Truth Dare kill

TWENTY TWO

It may be some men’s idea of heaven to live in a whorehouse, but if you’re a non-participant and all you can do is listen to the radio or do some handiwork around the place, it gets wearying. The perfume clings, making it difficult to venture out in case you got mistaken for a nancy boy. The hunt for me was still on but the initial frenzy had gone out of it. It was only once mentioned on the news; I just hoped my mother wasn’t listening. Occasionally I’d hear the clamour of the cars of the Flying Squad and wonder if they were heading this way. Police patrols had doubled according to Mary, and certainly there were more uniforms on the streets than I could recall. All bad for business said Mary.

So when the call – summons more like – came through to meet Jonny Crane I was on my way like a greyhound out his trap. But Mary’s advice rang in my ears.

“Jonny nasty piece. You keep back to wall and hand here.” She grabbed her crotch. “And no mention you was bobby!”

I mulled over the image of a girlie gangster as I started down the steep flight of stairs to one of Jonny’s hangouts in Wardour Street. I gave my name through the hatch and it was clear they were expecting me. The door was opened by a gorilla in a midget’s suit. He had mean eyes, maybe from having his nose broken so often. He pushed my face against the wall and smoothed his great mitts over me and grunted – with disappointment I think – at finding no weapons on me.

It had been getting dark outside, but it was darker down here until we came to another door. The gorilla pushed me ahead of him and I stumbled into a wide, well-lit drinking den. It was too early for customers but a barman ground away at a glass with a dish towel, clearly not worried if I had a drink or a coronary.

At a table on the left sat two men: one young and chewing gum and sitting back on two legs of a chair which could go over any minute; the other small, with glasses, his chin resting on clasped hands. He could be the young guy’s accountant. On the table in front of them – breaking the barman’s heart – were tea cups and a pot. A photo and an ashtray with a cigarette-holder lay between them. I walked over. The gorilla stuck to my tail. What did he think I’d do?

Chuck tea over them?

The young guy wore kohl round his eyes and his lips were red and wet. He shifted his gum to one side of his mouth and spoke. His voice was high and piping. I didn’t laugh.

“Mr Crane wants to know who you are and why you’re asking about this doll.”

Doll? Where did this jessie think he was, Chicago? “Can’t Mr Crane ask me himself?”

The accountant eased back and sat upright. Now I could see the heavy rings on both hands. He was much older than I first thought; his lined face was filled in with powder and rouge. His eyes bulged behind his glasses as he sized me up, maybe wondering how much concrete it would take round my feet to sink me.

“I’m asking. Who are you and why are you sending the word out on this bint?” His voice had all the depth and weight that his pretty friend lacked. He sounded like a sixty-a-day Capstan Full Strength man.

I’d thought about how to answer this if the time came. Suddenly I didn’t feel so confident about my story. But it was too late now. “I’m David Campbell. I’m a private detective. Hired by her husband. He’s been getting curious about how she spends her time.”

“You’re a Jock,” said Crane.

“That a crime?”

“Not necessarily.” The implication was that it depended which side of the bed he’d got out of that day. And who with. I hoped today was a love-your-fellow-man day regardless of predilection.

“Have you seen the lady?” I asked.

“Lady, is it? Sit down,” said Crane sucking on his cigarette then stubbing it out. He handed the holder to the boy, who refilled it, lit it and handed it back to him.

I sat. The boy rocked forward on to four legs and the gorilla scraped a chair up behind me. Now we were all cosy. Would they offer me tea?

I asked my question again.

“Depends,” he said.

I raised my eyebrows.

“On what you’re going to do with the information.”

“Do you care?” I asked.

His lengthened lashes blinked behind the glasses. “Let’s say, if I knew this bint, and if I’d done something for her, that would make her a customer of mine.

I look after my customers. If they look after me.” He sounded less like an accountant and more like a priest: one of the hard-boiled variety who taught the boys Latin and buggery.

“It’s not my business what my clients do with the information I provide,” I replied.

“I like that. I like compartments. Keeps things simple. In a complicated world, know what I mean?”

I shrugged. Spare me from amateur philosophers. “Mr Crane, this isn’t essential information to my enquiry. Just corroboration. I have enough to make my report, but this would… help. So I’m prepared to pay a fiver for answers to some simple questions.”

Crane turned to his companion and laughed. The boy broke into a high piping giggle. The gorilla spluttered behind me. Crane turned back to me.

“Campbell, I spend five quid on a round here. Is that all you’ve got?”

“It’s all it’s worth.” I could feel the sweat breaking out in the small of my back. I hoped it wasn’t showing on my forehead.

Crane sobered up. “I was forgetting; you’re Scotch.” His eyelids closed slowly for a moment as he thought; it was like a reptile blinking. He refocused. “Make it twenty and I’ll give you some answers.”

Twenty was a fortnight’s wages. “Ten is the limit.”

He shrugged. I reached in to my pocket, pulled out my little wad and counted out ten ones on Crane’s table. He reached to take them and I slapped my hand down on the money. The boy was on his feet in a second, a knife glinting in his hand.

Behind me the chair grated on the floor and I steeled myself for the blow.

“Easy, Sammy.” Crane’s command brought the boy to heel. He waved at the gorilla behind me and I felt the heavy breathing recede.

“You get three questions. Make ’em count,” said Crane.

I thought for a minute. “OK. Did you help the lady in that photo?” I pointed at the table.

“Yes. One.”

Shit. I already knew he did. Think harder. “What sort of help did you give her?”

The corners of his mouth lifted. “I gave her some contacts. Two.”

The bastard was playing with me. He was smiling. So was pretty boy. I wanted to hit him. I took a gamble.

“Did she come to you for an abortion?”

He looked at me for long second. “No. Three.” He reached out and took the money.

“We’re done. Now bugger off back to Glasgow, Campbell, or whatever your name is.”

Sod. If you could believe a grade one crook like Crane, my theory was out the window. I got up to go but couldn’t resist a shot in the dark, “Sorry about your girls, Jonny.”

The room went still. Even the barman stopped rubbing his glass. “What do you know about my girls, Jock?” he growled.

“Word on the street. Seems the Ripper was picking on you.”

“Is that so, Mister private dick? Is that so? S’none of your fuckin’ business, all right?”

“No offence, Jonny. I was just wondering if you’d been grilled by the lovely Inspector Wilson, that’s all.”

“Sit.”

I sat.

“You and him close, are you?” he asked.

“Let’s say my head and his fists got too close for my liking. An experience I won’t forget in a hurry.”

Crane’s hand stroked his red mouth. He had his cigarette holder replenished again. “Who are you, Campbell? Why you really here?”

I weighed up the odds. They weren’t good. If I told him the truth, it might put me on the same side of the law as him. But I never, ever, got taken in by that lie about honour among thieves. Crane was more than likely to turn me over to Wilson’s tender care. That would earn him brownie points, a favour to be called in. I’m sure Jonny Crane needed all the favours he could get from the law. Homos had a tough time of it in the nick. On the other hand Crane and I might find common cause; my enemy’s enemy is my friend. But it would be like siding with a rattlesnake against a scorpion.

“My name’s McRae. Danny McRae.”

Crane’s brows furrowed behind his glasses. “Fuck’s sake! The one the law’s after? You the Ripper?” He peered at me as if it were unlikely. Then his thoughts gelled. “If you done in my girls, you effing toerag…!” His words had the boy moving forward with his knife aimed at my eyeballs.

“No, Jonny, no! I’m the one they’re after, but I’m not the Ripper. Would I be sitting here telling you this if I were?” They settled back in their chairs and I swallowed hard. He was all ears now.

“I have an idea who is, though,” I said.

“You know who killed my girls? Cos when I find out…” His face was dark, and I didn’t know if it was his pocket or his pride that had been hurt. I didn’t for a moment think it could be his humanity.

My hook was in his mouth. “I know someone planted the gun beside the last victim. So Wilson must have been in the loop – maybe even did the planting.

There’s even a wild possibility that Wilson is directly involved.”

Crane jerked forward over the table with both his hands pointing at me like pistols. The rings glittered and flashed. “Wilson done them in? You’re fucking joking, right? This ain’t a joking matter, Jock.”

“Jonny, would I be that stupid? I’m being fingered for something I didn’t do.

Why would I wind you up?” That got a grudging nod.

A high-pitched voice cut in. “He’s got something there, Jonny. You know what that fucker Wilson’s like with the birds. Roughs ’em up and never bleeding pays.”

“Price of doing business, Sammy,” said Crane. “Look, McRae, if you have a name for me, you’d better share it. Right now. Do you want money?”

“I’ll tell you in forty-eight hours. I’ve got a couple of things to check through first and if they pan out, I’ll phone you with the name. I don’t want money, Jonny, though I’ll take back my tenner, if that’s all right?”

He looked at me like I’d asked his mother to go to bed with me. Then he slowly pushed the pound notes across the table to me. “What do you want?”

“I need to know what the woman in the photo was doing with you.”

He took a deep breath. “If you’re pulling my wire, Jock, you’ll never see the bonnie banks again, right?” I nodded. “The lady got given my name. She wanted a flat and some clients. I arranged it.”

I sat and stared at him. “Sorry, Jonny, There’s some mistake, surely. Are you saying this woman worked for you? On the streets?”

He laughed. “Not on the streets, exactly. I found her a nice little pad and sent her some business. I took my twenty per cent.”

I couldn’t take this in. Kate Graveney working as a prostitute? The perfect lady, doing it for money? Impossible. “Can you tell me a bit more? What she was like? Her name? I need to be sure, Jonny.”

He was smiling. “You think an upper-class tart like her wouldn’t get her knickers down for money? Think again, chum. I don’t know if she needed the money – and she made good money, let me tell you – or if she did it for fun. I’ve seen it all, chum. They’re all the same.”

Mary’s words rolled round my head as Jonny’s world-weary air began to convince me. “When was this?”

“September last year, she comes to me. I remember. She kind of stands out, don’t she? That hair. It was a hot day. She kept her sun specs on.”

I pictured Kate down here in the gloom, anxious behind her glasses, but shining like a diamond in shit. And then coming out with her request. Did Caldwell know about this? “Was there a man around? Working for her? With her?”

He shook his head. “Nah. I got a list of top clients who like something special.” He tapped the place where his heart should have been. If he had an address book in there it would be worth the gorilla’s weight in gold. “Once madam was settled and she’d turned a few tricks I had my phone ringing off the hook. Nice little earner, Sheila was,” he said wistfully.

“Sheila?” I asked incredulously.

“Her stage name, shall we say. Never gave me her real moniker.”

A worse thought occurred to me. “These clients… was one of them our friend Wilson, by any chance?”

“Let’s put it this way: if he was, he didn’t pay for it.”

My mind was reeling but there was a question still unresolved. “The lady – Sheila – ended up in hospital in November, Jonny. Know anything about that?”

He smirked. “You thought it was a bit of family planning gone wrong, didn’t you?

Not that simple, chum. Not that simple. Seems our Sheila liked it a bit rough. I don’t know exactly what she was getting up to – I don’t interfere with the details of my girls you know – but I hear it got a bit out of hand.”

I couldn’t take any more in. I needed air, and time to rethink. “Jonny, thanks.

That’s all I wanted to know.” More than I wanted, in truth. “I need to digest this.” But this was as digestible as raw liver.

“’Spect you do, chum. But don’t take long. I still need that name. You owe me now. I don’t know how it’s connected to the lovely Sheila, but I want that name.

We’ll take it from there.”

I didn’t know how it connected either, chum, but I was sure it did. “I’ll call you in forty-eight hours, Jonny.”

“Be sure, you do. If you don’t, Sammy here will find you. You do know that, don’t you?” The boy smiled and licked the blade of his knife with a tongue like a lizard.

I emerged into the last of the daylight. It was a mellow London evening, the type you get sometimes even in mid-winter; a false spring. In Glasgow it would rain or freeze or snow from November to March before you felt any forgiveness.

Here in the south the weather was like a clever mistress: treated you well enough to keep you interested and optimistic, but never too much to make you blasй.

As I sidled through the streets I wrestled with the new thoughts and the images they conjured. I felt sick to my core. That first night she came to my office I fell a little in love with a dream. She was everything better than me, everything I couldn’t have. Or so I thought. It never occurred to me that I could have paid for it. If I could afford it.

I shook myself. I was lucky to get out of that cellar with my head on, and here I was with another bit of the puzzle in place. But the overall pattern had slipped out of focus. I had to find the remaining pieces. All I knew – thought I knew – was that I’d been set up by Caldwell to keep me away from some squalid secret surrounding his sister. Had it been enough to cause the death of five young women? And how was Wilson involved?

My head was running through the choices I’d just made. I could have given Caldwell’s name to Jonny Crane, and let nature take its course; Sammy was malice in make-up, and his gorilla was an unstoppable force of nature. But two things had stopped me: first, I suppose, my days wearing a blue uniform had left a vestigial preference to work through the law rather than via the likes of Crane.

Second, and more important, I wanted this for myself. I wasn’t sure quite how to arrange it, but there needed to be a face-to-face showdown between me, Caldwell and his lovely whore of a sister. Wilson too. They owed me that.