He Died with His Eyes Open (16 page)

Tom made me understand what Staniland had been made to understand, that the more a man pleaded with Barbara, the more she enjoyed not giving it to him.

'Well,' I said suddenly, 'I've got to be going.'

'Why? You haven't finished your bottle yet. It's early.'

'It was great,' I said, 'but I'll be seeing you. You finish the bottle.' I picked my cigarettes up off the bar.

'Look, let's neither of us finish the bottle,' she said. 'What you and I are going to finish is something else. You got a pad?'

I thought of my dreary flat at Earlsfield. 'I've got this dreary flat at Earlsfield.'

'Old woman waiting up?'

'I hope not. I'm not married.'

'Christ, that makes a change.' She was moving with me towards the exit.

'Look, I'd really like to,' I said, 'but I can't.'

'Why not? Don't tell me you can't get it up either.'

'Oh, no, it comes up all right.'

'What's the problem, then? You said you fancied me.'

'Well, that's just it,' I said, shaking my head. 'I mightn't want to get too involved.'

'That sounds a bit fucking feeble.'

'Go ahead and think I'm feeble, then.'

'I would,' she said, 'only I don't think you are.'

'Me neither.'

'Listen,' she said, 'let's go to my place. It's closer, New Cross.'

'You're in a hell of a hurry. I'm not used to making conquests that fast.'

'Maybe. You've made one, all the same.'

A simian figure in a red jacket came up to us. He had a widow's peak all right, his hair grew all the way down to the bridge of his nose. 'Trouble here?' he said.

 'Yes,' she said, without looking away from me, 'you. Fuck off.'

'Easy,' said the man in the red jacket. 'We don't like no arguments in the place.'

'All right,' she said, 'well then, the quicker you get lost the fewer arguments there'll be.'

The doorman came up. 'Watch it,' he muttered to his colleague. He jerked his head at me. 'Geezer says e's a member of Parliament.'

'That right?'

'That's right,' I said. 'I'm one of those battling members.'

'All right, then,' said the man in the red jacket. 'As long as you wasn't annoyin the lady.'

'It's you that's annoying me, Ernie,' Barbara said. When he had gone she said to me: 'He tried to get into my knickers once. Trouble was, I don't like men with hair all over them, even if they are part owners. Still fancies he can get his nookie, though.'

'Who owns the rest of the place?' I said. 'Harvey Fenton?'

Her gaze zipped up like a dagger. 'Why? You know him?'

'I've heard of him.'

'You keep it that way, then, if you know what's good for you.'

'We were talking about nookie,' I said.

'Yes, and you're the one I want it with,' she said. 'So what are we going to do about it?'

'Have it.'

'Converted you, have I?'

'I didn't need converting.'

'You really an MP?' she asked as we went out into the street.

'No.'

22

'Sit down,' said Barbara, when we got in. It was a nice place she had there at New Cross, better than council housing.

'Well,' I said, picking on an armchair. 'Here we are, alone at last.' Yes, it was a nice flat, but it had a neutral feel about it, impersonal. The furniture, the hi-fi were what you bought on the knock, and the lighting was direct and too bright.

'Fix you a drink?' she said.

'Thanks. Not much water. Plenty of ice.'

She came back from the kitchen with a Scotch for each of us and sat in the chair opposite me. 'Well?' she said. 'Where do we go from here?'

'Information, you mean?'

'That's what I mean.'

'I don't know,' I said. 'Why don't you fire a question? But nothing too loaded.'

'Okay, what do you do for a living?'

'That's loaded,' I said.

'Why? Don't you make any money? Or do you make too much?'

'A hundred a week after tax. That doesn't sound like too much, does it?'

'No. You make it straight?'

'That's very loaded,' I said, 'or it could be. It isn't in my case. It's straight.'

'I don't mean to pry, really,' she said. 'It's just that with my background I'm sensitive about money.'

'All right,' I said, 'well, let's just say I get by.'

'So I fall in love with a mystery man.'

'There's no mystery,' I said, 'it's just boring.' I didn't want to tell her too much at once. I wanted time to decide on a story. I wanted to keep several options open. 'Anyway, you fall in love bloody fast.'

'Too fast?'

'Itchy pants isn't what they call the grand passion.'

'You bastard!' she shouted. She uncoiled out of her chair and threw her drink at me. The glass followed it. Both missed and sank into the curtain behind me.

'Nothing broken,' I said, 'so you can fix us another. But don't let's waste the next one.'

When she came back with the fresh drinks she had cooled down. 'You're a queer bugger, you are.'

'You mean I'm not what you thought I was in the club.'

'Something like that.'

'You have hidden depths, too.'

'Does that mean you don't trust me?'

'Trust you?' I burst out laughing. 'I wouldn't trust you as far as I could throw this flat. Why should I?'

'So we just fancy each other, and that's it.' I watched her trying so bloody hard to come on like a girl just fallen in love.

'Well, I was let down rotten by a woman before,' I said. 'Long time ago, but still.'

'I'll bet you deserved it.'

'Maybe, maybe not. Anyway, that's some information for you.'

'Well, it looks as if it'll have to do,' she said. 'At least for the time being.'

'I don't want to get my fingers burnt again,' I said. 'I bet you've let men down in your time. With your looks, you certainly could have.'

'Listen, why don't we just get to bed,' she said, 'and see how that works. I'm tired of swapping half-truths.'

'I'll tell you why not,' I said. I decided to sock it to her. 'Because I'm starting to go off you.' I shouted the last bit. It cost me a lot to do it, but I managed It cost me a lot because she had opened her thighs slightly, and from where I was sitting, opposite her, I could see right up between her thighs to her white knickers, and it turned me on hard. 'Look, you know what it is,' I said. 'If you and I screw just once, you'll go straight off me, you know that. Don't you, Babsie?'

'Don't call me Babsie,' she said. She said it indulgently. 'That's for the punters. Call me Barbara. And I wouldn't go off you after just once. It's true I usually do. But not you, I don't think.'

'Still, you've had lots of other men.'

'Okay, so?'

'What happened to them all? Didn't any of them mean anything?'

'They weren't up to standard.'

'I see,' I said. 'What's the standard?'

'You are.'

'No,' I said. 'I'm not going to go mad over a woman, and then she tells me to get lost.' I stood up. 'I'd rather say good night and leave now.'

After a time she said: 'Sit down. I want a strong man, and you're it.'

'I'm not strong. I'm just a realist.'

'Same thing. All I know is, you keep hitting me where I live.'

'You'd better have another drink, then.'

'I'll get them.'

I downed my new one, then said: 'Well? What about this bunk-up, then?' I knew that, whatever I did, I had to behave with her in as opposite a way to Staniland as possible. I had to boss her, if I wanted to stay where I was with her. I found it wasn't nearly as difficult as Staniland had made it.

She drank her drink quickly, too. 'All right,' she said, 'let's go, then.'

'It'll have to be quick,' I said. 'I have to be at work by eight.' I looked at my watch; it was a quarter to five. 'Where do we go?'

'Romantic, aren't you?' she said. 'You're enough to sweep a girl right off her feet, the way you go on.'

It was important to flatter her. 'God help any man who tried to sweep you off your feet,' I said. 'He wouldn't crawl out of the ring after round one.'

She laughed; she couldn't conceal her pleasure.

'That's better,' I said. 'Laughter's important, especially if you're in love.'

'I didn't know that.'

'You've been blind,' I said. 'You haven't found out what passion is. You've had a lot of men instead, but you've never really enjoyed them.'

'You're not a million miles from the truth there.'

'Ever had an orgasm?'

'I've heard of it. I don't think I've ever had one.'

'If you had, you'd have known. You might this time.'

'A likely tale.'

'We'll see.'

She was shy when it came to going to bed. She wasn't the kind of woman you could undress in a fit of passion there, right on the sitting-room mat. When I wanted to undo her bra she said: 'Look, it's got to be done properly.'

'Why?'

'Because it's our first time.'

I didn't believe her. We were both acting, and I wondered who had helped her write her script. It was true that I wanted her badly as well, yet part of me was in no hurry—the brain part. The lust I felt for her was also because I hadn't had a woman for so long. I was disgusted with myself. That didn't stop me, but I was lying to her, and I didn't like that. Now I was going to trump the lie by fucking a dead man's woman, so as to trick her into disgorging what she knew about his death. But that didn't make me feel like a knight in white armour; I wondered what the value of truth really was, if getting at it entailed so many lies.

As I sat in my hard-cushioned armchair, nursing a last Bell's while Barbara got ready for bed, I realized that if I'd been a free agent, if it hadn't been for Staniland, his cassettes and his writing, I would either have gone overboard for Barbara, which would have been all too easy for me, or else said woodenly, look, I'm a copper investigating a death, and got insults or silence. I would have felt better if I had, but I had to unravel what had happened to Staniland, and the fact that I interested her physically opened up the best route. Even so I felt dirty, like any double agent. It might take nerve and acting ability to be a double agent, but that didn't get the dirt off.

I heard her moving out of the bathroom into the bedroom, and smelled soap and steam. Then I heard her rustling between the sheets in the dark.

'Come on,' she said. I found I was by the bed, pulling off my clothes in furious haste to get in there with her. My body felt no scruples, anyway.

'Easy, easy,' she said after a while. 'It's happening to me.'

'Are we going to a club again tomorrow?' she said.

'We'll have breakfast, take our time over it, and then decide.'

'I thought you said you were going to work.'

'Not today. I'm taking the day off. I'll go into the office and explain. I'll have to go in, I've got some work to clear up, then we'll meet at lunchtime.'

'All right,' she said sleepily.

'We'll have lunch together. I'll tell you where we can meet: Do you like Indian?'

'How did you know I liked Indian?'

'I don't know. Maybe because I like it.'

She said: 'I could almost kill you, you know. I had one. An orgasm.'

'I know you did.'

'You're not like the no-hopers I usually get.'

'All right,' I said, 'don't say any more now. We'll talk later.'

'Yes,' she said, 'I want to sleep now; just don't let go of me till I sleep.'

23

When I got up at seven-thirty Barbara was still sleeping, her head on her arm, lying on her right side. I left a note on the pillow telling her to meet me in the Quadrant at one, and added the address. Then I went out into the river-cold street and took a cab back to the 84.

I found my car where I had left it, just as a traffic warden was writing me out a ticket. He was a young man with mild blue eyes and the beginnings of a beard.

'Save it, son,' I said, 'it's a police vehicle.'

'That's what they all say.'

'Some of us mean it.' I showed him my identification.

'Well, I've made the ticket out now,' he said. 'It's too late once I've started making it out. Sorry, Sarge.'

'The man you want to apologize to,' I said, 'is the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It's him who'll be six quid out at the end of the financial year.'

'Well, the vehicle wasn't marked.'

'There's a silly reason for that,' I said, taking the ticket. 'It's because a lot of these modern villains can read.'

I drove over to Poland Street and left the Ford in the police parking lot. Then I went round to the front of the building and barged in through the main doors just like a criminal with a complaint. I said good morning to people as I made for the stairs, but they saw me so rarely that nobody recognized me except the desk sergeant.

I was running upstairs to the second floor where my office was when I banged into Bowman.

'Christ, it's you,' he said. 'You still on that Staniland case?'

'Still?' I said. 'I've only been on it four days.'

'Four
days
? You should have had the geezer in half the time. You'll be working weekends if you don't pull your finger out.'

'Don't be silly,' I said. 'If you solved them that fast, they'd start stripping you down for the microchips to find out how you did it.'

'How are you getting on with it, anyhow?'

'I can't get my proof,' I said. 'You know me—slow, quick, quick, slow, Mr Foxtrot they call me. That's why I'm still a sergeant while you're shaping up for superintendent on the Vice Squad. All I can say is, when it happens, don't get done for looking at dirty pictures on the taxpayer's time.'

'You really make me laugh, you do,' Bowman said. 'You come out with better jokes than a villain.' He continued: 'Now listen, I'm serious for once. You're a good copper—you can't stay on at A14 forever. Why don't you give it up and move over to Serious Crimes with us? Do yourself a bit of good. Come on, I could get you the transfer.'

'No,' I said.

'You hate my guts, is that it?'

'It's nothing to do with that. If everyone only worked with people they liked, you wouldn't have a police force. No, I told you, I like being independent, I like working my own way.'