Thief Taker (A Macrae and Silver Mystery Book 3) Read online

  The present reasserted itself. “But I’m serious, George. The kids are growing up. And the money isn’t enough.”

  “What about something to eat?” he said, changing the subject.

  “Here?” Her mouth turned down.

  “There’s an Indian take-away down the street. We could go to my place. It’s not far.”

  “I know where it is, George. I lived there too, remember?”

  They bought a couple of bottles of Liebfraumilch then went to the take-away and George bought two vindaloos, stuffed parathas, rice, onion bargees, mixed vegetables and two large helpings of lime pickle and mango chutney. The drinks had made them hungry and the smell of the bubbling curries was almost too much to bear.

  His terraced house was in a street that looked as though it had been the centre of a recent tank battle. Rubble and rusting cars and graffiti of the Belfast-school of wall artists gave the place a flavour of Northern Ireland.

  Mandy stopped at the door before following him in. “I thought Battersea was coming up in the world,” she said.

  The house looked what it was, the lair of a single man who did not notice his surroundings. But both were too drunk to care.

  He opened the cardboard containers and poured the contents on to plates. She was half leaning on the kitchen table. His arm brushed against her breasts as he moved and that was the trigger. He found himself shaking. He caught her arms and she came up to him as though on springs. They kissed and in a second were pulling at each other’s clothing. His hand slipped under her blouse and covered one of her breasts. He felt her fingers on his trousers. As they wrestled they fell against the table which moved under their weight.

  “Not here!” she said, sliding her mouth away from his. “Not on the floor!”

  They climbed the stairs, shedding pieces of clothing as they went. His bed was still unmade but neither noticed that. He went down on top of her like a bull.

  It was all over for both of them in less than a couple of minutes and they lay together, hearts racing, breath coming in gusts, finally slowing down to a kind of free-floating numbness.

  “Jesus, George!”

  “Aye…That’s what we’ve been missing.”

  After a few minutes she got up and brought the curries into the bedroom. He opened a bottle of wine. Both of them sat naked on the bed, eating and drinking.

  When they’d finished she said. “I’d better go.”

  “What’ll you say to Joe?”

  “He won’t ask.” She made up her face. “Getting back to the kids. I’ll need at least another twenty a week.”

  He did not reply and she kissed him on the mouth. “Thanks for everything.”

  He lay in bed after she left, smoking and looking at the ceiling. Money. It all came down to money. Three thousand quid he’d had to find for Susan, his daughter by his first marriage, to go gallivanting around South-East Asia with her boyfriend.

  He remembered the night his first wife had asked him for it. She’d looked so good then, so different from the little Linda Brown he had married. That’s who he should have been having supper with this evening and not getting pissed at a boozer first. And not take-aways, but a proper meal in a proper restaurant and then…perhaps back to her place, not this pit.

  He’d hoped that meeting was the beginning of something, but he’d got mixed up with a bunch of crazy Triads and by the time the case was over…well, somehow, he hadn’t had the courage to ring her.

  Soon he was telling himself she’d only met him to talk about the money for Susan. That way he could dislike her.

  Money. Everybody wanted his money.

  He remembered the bank manager’s face when he’d asked for a loan. He’d paused, put on his glasses, looked at the papers on the desk and said, “Your house has a second mortgage on it, Mr Macrae. I’m afraid that under our regulations we are not able to make you a loan. Indeed your overdraft…” He flicked at the figures like a schoolmaster marking shoddy homework.

  And so he had found the money elsewhere. He didn’t like to think about where. And now Mandy wanted more for the kids…

  Anyway, to hell with it. Don’t think about it. Think about Linda instead. Life wasn’t just sex, he told himself. It was companionship. Friendship.

  That’s what he’d had with Linda.

  The sex had been with Mandy.

  CHAPTER IV

  “Ron! Where are you, Ron?”

  You old cow, he said under his breath. Bloody old cow.

  He had the gun on his bed. It lay in several parts; the barrel, the grip, the magazine, the bullets.

  He was having a little exhibition, just for himself. Spread out on the pink candlewick bedspread was the SS cap badge, the Iron Cross (Third Class), the pair of Zeiss binoculars said to have belonged to one of Rommel’s staff officers (a lens was missing which was why he had got them cheap), the red silk flag with the black swastika in the middle, the death star he’d found at the martial arts shop in the Charing Cross Road, the flick-knife he’d bought on a day trip to France.

  His “Collection”.

  He’d thought of it many times. Dozens. Hundreds. Lying on his bed listening to old Crowhurst snoring and muttering in his sleep, he’d thought of each piece detail by detail and had promised himself that the first thing he’d do when he got out was have one of his old exhibitions.

  And that’s what he’d done.

  “Isn’t it time for my pill?” His mother’s voice came through from her bedroom next door. “You know what the doctor said.”

  I know the doctor said you’d never bloody walk again, that’s what I know, Ron said to her, or would have said to her, or wished he was able to say to her. Instead he said it to himself.

  “Ron!”

  “I’m not Ron!” he shouted. “I’ve told you a thousand times! Ronnie. Ronald. Mr Purvis. Not Ron!”

  “Mr Purvis? You must be mad. You’re my own son. I’m not going to call you Mr Purvis!”

  “Well, don’t call me Ron then!”

  Otherwise I’ll smother you, you old cow.

  His “Collection” had once been ten times its present size. The coppers had got most of it, but not the cream. He’d buried these in next-door’s garden months before he’d been arrested, just a hole and a concrete slab to cover them. ‘Course the coppers never thought of looking next door. Why should they?

  Old Mrs Blunt had lived there ever since his family had moved to London when he was a kid. Half blind, she was, and deaf as a post. She’d seen him there once, getting out the plastic box, and he’d said he was looking for his ball.

  “Don’t you go breaking my windows,” she’d said.

  He’d been twenty-something but she still thought of him as a little kid. Which was good. It meant he could climb into her small back garden almost any time, and if she did see him — if — he’d just go on about losing his ball.

  If the pieces on the bed were the cream of the collection, then the pistol was the “cream de la cream” as Crowhurst was always saying with a leer — the bloody old bender. And ignorant too.

  Browning automatic pistol. Made in Belgium. Gun-metal black with cross-hatching on the grip. A “revolver”, his mother had called it when she saw it the one and only time. Jesus Christ, a revolver. Who did she think he was, Billy the Kid? He’d tried to explain the difference between a pistol and a revolver but she’d been just about bloody hysterical.

  “I don’t care what it is! I just want you to get rid of it!”

  Made him promise to take it that instant to the police station.

  “And tell them where you picked it up!”

  Naturally he hadn’t gone anywhere near the police station. He’d set off down the road and then come home the back way through old Mrs Blunt’s yard — and that’s when the idea came.

  That night he’d dug a hole and put the gun and his other things in a plastic box and hidden it there.

  Buried treasure. Brilliant.

  “Ronald!”

  She’s lear
ning.

  But he wasn’t ready yet. He had the gun oil. Ballistol. They said it was so pure you could gargle with it, rub it on cuts. They said it was a magic cure-all. He worked the breech. Lovely smooth action. Pulled the trigger. Click…click…firm…solid…He put some oil on the rag and began to rub the barrel up and down…up and down…The smell was lovely. Up and down…slow…then quicker…

  “Ronnie!”

  “What?”

  “I told you. My pill. Anyway I need to go.”

  “You went half an hour ago.”

  “I can’t help it.” Pause. “You don’t think I want to be like this, do you?” Pause. “Do you?” It was a shriek.

  “Oh Christ, all right.”

  He stopped by the long mirror near the door and looked at himself. Medium height, thin, sharp-featured. Ratty, they’d called him at school. His fingers strayed to the livid scar on his left cheekbone. Depressed fracture of the maxilla, the doctor had said. Broken nose, he’d said. Numbness, he’d said. And he was right. He still couldn’t feel his upper lip, still couldn’t breathe properly. He’d grown his hair long to try and cover the scar. “Veronica”, Crowhurst had called him. Veronica bloody Lake.

  At first he’d been angry, then he found that many of the Rule 43 prisoners had female names. Crowhurst himself was called “Jill”. Imagine that. And him an elderly geezer and ex-army. Still, he hadn’t minded calling him “Jill” if that’s what turned him on. He didn’t even mind being called “Veronica” himself as long as they didn’t try to interfere with him. But they had, of course. Or tried to. Rule 43 prisoners always did.

  Before he was put in with Crowhurst he’d shared with a bloke called Flugl…Flugel — something like that — big sod who was in for messing about with a kid. And so anyway this bloke tried to mess about with him and Ronnie had said OK, mate, you do that again and I’m going to think of something. And Flugel had laughed at him and done it again and when he was asleep Ronnie had held a pillow over his face until Flugel woke up choking. ‘Course he’d bashed Ronnie, but he’d persevered. He’d done it three nights in a row and Flugel got to a point where he wouldn’t go to sleep. After that he left Ronnie alone.

  He took his mum to the bathroom and helped her back into bed.

  “And now my pill,” she said.

  He gave her a white pill and some water. She had more pills than he could count. Red ones and blue ones; white ones and brown ones. Pills to alleviate pain. Pills to combat high blood pressure. Pills to bring down the rheumatic swellings in her joints. Pills for this and pills for that and pills to stop her stomach rotting from all the other pills.

  “You take more pills than — ”

  “You should be thankful for the pills. If it wasn’t for the pills you’d still be inside. God, when I think what you could have been! What I worked and scraped for!”

  He didn’t want to get into the what-I-sacrificed-for-you bit.

  “Why should I be grateful?”

  “If it wasn’t for my illness they’d never have given you early parole. Never. Nearest relative. That’s you.” She turned away.

  What a difference, he thought. She’d been a big, masculine woman, with powerful, knotted legs. Powerful personality too. Much too powerful for his dad. Now look at her. Long, grey, untidy hair, sagging flesh, loose dentures.

  “Nothing to do with you needing looking after.”

  “Plump them up a bit.”

  He plumped up her pillows.

  “What then?” she snapped sullenly.

  “The therapy at Granton.”

  The madhouse? Don’t make me laugh!”

  “That’s just the sort of thing you would say. It’s not a madhouse. It’s a psychological unit for prisoners who want to improve.”

  “You believe that you’ll believe anything.” She settled back. “Anyway, you’re home. And now you’ve got to do your duty.”

  “What duty’s that?”

  “Looking after me. That’s what. Just like I looked after your grandmother.”

  “That wasn’t long.”

  “Eighteen months it was before she died.”

  “Father said it was twelve.”

  “How would he have known?”

  Ronnie could hear the contempt in her voice and he didn’t like it. Didn’t do to speak ill of the dead.

  “Bring the TV nearer,” she said.

  She was settling down for the evening. Good, he thought. “Any more pills?”

  “The blue ones. But not till nine.”

  “I may be out at nine.”

  “Out! And leave me! What for?”

  He might have told her to post a letter. But she’d want to know every last bloody detail about it and it wasn’t her business.

  “There doesn’t have to be a reason. Out. Just so I’m not in all the bloody time.”

  “And stop your swearing. When I think how I slaved to send you to a private school!”

  “That place! You could’ve saved your money.”

  “There was nothing wrong with it.”

  “There was everything wrong with it. Pretended to have a history and traditions. The bloody place was only founded after the war.”

  “It was a good school and you should have got on. Instead…and just listen to you. Bloody this and bloody that. You didn’t pick that up at school. You got that from your prisoner pals.”

  “Wormwood Scrubs. University of Life. BA Degree in Buggery. Like to see the tie?”

  “Don’t be cheeky! I’m your mother!”

  It was time to stop. They both knew it because they had come to this point so many times before. They stared at each other like a mongoose and a snake. If Ronnie was the mongoose, his mother was like a large constrictor. The mongoose had sharp teeth but the constrictor’s coils had been round him since birth.

  “I think I’ll have my medicine now,” she said, suddenly arch. “Your sundowner?”

  She smiled at him. “Yes, darling, my sundowner.”

  He went to get the sherry. He liked her to call him darling. It sounded sophisticated; the way people spoke to each other in the movies. In his whole life, which was twenty-nine years, no one but his mother had ever called him darling.

  He came back with the sherry. The bottle was half full. “That’s all there is,” he said.

  A look of alarm crossed her face. “What about the other one. I thought there were two?”

  “You drank the other one last night. And half of this one.” She smiled like a little girl. “That was naughty, wasn’t it?” She wasn’t supposed to drink with all the pills she was taking, but you couldn’t blame her, he thought. The trouble was she got so bloody pissed he had to be around when it was pill time. Otherwise God knew what she’d take. Once before she made herself so ill taking handfuls of the things that the doctor had asked him to dole them out.

  “Ronnie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “When you go out, get me another.” She pointed to the bottle.

  “OK.”

  She switched on the TV, turned away and settled against her pillows, the glass and bottle to hand. He opened his mouth to say something but she was no longer aware he was in the room.

  CHAPTER V

  The house was in one of the elegant little squares off the King’s Road in Chelsea; three storeys and a basement in a terrace of identical houses, all painted white, all with doors either shiny black or yellow or deep purple, all with heavy brass door furniture, all with bars on the windows.

  Expensive cages.

  This particular house, number thirty-three on the west side, had security bars on every window and an alarm box on the wall. This was how Zoe would like to live, Silver had thought when he and Macrae had arrived earlier in the evening.

  It was now almost midnight.

  There was a great deal to protect: the ground-floor hall was hung with paintings: Braque, Klimt, and Mondrian — the value of which Silver could not even begin to assess. In the living room he saw two Picassos and a Dufy and there wa
s a Léger and a “Douanier” Rousseau in the first-floor study. The walls of the bathroom and lavatory were covered by erotic art: Beardsley and Egon Schiele, Indian miniatures and Japanese scroll drawings. The main bedroom was devoid of all paintings but it did have a complete mirror wall.

  It also had the body.

  The corpse lay on the white carpet at the foot of the bed. At first Silver had thought that the carpet was patterned. Then he saw that the patterns were splashes and trickles of blood. A large area was speckled with tiny red droplets and so was a section of the mirror-wall, as though someone had given it a burst from an aerosol containing red paint.

  The body, in death as in life, had a name: Robson Healey, and Macrae had recognised it instantly.

  Shipping.

  The police procedure was in full swing: the doctor had been, the police photographer had been, Forensic was combing the place and the “blue serge” — or “woodentops” as Macrae disparagingly called the uniformed branch — who had arrived first, were still saturating the house. An incident room was in the process of being set up at Cannon Row police station, and everything was going just beautifully — except for Robson Healey and the fact that no one knew who had killed him, for killed he had certainly been.

  “A blow to the head with a blunt instrument,” Silver had said, unconsciously cathartic.

  The duty doctor, an elderly man called Dr Willey, who had been wrenched away from the bridge table and who was in no mood for levity, had snarled, “For goodness sake, man, have you no feelings!”

  Silver had been taken aback. This was not the first murder victim he had seen. He had been badly affected by the early ones. Now, he realised, he was making jokes about them.

  Before the body was zipped into a body-bag, Silver studied it carefully. Healey had a young-old face, deeply suntanned. You didn’t usually get tanned in an English spring and it spoke of a yacht in the Med or a sunlamp. His white hair was heavy and thick, exceptionally so for a man in late middle-age. Now it was disfigured by blood and bits of flesh and bone, and what might have been brains. When he died he was wearing clothes more suitable for St Tropez than London on a damp night: blue espadrilles, light blue cotton trousers, a blue denim shirt and the mandatory gold chain around his neck. He looked more like a cliché Hollywood producer than a British shipping magnate.