Part 12 (2/2)

No, probably not the slightest bit, thought Joe.

He said gently, 'We'll have to see, Chris. Good night now.'

Why is it I never talk to this guy without feeling lousy? he asked himself as he switched off.

Maybe it was because he'd got so used to being with people who at best regarded him as a lucky PI and at worst thought of him as a joke that it was hard to deal with someone who managed to find more evidence of his skill and insight every time they talked!

He needed someone down to earth and sensible to talk to, but when he looked around the flat, there was still no sign of Whitey.

He put his front door on the security chain and left it slightly ajar so that if the cat returned via the lift he could get in. The balcony door was wide open anyway to admit what little breeze there was. He recalled the scented air conditioning at ProtoVision House. Nice work if you could get it. But lower down the food chain all you could do was take off all your clothes and lie naked on top of your bed by an open window.

It had been a long day full of incident and information, a day made for lying idly in the sun but which had seen him moving sweatily between the Royal Hoo and Ram Ray's garage and the Law Centre and King Rat's palace and the Hole in the Wall, a day that might have had a lesser man lying awake pondering its significances and implications.

Joe did ponder, for all of five seconds, before bundling up the day and all its events and dumping them out of sight at the back of his mind. And in another five seconds he had plunged effortlessly into his customary deep sleep which Beryl claimed was indistinguishable from catalepsy.

Twitch.

Except with regard to Luton winning the Premiers.h.i.+p t.i.tle, the FA Cup and the European Champions.h.i.+p all in the same season, Joe was not a dreamer.

Tonight, however, he can't have plunged to his usual depths of sleep because he found himself dreaming.

It was a really weird dream in which a pair of mighty hands seized him by the ankles, bore him through the air and hung him upside down over the railing of his balcony. The early July dawn was already painting the dreaming spires of Luton and its surrounding landscape in a beauteous light. He was facing outwards, and even upside down, the view looked really good. Blasphemously he thought, Maybe I'm being tempted like Jesus. A voice was calling his name in the kind of smoky rasp you would expect from the devil's throat and it wouldn't have surprised Joe to hear his a.s.sailant proclaiming, 'All these things I will give thee, if thou wilt fall down and wors.h.i.+p me.'

Instead the voice cried, 'Sixsmith, what you playing at? You are dead meat, man! Dead meat!' And at the same time his body was pendulumed so violently that his head struck the underside of the balcony.

The first collision roused both pain and suspicion. A lesser detective might have leapt at once to the conclusion that he wasn't dreaming, but Joe had learned a long time ago that it was better never to leap to conclusions but let them come to you in their own sweet time.

The second collision brought the conclusion a lot closer and the third confirmed its arrival.

This was no dream. He really was being dangled over his seventh-floor balcony by a homicidal maniac.

As if to reward this admission of reality, the swinging began to slow down. Which was nice, until it occurred to him this could mean either the swinger was tiring or maybe was thinking of letting go.

One result of the deceleration was that Joe was once more able to take in the view, but like one of his favourite songs almost said, What a difference a couple of seconds makes!

Now the soft beauty of the morning had completely evaporated and the gentle sun was a spotlight, picking out the little square of pavement far below against which his head was about to splatter.

He bent his neck so he could look up. Even if he hadn't been able to recognize the rage-twisted features peering down at him, he would have made a good guess at the huge hands bolted tight around his ankles. Last time he'd seen those fists they'd been remodelling the face of Ernie Jagger, the Battersea Bruiser.

He was literally in the hands of Eloise's ex, Jura.s.sic George.

Knowing how to say the right thing at the right time is truly a gift from heaven, which was why on the whole Joe usually opted for silence or a neutral 'U-huh.' But neither of these options seemed suited to his present circ.u.mstances. So Joe let his mind go blank and said the first thing that came into it.

Which was, 'Hey, George, man, how're you doing? That was a great job you did on Jagger. Those left hooks! Just beautiful.'

It was an inspired social gambit. Boxers are simple men, a condition refined by frequent blows about the head, and though they are generally indifferent to appeals to their better nature or the higher aesthetic, the one way of catching their interest is to make complimentary remarks about their ring technique.

Above him there was a change of atmosphere, or not so much a change as the kind of hiatus you sometimes get when a big black thundercloud seems uncertain whether to launch its floods and lightnings here and now or postpone them a bit till there and then. The swinging from side to side stopped altogether and the voice modulated from threatening rasp to modest roar.

'Yeah, well, I just saw a gap, know what I mean, and I threw that first left and the gap got bigger, yeah, so I chucked in another couple and set him up to finish the job.'

Joe would have preferred it if George hadn't felt the need to relax his grip with his left hand in order to ill.u.s.trate the hooks. True, the man's right hand seemed to have strength enough to hold his weight indefinitely, but if George should feel moved to demonstrate the combination with which he dispatched the unfortunate Bruiser, this diversionary tactic could prove counterproductive.

Time to change the focal point of the flattery.

'Nearly took his head off!' said Joe. 'But it wasn't just strength, though, no way, George. Your footwork, man, you've really been working on your footwork. Float like a b.u.t.terfly, sting like a Centurion tank, eh?'

To his disappointment, all the fulsome compliment earned Joe was a mandatory shake of the ankles.

'Sting like a bee, I think it is,' growled George. 'Ain't that right, Twitch? Sting like a bee.'

Keep it simple, Joe admonished himself. Real simple!

Another head appeared over the balcony rail. This was a smaller head and it only came up to George's shoulder. The features were indistinguishable, but the way it jerked to the side from time to time as if dislodging a troublesome insect was a giveaway.

This was the watcher outside Ram Ray's and the Hole.

Twitch. What else would he be called?

'Yeah, like a bee, George,' agreed Twitch. 'Listen, George, mebbe you should pull him up. He slips, we're all in s.h.i.+t, you dig?'

Joe fell in love with Twitch. Here was a real gem, a man of sense and sensibility who appreciated that while the odd body plummeting from the seventh floor might be regarded as a natural hazard in neighbouring Hermsp.r.o.ng, here in well-regulated Ra.s.selas it could provoke complaint and investigation.

George seemed unconcerned.

'He ain't gonna slip,' he declared rea.s.suringly. Then spoilt it by adding, 'He hits that pavement, it's 'cos I let the motherf.u.c.ker drop.'

By now Joe had woken enough to be getting his head around what was happening here.

It was Eloise. Distracted by their break-up, George had set his minion Twitch on to watch Eloise. And what had he seen?

Oh shoot! thought Joe.

He'd seen Eloise, the girl of George's dreams, with her scantily clad body pressed close against Joe Sixsmith's, her mouth feasting on his, and he'd seen it twice in one day. Not only that, Twitch had probably been using that phone he was playing with to take photos.

He felt he could put things right if only he could talk to George face to face instead of face to foot.

The one good thing about being upside down was that all that blood draining into his brain seemed to be speeding up his intellectual processes. For instance it was clear to him now that the young woman must also have spotted Twitch lurking, and far from being overcome by a desire to explore his manly body, the two close embraces had just been her way of winding up George in absentia.

All he had to do was share this insight.

He called, 'George, I can explain about Eloise ...'

It was a mistake. The sound of the girl's name from the unhallowed lips of her molester clearly brought the Jura.s.sic mists rising once more and Joe felt himself swung so violently that if he'd been released at either extremity of the arc, he would have landed twenty or thirty feet from the target point he'd focused on before.

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