap of your daughter being shafted by a mate of yours. Wanna see?’

Clive gave me a pained look. He went to his filing cabinet, started digging in there.

After Tubs dropped me back to my flat at 3 a.m., I’d slept for four hours, but badly. And over breakfast Katy was on at me about Fielding, telling me I should file a complaint with the Police Commissioner or the ombudsman or someone. When I told her to put a sock in it, she got the hump and wouldn’t make the tea. And now Clive’s reaction to the photo. It wasn’t shaping up to be a great day.

I said, ‘I thought you might handle it.’

He took a folder from the cabinet. ‘Why?’ he asked me.

When I mumbled something about him being a solicitor, he said, ‘Currently working on behalf of the Mortlake Group. And do you know what’ll happen if I take that—’ he pointed at the photo — ‘to Allen?’ He dropped the folder on the desk. ‘He’ll thank me very much, tell me I did absolutely the right thing, and once the Ottoman case is over he’ll never speak to me again. I’ll lose a client.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘No?’ He put a finger on the photo and pushed it slowly back across the desk. ‘Then you show him.’ Stalemate. My stocks with Allen had already taken a battering. And I read this the same way as Clive. With a photo like that, Allen wouldn’t hesitate to shoot the messenger. ‘Look,’ Clive said. ‘I’m not saying it isn’t important. I just think it might be best if we put it to one side for the time being. Finish the Ottoman case first, after that, take it up with Justine.’