Brady lit his cigarette, blew out a plume of smoke. “I wouldn’t be surprised,” he said calmly. “It was splashed all over the newspapers for long enough. I’m Matthew Brady.”
There was a moment of absolute stillness and her eyes widened perceptibly. “Brady!” she said in a whisper. “But it isn’t possible.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, angel,” he said. “But it is. I crashed-out of Manningham Gaol not much more than an hour ago.”
She sat up, swinging her legs to the floor, and stubbed out her cigarette in the ash tray. “What do you want, Brady?” she said calmly, and she seemed to have recovered her nerve.
“I haven’t got time to argue, so I’ll give it to you straight,” Brady told her. “Jango tried to see me out of this world yesterday. With a little persuasion he told me that you’d put him up to it. I want to know why.”
“I’ll see you in hell first,” she said. “Get out of here before I ring for the law.”
She started to get up and Brady slapped her backhanded across the face, and pushed her back down on to the bed, a hand at her throat. “You’d better listen to me, you cheap tramp,” he said. “If you put the cops on to me now or at any other time, I’ll see that Jango pays. I’ve got friends inside — good friends. If I say the word, they’ll make his face look like raw meat.”
She glared up at him, but there was fear in her eyes — real fear and he knew that he had said the right thing. That Jango was important to her.
He took his hand away from her neck and she sat up, smoothing it with one hand. “What do you want to know?” she said sullenly.
“That’s better,” Brady said. “That’s a whole lot better. Who asked you to sick Jango on to me?”
She took a cigarette from a box by the telephone and lit it from a table lighter. “It was a man called Das,” she said. “He’s an Indian — runs a phoney religious set-up called the Temple of Quiet about a mile from here, near the Hippodrome Theatre.”
Brady frowned. “But I don’t understand. I’ve never heard of him before.”
She shrugged. “I’m telling you the truth. He’s got his finger in everything crooked that goes on in these parts from drugs to girls. He came to see me on Wednesday. Told me he had a client who wanted to see you meet with a fatal accident inside. He said there was five hundred in it for us if Jango could handle it.”
“And an extra two hundred and fifty if he managed it by today,” Brady said.
She nodded. “That’s right. If you want to know anything more, you’ll have to see Das.”
“I intend to,” Brady said. He went to the door, unlocked it and turned. “Remember what I told you, Wilma. If I get nicked through you, Jango pays the piper.”
She spat out one filthy, unprintable word at him and he gently closed the door and went along the corridor.
The girl in the cloakroom still looked bored. She gave him his coat and hat without a flicker of emotion and he put them on and went downstairs and out into the rain.
(5)
As he walked away from the club the wind, blowing across the water, brought with it the dank, wet smell of rotting leaves, redolent with decay, filling him with a vague, irrational excitement.
The rain was falling in solid silver lances that gleamed in the lamplight as he went briskly towards the centre of the town through deserted streets. An occasional car swept by, and now and then, someone hurried along the sidewalk, head lowered against the driving rain.
He found an old man in tattered overcoat and cloth cap standing in a doorway on the corner of the main shopping street, hopefully trying to sell his last halfdozen Sunday newspapers. Brady bought one and the old man wiped a dewdrop from his nose with the back of a hand and stepped out into the rain to direct him.
He came to the Hippodrome first, a narrow, marble-fronted Edwardian music hall with an alley running down one side to the stage door. The stills for that week’s show were still on display in glass-fronted display cases and on impulse, he stopped and searched through them, looking for Anne Dunning.
He found several of her, mostly carefully posed in a tableau with two or three young male dancers, but there was one studio portrait which had really caught her. For a moment, he stayed there looking at it, remembering her kindness, and then he sighed and turned away.
The Temple of Quiet was up the next turning. There were many cars parked in the street and as he moved along the sidewalk, a large, black Mercedes swirled in to the kerb, splashing him with water from the gutter.
He turned angrily. “Why the hell don’t you look where you’re going?”
He caught a brief glimpse of a Homburg hat and pebble-dash glasses. Teeth gleamed whitely in the darkness. “So sorry,” the man said with the merest suggestion of a lisp and drove the Mercedes farther along the street where there was more space.
Brady moved on to the gate of the temple and looked up at the imposing building with a frown. It looked as if it had been some kind of Nonconformist chapel at one time, a gaunt, soot-blackened Victorian building with fake Doric columns and a portico over the entrance. Probably the original congregation had dwindled away as the population tended to spread outwards from the centre of the city, and Das had got the place cheaply.
He mounted the broad steps into the portico, opened one of the doors, and was immediately greeted by an overpowering smell of incense.
The hall was covered with an expensive Indian carpet and lit by fake electric tapers. A low hum of conversation came from somewhere in the dim recesses of the building and he followed the sound to a pair of double doors.
He stood outside listening for a while and then noticed another door at one side. He opened it and mounted a narrow stone staircase which brought him into a gallery from which he could see down into the hall below.
The altar and the choir stalls had been removed. In their place stood a gold-painted statue of Buddha. There were no chairs in the hall and the congregation sat cross-legged on the floor. They looked middle-aged and anxious and the majority were women.
The place was dimly lit with more fake tapers and heavy with incense. In front of the statue of Buddha, a small fire burned in a bowl and a man prayed before it, his head flat on the ground.
Brady decided that he must be Das. He looked very effective. He wore a yellow robe which left one shoulder bare and his head was shaved.
After a while he stood up and turned. He had a fine face and calm, wise eyes. He smiled gently and said in a melodious voice, “And so, my brethren, I give you a text to meditate upon until our next meeting. To do good is not enough. It is also necessary to be good.”
He sounded completely sincere, but spoilt it for Brady in the next breath. “There will be the usual silver collection as you go out. Give what you can that we all may benefit.”
He raised his arms in benediction and then turned and disappeared behind a screen.
The audience got to its feet, not without an effort in some cases, and Brady stayed where he was until the last of them had filed out.
He went downstairs and as he emerged into the corridor, a woman was about to enter a small office opposite. She wore a yellow robe rather similar to the one Das had been wearing and held a large collecting bag in one hand. It was bulging with cash.
“Can I help you?” she said with a slight frown.
She looked about forty and spinsterish, with one of those tight, desiccated faces and a slight nervous twitch to one side of her mouth.
“I’d like to see Mr. Das if that’s possible,” Brady told her.
“The Swami is always very tired after a service,” she told him. “He doesn’t usually see patients on a Sunday.”