Peter Corris - The Greenwich Apartments

‘Yes?’ She teetered on high heels and had to hang on to the door for support. She’d already started, perhaps she never stopped.

‘Good afternoon, Madam,’ I said. ‘I believe we talked on the telephone the other night.’

‘What?’ She had the door on a chain and was peering up at me through the four-inch gap. I showed her the licence.

‘I have to get my glasses,’ she said. She left the door on the chain and I slipped two fingers through and slid the catch free. The door was standing open and I was head and shoulders inside when she got back.

She laughed. ‘I always do that. Someday someone’ll come in and kill me.’

‘You need a gun,’ I said.

‘I had one but I lost it. Well, you’re in. Let me see that paper again.’ She hooked on a pair of wire-rimmed glasses and squinted at the licence. ‘Private Inquiry Agent,’ she read. ‘I knew one of them once. Way back in the forties. Drank himself to death. Funny thing, I drank just as much as he did an’ I’m still here. Whaddayou think of that?’

‘You must have a fine constitution,’ I said. I held up the Rose. ‘Haven’t retired, have you?’

‘No fear. Come in. I have to warn you, I can drink all day an’ all night an’ it doesn’t affect me.’

‘You like to talk, don’t you?’

I went into the living room which was full of furniture that all looked too big for her. So did the room itself with its high ceiling, picture rail all around and deep, floral carpet. I went over to the window.

‘Excuse me,’ I said.

I parted the dusty Venetian blinds and looked directly down from one storey into the courtyard. The window of flat one in the Greenwich Apartments was directly opposite.

‘Feel free,’ she said. ‘I’ll get some glasses.’

‘I sat on the arm of an overstuffed sofa, reached across and put the bottle on the glass top of a French-polished table. She came back with two tall glasses-long stems, green tinge, swirling designs cut in the glass. She took the foil off the bottle expertly and poured carefully.

‘Cheers,’ she said. ‘I’m Ellen Barton, Mr Hardy, and I’m very pleased to meet you.’ She drank and hiccupped. ‘Excuse me.’

I drank too. At least it was cold. ‘That was a very dangerous thing you did, Mrs Barton, making that phone call.’

‘Ellen,’ she said. ‘I thought I was anonymous. How did you find out it was me?’

I told her. She nodded and finished her wine. She let about half a minute pass before she poured some more. ‘I remember that day. Gee, she was a nice kid.’

‘So everyone says.’

‘Yeah, a nice kid. So what’s your interest?’

I told her. She listened but she seemed to have trouble concentrating. She twitched a little inside her blue silk dress with its beaded top and wide, unfashionable belt. The buzzing of a fly distracted her; she seemed to be watching motes in the beams of light that slanted through the blinds.

‘Did you see the shooting, Ellen?’

‘Sort of.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Wouldn’t have a smoke on you, would you?’

I produced the silver packet and she pounced on it greedily. ‘Very nice too. You gonna have one?”

I shook my head. She lit up and puffed luxuriously. ‘Remember de Reszke, in the tins?’

‘No.’

‘Ah, they were lovely cigarettes. Not like the rubbish they sell now. ‘Course, these are all right.’

‘The shooting,’ I said.

‘Yes, I saw it. That is, I was looking out the window and I heard the shots and I saw her fall.’

‘You didn’t see who did it?’

‘Not properly. Look, why’re those flats empty over there?’

I told her about Leo Wise’s plans for the Greenwich Apartments. It was hard to keep her mind on a single subject; I couldn’t tell whether the wine was making her that way or whether she’d be worse without it. She had nearly finished her second glass. ‘Tell me what you saw?’

‘A man. That’s all. In the corner. He ran across and down the lane. He…’

‘What?’

‘He jumped over her. Jumped!’

‘Would you recognise him again?’

She shook her head; the purple hair wobbled. ‘Dark. Couldn’t see properly. Bastard!’

‘What did you do?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Why?’

She stubbed out the cigarette and poured some more wine. Her hand shook and she spilled some on the table. ‘Bugger it. Know how long I’ve lived here?’

I shook my head.

‘Forty years. Think I haven’t seen it before? Shooting? I’ve seen it! You can’t do anything.’

‘You did something the other night. You rang the flat’

‘I’d had a few. I felt sorry for her.’

‘How did you know I wasn’t the killer?’

‘You used a key. Looked like you had a right there. But, he was a tall man, same as you. I like a big man.’

‘Mm, well, what happened then?’

‘After a bit, ambulance came up the lane. Police. I put out the lights and went to bed. Didn’t sleep much, but.’

‘Did the police interview you?’

‘Yeah. One came. Told him I was asleep. Didn’t hear or see anything. Look, three, no four people been shot around here. Police never caught one killer. Not one. Have some more plonk, sorry rosey’s good.’ She wasn’t the drinker she thought she was, two and a bit glasses, admittedly big ones, and she was awash. Of course, I didn’t know what sort of a foundation she was building on. She lit another cigarette, just managing to get the match in the right place. Forty years, she’d said. I wondered it she could unscramble them.

‘Before the girl…” I began.

‘Remember Jack Davey?’ she said suddenly.

I did remember him. He was the best thing on radio in the days before transistors, the Top Forty, and talk-back. ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Hi ho, everybody.”

‘ ‘s right! ‘s right! Hi ho, every…everybody. Ooh, he was a lovely man, Jack Davey.’

‘I don’t see…’

‘Jack Davey had a girlfriend who lived in that flat.’

She leaned forward conspiratorially as if the gossip was still hot stuff although Jack Davey has been dead for nearly 30 years. ‘Lovely girl, showgirl or something. He used to come and visit her. Silver hair, beautifully brushed always. And he wore a camel-hair coat. Funny thing, that… people wore coats more. Must’ve been colder. Must be the bomb…’

She was back in the forties, with her dipso private eye and Jack Davey, and I wanted her in the eighties as neighbour to Tania Bourke and Mr Anonymous. The problem was to get her there. ‘Did anyone else famous live there, Ellen? In the Greenwich?’

‘Oh, sure. ‘Course, I forget their names. Been a long time. Lee Gordon, he was there, or a friend of him. Anyway, they held parties there. Parties! You shoulda seen them! Packed! You couldn’t squeeze another bottle in.’

She laughed at her joke and took another drink. Gordon was an entrepreneur who’d brought the big names out from America, Sinatra and the rest, and made a bundle by putting them on in the Stadium. Gordon died and the Stadium was pulled down, but this was better-sixties. ‘Do you remember a man and a woman who lived there, I’d say about two or three years back.’

‘Too long ago.’

‘Come on, you remember Jack Davey.’

‘Jack Davey… lovely silver hair, all brushed.’

I took out the photograph of the group around the table. ‘Look at this. Do you know her?’

She reached for the glasses and put them on. A sip and a puff and she was ready. ‘Ooh, yes. I remember her. Air hostess.”

‘That’s right. Do you remember the man?’

‘Yes, yes. See him alla time.”

‘What? You see the man who lived in the flat? You see him now?’

‘No, no, no.’ She slapped my arm. ‘Silly. No, haven’t seen him for years. I mean this one.’ She put her finger next to the face of the blonde man, the one Tania Bourke was giving the big Yes to.