Born Guilty Read online

  It took less than a minute of admirably terse narrative. Chivers didn’t interrupt or ask any questions, and then Mrs Calverley accepted Tin Can’s invitation to step into the vicarage for a warming potation, though she winced visibly at his preciosity.

  ‘All right for me to go and get one of them too?’ asked Joe.

  ‘Not before you answer a few questions, Sixsmith,’ snarled Chivers.

  ‘Nothing I can add to what the lady says.’

  ‘You’re supposed to be a detective, aren’t you? How about trying to give me a description of the perpetrator?’

  ‘What perpetrator?’ asked Joe. ‘Perpetrator of what?’

  ‘Don’t get clever with me, sunshine. There’s a body in that box, remember?’

  ‘I know. And I think you’ll find he’s been dead an hour or so.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because I felt for a pulse and he was cold enough not to have died just that minute,’ said Joe.

  ‘So what was this guy you spotted doing then?’

  ‘Maybe the same as me, checking the kid’s pulse to see if he needed help.’

  Chivers snarled a laugh and said, ‘Do you think Immigration knows about all these Good Samaritans flooding into the country? More likely he was one of those weirdos who get their kicks beating dossers up. So, a description.’

  Joe gave him what he could. Finally Chivers said, ‘All right. Sod off. We’ll be in touch.’

  ‘And thank you too, Sergeant, for your courtesy. I’ll be sure to mention it to Mr Woodbine. I was real pleased to hear he’s been made up to superintendent.’

  It was a low blow. Willie Woodbine disliked Chivers almost as much as Joe did, plus the new detective superintendent hadn’t been hindered in his elevation by the help Joe had somewhat fortuitously supplied in solving a recent big murder case.

  Chivers was a nifty counter puncher and now he said, ‘You’ll be going to the celebration party at his house next Sunday then?’

  He knows I’ve as much chance of being invited there as I have of being invited to stand for the Cheltenham Tories, thought Joe.

  ‘Hope I can make it,’ he said. ‘If I do, I’ll see you there, shall I?’

  He saw the dart draw blood. Chivers and the CID girls might get a drink down the pub, but no way was Willie Woodbine going to take them home!

  He took a last glance at the cardboard box before he walked away. No one should end up in a thing like that, especially not someone so young.

  His musing on death’s indignities made him forget life’s perils.

  ‘There you are, Joseph Sixsmith. Now what you been up to?’

  It was Aunt Mirabelle, lurking in the portico. At least her eagerness to be brought up to date made her forget Galina. But she showed more pertinacity than Chivers by suddenly asking, ‘What you doing sneaking out of that side door anyway?’

  Time to go. He glanced at his watch which had stopped and said, ‘Auntie, we’ll talk tomorrow, OK? I got an appointment. Business.’

  ‘At this time of night.’

  ‘Crime doesn’t keep office hours,’ he tossed over his shoulder.

  He’d seen that on the letterhead of a security firm he’d failed to do business with. He’d thought at the time it was a pretty crappy slogan. Now he got Mirabelle’s vote.

  ‘Don’t give me that clever dick crossword stuff,’ she yelled after him. ‘You never went to no college. Joseph Sixsmith, you get yourself back here!’

  Joe had made it to the square. Freedom was at hand but old habits die hard and he’d been obeying Aunt Mirabelle’s commands as long as he could remember. He hesitated on the edge of the pavement. He who hesitates is sometimes saved. A dusty blue Range Rover came shooting out of the narrow lane that led to the Cloisters car park and swept by him at a speed that would probably have exploded his vital organs if he’d taken another step.

  He glimpsed Mrs Calverley’s angular profile above the wheel. She gave no sign that she’d noticed him. Well, he supposed she’d had a nasty shock. And so had he.

  There were two ways of taking this near miss. One was that God had used Aunt Mirabelle’s voice to save his life. The other was, a man who’s just been so close to death needs a drink.

  He weighed the alternatives judiciously. On the whole, he reckoned that after all the eighteenth-century praise and thanksgiving God had been getting tonight, He wouldn’t be averse to a bit of modern secular music for a change.

  Deafening his ears to Mirabelle’s unceasing commands, he set off for the Glit.

  3

  From time to time, Dick Hull, who runs the Gary Glitter public house in Luton, gets an acute attack of conscience. It seems to him that despite all he has done by way of decor, music and memorabilia, he is failing in his priestlike task of celebrating the one and only supernova of the British pop firmament.

  Whenever this black mood comes upon him, he seeks solace in The Tape.

  This is a recording he made at one of Gary’s legendary Gangshows by hurling a cassette recorder on to the stage and reclaiming it later under a savage assault by three stewards. Miraculously, the tape had kept on recording. The resulting sound in Hull’s ears was more than hi-fidelity. It was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Played full belt on the Glit’s PA system, it took him back to that glorious night in Glasgow, and all his self-doubt faded away.

  It was playing tonight. Joe heard it several streets away. Legend had it that when fog blanketed Britain so bad that most airports were packing up and going home, at Luton planes still landed, homing in on the Glit.

  Joe didn’t altogether believe this. But he did wonder how a God accustomed to the gentle murmurings of Hallelujah choruses might feel about this level of decibels.

  Happily, he was able from long experience to detect that it was approaching its climax. This was not, great though it was, Gary’s valedictory rendition of ‘I’m the Leader of the Gang (I am)’ but the voice of a steward shouting ‘Awafokyerselyerweedickheed!’ and Hull’s respondent scream as a size eleven army surplus boot came down on his hand.

  The scream peaked as Joe entered. No one was talking. Even the new generation of kids brought up in a sound environment which made the machine room Joe had worked in most of his adult life seem like a forest glade, couldn’t compete with this combination of frantic fans, stroppy stewards, and personal pain.

  Then it was over. For a second there was a fragment of that rarest of things at the Glit, perfect silence.

  In that moment Joe’s gaze met Galina Hacker’s across the crowded bar, and his heart sank. She’d been at the Oxfam shop again. At least the seventies flared trousersuit she wore covered those provocative legs (how could anything so skinny be so sexy?) but she’d given the tunic a bit of pazazz by cutting off the sleeves, and even from this distance Joe could see she was wearing nothing beneath it. The flesh missing off her legs had been redistributed up there with equally disturbing results.

  First things first. He gestured to the bar and shouldered his way through, giving and returning greetings. Next best thing to anonymity for a PI was a place where everyone knew you, especially when it meant your pint of Guinness was already waiting, neat and welcoming as a vicar at a wedding.

  ‘Thanks, Eric,’ he said.

  Eric, a young man whose habitually worried expression clashed strangely with the brash assertiveness of his diamanté-studded waistcoat, watched in respectful silence as Joe downed five inches, then said, ‘No Whitey?’

  ‘No. I’ve been rehearsing. He doesn’t care for Haydn.’

  Whitey was his cat. No way you could get him into the chapel. Rev. Pot reckoned he’d got enough on his plate dealing with human crap. But St Monkey’s larger spaces had tempted Joe to bed Whitey down on a hassock in a remote pew at the first united rehearsal. He’d been all right through the introductory Chaos and the piano entry of the choir. But when they reached let there be light, and there was LIGHT, and the voices and instruments exploded in that most glorious of musical
exultations, Whitey had shot upright and started a howling which had persisted long after the music had died away.

  Most people had been amused. Aunt Mirabelle was not most people. According to her, Joe had let down himself, his family, Boyling Corner Chapel, and every decent Christian soul who’d ever had the misfortune to come in contact with him.

  Memory of Mirabelle was so strong that when a hand grasped his arm he jumped guiltily and almost spilt some stout.

  ‘Thought you wasn’t coming,’ said Galina accusingly.

  He turned and looked at her. Despite apparently being assaulted by a mad sheep-shearer and a myopic action painter, she was still a beautiful girl. But why not? Blacked out teeth and a raggedy suit hadn’t stopped Judy Garland of immortal memory from being the loveliest swell walking down the avenue.

  ‘Hello, Gal,’ he said. ‘Got a drink?’

  For answer she held up a bottle. Joe winced. It wasn’t just the contents, winceable though they were, being something called Luger which the ads claimed ‘blows you away’. It was the way these young girls drank straight from the bottle that offended something deep down. When he’d mentioned this to his friend, Merv Golightly, his distaste had been submitted to a long and deeply unflattering sexual analysis. But so were most things that tugged at Merv’s consciousness, from Luton’s performance in the FA Cup to the way that John Major walked. As a taxi driver, Merv was used to a captive audience. An American visitor had once hired him to drive her to Leeds and back twice a week for a month. ‘It’s cheaper than my analyst,’ she said. ‘And it does me more good.’

  ‘Let’s sit down,’ said Galina.

  She led him to a table where a bunch of her mates were protecting a couple of empty chairs by smashing their bottles down on any hand foolish enough to grasp them. They greeted Joe with their customary silent incredulity that one of his advanced years could still be moving with no apparent mechanical aid, then went back to their conversation which consisted of an interchange of staccato screams. The only alternative was to lean forward so that your lips were almost touching your interlocutor’s ear. This was the mode preferred by Joe and Galina, and if Aunt Mirabelle could have seen them in this position, the worst case scenarios hypothesized by her spies would have been positively confirmed.

  A tape of the conversation would have been more puzzling.

  ‘You got anywhere yet?’ said Galina.

  ‘Give me time,’ said Joe.

  ‘It’s been a week.’

  ‘Six days,’ said Joe firmly. ‘I said it would need to be slow else you could end up getting what you’re trying to avoid.’

  ‘Yeah? Maybe publicity’s what we need, get it out in the open, make them show their hand.’

  ‘We’ve been through all this,’ said Joe gently. ‘If they’ve nothing to show, all you’re doing is giving the loonies a feast. There’s no such thing as good publicity. You see a headline saying: BISHOP NOT BONKING CURATE’S WIFE, it doesn’t stop rumours, it starts them. Get a hint of this in the papers, makes no matter how innocent they say your granddad is, there are enough loonies out there to give him and you and the whole family a really lousy time. Is that what you want?’

  ‘Of course it’s not,’ said the girl. ‘Only I hoped …’

  Her voice tailed off, though he could still feel her breath warm on his ear lobe. He knew what she hoped. That in bringing her worries to him, she’d be told in no time flat that she had nothing to worry about. That’s what people often wanted, and they had a nasty habit of blaming him when he couldn’t give it to them.

  She said, ‘He’s been round at the club again, asking questions. I got a proper description this time.’

  She took a piece of paper from an inner pocket. It was warm from her breast. On it she’d scribbled: 5’8"–5’10" (bigger than me but not too much) reddish hair. Blue eyes. Swollen nose. Big feet. Olive-green jacket.

  Joe said, ‘This sound the same as the one who got talking to your mum?’

  ‘Yeah, except she didn’t say anything about his nose. Maybe someone’s hit him since then. Gets in my range, it’ll be more than a swollen nose he ends up with!’

  Joe regarded her gravely and said, ‘You’re not stupid enough to do that, are you, Gal?’

  In fact, he knew she wasn’t stupid at all. And the more he talked to her, the brighter she seemed. He’d known her for a long time without really knowing her. She was a cashier at the Luton and Biggleswade Building Society where Joe stashed what little money he managed to save from his erratic income. She was pleasant and personable and always greeted him by name and passed the time of day as she updated his book.

  He’d never seen her outside the building society except for one night he’d been invited to the Uke, the local Ukrainian Club, by a client and he’d spotted her sitting with a middle-aged couple and an older white-haired man. She’d given him a wave and he’d gone over and been introduced to her parents, George and Galina Hacker, and her grandfather, Taras Kovalko. Joe’s client had filled him in later. Taras was one of the numerous displaced persons who found refuge in the UK after the war. He’d settled in Manchester, married an English girl, had one daughter he called Galina after his own mother. She had married George Hacker, a salesman, and they’d gone to live in Luton. Widowed and retired, Taras had come to live with them a couple of years ago.

  Joe, who’d hitherto guessed that the girl’s unusual name was merely one of those Anglo-Saxon flights of fancy which filled the classified ‘Births’ with Clints and Garths and Meryls and Kylies, was pleased to know it had a real meaning. He believed in families. Blood was thicker than water, though he wasn’t so sure about Guinness.

  Then about a week ago, when he visited the building society to draw out a little of the little that was left, the girl had asked in a low voice if she could see him professionally.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘When?’

  ‘It’s my half day today,’ she said.

  ‘Fine,’ said Joe, smiling at her. In her M & S cardie with minimal make up and straight brushed hair, she looked about fourteen. He didn’t fancy making her walk down the rather seedy street which housed his rather scruffy office, so he said, ‘How about four o’clock in the Sugar ’n’ Tongs?’

  The Sugar ’n’ Tongs was the kind of place people took their grannies, very safe, very central.

  ‘OK,’ she said.

  He’d got there early so she wouldn’t feel uncomfortable arriving by herself. He realized he stuck out like a sore thumb among the mainly formidable female clientele. But he’d been united with them in conversation-stopping surprise when a spiky-topped alien in a skirt like a guardrail above a dizzying drop, and a halter straining like a tops’l in a Force Ten gale, had come through the door. The unity had been shortlived. From being a spectator he became part of the spectacle as the newcomer headed straight for his table and from that vermilion mouth came the words, ‘Hello, Mr Sixsmith. Good of you to see me.’

  Though the noise level here was decibels below the Glit, they set the pattern for future conversations by leaning close together to thwart the straining ears.

  What was said would probably have disappointed the would-be eavesdroppers, but Joe it deeply dismayed.

  ‘I was down at the Uke last week helping with the refreshments. It was a ladies’ social night, Mum’s really keen, it was her actually that got Grandda started going, he’s never been a one for living in the past, but since he joined he’s been really enjoying it. And I got talking to Mrs Vansovich, you may remember seeing her, little old lady, about the size of a garden gnome and she looks a bit like one too. The men make a joke about her, Vansovich always a witch, very funny ha ha, but she is a bit of a gossip, no denying. She started telling me about this man who’d been asking questions, said he was trying to contact someone called Taras something beginning with a K. He said his grandmother had got to know this Taras after the war when she was a driver for some colonel in charge of dealing with displaced persons in southern Germany. He said his grandmother
was bedridden now and would like to see this Taras again, but she couldn’t remember his second name except that it began with a K, and she thought he came from Vinnitsa which is where Grandda was born, and Mrs Vansovich knows this because she was born there too and is always wanting to talk about it.’

  Tea arrived and she paused for breath. When the waitress had gone, Joe said, ‘Galina …’

  ‘Gal. My friends call me Gal. Or Gallie.’

  Joe, conscious of the presence of some of the sharpest observers in Luton, didn’t think this was a good time to offer her the familiarity of calling him Joe.

  He said, ‘Gallie, if you could get to the point …’

  ‘Sorry. It’s not easy, not without telling you all this. The upshot was that old Vansovich must have told this man everything she knew about Grandda, and he said it might be the same one but he wasn’t sure, and could she please keep quiet about it till he was, as he didn’t want to embarrass anyone with talk of an old flame. He went off then, leaving Vansovich convinced there’s been some great romance. She’s a bit frightened of mentioning it to Mum, I think, but me being young, she thought I’d be interested.’

  ‘And were you?’

  ‘Yeah, it sounded a bit of a giggle really, Grandda and the colonel’s lady driver! I dropped a few hints to him, taking the mickey like I often do. Usually we have a good laugh but he got quite ratty. So I thought, hello, Vansovich has said something and it’s something he doesn’t want to talk about, so I let it drop. I did begin to wonder if maybe this thing had gone all the way and that maybe this jerk-off asking the questions was some sort of cousin of mine. Then Mum brought Grandda back from the club a couple of days later and I could see he was upset. I asked Mum about it and she said she’d called in at the supermarket on the way home, and when she came out to the car park, there was this guy talking to Grandda through the car window. Mum said he was holding the glass down with his fingers while Grandda was trying to wind it up inside. Mum heard him say, where’s the harm in a few facts, Mr Kovalko, if you’ve got nothing to hide? Then Mum asked him what the hell he was playing at? And he said sorry, he was just asking for directions, and took off. Since then, Grandda’s hardly been out of the house.’