Dead Man Upright Page 5

  I got bad feelings about the house the minute we shut the street door behind us. The hall smelled violently of take-away korma and couldn’t have looked new even the day it was finished – the staircase neither, with its rotten banister snaking away into the shadows. Firth unlocked his room and left me in the hall while he went to the toilet behind a purple stained-glass door. He pulled the chain and water tumbled wearily after it but he didn’t emerge, so I went into his room and got a beer out of the fridge.

  It wasn’t a room that anyone with positive aims in life would put up with for long. The greasy red carpet was worn through to the threads and I looked down at it thinking that at least the blood wouldn’t show when someone cut his throat over it. The wallpaper was the shade of green that only said hello to people looking for a place to kill themselves; in fact it was the ideal surroundings for your end to introduce itself to you in the mirror set into the junk city wardrobe; I expected my doppelganger to walk through it any moment with the message that this was it.

  Then night closed in with the darkness mankind had coming to it, and Firth made things worse still by coming in and pulling down the bamboo blind.

  ‘Cheerful,’ I said.

  Firth got himself a lager. After a while we heard steps out in the street and he peered out of the window.

  ‘That’s her,’ he said, ‘the new girlfriend.’ He looked a second time. ‘Yes, it’s her all right.’

  ‘Go out and talk to her.’

  He put his beer down carefully and went out.

  The front door opened, then shut again and a woman’s voice spoke sharply. I moved across the room to listen and heard Firth saying: ‘I’m the ground-floor tenant.’

  The woman said: ‘Really? Let me past, please, I want to go up.’

  Firth said: ‘If you’d come in here for a minute, I’m with someone who’d like a word with you.’

  ‘No fear,’ said the woman, ‘I haven’t time and I don’t know you. Anyway, men don’t talk about me.’

  I didn’t see why. By the crack of light in the doorway I saw she was in her forties, obstinate-looking, and in a business suit, but that didn’t make her unattractive. She was slim and her dark hair had some grey in it; one strand had got caught in the icy draught that whistled down the hall and blew across her cheek.

  ‘You’re going upstairs to see a man all the same, though, aren’t you?’ said Firth.

  ‘That’s none of your business.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I’m in a hurry. I’ve got things to do.’

  ‘Things?’ I said, coming out of the door. ‘What things? To do with Mr Cross?’

  She looked at me in the stupefied way that no liar can ever manage. ‘Mr Cross?’

  ‘You know. Mr Cross on the top floor.’

  ‘Who’s he?’ she said. Firth and I stood there, looking as silly as she did. ‘It’s Mr Drury I’m going to see.’

  Firth started to speak but it was me she was looking at. ‘Who are you, anyway?’ she said.

  ‘A police officer.’

  She obviously didn’t believe me. ‘A sleeping policeman?’

  ‘Mind out when I wake up,’ I said. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Ann Meredith,’ she said reluctantly. ‘Miss. Anyway, what’s this about? What’s it got to do with you who I’m going to see? Are you on duty?’

  I was always on duty, but there was no point saying so. She looked from one to other of us, biting her lip; I already found her very irritating. ‘Why should I believe you’re a police officer? You could be anybody. I don’t trust you.’

  When she saw my warrant card she looked up sharply. ‘Unexplained Deaths?’ I was surprised; not every member of the public knows A14 means that. ‘Do you know Chief Inspector Bowman?’

  ‘We co-exist.’

  She stared at me. ‘I know your face,’ she said. ‘You were on the Mardy case seven years ago; I worked for the defending solicitor. As a matter of fact I was his clerk. I was in court when you gave evidence.’ She pointed at Firth. ‘And him?’

  ‘Mr Firth’s a friend of mine,’ I said. ‘We want to talk to you, it won’t take long.’

  ‘It’ll have to be another time. Mr Drury’s expecting me upstairs; he’ll be here any minute. I just told you.’

  ‘If we could go into Mr Firth’s room here.’

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ she snapped, ‘don’t you speak English?’

  ‘I don’t want to insist,’ I said.

  ‘Then don’t,’ she said, ‘because I know my rights and you haven’t any.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, ‘that’s why I’m just asking you.’

  ‘All right,’ she said unwillingly, ‘five minutes.’

  I led her towards Firth’s room and she said: ‘What are we going in here for? Don’t you want to be overheard?’

  ‘You’re dead right,’ I said, ‘I don’t.’ We got into the room and I shut the door. ‘Now then, we’d like you to talk to us about Mr Drury.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s just routine.’

  ‘That doesn’t cover it,’ she snapped, ‘you’ll have to be much more explicit than that.’

  I counted to ten and said: ‘All right, I will be. Mr Firth here used to be with me in the police. He’s been living here for eighteen months, and he’s been keeping an eye on Mr Drury lately because he’s noticed a few things about his behaviour that puzzle him. So much so, in fact, that in the end he contacted me so that we could have a chat about it. And now that we’ve had the chat I admit I find Mr Drury puzzling too.’

  ‘I can’t think why, any more than I understand why you keep calling Mr Drury Mr Cross.’

  ‘Because Cross is a name Mr Drury is apparently using,’ I said, ‘and that’s part of the puzzle. We’ll get back to that, but I’d like to know a little more about you first.’

  ‘There’s nothing much to tell. I’m forty-one. I live on my own, and I’m with the same firm of solicitors I’ve always worked for, except that I’m only there part-time now. I don’t need to work the way I used to; I came into some money last year when my father died.’

  ‘A lot of money?’

  She studied me. ‘Two hundred thousand.’

  ‘Have you ever been married?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you any close family left now?’

  ‘Not any more, no.’

  ‘Friends?’

  ‘Besides Mr Drury, a few acquaintances, people I meet at work, that’s all.’

  I looked away from her because just then I heard a shoe scraping on the path outside the window. Firth must have heard it too, because he looked in the same direction. However the sound wasn’t repeated, and she seemed not to have heard it. I said: ‘By the way, am I right in thinking that there’s no one upstairs in Mr Drury’s place at the moment?’

  ‘Not as far as I know, unless he’s arrived while I’ve been in here.’

  ‘Then excuse my asking,’ I said, ‘but how did you intend to get into his flat?’

  She looked at me as if I were a half-wit. ‘Well, with a key, of course.’

  ‘So you go in and out as you please?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she flared. ‘I let myself in by arrangement with Mr Drury.’

  ‘That’s unusual,’ I said, ‘I would have thought Mr Drury would be waiting for you when you arrived.’

  ‘Hen’s got his little ways,’ she said. ‘He likes me to slip in first and tidy up – that’s how we always do things.’

  ‘Always?’ I said. ‘That sounds as if if you’ve known each other for quite a while. How long?’

  She looked put out. ‘A month.’

  ‘Long enough to decide you really like him, though.’

  ‘Like him?’ she blurted out. ‘I love him! He’s the most wonderful man I’ve ever met!’

  ‘Don’t his eyes
ever put you off at all?’ Firth muttered.

  ‘Of course not. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘But have you ever noticed anything unusual about him?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘His behaviour, say.’

  ‘What an extraordinary question! I just told you. He’s the most – well, there are his nightmares.’ I could see she regretted that as soon as it was out.

  ‘Nightmares?’

  ‘He has them sometimes. I prefer to forget about them. In fact, I’d rather not discuss it.’

  But now she had started it all came out in a burst. Some of them were so bad that they made him jump out of bed. The last time had been three weeks ago when they had been over at her place; he had walked towards the door stiff as a board with his arms out in front of him and she had had difficulty getting him back to bed, calming him down.

  ‘Did he say anything while he was having these nightmares?’

  ‘Nothing I could make sense of.’

  ‘How did he look?’

  ‘You’ve no right to ask me that.’

  ‘It might be important that you tell me,’ I said.

  She said in a low voice, as though she were reliving the experience; ‘All right, it was just a nightmare, of course, but his lips were drawn back and he was snarling.’

  ‘Were you afraid?’

  ‘I was glad when it was over.’ She tried to laugh. ‘Poor Hen! Afterwards when I told him about it he made an awful fuss because he didn’t memember a thing about it and it worried him.’

  I said. ‘Have you ever made a will, Miss Meredith?’

  She had just started to relax with us, but now her eyes blazed with anger again. ‘How dare you ask questions like that! Even from you people that really is the limit!’

  ‘You can’t always go by the rule-book when you’re trying to help someone.’

  ‘What makes you think I need any help?’

  ‘That’s what I’m trying to decide – but I can’t help you if you won’t answer my questions.’ I thought it was so strange, how there are times when two people can’t make any sense of each other no matter how hard they try.

  She calmed down. ‘I had considered making a will, yes.’

  ‘Was that your own idea or were you prompted?’

  ‘Prompted? Why prompted? Hen and I were making plans for the future.’

  ‘All I want to know is if Mr Drury raised the subject.’

  ‘This is intolerable!’ she shouted.

  ‘Maybe. But did he or didn’t he?’

  She flushed. ‘Well, we discussed things. I work for a solicitor after all and we drew up –’ She looked down at her hands.

  ‘Don’t make the will,’ I said urgently. ‘If it’s already drawn up, don’t sign it. Or have you signed it?’

  ‘No. It’s not ready.’

  ‘Then don’t touch it. Anyway not yet.’

  ‘Look, for the last time,’ she said, ‘will you, in simple language, explain what you’re getting at?’

  ‘What he’s saying,’ said Firth suddenly, ‘is that as long as you don’t sign any will your health will probably continue middling to good – frankly what he’s saying is that once you have signed it on the other hand, the odds in favour of your name appearing on a granite slab look excellent. That’s simple language, isn’t it?’ He added: ‘Have you known a lot of men?’

  He could have put it more tactfully, but tact wasn’t a suit Firth ever led with, and this time she really exploded. ‘The answer to your question, Snoopy, is no – not every woman needs to know what you call “a lot of men”.’

  There again another man might have let it drift, but not Firth.

  ‘Do you go by your instinct when you make up your mind about men?’

  ‘Yes,’ she snapped, ‘I find it’s a very sure guide.’

  ‘That’s what my wife thought, too,’ said Firth, ‘but she thought wrong so she threw the dishes at me and we’re divorced now.’

  I thought, Christ, he’ll be telling her the colour of Diane’s hair next. I said: ‘How did you first meet Mr Drury, Miss Meredith?’

  ‘By chance. I looked into a bar called the Anguria in Frith Street, and there he was, if you must know.’ She glanced at her nails. ‘I got on incredibly well with him straight away.’

  ‘Well let me tell you something,’ I said, ‘you’re not the only person to do that. In the course of the last eighteen months five other women have been getting on just as well with your Hen or even better, the last one since he met you. Did you know that?’

  It was obvious she didn’t, but she rallied. ‘Of course I realised he had a past,’ she said icily.

  ‘But perhaps not that it was such a recent one,’ I said. I turned to Firth. ‘When did you last see Miss Meredith’s predecessor?’

  ‘Couple of weeks ago,’ he said, ‘she hasn’t been back since.’ He added: ‘Her name was Flora. I know because I heard him calling her that one night on the stairs.’

  That really lowered her in the water; even so, she still didn’t sink. ‘Hen and I never discuss our past, we accept each other as we are,’ she said. ‘We love each other. And as for all these questions of yours I know the law, and if you infringe on my privacy any further I shall have them blocked.’

  ‘Don’t do that yet,’ I said. ‘For your own protection I’m going to make inquiries that might need your co-operation, that’s all I can say right now. Try to understand, Miss Meredith – police work is as much to do with preventing crime as solving it.’

  ‘You’re implying that I might be in danger from Mr Drury, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m not implying anything,’ I said. ‘I’d rather act on information, only I can’t do that if you’re not going to give me any.’

  ‘Can I have some idea of what this co-operation might involve?’

  ‘No, because I don’t know yet,’ I said. ‘Maybe there’ll be nothing to proceed on, maybe this whole thing will turn out as flat as a tyre and I hope it does. But for the time being I’ve got to warn you to be careful.’

  ‘And what if you find you have got something to go on?’

  ‘In that case I’ll be in touch with you, which is why I need your home and work address. The phone numbers.’

  ‘This is ridiculous!’ she said, but she ended by writing them down for me just the same.

  ‘And another thing,’ I said, ‘don’t tell Mr Drury about this meeting, it’s for your own sake.’

  Her mouth tightened. ‘We aren’t used to having secrets from each other.’

  ‘Yes you are,’ said Firth. ‘He’s never told you about his past and you’ve never asked him, you just said so. So you can keep him in the dark about this.’

  ‘It’s completely against our principles,’ she said. She looked at her watch again. ‘I must go now. I’ll think over what you’ve said.’

  ‘Let me do the thinking,’ I said.

  ‘All right,’ she said grudgingly. ‘As you’re a police officer I’ll do as you ask for a day or two. But it’s absurd, it’s like some sort of dream.’

  We saw her out and up the stairs. When she had gone Firth said: ‘My God, how stupid can people be – two hundred long ones and running about jumping into bed with a total stranger.’

  ‘It’s worse even than that,’ I said. ‘There you’ve got a woman who’s actually trying to die. Deep down she knows she’s all wrong about Cross, she knows she’s in danger but she just can’t help herself, she’s too stubborn.’

  ‘It makes you despair,’ said Firth.

  ‘Use your time explaining to her about the rabbit and the snake,’ I said, ‘You’ve got plenty of it, and keep an eye on her.’

  * * *

  We waited for Cross for almost three hours, but nothing happened. ‘He saw the three of us talking,
’ I said, ‘he was outside in the street and slunk off, I heard him, didn’t you? Pity, I was dying for a chat.’

  When it had just gone nine o’clock Meredith came downstairs past our door, alone, and beat on it savagely. She shouted through the panels: ‘I don’t care what’s the matter with him! I don’t care! Well, are you satisfied now he’s gone? Do either of you men know what it is to be a frustrated middle-aged woman and have a sex life you can finally revel in, no matter how strange it might seem to others? No! No!’ she screamed, ‘You don’t either of you know, you neither of you do, you’re cold ruthless blank faceless cruel bastards, and may you both rot in hell, the pair of you!’

  It was as though she had been in the room all along and overheard every single thing Firth and I had just whispered.

  She went out, banging the street door. It had started to snow. We watched her to the corner; her head was bent under the driving flakes, and she was crying.

  5

  I sat in the underground going out to my flat at Earlsfield thinking Firth had probably got something. I looked up and down the carriage. People were embarked on the last stage of boredom for the day, the journey home competing with the bad news in the Standard.

  A Jesus freak got on at Swiss Cottage. He shouted in a high treble voice above the roar of the train: ‘Let us all say good evening to Christ!’

  No one even said hello. Only the tough little German goddess sitting opposite me took any notice; everybody else immediately got their faces deeper into their reading, so that the speaker was faced with a solid wall of print that ran down the length of the car proclaiming 3 die in belfast gun battle in banner headlines. He got off at Baker Street looking discouraged. I stopped him by the sleeve as he left: ‘It took bottle to do that,’ I said. I offered him a pound but he refused it, saying: ‘Thank you, friend, but Jesus will provide.’

  I thought the heavens had worked a flanker on him myself, letting him freeze to death like that – not that I expected a magic overcoat to fall on his shoulders suddenly or anything. When I got off the train I saw two blind men helping each other up the stairs, one of them an old feller who knew the ropes, the other young, uncertain, only just got his L-plates up, probably only just left blind college.