The Laughing House

                                     (Footprints)

                                              George Sweet

Footprints led up the muddied path, ordinary human prints, and then tracked back toward me. Then, when I took a second look, they had turned to monster prints. And they were welled in blood...

There is no trap so deadly as the trap we set for ourselves

   The Long Goodbye – Raymond Chandler

                                    Brighton

one

I’ve never been one to go much on premonitions and stuff, but that night in Chelsea a goose with cold feet shot across my grave.

     We’d got on to murder, courtesy of yours’ truly. I’m going back a few years to this literary poof’s uber-stylish dinner party I somehow found myself at. See, crime was my bag and I’d stood about all I could of that la-di-da Oscar Wilde earache - okay, so I’m a philistine. Anyway, with king-sized brandies going down a treat, feeling chuffed I’d worked the monte onto my territory, I was all set to parade my brilliance, when this Fran O’Dea, the very bird I’d been fancying all night, snuck in and pulled the rug right from under me!

     Not that I really minded, didn’t mind at all, in fact. She was what you might call a kind of new-age shrink. Brain like a planet. And I could have sat there till the cows came home, chin propped in the palm of my hand, catching sly peeks down the cleavage of her low-cut black dress, as she cruised on in that confident expensively educated throaty drawl of hers. Though she had me blinking when she insisted that the murderer as much as his victim is left fatally scarred by the extreme act, as she called it (later I saw the truth in those words). She was adamant that love is wrapped up in the same onion soup as hate in explaining why we kill. Apparently, we house two oppositional, conflicted personalities, you know like Jekyll and Hyde, our light and dark sides, and it was this morbid pathology that lay at bottom of our homicidal tendencies.

      And if that boggles your grey cells spare a thought for moi, poor humble Pete Llewllyn.

     Except that’s a lie. At the time I was a top gun with one of the Met’s super squads, primed to be a forerunner of the British FBI it was said, and humbleness was one charter I most definitely would not have signed up for.

   Even so, and although we never got beyond glances across a candle-lit room, got to admit Fran had me going with her twisted love/hate theory. A view I stuck to pretty much ever since, buttonholing any unfortunate sod careless enough to raise the subject then hitting them full tilt with the smart-arse impact of my rented wisdom.

   Or I did until Brighton.

   Jesus. I still have nightmares about that girl. I can see her half-starved and naked in that grim house. In my mind’s eye she is whimpering and cold, cowering in yellowed rags of underwear, pleading for her life. Knowing there can be no mercy from such people. God help me, I even hear her broken fingernails scraping at the cracked pebbled glass in a last desperate attempt to escape.

     And there was a flash of those events, that night with the smart set. I swear there was. Worse yet, if I hadn’t fooled myself, seen what I wanted to see, a couple of lives just might have been saved. Christ. The truth sat there grinning at me like one of those smug pot-bellied little green Chinamen you find in curio shops. But leave that aside.

     Fran O’Dea has since gone on to carve a big name for herself writing books and articles and spieling away full of her Freudian certainties on Radio 4, and good luck to her. Yet I know now just how wrong she had been.

     Hate, let me tell you, is a million light years removed from anything to do with love. You only have to see it once. I’m talking of the pits of black hate. That raw, unremitting, revengeful kind of hate that drove the old woman finally to madness.

     Fran was right on one count though.

     About two people existing in one. With that hidden bad side laying in wait to ambush the good.

     Oh, yes.

two

To get it in context you need to look where I was at when it all started. My attempt to go solo had bombed and I’d been reduced to trudging around dumps of factories you couldn’t believe existed anymore, hustling over-priced chemicals, descaling solvents and lavatory cleaners and such like. Or trying to, I should say.

      In fact, I’d pretty much decided my time as a chemical salesman was at an end, when my one time buddy an fellow big-head law enforcer, Kev Millet, turned up, and I crossed the divide from marginal seedy honesty into a world of sly blind alleys that brought me finally to a door I didn’t want to open.

      Friday night. It had started to rain and I was bone tired. I parked in the street and hauled myself up the three flights of stairs to my penthouse, actually the attic flat of a big old Victorian house that might have been something in its day, and there he was. Standing with his arm stretched pointing, thumb raised vertically, as I came in through the door.

     The thumb dropped and he grinned.

     "Bang! You’re dead."

     I managed to keep a straight face and my palpating heart under control, shuffling past him to plop down in my lone battered-up armchair. I closed my eyes.

     "How’d you get in?"

     "That’s a nice welcome, for an old pal. Thought you might be pleased to see me."

     I clocked him with one eye, and he smirked shifting his gaze around. I guessed he must have flashed some ID at Murphy, the janitor cum owner. I lit up a Silk Cut.

     "Don’t worry," I said, "this is only a front. I got a tripe shop out in the back."

     Kev snorted. "Haven’t lost the old sense of humour then?"

     "Well, you need a bit of humour to live in a dump like this."

     "I dunno, I’ve seen worse."

     So he had, we both had. I took a drag as he continued his reccy. We were always big kidders, and it’s true my place was hardly the Ritz. All the same it irked me he took it for granted he could just come waltzing in as he pleased. The fact that I outranked Kev back in the old life and now he was doing well and I wasn’t might have had something to do with it. At the same time, I sniffed an opening. This wasn’t a social call. He was here for a purpose, with luck to put some much-needed business my way.

     "I tried to get you at your office," he said, "but they were cagey about your whereabouts. I couldn’t reach you on your mobile, either."

     "It’s switched off. I’ve been out working."

     "On a job?"

     "Sure," I said. "Top of the range stuff. Taking blind dogs for a pee. Come on, Kev, you know better than that. I haven’t had a decent assignment for well over two months."

     "That’s too bad, Lew."

     "Isn’t it though."

      Pure vanity, but it gave me a kick to see his wispy fair hair was receding more rapidly than my darker, though admittedly greying thatch. He would have heard I’d split with Sally - Sally being my long-suffering partner of four years - and that I was sunk below the hole line. I dragged deep on the Silk Cut, well you have to.

     "You don’t have to keep up the pretense," I said. "The jungle drums must’ve been rumbling. I had to let my office go. That place you called is just a façade, just provides a bit of legitimacy and passes on calls. Although seeing as I haven’t been paying my dues of late, I wouldn’t think they’ll be up for that much longer. Not that I get many calls these days. You must have heard what I’ve been doing."

     He put on an inquiring frown.

     "Kind of a rep, that right?"

     "Tat peddler more like. I go around with a big bag of junk chemicals and try to pressure some gullible or greedy merchant into buying them. We give out golf balls and lighters and things to get a foot in the door, with the temptation of serious returns for the really big orders."

     "Bribery, then."

     There was a sting in that, but I let it ride.

     "Advertising novelties is the preferred term," I said. "But that’s what it amounts to. I tell you, you’d sell your grannie’s soul to get a sale. All commission, no basic salary. It’s the absolute pits."

    "No company car, nothing like that?"

     Are you kidding? Know what I’m running around in? This will kill you. An old knacker of a police dog handler’s van."

     "Shit."

     "You said it. Got one of those air vent things fixed in the roof that goes round and round as you drive along. I got it for a song from Maurie Simpson, remember him?"

     "Motor-mouth Maurie? Christ, that’s going back a bit. I thought he was dead."

     "No he’s still around, still at the same old site. Wheeling and dealing on the shady side of the street. I called him on a favour or two he owed me and he came up with the van. Actually it’s not so bad - when you can get the bugger started."

     "So you lost the BM."

     "Lost everything, pretty much – lost Sally, but I guess you heard."

     Kev sighed a phony sigh and shook his head.

     “I don’t want to rub it in, but I never could understand why you took the risk you did.”

     I smiled. He knew, all right. Unlike me, Kev was a committed family man with a nice pretty wife and two kids at junior school level. I flicked ash in the strategically placed saucer next to my feet.

     "I didn’t do so bad at first,” I said. “When I had Sal keeping the books and keeping me on the straight and narrow. Then when the insurance crowd decided to keep it all in-house, that was it. Goodnight Charlie. They were a grind, those claims, but good bread-and-butter work."

     "Nothing else doing?"

     "Not so you’d notice. They want techies these days. Sound equipment nerds with mics and monitoring devices. Seems there’s not much call for pukka detectives. Anyway, there it is. I hear the old team’s been busted up."

     Kev nodded. "Gone to dust, that’s right. It was always on the cards of course. And I suppose, when you count it all in, we didn’t have a bad run."

     "No, I guess we didn’t at that."

     "I got lucky. You might have picked up on it. I’m back in uniform now."

     Saying this, he made a half-turn to the side, as if he couldn’t quite manage to look me in the eye, and I began to wonder what his game was. He had something cooking, that’s for sure.

     "Any good?" I asked, watching him.

     "It has its points," he said, then changed the subject. "What happened with Sally? I know you had your ups and downs, but you were solid, the pair of you. Or that’s what everybody thought."

     I smiled inwardly. Kev always had a thing for Sal. But then so did most of the guys I knew.

     "She went off with her boss," I said, blasé as you like. "The old story. Still, comes a time in every man’s life when he has to make way for an older man."

     "Older, you mean a married bloke?"

     "No, he’s not married, and he’s not all that old either. Simon something or other. He’s all right, and it’s probably for the best. I didn’t treat her right, you know I didn’t. Took time out with her best pal and that about tied it. Once a jerk, as they say. She weren’t a lot of cop, either, that best mate of hers."

     Kev nodded for no good reason and shuffled across to stare out through the skylight window at the rain that had started to fall.

     I said, "If you crane your neck, you can just about see the flag on Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Club mast."

     He turned and gave me a direct look.

     "I might be able to put something your way."

     We were finally getting to it.

     "Oh yeah?" I said, and waited.

     He came back toward me, frowning, doing the business skimming flatted hands back and forth. "There’s this family. Well to do, they are. Rich in fact. And there’s a job they need doing that would suit you right down to the ground."

     "You don’t say?"

     "This is on the level. These people are top drawer. You know, live in a big swanky house on Richmond Hill, tennis court, mini lake and all that."

     "Sounds good."

     "It is, believe me. Only turns out they’ve got this problem daughter, and she’s done a runner again."

     "Again?"

     "Does it all the time. Spoiled rotten from what I heard. They know where she is, they just want somebody who knows the ropes to go and get her back on track."

      "You want a priest.” I took a drag. "So she’s not actually missing? We’re not talking about a lost person job?"

     "No, it’s nothing like that. This could be a good opening. They’re prepared to cough up good money, these people. Interested?"

     "Sure, why wouldn’t I be? But let me get this straight. There’s no question of where she’s at?"

     "She’s in Brighton."

     "Right, my old stamping grand. And all they’re asking is for some mug to go and haul her back to the family fold and for this little service they’ll pay top dollar?"

     Kev shrugged. "It’s their loot. Know what they say, never look a gift horse and all that."

     "So they do, so they so."

     "By all accounts she’s a real cracker."

     "Is that right?"

     "A leggy blonde with all the goodies to match. See it as a perk of the job."

     I went, "Mm," like Sherlock might and studied the red tip of my burning ciggy.

     "I’ll explain, there’s a bit more to i." Kev’s eyes went around my dingy attic room. "But not here. What say we have a pint somewhere? Know anywhere decent?"

     "The Windsor’s not so bad. Your basic pub but okay so far as it goes."

     "Right, let’s try there," he said, starting to move, halting in his tracks as second thoughts kicked in. He gave me a leery look.

    "Go on, Kev," I said, "spit it out. You heard I’ve been tanking it, is that it?"

     He nodded. "What I heard. And you’ve been at it already, I can smell it."

     "You joined the temperance league then? As I recall we used to get a fair drop down us, on and off duty."

     "Times change."

     "Don’t they just." I snuffed out the cigarette and levered myself out of the chair, easing back my shoulders. "It’s true. I did hit it hard for a time after Sal left me. But I haven’t become a dipso, if that’s what you’re thinking. I had a quick one on the way in, okay? Just the one, which I felt I needed to help me think over the decision I’d come to."

     "Decision?"

     "To quit the selling game and try and give what I do best another go.”

   Kev paused on that for a moment.

   "Then you might say this call of mine is timely," he said.

   "You might indeed. Come on," I said, "let’s get that pint. Don’t worry, I’ll take it easy. And I know what you mean about this place. Come this time of night, even the mice start getting depressed."

three

Kev paid for two pints of Guinness and we found a table. It had started to rain again and the pub was near empty, the locals indoors watching the Sky Sports. Brian, the non-too-clean-looking patron, leaned over the bar reading a tabloid, a fag held slyly out of sight against his leg and over in a corner a solitary youth was hammering away at a game machine. A roll-up hung from his lips and his shirtsleeves were screwed tight back over stringy little muscles. We watched mesmerized as he fed in coins, jabbing his fingers at the buttons with passionate intensity, the machine responding with space-age beeps and flashes.

     I swallowed a mouthful of Guinness. Kev followed suit, taking a measured sip from his pint, glancing around.  

     "Bit quiet," he said. He gave his hands a brisk rub. "And chilly."

     I nodded, agreeing. Kev took another sip and set his glass down on its coaster.

     "Okay, this is the deal. The girl’s named Nicci – Nicola, and she’s reckoned to have took up with some local Jack the Lad, and your job will be to go and pay him off."

     "Press money into his hot little hand to encourage an early departure, that it?"

     "Exactly. Get him out of her life. Give his arse a kick if you have to. You could manage that, couldn’t you?"

    "Sure, muscle for hire, that’s me." Guinness slid past my tonsils. "Who is he, do we know?"

     "No, and neither does it matter. He’s just one in a long line."

     I nodded in that useless way you do. I said, "Won’t solve anything. If she’s that way inclined it’s bound to happen again."

     "And again and again. Which is good news for you, my son. Do your stuff on this and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t build up a nice regular little earner out of it."

     Kev worked thumb and fingertips together in the time-honoured fashion to drive home the point, and I could feel the centre of my palms beginning to itch.

     "There could be more besides. Quite a bit more, as it happens. Her old man’s a big time industrialist. The name Ted Brown mean anything to you?"

     I shook my head.

     "But I’ll take a bet you’ve heard of his company," Kev said, and spoke the name of a giant construction outfit, one of the biggest names in the industry.

     I pulled down my mouth. "That’s him is it?"

   "Started with a shovel and a pair of wellies, now a multi-millionaire, you know how the story goes. See what I mean? Get a toe-hold with this and you’re on your way."

     More Guinness went down. I had to admit, it was beginning to look pretty sweet.

     "And she’s definitely in Brighton?"

     "Rock solid. She’s been free and easy cashing cheques and using her credit cards in the town and the family’s got this cottage place out there on the coast. See? Piece of cake."

     "Yeah, sounds a breeze. Only..."

     "Only what? Don’t start creating obstacles."

     "I’m not. I’m just having a tough time getting my head around this. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for the intro and all that. But why does Mister Brown need me - anybody for that matter? Why not just dust off the Rolls and go and bring her back himself? How old is she, anyway?"

     "She’s twenty-four," Kev said.

     "Twenty-four? I thought we were talking about a teenager. She can please herself, can’t she?"

     "Not like you’d suppose. Nicci’s the youngest daughter and gets away with it something rotten, but only up to a point. Finally Brown’s word is law, simple as that - and he won’t go after her. Just take it as read. This is how he wants to play it."

     "Isn’t there a phone in this cottage?"

     "Line’s out of commission, probably as a result of Nicci sabotaging it."

     "Get her on her mobile, then. She must have a mobile."

     "Switched off, won’t answer."

     I grunted and took another drink. It all sounded more than a little cranky. But what the hell. Pound signs were clinking.

     "You say she’s the youngest daughter. So how many others are there?"

     "Only the one. Jane. Who’s altogether different. Independent. Got her own career and flat in London. Doesn’t have a lot to do with the family anymore."

      I nodded. “So how long’s she been gone?”

      "Nicola? Near enough three weeks and it’s getting to the old man. He had a minor heart flutter a while back and her antics are sending his blood pressure through the roof."

     I frowned at him. "Three weeks out of the loop. You sure this isn’t stacking up as a missing person brief?"

     "There’s no reason to suppose that. She’s just hung it out, that’s all."

     I gave another grunt, cogs in my brain grinding to no worthy purpose.

     "How did you come to hear about all this?" I asked, and watched Kev’s face take on a shifty look.  

     "I’m on this sort of social work committee thing - that’s right, the do-gooders brigade. You might have heard. I’m up the road in Wandsworth now. I got made up to chief inspector."

     "Sure, I heard. Well that’s good, Kev. Good luck to you."

     "Thanks, Lew. I did wonder if you would mind."

     "Mind? Why would I mind? It’s nothing to do with me. I chose my path. Don’t be a jerk. I’m pleased for you. So, go on. You were telling me about this committee – this is on your new patch, I take it."

     "Over in Wandsworth, that’s right. Being honest, it’s a status move. There’s this hostel, Beckridge House it’s called. Caters for ex-offenders and such like, you know the kind of place I mean."

     "Like a holding house."

     "You got it. It’s wound up with a charity trust. The government stumps up most of the dosh, but we hire the warden and give the nod as to who’s allowed in and who isn’t and so on. There are a couple of lawyers and a doctor on the team, and I guess they thought it wouldn’t be an altogether bad idea if they could get hold of a copper."

     "A young senior copper to join the great and good, sure, makes sense." 

     "Don’t know about the great and the good. But they approached me and I went for it, and one of the star members happens to be Mrs Helen Brown."

     "Right. The mother of the wayward Nicola."

     "Not quite. She’s Brown’s second wife. The girl’s real mother died a few years back."

     "And she’s a good bit younger than him, I’m guessing, Mrs Brown Mark ll?"

     "Helen, yes, I suppose she is."

     "Oh. Helen? Like that, is it?"

     "No it is not like that," Kev said, but snappish like. "She’s got this family problem, so she turned to me for advice? What’s wrong with that?"

     "Nothing at all. Don’t get tetchy. I was only pulling your leg."

     He gave me a weak grin. "She does a lot of this voluntary social work stuff," he said, but kind of shame-faced about it.

     "I’m sure she does. All right, so assuming I get the rubber stamp, I trundle down to Brighton, pay off Nicci’s latest stud and bring her back. That it?"

     "That’s it," Kev said. “But you’ve got the ruby stamp.”  He grinned. “Courtesy of your Uncle Kev.”

     “You mean they’re buying me sight unseen?”

      “Helen trusts my judgement and Brown’s happy to go along with that.” He went into a pocket and pulled out ten inch envelope and laid it down in front of me. “All the info’s there – address where you’ll find her and so on. Plus five thousand quid.”

     “You’re kidding,” I said.

     “No, you’ll need it. She’s heavy into gambling, roulette and blackjack, so likely as not you’ll have to do some negotiating to clear off her debts. You’ll probably need some dosh besides to pay off her latest Romeo. What’s left you get to keep. Like it?"

     “Sure,” I said.  I stared up at the ceiling. "I couldn’t make her come back if she didn’t want to."

     "No worries there. She’ll come back. That’s how it’s worked in the past and there’s no reason to suppose it will be any different this time."

     "What happened to my predecessor, the one who did the buying off before?"

     "No idea. Maybe he retired, snuffed it. What’s it matter? It’s an opening for you, that’s what counts. She drives a Ferrari, which she’s been known to put into hock when her funds run out. So there’s every chance you’ll have to redeem that too."

     "You’re kidding me, a Ferrari. And here’s me with a clapped-out old van!"

     "You’re such a Jeremiah. The family’s rolling in it, what do you expect her to be driving around in? In any case, you haven’t got to literally bring her back. Just get her on her way. Hire a motor, if you are that bothered about it."

     I lifted the envelope and peered inside the flap. I saw the lovely sight of money wrapped in a cellophane folder. Also a colour photograph, which I slid out and gave the once over.

     “This is her, I take it?”

     The girl in the picture was blonde and pretty, and very young. Taken when she was a teenager, by my estimation, with that surly expression teenagers are apt to show the world.

     “That’s her,” Kev said. “Nicola Brown, or rather Nicola Carnaby. She’s married, I forgot to tell you.”

     “Married? Are you kidding me? If she’s married, why doesn’t her husband go out and do the collecting?”

     Kev too a big sighing breath.

     “For all sorts of reasons. So far as I know, the marriage is a bust. Anyway, it’s neither here nor there. Go and do the necessary, and keep me posted, okay?”

     I looked at him and drained my Guinness.