GBH (17 page)

“Well, that’s something,” James said.

There was a silence.

“What does worry me,” Jean said, “is Ray. If Glenda was meeting him in Amsterdam, why didn’t they do for him as well?”

“Ray would have stood back for a while,” James said. “To make sure Glenda hadn’t led anyone to him.”

“Or it supports my argument,” I said. “That Ray did for her himself.”

There was another silence. This time nobody broke it. We all sat there thinking our thoughts.

Then the phone rang.

THE SEA

W
HILE
J
ACKIE
’
S AWAY SERVING
someone else I say to Eddie, “You got time for a quick word?”

“What?” Eddie says.

“A moment,” I say. “For a quick word.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, “sure.”

“Let’s go and sit down.”

“Sure,” Eddie says. “Yeah.”

We go and sit down on the leatherette seating.

“That was bad luck about the transit van,” I say to him.

“Yeah,” he says, “but what can you do?”

“The driver,” I say. “Is he a mate of yours?”

“He’s no mate of mine,” Eddie says. “I’d never have lent the silly bugger it in a million years. I could murder him.”

“Unreliable, is he?”

“Between me and you,” Eddie says, “I would say it’s lucky for him the others didn’t come out of it alive.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it was down to him. He drives like a madman. I think I’ll send him a headstone for Christmas. Should come in more useful than a pair of socks.”

I take a sip of my drink.

“Incidentally,” I ask him, “had any joy with Lesley? I mean, about getting her on a permanent basis?”

“No,” he says, “I’m being facked about in that respect as
well. She can’t make her fucking mind up what she wants. Which is just about anything with her talent. I suppose I’m lucky she’s even thinking about doing a spell with us.”

“When did you last talk to her about it?”

“I dunno. I haven’t seen her all week. In fact, now you come to mention it, I haven’t seen her since the amateur night.”

“She’s not been around?”

Eddie looks even gloomier.

“No,” he says. “I expect she’s like the rest of the Seasonals; as reliable as a two-bob watch. She’s probably fucked off to Skeggie or Yarmouth or somewhere to see what’s going on. If she’s done that I got no chance, have I?”

“I suppose not,” I say to him.

“No,” he says. He takes a sip of his pint. “No chance.”

We sit there in silence for a minute or two. Then I say, “So what are you going to do about tonight?”

“Christ knows,” he says. “And it’s not just tonight; if we can’t get the other van on the road, we’re going to lose a lot of bookings; there’s plenty of second-rate groups waiting to jump in.”

“How much do you need?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Well,” I say to him, “the fellow at the garage wants fifty quid, and you say the work on the van’ll be about two hundred.”

“About that, yeah.”

“How much is it to hire the other van? Without the deposit.”

“Ten quid a night.”

I take ten tens from my wallet and fold them neatly and tuck them under the beer mat beneath Eddie’s pint glass. Eddie looks at the money and what I’ve done with it as if he’s never seen fingers folding money in his life before.

“What’s that?” he says.

“That should cover the van hire till next weekend. By then you’ll probably have got your own fixed up.”

Eddie looks at the money.

“I don’t know what to say,” he says.

“That’s all right,” I say to him. “When you get a price on the van, let me know what it comes to.”

“But I can’t—”

“Don’t worry,” I say to him. “I don’t want it back all at once. Let me have it whenever you can.”

Eddie looks at the money again.

“I’ll pay you back out of each booking,” he says.

“I’ve told you,” I tell him, “when you can.”

“I don’t know what to say,” he says again.

“Forget it. You’d better pick it up and get round to Grafton’s before he hires the van out to somebody else.”

Eddie takes the money and puts it in his inside pocket and drinks his drink and stands up.

“Each booking,” he says. “I’ll pay you back out of each booking.”

He clears off, not quite bowing from the waist down. I get up and go back to the bar and get myself another drink. Jackie has, of course, seen the passage of the money but he can’t think of any way of finding out what it’s all about without asking me point blank, and that he doesn’t do. And if he had asked, I don’t know what my answer would be. Of course, I could tell him what. But I doubt why. Perhaps I felt somehow responsible; the accident wouldn’t have happened if the crossword man hadn’t changed the venue, due to my indirect enquiries. Eddie was not only out of a van, but out of a star attraction. Perhaps it’s just because I don’t want anything else on my conscience at this present time.

“Anything on at the Dunes tonight?” I asked Jackie.

“Yeah, there’s some wrestling on. Starts at eight.”

“How could I ever miss that?” I say.

“Yeah,” says Jackie. “All good clean fun.”

THE SMOKE

I
PUT THE PHONE
down.

“That was Pedersen,” I said.

“So we gathered,” Jean said.

“What did he have to say?”

“The items removed from the hotel room,” I said. “They’ve also been removed from the local nick.”

“That’s good news,” James said. “What were they?”

“Mainly identification belonging to Ray. Bankers’ cards, deposit numbers, etcetera. But the main thing being a notebook including my name and various connected addresses.”

“Christ,” Jean said.

“There’s no need to worry. They were only at the nick half an hour before they were transferred out. Everybody knows what’s in the book, naturally, but nobody was able to make a copy before it got mislaid, along with Ray and Glenda’s other personal effects.”

“Well,” James said. “We can drink to that, at least.”

I watched Jean as she thought things out in the light of the phone call.

“Ray’s things, and the notebook,” she said.

“Right,” I said. “My theory isn’t all that stupid, is it?”

“Yes,” she said, “because if you were right, and he’d done Glenda that way to calm us down, he wouldn’t have chanced implicating himself. That part would have been very clean.”

“The items being planted as additional material to link it with us,” James said.

“But to do that, to get those items from Ray, the Sheps would have to know what was going on, and in good time,” I said.

“Quite,” said James. “Which makes my own theory not quite so stupid, does it?”

I poured myself another drink.

“It’s no good putting your head in the sand,” Jean said. “It’s got to be considered.”

THE SEA

I
STAND IN THE
lobby at the Dunes, listening to the ringing-out signal until at the other end the receiver is lifted and James says, “James Morville speaking.”

I tell him that it’s me.

“Christ, George,” he says, “you don’t expect me to have the number this soon, do you? I mean, it is Friday night.”

“I know what time it is, whatever you think, James,” I tell him.

“Well, George, and I say this in all friendship and sympathy, you haven’t exactly sounded yourself the last few times you called.”

“Well, forget my state of health for the moment, James,” I say. “I’m only phoning to tell you not to bother with that registration number.”

“Oh?” says James. “How come?”

“Never mind,” I tell him. “It’s no longer necessary.”

“I see.”

“I don’t think so, but it doesn’t matter.”

There is a slight pause.

“You haven’t done anything that might be termed a little bit extreme?”

“No, I haven’t. It’s just that it is no longer of any importance.”

“I’ve heard you use phrases like that before.”

“In this case you can take it at its face value.”

“I hope so. Because things are going well down here and the last thing either of us wants is for you to draw any untoward attention to yourself.”

“Quite, James.”

“I’m sorry to sound like a dutch uncle, but after everything that’s happened, the way everything’s been smoothed out, it would seem ridiculous to say the least, at this point—”

“James,” I say to him, “there’s nothing to worry about. I’m telling you.”

There is another slight pause.

“Look,” James says, in his most diplomatic manner, “it hasn’t been me that’s been worried. It has been yourself who’s been telephoning, out of concern.”

“All right, James,” I say. “Point taken.”

“I realise after all that’s happened you’re probably—”

“Whatever I’m probably, let’s not go into what’s happened, eh?”

“No. As you wish. You’re quite right. I’m just concerned. That you’re—that you’re quite yourself.”

“Don’t worry, James. No need to worry about that. I am. I’m quite myself.”

THE SMOKE

“W
HAT WAS
M
ICKEY
’
S REACTION
,” James said, “when you told him about Amsterdam?”

I told James what Mickey’s reaction had been.

“Rather simplistic, don’t you think?” James said. “I mean, knowing Mickey.”

“I repeat,” I said. “Mickey would have to be totally insane to imagine that bringing me down would do him any good whatsoever.”

“At the moment,” James said, “motivation is rather beside the point; the point is that if I were a gambling man, which I am not, on the basis of the facts, the odds are on Mickey.”

“But not the form,” I said.

James was silent.

“And it’s not a matter of facts,” I said. “It’s circumstantial, James, if I might put it that way.”

“George,” Jean said. “Forget the semantics. Listen to James. He’s not saying what he’s saying just for fun.”

“And you think,” I said to her, “that after all this time, after all Mickey’s been to this firm, all it’s worth to him, he’s going to throw in with a circus like the Shepherdsons?”

Jean didn’t say anything.

“There is no deal he could do with them that could prevent him going down with us. You above anybody know that.”

James took out his cigar case.

“So what do you intend to do?” he said. “Nothing? You hardly lay back and thought of England in the case of the collectors.”

“That was different.”

Jean didn’t look at me and said, “Well, what
do
you intend to do, George?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Naturally, I shall take everything into consideration, and I do mean everything. And I shall look into everything. But with the greatest of care. I don’t want to be falling down any manholes.”

“That, at least, is very wise,” James said. “Although at present, thanks to our member from the Common Market, Parsons is without evidence, I’d advise a low-profile situation.”

“James,” I said. “You didn’t start representing me yesterday. I had arrived at that conclusion myself.”

“Because God knows what else the Sheps might have in their possession to put in Parsons’s pocket.”

“I realise that.”

“And in the meantime,” Jean said, “if it’s Mickey feeding the Sheps, that’s very handy, isn’t it?”

“Well, there’s one thing for sure; in establishing the rights or wrongs of Mickey’s case, we don’t proceed in the manner in which we proceed against the collectors. Horses for courses.”

“Well, let’s hope this course isn’t Aintree,” said James.

“Look, the pair of you,” I said. “If it’s Mickey, I’ll find out. You both know that, for sure.”

I poured myself another drink.

“I mean,” I said, “I do take it you consider me reliable in at least that department.”

THE SEA

A
FTER
I’
VE MADE THE
phone call to James, I go back to my drink, and to Howard.

The wrestling ring has been set up in the centre of the auditorium, the packaway seats boxing it in, some of them set in rows on what is normally the stage. As yet the place is totally empty.

Howard, naturally enough, is in a buoyant mood. As he’s said earlier, he looks forward to his bit of wrestling; the nearest thing he gets to his kind of fun around here. Mind you, he told me, the women are the worst; a couple of pairs of well-hung bollocks thrashing about underneath the spotlight, and well, the castration complex is nowhere in it; it’s as if they want to take them home and hang them on the wall along with the flying ducks, he’d said.

You don’t say, I’d said to him earlier.

But now the topic of conversation is a different one.

“Eddie told me what you done,” he says. “Come in here earlier on like he’d got a sixpenny-bit up his backside.”

“That dates you,” I tell him.

“What doesn’t?” he says. “Except fellers.”

I help him along in his routine by smiling a little.

“You, er, you’re not masquerading under false colours, are you?” he says.

“How do you mean, Howard?”

“Well, you know.”

“No, Howard, I’m not.”

“No, I thought not. I was going to say, if you were, I could have seen my way clear to helping you get rid of the odd fiver.”

“Sorry, Howard. And all that.”

“Ah well, I can dream, can’t I?”

“Dream away.”

Howard refreshes himself with his drink.

“The only thing is,” he says.

“What, Howard?”

“Well, I mean. Eddie. Why? I mean, he’s not going to be able to settle up with you first thing Monday morning, is he?”

“I suppose not.”

“And you don’t strike me as being your actual philanthropic type. Not, I hasten to add,” he hastens to add, “that you’re not always generous to me, you are; you know what I mean. There, I’ve done it again. Come out all wrong.”

“I know what you mean, Howard.”

Howard goes into a theatrical production of wiping his brow and flicking the invisible sweat from his fingertips.

“You know what I mean,” he says. “Honestly, if Sam Spiegel walked in here and offered me the lead in
Lawrence of Arabia
I’d probably tell him I was Jewish.”