Get Carter (17 page)

I turned from the foot of the stairs and walked quickly down the hall and pushed the kitchen door wide open. It opened inwards. The door bumped against whoever it was who’d begun to open it. I felt inside the doorway and flicked the light switch. There was a small scream. I yanked the door back and slammed it to behind me. My landlady was standing there trying to press herself into the wallpaper.
There was a bruise under her right eye. It was going to be quite a rainbow. She was wearing a long red dressing gown with a wafting white feather collar. She was holding a glass and a cigarette in her left hand and in her right hand she was holding an ornamental brass poker. She looked at me and I looked at her.

“Well,” I said. “What happened?”

She stopped looking at me and went over to the kitchen table. She picked up a bottle of brandy. It was good stuff. She poured some of the good stuff into her glass.

“They came back, didn’t they?”

She took a drink.

“One of them did. With two different fellers.”

“What happened?”

“What the Christ do you think happened?”

I didn’t say anything.

“They came for that bloke, didn’t they? They knew you wouldn’t be here. They thought it was all very funny.”

“All right,” I said. “So what happened? What did they do to Keith?”

“They took him with them. The one who was here before wasn’t very pleased with him.”

“What happened to you?”

She didn’t answer.

“Well?”

“Put it this way; you owe me for a new blouse.”

“You were lucky,” I said, lighting up. I looked round the kitchen. On the wall was a whitewood cabinet. I slid the glass door back and took out a cup. I went over to the table and sat down on a kitchen chair and poured myself a brandy.

“Is that it, then?” said my landlady.

I didn’t say anything.

“You don’t care, do you? They could have done anything.”

I didn’t say anything.

“And what about that lad? Aren’t you going to do anything about it?”

“Nothing I can do, is there?”

“What’ll they do to him?”

“Hard to say, offhand.”

I took a drink.

She rushed over to the kitchen door and pulled it open so that it banged on the kitchen wall.

“Get out,” she screamed. “Get out of my house.”

I took another drink. She began to cry.

“Bloody rotten sod, you are,” she said. “Who the hell do you think you are? They hurt me tonight. They bloody hurt me.”

“That’s nothing to what they did to my brother,” I said.

“And what are you going to do? Do it back to them?”

“That’s right.”

“You didn’t get very far tonight, did you?”

I didn’t answer.

“What happened? Did you murder the wrong man?”

“No I bloody didn’t so put a sock in it.”

“Oh, they were full of it when they came to get Thorpey. Thorpey really thought it was funny.”

“Shut up.”

“He was saying as how he’d been told to tell you Brumby’d sent him if they couldn’t manage you. Thorpey said he’d like to have seen Brumby’s face when you tackled him.”

“And why should Brumby fix me if four of them bastards couldn’t?”

“You’re missing the point. They were hoping you might fix Brumby. Kill him, with a bit of luck. They know you’re not the kind of bloke to ask questions first. Thorpey said it’d kill two birds with one stone. Get Brumby out of the way and you fixed for doing him at the same time. Thorpey’s waiting to hear what happened so he can phone somebody he knows at Cop Shop and tell him all about it.”

“Well, he’ll be disappointed, won’t he?”

“What happened? Was Brumby bigger than you expected?”

I said nothing.

“Bloody brave aren’t you with a little bloke like Thorpey.”

“Shut up.”

“Good job Keith was there to help you out earlier. Pity though, isn’t it, that you’re not there when he needs a hand.”

“Do you want something?”

“Oh, yes. You’d like that wouldn’t you?”

“No, but you might.”

She rushed over to me.

“Would you like to see the bruises?”

“Why? Do you want to show me?”

She hit me across the face. I hit her back. She hit me again. I stood up and took hold of her by the wrists and swung her against the wall. I let go of her before she connected and walked out of the kitchen and down the hall and began to go up the stairs. She ran out of the kitchen.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she screamed.

“To bed. Coming?” I said, not stopping.

She ran to the bottom of the stairs.

“You’ll get out! You’ll bloody well get out! If you don’t I’ll call the police.”

“Sure you will,” I said, going into the bedroom.

I went over to the bed and lifted the counterpane. I took the long parcel from underneath the bed and began to unwrap the newspapers. My landlady appeared in the doorway but I didn’t take any notice of her. She took a lot of notice of me when she saw I was unwrapping a shotgun. I broke the gun and took the box of cartridges from the hold-all and put two up the spout.

“What are you going to do with that?” she said.

“Protect my goods and chattels.”

“They won’t be back tonight? Will they?”

I snapped the gun together again.

“You never know,” I said.

“And you’d use that if they did?”

“Don’t be bloody silly. You only have to point one of these to get results.”

“Then why have you loaded it?”

“Somebody might think I was bluffing. I’d like to be certain I wasn’t.”

“Jesus,” she said wearily.

I leant the gun against the wall next to the bed and stretched out and closed my eyes. I heard my landlady walk over to the bedside table and pick up one of the cups and pour something into it.

“Why did they kill your brother?” she said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “And I don’t know who ‘they’ are either.”

“Didn’t Thorpey have anything to do with it then?”

“I very much doubt it. He wouldn’t have the nerve.”

“He had the nerve to send you on a wild goose chase tonight.”

“That wasn’t nerve; that was betting on a dead cert. I wasn’t supposed to finish up back here whichever way the land lay. He’ll be peeing his pants when he finds out I didn’t act true to type.”

“Will you go after him?”

“I would if I thought I could catch him. He’s probably half-way to Doncaster or Barnsley or somewhere by now. He won’t be back until I’ve been gone a month.”

“What about Keith? What are you going to do about him?”

“Give him some money.”

“That’s a lot of use to him right now.”

“I don’t know where he lives, do I? I don’t know where they’ve taken him, do I? Do you know?”

“No.”

“There you are then.”

She didn’t say anything for a while. I sat up and had a big drink and lay down again and closed my eyes.

“What are you going to do if you catch who did it?” she said.

“What do you think?”

Another silence.

“Why?” she said.

“He was my brother.”

She sat down on the bed.

“You’d just kill them? Just like that?”

“If they didn’t kill me first.”

“Could you do it? I mean without worrying about it?”

“Anybody could if it was their own flesh and blood as was involved and they knew they weren’t going to get caught.”

“And you’re not going to get caught?”

“No.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know.”

After a little while she said:

“Supposing I phoned the police and told them that there was a bloke in my boarding house with a shotgun and he’d told me he was off to shoot somebody with it?”

“You wouldn’t.”

“How do you know I wouldn’t?”

“Because I know you wear green underwear.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Think about it.”

She thought about it.

There was a long long pause in which nothing at all happened except that I opened my eyes and found that I was looking into hers. She wasn’t looking at me as though she liked me but then she didn’t have to. Women that wear green underwear don’t. I stretched an arm out and pulled open the front of her dressing gown. The bra matched what I’d already seen. There was a bruise near her left nipple. She kept looking at me.

“What did they do?” I said.

“One of them ripped my blouse. Another punched me. They would have gone on if Thorpey hadn’t started getting worried about things.”

I touched the bruise with my finger.

“He hit you there, did he?” I said.

She didn’t say anything.

“That couldn’t have been very pleasant,” I said. “Or could it?”

“You’re a bastard, aren’t you?”

I didn’t answer, I kept massaging the bruise. Then she leant backwards so that her back was arched across my
chest. She undid the cord on her dressing gown and then squirmed her arms underneath her and unhooked her bra and left her arms where they were, pinned underneath her. I extended the massaging to cover a larger area. Eventually, still lying across me, she rolled over on to her side, facing away from me.

Saturday

I
WOKE UP
.

I was alone. It was daylight and it was raining. The bed was warm. I only had my shirt on. It was undone and rived up round my armpits. The door opened. My landlady backed into the room. She was carrying a tray with breakfast stuff on it. I looked at my watch. It said twenty to nine. My landlady came and sat on the bed. I sat up. She put the tray across my legs. On it there was boiled eggs and things. All I was interested in was the tea pot.

“What’s this in aid of?” I said.

“Would you like me to throw it at you?”

I didn’t say anything. She poured the tea out. I drank a cup and poured myself a refill.

“Well,” she said, “aren’t you going to eat it?”

“I don’t eat breakfast,” I said.

“You’re a real little charmer, aren’t you?” she said.

I picked up my cup and she moved the tray to the part of the bed I wasn’t in. I could tell from her face she wanted more. I didn’t want to give her any but if she insisted I thought I’d better. For the same reason I had done last night; the sweeter she was, the less danger there was of
her phoning the Cop Shop if she ever saw a newspaper item she might associate with me. You never could tell.

She got into bed and we got down to it. We were going strong when the bedroom door opened.

I rolled off her very quickly. The breakfast things went all over the place. I took most of the bedclothes with me. My landlady screamed and tried to snatch the bedclothes back but she couldn’t quite manage it so she carried on screaming.

Now I was on my back I could see who had opened the bedroom door.

Two men were standing there looking at us. One was fairly tall with the sort of unhandsome good looks you get on blokes in the after-shave ads. He also dressed the part. He had on a white shirt with a broad hairline red and green check pattern to it, a red knitted tie, a bottle-green V-neck, twill trousers and Oxford boots. Across his shoulders was draped a fur collared waterproof and on his hands were those tiny stringy driving gloves. The only items not entirely for show were the Oxford boots.

He was smiling.

The other man was not so tall and not nearly so good looking. He had on a leather trilby and a single breasted leather coat with a tie belt. Underneath the coat was a mohair suit the same colour as mine. Not surprising as we both used the same tailor. Black hair curled from under the trilby and hung over his coat collar. His hands were in his coat pockets.

He was smiling.

The good-looking man in the English clothes was called Peter the Dutchman. The not-so-good-looking man was called Con McCarty. It wasn’t a big step from there to Mack the Knife.

They both worked for Gerald and Les Fletcher.

“Hello, Jack,” said Con, still smiling.

“Don’t let us interrupt you. You just carry on with what you were doing,” said Peter. He was still smiling too.

My landlady had stopped screaming by now because she’d managed to cover herself up. I sat up and looked at Peter and Con.

“Don’t tell me,” I said. “Let me guess.”

Con rubbed his nose with his forefinger.

“Sorry about this,” he said. “But there you are. Orders is orders, as they say.”

“And what orders would they be, Con?”

“Gerald called us at half past three this morning. Just after somebody had called him. Somebody told him you’d been making a nuisance of yourself.”

I said nothing.

“So Gerald asked us if we’d drive up and ask you if you wouldn’t mind coming back to London with us,” said Peter.

“He said it’d be doing him a big favour if you would,” said Con.

I said nothing.

“I mean, we appreciate why you’re all steamed up,” said Con, “and so do Gerald and Les, they really do.”

“But they have to be diplomatic,” said Peter. “They have to take the broader view.”

Both of them were still smiling.

“Gerald and Les sent you to fetch me back,” I said.

They just went on smiling.

“One way or the other,” I said.

They didn’t say anything.