Part 30 (1/2)
He thought of telling Naysmith that Beryl was sitting waiting for him in the Magic Mini, but aborted the idea almost before conception. Either Naysmith wouldn't believe him. Or he would check, and Beryl would be pulled into this mess by his side. Road accident, easy to fake, particularly when the driver had so much alcohol swilling around inside his veins.
The hands were taking, a grip on his head.
He said, ”Which one of them goes?”
Lucy had come back into the room and poured herself a whisky. Her expression was still faraway, dreamy. She was probably planning outings and birthday parties and Christmas treats. She was so certain of her future now that she could afford to be patient and wait for the final farewells to be taken upstairs.
Naysmith said, ”Don't know. To be honest, it's not a choice I want to make. All the others, there really was no choice. But this ... look, what would you do?”
”Me. I expect I'd ring the Samaritans,” said Joe.
”That's why you'd never have made a half-decent PI, Sixsmith,” said Naysmith, tightening his grip on Joe's head. His hands felt really strong, which was a comfort. One quick twist and it should be over.
The telephone rang.
”Leave it!” snapped Naysmith.
But it was too late. Lucy had picked it up.
She listened and said, ”Someone wanting a taxi.”
The hands relaxed, let go of his head.
Naysmith said, ”Give it here,” and went to the desk.
Joe shouted after him, ”Promise me you'll look after my cat.”
Naysmith took the phone, said, ”p.i.s.s off!” into the mouthpiece and banged it down.
”What did you say about your cat?” he asked.
”Just wanted to be sure someone would take care of it,” said Joe.
Touching. Me, I can't stand the brutes,” said Naysmith, moving back towards him.
Figures, thought Joe, casting round desperately for something else to keep the guy talking. Nothing came to mind. Fortunately his mind had a mind of its own.
He said, ”One more thing, the phone reminded me, there was a message, couple of days back. Sounded like a guy I know. Doug Endor, the sports agent.”
”So what about it?” said Naysmith, puzzled.
Joe didn't know what about it. His meandering mind which seemed incapable of fixing on his very real and immediate problems had just casually registered whose voice the call had reminded him of.
He said, ”Nothing really. Just like to know, if we've got a moment to spare, what it was he wanted. Sort of last request, like in the movies.”
Naysmith shook his head and began to laugh.
”Sixsmith, I'll be almost sorry to lose you. I swear if I was really rich, I'd dress you in motley and keep you around as my clown. But OK, last request. It will only take a minute to tell you and what difference is a minute going to make now?”
As it happened it made a great deal of difference to all kinds of people. Princ.i.p.ally to Joe Sixsmith whom it kept alive.
This was because it gave sixty more seconds to Beryl Boddington who, growing tired of waiting, had strolled up Naysmith's driveway, noted Dorrie McShane standing at an upstairs window with her daughter, wandered along the side of the house, glimpsed Joe through a crack in a curtain sitting in an armchair with his head bleeding, ran across the road to Willie Woodbine's villa, demanded to speak to anyone sober in the house, and while she was waiting picked up the phone, dialled Naysmith's number from the s.e.xwith flier, and asked for a taxi. When she heard Joe's voice in the background asking for someone to take care of his cat, she had rounded on Woodbine with a sobering ferocity and ordered him to accompany her across the road. His wife, Georgina, opposed the move strongly on the grounds that it had taken her best social endeavours over many years to persuade her high-cla.s.s neighbours that they need feel neither ashamed nor afraid of having a flatfoot in their midst. All this good work, she averred, would be destroyed if he marched into someone's house unannounced at dead of night, to invite them to help with his enquiries. ”Point taken, Georgie,” declared one of the hard-drinking senior officers who were inevitably the princ.i.p.al survivors of the party. ”But it is New Year, isn't it?”
Upon which hint they acted; and over the road in Naysmith's study, as the big lawyer finished satisfying Joe's curiosity, and tightened his grip on his head prior to sending him in search of cosmic clues as to what it was all about, the door burst open to admit a gaggle of drunken cops, many of them clutching bottles in one hand and lumps of coal in the other, who cried, ”First-foot! Happy New Year to one and all!”
To which Joe replied, from the top of his head and the bottom of his heart, ”And a Happy New Year to all of you also!”
Twenty-Seven.
The eastern sky was growing pale and Joe Sixsmith had long been sober by the time he got to bed.
Making things clear to the police had never been one of his natural talents, and when the police in question were drunk as skunks, it seemed as if it might be quite impossible.
Naysmith was charming, urbane, a touch surprised, a mite indignant, and admitting nothing. Joe's bleeding head and fis.h.i.+ng-line bonds he put down to his wife who, he explained to Woodbine, had been in an excitable if not to say unstable condition ever since the arrival of Dorrie McShane and the child. These two were found, locked in the nursery, a necessary precaution, Naysmith claimed, until he had calmed his wife down.
Joe kept on repeating over and over, ”He was there at Poll-Pott's pretending to be Potter,” but no one seemed very inclined to take in this piece of clinching evidence. Indeed, at one stage it seemed possible (though Woodbine later claimed he was hallucinating) that he would be locked up and Naysmith would go over the road to join the party. Then Lucy saw Dorrie and Feelie leaving the house.
Her explosion of fury, grief, despair, shocked everyone sober. Finally she flung herself at her husband's feet, clasped her arms round his legs and pleaded, ”You promised, you promised, you promised ”Sorry about this,” said Naysmith to the silent onlookers. ”As you can see, she needs help. Come on, old girl. Pull yourself together. How about a nice cup of tea?”
Which was his fatal mistake. He should have chosen his words for his wife, not for his audience.
Lucy went very still, then slowly pushed herself upright and said in a level controlled voice, ”You b.a.s.t.a.r.d. It's all been one of your little juggling acts, hasn't it? He likes to juggle women, money, murder because it confirms how much cleverer he is than the rest of us. I knew, I knew, really I always knew, but I let myself be fooled because I wanted so very, very much to have For a moment it looked as if she would break down again, then she regained control and said, ”So which of you gentlemen do I make my statement to?”
The police might have hung on to Joe even longer if Beryl hadn't insisted that he needed medical treatment and driven him away.
He got the treatment, not at the hospital but from the Magic Mini's medical kit in the car park of the Kimberley Hotel.
”Bet we look like a kinky courting couple,” said Joe.
”Bang on the head doesn't improve your jokes,” said Beryl. ”That'll have to do. Now tell me what the h.e.l.l we're doing here?”
”Someone I need to see,” said Joe. ”Call it first-footing.”
It took a deal of hammering to bring Abe Schoenfeld to the door of his room. He didn't look pleased to see Joe, but it was Mary Oto who appeared behind him who really verbalized their displeasure.
Joe hadn't been brought up to indulge in slanging matches with women, especially not mother-naked women, so he stood there silent, waiting for the storm to rage itself out. But Beryl had no such inhibitions.
”Listen, sister,” she said. ”Why don't you b.u.t.ton your lip and cover your b.u.t.t? My man's vegetarian and can't stand the sight of raw meat before breakfast.”
Joe registered my man and quite liked it. Mary stopped in mid word. Guessing this pause might be only temporary, Joe quickly got in, ”I don't work for Endor. I do work for Zak. All I want is for her to win and be happy. If that's what you want too, we ought to talk.”
Abe looked at him for a long moment then said, ”OK. You got five minutes. Come in and talk.”
It took longer than five minutes and long before he finished, Mary Oto had put on a robe and taken off her expression of implacable distrust.
At the centre of Joe's discourse was what Felix Naysmith had told him about Doug Endor.
”Remarkable chap,” he'd said with apparently genuine admiration. ”Next to no education, yet he can run rings round most people. You haven't been tangling with him, I hope, Mr. Sixsmith. I imagine he could walk rings round you.”
”He recommended me for a job,” said Joe defensively.