A Good Year for the Roses (1988) Read online

  The doctor appeared to be about two hundred years old and took all day to climb the stairs.

  Everyone waited with varying degrees of patience. One of the ambulancemen chewed on his nails and the taller of the detectives stared at me as if I was an exhibit in the zoo.

  That's one thing you get used to at the scene-of-the-crime, waiting.

  The doctor didn't take long to examine the body. A blind man with a good sense of smell could have told him the girl was dead. He mumbled softly to the detectives as he peeled off his rubber gloves. He left as slowly as he had come. Only when I heard the front door slam behind him did it occur to me that I should have had him look at the wound on my head.

  I remained cuffed up in the corner of the landing as the ambulancemen went about their grizzly business. They moaned that the body was too stiff to lie on a stretcher and had to be back for a wheelchair, cursing and complaining as they went.

  The silver buttons stayed with me whilst the detectives began tagging and bagging the few belongings in the room.

  Finally they got round to tagging and bagging me.

  They dismissed the uniformed officers with a curt order that they completed their reports immediately, and then introduced themselves as Detective Sergeant Bachman and Detective Constable King.

  They came across as a real class act. Something told me they fancied themselves as a pair of snappy dressers.

  Bachman was tall, wearing a ratty windcheater over a grubby T-shirt. He favoured elephant cord pants that finished an inch or so above his Adidas sneakers.

  King was a tub of lard with a beard. He obviously owned a charge card at C&A. He was all dolled up in an obnoxious light tan leather jacket, a predominantly red shirt and powder blue slacks.

  They'd got their sartorial shit together splendidly, looking like a pair of professional darts players out on a spree, but came across as the toughest pair of dudes outside re-runs of ‘The Sweeney’.

  Bachman hauled me to my feet and stood staring closely into my face as I leaned against the wall.

  ‘Now my friend,’ said King, playing the good cop. ‘Who are you? What are you? And why did you kill the girl?’

  I think with his soft tone that he expected an immediate confession and for me to cry buckets onto the shoulder of his leather jacket.

  No such luck.

  I painstakingly told the whole story, beginning with the visit from George Bright, through to the heavyweight's phone call and ending when I woke up lying on the carpet. My name seemed to mean little to them.

  ‘Do you expect us to believe that bullshit?’ asked Bachman, when I'd finished. ‘You topped the girl, and that's that.’

  ‘Jesus!’ I said, holding out my cuffed wrists in front of me. ‘It's a fair cop. I'll come quietly, guilty as charged. Are you blind? I just got here, and she's been dead at least three days. Didn't the doc tell you?’

  ‘That doesn't mean that you weren't around when she died,’ said Bachman. ‘And how come you're an expert on how long she's been dead? Unless you were here that is.’

  ‘It's obvious,’ I replied. ‘Have you got no sense of smell? And if I were here, what did I do? Hit myself on the back of the head and wait for you to arrive? How come you're here anyway? Who called you?’

  ‘A tip from an informant,’ said Bachman.

  ‘I'll bet,’ I said. ‘And when did you get it? Last Thursday?’

  Whilst we'd been enjoying the witty backchat together, King had been absent-mindedly going through my pockets.

  I thought he'd find my car keys and very little else.

  But inevitably, he pulled out an envelope from my hip pocket. ‘What have we here?’ he asked.

  I could hardly wait.

  He opened the envelope and tipped a number of little oblong paper packets into his hand. He returned all but one to the envelope which he stashed in his pocket. He carefully unfolded the remaining wrap which contained a small quantity of brownish-white powder. He wet his forefinger with his tongue and dipped it gently into the powder. He tasted the residue and pulled a face.

  ‘Don't tell me,’ I said. ‘Horlicks.’

  ‘Scag,’ he said, and refolded the wrap and tucked in into his pocket with the envelope.

  ‘You naughty boy,’ said Bachman. ‘You're nicked.’

  The rest of my pockets revealed no surprises. Just the car keys as expected.

  ‘Check the shirt pockets,’ I said. ‘Anything there?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said King.

  So the heavyweight had lifted his fifty quid!

  ‘You travel light,’ said Bachman. ‘Just some dope for those precious solitary moments.’

  I didn't bother to reply.

  Bachman started to get heavy. He pushed me across the banisters until I thought my back would break.

  ‘That hurts a bit,’ I said through clenched teeth.

  He suddenly slapped me hard on the right side of my face with his open palm.

  ‘I remember you now,’ he said, ‘you didn't say you were an ex-copper. The blue eyed boy who went bad. I thought I recognised you earlier. Sharman. That's right, and you're up to your old tricks again.’

  I declined to mention that my eyes were brown.

  ‘You ever hit me again like that, you'll regret it,’ I said.

  He hit me again. Harder with his clenched fist. Perhaps he did regret it, but certainly not as much as I did.

  ‘We'll meet again,’ I said.

  ‘I'm shaking right down to the tips of my toes,’ he replied.

  ‘Bachman,’ said King. ‘Let's take him to the station. His head needs looking at.’

  I tended to agree, but not necessarily in the way he meant.

  I must have been crazy to get into that situation. However, King was correct. The force of the fresh blows had made the bleeding start again, both inside my mouth and on the back of my head. I could feel the warm stickiness running down my neck and mouth filled with blood. I spat a mouthful onto the floorboards, close to Bachman's foot. He scowled at me but said nothing. Suddenly I felt like crying. I wasn't half as tough as I liked to think I was.

  King still held my car keys. Bachman looked at them and noticed the fancy key ring.

  ‘Do you drive a flash black Jaguar?’ he asked, a big smile spreading across his ugly face.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied.

  ‘Not any more, you don't,’ he said gleefully. ‘You larey git.’

  I didn't know what to expect as they took me downstairs. King holding on to my arm so that I wouldn't fall, cuffed and groggy as I was.

  Chapter Fourteen

  When we reached the street, the light was bright from the August sun. I squinted across the pavement to where I'd left the car. If I'd felt like weeping earlier, I came even closer then. Someone had taken a sledgehammer to my pride and joy. The windscreen of the Jaguar had been smashed and the headlights kicked in. It looked as if someone had been dancing on the bonnet, and the paintwork on the roof had been scoured with a screwdriver or something similar.

  The two policemen let me peer into the cockpit. The front seats were covered with broken glass and the leather covers had been slashed. My jacket had been screwed up into a ball and tossed onto the back seat. King retrieved it for me and searched the pockets before draping it around my shoulders.

  ‘You could win a prize with that motor,’ said Bachman. ‘Concourse condition.’ I swallowed hard. ‘And just look at those tyres,’ he continued.

  I might have guessed. On the curbside both tyres were down on their rims. I could see the slashes in the white walls. Bachman walked into the road. ‘Same this side,’ he said. ‘Dear, dear, this'll cost you a packet.’

  ‘Fuck you Bachman,’ I managed to say.

  ‘It wasn't me mate,’ he replied with a smile. ‘But if you leave it here for long, there'll be nothing left to cost you anything. Never mind, where you're going, you won't be driving for a long time.’

  Bachman led me over to a blue Ford Granada, double parked in the street and p
ushed me into the back seat. He sat next to me. King got behind the wheel.

  As we drove away, the last thing I saw of my beautiful E-Type was the broken glass from the headlights glinting in the sunlight as we turned the corner.

  During the journey, Bachman took great delight in telling King the story of my misdemeanours whilst serving on the force. He didn't know the half of them.

  When I'd left Brixton nick it had been under bad circumstances, but I never thought that the next time I passed through its door I'd be cuffed to a plainclothes officer.

  I was manhandled through to the CID room. Familiar territory.

  I was put into an interview room and left in the care of a young uniformed officer. Before King left me, he removed the cuffs from my wrist.

  ‘Greaves,’ said King to the young policeman. ‘Get the first aid box and look at this man's head. Then get him some tea.’

  ‘I could be concussed,’ I said.

  ‘Don't push it, Sharman,’ came the reply. ‘Think yourself lucky to get anything. We don't like heroin dealers here.’

  Talk about giving a dog a bad name.

  The uniform fetched the first aid kit and a damp cloth. He cleaned me up a bit, and put two of the biggest plasters he could find on the cut on my head.

  ‘Hell of a bump there, I'm afraid,’ he said. ‘And that shirt's a write off.’

  ‘It was one of my favourites too,’ I replied. ‘Did someone mention tea?’

  ‘OK,’ he said, and went off to fetch some, locking the door behind himself. When he returned, I told him I could have hung myself with my shoelaces whilst I'd been alone.

  ‘But you wouldn't, would you?’ he commented cheerfully. Then you'd have missed your tea.’

  Coppers! I thought.

  I washed the taste of blood out of my mouth with the hot, dark, sweet liquid and relaxed for a bit for the first time since the heavyweight's ‘phone call.

  The young bobby offered me a cigarette from his packet of Silk Cut. I desperately wanted one, but refused.

  I looked at my watch. It was four ten.

  Doesn't time fly when you're having fun?

  No-one came to see me. I just sat and ached. I asked the young copper if I could use a telephone. He refused. Finally I just sulked and wished I'd never been born. That would teach them, I thought.

  The hours dragged by until just after seven o'clock when the interview room door swung open and in came my favourite person in the whole world. Detective Inspector Daniel Fox. Desperate Dan to his friends and enemies. Personally, I'd always referred to him as Poxxy Fox, but what do you expect?

  Fox gestured for the uniformed man to leave the room, then ponderously moved in and sat on the hard wooden seat opposite me. He placed a packet of Dunhill and a gold cigarette lighter carefully before him on the table. How many times had I seen that prelude to an interrogation before?

  Fox was well above average height and built like a bull. His temper was notorious. I'd seen him reduce long serving coppers close to tears and what he could do to a small-time villain was legendary. But he had a strange quiet side to his nature. I'd known him to sit in silence with a suspect for hours, saying nothing. Then gently he'd obtain a confession with a few whispered questions. I'd fallen foul of the man often and I knew his opinion of me was that I should never have been allowed into uniform. It was just my luck that he was on duty.

  ‘Good evening, Mister Sharman,’ he said. ‘Do you remember me?’

  As if I could ever forget. ‘Yes, Mister Fox,’ I replied. I felt like a kid dragged up before the headmaster for giggling in assembly.

  ‘I never thought we'd meet again, you know,’ he continued. ‘Not after the last time.’

  He gazed into the distance over my shoulder as if contemplating the vagaries of the world.

  ‘No, Mister Fox,’ I replied.

  ‘But here we are. And once again on opposite sides of the table, as it were.’

  I remained silent.

  ‘Now tell me everything that happened this afternoon.’

  Once again I reiterated my story.

  ‘You should never have come back to this area, should you?’ he mused.

  ‘I've lived here most of my life.’

  ‘But your life is over as far as I'm concerned Mister Sharman. All you've got to look forward to is ten years inside.’

  ‘Mister Fox, if I may interrupt,’ I interrupted. ‘Ten years is a very long time, and for what?’

  ‘Did the knock on the head bring on amnesia, Mister Sharman? There's the small matter of a dead girl. She died from an overdose of heroin. You were found with the body, and by coincidence a quantity of the same drug.’

  It sounded open and shut the way he put it. I shook my head and said. ‘Very convenient, wouldn't you agree. Almost too convenient. All it needs is a signed confession. By the way, who was the girl?’

  ‘You mean to say you don't know?’ he asked. ‘I'm very surprised.’

  ‘It wasn't Patsy Bright, was it?’

  ‘Ah, the Bright girl. One of my junior officers told me earlier that you were interested in her. I'm sure you know which one.’

  ‘I've no idea who you're talking about,’ I said innocently.

  ‘We won't pursue the matter for a moment,’ he said, making a steeple with his fingers and regarding me gravely over them. ‘We located Mister Bright earlier this afternoon, and he has told us that the girl found today is definitely not his daughter who was reported missing in June this year.’

  ‘Who is she then?’

  ‘As far as we can discover from the UB40 found in her room, plus other documents,’ he withdrew a notebook from his pocket and donned a pair of national health spectacles, ‘her name was Jane Lewis.’

  ‘I knew it wasn't Patsy. Her hair was all wrong,’ I said for no particular reason.

  He continued as if I hadn't spoken. ‘You were supplying her, presumably she was not the only one, with drugs. For some reasons, best known to yourself, you decided to drastically improve the quality of the heroin supplied. The preliminary report tells us that the drug remaining in the syringe was 98% pure.’

  ‘Good shit,’ I said.

  ‘The girl is dead, Sharmain. She may not be the only one.’ The Mister had vanished. ‘You were found with the deceased. I feel humour is hardly appropriate under the circumstances.’

  ‘How long was she dead before she was found, Mister Fox?’ I kept calling him Mister, old habits die hard.

  ‘A matter of days,’ he replied.

  ‘The blood of my shirt is fresh, Mister Fox. As I asked that dildo Bachman. What the hell was I doing camping out in that dump for a couple of days? It's hardly the Inn on the Park, and the room service is appalling. And while I was waiting for the plods to arrive, I suppose I wrecked my own car so that I couldn't get away even if I wanted to. You've got to be joking.’

  ‘Sharman, why you've done so many things in your life has long been a mystery to me.’

  ‘So now I'm a drug pusher,’ I said. ‘And at the same time I'm searching for a potential drug victim on behalf of her father. That's a strange juxtaposition wouldn't you say?’

  ‘A clever cover.’

  ‘Oh bollocks, Fox,’ I was so pissed off I dropped the Mister too.

  ‘Give me a break will you. I've been out of London until just recently, and I've hardly had time to build up a drug ring since I got back. You can check you know.’

  I thought of giving him the name of my solicitor friend, but guessed that funds wouldn't run to ‘phone calls to Portugal. I'd keep him up my sleeve for later.

  ‘I've already done so,’ said Fox. ‘I don't spend my afternoons chasing the tea trolley, as you may remember. You spent nine months in hospital, mental hospital. Then three months convalescing at your mother's house in Sussex.’

  ‘I was a voluntary patient.’

  ‘Is there any other kind?’ he asked sarcastically.

  I didn't reply.

  ‘We have analysed the contents of the twenty g
rammes of powder found in your possession.’

  ‘Twenty grammes,’ I interrupted. ‘My, but those boys are cutting into their profits.’

  He peered at me over his glasses and continued. ‘And it is also 98% pure. It is heroin from the same batch that killed Jane Lewis.’

  ‘I'd be amazed if it wasn't,’ I said. ‘Planting twenty baggies of talcum powder would be as much use as pussy in a gay bar.’

  ‘The inevitable humour, Sharman. Will you never learn?’

  ‘I learnt early on what a fit-up was Mister Fox.’ I was expecting the worst so I put the mister back in. I could hardly believe what he eventually said. He stared at me and flicked some lint from the lapel of his suit. ‘I think you're probably right. I know you of old, Sharman, and you're much too slippery to get caught like this.’

  ‘Well I'm damned,’ I said. ‘You believe me then?’

  ‘Up to a point. We'll check your story further of course. I must say it seems very amateurish of them, whoever they are.’ He seemed lost in thought for a moment. ‘But beware, the next time they may be more professional. Take my advice and get out whilst the going is good.’

  ‘Am I free to leave then?’

  ‘I think we'll let you out on the street again. I'm sorry about your car. You won't function very well travelling by public transport. It hardly goes with your image of yourself. And of course the next time, these individuals might kill you, which will eventually save the courts time and money.’

  ‘You always were a nice bastard, Fox.’

  For the first time he showed some emotion. ‘Listen scumbag,’ he said, raising his voice slightly. ‘I'll spell it out for you. I don't want you in my part of the world unless you're in custody. And believe me you could easily be if I pushed it, and down for a long stretch. I don't want you corrupting my officers. I don't want you conducting your pathetic little investigations around here. This is your only chance. I think you're a little man who has always had someone running round after you cleaning up your messes. A little man who's always had a good Samaritan in tow. You had one on the force, and thank God he's gone, just like you.’

  Fox was referring to a certain chief super who'd been to school with my father. The old boy had taken my career in hand and helped smooth the way for me on the force. Unfortunately he'd been pulled up one Christmas eve, driving home from a party. He was nearly five times over the legal limit. It would normally have been hushed up by the powers that be. Except that he'd been driving an SPG Range Rover at the time, and had managed to demolish three parked cars, a bus stop, a keep left sign and most of the front of Streatham Sainsbury's before the car came to a halt, wheels up. He took an early retirement before the new year, and from then on my professional future took a nose dive.