скачать книгу бесплатно
She was looking at him like he was raving mad.
‘What is all this about immigrants?’ she demanded angrily. ‘I have been living in Birmingham for fifteen years. My children are all born here. I have a National Insurance number, and a job as part-time receptionist at the Sheldon Airlodge Hotel.’
‘Oh shoot,’ said Joe. He’d made the same kind of bonehead assumption that so irritated him when people made it about him. This was clearly his night for guilt.
He said, ‘I’m sorry, I thought when Merv mentioned the airport …’
‘We are coming back from holiday, ten days in Marbella, three star hotel. We arrive at Luton, very good flight, only ninety minutes late, and as we go through Customs green light, a man says, will you come this way, please? And he takes us to a little room … please, is there somewhere we could sit down? This has been a very tiring day.’
Joe didn’t know if it was written somewhere, never let a woman with two kids and a suitcase into your home, but he guessed it was, probably in the Dead Sea Scrolls or on a pyramid. Maybe it went on to give advice on how to keep them out, but not having the benefit of a classical education he lacked the art. And the heart.
He picked up the suitcase. It was very heavy.
‘You’d better come on up,’ he said.
CHAPTER 4 (#ulink_b0deb0d9-8cb3-5721-b0b1-f09dda25d2e7)
Whitey was still stretched out on the armchair. He kept his eyes closed but Joe knew he was watching. Mrs Bannerjee sank with a sigh of relief on to the sofa. The infant still slept in her arms and the little boy clung on to his bull with one hand and his mother’s sari with the other while his huge brown eyes took in the mysteries of this new place.
Joe didn’t disturb the cat. Standing was fine. He didn’t want this to get too cosy.
‘So what happened next, Mrs Bannerjee?’ he asked.
She said, ‘They took my husband away somewhere else, also our luggage. After a while a lady comes with a cup of tea and orange juice for the children. She asks a lot of questions about our holiday, where we have gone, who we have seen. I ask her, where is Soumitra, my husband? And she replies that he will be with me soon, and goes on asking questions. Then she leaves us alone. After a long time she comes back with my suitcase and tells me I can go with the children but Soumitra must stay. I ask why and she says to help with inquiries. I try to argue but she leads me outside. I do not know what to do. I think perhaps I will phone Mr Herringshaw, my husband’s employer in Birmingham, but I do not have his number and besides, it is very late to be disturbing such a man. Our car is in the car park but I have no key and I cannot drive. I think maybe I will take a taxi home but I do not have enough money for such a journey and in any case I do not want to go far in case they let Soumitra go. So I stand there undecided and though I try to be strong, I find that I am crying … Then your friend comes up to me …’
Good old Merv. He hated people being miserable. He’d been worth twice what he got paid at Robco just because of the job he did for shop floor morale.
‘Amal, be careful,’ said Mrs Bannerjee.
Her young son had gained sufficient confidence to detach himself from his mother’s side and kneel in front of the armchair to examine Whitey, who returned the compliment assessingly. The boy’s hand went out and touched the cat on the stomach. Joe held his breath. Whitey would claw Mother Teresa if he didn’t take to her. But now he stretched luxuriously, offering the whole range of his undercarriage to the child’s caress and began to purr like a hive of bees.
‘It’s OK,’ said Joe. ‘Look, Mrs Bannerjee. My friend Merv was right in one respect. What you need is help from the law, not my kind of law, but a real lawyer. I may be able to get someone. There’s this lady solicitor I know who works at the Bullpat Square Law Centre. If we can get her interested she’s very good. But it would help if we had some idea why they’re holding your husband …’
‘Why do you need to ask?’ she demanded scornfully. ‘Is it not obvious? They think he is smuggling something into the country.’
Sixsmith didn’t care for the scorn and in any case it wasn’t all that obvious. If they’d picked up Bannerjee on suspicion of smuggling, why on earth had they turned his wife loose without a much more thorough investigation of her possible complicity?
One reason suggested itself uncomfortably. They might have felt it worthwhile letting her loose and following her to see who she made contact with …
He went to the sliding window which opened on to a tiny balcony crowded with pot plants. Stepping carefully between them, he peered over the rail into the street below. Six storeys down he saw three police cars, sirens muted but with their roof lights still gently pulsating. A little further along was Mervyn Golightly’s taxi with Merv leaning against it, protesting loudly as a constable ran his hands up his legs.
‘Oh shoot!’ said Joe Sixsmith.
The doorbell rang.
He moved quick. He knew the Law’s way with a door when they wanted quick access. A short ring in lip service to legality, then …
Fortunately he hadn’t put the chain on. He seized the handle, turned it and pulled. The burly constable swinging the sledgehammer didn’t have time to change his mind. The weight of the hammer carried him into the flat and across the room and out of the open window on to the balcony, where the low rail caught him across his ample belly and doubled him up. For a terrible moment Joe thought he was going to go over. But he let go of the hammer and grabbed the rail with both hands as Joe dived after him and seized the seat of his pants.
Over the man’s shoulder he saw the hammer sailing through the night air with the breath-catching majesty of an Olympic medal throw.
Then, like a smart bomb, it revolved slowly as though seeking its programmed target, locked on, straightened up, and arrowed down.
Far below a constable looked up. He opened his mouth in horror, then screamed a warning. The doors of the middle of the trio of police cars flapped open left and right, and two uniformed men hurled themselves out in perfect sync a split second before the sledgehammer passed through the car roof like a cannon ball through canvas.
‘Oh shoot,’ said Joe.
‘Will you get your black hands off my white arse!’ snarled the burly man.
Joe could understand his ill temper but that gave him no entitlement to racist cracks.
He let go of the trousers and said, ‘Hey, friend, look what you’ve done to my begonias. Someone’s going to have to pay for this.’
Then he turned in search of the bossman.
There were two of them, a DI from the Drug Squad and a Senior Investigation Officer from Customs and Excise. At first they vied for control, but as Joe repeated his story, and Mrs Bannerjee repeated her story, and confirmation came from below that Merv the taxi man was repeating the same story, gradually the two men each tried to back out of the limelight, leaving centre stage to the other. The flat meanwhile had been well turned over without result and the searchers were reduced to a close examination of the balcony plants in hope of discovering some illegal growth.
‘That is a pelargonium,’ said Joe, indignantly snatching a pot from a pair of clumsy hands. ‘Who’s going to clear up this mess? I want compensation. What right you got to come in here, wrecking my flat, scaring my cat, and terrifying this poor woman and her kids?’
The men looked unimpressed and it was true that Mrs Bannerjee seemed more indignant than afraid, while her daughter hadn’t even woken up and the little boy was sitting in a corner with Whitey in his arms, both of them watching the activity with wide-eyed interest.
‘I’m going to ring my lawyer,’ said Joe. ‘But first I’m going to ring the News, tell them there’s a great story here, cops and Customs men busting an innocent man’s place up, not to mention throwing sledgehammers through police cars. Now that should really make a headline!
It was the threat of ridicule which did the trick. The searchers began to do some token clearing up, while Mrs Bannerjee, her kids and her suitcase were being ushered from the flat.
‘Where are you taking that lady?’ demanded Joe.
‘Helping with inquiries,’ said the DI who had lost the battle to shed responsibility and signalled this by grudgingly admitting his name was Yarrop. ‘Don’t worry, she’ll be well taken care of.’
Joe doubted it. Having let Mrs Bannerjee run free to see where she went, now presumably they would put her in the same room as her husband and bug their conversation. The last thing on their official minds would be genuine concern.
‘Suppose she doesn’t want to go?’ he said.
‘It is all right, Mr Sixsmith,’ said Mrs Bannerjee. ‘I never wanted to go away from my husband in the first place. Now they say I will see him. But, please, you mentioned a solicitor …’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Joe. ‘I’ll try to get hold of the woman I told you about. Her name’s Butcher.’
‘Thank you very much, Mr Sixsmith,’ said the woman, smiling for the first time. She was rather pretty when she smiled. ‘You have been very kind. Amal, say thank you and goodbye to Mr Sixsmith.’
‘Thank you very much, Mr Sixsmith,’ piped the little boy to Whitey whom he had released with great reluctance.
He thinks the cat’s in charge, thought Joe. Maybe he’s right.
The Bannerjees went out.
Yarrop said, ‘I’m sorry about this. Can’t win ’em all.’
‘Well,’ said Joe grudgingly, ‘at least you can admit a mistake.’
‘Mistake,’ echoed the man thoughtfully. ‘Maybe. It would certainly be a mistake to start disturbing solicitors at this time of night, wouldn’t you say? Let’s both try to avoid any further mistakes, shall we? Good night now!’
He left. Joe went to the phone and dialled. He had a sense that Yarrop had gone no further than the other side of the door but he didn’t care.
A woman’s voice said, ‘Bullpat Square Law Centre.’
‘You really work late,’ said Joe approvingly. ‘Now that I admire.’
‘I know that voice. Is that you, Sixsmith? I heard you’d gone bankrupt.’
‘You heard wrong.’
‘You sure? I could swear I saw you flogging apples off a barrow in the market.’
‘Still can’t tell us apart after all these years? No wonder you’ve got to work long hours to make a living.’
‘And I want to get back to it, so why don’t you come to see me in the morning. I can maybe manage a two-minute slot around ten?’
Joe said, ‘I need you now, Ms Butcher.’
‘Ms? Such politeness means trouble. But it’s no good, Sixsmith. I’m not moving out of here, not even if you’ve been gang-banged by the entire Bedfordshire Constabulary.’
‘Not yet,’ said Joe. ‘But there’s a man called Bannerjee in a fair way to being screwed.’
He explained. There was a long silence.
‘You fallen asleep?’ inquired Joe courteously.
‘Chance would be a fine thing. How do you know this Bannerjee guy isn’t a pro dope-smuggler?’
‘I don’t,’ said Joe. ‘But I don’t think his wife is. And I’m certain his kids aren’t. And the way the cops came bursting in here, they’re pushing this thing very hard, and that’s the way innocent people get squashed against the wall.’
‘God, you’ll be telling me next you’ve got a dream. These guys who turned you over, they had a search warrant, I take it?’
‘I forgot to ask,’ admitted Joe.
‘Oh Jesus. The great PI! I expect it was all so sudden.’
‘Well, it was.’
More silence.
‘And you say they dropped a sledgehammer on to a police car?’
‘From seven floors up,’ said Joe. ‘It went clean through the roof.’
‘All right. I’ll do it. Not for your sake, not even for the Bannerjee kids’ sake, but for the sledgehammer’s sake. A story like that deserves some reward.’
The phone went dead.
‘Whitey,’ said Joe, ‘this has been a busy day. And nothing to show for it, except more mess than when you chased that blue-tit that came through the window.’
Whitey gave his are-you-never-going-to-forget-that? mew, and disappeared behind the armchair. He emerged a moment later dragging little Amal Bannerjee’s toy bull which he deposited in front of Joe before climbing back on to the chair and going to sleep with the complacent look of one whose duty has been done.
‘The poor kid,’ said Joe, picking up the bull. He went on to the balcony and looked down. All the cars had gone including the one with the new non-sliding sunroof.
With a sigh, Joe placed the bull carefully among his begonias and started clearing up the mess.
CHAPTER 5 (#ulink_cd5423fb-4b92-5431-916d-c24e098cf942)
Next morning didn’t begin too well.
Joe found he’d run out of provisions for the fried breakfast and had to make do with plum jam on high bake water biscuits which Whitey loathed.
Also he felt very tired. After his third mug of tea, he recalled he’d been woken at least twice in the night by the strident strains of the Casa Mia quartet.
Still, the way business was he didn’t anticipate much difficulty catching up on sleep at the office.
As usual, he stopped to pick up his papers at Mr Nayyar’s shop on Canal Street which linked Rasselas and Hermsprong. Mr Nayyar claimed to run a speciality store, which meant he sold everything.
‘And I’ve run out of food,’ said Joe after he collected the Sun and The Times, the former to keep him abreast of current events, the latter for his crossword ploy.
Mr Nayyar’s real speciality was knowing his customers’ requirements better than they did. As he busied himself assembling the rich and varied ingredients of the fried breakfast, Joe browsed through his tabloid, careful to avoid the page with the boobs as he knew these caused Mr Nayyar a problem. Banned from his shelves were any magazines which flaunted flesh, but this principle if extended to papers would drastically limit his trade. So regulars like Joe kept the curves at a low profile till well clear.
The front page headline and three lines of text were still concerned with the horse-loving politician, and the back page concentrated on the A505 plane crash. The pilot, Arthur Bragg, had been taken ill not long after leaving Luton Airport to ferry Mr Simon Verity, a business executive, and his secretary, Miss Gwendoline Baker, to a conference in Manchester. He’d managed to keep control just long enough to flop the plane down on the roadway. None of the three was seriously injured, but they’d all been kept in hospital for observation and the Press concentrated on the woman who’d taken the video, ‘Raven-haired beauty, Meg Merchison (29)’.
She said: ‘I was trying out my new camcorder on a flock of rooks when I suddenly spotted this light plane diving out of the sky. It was terrifying. I thought at first it was going to hit me, but it levelled off, just missing some trees, and I was able to follow it all the way down on to the road. I never dreamt when I bought the camera it would give me a thrill like this.’ There was a photo of the raven-haired beauty astride a gate, caressing her camera sensuously and showing enough leg to give Mr Nayyar moral palpitations.
Lucky lass, thought Joe. Wonder how much she got for the video?
He turned to the inside pages and found that here the Casa Mia killings got a double-page splash. There was a lot of sensational speculation, but nothing new and they were still using the same blurred picture of Rocca that had been shown on telly. There was no mention of Joe. He didn’t know whether to be disappointed at missing the publicity or glad at missing the Press.
The shop door opened and two teenagers came in. Dressed identically in T-shirts, jeans and trendy trainers, with hair razored to a crowning crest, they were sexually distinguished only by a faint smear of moustache on the larger one’s lip and a bubbling of breast on the smaller one’s chest.
Sixsmith recognized the design on their T-shirts, a Union Jack with Maggie Thatcher’s face at the crux. This meant they belonged to the True Brits, the leading white gang on the Hermsprong Estate. Joe doubted if they’d enter a Pakistani-run shop looking for anything but trouble, so he kept a close eye on them as Mr Nayyar busied himself with the order.
As the shopkeeper turned his back to weigh some tomatoes, the girl thrust a handful of chocolate bars under her T-shirt. She felt Joe’s eyes on her, grinned at him and nudged the boy. He looked towards Joe, bared his teeth in an animal snarl, picked up a music cassette from a display rack and slipped it into his pocket. The girl meanwhile was pushing a couple of packs of panti-hose down the back of her jeans.
‘I think that is everything, Mr Sixsmith,’ said Mr Nayyar. ‘Now let me see, how much will that come to?’
‘Serve these young folk first,’ said Joe. ‘I’m in no hurry.’
‘Nah,’ said the boy. ‘Nothing here we want. Load of Pakky junk. Come on, Suzie.’
They made for the door. Joe moved quickly and blocked their way.
‘Hey, man,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you forgetting something? Even junk costs money.’
‘What you on about, Sambo?’ said the boy. ‘You best keep your black nose out, you don’t want it even flatter.’
