Time Out Of Mind (v1.0), page 5
“Who told you all this?”
“A young girl.”
“And you believed her?”
“Yes I did.”
Manders, who had been examining the cylinder scrupulously while Laurie was talking, now said: “There’s a serial number here. ‘K dash 12 stroke I:F. dash B stroke 410 K.S.’”
Laurie bent his head and peered at the minute lettering. “I missed that. Does it mean anything to you?”
“It’ll be a batch number of some sort. T.F.’ is straightforward international alphabetical code for * ’96.’ ‘B’ is probably ’February.’ One thing’s certain, this ampoule isn’t any sort of backstreet production.” “Will there be enough left for you to analyze?” “I very much doubt it. Whatever it is it’s almost certainly volatile. And this is a single shot cartridge. Once a needle’s pierced the diaphragm it doesn’t reseal itself. Still, I’ll do what I can.”
“I can’t be absolutely certain it’s what she was on,” said Laurie, “but it seems highly likely. This Jim character didn’t seem to know what it was. My guess is that he’d taken off to try and rustle up some more for her when she was pulled in. But that’s just a guess. Oh yes, one other thing. While she was there she was still talking. She used to send Angie—the kid who told me about it—out for milk and sweets. According to Angie that was all the food she took.”
Manders nodded. “You didn’t manage to find out how she came to be in the river in the first place?”
“Apparently she fell off a boat of some sort and Jim pulled her out. I don’t know how much credibility to attach to that. ‘I suppose it could have happened.” “Nothing’s impossible,” said Manders. “Have you decided on your next move?”
“I’d thought of going back to Gravesend tomorrow and having another chat to Angie—trying to get her to give me a good working description of this Jim character. Then I can comb through our Central Office records either for him or for some of the cats who dragged him off the stage. Assuming I draw blanks on both counts, there’s not much else I can do except contact the police. After all, assuming that wasn’t the only shot she had, someone must have picked up the rest and her syringe.”
“Well, the police didn’t,” said Manders. “It was the first thing we asked when they brought her in.”
“Then that only leaves Jim, doesn’t it?” said Laurie, picking up the cylinder and squinting at it. “But I suppose it’s just possible that one of the big wholesale drug suppliers might recognize this batch code mark.” “I can find that out easily enough,” said Manders. “I’ll get Brenda on to it first thing tomorrow. By the way, have you had anything to eat?”
Laurie grinned. “Yes, thanks. Angie saw to that.”
“Well, how about another drink then? You’ve certainly earned it.”
“That I shan’t refuse,” chuckled Laurie. “Just so long as it isn’t FRUTTO.”
A chill east wind was scything up the Thames estuary when Laurie stepped out on to Culver’s Wharf shortly after ten the next morning. The sky was a clear ice blue and the April sunlight exploded off the chopping wavelets in little silvery flecks and splinters. There was no sign of Angie. He walked out on to the broken jetty and peered along the foreshore.
The tide was running out fast, streaming a wake of arrowing ripples from each of the ancient, jutting piles. Beyond the low marshland toward Southend frail feathers of sunlit steam plumed up from the distant derricks that marked the westward fringe of the vast Medway oilfield. A glittering hover-coach came rushing round the bend in the river by Canvey Island, speeding its freight of travelers upstream to the City, while from far-off Maplin the banshee shriek of aircraft jets was borne faintly to him on the back of the wind.
An old man edged into sight, shuffling his way along the oozy shore, hunting for God knew what. He had roped two flat pieces of board to the soles of his boots to form a pair of crude mud skis, and he maintained his balance by the adroit use of a long forked pole. Around his neck was slung a filthy canvas satchel. Every now and again he stooped and picked up something and stuffed it inside.
Laurie watched him as he slithered through the gluey ooze toward the jetty and, when he had approached within earshot, called out a greeting. The old man glanced up and nodded. His eyes were as clear and as blue as the spring sky.
Laurie moved back towards the quay. When he was roughly on a level with the old man he squatted down and said: “I’m trying to find a bloke called ‘Jim,’ grandad. Do you happen to know him by any chance?”
The old man placed the knuckle of his left index finger against his left nostril, averted his head and snorted a blob of green phlegm into the mud at his feet. Then he turned to face Laurie once more. “Jim?” he said. “Ah.”
“You know him, do you?”
“Mebbe.”
“Could you describe him for me?”
The old man wedged the crotch of his pole against one of the iron cross-braces of the jetty and rested his weight on it. “Mebbe,” he said again.
“I’d be grateful if you would.”
The old eyes twinkled. “Worth somethin’ to you, guv, I dessay?”
Laurie nodded, felt in his pocket and produced a hundred penny piece. “That much,” he said, holding it up.
The old man wiped his hand and reached out for the coin, but Laurie shook his head. “Let’s hear what I’m buying first, oldster.”
The old man chuckled. “Well, you ain’t no’ cop, son. They wouldn’t even ’ave offered me a tenner. Let’s see now. ’E ain’t been around ’ere lately, ’as Jim. I did ’ear as ’ow he’d got hisself knocked off. Used t’doss down up Culver’s there.”
“That’s him,” said Laurie.
“Well, now, lessee. I’d say Jim was abaht firty-five, pushin’ forty. Biggish bloke. All er twelve t’fifteen stone, I dessay. Long ’air. Black beard an' 'tache. Tell yer one fing, though. He’s gotter duff eye. Big brahn speck in the white. Like an egg-spot.”
“Do you remember which eye?”
The old man pointed unhesitatingly to his left.
“You don’t know his full name, I suppose?”
“I never ’eard ’im use it, guv.”
“Anything else you can think of?”
The old man screwed up his eyes, dredging his memory. “I b’lieve I ’eard ’im say e’d once crewed on the rigs. Couldn’t swear to it though.” *
“Thanks, grandad.” Laurie leaned forward and was about to drop the coin into the outstretched palm when a thought occurred to him. “You don’t happen to have picked up a hypodermic syringe around here in the last couple of months?”
The old man shook his head. “No, guv. Can’t say as I ’ave.”
Laurie shrugged and handed over the coin. “Do you know where I could find a kid called ’Angie?’ About seven years old. Plays around here.”
“Angie Forrest, yer mean? Her’s ma what runs the knockin’ shop up Ferry Street?”
“Ferry Street?” said Laurie. “That might well be her. Thanks for the help.”
He straightened up, nodded goodbye to the old beachcomber, and walked back to the car. He wondered why he had paid a pound for information which Angie might have given him for nothing, and then realized it was because he didn’t want to have to confess to her that he had never known Jim. He surmised that retaining her trust might’ ultimately prove to be worth a good deal more than the hundred pence.
He left the Koyota in a parking lot and went on foot in search of Ferry Street. It proved to be a ramshackle assortment of ancient tenements leaning one against the other as if in a despairing effort to arrest an imminent slide into the river. For all its air of decay it struck him as preferable in almost every way to the anonymous concrete hives that would surely soon replace it.
He discovered a faded sign advertising “Rooms to Let,” pushed open the door and found himself standing in a low, dingy saloon which seemed to be half bar/half café. A middle-aged woman with heavily lacquered eyelids was sitting wrapped in a faded floral dressing-gown, her elbows propped on one of the tables, sipping at a cup of steaming coffee. She lifted her mouth just far enough above the rim of the cup to say: “We’re closed.”
“Mrs. Forrest?” he inquired.
She surveyed him incuriously for some seconds. “I’m Mrs. Forrest. What about it?”
“I was wondering if I could have a word with Angie?” “Angie?” Her eyes narrowed. “What about?”
“About someone she knows.”
“Go on.”
Laurie shrugged. “A man called Jim. Big bloke with a black beard.”
To his surprise a glimmer of what could have been either alarm or just plain curiosity ghosted across her eyes. She set down her cup, reached into the pocket of her dressing-gown and drew out a packet of Dreamers. She put one between her lips and lit it. When she had shaken out the match she dropped it on the floor beside her and blew a jet of perfumed smoke across the tabletop toward him. “All right,” she said woodenly. “What have they done to him?”
Laurie shook his head. “That’s exactly what I’m trying to find out, Mrs. Forrest.”
“Who are you then?”
“A friend of Jim’s.”
“Oh yes?” she grunted skeptically. “That’s what they said too.”
‘“They?”’ -
She scratched a shred of gray leaf from her lip. “Two of them came around here looking for him, just like you. Said they’d got a business proposition to put to him. That was six weeks ago. No one’s seen him since.”
“Have you any idea who they were?”
“I’d never seen them before in my life.”
, “Cats?”
She nodded.
“Did one of them have a white mark, here?” Laurie touched his jaw.
“Maybe. I didn’t see it.”
“Can you remember anything about them?”
She considered for a moment. “They weren’t English.”
“American?”
“French, more like.”
“Were they young? Old?”
“One was middling, I’d say. The other was younger. They both had dark-hair.” She suddenly lifted her face. “Yes, there was something. The middling one—the one who did all the talking—had two marks here and here”—she pinched the bridge of her nose—“from wearing glasses, I guess. He wasn’t wearing any though.”
“It all helps,” said Laurie. “You knew Jim pretty well, I imagine.”
“So-so.”
‘
“Did he ever say anything to you about Lynn?”
“Who?”
“A girl called Lynn.”
She shrugged and shook her head. “He might have done. I don’t remember.”
“You’ve been a real help, Mrs. Forrest. You don’t mind if I have a word with Angie now, do you?”
. “She’s at school.”
“Of course,” said Laurie. “That was stupid of me. Does she come home for lunch?”
“No. Not till four.”
“Then I’ll call back, if that’s all .right by you?”
“Suit yourself.” She let her gaze trickle slowly down him. “You got time for a cup of coffee, haven’t you?” He grinned. “Do you think I could afford it?”
“Cheeky bastard,” she chuckled. “Come over here a minute.”
Laurie laughed and shook his head. “You keep it warm for me,” he said. “I’ll be back.”
There was a traffic control barrier spanning the freeway at Dartford. Laurie proffered his NARCOS identification but the warden shook his head and tapped the windscreen of the Koyota. “Where’s the U.R.?”
“But it’s Government registration,” Laurie protested. “That’ll do, won’t it?”
“Sorry, mate. Not any more it won’t. Urban Register only. Don’t blame me. I didn’t make the rules.” Laurie swore. “What’s the quickest way in?”
“Where d’you want to get to?”
“London Bridge.”
“Well, let’s see now,” said the warden. “Go back a mile and take the left leak signed ’Erith.’ That’ll see you right down to the pier. There’s a City hoverbus every ten minutes.”
“Thanks,” said Laurie. “Is it all right to turn here?”
“Hang on a sec, and I’ll put you through,” said the obliging warden, and suiting the gesture to the word he organized a gap in the queue of vehicles, allowing Laurie to execute a “U”-tum, cut across into the southbound lane, and zoom back the way he had come.
It took him twenty minutes to find himself a parking slot at Erith but he was luckier with the hoverbus, sprinting aboard just as the gangway was retracting. He made his way up to the- observation deck, tucked himself into a vacant corner, and began jotting down the scraps of information he had gleaned from his two interviews.
The NARCOS Records Department occupied three rooms in -Brussels House, one of the concrete leviathans that fronted all the south bank of the river between London Bridge and Tower Bridge. The offices in the front of the block had one of the best outlooks in the City, but NARCOS did not rate anything more exalted than a rear view over London Bridge Station and the Bermondsey gas terminal. However, the staff were allowed to use the pool and the rooftop restaurant.
Laurie had been to Records only once before—for a brief visit during his indoctrination period—and he was faintly apprehensive lest his inquiry should be regarded as mere time-wasting. He explained to the grey-haired Officer in Charge that he was following up a line of investigation that had been suggested by Doctor Manders and was now trying to identify a couple of characters from a verbal description.
“Help yourself, son,” said the O. in C. affably. “What’s ours is yours. I’ll see if I can find someone to give you a hand.”
He thumbed an intercom button and said: “Break it up, kids. Hands up who’s not doing anything vital?”
“Well,” responded a doubtful voice, “that depends on—”
“O.K. Carol, you’ll do. I’m sending someone along. Look after him, would you?” He grinned at Laurie and jerked his thumb toward the door. “Second on the right down the passage. Good luck.”
The girl who opened the door to Laurie’s knock smiled when she saw him. “Oh, I know you,” she said. “You were here in February.”
“That’s right,” he admitted. “I don’t remember you though. Where were you?”
She laughed. “In Rome, actually. But we film-recorded your visit just for practice. Come on in.”
She led him into a room whose walls were lined from floor to ceiling with a honeycomb of video-spool cells. Gunmetal gray filing cabinets and a huge memory bank occupied most of the available floor space, but wedged in front of the window was a littered desk and a couple of chairs. She nudged one of these toward him and sat down on the other. “My name’s Carol Kennedy, by the way,” she said. “Now—don’t tell me—you’re…she screwed up her eyes then opened them very wide. “Linton!” she exclaimed triumphantly.
He nodded. “Yes. Laurie Linton, to be exact.”
“I’m getting better all the time,” she said happily. “It’s just a question of mnemonics really. Now, what can I do for you, Laurie?”
Laurie produced his notebook. “I’m almost sure it’s hopeless,” he said “but there could be just a chance you’ll be able to help me trace these two,” and he read out the jottings he had made.
Carol listened attentively. “We’ve come up on less than that before,” she said when he had finished. “The white mark will help and so will the speck in the eye. Let’s punch out a card on hairy Jim first.”
She went across to one of the metal cabinets and unclipped a side panel to reveal a ten-banked keyboard. Having depressed a chromed lever at one side she began rapidly rapping out Laurie’s slender stock of information. “What nationality do we give him?” she asked. “British?”
“I,don’t know,” he confessed. “It occurred to me he might be Canadian. They have a lot of them on the oil rigs, don’t they?”
“They have a lot of everything,” said Carol. “Well, let’s make him ’fluent English speaker.’ That’ll cover it, but it’ll take a bit longer.”
She tapped a few more keys. “Which eye was it?”
“The left,” said Laurie.
“The left it is,” she said. “There.”
She pumped the lever briskly up and down and a perforated card slid out into the wire basket below. She retrieved it, examined it, then carried it across the room and dropped it into a slot on the top of the memory bank. That done she stabbed out a pattern among the regiment of buttons and finally tripped a master switch. “While that’s cooking, we’ll do the other one,” she said.
Laurie watched her fingers flickering ’over the keys and mentally registered the fact that she was pretty. It was as though from having been focussed solely upon his investigation the angle of his apprehension had suddenly widened. He noted that her hair was a dark honey-blonde, that her waist was slender, her legs slim. “How long have you been with NARCOS, Carol?” he asked.
“Three years in June,” she said. “I suppose we might as well put white spot down as working with three others, one of whom wears spectacles.”
“It seems an even money bet that they were the same lot,” he agreed. “Angie’s mother didn’t seem too sure about him being French though.”
“I’ve made him European,” said Carol, “with French on the primary sift. Even so it looks a bit slim, doesn’t it? Still, you never know your luck till you try.”
She transferred the second card to the memory bank, consulted a dial, and then pulled a sour face. “Your Jim’s going through like a dose of salts,” she said. “That doesn’t augur well.”
Laurie moved over to join her. “I expected as much. He didn’t seem to fit into the pattern somehow. What’s more I’m beginning to get a nasty feeling that if he turns up anywhere it’ll be on the morgue files of the river police.”
“Well, that’s no problem,” she said. “We can phone your data on him straight through to them from here. Shall I do it?”
Laurie gnawed his thumbnail. “Would we have to let them know why we’re asking?”
She glanced across at him curiously. “Not unless we particularly want to. As far as they’re concerned it can be just an identity check.”
