Peter Corris - Heroin Annie

‘Okay, but why would there be two copies?’

‘I don’t know, I can’t figure that at all.’

Harry grinned, he liked to out-sleuth me. ‘There’s another thing, this is all pretty coldblooded stuff-knocking the woman off, pinching the paintings, this Steele didn’t sound like that sort of a bloke from Renee’s story.’

That was worrying me too although I didn’t like to admit it. I felt I almost had the thing wrapped up but that there were some loose ends that could unravel the whole rug. There was also something else worrying me which I couldn’t quite grab. I looked at the addresses and I looked at Primo’s drawing and Harry and Renee’s dead cigarette butts and I still couldn’t get it. I said goodbye to Harry and went off indecisively to work at it.

The first address was a wash-out, no-one living in the blighted old house at all; at the second place I was offered grass but no information. The third house was in a tall, crumbling terrace wedged between rusty, graffiti-daubed factories. The street light was broken and two youths were working by torchbeam to strip a newish Commodore in the alley across from the house. One of them straightened up when I got out of my car and looked across. He picked up something from the ground.

I held up my hand. ‘These modern cars are so unreliable; hope you get it going again. Anyone at home in 88?’

He relaxed and spoke to his mate. The torch beam came up and hit me in the face. I let it hit.

‘Junkies’, one of them said. ‘You a narc?’

‘No.’

‘I think they’re there, why don’t you take a look.’

‘There’s no lights.’

He laughed and spat into the gutter. ‘Squatters mate, they use candles.’

I went back to my car and got the. 38 from under the dash. I let the mechanics see it as I closed the door.

‘Not interested in Falcons, are you?’ I said.

I walked over to the house; the front door was a ruin with some of the panels replaced by cardboard. I pushed one in and put a hand through to undo the catch. In the passage way the floorboards were rotten and the walls smelled of damp. There was a chink of light under the second door along and I pushed it open with the gun held high. There were mattresses around the walls, some clothes scattered about and a candle burning crookedly in the middle of the floor. Two men were lying together on one of the mattresses. One of them turned his head to look at me, the other’s eyes were closed.

‘Trouble?’ The accent was southern US, with a lot of illness and heroin in it.

‘No trouble. Paul Steele here?’

‘Upstairs. I’m glad there’s no trouble.’

I closed the door and felt my way up the stairs. The front room was showing a faint light and I could hear soft, slow voices. I crept up close and listened. There was only one voice, a woman’s, and it was saying, ‘Pauli, c’mon Pauli, Pauli?’ over and over again.

I pushed the door open and the woman gave a scream and jumped off the floor and straight at me. She was big and fat, and she swung a fist into my face and followed that up with a fingernail attack. Both did some damage, and it was hard to counter while holding the gun. I gasped ‘Easy’, and tried to duck the next swing and get at her feet, but she was quick, despite her weight. Her hand hit me again and I forgot my manners; I clipped her smartly under the chin, her knees sagged and I rushed her back against the wall which pushed all the breath out of her. I held her there while she struggled for breath.

‘I’m not going to hurt you’, I rasped. ‘Now behave, or I’ll shove something in your mouth to shut you up. Understand?’

She nodded and I let her go keeping a cautious eye on her hands and feet. But all the fight had gone out of her and she slipped down to the floor beside the mattress on which Paul Steele lay. He’d been watching us but there was no interest in his eyes.

I bent down. ‘Remember me, Paul?’

There was no reaction and I reached into my pocket for the piece of cloth. He was wearing the same shirt and I dropped the torn piece onto his narrow, heaving chest.

‘He’s OD’d’, the woman said. ‘What is this?’

‘It’s a murder investigation’, I said. ‘A woman named Susannah Woods got killed. What’s your name?’

‘Morgan Lindsay’, she said. ‘Have you got a cigarette?’

‘No. Where are the paintings?’

‘Over there.’ She pointed to the far corner of the dark room. I picked up a box of matches from the floor and went across to the corner. The three canvases were stacked carelessly against the damp wall. I struck a couple of matches and peered at them but under those conditions it was impossible to tell which version of ’Stockyards at Jerilderie’ was which. The woman was sitting listlessly by the ragged mattress listening to Steele’s breathing which was harsh but even.

‘Where’d he get the money for the heroin?’ I said.

‘Pinched something from that bitch’s house and flogged it. It must be bad stuff though, never seen him like this before. God, I wish I had a smoke.’

I looked at Steele and thought that his colour was bad, he had a sort of nineteenth century opium-den pallor and then one of the things that had been jangling around loose in my mind clicked into place. I had a short talk to Morgan Lindsay and then Steele’s breathing broke up into erratic gusts and we went out to look for a phone.

I talked to her some more in the street while the ambulance was coming. But when we got back to the room, Steele and his torn shirt and the ragged mattress were covered with blood and vomit, and he was dead.

I handed the three paintings over and Quentin de V C James pushed the buttons to get a cheque made out for me-promptly. He took the canvas with Dr Ernst’s mark on it over to the window and let the expensive light flood over it. He put it down and shook his head.

‘Not my idea of $30,000 worth’, he said.

I grinned. ‘Nobody’s idea, it’s a fake.’

‘Then they’re all fakes.’

‘That’s right, Steele did them all; the first one was a dry run which he wasn’t happy with. Woods left it lying around and Leo Porter got hold of it. Then there was the deliberate fake to help authenticate the first-class fake. Steele killed her when she said she was going to burn that one and collect the insurance.’

‘But why? He’d have got his cut surely?’

I shook my head. ‘He was past that. Have a look at these.’ I took out Primo’s picture and laid it on the desk, then I opened up one of the books on Castleton. It had as a frontispiece a photograph of Castleton taken at a time when he was ill. The hair, the face, the lines of suffering were almost identical.

‘Remarkable’, James said.

‘Yeah, the woman filled most of it in for me. Steele was pretty nutty to begin with and the dope didn’t help. He did a deep study of Castleton when he took on this commission for Woods. In the end he came to believe that he was Castleton or was his son or grandson-the Lindsay woman said he shifted around a bit on that point.’

‘And he cracked when she said she was going to burn the painting?’

‘That’s right. By then he believed it was real and that he’d painted it as a real artist.’

‘Is that why he went after the other pictures?’

‘Probably, but I think the girl might have helped a bit there. The rough jobs probably looked more like Steele’s own work, if they turned up and someone saw Steele’s style in them that would lead directly to him. The Woods woman wanted to get the rough copy back so as not to confuse the issue when she made her claim. That’s why she came to me.’

James was nodding sagaciously when a secretary came in and handed him an envelope. He passed it over to me and did some more beaming.