took the pewter mug across to the bar, where she poured half a bottle of Cooper’s ale into it. Mac ate some chips and took a big scoop of the hoummos up with a shovel of bread.
‘I’m trying to find out what happened to John Singer.’
‘He drowned.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Two years ago.’
‘Maybe.’
He looked interested but not fascinated; his priorities at the moment seemed to be the food, the beer, Sharon and me. When she brought the beer over, she bent over and let him see down the front of her suit. I saw a bit too. I paired them mentally- with him on top you’d see her feet and forehead sticking out at either end. The idea amused me.
‘I wouldn’t smile if I was you, shithead,’ Mac said. He took a big pull on the beer. ‘Why’re you going around saying Freddy Ward killed Singer and putting it on me?’
‘Oh, that. I was just trying to stir things up. Actually, I think you probably killed him.’
‘I thought you were a bullshitter when I first heard about you and now I know. Why would I kill John?’
‘Ward’s moving shop. With Singer gone, you’d control the game.’
He smiled around a big mouthful of pizza. I remembered that I was supposed to be trying to gauge his reactions, but it was hard with his face full of food. Also, I had the feeling that he was only half paying attention, that he was off on a tangent of some sort.
‘Just like that?’ he said.
‘Well, you’d have to work things out with Marion.’
That ruffled him. His hand jerked and he almost spilled beer on his pants. ‘You don’t know her!’ he spluttered. ‘It’s taken me…’ He broke off and pushed his lower lip out under the upper in a ‘what the hell’ gesture. ‘Well, that’s no bloody business of yours. I didn’t kill Singer. I don’t think anyone killed him. There’s nothink in it.’
‘Why did you have me picked up, then?’ I tried to put some aggression into the question, but I wasn’t feeling at all aggressive. The session was very unsatisfactory. I was getting no change out of McLeary and all my experiment had got me so far was a broken walking stick.
I asked the question again, which only made me sound as nervous as I felt. I sneaked a look at Bob; he was leaning back against the wall, but not looking as bored as he should have been. Neither was Sharon; a little bit of tongue about the same colour as her suit was showing between her small, white teeth and her eyes were wide open and keen, as if she was watching something good on TV. Only Mac looked appropriately bored, and that could have been because he’d finished eating. He had a toothpick out and was excavating and sucking down the results. His baby blues were half closed and he seemed to be thinking. He dropped the toothpick into the remains of the hoummos and asked Sharon for a cigar. She got one from somewhere near the bar, brought it across and he lit it himself with a Dunhill lighter. He seemed to have forgotten my question. I felt very nervous and leaned forward to scratch my knee.
‘Why do you do that?’ Mac asked.
‘It hurts.’
‘Let’s see it.’
I didn’t move. Bob came up and touched me on the unbandaged ear with something hard and warm. It was the gun, which he must have been wearing somewhere nice and close to his armpit.
‘Do you want him to pull his pants leg up, Mac, or should he drop them?’
Sharon sniggered and Mac gave a slight smile.
‘Up,’ he said. ‘Don’t want to excite Sharon too early in the night.’
The trousers weren’t tight. I rolled the leg up past the knee to show the brace. In that comfortable atmosphere, composed of the food smells and the rich aroma of Mac’s cigar, the device looked hideous. The plastic shone pink with a blue tint, like the skin of freshly cleaned rabbit. It was a reminder that flesh could be torn and bones broken.
Mac puffed out a billow of smoke. ‘Nasty,’ he said. ‘Broken?’
I rolled the cloth back down. The cylinder was still inside the padding, but there didn’t seem to be much point in sounding the alarm. I still didn’t know what was going on in Mac’s mind and for all I knew the cops could still have been circling the Nimrod Theatre. I could throw my glass and try for Bob’s gun and the odds on that coming good were about the same as for Braddock beating Louis. It looked as if my only hope lay in some good talking. My tongue felt stiff and only half-linked to a sluggish brain.
‘It’s twisted,’ I said. ‘This guy in Bronte kicked me, and your offsider here broke my stick. Do you know Freddy Ward’s heavy named Rex?’
‘I know him,’ Mac said.
‘He’s tougher than this bloke and I took him.’
‘How was your leg then?’ Bob asked.
‘I’ll look out for you when the leg gets better.’
It was thin stuff and not making any impression. The sweat of fear jumped out on me when I realised what an empty sound my last words had had. There was no response to them. The knee wasn’t going to get better. Their faces wore the curious, dispassionate look of the judges at the Nuremberg trials. Wheels were in motion, inexorably.
Sharon spoke for the first time in a tinny, sick little voice. ‘She might like that, the knee.’ What she said made no sense to me, so I ignored it.
‘I don’t understand why you picked me up,’ I said.
Mac waved his cigar hand expansively. ‘You will, mate. Forget about Singer and all that. There’s someone who wants to see you again.’
A door off to the right opened and Smelly came in with some sticking plaster across his face. He held the door wide and a smallish, dark figure glided into the room-Mary Mahoud.
25
Mahoud didn’t waste time getting down to business. One, two, three steps across the thick carpet in her desert boots and she was smashing me in the face with her fist. She had her arm back for the follow-up when Mac shook his silver head and said, ‘Bob’, quietly. It was a nice friendly name for a man in Bob’s line of work, and I felt quite well-disposed towards him as he eased Mahoud away with a bit of arm and shoulder work.
‘I wish I could say it was nice to see you,’ I said.
She sneered at me. ‘You’ll be sorry for everything.’ She wasn’t panting with rage and her eyes weren’t alight with triumph. They were dull, flat and malevolent. I gathered she blamed me for Manny’s death and hadn’t forgiven me for busting up her million-dollar gaol. It was a lot to hold against a man, and I had a feeling she had something unpleasant planned for me.
‘You’re crazy,’ I said. ‘You should be out of the country. Everyone’s hunting you, Federal cops…’
‘Manfred had all of that planned. A place to hide, but we thought we would have more time.’
‘You grabbed the money and ran.’
She raised her hand as if she was going to hit me again. She had simple solutions. But she changed the movement into a shrug. ‘Yes, I was afraid. I ran away.’
I understood her better then; she was feeling guilty about shooting through on Manfred and she’d never be able to justify it to him or herself. I was a good target for that disturbance, too. I turned to look at Mac and Sharon, but I made the movement a bit too suddenly and my dented head, torn ear and battered ribs all hurt.
‘Do you know what this bitch did?’ I said. ‘She had these old people in cages like animals. She fed them cat food while she banked their pensions. She let them die; probably helped some of them along.’
‘Probably,’ Mac said. ‘I read about it. No-hopers, plonkos, what do they matter? If the government’s crazy enough to give people like that money, there’ll be smarties around to take it off them.’
Sharon said, ‘Cat food? I didn’t read about that.’
