‘Was that him?’ whispered Jane.
‘He wasn’t here, all right? He’ll sort everything out.’ Suzy spoke very quietly, without moving her lips.
It was all shaping up like a tragic accident – Careless Driving at a pinch – until the police started taking statements from people and Jim the porter told them he’d seen the car deliberately accelerate into the wall. Thanks, Jim. And then the other nosey old bitch – the one who had the flat on the other side of the main door where the crash was – went and stuck her oar in. Mrs Kowalski, her name was. Foreign.
Mrs Kowalski had seen the whole bloody thing and she’d tottered out into the front hall and started shooting her mouth off. She had a ginger wig stuck on all anyhow and a white space at the front of her head where her face ought to have been: no eyebrows; no eyelashes; no cheeks; no lips. Without Max Factor there was nobody there. They took her statement over by the porter’s desk but she was stone deaf so you could hear every word. Young women in motor cars at all hours driving. Decent people asleep. And not the first time flat fifty-two a nuisance made. The policeman’s ears pricked up. What flat number did she say? He finished taking her statement and was just nipping out to have a word with the radio bloke in the police car when he heard the clang of a tin pail on the tarmac outside. While he’d been busy with Mrs K, Jim the porter had wandered off to his little glory hole under the main stairs to get a mop and a bucket and a bottle of Jeyes Fluid and had calmly trotted outside to wash all that mess off the stonework. What was his game? More to the point, what were the CID going to say?
The CID pulled up a few minutes later in a shiny black Humber. The detective sergeant had a few words with the constable then strolled over to the settee. Carefully combed hair, dandruff (if allowed to run riot, dandruff can even lead to baldness), shiny blue suit. Married. He even smelled married: a nasty mixture of pipe tobacco and cough sweets and meat pie. Jane tried to picture the wife: a carrot-topped, pear-shaped, apple-cheeked housewife in a floral apron and K Skips baking bloody biscuits in Barnet.
Something about the magic number fifty-two had got them talking about accompanying them down to the station. No charge or anything. No taking down and using in evidence or any of that Dixon of Dock Green malarkey but they didn’t seem to have much choice about it just the same.
Suzy looked down at her blue velvet and then up at the copper.
‘The police station? Like this?’
Her voice had gone very Darjeeling all of a sudden and she’d tried to turn the charm up a notch or two, pursing her lips and batting her eyelashes down (to the frock) and back up again (to the detective) but those strokes didn’t cut much ice when your mascara was all down your face and you’d left most of your lipstick on the rim of a teacup. Jane surreptitiously wiped her lipstick on to a crusty old paper hanky she found in her jacket pocket. Crusty with what?
The policeman obviously hadn’t heard of dressing for the occasion.
‘Don’t try to be funny, miss. Just you go along with the sergeant here. We’ll take the other young lady in the Humber, Wilkins.’ It was Wilkins who had told Johnny Hullavington that the ambulance was on its way as his life’s blood trickled neatly down a nearby drain.
They might not let them change into formal daywear but they couldn’t very well refuse to let them go to the bloody toilet. Mrs Kowalski’s toilet. Suzy was gone nearly twelve minutes – time to put a whole new face on – but it wasn’t the brightest idea she’d ever had. Mrs Kowalski only had a thirty-watt bulb in her bathroom and the thick peachy powder and Plum Crazy lipstick were much too after six. And she’d got lipstick on her teeth.
Jane was in and out in half the time. She peeled off her eyelashes and left them in the soap dish then washed off what was left of her make-up. No sense looking like a slag. She quickly took Sergio’s bracelet off and looped it round the middle of her bra. Might give the filth the wrong idea. When she came out Mrs K was hovering in the hallway with a pair of rubber gloves and a bottle of Parazone, ready to disinfect the toilet seat. Cheek.
Chapter 25
Constant vigilance is required to form
and maintain pleasant facial habits.
There were a few drunks lurching pleasantly out of clubs in Curzon Street and Berkeley Square but there were no cars about and they got to Savile Row in about five minutes. They drove in round the back entrance and the uniformed man marched them along the gloss-painted corridors and up the stairs to the first floor.
Everyone was shouting and carrying on and a tone-deaf tramp was belting out ‘Who’s Sorry Now?’ from a faraway cell. It was obviously rush hour: tarts; pimps; poofs; toughs and one very drunk, very disorderly old bag with no front teeth and a greasy tweed skirt. She squinted cross-eyed at the pair of them in their French pleats and French navy.
‘Fuck me! If it isn’t the lady with the alligator purse!’
A big hello from an old soak like her didn’t do them any favours with the filth. Not exactly a character witness.
‘Friend of yours?’
They fingerprinted them both then put them in separate rooms. Jane’s had a bench against the wall and a table and chairs in the middle. She sat down on one of the chairs. The green paint, the smell of bleach and cabbage and the tiny shrivelled brains of chewing gum under the rim of the table made it a lot like being back at school.
There was a window in the room but it was so close to the wall of the office block behind that no light at all could get in and the ailing fluorescent striplight buzzed away day and night. It was hot and stuffy but she didn’t take off her mink – might get nicked. They left her there for over an hour before the detective came back and started asking questions while a hatchet-faced old dyke in a blue serge dress and one of those upside-down nurse’s-outfit watches sat in as silent chaperone.
Had she been driving the car? No, she was not driving the bloody car. How long had she known the deceased? How fast had the car been going? Did she possess a current driving licence? Did she know it was an offence to drive a car without a licence?
‘I wasn’t driving.’
Soothing suddenly. They knew it was an accident. Foot on the accelerator rather than the brake? Happens all the time. The jury would understand. Careless driving. Driving without a licence. First offence? There’d be a fine, obviously. But prison was unlikely. Six months tops.
‘I wasn’t driving.’
It was like talking to your bloody self.
They tried a different tack. What had she seen exactly? How did Johnny look when the Volvo hit him? Jane’s fingernails picked silently at the little brains under the table. She had a mental snapshot of the funny, confused expression as those Dior-blue eyes looked up from his scrounged cigar to the oncoming car. She remembered the softish, queasy feeling as they slammed into the wall and the jerk of pain as the strap thingy dug into her shoulder. She rubbed at the bruise.
‘Tell me about your evening. How many drinks did you have?’
She answered very slowly. A bit tipsy. A tiny bit slow on the uptake. Mr Hullavington was drinking Nwee. Nwee something. But Jane had wanted Whywine. Always Whywine with fish. Not too slurred. Her accent was edging steadily down the A3, mouth slightly ajar, a bit of a wobble to the head, letting her chin stroke the collar of her mutation mink.
Wouldn’t she like to give Mum and Dad a ring? Let them know where she was? The detective came into sharper focus when she filled her eyes with tears. He had really bad skin.