‘Maybe. I wonder.’
‘You have another idea?’
‘I don’t know. Just a thought. You see, I got to know Chox quite well while we was down in Hunstanton. I don’t mean I got close to him — I don’t think anyone did that, but I think he kind of trusted me. I wonder if we were to talk to him together. . I’ve a feeling he might be more forthcoming that way, relax a bit, you know. What do you say?’
‘Sounds a great idea to me.’ Anything rather than steeling himself to another solo encounter with a supposed murderer.
‘Well, look — What’s the time? Hmm. I got to go back to see Walter, try and get some more of this bloody script sorted out. So that’ll take. . I don’t know, three bloody years to get it anything like respectable. But let’s say till seven. Can you meet me round Chox’s place about eight?’
‘Sure. Where’s he live?’
Barber gave an address in North Kensington. ‘I’ll ring him first to check he’s going to be in. You ring Walter’s office in a couple of hours and I’ll be able to confirm that. Otherwise, see you there at eight.’
Charles arrived shortly after eight. The road in North Kensington had been built for prosperous Victorians, but now the trees which lined it were scraped and scabby and the tall facades of the houses diseased by neglect. Paint flaked from porticoes, toothless balcony railings gaped, overflow pipes scored green smears down walls and the doorsteps were littered with dustbins and old magazines. A dusty cortege of outmoded Fords, some wheel-less, some lividly splodged with aerosol paint, lined the gutter. The aerosol artist had also left his blurred testimony on the trees and every bit of wall that he could reach.
The large front door out of which Lennie Barber emerged had been slashed with lines of spray paint, silver mocking the dirty blue beneath.
‘I was waiting just inside the hall, Charles. Not the sort of area to hang about in. Lot of muggings round here. Also not too many friendly white faces, know what I mean?’
Charles nodded and followed Barber into the dimly-lit hall. The outline of what had once been an impressive sweep of stairs emerged from the gloom ahead. But its classical proportions had been distorted by the random juttings of hardboard walls with which the fine old house had been converted into bedsitters.
‘Like I said, Charles, when you rang, he’s expecting us. I said you was coming. He didn’t sound suspicious or anything. I think he may have just had a fix. Didn’t sound all there. If he’s still in the state, it might be good for us. He’ll be relaxed and talk. Then we’ll find out what really did happen.’
‘Let’s hope so.’
The push-button time-switch in the hall produced no more light. Either the bulbs had been nicked or just not replaced by absentee landlords. As Charles and Barber groped their way up the banister, they became aware of the smell of the house — a compound of used cooking oil, beer and wet cardboard. Reggae music and softly accented voices issued from behind the doors of the other bedsitters they passed.
On the second landing Charles paused to let Barber catch up with him. The comedian was breathing heavily, suddenly an old man. Struggling for his breath, he leaned against the banister and gestured straight ahead through the murk. ‘It’s that one,’ he gasped.
The door was slightly ajar, but no light showed through the crack. Charles knocked softly. Then harder. Harder again. Nothing.
Struck by an abrupt sense of panic, he pushed the door open with his left hand and with the right reached round for the light switch.
He felt its outline and the pain hit him. As his fingers stung with the snapping flash of electricity, he had a vision of Bill Peaky’s wild face as he had grasped the microphone in Hunstanton. At the same time the impact of the shock slammed him, backwards against the banister.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
FEED: There’s a man outside with a nasty look on his face.
COMIC: Tell him you’ve already got one.
Charles felt as if some demonic barman had mixed him with ice and fire and was determined to shake him into the cocktail of all time.
Lennie Barber was crouching over him, his face old and anxious in the half-light. ‘You all right? What happened?’ he kept repeating.
After a bit, Charles decided that he wasn’t that badly hurt. His fingers still stung and his arm felt numb. The impact with which he had met the banisters was going to leave a great bruised line across his back. But basically, he would survive.
‘I’ll be OK, Lennie. Help me up.’
It hurt, but he could walk. He rubbed his tingling wrist and moved across to the door of Chox’s bedsitter again. There was still silence from inside. From the other doors on the landing there were human sounds, but no one had come out to see what had caused the crash. Perhaps the sounds of violence were too familiar to be investigated. Perhaps it was wiser to keep out of other people’s troubles.
Charles felt confident that Chox’s room was empty and went in. After a bit of fumbling in the dark, he found a bedside lamp of the Chianti bottle variety that went out of fashion in the fifties, and switched it on.
The room was a terrible mess. A mattress on the floor served as a bed and hadn’t been made for some weeks. The floor was littered with copies of Melody Maker, New Musical Express and other less-established music papers. In the gaps these left, LP sleeves poked through. Encrusted coffee cups were marooned among the flotsam.
He moved across to the light switch, aware of Lennie Barber’s frightened face peering round the door-frame. The booby trap had been simple. Chox had merely taken off the plastic cover of the switch and pulled out the wires so that they would be the first thing a reaching hand would meet. Simple, but efficient.
Charles became aware of what Lennie Barber was saying. ‘I shouldn’t have told him.’
‘Shouldn’t have told him what?’
‘Shouldn’t have told him you were coming, Charles. Someone must have mentioned that you had this sideline as an amateur detective and he must have realized you were on to him.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘He intended to kill you, Charles. God, it’s just struck me. If I hadn’t been such a short-winded old fart, I could have been the first one into that room.’
‘Yes. Just a minute.’ A new thought.
‘What?’
‘You don’t think Chox is out to get you, do you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I was just thinking back to the accident you had in Hunstanton. When you burned your hands. Had Chox been round to your digs?’
‘He had, but — ’
‘It’s possible that he’d sabotaged your kettle. He seems to have an unhealthy interest in murder by electrical accident.’
‘Yes. You had a lucky escape, Charles.’
‘Maybe. Of course, the switch wasn’t certain to kill me. As I have proved by standing here before you now.’
‘No. Maybe he just wanted to warn you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘To discourage you. To indicate that, if you go on hounding him, he’ll try something a bit less hit-and-miss.’
Suddenly the electric shock seemed to be on him again and Charles shivered uncontrollably. ‘Do you know,’ he managed to say, ‘at the moment I feel very inclined to take the hint. Let’s go and have an extremely large drink.’
Fortunately he didn’t have much time over the next few days to examine the ethics of the case. In the brief moments when it loomed into his mind, the questions it posed were quite simple: do I want to go on pursuing Chox Morton or can I be content with the intellectual satisfaction of knowing that he killed Bill Peaky? (There was now no doubt about this last assertion; the booby-trapping of the light switch was tantamount to an admission.) Does Bill Peaky’s death matter anyway, since he was such an unpleasant person? Or is the world just rid of another bastard? Do I believe in an Ultimate Truth, which must always be upheld?