LITMIR.BIZ

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sent flames shooting out. A seagull got cremated, standing on a lamp-post. It was a hell of a show and it drew a good crowd. Henry was among the spectators, we were told. He stayed until the last flames were extinguished, which would have been around three or four in the morning. It was odds-on that the fire was started deliberately and of course there were people prepared to believe that the disreputable-looking old geezer who hung around till the final curtain might have been in some way involved. But Henry wasn’t involved. Within two days it was known that it had nothing to do with Henry. Three schoolkids did it. Having no TV to watch at home, Henry had stayed to watch the fire. Probably warmed himself up a bit into the bargain. End of meaningless episode. We have an anecdote, when what we need is a story.

      In the afternoon, as in the morning, we meet people who can’t bring themselves to say it but obviously had never thought that Henry was much of an adornment to the locality. Equally obviously, none of them had ever wished him dead. They confirm that Henry was prone to going missing for a week or two, every now and again. No one has a clue where he went. Everyone is sorry he’s gone.

      No, that’s not right: Mr Latimer wasn’t sorry. Formerly an airline pilot, today a gin-pickled old fascist, Mr Latimer would have had Henry clapped in irons and set to work in a chain gang if he’d had any say in the matter. ‘The Wandering Jew,’ he called him, giving us a look to gauge if we are men enough to take his strong straight talking. Between sentences his jaws made fierce little champing movements, as if chewing on tiny cubes of hard rubber. Occasionally, he reported, he saw Henry in the town, ‘watching people’. There was something not right in the way he followed people with his eyes. It wasn’t just rude: ‘You felt he was up to something,’ said Mr Latimer, but he declined to specify to what manner of thing Henry might have been up. And once he came across him on the top of the cliffs. ‘Ogling a young woman,’ he said, with a sneer, then paused for us to work out what he meant. ‘Messing with himself,’ he elucidated, displeased at our failure to participate in his disgust. We shouldn’t pity such people, Mr Latimer insisted, affronted by the permissiveness he’d discerned in us. This isn’t the eighteenth century, after all. Our society makes provision for the unfortunate, and anyone who lives like that man lived is doing so through his own choice and for no other reason.

      And in the same afternoon we encountered Ferrari man, a taxi driver who lived in a flat with Ferrari-red carpets and Ferrari-red curtains and model Ferraris all over the place, on the windowsills, on chairs, under chairs. It was like a plague of scarlet metal mice. Magnetic Ferraris were stuck on the fridge. The phone was in the shape of a Ferrari. It was news to him that Henry’s name was Henry. It hadn’t registered with him that Henry was missing until he saw the posters. Another futile conversation, but mercifully brief, and for Ian this character was the highlight of the day, of course.

      An hour after the visit to the Ferrari man we’re in the pub, where Mary – Ian’s new girlfriend – is waiting, with her friend Rachelle. It’s one minute past six and they are the only people in the place. This is the first time we’ve met, so Ian undertakes the introductions. ‘Mary Usher, John Donohue. John my colleague, Mary my girl. Rachelle, John. John my colleague, Rachelle my girl’s best friend.’

      ‘Nicely done,’ says Mary, giving him a smack on the arm.

      ‘He won’t be staying long. Has to get home to his wife,’ Ian whispers loudly to Rachelle, getting another whack from Mary, then he’s off to the bar.

      ‘Hello,’ says Mary. For some reason her boyfriend has omitted to mention that Mary is startling to look at, with whiteblonde hair and a wide frank face and grey-blue eyes that are as clear as a child. We shake hands.

      ‘Pleased to meet you,’ says Rachelle, reaching over the table. A year or two younger than Mary, she’s dark and small and sinewy, like a marathon runner. She and Mary have known each other since they were at infants’ school together, she explains timidly, as if she feels herself to be under an obligation to establish at once her right to be here. She works in a café up the top of the hill, she says, and she seems almost grateful that the name of the place is recognised. We talk for a minute, then Ian is back from the bar and straight away he’s gabbing on about Mr Ferrari.

      ‘Incredible,’ he tells them. ‘Like a boy’s bedroom, but he’s what, fifty?’

      ‘Thereabouts.’

      ‘Fifty, and he’s got these little cars everywhere. Ferrari lamps, Ferrari mugs. Everything screaming red. Would give you a migraine after five minutes.’

      ‘So what do you think?’ asks Mary quietly. ‘About –’

      ‘Henry?’ says Ian, though the question wasn’t addressed to him. ‘Can’t give too much away,’ he explains, with a wink for Rachelle. ‘But I think it’s safe to say that we’re looking for a man. Ninety per cent of murderers are male. The women are domestics, one way or another, nearly all of them. They take a hammer to the husband, or the father who’s been molesting them for years.’

      ‘Or stick a knife in the boyfriend,’ adds Mary.

      ‘Rarely, but it happens. But Henry was nobody’s boyfriend. OK, another interesting thing,’ continues Ian, overexcited by his first murder, determined to impress Rachelle as much as Mary, ‘is that victim and killer are usually of similar age and similar economic status. Once in a while a millionaire gets wiped out by one of the lower orders, but as a rule it’s yob kicks yob to death, dodgy businessman wipes out his partner, husband kills wife. So all we’ve got to do is find us another middle-aged down-and-out male and we’re home and dry.’

      Leaning forward, pressing her hands between her knees, Rachelle laughs on cue. Encouraged, Ian gives his audience a welter of facts and figures – it’s his homework rehashed, some of it misremembered. ‘The crucial periods are the last twenty-four hours of the victim’s life and the first twenty-four hours after the discovery of the body. Forty per cent of detections occur within two days of the murder being reported,’ he tells wide-eyed Rachelle. ‘Now we’re past that point, and the odds get longer as time passes. But, on the bright side, sixty per cent aren’t solved in the first forty-eight hours, and it’s early days.’

      Another thing about Ian, it turns out, is that he’s as jealous as a cat, and when the barman, a good-looking boy with mighty forearms and a complicated haircut, comes over to collect the empties, the smile that Mary gives the intruder wrecks Ian’s concentration in mid-sentence, as intended. You can almost see his brain clenching.

      ‘Heard what you were talking about,’ says the barman. ‘So what do you think?’

      ‘You just said you heard,’ Ian reminds him, reddening faintly.

      ‘Yeah. But,’ the lad replies, apparently deaf to Ian’s tone. His hand is lingering on Mary’s glass, his bare arm an inch or two from her face.

      ‘But what?’

      ‘But do we know him?’ he goes on, narrowing his eyes in a way that’s meant to suggest mystery.

      ‘Do we know him? Who?’

      ‘Who did it.’

      ‘What’s your name?’ asks Ian.

      ‘Josh.’

      ‘Josh, what the fuck are you talking about?’

      Amiably, as if his ears have edited out the expletive, Josh continues: ‘I mean we know the person who did it, but the police don’t know him yet. It’s someone who lives here, isn’t it? Got to be. Must be someone who went out there to do him, who knew where he were, otherwise what you looking at? Some bloke is stretching his legs on the beach, comes across your man, doesn’t like the look on his face, cuts him up. I mean, I don’t think so.’ He steps back, eyebrows raised, greatly pleased with his reasoning.

      Ian drains his glass and passes it over. ‘Thank you, Josh,’ he says, giving him a thin wide smile. ‘Something to think about.’

      ‘Stands to reason, don’t it?’

      ‘It does. You’re wasted in this job. The police need men like you.’

      Nicked

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