Gay Phoenix (8 page)

The hideous danger inherent in all this was patent to Povey at once. For might not the police at any moment swoop down on such villainy, Povey himself fall into their net, and a situation result in which he could clear himself of suspicion and resolve absurd misapprehension only by submitting to the most searching inquisition? And there wasn’t, perhaps, alive in England at that moment a single man who could less afford to find himself in such a position!

His first impulse was simply to jump up and bolt – literally fleeing, as it were, this risk of guilt by association. He controlled himself, however, and in a further moment the fuller, the positively weird, strangeness of his position came home to him. This gang – or whatever it was to be called – was itself on the brink of forming against Butter just that sort of lethal design which he himself – the detected and unmasked Arthur Povey – had been perpending! And it was against an unsuspecting, and therefore utterly vulnerable, Butter. Povey was certain of this. As far as those ex-associates and fellow-villains were concerned, Butter, for reasons best known to himself, believed himself to be entirely in the clear. No hunted man would have addressed himself so blithely to a new quarry (Arthur Povey, to wit) had he the slightest sensation of that hot breath on his own neck. It was only Povey that Butter would be on his guard against.

The possibilities were so enormous that Povey felt it almost necessary to spread his arms wide to grasp them to the full. And time – something like lightning speed – constituted the essence of his opportunity. This disgusting thug’s absurd blunder in taking him for a member of the pack couldn’t survive long undetected. He had been mistaken for somebody who was to turn up, to join in the sinister operation, on the following day. So a tremendous
tour de force
was required. Just contrive that, and these timely emanations from an underworld would do his job for him.

‘Then I’m afraid that curtains for Butter it is.’

Povey found that he had produced these words without the slightest idea of how he was to follow them up. Yet his only difficulty in uttering them had been occasioned merely by a fastidious dislike of low language. They were a deliberate challenge to his own powers of improvisation and invention. And with them he had burnt his boats. It had become instantly impossible for him to withdraw from his exposed situation with some vague words about a mistaken identity. But what on earth was he to say next?

Fortunately his ferocious companion seemed for the moment to expect nothing further in the way of verbal communication. He sat back on his chair so violently that it creaked ominously beneath the strain, and then slapped his thigh with such vigour that several people glanced at him disapprovingly from the surrounding tables. His facial expression, too, had become alarming, since it had contorted itself into lines expressive of naked sadistic anticipation. It was plain that he was delighted by what he had heard, and that he very distinctly had it in for Butter, regardless of Butter’s present degree of proven unreliability. Povey – who had never associated with any species of criminal, barring a few discreet swindlers in the upper and middle reaches of society – had to confess to himself that he was almost as scared of this potential ally as he was of his acknowledged adversary, the too well-informed Butter. If he didn’t now play his cards well (and swiftly) he might find himself between the devil and the deep sea.

‘It’s that bloody big reward,’ the ferocious man said with disgust. ‘There ought to be a law against such things. Banks, insurance companies: they’d buy your own brother off you without a blush. Shameful, it is. Playing on human frailty. And downright bribery, with good public money passing on the quiet. You wouldn’t believe.’ The ferocious man was now speaking on a note of quiet bitterness. ‘Creating snouts the length and breadth of the land. Snouts under your bleeding bed. Or between the sheets with you. Your own mother may be a bloody grass.’

‘It’s a shocking thing,’ Povey said. This seemed a perfectly safe and acceptable comment, even if it was a little on the mild side.

‘Just that. Creates distrust, you might say. It’s that offer of £10,000 he’s after?’

‘It’s the £10,000. He named the sum.’ Povey considered this mendacious statement. ‘Foolhardy of him,’ he added.

‘You’re telling me. Bloody nitwitted thing to come out with.’

‘Yes, wasn’t it? But it’s vanity, you know. That’s the downfall of all those small fry. Vanity. Can’t resist making a big mouth about something.’

‘That’s it.’ The ferocious man nodded sagely. But then a glance of what might almost have been called dim suspicion appeared on his face. ‘Say!’ he said. ‘How you get this out of Butter?’

‘Oh, I got into talk with him. Earlier this evening, it was.’

‘So you did.’ The ferocious man was impressed. ‘I saw you at it. Quick work. So what?’

‘I got him on to his work here. A pretty low-class job. Pay’s dirt, he said. He shifts dirt and he earns dirt. But he’s had enough, he says. There’s money waiting for him when he cares to ask for it. And for no more than a bit of information he happens to carry round in his head.’

‘Cor! Did he name the bank?’

‘No, no. It was all no more than hints and mutterings. But I put two and two together. That was what I’m here for.’

‘True enough.’ The ferocious man nodded approvingly. ‘And you think he might decide to cough up fairly soon?’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow
!’ The ferocious man turned pale, and at the same time stiffened in his chair. ‘He told you
that
?’

‘Tomorrow as ever is,’ he said, ‘he’s going to I knew who.’

‘The fuzz?’

‘I knew who. Those were his words.’ Povey paused on this pedantic precision. ‘I suppose we know what to make of them.’

‘You’re telling me.’ The ferocious man – who now didn’t look at all ferocious – gulped down the remainder of his brandy and dropped his half-smoked cigar into an ashtray. He was in a panic – which was just as well for Povey’s crazy deception. This particular member of the gang (Povey felt) was almost unbelievably thick. There must be others who would be more capable of assessing the situation coolly – or who would merely and simply know that Povey wasn’t the man he was masquerading as. But now nobody must be given an opportunity to reflect. Imparting a sustained momentum to the affair was the single essential thing. And the thick man’s behaviour was promising. He had jumped to his feet.

‘Get on the blower,’ he said in an agitated mutter. ‘Get instructions. That’s what I’ve to do. No time to lose, and no mistake. Found drowned in the morning – that’s what Butter will have to be, if you ask me. Or a brick fallen on him. Or collided with a bus. Or tumbled downstairs after words passing with a tart.’

‘Well, then – get along, man, and stop jabbering.’

‘Yes, that’s right.’ The ferocious man had become humble and bewildered. ‘Thanks, mate. I’ll go.’

‘And mention, by the way, that I have another date with Butter in inside half an hour.’

‘What’s that?’ The incompetent criminal whom a benign Providence had tossed in Povey’s way had taken his first hurried steps from the restaurant. But now he halted, turned round, and stared. ‘You’re seeing him again?’

‘Yes, for a drink at the Cock and Bottle. You must know the Cock and Bottle; it’s that pub opposite the pier. Listen!’ Povey seemed to have been struck by a sudden idea. ‘A nice lonely place by now, that pier will be. So just suggest to them that found drowned’s the thing. Get you a good mark with the bosses, old boy.’

‘Butter could be got out there?’ The ferocious man was open-mouthed.

‘Leave that to me.’ Povey glanced at his watch. ‘An hour from now, he’ll have taken a toddle to the end of it.’

‘The end of
him
, that will be, if you can work it.’ The ferocious man was enormously impressed. ‘But are you sure, mate? Can’t afford a boss-shot, can we? Put the bastard on his guard and he’ll be with the bloody fuzz before anybody can take another swipe at him.’

‘Leave it to me, I say.’ Povey was impatient. ‘I’ve been there before, haven’t I?’

‘On that pier? How that help you?’

‘On this kind of job, you idiot. These assignments are my line, aren’t they? Frig off to that blower, for Christ’s sake.’

Arthur Povey, although scarcely to be described as a man of unimpaired moral sensibility, enunciated these coarse and blasphemous words not without effort.

He was chuckling to himself, however, before this imbecile thug had vanished from the restaurant. He felt that he was more than halfway home.

He was less sure of himself by the time he reached the Cock and Bottle. It was a most respectable-looking little pub, which somehow made the whole crazy project seem crazier still. The trap – the other end of the trap – was no doubt being baited now. But how on earth was he to bring off his part of this bizarrely improvised homicide? He had already decided that his chance of persuading Butter to take a stroll along a deserted pier with him was nil. And now he found that he hadn’t an idea in his head. He simply had to play the thing off the cuff. It had perhaps been a mistake to drink almost the whole of that bottle of claret. On top of a couple of dry martinis it had been a bit much. No doubt it had helped him in his encounter with that horrible thickie, had given him just the extra punch needed to push that first vital manoeuvre through. But the trouble with alcoholically boosted cunning was that it treacherously faded, more often than not, at just the wrong moment. He suddenly remembered with increased misgiving that he had drunk a companionable brandy as well. So here was a minor problem dead in front of him: just what, if anything, it would be judicious to recharge the battery with now.

And he knew there was another problem, although he found it hard to pin down. Macbeth on the blasted heath, advised by the Weird Sister to be bloody, bold and resolute, must have felt rather as he was feeling now, must have wondered whether any of these qualities was his in a measure quite adequate to the job on hand. That was it. He couldn’t quite convince himself that treacherous murder was exactly his line. In fantasy at times, yes. But he had reached middle age without practical experience of any such definitive violence. He braced himself, and shoved open a swing door. Butter – hopefully the doomed Butter – was sitting in a secluded corner of the saloon bar, with what looked like a double whisky in front of him. Povey took a grim resolution to try a double whisky too.

‘So now we can have our chat,’ Butter said. ‘A quiet chat, man to man. No more of that guest and menial stuff. It’s confusing.’

‘I quite agree.’ Povey said this amiably enough. For one thing, if he was to get Butter effectively on the spot, he must begin by successfully chatting him up. But another factor was at work in his relaxed tone. At their first encounter he had regarded Butter in the nakedness of his blackmailing design as a kind of
ne plus ultra
of wickedness, and he had been further offended by the insolent manner the fellow had intermittently assumed. But since then he had suffered his encounter with that ferocious nameless thug, and in comparison with
him
Butter appeared almost civilized. Butter was also – and here again he differed markedly from that other scoundrel – as clever as they come. Povey admired cleverness. As a virtually disinherited younger brother, it had been for a long time his own sole asset. Still, all this didn’t alter the basic situation.
Delenda est
Butter
. Butter must be rubbed out. The prospect of Butter permanently on his back was intolerable.

‘I quite agree,’ Povey reiterated, returning to their retired corner with his double whisky. ‘And I’ve no doubt, my dear chap, that we can come to an arrangement – an accommodation.’

‘Now you’re talking turkey.’ Butter nodded approvingly. ‘No need for you and me to fall out. Let there be frankness between us, I say. That brother of yours, now. I can’t say I ever much cared for him. Hoity-toity, he was. I’m the cream of the cream and you’re the
hoi polloi
was his line. Even when you were using your wits to get him off a licking. He didn’t care for a licking, young Master Charles didn’t. Not the sort to bend over with a stiff upper lip, was he? Yellow, I’d call son-and-heir Charles.’

‘Definitely,’ Povey said. These remarks, which had reference to certain barbaric simplicities of discipline in the ancestral Povey home, were not ungrateful to him.

‘And lost at sea! Smart, that was. You tumbled him in, did you?’

Arthur Povey was startled by this frank query. For one thing, it was astutely within the target area, although in fact it had been a corpse that Povey had committed to the deep. For another thing, there was a striking dramatic irony in the suggestion. Tumbling in was what now awaited Butter himself.

‘Not exactly,’ Povey said. ‘Just put it that I didn’t mourn him. And it’s my turn to ask a question now. Man to man means turn about, wouldn’t you say? So tell me, Butter. You’re a hardened crook, aren’t you? A crook down on his luck.’

‘I am that I am.’

This reply, whether Biblical or Shakespearian in its reference, was again startling. It suggested that Butter, although doubtless of a lowly and inconsiderable generation, was something of a reading man.

‘And at the moment a crook on the run?’ Povey suggested. ‘Hiding in that hotel from other crooks.’

‘No, no – nothing of that kind.’ Butter’s tone was entirely confident. ‘I’ve had unfortunate connections, I’m free to own. But no trouble in that quarter now. Your partner carries no liabilities of that sort, Master Arthur. Forgotten about, and nobody gunning for him, believe me.’

‘I’m delighted to hear it.’ Povey offered this comment carefully without surprise or emphasis. That Butter in this regard inhabited a fool’s paradise was an important point clarified and to be passed over lightly. ‘But you haven’t exactly been lining your pocket lately? Not much on the way of working capital in the bank?’

‘Correct.’

‘Well, I can see to that. I’m a reasonable man. You’ve had a stroke of luck stumbling on me in this way. I acknowledge it.’