White Meat Page 5

  “I heard he was on the rocks. Still there?”

  Courtenay nodded. “Down on the rocks outside the wall. The place is a fort. You know it?”

  “No.”

  “Well, it’s a fort like I say, with these high walls around it. Built to fight off the Japs.”

  “Russians,” Penny said suddenly.

  “Alright, Russians. Anyway Simmonds was shot somewhere up on the island and fell down to the rocks. Ended up in a sitting position. He’s still there. We need some pictures.”

  “Who found him?”

  “Girl. She called us, went around to the house. Then she shot through. She your misser?”

  “Yes. Can we take a look out there?”

  “If you like. He’s not pretty. No face to speak of.”

  Penny turned away, her nails scratched the smooth surface of the truck as she reached out for support. I moved closer and put my arm around her. Bait’s sneer was a hiss of stinking gas in the dark.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  “Who’s out there?” I asked Courtenay.

  “Foster, forensic guy, photographer, stretcher boys on the way. Tell Foster I OK’d you.”

  “Right.” We crouched ready to move off into the rain which seemed to be easing a little.

  “You might remember the co-operation when you see Evans,” Courtenay muttered, trying to keep the sound from travelling to Balt.

  Penny sprinted off into the drizzle. We dodged the posts that prevented vehicles driving onto the causeway and started across. The visibility was poor and we had to watch our footing; the wooden handrail and the planking were twisted as though the island had tried to wrench itself free of the continent. There was an oasis of light down under where the causeway ended at a gate that stood up like a stand of spears. We struggled down some steps to where two men stood in stiff formation near a dark shape on the ground. A roughly rigged-up floodlight on a six foot high stand threw shadows around and caught flecks of spray and drizzle in the air. One of the men was wearing a white boiler suit and heavy rubber gloves, the other was fiddling with one of the cameras slung around his neck. The dark crumpled heap against the pitted cement wall looked like something that had been screwed up and thrown away. One of his legs stuck straight out and the other was tucked up under him at a crazy angle. His face was a sagging collapsed hole. He was wearing a light khaki jacket and denims. The left side of the jacket was an oozing dark stain. Penny looked down at him, a shiver ran through her and I could feel her trembling across the distance between us. Then she turned away and leaned her back against the wall. She stared ahead of her, across the water to La Perouse and beyond.

  “How do you read it?” I asked Foster.

  He pointed up. “He got it up there and fell down. Got the head shot I mean.”

  “And then?”

  “Can’t be sure, but I think he was propped up and shot in the chest.”

  “To finish him off?”

  He shrugged. “Could be.”

  “When was this?”

  “Sometime this afternoon. Look, who’re you?” I’d wondered when he was going to ask. I told him that Courtenay had given me the nod. He looked happier, as if he’d done his duty as a policeman. The cameraman suddenly let off a flash. We all jumped.

  “Sorry,” he said sheepishly.

  I asked Foster what was on the body and he told me “nothing remarkable”. I bent down to get a closer look at the corpse. The belt was fastened about two holes too loose and one of the laces on the canvas sneakers was untied. This could have been the result of the body being searched and I was going to ask Foster about it when the stretcher bearers arrived. They came down the steps and we all stood aside. They lifted the body onto the stretcher, covered it with a dark blanket and secured the load with broad straps. The procedure finished off the process of the elimination of a person that had begun with the first shotgun shell.

  The drizzle had stopped. We watched the men in their pale blue uniforms carry the stretcher up the steps and back along the causeway. On the bridge, with the long, flat burden between them, they looked like a strange monster, low backed, with a high, pale rump and head.

  The cameraman assembled his gear and unhinged the stand. I thanked Foster for his co-operation then the girl and I started back to the land — where this had all started and where the reasons for it lay. Her high-heeled boots thudded on the wooden planking and I glanced down at them; they gave her an extra three inches; without them she would only have been medium tall. Lost in the duffel coat, she looked small and young, and I wondered about what having your dream man shot to death when you were seventeen did to you. It couldn’t be good.

  Courtenay and Bait and the ambulance had gone. The car for the photographer and forensic man was parked a little further on and it made me think of Ricky’s Biscayne, the car you couldn’t miss. Where it was and how it had got there would be important. I’d have to get Grant Evans’ help on that. We got back into my car and she huddled in the corner again.

  “Home?”

  She snorted. “If you can call it that.”

  “They your parents?”

  “No.”

  “Is your name Sharkey?”

  “Is now.”

  I started the car and drove back through the wet, empty streets. The pubs were still open, letting out a fitful light and a trickle of people. I pulled up in front of the house. The girl shrugged out of the duffel coat and folded it before putting it on the back seat. She opened the door.

  “Just a minute,” I said. “You can help me.”

  She raised her eyebrows, theatrically bored and sceptical.

  “How?”

  “What did Ricky and Noni talk about down here, what did they do?”

  “Why should I tell you?”

  “You want Ricky’s killer caught.”

  “I know who killed him.”

  “The girl, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “You would. What would you do if it turned out to be true?”

  “I’d let it be that way.”

  She sneered. “Why?”

  I was getting tired of the conversation and let some impatience come into my voice. “I’m not a crusader and I’ve cooked the books in my time, but I let the facts alone unless there’s very good reason not to. I can’t think of any reason to do differently in this case.”

  She turned her head and studied me through the gloom. The inside of the car smelled damp and old; it didn’t reek of high-priced corruption or the sweet smell of success.

  “All right Mr Cliff Hardy,” she said slowly. “Maybe you’re telling the truth. I can’t tell you much anyway. All I know is that Ricky’s father was a crim and he dropped out of sight about twelve years ago. No-one knows what happened to him. For the last couple of years Ricky has been driving people mad around here with questions about his father. I don’t know what he’s found out.” She let the sentence hang there.

  “That’s interesting, but not much help. There’s something else you can tell me?”

  “Yes. It’s just a feeling. I went around with Ricky a bit and saw him talking to people. I got the feeling he wasn’t only interested in his father. He seemed to be almost looking for someone else as well.”

  “Can you make it clearer?”

  “Not really, it was just a feeling. He seemed to stare at people, men, who couldn’t have known his father because they were too young. Men his own age, you know?”

  I nodded and stored the information away. It could mean something but I felt tired, my head hurt and I remembered that I hadn’t had a drink for too many hours.

  “Thanks, I’ll think about it. Tell me about the girl.”

  “Noni?”

  “Yes. What’s she like?”

  She clenched her hands in her lap to stop them from flying about like angry birds. When she spoke her voice was full of malice with a note of fear. Maybe she believed Noni had actually killed the boy.

 
“She’s a blonde, thin, a bitch and a bloodsucker. She acts freaked-out, you know? But she’s really ice-cool. Know what we call her down here?”

  I shook my head.

  “White meat,” she hissed. She opened the door and started to get out of the car.

  “See you Penny,” I said.

  “Not here you won’t.”

  She slammed the door and moved off. I watched her go through the collapsed gate and up the overgrown path. She was an elegant parcel of brains, bone and muscle wrapped up in hate. Seventeen. I drove away.

  7

  I had two fast Scotches in a pub in Kensington and bought a half bottle for company, so I was feeling better when I parked in the lane beside the Capitol theatre. The Capitol is a grimy old matron on the outside; it hasn’t had a face-lift for a good many years and the layers of old posters splattered over its walls seemed to mark its age like the rings in tree trunks. The posters for Saul James’ musical were up now covering over last year’s spectacular and greatest shows on earth long forgotten.

  A chink of light showed through the door at the side of the building. I pushed the door open and went up a flight of stairs that ascended nearly as steeply as a ladder. I moved slowly, smelling unfamiliar odours, not the usual urine and garbage smells you get on dimly lit stairwells, but something richer, more exotic. The stairs ended at a corridor that had rooms going off it on both sides. One of the rooms was showing a light and I could hear soft voices. I paused outside and placed the odour, a combination of perfume and the sweet herbal smell of marijuana smoke. The door at the end of the passage opened out onto a backstage area behind a massive green velvet curtain. A few props, a coffee table, some chairs, a bookcase and a wheelchair, were scattered around. Against the wall, on the floor, was a big tape deck flanked by two king-size speakers and connected by a heavy cable to a power point that bristled with double adaptors. I could hear voices through the curtain and I stepped forward to where its two sections met.

  “It has to go in there,” I heard a woman’s voice say. “If you move it it’ll be out of place and you’ll cut it later. I know you bastards.”

  “We won’t Liz.” a high voice, wheedling. “I swear to you darling that the song stays in, whatever happens.”

  “What do you mean?” Her voice rose to a near-shriek and I took a peek through the curtains. She was wearing body paint and a spangled G-string; her nipples, showing through the paint and tinsel, looked naked and obscene. She was lean and sinewy like a stockwhip and she was stalking up and down in nervous, gliding strides. Saul James, wearing jeans and a striped, matelot-style T-shirt, was sitting on a turned-around chair. Another man squatted on the stage. His fat thighs bulged in brown corduroy and his body was heavy and gross inside a flowered Hawaiian shirt.

  “It’s an essential song Liz,” James said quietly. “It won’t be cut, it can’t be. You do it superbly.”

  The woman stopped prancing. James’ mild tone seemed to calm her down and I was interested to see that he had some authority when operating professionally. She moved smoothly up to the actor and stood in front of him, her breasts almost touching his chest.

  “Alright Saul,” she purred. “I’ll take your word for it, and if the song doesn’t stay in I’ll hold him responsible.” She pointed to fatty who got creakingly to his feet. The stage lights were dim but I could see the flesh shaking on his red face.

  “Now that’s not fair sweetie, I . . .”

  “Don’t call me sweetie, you slob,” she snapped. “Half of those fancy boys of yours can’t sing for shit and you know it.”

  She turned and marched off the stage to the right as if she’d just delivered the last line in the first act. The fat man pulled out a flowered handkerchief and wiped his face.

  “Nerves,” he said. “Jitters, highly strung. It’ll be alright.”

  James nodded. He seemed to have lost interest in the scene and its implications very quickly. I opened the curtain and walked forward. The fat man stared at me.

  “More trouble,” he said.

  “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  “Your face, your eyes. You want money. You’re going to threaten me.

  “You need to watch your guilty conscience, sport. I don’t care if you’re the Woolloomooloo flasher and keep an unlicensed dog. I want to talk to Mr James here.”

  James looked at me. His face was pale and more Leslie Howard-like than ever; he looked as if Scarlet O’Hara had just given him the latest piece of bad news.

  “Have you found her?”

  “No. But I’ve been close. We have to talk some more. Here?”

  James glanced across at the fat man who was looking on with interest. He seemed to be enjoying James’ distress.

  “Lost her again have you Jamie?” he said maliciously. “I do hope you find her. This gentleman looks . . . capable.”

  “Just shut up Clyde or I might sic him on to you.”

  “Charmed I’m sure.”

  I didn’t like being their verbal plaything and said more roughly than I needed: “The talk, James. Where?”

  He swung off the chair and walked through the curtains without giving Clyde a glance. I followed him down the passage and into one of the rooms on the right. He turned on the light which showed the room to be pretty bare apart from a cupboard, a make-up table in front of a mirror and coffee-making things on a card table. There was a chair in front of the make-up table and I hooked it out and sat down. James looked at me, then went out of the room and came back with another chair. I rolled a cigarette and lit it. James tried to let go one of his boyish smiles but it came out thin and strained as if only half the required voltage was available. He got up and shook the jug, it responded and he plugged it in.

  “Coffee?”

  I shook my head. I was wondering how to play him. I needed more information on the girl. Maybe he had it, maybe he didn’t. I didn’t want to tell him too much, possibly out of sheer habit, but I must have looked worse than I felt.

  “What happened to you?” He spooned instant coffee into a mug and added boiling water. He held up the other mug. “Sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  He shrugged elaborately and anger flared in me.

  “Listen, I’ve been bashed and seen a man dead on the seashore while you’ve been poncing about on the stage. I’m not in the mood for games.”

  His eyes looked moist and he spoke softly. “Sorry.”

  He was a deal too sensitive and raw in the nerve endings for my comfort. He wasn’t a kid. Late twenties probably. I remembered how well he’d handled the scene on the stage and wondered whether his personality was completely professional. His private role looked to be a bit beyond him and he seemed to need to set up a particular emotional atmosphere in order to operate. I didn’t want to play along and he wasn’t employing me, but somehow I’d begun to feel responsible for him and the feeling irritated me.

  He sipped his coffee and tried again. “You said you’d come close to Noni. What did you mean?”

  I gave him a version of the events of the past couple of hours. He looked concerned when I mentioned the strip off my scalp and he flinched when I gave him a watered-down account of Penny’s remarks about his girlfriend. He looked concerned again when I told him that I’d turned up at a murder scene and couldn’t avoid telling the cops exactly why sooner or later. I’d protect Ted Tarelton’s private affairs as long as I could but the pressure was on me now to find the girl quickly. I needed to know everything about her, particularly where she might have gone.

  He caressed his coffee mug and took a long time in answering.

  “Well, one thing. Noni has a drug habit.”

  “Hard drugs?”

  “Yes. She handles it pretty well most of the time, not always.”

  “That’s great.” I suddenly felt old and weary, running up again against that problem which symbolised the generation gap for me. He misinterpreted my action.

  “You aren’t going to give up are you?”

&nbs
p; “No, I’m not going to give up but it’s not going to be easy. I must know where she’s likely to run when she’s in trouble. That fat queen out there implied she’d taken off before. Where to?”

  James was shaking his head and opening his mouth to speak when the door flew open.

  “I resent that,” Clyde squeaked. “I belong to a noble brotherhood which roughnecks like you wouldn’t begin to understand.” His plump face creased into a plummy smile. “But I understand all about little Noni. Jamie here barely knows her name.”

  “Shut up Clyde,” said James. “You don’t know a thing about her.”

  “Oh yes I do.” Clyde sang the words in a near falsetto. “Are you a policeman?”

  I told him who I was and what I was doing. James protested but Clyde hushed him and I didn’t back him. Clyde rested his chin in the palm of his left hand and sat that elbow in the other hand.

  “Little Noni now, she’s a naughty girl. You wouldn’t believe the things she does and the people she does them with.”

  “Maybe I would,” I growled. “I’m just back from her hang-out in La Perouse.”

  “Ooh yes, loves the noiros does our Noni, the blacker the better.”

  I shot a look at James. He was nursing his empty coffee mug, just taking it. Clyde was enjoying himself immensely.

  “Why do you take it Jamie? What do you want now?”

  “I want her back with me.”

  Clyde cackled. James sounded defeated, beaten hollow by something he couldn’t understand. I understood it in part. My ex-wife Cyn had affected me the same way. I kept crawling back, signing cheques, waiting up till dawn and hoping everything would come right. It never did and I felt sure it wouldn’t for James. But no-one else can tell you that and you can only see the end when you get there on your own. Still, I didn’t want any part of Clyde’s baiting game. I stood up with my coat open and let him see the gun.

  “Cut out the crap. Tell me something useful or piss off.”

  He recoiled and his jowls shook. The plummy malicious smile dropped away.

  “Newcastle,” he muttered. “She lived in Newcastle and she knows the heroin scene there.”

  “This true?” I asked James.