The City Trap (13 page)

‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing?’

Des tried to lord it even more, feeling that there was some compensation for woe in being able to flaunt himself at the hard-faced cop.

‘Just get me DI Wilson, will you?’

‘Go fuck yourself.’

But Errol had already spotted Des and he came over. ‘How come you’re here, man?’

‘To this door a lead has brought me.’

‘Shit, you’d better come in.’

Des gave one final defiant smirk and then allowed himself to be ushered in where the big boys were.

Errol and Des stood in the overgrown back garden, the sun now lost behind a wall and the place busy with forensics.

‘Yeh, the rail on the middle landing there just gave way and she fell bout fifteen feet. Might’ve survived but for the brick yard and the serrated chimney pot she clonked her head
on.’

‘Jesus . . .’

‘Instant death.’

‘So was it an accident or what?’

‘Could’ve been, but there was blood on the sofa in her room and her phone line had been cut.’

‘Jesus . . .’

‘We’ve got a vague description of a guy hanging around, but nothing else as yet.’

‘You say it happened a couple of hours ago. Jesus, I could’ve been here then.’

‘Huh-uh, so why weren’t you?’

‘Fell asleep on the job.’

Des had almost been wondering what the job was. Farting around with nothing but a scrap of a photo and Claudette’s death seeming like ancient history. But this development, this was a
shock; it was a justification he didn’t want.

‘Come on then, Des, explain your angle.’

‘Jesus . . .’ Des sighed and felt the ache in his head even more.

‘That’s the fourth time you’ve said that, man. Could you, you know, try another word?’

‘Daytime drinking, Errol, it’s a . . .’ Des stopped himself saying ‘killer’ and then got out his scrap of photo.

‘It’s just an arse, I know, but I found this at Gary’s wrecked pad and thought maybe that him and Claudette could’ve been into porn or blackmail, so I was checking out
possible snapshotters and this woman’s name comes up.’

‘Jesus . . .’

‘Errol!’

‘No, what I mean, this woman had her darkroom done over a while back, had a lot of stuff nicked. One of the DCs remembers coming here, said it was a nasty break-in, a lot of damage and all
of her neg boxes gone.’

‘Sod it, Errol, is this fitting into place? Is it me or what?’

‘It could still be a coincidence, but I reckon we should get together on this quick.’

‘Who found the body?’

‘A guy called Jerry Coton. Lives in the top flat. He was cut up pretty rough and couldn’t tell us much. Looked pretty stoned to me.’

‘Yeh, who wouldn’t want to be?’

‘With that guy it’s probably permanent.’

‘Seems sane enough to me.’

‘You’re not sounding too good, Des.’ Errol narrowed his eyes and gave Des a once-over. ‘I mean, are you in control of this situation? How are you handling
Bertha?’

‘I don’t reckon I know, Errol. Whatever happens is about as far as it goes.’

* * *

There was a picture of Mount Everest next to the Cute of the Month. That was Ross for you, a cute cunt and a big tit of a mountain. Of course, Ross would put it in a more
‘refined’ way: ‘A peak of achievement in the glamour business.’ Scobie secretly scowled. What a tosser! The guy was just a piece of gutter shit like the rest of us. Just
because he read a dictionary once doesn’t change fuck all. It’s only a line of guff anyway for the men in suits but he seems to think he can pull the same shit with everyone.

‘Are you listening to me, Scobie?’

‘Sure.’

‘I am really trying to get it into your thick skull that I am not pleased.’

‘I got it the first time.’

‘I don’t know if you did. Two-inch thick – that or you’re just pretending to be dim.’

‘Come on –’

‘No, you – Jesus, think I’ll get Gus to bring the drill in – look, final last time. I did not tell you to fuck Claudette, I told you she needed to go away
permanently.’

‘So what’s it matter?’

‘What’s it matter? It matters because they’ve got your genetic fingerprint. That means they’ve got you one hundred plus per cent for doing Claudette and that means
they’ve most likely got me.’

‘They don’t know anything.’

‘Right. Maybe. So then what happens? I tell you to put the shits up this photographer bitch and she ends up dead, and no doubt screwed too. What’s the matter? Are you not getting any
or something? Are you losing touch with reality?’

‘No! The fuck no! I never touched her! She was the nutty one. One minute rigid as a rock, the next dashing off like a mad animal. There was nothing the fuck I could do about it.’

‘It’s an almighty mess, Scobie, it really is. Two deaths will mean four times the effort by the police and that means heat for me and diarrhoea for some of my clients!’

Words, his bleeding mouth’s got the runs! What an arsehole! Scobie thought. The cops will never make a connection anyway. A tart gets bumped off and a drugged up hippie falls off a fire
escape; big bloody deal. Scobie continued to seethe quietly at the bollocking his boss was laying out. He stared at the missing finger and began to imagine slicing off the rest of them. The joke
was that Ross lost his finger while touching up a Nepalese whore who had a cunt like a clam. The truth was supposed to be that a rabid dog did the business, which explained why Ross himself was a
nutter and liable to do nasty things. But Scobie had other ideas. Years of wanking had worn it down, that was one. Another? The guy was talking so much one time that he bit it off himself without
even knowing it.

* * *

No matter how many tart-ups it had, the Crown always ended up looking like a dive. The landlord, a West Indian old-timer, didn’t really give two shits for what the place
looked like. ‘Back-a-yard dem have bleedin tin hut wid tea chest fi sit pon. A pub, it a drinkin place. Who care what it look like?’ he’d say. So Reuben just left the fingermarks
and beer stains alone. Posters of past events became permanent, as did the felt-tip exhortations to Jah, long forgotten posses and the bloodclaat pros from down the road. Only the bottles of booze
and the well-worn bar sparkled, as did the big screen satellite TV that flooded the ceiling blue and silver. Jerry and Frederick eased into a corner away from the old men who pumped fruit machines
and slapped their way through endless dominoes. Frederick set the tone of the night by lining them both up with a pint of bitter and a large white rum. The big screen that hung safely from the
ceiling was showing some Stateside boxing match. Nobody seemed bothered with it; all the intercourse of noise was rooted to the floor.

‘You feelin a bit better now, man?’

‘I d-don’t know . . .’

‘Jus let it ride, man. Nuttin else much you can do but get piss and let it ride.’

Jerry nodded and lit up a fresh fag from the butt of his old one. His face was grey and sweat-flecked, his lips were trembling and he didn’t dare to try to keep his fingers still. But
though he found it hard to utter more than two words at a go, he was pleased that Frederick had taken him in tow. Earlier, at the Lime Tree, he had sat alone looking down into a deep pit where Mary
lay bloody and smashed. He couldn’t see anything else, couldn’t envisage ever closing his eyes and was scared to try to think or feel. But old grey Frederick had come along with
soothing words and a fatherly arm to guide him into oblivion. The Crown was the third pub of the night.

The movement of booze began to increase. The bitters sank to halves but the rums began to rise in their glasses. The pub had become more crowded and the noise of revelry flooded in.
Frederick’s tales of female conquests soon got lost in the blather. Jerry’s eyes began to glaze and stare blankly at other guys cackling in competition with each other. Then his eyes
drifted to the screen in the sky and the heavy sparring that took place there. It wasn’t long before Jerry was in there with the punches, as if that was a way to exorcize his pain. Willing on
thuds to the body and wincing at the slow-mo crunch of punches replayed. The whole situation seemed like a big spar. All the guys in the bar were fighting with words and gestures. The stylized slap
of a domino was a provocation to war. Everyone was getting frigging worked up; the whole world was at each other’s throats, dancing up and down with the rituals of the fight. Jerry felt like
standing up and getting into a boxing pose.

‘What’s your problem, huh? Let me sock you with this shit! Mary’s dead, you bastard, her skull’s all smashed in!’ he wanted to shout. But Jerry remained a
pale-faced mute, a sad case in a bar of black revelry. Frederick clamped a large hand on Jerry’s shoulder and pointed across the bar.

‘It a Friday night. The girls dem a tekkin break from work.’

There was Ida, Sandy and there was Colette. The three women squeezed around Jerry and Frederick and suddenly the atmosphere changed. Well-cushioned thighs and brazen boobs pushed out and the
raucous chat that had previously jarred was dispelled to the far reaches of the room. Frederick did the intros as he sneakily rolled a spliff on his knees.

‘Social workers of the world, ennit, sisters?’

‘Too right, Fred,’ the big-shouldered Ida replied. ‘There ain’t a man’s problems we don’t fix.’

‘Fuck the prisons, eh, jus gi em lots a pussy.’

‘Yeh, well we ain’t working at the mo, Fred, so leave it out, eh.’

‘Yeh, you is right, sis.’

‘So how’s it goin with you, old man? How’s the weary bones an that dreaded arthritis?’

‘No way you shoulda mention dat. It like the weather, Ida, which in dis country is none at all good. Why you tink me a spliff up all the time?’

‘Huh, that’s just an excuse to get high and you know it. You wanna get into training, old man. That’s what we do, ain’t it, Sandy?’

Ida raised her arm to show off her biceps. She nudged Sandy as she did so.

‘Leave off, Ida!’

‘Blimey!’ Ida turned back to Frederick. ‘She had a real slimebag earlier on. We had to help her out. Jesus, you need to be fit.’

‘Well you know what happen to Claudette.’

‘Yeh. But it forgettin time now, ain’t it? Time for fun, eh?’

‘Too, too right.’

As Ida spoke, Jerry found himself looking at her nutbrown hands and the eight silver rings that adorned them. One had a skull on it. Jerry couldn’t stop staring and suddenly felt his
stomach churn. The sight of Mary’s bloody head came looming. And then another hand reached out and touched Jerry’s. It belonged to Colette, the one with the ginger curls.

‘You all right?’

‘J-Just about.’

‘You feelin sick?’

‘B-Badly.’

Colette pouted her lips and frowned. ‘Now I’m here it ain’t allowed.’

She smiled, shoved a fag in Jerry’s mouth and suddenly the death’s head receded. The flow of drinks increased as the girls began to blow hard-earned money. The laughter grew too, the
girls taking the piss out of punters, talking telly and movies and most of all weighing the options of where they’d most like to be – Spain, Greece, LA, Orlando – it looked like
Florida would win hands down.

‘Stop dis dreamin!’ Frederick shouted. ‘The night it a young, the pub a closin an we should go party elsewhere.’

‘Why not your yard, Fred?’ Ida bawled.

‘Oh no, me gotta much better idea.’

It was the end house of a condemned row. Looking out of a side window, all Jerry could see were dark humps of earth and brick rubble. The broken terrain seemed to last for
ever, only ceasing, it seemed, at far-off lights in some other part of the city. The window was in the hall, a place a few precious decibels quieter than the rest of the blues party, where rap and
reggae thundered. Heavy bass pounded into the walls and foundations, and then went off into the bowels of the earth. Jerry could see the house being prematurely demolished by the end of the
night.

‘Women dem a bitches, man. Dem play up like queens an mek man pay.’

‘Ugh?’

Jerry was propping up a wall in the hall with a Red Stripe and a solid vibration up his spine. This guy Wishbone was talking. He was a kind of travelling salesman with a big bag full of dope,
chocolate bars and overpriced fags.

‘We the hunters man, an women, dey is creation, ennit? Pickneys an dumplins an sweet-scented fannies, right?’

‘Er . . . right.’

‘Right, an we out in the bleedin jungle gettin cut up and fuck up an strung way out, an all we friggin want, man, when we get back fi yard is a lickle bit a sweet –’ Wishbone
rubbed his fingers under Jerry’s nose.

‘Yeh, r-right . . .’

‘Right, an do we get it? No fuckin way, man, less we kiss dem friggin feet firs!’

Jerry didn’t know what the guy was on about or how come he was talking of sweet-scented fannies. Frederick had drifted off some time ago to rub-a-dub with the off-duty whores. He could see
them grooving and soothing away the sweat of their labour with crackling bush and the rhythms of Africa. Maybe Frederick had said to the guys that Jerry was mourning or maybe it was his sad
drooling eyes that Wishbone noticed as Jerry watched tight pants throb and hanging cleavages drip with sweat.

‘But me don’t tek none a dat now. Me mek sure me skirt a one who know me is the boss!’

Wishbone showed a gold tooth and then pushed a gold knuckle up towards Jerry’s eyes. All he could do was grin. Copious amounts of dope and pummelling sounds had moulded him into a kind of
fluid oblivion, a throbbing organism that just was, whatever went on around him. And that was good because the pain had gone. There was nothing but the numb beat, the uncomplicated pulse that went
on and on.

14

The Mirpur Gardens wasn’t exactly teeming with life. Only four others, two couples, sat up front by the plate glass window, their faces washed green by the restaurant
sign. Within the rest of the room, surrounded by the gold-embossed flock of rose and vine, there was just one other person. Des McGinlay mopped up the last of his balti with a cold remnant of naan.
The tables were covered with plum-coloured cloths and had sheets of glass on top. In the reflection of one, Des could see the cold cabinet with its trays of sweets and the disembodied, upside-down
head of Zafeer. A disconcerting view that seemed to sum up how uncomfortable he felt. Sweat dappled his brow, a brow that felt taut as though ratcheted from behind. And the floral walls, they
twitched and swirled in the corners of his tired eyes. Des gripped the edges of the table. The room, dimly lit, suddenly seemed to elongate and Zafeer, eyes almost closed, appeared twenty yards
away, a shrivelled nut of a head bathed in the green neon glow. Des knew he had to move. He eased his way over to the counter. He paid the bill, fumblingly, cash clattering on glass, with
Zafeer’s bleary eyes looking out into the night for mathematical inspiration. It was a transaction of sorts, though the details seemed arbitrary. Des didn’t mind; a hollow
‘Cheers’ and he was out into the cool night air.