Death of a thin skinned.., p.8
Death of a Thin Skinned Animal, page 8
'Lost our tongue, have we?’
The gentler his voice the more frightened she got. And the woman Betts was smiling at her. Those big teeth and tiny eyes and that mouth like a razor-slash.
'Well now, these clothes are tramps’ clothes.’ He turned to one of the men. 'Crossley, you were on duty here. Wasn’t there some trouble with tramps?’
Crossley described how two of the tramps had started fighting while the others ran off. Shepherd listened in silence, nodding occasionally.
'And the one who ran round the back - did you see where he went?’
'Well, there’s a passageway leading to the next street, he must’ve gone down there.’
'You saw him?’
'Well no, but—’
'Did anyone see him?’
'No, but he was running away. Running like hell.’
'And you know where he ran? He ran straight past that passageway, up the fire-escape - and into this flat. And it wasn’t a tramp, it was Richard bloody Abbott.’
'No,’ said Joan with a loudness that surprised her.
‘No?’
'No.’
'Then I’m wrong,’ said Shepherd, his voice if anything gentler. 'And you will tell us how these clothes got here.’ 'Well, it was a sort of fancy-dress party,’ she said uncertainly. 'And one of my guests... .’
She stopped, at a loss.
'Came dressed up as a tramp?’
'Yes, that’s it.’
'And went home naked after stuffing his clothes behind the boiler.’
'No, well, you see...
Again she stopped. She felt panic rising in her like something alive and choking in her throat.
Shepherd stood up and looked down at her. Then he grabbed her, pulled her to her feet.
Tying bitch! ’ His voice came out like a thunder-clap. 'Abbott’s been here, hasn’t he?’ He gave her a savage shake. 'Hasn’t he?’ Another shake.
'Hasn't he?’ She thought her head would come off. He half- thrust, half-threw her back into the chair.
'Answer me, you bitch, or I’ll really start.’
She was too breathless to be able to speak. The Betts woman was smiling at her again.
'No,’ she said when she got her breath back sufficiently. 'No, he hasn’t.’
She’d hardly got the words out before he picked her up again, shook her again, threw her back in the chair again. 'You’re coming down to the Yard.’
'On what charge?’ Her voice shook, but she got it out. 'Harbouring a wanted man.’
'How was I to know he was wanted?’
'To say nothing of conspiracy, obstruction of the police and various charges under the Official Secrets Act.’
'I don’t believe you.’
The woman Betts reached out and gripped her upper arm so hard it made her cry out. The grip was like a man’s.
'Don’t argue with the superintendent, dear.’
She had to stall, she had to wait for Richard’s phone call so she could warn him. She had to find a way....
‘Look,’ she said, 'I’ve been at the office all day. I must have a wash. And change my clothes.’
Shepherd was about to say something short and rude when he caught the Betts woman’s impassive stare. He stared back with equal impassivity. Something passed between them, through the sort of deadpan communication system that develops between people who have worked or lived together a long time and who are fundamentally in harmony in certain ways.
Shepherd smiled. 'Of course, of course. No hurry.’
Joan, who had caught the look without understanding it, felt suddenly relieved, almost exultant. She thought she had won.
‘I’ll go and change.’
’One thing though,' said Shepherd. ’Sergeant Betts must go with you.’ To Betts he said: ’Make sure she stays away from the windows. I don't want her giving signals or any of that malarky.'
Joan was going to argue but thought better of it. What did it matter? She was winning anyway.
She went into the bedroom followed by Betts and stripped down to pants and bra. She was going to strip completely but the way the Betts woman was staring at her made her feel unaccountably shy.
She went into the bathroom and started to wash. Betts leaned in the doorway, tall and angular, watching her with those tiny eyes that missed nothing.
’You've got a nice figure, dear. A bit plump - but in all the right places.’
She had intended taking her time over washing but found herself hurrying. She wanted to get out of that tiny bathroom and the overpowering presence of the other woman.
She dried herself quickly and dusted her shoulders with a scented talcum powder. Suddenly she realised the woman was close behind her, almost touching her. She half turned and saw the woman towering above her; she was almost as tall as Shepherd.
Don't panic, she told herself. Be calm. This is England, after all.
’Do you mind giving me a little more room?’ The words were calm enough but the voice was breathy, with the suspicion of a shake.
The Betts woman bent her head and sniffed delicately at Joan’s bare shoulders.
’Very sexy, dear,’ she said, sniffing again. ’M’m, very sexy.’
’Will you please go away?’ The shake in her voice was now distinct.
The woman didn't move. In fact she leaned closer. Joan could feel her warm breath on her, then her hands on her. She screamed. It was the shock of being touched. The woman had merely put her hands on her shoulders.
‘No good screaming, dear. No one’s going to rescue you. Certainly not him.’
The grip on her shoulders tightened. The woman’s strength felt enormous. She tried not to, but she could feel herself cringing. And that helpless feeling came over her, paralysing her will. She wondered if she was in a state of shock, removed from reality.
’He doesn’t care what I do - as long as I make you talk. And if it helps to catch Richard Abbott, dear, he won’t care if I rape you with a bottle.’
The woman spun her round like a top. The big face, big teeth, tiny eyes peering down at her and getting nearer, ‘I’ll l she could see the downy hair on the long thin upper lip, even see a blackhead on the side of her nose, smell that warm cigarette-tainted breath, feel the grip of those big hands. . . .
Suddenly she felt a sharp pain in her left breast as if it had been twisted.
Chief Superintendent Shepherd heard her scream from the living-room. Then she burst in from the bedroom and ran straight into his arms. It was difficult to tell whether she was shrieking from laughter or fear.
Shepherd sat her in a chair and slapped her face. The old remedy. And it worked. Well, more or less.
The Betts woman came into the room and stood beside Shepherd and stared down at her. As soon as she saw the woman her lips trembled, and then she was trembling all over
'Get her back into the bedroom,’ said Shepherd, ’and get her dressed.’
’No,’ said Joan, 'no. I won’t have her near me. She’s a sadist, a lesbian—’
'A lesbian? Sergeant Betts a lesbian? She’s a married woman, a wife and mother.’
'A wife?’ Joan started to laugh that shrieking laugh again. 'That’s no lesbian, that’s my wife. Oh my God.’
’She’s hysterical.’ said Sergeant Betts. ’Let’s get her back into the bedroom.’
’No, please, no! ’ This time the shriek had no laughter in it.
Shepherd gripped her firmly by one arm, Betts by the other. They dragged her into the bedroom.
’Get her dressed,’ Shepherd said.
’It’ll be a pleasure.’
The woman still held her tightly. Shepherd moved to the door.
’Please don't go,’ said Joan. ’Please.’
She struggled impotently, ludicrously, like a fly in a spider’s web.
’I can’t stay here while a lady gets dressed.’
'I don’t care about that, I’ll dress in front of you, I don’t care.’
’Mrs Abbott,’ Shepherd sounded shocked, ’that would be most improper. Wouldn’t it, Sergeant?’
‘Most improper, Superintendent.’
’I’ll lock the door, shall I, Sergeant? In case she tries to get out again.’
Joan tried to say something but was overtaken by a fit of sobbing and trembling.
’She’s sweating. I’d better give her a bath. Shall I give her a bath?’
'Good idea,’ said Shepherd, turning to the door. The Betts woman smiled at her.
‘You’ll find me very handy with the soap, dear.’
‘I’ll ... I’ll tell you . .. about Richard.’ The words came out with difficulty between sobs.
She had broken. She had done her best but she had broken. In fact she had held out longer than might have been expected of someone of her temperament. She knew nothing of interrogation techniques or techniques for combating them. She was an amateur quickly broken by two professionals. She never had a chance. Later she would recover and try to undo some of the damage, but now she was broken.
Betts put a dressing-gown round her shoulders, sat her on the bed and fetched her a stiff whisky. Her manner was brisk, impersonal, matronly. It was hard to believe it was the same woman.
The whisky made Joan feel better. The shivering was only spasmodic now.
Under Shepherd’s questioning she admitted that Abbott had stayed in the flat the night before. She told him about the tramps - how Richard had bought them meths and got them drunk, changed clothes with one of them, then brought them along to the flats and engineered a quarrel between them.
‘Clever.’ said Shepherd. ‘Very clever. He waits for us to search the place and put a watch on it, then finds a way of slipping past us.’ He looked at Betts. ‘On the assumption that we won’t search it again. I like it. Oh, I like it.’
‘He reckoned without you, though, didn’t he?’
The Betts woman was smiling at him, almost simpering. Tiny, eyes fluttering. Trying to look coy. Trying an impossibility, trying to cover those yellowing piano-keys that passed for teeth with her upper lip and still smile. Trying to flirt, for Christ’s sake. Perhaps the lesbian bit was just an act. Sobering thought; but how far was she prepared to carry that act? Too far for me, Joan thought - but perhaps she was trying to rationalise her failure.
'Did he tell you what his plans were?’
‘No.’
She was telling the truth and Shepherd realised it.
‘When did he go out?’
‘Idon’t know. He rang me from scape pub after lunch to say the flat was no longer being watched.’
‘Was he suspicious about that?’
‘A little. He thought it was a day too early.’
‘When’s he coming back?’
‘Some time this evening. He said he’d ring and let me know.’
‘On this phone?’
‘On the public phone downstairs.’
‘Doesn’t miss a trick, does he? And he’ll be wanting to know if the coast is clear, won’t he?’
Joan lowered her head.
'Won’t he?‘
'Yes,' she said.
'And you’re going to tell him it is clear. Aren’t you?’
He and Betts stood over her, stared down at her.
‘Aren’t you?’
She nodded listlessly without looking at them. Betts put a hand under her chin, lifted her head up, forcing her to look at them.
'Answer the superintendent, dear. Say yes.’
‘Yes.’
Betts took her hand away and Joan’s head fell forward again, like a puppet’s.
They left her to dress and went into the living-room.
'Got him,’ said Shepherd. 'Now we’ve got him.’
His face was shiny with excitement and triumph. Like Joan earlier, he felt he was winning.
10
It had been a rough day for Frank Smith. After the broken night and the tiresome morning with Njala, he intended to slip home in the afternoon, put his feet up for a couple of hours and listen to some music.
But the afternoon brought trouble. Not serious but irritating to a tired man who wanted to go home.
Information had been leaked, presumably from the hotel’s press office, about the sudden tightening of security around Njala and his intended departure to the country. The press wanted to know what it was all about. They got on to the Yard and the Ministry of Defence and got nothing but dusty answers. They scented a mystery and tried the Foreign Office, who first stalled them with a statement that was a masterpiece of obscurity even for the Foreign Office, then sent an urgent memo to Frank Smith, who could (and should) have dealt with it, but decided to put it on the Minister’s plate. Let him earn some of that bloody money for once. Frank Smith was being petty and knew it. But he was feeling petty. It had been a rough day.
He rang that steeply superior private secretary, who said in his snootiest voice that his master was unavailable. That was the last straw.
'You mean,’ said Frank Smith with a calculated and matey coarseness, 'he's still banging that black bird in Fulham? Doesn’t he ever get off the nest?'
It must have taken the secretary’s breath away because all he heard on the line was a kind of strangled splutter. He hung up and laughed, his temper restored.
Then he rang the Foreign Office and suggested a press conference later in the afternoon at which he would make a statement and answer questions.
The conference went off well. The statement, which was false but plausible, said the Government had wind of a rumour that an IRA terrorist group were planning to kidnap or assassinate politically important visitors to Britain during the spring and summer. Of course it was only a rumour, possibly even a hoax, but . . . Frank Smith spread his hands. There had been the Herrema kidnapping, remember.
And why was Njala leaving London?
To visit a friend in the country.
'Male or female?' someone asked. 'Or is that a silly question?’ And there was a ripple of laughter from the men. The only woman journalist there sniffed.
Coming out into Whitehall afterwards the sunshine felt like a pleasant shock. It was the last day of April and overnight the weather had changed with suspicious suddenness from cold and rainy to sunny and warm. He tried to remember a line of Shakespeare's about the uncertain glory of an April day. There was a hint of thunder in the air though, and it made him uneasy.
His car was waiting and he told the driver to take him home. Along the Mall he wound down the window to look at the green grass and the girls in their summer dresses. They had come out with the sun, like flowers after rain. A yearly miracle that never palled. Looking at them, the lyric of hip and breast and thigh and swinging hair, he felt the old male desire for a woman. He lay back on the cushions and sighed and thought of Joan Abbott and her rounded softness. He supposed he shouldn’t have taken no for an answer. Everyone knew that women said one thing and meant another. The trouble was (apart from those nagging guilt feelings about Richard) he had always been shy of women. He liked them, he wanted them, but he was shy of them. Of course sexual need harassed him out of the shyness from time to time, but the relationships were fleeting. Perhaps like most men he was afraid of emotional commitment. A sign of typical male immaturity. No wonder he was still a bachelor. He sighed again and continued to think of Joan Abbott.
He was still thinking of her as the car turned out of St
James’s Street into Piccadilly, heading west. Just past the Rite he yelled to the driver, 'Hold it! ’ and jumped out. He was sure he had seen Richard Abbott. But when he caught up with him he saw it was someone else. He got back into the car red-faced and breathless. Christ, I’m out of condition, he thought.
They drove slowly through the Piccadilly traffic and he watched the crowds on the pavement, the men rather than the women, automatically searching for Abbott, which was ridiculous but he couldn’t help it.
When they got to Kensington Gore his mind was still alive with Abbott and just before Queen’s Gate, where he lived, he told the driver to go on to the office. He suddenly wanted to listen to the tape of Abbott’s voice again. Perhaps he’d missed some clue, some hint. Something.
But though he played the tape several times Abbott sounded as calm and rational as ever, and he learnt nothing. He called Alice in and asked her to listen, but she was no help. Not that she wanted to be. It was after five and she wanted to get home to the fiat, wash her hair and do some minor but important domestic chores.
'I’m sorry, I’m keeping you.'
'That’s quite all right,' she said politely, keeping her eyes down as usual.
She too had on a summer dress, and as she leant forward listening to the tape (in fact she was thinking about some tight jeans she was going to buy and not listening at all) he could see the beginning of the shadowed valley where the neckline ended and the suggestion of rising curves began. Twin roes feeding on Mount Gilead. It was warm in the office and he tried not to look.
She was attractive. It surprised him (for about half an hour a year he found her attractive and it always surprised him).
He started to listen to her voice on the tape - and something else surprised him: the emotion in it.
’You really did like him,’ he said, switching off the tape.
’Yes,’ she said, still looking down.
He wanted to ask her more, but did not know how to. His old shyness had come back.
‘It's well past your time.’ he said abruptly. ‘I ’I I drop you home.’
In the car he still had the feeling that there might be more to know about her and Abbott. Perhaps it was due to his odd mood, the warmth of the evening, the closeness of her, the female smells he was suddenly aware of, the remembrance of the girls in their summer dresses along the Mall, his own vague sexual stirrings....
‘Did he ever take you out?’
’Richard? A couple of times. When he was at a loose end.
'Did he ever say anything that . . . well, might help us? I mean, was there anything... strange about him?’
