GBH (24 page)

“Second,” I said, “if you could prove he worked for me, you’d have to come up with a reason for me having him topped.”

“I think the Shepherdsons could furnish a motive, don’t you? The collaboration, or whatever it was.”

“Oh, sure. They’re dying to get on to the centre court, aren’t they? Perhaps they’ll tell you what happened to Ray Warren’s Glenda while they’re at it.”

“And maybe even Ray Warren.”

“No,” I said. “They’d only be guessing there.”

Parsons looked at the inside of his hat.

“Anyway,” he said, “I’m not too bothered at the moment. I’ve got plenty of time. I’ll have you, no danger.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“No,” he said. “I’m more interested in what’s going on at the office at present. Collins’s retirement has created a vacuum.”

“How can a vacuum create a vacuum?” I said.

“Well put,” he said.

“Are they taking bets yet?” I said.

“On what?”

“On who’s going to be promoted. On to my firm.”

“Well,” he said, “that’s very interesting, because at the moment the field seems a little bit thin. In fact, it seems as though there’s really only a couple of front runners in it.”

“Being?”

“Now, that’s not fair, is it?” he said. “Why should I tell you that, give you that kind of advantage? Why shouldn’t you find out the hard way?”

“It makes no difference,” I said. “I’ll find out.”

“I know,” he said. “So I may as well tell you. It’s between me and Farlow.”

I looked at him.

“Now what do you think about that?” he said.

“I think it’s as different as over the sticks is from the flat,” I said.

“Quite,” he said, “and from what I gather, it appears that Farlow’s not entirely in favour. Oh, the rank’s there, but I don’t think they want another Collins in there, not at the moment.”

“Why should Farlow want it, anyway? He’s well set up where he is.”

“One would have thought so,” Parsons said. “Although perhaps he thinks he won’t be so very well set up if the Sheps happen to go down.”

“And why should they happen to do that?” I said.

“I can’t imagine,” he said. “Can you?”

THE SEA

I
STAND ON THE
trapdoor.

The trick will be not to be drawn to the section where Jean is. Not to be like when I’d been standing on a pier, pulled towards the current beneath.

I unlock the padlock and slide back the bolts and lift the trapdoor.

I go back to the panel by the door and flick a switch and light shines up through the gaping square in the floor.

Then I go back to the trapdoor and walk down the steps and go past the section where Jean is without looking at it.

The section, in the cross-referenced scheme of things, wherein the evidence of the hint Lesley planted lies, contains around a hundred boxed movies, eight-millimetre stuff. The sixteen millimetre has a section to itself. So, in the eight-millimetre section, the lesbian stretch, there are a hundred movies. Twenty minutes each. Two thousand minutes altogether. But that can be halved, because half the boxes are illustrated on the outside by frame blow-ups from the prints inside, accompanied by a title. So if she’s on the inside of one of the illustrated boxes, she’ll be identified by the still on the outside. It won’t take me long to eliminate the illustrated boxes. Which will still leave me around a thousand minutes to run through the eight-millimetre projector. Assuming she’s not in any of the quality stuff. Around fifteen hours of celluloid. Two or three days’ viewing, depending how much I can take.

But what else can I do, and what else have I got to occupy my time?

So, in the coldness of the basement, I eliminate the illustrated boxes, because she’s not in one of them. Those that remain, I put in a big cardboard box, and carry the box to the top of the steps, and put it on the garage floor, and close the trapdoor behind me, without looking back.

It’s a relief to slide back the bolts and re-lock the padlock, so much so that I kneel on the dusty floor for a few moments, letting the sweat fall like raindrops on the dryness of the concrete floor.

As I stand up, I look at my watch. It is a quarter to seven.

THE SMOKE

“T
HAT WOULD BE ALL
we need,” said Jean, “Parsons sitting behind Colins’s desk. Christ, from there, he could practically wave to us from the window.”

“I know,” I said. “Anyway, he’ll never get it.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’d turn over too much stuff that wouldn’t be good for the office, that’s why. You know that.”

“And what about Farlow?”

“He won’t either. For the opposite reason.”

“Makes it difficult for us to set up anybody at the moment, though. Till it’s settled.”

“Yes,” I said. “It does.”

“Anyway,” Jean said. “All we can do is wait and see.”

“Which I don’t very much like doing,” I said.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “You waited for me, didn’t you?”

“Bollocks.”

She put on her sealskin coat.

“Where are you going?” I said.

“Hairdresser’s,” she said. “It’s Tuesday.”

“Oh. Yes.”

“Gerry’s bringing the motor round.”

“Good.”

“I won’t be any later than two,” she said.

The phone went. It was Gerry with the motor. Jean put the phone down and said, “See you later, then.”

“Fine,” I said. “See you later.”

THE SEA

A
T ELEVEN
, I
SHUT
the projector off. Four hours of celluloid and no appearance.

And no phone call.

I pour myself a drink and walk over to the picture window and look out over the different perspectives of the dunes and the gorse.

Four hours of it. Four hours of it, without Jean. For whom it was meant. Together, the two of us; without her, it almost makes me sick.

And all I have to do is to go down there and choose from a particular group of movies or videos, and bring Jean back to life, in some cases, along with myself.

I wait another half-hour.

No phone call.

Why? I could have been gone a long time by now.

Maybe they don’t give me enough credit. Maybe they don’t think it’ll get through to me this early. Perhaps they’re waiting, luxuriating in their smartness.

Quarter to twelve.

All right. I’ll play it their way, if they think I’m that thick. I go down into the garage and get into the Marina and drive into Mablethorpe.

By the time I get there it’s opening time.

Sunday lunchtime seems to bring them out; the South is
almost a tenth full. But after my third drink, there’s still no sign of Eddie.

Jackie says, “You missed a right old session last night.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Didn’t get cleared up till half-past two, did I?”

“That must have been handy.”

“Well. I took a few bob, didn’t I? Didn’t do any harm.”

“I suppose not.”

“The bird came in later on. Round the back.”

“Lesley?”

“Lesley. About half an hour after you left.”

“You’re joking,” I tell him.

“How do you mean?”

“Half an hour after I left? You must have been well pissed.”

“I was. Anyway, whatever time it was, she came in and was it worth it! What a bird.”

“Eddie here, was he? When she came.”

“Of course. Oh, I see what you mean. It’s not like that. It’s more a business arrangement. I mean, can you imagine, her and Eddie?”

I make no comment. Instead, I say, “Where is the superstar this morning?”

“I should think he’s sitting trying to outstare a fried egg. Was he bottled last night! Mind you, we all were, like I say.”

“Did Eddie and the bird leave together?”

“Hang about. Yes. Yes, they left at the same time. But not together, know what I mean? I mean, Eddie made a big deal about going at the same time as her, but, you know.”

“They playing anywhere tonight?”

“No. He was saying tonight was a dead night. It’ll be a dead day today as well, as far as he’s concerned. Christ, was he bottled.”

“So you say,” I say, and order two more drinks.

THE SMOKE

A
T FIVE O
’
CLOCK
, I phoned the hairdresser’s. Yes, Mrs. Fowler had been, naturally. She’d left at one-thirty.

I broke the connection and rang downstairs.

“Did the car come back yet?” I said.

“N
O
, not yet, Mr. Fowler.”

I put the receiver down and looked at it. There was nobody else other than James for me to phone.

“She couldn’t have gone anywhere else?” he said.

“Sure,” I said. “There’s a thousand places she could have gone. She could have gone to the pictures, anywhere. The point is, she didn’t say she was going anywhere else.”

“What about the driver?”

“If he’d been in on it she wouldn’t have made the hairdresser’s, would she?”

“Probably not.”

There was a silence.

“D
O
you really think it’s down to them?” James said.

“In an hour’s time I will do,” I said.

“And then what?”

“I’ll go looking for her, won’t I?”

“You think if they’ve got her you’re going to be able to find her?”

“What else can I do?”

“I think I’d better come round,” James said.

He was round inside of half an hour. In that time there’d been no news of Jean.

“They won’t dare touch her,” he said, taking the brandy glass from me.

“Won’t they?”

“They’d have to be insane, at the moment.”

“Then why take her? If they don’t intend doing anything to her?”

“We can’t be certain they have, yet,” said James.

“No,” I said. “Yet.”

The phone rang at six o’clock.

“Sweating, Fowler?” the voice said.

I didn’t say anything. There was soft laughter at the other end of the phone.

“Want to talk to her?” said the voice. “To make sure she can still talk back.”

“Yes.”

There was a short silence and then Jean came on the line.

“George,” she said, “I’m all right.”

“Where are you?”

The other voice came back on the line.

“You move out of your place and she’s dead. Even to get the night paper. We’ll phone you back at nine. They tell me Scrabble’s good for passing the time.”

Then the line went dead.

THE SEA

E
DDIE DOESN
’
T APPEAR ALL
lunchtime. Nor the girl. But then I hadn’t expected her to appear.

When the South closes, I drive out of Mablethorpe and past the bungalow and on to the track that leads to the beach.

The beach is totally empty.

I walk to my tank and sit on the top and take out my flask and review the flatness.

My different lines of footprints stretch away into infinity which, in that case, is the mouth of the track.

Then it occurs to me.

There’d been no footprints for her at the mouth of the track. No footsteps stretching away towards Mablethorpe, in the opposite direction to mine.

If she’d walked home along the beach, there would have been footprints. Mine are still there, from the day before and from the day before that.

She’d walked home by the beach, all right.

I smile to myself. I expect the bastard thinks it’s very funny, picking her up in the van which is only on the road through my money.

It would only have taken him ten minutes. Nipped out the back of the South, over here, back with her, so it looks as though he’s been chucking up in the bog and she’s just walked in.

Nice one, Eddie.

But what is even nicer is that as yet you don’t know I’ve connected you up. When you see me next you’ll still think I haven’t clocked it, won’t you? And that’ll be good fun. Whether I get her phone call before or after I see you next, you’ll still be playing the game, won’t you, Eddie?

Well, so will I.

THE SMOKE

“W
ELL, IT SEEMS QUITE
apparent to me,” James said.

“Does it?”

“They’re going to extract their pound of flesh financially,” he said. “Quite bright of them, really. For them.”

“You think that’s what they’re going to do, do you?”

“What else? I hate to put it this way, but if they were going to do anything to Jean, they’d have done it, and the only phone call you’d have got would have been to tell you where to find the body.”

I poured myself another drink.

“Supposing they intend marking her?”

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“Why don’t you think so?”

“Partly for the same reason I don’t think they intend killing her; they wouldn’t bother to phone.”

“To make me sweat, that’s why they phoned.”

“If that was the real reason, it would have been far more effective not to have phoned at all, wouldn’t it?”

I drank my drink.

“I don’t know,” I said.

I poured myself another drink and sat down.

“Of course,” I said, “they could be using her to get to me. To make an exchange.”

“It’s possible,” James said.

“I hope so,” I said. “For her sake.”

“How much could you raise?” James said. “If my supposition is correct.”

“As much as necessary.”

“Good,” James said. “Good.”

The phone rang at nine o’clock.

“If you want her back, unmarked,” the voice said, “it’ll cost you three hundred thousand.”

“Is she all right?”

“What do you think?”

“Put her on.”

“Can’t at the moment,” the voice said. “Not convenient.”

“Listen—”

“No. You listen. You want to see her again, alive, unmarked, that’s the deal.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I take it you want her back?”

“Get on with it.”

“I’ll tell you the arrangements, then. You want me to do that?”

He told me the arrangements. I agreed to them and put the phone down.

“Just as I said,” James said. “They’re being very sensible.”

“They’ve never been sensible in their lives,” I said. “Why should they start now?”