‘Sammy?’ Sheila called out and moved urgently across the living room towards the hall. I took a couple of steps and halted her progress with a hand on her arm. The skin was warm; moist beneath my fingertips.
‘Let me have a look,’ I said. ‘You wait here.’ I had already closed my hand around the leather-dressed spring-steel sap I carried in my pocket. When I was in the hall and out of Sheila’s sight, I took the sap out.
‘Mr Pollock?’ Nothing. ‘Hello?’
I moved along the hall. An ivory-coloured telephone sat on a chest-high hallstand, another full ashtray beside it. I noticed some of the butts were filters, not something you saw a lot of, and they were rimmed with crimson lipstick. I slipped one into my pocket. I moved on, checking each of the rooms as I passed. The flat was bright and expensively furnished, but each room had been turned over, with papers and other debris scattered all over the floors. I climbed the stairs and found the same on the upper floor. I came to Pollock’s bedroom. More clutter strewn across the floor. Something shiny caught my eye, glittering in the sunshine. Once I was sure we were the only ones in the flat, I called down and asked Sheila to come upstairs.
‘You said you were sure someone has been in here. I take it the flat wasn’t like this when you were last here?’
She shook her head. ‘Sammy was never house-proud, but not this… this looks like he’s been burgled.’
I nodded to the bedside cabinet. There was a lead crystal ashtray and a brick of a gold table lighter. ‘No house breaker is going to leave without that in their pocket. This hasn’t been a burglary, this was a search.’ I bent down and picked up from the floor the shiny item that had caught my eye. It was a small, polished, steel-hinged box, lying open on the floor. I looked around my feet and found the contents that had spilled out.
‘Does your brother have any medical condition I should know about?’ I placed the syringe and needle back in the metal box and held them out for Sheila to see. ‘Is he diabetic?’
Sheila looked at the box and her expression darkened. ‘No. He doesn’t have any medical condition.’
‘But this means something to you?’ I asked.
She looked at me hard for a moment before answering. ‘I’ve been around a lot of musicians. It’s part of my job. Musicians and artists
… well, they experiment with stuff.’
‘Narcotics?’
‘Yes. But I don’t think… or at least I’ve never had any reason to think that Sammy would be involved in that kind of nonsense.’
For a moment, we both gazed silently at the metal syringe box in my hands, as if it would surrender its secrets to us if we stared at it long enough.
‘It could have been Sammy himself, of course,’ I said. I could have sounded more convincing. ‘Maybe he came back to collect stuff. Pack a bag.’ I pocketed the syringe box.
‘I’ll check his wardrobes and drawers,’ she said dully. ‘Maybe I’ll notice something missing. If he’s taken clothes…’ She stepped past me. The room was hot and stuffy and as she passed, I again picked up a whiff of lavender and musk: the dressing and the flesh. Oh boy, Lennox, I thought, you’ve got it bad this time.
There was a sound from downstairs and we both froze. Someone was opening the apartment door. Sheila had closed the snib over behind her and that meant whoever was coming in had a key. Again I stopped Sheila as she made her way to the bedroom door, clearly to call out her brother’s name. I put a finger to my lips, slipped past her and moved as quickly and quietly as I could back down the stairs, again unpocketing the spring-handled sap. I reached the bottom of the stairs just as a young man with black hair and a dark complexion opened the vestibule door and stepped into the hall.
‘Hello,’ I said with a friendly smile, keeping the sap out of sight. The dark-haired man looked at me, his eyes wide with surprise.
‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’ The eyes narrowed as surprise gave way to suspicion. I kept smiling and tightened my grip on the sap.
‘You know in these films,’ I said, ‘where someone says “I’m asking the questions here”? Well, that’s me. Let’s start with why you have a key for an apartment you don’t own or rent and seem to come and go as you please.’
‘Are you a cop?’ he asked.
‘Let’s just say I’m investigating the disappearance of Sammy Pollock.’
‘But you’re not a cop…’ His eyes narrowed further. Suddenly he looked unsure of himself. ‘You sent by Largo?’
‘Largo?’
He looked relieved, then the hardness came back to his eyes. His head lowered slightly into his shoulders and he slipped a hand into the side pocket of his jacket. Playtime.
Upstairs, Sheila Gainsborough must have crept towards the stairs. A floorboard creaked. My dark-haired chum’s eyes cast in the direction of the sound and he looked less sure of himself. He clearly thought I had reinforcements in the wings. I was a little piqued that he thought I’d need them to deal with him.
‘If you’re not a cop, then fuck you.’ He turned and went back into the small tiled vestibule, moving swiftly but without panic.
‘Oh no you don’t…’ I reached out and grabbed his shoulder. ‘Just hold on a minute…’
He was about three or four inches shorter than me and he misjudged the vicious backward jab with his elbow. Instead of hitting me in the face or throat, it slammed painfully into my chest and sent me backwards. It gave him time to open the front door and he was stepping through it when I ran for him. I slammed the door shut on him with the flat of my foot. All my weight behind the kick. The edge of the door caught him on the shoulder but glanced off and smashed into his cheek, jamming his head between the door edge and the jamb. He was stunned. A thick bulge of blood swelled up on his cheek, then turned into a torrent down the side of his face and neck, staining his shirt crimson.
‘Oh, sorry,’ I said. ‘Did I catch you with the door?’
His hand made for his pocket and whatever was in it, but his movements were sluggish and unfocussed. I snapped the sap at him hard. Twice. The first blow cracked something in his wrist and the second caught him on the nape of his neck. His lights went out and he went down, half in and half out of the door. I grabbed him by the back of his shirt collar and dragged him back into the flat.
I turned to see Sheila standing halfway down the stairs, her eyes wide and a hand to her mouth.
‘Did you have to do that?’ she said, once she had recovered sufficiently.
‘He had a go,’ I said. ‘And he’s got some kind of weapon in his pocket. He was going for it.’ I bent down and pulled out a switchblade. I flicked the release and held the knife up for her to see. ‘See… self-defence.’
‘You seem to relish defending yourself, Mr Lennox.’
I shrugged and pulled the slumped figure to his feet. He was still groggy but looked at me maliciously. I didn’t like that so I gave him the back of my hand. Twice and hard across the uninjured side of his face. Setting boundaries.
‘For God’s sake, that’s enough, Lennox…’ Sheila stepped forward staring hard at me. She was right. It was enough. It was too much. I had that hot, tight feeling in my chest. The desire to hurt someone else that I learned during the war slept in me. I could see Sheila didn’t like the person she was looking at. At least we had that in common: I didn’t like me much either.
I steered our visitor back into the flat and dropped him into the armchair. Sheila followed us in and leaned against the wall. She lit a cigarette and smoked it urgently. Other than that she was calm and collected. Impressive. I gave the man in the chair the once-over: mid-twenties, the double-breasted blue pinstripe not cheap but not expensive, same for the shirt and tie. I noticed his shoes were not the newest and brown leather. I felt like giving him another slap just for that: black or burgundy shoes with blue pinstripe; not brown.