9: Storm Over

i

Back to square one,” Alleyn thought when they brought Sydney Jones before him, once again exhibiting all the unlovely symptoms of the deprived addict. Doctor Carey had evidently not been overgenerous with the dosage.

He began at once to say he would only talk to Alleyn and wouldn’t have any witnesses in the room.

“It won’t make any difference, you silly chap,” Fox said with a low degree of accuracy. But Syd knew a thing worth two of that, and stuck to it.

In the end Fox and Alleyn exchanged glances and Fox went away.

Syd said: “You going to fix me up?”

“Not without the doctor’s approval.”

“I’ve got something I can tell you. About Dulce. It’d make a difference.”

“What is it?”

“Oh, no!” said Syd. “Oh dear me no! Fair’s fair.”

“If you can give me information that will lead substantially to a charge, the fact that you did so and did it of your own accord would be taken into consideration. If it turns out to be something that we could get from another source — Ferrant, for instance—”

Syd with a kind of febrile intensity let fling a stream of obscenities. It emerged that Syd now laid all his woes at Ferrant’s door. It was Ferrant who had introduced him to hard-line drugs, Ferrant who established Syd’s link with Jerome et Cie, Ferrant who egged him on to follow Ricky about the streets in Saint Pierre-des-Roches, Ferrant who kidnapped Ricky and brought him into the Pad.

“And this information you say you have, is about Ferrant, is it?” Alleyn asked.

“If they got on to it I’d shopped him, they’d get me.”

“Who would?”

“Them. Him. Up there.”

“Are you talking about Mr. Louis Pharamond?”

“Mister. Mister Philistine. Mister Bloody Fascist Sod Pharamond. You don’t know,” Syd said, “why I wanted that wire. Well? Do you?”

“To hang a picture.”

“That’s right. Because she said it gave her a feeling that I’ve got a strong sense of rhythm. That’s what she said.”

“This,” Alleyn thought, “is the unfairest thing that has ever happened to me.”

He said: “Get back to what you can tell me. Is it about Ferrant?”

“More or less that’s what she said,” Syd mumbled.

“Ferrant!” Alleyn insisted and could have shouted it. “What about Ferrant?”

“What’ll I get for it? For assault?”

“It depends on the magistrates. You can have a solicitor and a barrister to defend you.”

“Will he get longer? Seeing he laid it all on? Gil?”

“Possibly. If you can satisfy the court that he did.”

Syd wiped the back of his hand across his face. “Not like that,” he said, “not in front of him. In court. Not on your Nelly.”

“Why not?”

“They’d get me,” he said.

“Who would?”

“Them. The organization. That lot.”

Alleyn moved away from him. “Make up your mind,” he said and looked at his watch. “I can’t give you much longer.”

“I never wanted to do him over. I never meant to make it tough. You know? Tying him up with the wire and that. It was Gil.”

“For the last time: if you have something to say about Ferrant, say it.”

“I want a fix.”

“Say it.”

Syd bit his fingers, wiped his nose, blinked, and with a travesty of pulling himself together cleared his throat and whispered:

“Gil did it.”

“Did what?”

“Did her. Dulce.”

And then as if he’d turned himself on like a tap he poured out his story.

Dulcie Harkness, he said, had found out about the capsules in the paint tubes. It had happened one night when she was “going with” Syd. It might have been the night he took Ricky to the Pad. Yes — it was that night. Before they arrived she had taken it into her head to tidy up the paint table and had come across a tube that was open at the wrong end. When Ricky had gone she had pointed it out to Syd. Alleyn gathered that this rattled Syd. He told her it was because the cap had jammed. Dulcie had unscrewed the cap with ease and “got nosey.” Syd had lost his temper — he was, he said, by that time high on grass. There was a fine old scene between them and she’d left the Pad saying she expected to be made an honest woman by him. Or else.

After that she kept on at him both before and after his trip to London. Her uncle was giving her hell and she wanted to cut loose and the shortest route to that desired end, she argued, was a visit to the registry office with Syd. By this time, it emerged, she was “going with somebody else” and threatened to talk.

“Do you mean to Louis Pharamond?”

Never mind who. She got Syd so worried he’d confided in Gil Ferrant and Gil had gone crook, Syd said, revealing his antipodean origin. Gil had taken it very seriously indeed. He’d tackled Dulcie, trying to scare her with threats about what would happen to her if she talked, but she laughed at him and said two could play at that game.

That was the situation on the morning before the accident. When he returned from his trip to the corn chandler Syd found Ferrant lurking around the stables. He had driven up in his car. Alleyn heard with surprise that Mrs. Ferrant had been with him. It appeared that she did the fine laundering for L’Espérance and they had called there to deliver it. Ferrant said that within the next few days he was going over to Saint Pierre under orders from above and Syd was to hold himself in readiness to follow. To collect a consignment. Ferrant wanted to know how Dulcie was behaving herself. Syd gave him an account of the fence-jumping incident, her threat to try it herself, and the subsequent row with her uncle.

Ferrant had asked where she was and Syd had said up in her room but that wouldn’t be for long. She’d broken out before and she would again and if he knew anything about her she’d take the mare over the jump.

“Where,” Alleyn asked, “was her uncle at this time?”

In his office, writing hellfire pamphlets, Syd supposed. And where was the sorrel mare? In her loose-box. And Mrs. Ferrant? She remained in the car.

“Go on.”

Well, Ferrant supplied Syd with dope, and he’d brought a packet, and he said why didn’t Syd doss down somewhere and do himself a favor. He was friendlier than Syd had known him since the row over Dulcie. They were in the old coach house at the time and Syd noticed how Ferrant looked around at everything.

Well. So Syd had said he didn’t mind if he did. He went into one of the unoccupied loose-boxes where he settled himself down on the clean straw and shot up.

The next thing he could be sure about was that it was quite a lot later in the afternoon. He pulled himself together and went into the coach house where he had parked his bike. It was then that he noticed the length of wire that had been newly cut from the main coil. He thought it would do for hanging pictures and he took it. He then remembered he was supposed to take the sorrel mare to the smith. He looked in her loose-box but she wasn’t there. It was too late to do anything about it now so he biked down to the cliffs. After a time he got around to wondering what had gone on at Leathers. He returned there and met Ricky and Jasper Pharamond who told him about Dulcie.

Here Syd came to a stop. He gazed at Alleyn and pulled at his beard.

“Well,” Alleyn said, “is that all?”

“All! God, it’s everything. He did it. I know. I could tell, the way he carried on afterward when I talked about it. He was pleased with himself. You could tell.”

At this point Syd became hysterical. He swore that if they put him in the witness-box he wouldn’t say a word about heroin or against Ferrant because if he did he’d “be in for it.” It was for Alleyn to follow up the information he’d given him but he, Syd, wasn’t going to be made a monkey of. It was remarkable that however frantic he became he never mentioned Ferrant’s name or alluded to him in any way without lowering his voice, as if Ferrant might overhear him. But when he pleaded for his fix he became vociferous and at last began to scream.