be. He moved away from it and closer to the car and to Parker’s gun.
‘What’s this?’
‘It’s what it looks like, Tiny. You’ve seen it before. Now get in the back or I’ll put one in your kidneys. Your choice.’
Parker reached over and opened the back door from inside. Spotswood hesitated, perhaps considering a yell to the pub. I discouraged that by jabbing him again; he moved towards the door and I eased the gun away so he wouldn’t know where it was. But he was too drunk for any swift moves and he probably knew it. He bent and stumbled into the back seat. I followed and dragged the door shut. Parker started the car.
‘Easy?’ he said.
‘Pretty easy. Follow this, takes you to Victoria Road, I think.’
Spotswood leaned back against the seat; with his body relaxed he spread over nearly half of it; there’d be no athletic door-openings and divings-out for Tiny. A sweet, sickly smell-beer, sweat and fear-rose from him. Parker drove cautiously, getting the feel of the car.
‘Okay?’ I said. I meant the car.
‘Yeah. We’ve got a problem-I originally thought we’d do it at your dump.’
‘I thought you might.’
‘But with Hilda there I don’t like the idea.’
‘Hilde.’
‘I call her Hilda, like it better. Have you got any ideas?’
I thought about it, weighed it up, and decided. ‘Yes. I know where we can go.’
Tiny tensed up beside me. ‘Me bladder’s full, I have trouble with it…’
‘That’s tough’, I said. ‘And you were wrong, Tiny. Yolande Pompey stopped Dave in the seventh in London in 1951.’
13
We didn’t talk any more. It’s not the way to do it. Even with an ox like Tiny Spotswood, the real intimidation is a matter of what happens in the subject’s imagination, not outside threats.
Parker had a grim, unrelenting driving style; he sat straight whatever the car was doing, which is the way they teach cops to drive. There was something frightening about his mobility, watching it from behind, so that I was beginning to get apprehensive about what was coming up myself. Not as much as Spotswood though. The smell came off him more and more strongly and his voice seemed to go up an octave. He wriggled.
‘I’ve got to piss!’
I didn’t say anything.
Guthrie’s marina at Double Bay looked squat and forbidding. The high mounted lights and some barbed wire running along the top of one section offence gave it a Stalag 17 look.
The water was dark and still; the boats ground and clanked at their moorings and only a few were showing lights. There were no wild parties going on, no strolling couples, no yachtsman comfortingly smoking a cigarette on his deck. Parker took the Falcon down a concrete ramp to the marina office, which was closed. There were lights showing in a box-like structure up on the roof of the office building. Parker tapped the horn and Paul Guthrie’s face, pale and agitated, appeared at the window. Parker turned around and held his gun on Tiny while I got out. I stood in the headlights of the car and let Guthrie see me.
‘No names’, I said. ‘How do we get up there?’
He pointed into the shadows and, by straining my eyes, I could see a metal ladder running up the side of the building to the roof. Ten metres or a bit more, a couple of dozen rungs. Eighteen-stone Tiny Spotswood was going to love this.
We hauled him out of the car and prodded him across to the ladder; he baulked at it, but a look at Parker’s hawkish face and the way he handled his. 45 automatic changed his mind. I went up first and it was a stiff climb for the leg muscles; I waited at the top on the flat roof with my heart rate raised and a feeling of distaste for what we were doing. Spotswood’s foot slipped a couple of rungs up and he swore; he kept swearing as he came up, rung by rung, slowly, and breathing as if it was a one-in-two sand dune. Parker came up quickly behind him, and we moved quietly over the roof to where Guthrie held the door of his flat open.
From the elevation, I could see down on the moorings; the lighting on the walkways was widely spaced and there were long areas of deep shadow. There were gaps in the ranks of moored boats, and one section of jetty at which there were none at all. I looked across the water to where Roberta Landy-Drake would be doing her evening’s drinking, but that only made me think of Helen and it was no time for that.
The three of us filed past Guthrie in silence; he was wearing a tracksuit and had one of his boating books in his hand. His hair was spiky and rumpled again. I brought up the rear and closed the door.
‘Spotswood’, I said. ‘I have to talk to him, and you know why.’
Guthrie nodded.
I made sure that Tiny couldn’t see my wink. ‘I want you to go and get a small motor boat or a dinghy or something and bring it to the closest point to here. Put plenty of rope in it and something heavy-metal, you know what I mean.’
‘Yes.’
‘Will I be able to see you from in here?’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay. Take your time.’
I took the book from him and he went out. Tiny heard all this and his huge belly sagged. Then he swore and the urine soaked his trouser leg. Parker jerked his head and Tiny shuffled into the flat. We went through to a small room with a big window looking out over the water. There was a couch and a couple of armchairs by the window, a kitchenette at the end of the room and a door through to a bedroom. I gathered up a newspaper and spread the sheets thickly in one of the chairs. Spotswood got the idea. When he was settled in the chair, Parker sat opposite him on the couch and didn’t say anything.
I went to the kitchenette, looking for a drink. Guthrie had a few cans of light beer in the fridge; I held one up to Parker who shook his head. I opened one for myself and poured some into a plastic mug I found on the sink. I came over and handed the mug to Tiny.
‘You can have yours in a plastic cup because you wet your pants.’ He took the mug and drank it down in one go-he’d have done the same whether it was overproof rum or elderberry wine. I took the cup away and sipped my can.
‘What do youse want?’ His voice was a high register croak.
‘It’s pretty simple, Tiny’, Parker said. ‘You tell us what Liam Catchpole and “Bully” Hayes are up to, or we’ll kill you.’
‘Oh, Jesus.’
‘No help there’, I said. ‘If you tell us we won’t kill you. Of course, if Liam and Hayes knew you talked to us they’d kill you. You’re stuffed either way, but we’ll give you some protection against “Bully”, or at least time to shoot through.’
‘What’s all that shit with the little guy-about the boat?’
‘That little guy is Mr Boats. He knows the currents, the deep water-the lot. Out there even a big, flat slob like you will just vanish if you do it right.’
‘Let me go to the toilet.’
‘No.’ Parker said. ‘Don’t waste our time, Tiny. If you don’t tell us we’ll just tidy you up and go about it another way.’
The way he said it made me wonder whether Parker had ever done this sort of thing before and if he really meant it. Tiny caught the same note in the words but there was some hardness and defiance left in him, as well as the fear.
‘Bullshit.’
‘Have it your own way.’ Parker gestured to me. ‘Is he there yet?’
