The Unquiet heart

TWELVE

That was the call that led me to the Angel pub by the river that night. I met my contact and watched him go to the bar. Then, from the filthy floor with a man on my back, I watched them slaughter him like a sacrificial goat. Like the other cowardly clientele I fled into the night to avoid explaining my presence to the boys in blue. I got home at midnight, exhausted and deflated. My one chance of finding Eve, or even learning if she was alive or dead, was gone. All I’d gleaned was that my contact had an Irish accent and one of his killers had a foreign one. It was a set-up. It told me that an organised gang was involved in her abduction. And that someone had tipped them off about my rendezvous.

Gambatti, to get me out of the way?

I took my only suit to the cleaners again, the second time in a week. I sat and I fretted, walked round and round my office till even the cat got dizzy. I hung a sign on my office door telling the world – if it ever chose to beat a path to it – that Finders Keepers was on holiday, and took to walking by the Serpentine, feeding the ducks and feeling sorry for myself. I hate inaction. I’d rather be doing something meaningless than nothing at all. Even a visit from the Flying Squad to grill me over Eve’s disappearance would have been welcome. I was well enough known to her office mates, not to mention Hutcheson and her landlady.

Surely they weren’t that incompetent? Why the silence? There was nothing in the papers about the murder. A man dies in a pub brawl and doesn’t even get a mention. Life is cheap in the East End, but not worthless. Had the coppers been bought off?

I needed a plan. I thought about finding Gambatti and beating his head in. But however satisfying that might be I doubted it would lead to Eve. If it had been his gang that had taken her, why go to all the trouble of setting me up? It would have been easier to bump me off than my mystery contact. And if Gambatti had put the word out about the meeting, he sure as hell wasn’t going to admit it to me, far less tell me who he’d spoken to.

It got so bad inside my head that I began to think seriously about Gambatti’s offer. My life was shit. I barely made a living. I was going nowhere. The whole world seemed bent and I was the only straight man left. What was the point?

Principles, or just habit? Most of the time I worked in the gutter, and often enough it was hard to know who the bad guys were. Take my old sparring partner Detective Inspector Wilson: just as much of a thug as Gog and Magog. Worse maybe; at least those gangsters made no pretence about which side they were on.

Why did I want to stay on the losing side?

But just when you think you’ll go daft with inactivity, life kicks your door in.

I came back from the park and found a parcel waiting for me. It hadn’t been left by the postman. It just had my name on it. It was hatbox-sized, about a foot long on each side. Brown paper, tied with string and sealed with red wax. I touched it gingerly with my foot. It moved easily. It didn’t look like a booby trap. But then – as any good SOE instructor tells you – that’s the whole idea. I took the risk and lifted it. It was light. Maybe there was a hat inside.

I walked in to my office and put it on my desk. I sniffed it. Nothing. I shook it gently. Something moved inside but it didn’t clunk or thud. I took out my scissors and sliced through the string and sealing wax. I opened the lid and for a moment my world dropped away. It was full of hair. Like the rich, russet mass surging from a black beret, or floating beside me on the pillow.

I lifted it out, in no doubt it was hers. I laid it tenderly on my desk and stroked it like it was alive.

There was a folded paper on the bottom of the box. I opened it up. A few words were scrawled in capitals: