Gun Street Girl (25 page)

‘How did you know?'

‘I didn't for sure, not until I found this.' I took the piece of paper I had found in the file out of my shirt pocket with the fingers of my left hand. ‘You were very thorough. Too thorough, if anything, but you missed this. I went through Catherine's papers last night. The papers she brought from Australia. After all the trouble you went to to supply her with all the right credentials, I don't think anyone had ever gone through them before, or else they might have seen that there were too many things missing for someone who kept their whole life in a box. There were no photographs in that file, none at all. Up until her passport was issued, she didn't have one photograph. Not one in twenty-one years. A girl who was supposed to have attended drama school. I couldn't believe it. Even when she told me she'd only gone for a couple of terms, I still couldn't believe it. And there were no dental records. She must have been to the dentist at some time. And nothing in her own handwriting, not after she was a child. But the clincher was this.' I held up the paper. ‘It was in a medical folder, pushed right down. I almost didn't see it myself.'

‘What is it?' asked Lorimar, and his voice sounded weary and thin as a reed.

‘A bill from a private hospital in Melbourne. A bill for an operation on Catherine Bennett. Dated 1969 when she was fourteen. A bill for the removal of her appendix. Now I know these surgeons are good, but not that good. I slept with that woman the night before last.' And I remembered her sweet belly, covered with a sheen of sweat as she pushed it into my face to be kissed. Apart from the indentation of her navel, from the rib cage to the triangle of curly blonde hair between her legs, her body had been as flat and white and smooth as if the skin had been airbrushed. ‘She's never had an appendectomy, not on this planet,' I said.

The ginger man looked at Lorimar. ‘You stupid old fool. I don't know why I ever listened to you. You told me it would be easy. I might have known you'd fuck it up.' And he made as if to hit Lorimar.

‘Stand still or I swear I'll kill you.' I said. ‘I haven't forgotten what you did to Leee.'

‘You won't kill me,' said the ginger man.

‘Won't I? Why do you think she got Elizabeth to hire me?'

His eyes narrowed. ‘Is that why you're here?'

‘No,' I said. ‘I don't think you understand why I'm here.' I thought again of the lonely child with her book of scraps. ‘Let's just say I wanted to see your face when you realised that you weren't going to get any of the money.'

He spat on the ground, but said nothing.

‘Did you kill her?' I asked Lorimar again.

‘It was her own fault.' He was almost pleading. ‘You don't understand. She wouldn't have anything to do with Pike. In the end she hated him as much as Joanna did. I told her she could have a good life with him in England, but she didn't want to know. She preferred hooking on the streets. That was where I found her again. She was diseased and strung out on speedballs, but she still wouldn't take the money he left for her.'

‘You got her to change her mind.'

‘I did,' said the ginger man, and looked well pleased with the memory.

‘You're a fucking scumbag,' I said.

The ginger man smirked but said nothing. Scumbag was probably a compliment where he came from.

‘You still haven't answered my question, Lorimar. I won't ask you again. Did you kill her?'

‘She would have been dead anyway within a few months,' said Lorimar.

‘So you did.' I suddenly felt very old.

‘He helped her on her way,' said the ginger man. ‘Let's put it that way.'

I did feel like killing all three of them, there and then, but I'd come that far and I wanted to know a little more. ‘So who's that in there?' I nodded over at the Mercedes.

‘A girl we knew,' said Lorimar.

‘And what did you have on her?'

‘She owed money. She was broke. She was glad to do it. She looked a lot like Catherine, same hair, same eyes. As for the photographs, you're right. Our girl just didn't have any, none that fitted in with being Catherine Bennett.' He looked first at me and then at the ginger man. ‘How was I supposed to know he'd sleep with her?' The ginger man looked at Lorimar like death.

‘So who is she?' I asked.

‘Who cares?' said the ginger man. ‘Just another cunt.'

‘She called herself an actress,' said Lorimar. ‘But she was lousy. I don't think she ever got a part.'

‘She can't have been that bad,' I said. ‘She took everyone in when she got here. You took a hell of a risk.'

‘It was a hell of a prize,' said Lorimar.

My right hand was getting tired and cramped from holding the heavy pistol and I swapped it to my left. ‘Did she know you'd killed the real Catherine?'

‘What do you think?' asked Lorimar.

‘And what about Robert Pike?' I asked. ‘Did you help him on his way too?'

‘I told him the truth about her, and threatened to make it public,' said Lorimar. ‘I suppose he just couldn't face losing her twice. Or maybe he couldn't stand to be made a fool of.'

I remembered then what I had said about suicides to Elizabeth back in my office.

‘But why? You had a good deal going.'

‘She stopped paying us,' he said. ‘In the end I think she really believed she was his daughter.'

‘I am,' said Catherine.

In all the excitement no one had seen her get silently out of the Mercedes. In the bright daylight she looked a lot older and more worn than I remembered. Her dress was wrinkled and dirty and had sweat stains under the arms, and her bright hair had turned dull and brassy. She had lost a shoe and leant against the car for balance. ‘You killed my daddy,' she said to Lorimar, and I saw the sun reflect off the object she held in both hands. Somewhere in the back of the car she had found a screwdriver. She tottered towards him, one high heel on, one off, and drove the shank of the tool two-handed up into his throat, up through his mouth and into his brain. Blood spurted from his nose and from between his lips and spattered down the front of her already ruined dress.

Lorimar clutched at the brightly coloured plastic handle that protruded from just above his adam's apple and tried to say something. But his voice was ruined and what emerged was something between a scream and a sigh. He lost his balance and fell back onto the ground. As he hit the yellow dust, it puffed up around him and settled on his body and the pool of red that pumped from his neck and soaked the earth.

I looked into Catherine's eyes and in that split second knew that since I had seen her last she had gone through the barrier that separates the mad from the sane, and I doubted if she could ever return.

The ginger man took his chance and dived for his gun. As if on cue, the wide man took off for the clump of weed where his had ended up. I snapped off a shot at the ginger man and missed by a mile – I could never shoot lefthanded. The echo from the shot rang round the building site, bouncing back off every surface until it sounded like a hundred shots. I tossed the gun back to my right and fired double action at him again, and missed again. He had his gun and rolled behind the protection of the Rolls's bonnet.

I fired at the wide man's back and saw a puff of dust flower on the back of his jacket, high up on the left side. But he kept running and slid down beside the breeze blocks and I knew I'd done little serious damage. The ginger man popped up from his cover and pulled the trigger of his Beretta. I felt as if someone had clobbered me on the side of my head with a baseball bat. I dropped to the ground and rolled behind what cover the empty suitcase provided and hugged the dirt like it was a long-lost lover I hadn't seen for years. I saw blood dripping from my head onto the ground and heard and felt two more bullets tear into the case as he fired at me again and again.

When I'd been hit I'd lost my gun, and I thought my time had come, when suddenly from behind me I heard a voice, amplified by a loud hailer, echo around the site. It seemed to come from behind me and to the right, but I couldn't be sure. ‘Armed police, throw down your weapons,' the voice ordered. And right then I knew what a condemned man feels like as a last-minute reprieve arrives at the place of execution, when the black hood is on and the hangman is about to spring the trap door.

The wide man found his gun and stood and aimed it in the direction that the amplified voice had come from. He fired and the silenced pistol kicked in his grip with a sound like a muted hand clap. Louder shots came from behind me and the wide man stepped back with a look of surprise on his face, dropped his gun, folded to the ground, kicked his feet for a few moments and went very still. The ginger man leapt from behind the car and grabbed Catherine. Holding her in front of him as a shield, he walked backwards, dragging her as he went, past the Mercedes and towards one of the scaffold-covered buildings. As soon as he touched her, the police fire stopped.

I cleared my head with a shake that sprayed blood down my shirt and scrambled for the Taurus. Endesleigh came running round the back of the Rolls, gun in hand, closely followed by Sutherland. Endesleigh ducked down and threw me back against the side of the car. ‘Shithead,' he said. ‘What the fuck do you think you're playing at?'

I sat and looked at him in a bemused fashion. Maybe not bemused, maybe stupid. Meanwhile Sutherland ran over to Lorimar, took one look and shook his head. He crabbed across the dirt to the wide man, picked up his Beretta, stashed it in one of his many pockets and touched the wide man's throat. He came back to where Endesleigh and I were waiting. ‘Both gone, guv,' he said.

‘Call it in,' said Endesleigh. ‘And make sure that ginger-headed bastard doesn't get away. With or without the woman, but particularly with.'

Sutherland nodded and loped off without a second glance at me.

‘How did you know … ?' I asked at length.

‘We had a man in Curzon Street all night. While I was waiting for you to call, he saw you drive away in this thing.' Endesleigh rapped on the side of the Rolls-Royce. ‘And five minutes later I get a call from David Pike screaming blue bloody murder that you'd locked him in his own safe, stolen a gun and the car, beaten up his chauffeur, left the ransom money and pissed off God knows where. Why didn't you call me like we arranged?'

‘I knew it was going to get heavy.'

‘You put Catherine Pike's life in danger. Luckily our man followed you, and had the nous to get directly on to me.'

‘She's not Catherine Pike,' I said. ‘Catherine Pike is dead. She's been dead for years, poor cow. Lorimar, or one of his little firm, did for her when she wouldn't play ball and come over here and scam Sir Robert. They disposed of the body so it couldn't be identified and put in a ringer. Now she's flipped out. She killed Lorimar. She practised a little DIY on his vocal chords.'

Endesleigh looked over at Lorimar's body. ‘Jesus.'

‘That's why I clobbered Vincent. There was no kidnap. He delivered her on a plate.'

‘You're bleeding,' said Endesleigh.

Tell me something I don't know, I thought. I put my hand gingerly to the side of my head and it came away red with fresh blood. ‘I bet you passed all your observation tests at Scouts,' I said as dryly as I could. I stood up and leaned into the open door of the Rolls, opened the glove compartment and found a pack of tissues. I looked in the mirror and saw that the bullet from the ginger man's gun had nicked a quarter-inch piece out of my right ear lobe. I stuck a tissue to it to stem the flow and said to Endesleigh, ‘We're wasting time.'

‘We nothing. This is police business. You're hurt, and should be under arrest. You stay here.'

‘Not on your life. Where you go, I go. I'm in on this until the finish.'

He thought about it for a second. ‘Come on then,' he said. ‘But if I get fired I hope you offer me a partnership.'

‘Just say the word.'

He was off and running like a bloody racehorse and I had the greatest difficulty keeping up, although I wasn't going to let him know that. When we reached the building the ginger man was heading for when last seen, all I could see were black spots in front of my eyes, but I didn't disgrace myself by throwing up, although my breathing might have been a little on the ragged side.

‘They're up there, guv,' said Sergeant Sutherland who made a pointed display of ignoring me, much to Endesleigh's amusement.

‘Are you sure?' he asked.

‘Sure. Johnno and Bill saw them go in and they haven't come out.'

‘I'm going up,' said Endesleigh. ‘Who else is here?'

‘Nobody, thanks to him,' replied Sutherland, and I think he meant me. ‘But there's more on the way.'

‘Don't endanger the woman,' said Endesleigh. ‘I don't want anyone taking pot shots if she's within five yards of the ginger bloke.'

‘Do you want anyone to climb the scaffolding on the outside?'

Endesleigh thought about it. ‘No,' he said. ‘If there's too many of us up there, we'll end up shooting at each other. You lot stay down here and wait for the rest. Perhaps he'll come down of his own accord.'

‘Fat chance,' said Sutherland.

‘And don't make a move until you hear from me.'

‘OK, guv.'

‘I'm coming with you,' I said.

‘I was afraid you'd say that. But I warn you, my first concern is the woman.'

‘Mine too.'

We went inside the building. It was a shell with floor and stairways in place but little else. The scaffolding was up so that outside work could be done. Because of the safety netting around the scaffolding, the interior of the building was cool and dark and green like the inside of a fish tank. There were two sets of stairs leading up, one at the front and one at the back of the building. I took the back.