High John the Conqueror, page 10
The delay is long enough. Responding with the low cunning and offended self-righteousness that defines criminality under any system of government, The Well splutters, ‘We’ve jumped through hoops to try and clean this place up, give us some credit. You can’t blame us for what goes on here, fair dues. You lot are all over everywhere else — where do you expect the outcasts to go? You know you need this place as much as you need jail or rehab. We’re good people here. We didn’t ask to end to up as a day centre for pervs and numpties…’
‘That’s enough,’ I say. Allowing a certain type of person to complain increases their self-importance, and The Well will believe he is Gandhi if he is not stopped. ‘Answer questions or shut the fuck up.’
‘Just saying, you should try working here…’
‘But we don’t; you do,’ interrupts Christopherson, ‘and under the Sexual Offences Act, this den of iniquity qualifies as a brothel. You’d both be looking at seven years.’
Understandably eager to change the subject, Maureen taps the bar and eyes the door in a meaningful way, before jerking her head down at an angle as if she is trying to get water out of her ear.
‘He left that way then?’ I ask.
She nods.
‘How long?’
She lifts both hands, five ringed fingers on one, four raised on the other.
I pull out my mobile and call Tamla.
‘Yeah?’
‘He apparently left by the main door ten minutes ago.’
‘That would have been about exactly the same time we got here. I didn’t see anyone.’
‘Okay, start scanning the surrounding streets.’
A constable has appeared at the bottom of the steps, and I put my phone back in my pocket. ‘Nothing up here, sir,’ he says.
‘You’d better pay for any damage,’ threatens Maureen.
‘You know why he called in?’ I say, ignoring her request.
It is too much for her to respond to a question that cannot be answered silently, and nudging The Well, she passes the baton to her assistant. He seems disinclined to take it. ‘Search me,’ he moans. ‘I only work here.’
‘We know, no one loves you, but the man you’re protecting is connected to a serious crime. One that makes what you lot normally get up to look like chickenshit. Do you realise that?’ stresses Christopherson.
‘So, what were we supposed to do, bar anyone who doesn’t pass your good citizen test? We’d be lucky to sell half a pint a week.’
‘He chooses this pub, not Wetherspoons, The Cathedral Arms or Pizza Express, but this pub to wield a bloody axe or mallet or whatever it was… Come on, help us understand why that is? I mean, it’s not for your two-for-one carvery, is it?’
‘I’ve no access to his workings. He came in a funk, broke a mirror and fucked off. What more can I say?’
‘Something else,’ I reply, ‘because you don’t want us to come back here.’
‘Jesus! Just give them what they want, something, anything, whatever it’ll take for them to fuck off out of here!’ shrieks Ava. ‘They’re a disease!’
To his credit, The Well looks like he would like to oblige, though there is a hidden difficulty, and without divulging what it is, a simple answer appears to be out of the question. Bringing his hands together, he hisses under his breath, ‘I never want to see that cunt again in my life, believe me. I’d grass him if I could, you got to know that. I want him gone but…’ — he shows us his open palms — ‘…there’s just nothing there, nothing I can give you…’
‘Then tell me what you know about this.’
I hold the bag containing the twisted weeds I found in Nana Pertwee’s bedroom in front of him, high enough for the pub to see, and watch The Well change colour, again. His lips are not moving, but the noise he makes sounds like the last of the kittens he has swallowed has finally given up the fight.
‘Well?’
‘Where do… where… how did you find tha— that?’ he stutters, his entire body trembling. ‘Please. Where did you get it?’
‘I’ve a nose for these things.’
‘Just tell me who gave it to you. Please. It’s serious.’
‘Why?’
‘You don’t understand, that stuff, you having it. It’s not safe!’
‘I’d need to know more than that, before you get me as worried as you.’
‘Look at the colour on there,’ mutters one of the youths, squinting at the bag. ‘I’ve never seen it go like that before…’
‘You shut up you,’ The Well snaps at the boy. ‘You tell me what’s he doing with it, eh? Eh? Trusting you fucktards! On my daughter’s life, I’ve been a fucking fool to!’
‘No, never seen it do that,’ replies his friend by the side entrance. ‘Too freaky. It’s all in bits — look at it!’
‘You any idea what’s going to happen to us now!’ The Well practically chokes, raging at the youths, ‘I’ll tell you, we’re fucked. Period. You understand me, right? Fucked. The bitches of the cornhole king! You bloody clowns, you don’t even realise what you’ve done! Messing around with that stuff so the likes of him have it!’
Ignoring The Well, and with genuine interest, the teenager by the side entrance sidles over to us and asks, ‘Was it like that when you bought it? I know it’s a bit off, I mean, we’re not allowed to ask you the questions I know, but where do you get hold of a load looking like that?’
I consult my peripheral vision. The wiry clumps have changed from a greenish brown to ashen-white flakes, nearer charcoal or burnt embers than any drugs that speak to my core competencies. The osmosis must have occurred in my pocket within the last couple of hours. And, trying to disguise my disquiet, I hold The Well’s eye, and ignore the boy.
‘So are you going to help us or not?’
Christopherson grunts, ‘Listen, we’re not going to be asked to run a trace and track service for our local drug dealers.’ And he gently pushes the boy away from me. Behind him, his friend stands firm, and an ugly little squash develops, neither side having any hope of winning without recourse to overt coercion.
‘Easy now,’ says Christopherson, ‘let’s keep this nice and easy.’
Looking to Maureen for support, The Well starts to say something to her, but words are inadequate to the crisis, and unable to stop himself, he reaches to snatch the small plastic packet. I catch his fingers with my free hand, and turn them at an angle.
‘Jesus Christ! Stop that, please!’
Maureen has reached her limit, her breasts swelling with rage, ‘You think they’re worth losing everything for, Nick? The coppers are here now. Them others aren’t. They’ll do for us before those animals will. I’m not sacrificing this place or anything else for them creatures. They’ve used us like I told you they would, and how long did we have to wait, eh? It’s all coming apart already!’
‘For Christ’s sake, Maureen. There’s a limit to what the law can do to us, but them…’
‘She sounds like a sensible woman,’ says Christopherson. ‘You listen to her in the first place and there never would have been any of this trouble, I’ll bet.’
Maureen shoves The Well to one side and leans across the bar, motioning us to draw close to her. Half-heartedly he attempts to regain his place, his volition impeded by sheer relief.
‘Bizarre Bazaar, you know it? Top floor of the antique market on St Anne Street, a retro-tack shop, full of old uniforms and record players. That’s where you should be asking your questions, not here. We mean nothing.’
‘Will the man we’re looking for be there?’
‘As sure as night follows day, that’s where he’ll be heading. Everything you want from us, you’ll find there.’
I turn to Christopherson. ‘It’s a ten-minute walk. I’ll go. You clear up here.’
‘You don’t think they’re deflecting?’ he asks.
I look Maureen straight in the eye. ‘No, they’re too scared to. They don’t want occasion to pick up from where we’ve left off.’
‘Good, clever man,’ she says, nodding. ‘You’re getting it. We want nothing more to do with this. We’re the little people, so keep us out of it. You ask there, and you’ll find what you want to know. But nothing about us, whatever you do, nothing more about us. Don’t bring us in.’
‘Of course not,’ says Christopherson. ‘But if you told us what you’re running scared from, perhaps we’d be in a better position to protect you?’
‘Ha! You protect us by saying nothing, mister. That’s how you protect us.’ She slams her hand against the bar. ‘And mark me, I warn you now, when you start, don’t stop. Whatever you do, don’t stop until you’ve got the real bastards behind all this, you understand? Move quickly, faster than you ever have on anything before, you understand? You relax, just for a second, and it’s the end. They’ll do for us all. You included. Promise me? I mean it, I value my life.’
‘We need more information first. Who do you need protecting from?
Maureen folds her arms and shakes her head, ‘Promise me you’ll say nothing.’
‘Okay, alright, I promise,’ Christopherson says, ‘we’ll act fast and say nothing about you.’
She turns to me. ‘And you?’
I nod in assent, slightly bemused.
‘Good. Then you’ll find what you want from them,’ she says. ‘They’re who you want, not us. You’ll get nothing more out of me. You know enough now.’
‘I believe that. Thank you. But don’t go anywhere. DCI Christopherson will still have to take full statements from you all.’
‘Oh sure, whatever,’ she says, waving her arm in the air. ‘We’ll tell you a madman came in here and went straight out again. But the wheres or whys — those answers you need key players for, and we’re just the little people, mushrooms kept in the dark. Alive for now and tired of being crapped on.’
I turn to go, but as I do so I catch The Well’s chastised eye, and I can’t resist it. ‘Just one more thing, a question. No, don’t worry, I think you’ll know the answer to this one. Why do you call yourself “The Well”’?
Staring at me, with a concentration that almost borders on defiance, he slowly pulls up the zip of his jacket until the leather collar, stitched into the denim, forms a circle round his neck. After a heavy night, it could even look like the outline of a well.
‘And I thought it might have something to do with you being deep,’ I say, acknowledging the effort. ‘Thank you for your cooperation.’
CHAPTER FIVE
PLAINSONG
Out on the street, Tamla repeats, ‘Bizarre Bazaar… Bizarre Bazaar?’
I stuff two pieces of gum into my mouth and nod, lifting my finger in the rough direction of the antique market. ‘Yeah, it’s that way. That’s where they say he’s made for, and where we’ll get our answers.’
‘Okaaaay. I know the way, Terry, and we have people watching the place waiting for Lockheart to show up right now, but it’s a sort of posh-pikey jumble sale, isn’t it? Full of flying goggles, feather dusters and old Fairport long-players. What would a criminal conspiracy be doing there, I wonder?’
‘So? Where would be more apt, Sports Direct?’
‘You know what I mean. It’s nearer the posher bit of town. Things get harder to solve there.’
‘Play the team in front of us, I say.’
‘Mmmm… then again, it’d be ridiculously easy to find out if she’s lying to you. I mean, if it were me I’d have deflected as far as Southampton, if I were buying time to hide my misdeeds… not some shithole ten minutes’ walk away.’ Tamla sticks her hand in my pocket and, removing the packet, helps herself to a stick of gum.
‘She’s too frightened to deflect,’ I reply, covering my eyes from the sun, ‘and there’s no way Lockheart could have pegged it to Southampton in ten minutes.’
‘So you think she’s telling you the truth?’
‘Not the whole truth, but as much as we’re going to get short of breaking the rules.’
‘A bit of torture might give us more to go on?’
‘If we were the Mafia, we’d have full confessions in five minutes. But as far as Wiltshire Police procedure is concerned, we’ll have to make the most out of what she’s ready to share.’
‘You think it’s Lockheart that’s giving them all nightmares? Is he what they’re so scared of?’
The chewing gum tastes like a laboratory experiment, and I spit it into the gutter, making sure it clears the grating, as public littering will not do. ‘It’d be easy if it was. But the way they were, it seemed like they were alluding to a state of affairs, not just some crazy guy who’d come looking for retribution. The best thing we can do is follow him, and her lead.’
‘And that’s another problem right there, Terry…’
‘How so?’
‘She may have given you the junk shop, but we’ve lost our man.’
‘Lockheart? Someone must have seen him. He was only meant to have scarpered as we arrived.’
‘There’s no sign of him ever having left this street, or of ever having reached town,’ Tamla says, biting her lip.
‘So he is still in the Hearse? Can’t be… They may have been lying, but we looked everywhere.’
‘Oh no, that’d be way too simple. They told you the truth alright. He left there just as they say. She at Hairway to Heaven, her assistant, and the bloke from Chick O’ Land all swear blind they saw him crashing out of the pub in a hurry, just minutes before we got here…’
‘They’re sure about that?’
‘Of course, how could you not be? One hundred percent…’
‘So where did he go? I don’t get it.’ I begin to survey the street nervously, in spite of the presence of police everywhere. ‘He leaves and no one sees him go anywhere? Come on.’
‘Nowhere… They saw him leave the pub and then nothing. None of them agree on where he went, only that he charged out of the place. They all say he looked so bloody evil that they looked down or away to avoid him clocking them. We’re checking CCTV now. Best guess is that he must have accessed one of the houses or worked his way through an alley. But as far as specifics are concerned, we’re chasing ghosts again.’
‘Lucky we have this, at least,’ I say, and hand Tamla the small bag that aroused so much interest in the Hearse.
‘Evidence?’
‘I hope so. It needs to be sent to Porton Down, today, and broken down and explained back to me. I need to know what it is, and if possible, what it does…’
Tamla takes the bag and, opening it, holds it to her nose with an ironic dignity. ‘Eeyooow!’ she exclaims, ‘have you actually smelt this?’
‘I hadn’t got round to it yet, no.’
‘Let me spare you the trouble. Syphilis, mustard gas and asbestos, all yours in one foul inhalation!’
‘That good? Oh yeah, I can already smell that.’
Tamla chuckles and rocks on her feet a little. ‘So, you know you think I am an overreaction to life, full stop? Well, cast that to one side for a minute, because this is how I imagine the Battle of Agincourt to have smelt, after the bodies began to turn in the armour.’
She has an enjoyably flustered look, and crossing her eyes slightly, laughs as if communing directly with the contents of the bag itself. ‘No, no, too much, this is fucking weird!’
‘Go on, give it here.’ I reach my hand out.
‘Some things do not need to be experienced for oneself…’
‘Come on!’
‘Your funeral…’ she lets go of the bag.
I pull open the polythene and hold the open bag to my nostrils and inhale very gently, braced for the worst. As ruthlessly as truth, the concoction delivers on Tamla’s playful warning. I forget myself. It is the odour, somehow separate from the substance, that does it. In seconds it has thrown me over a pyre of human fertiliser, past the lavatories of every junkie flophouse in the city, over the wall of Eileen Pertwee’s garden, and into her bungalow, where I take my place next to her in front of the television. Like the subtlest of colognes, the old sickly scent emerges from the rugs and carpets, rising like a mist to reveal things I know I will forget unless I speak of them immediately. With quiet authority, Eileen raises a finger to my lips and turns the television off. The shawl that covers her drops to the carpet, and she stands totally naked before me, bidding me to come to her… Then I am here again, stood on this unloved street, crushed by the restrictive facts of my physical existence.
‘Jesus!’
‘I told you it was bad.’
‘You didn’t tell me it would get into my head that fast.’
‘Honestly, Terry, I thought a man of your experience could take that much for granted!’
‘Oi, you two!’
Rather gingerly for an officer that writes rude letters to lenient judges, we are joined by Orridge, who nursing his tennis elbow aggravated by the traffic cop routine, frowns at us. ‘What are you two reprobates playing at? Are we good to reopen or what?’ he barks, his voice heavy with disproval.
Still reeling from our herbo-chemical hit, Tamla’s eyes search for a put-down, too slowly to stop Orridge revving into second gear. ‘And where’s our badman, eh? Forty minutes this road’s been closed. I tell you, we’d better have something to show for it or else my life will be hell the next time I bump into Councillor Hussein at the Middlemist Golf Club. Traffic is bad enough with works on the Downton Road. Like Piccadilly Circus, this place, but without the language schools or Garfunkel’s. Bloody lazy bastards digging the roads. Can’t see why they can’t work at night and weekends… All this and a madman on the loose, supposedly.’
Tamla and I start to giggle in controlled bursts.
‘You’re bloody mad, you two. Like little girls… So, where is he? Don’t tell me we don’t have him yet!’
‘Our man is hiding, Max,’ I say, trying to pull myself together. ‘Hiding and not letting us find him. But rest easy, the good news is that the locals see it as a matter of some urgency that he is caught…’
‘That’s a bloody relief, because so do I. The sooner we hit this nonsense on the head, lock up this lunatic or, more likely, find out all those poor buggers threw themselves off a bridge in a collective suicide pact, the better prepared we’ll be for Her Majesty’s visit… and you two, pissing around like this when we’re still officially in pursuit. Fucking lamentable, it is.’
