Russell Hoban - Linger Awhile

I took him round to Beak Street. On the way there I said, ‘Was she married?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘Anyone in her life, a boyfriend?’

‘No, why are you asking?’

‘When a case is still unsolved like this I try to find out as much as I can,’ I said. When we got to the flat I removed the police tapes from the door, and we went inside. He stood there taking in the goneness of his sister. London silences always have the background of London traffic. ‘Could I be alone in here for a few minutes?’ he said.

‘Certainly, I’ll wait for you outside.’

After about ten minutes he came out. ‘Do you think you’ll find whoever did this?’ he said.

‘We have a suspect that we want to talk to,’ I said, ‘but that’s all I can tell you just now.’

‘I understand,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’ We shook hands and he walked away slowly.

31 January 2004. I was coming through Cecil Court early in the morning on my way to the lab when I heard a woman singing with a down-home accent:

Tweedle-O-Twill, puffin’ on corn silk,

Tweedle-O-Twill, whittlin’ wood,

Settin’ there wishin’ he could go fishin’

Over the hill, Tweedle-O-Twill.

That’s a Gene Autry song, and the last time I heard it was back in Tennessee about thirty years ago. My daddy used to sing it when he was working on his old Ford pickup.

She was sitting in a doorway with a man slumped against her. I noticed that she was wearing cowboy boots. She didn’t look homeless and neither did the man. I stopped in front of them and she said, ‘Howdy.’

‘Howdy,’ I said. ‘Been having a late night?’

‘I been saving the last dance for you,’ she said.‘Whyn’t you come a little closer, honey.’

It’s hard to say no to a good-looking woman even if she seems a little the worse for wear. ‘Won’t your friend mind?’ I said.

‘It don’t make no never-mind to him,’ she said. ‘He’s dead to the world.’ She reached up and pulled me down to her and gave me a big wet slobbery kiss with her tongue half-way down my throat. She tasted like my high-school friend Barbara-Ann Hopper only ten times worse. Oh my God, I thought — a toad-sucker in London! Then she was trying to bite my neck but I got loose and backed away as fast as I could. Everything was going round and round with the ground sometimes tilting up and sometimes down while out of the corner of my eye I saw some great big hopping thing coming after me. I sprinted down Cecil Court, dodged through the traffic in St Martin’s Lane with the thing close behind, made a sharp right towards the Coliseum, then left and left again and so on trying to lose it but when I reached the lab it was still hot on my heels. Once I got inside I phoned the police while the hopping thing did its best to come through the wall. Scared? I didn’t know whether to shit or go blind so I just kind of closed one eye and farted and hoped for better times. It took about an hour and a whole lot of black coffee before the thing left off thumping and squelching and went back to wherever it lives.

When PC Plod got to Cecil Court Miss Tweedle-O-Twill was long gone but her friend was still there. He was dead to the world all right, stone dead with all the blood sucked out of him.

31 January 2004. When Wilbur had drunk nine or ten cups of black coffee and was more or less back to normal we looked at the lab report on Walter Dixon. Wilbur, who’s from Tennessee, said, ‘I don’t need this report to tell me that what we got here is a toad-sucker,’

‘A what?’ I said.

His answer was part of a poem:

How about them toad-suckers,

Ain’t they clods?

Sittin’ there suckin’

Them green toady-frogs.

‘Toad-suckers,’ I said. ‘Have you ever seen one before this?’

‘I dated one when I was in high school,’ he said: ‘Barbara-Ann Hopper. She hung out with a crowd of older boys and they used to kid her about her name. They said she ought to try tripping with one of her relatives. So she did and she liked the effect. She said that sucking those little warty ones made her horny.’

‘Did you ever try it, Wilbur?’ I asked him.

‘No, but I tried her shortly after she had one.’

‘And?’

‘I didn’t care for the taste but I’d rate her eleven out of ten for the rest of it.’

‘Bufotoxin,’ I read from the report. ‘Walter Dixon’s saliva shows traces of bufotoxin. Where would a toad-sucker find a toad in London? You can get frog’s legs in a French restaurant but as far as I know there’s no pub where you can step up to the bar and ask for a little warty guy. You know of any?’

‘No, I don’t,’ said Wilbur, ‘but that woman who snogged me sure as hell had a toad connection.’

‘A toad pusher?’ I said. ‘You never know — London seems to be full of surprises these days.’

31 January 2004. When I saw the body I rang Burke on my mobile. ‘Istvan Fallok’s on his way to you,’ I said. ‘Running on empty.’

‘Fallok!’ said Burke. ‘I’d heard about Cecil Court from Wilbur but I didn’t know who the victim was. He’s still shaking from the bufotoxin snogging and the great big hopping thing.’

‘I’ll be over as soon as I finish with the crime scene,’ I said. ‘Don’t go away.’

‘I’m not going anywhere. Wilbur just went out for a six-pack.’

‘This one’s really hitting you hard, is it.’

‘Definitely worth getting out of bed for. See you.’

When I got to the lab I went through the door marked NO ENTRY — PROTECTIVE CLOTHING MUST BE WORN IN THIS AREA and walked into the post-mortem smell which is partly butcher shop, partly fecal matter, and partly Hycolin disinfectant. Burke and Wilbur in their blue lab gowns, plastic aprons and wellies were standing by a white dissecting table on which lay Istvan Fallok, being considerably more open than when last we spoke, in fact he no longer had any secrets whatever. Except, of course, the identity of his killer.

I joined my colleagues as they went on with their work in the quiet hiss of fresh air coming in from the blower. Wilbur recorded the contents of Fallok’s stomach and weighed it while Burke busied himself with the rib shears and I averted my eyes. ‘Salt beef on rye,’ said Wilbur. ‘This says surprise attack to me; if he’d known it was to be his last nosh he’d have had something better.’

‘I love it when you talk forensic,’ I said, ‘but what about a suspect?’

‘Are you kidding?’ said Wilbur. ‘The DNA from the saliva on Fallok’s neck and jacket is the same as the DNA from the saliva on Walter Dixon’s neck and jacket, and Dixon also got snogged in Cecil Court. And if you take a sample from my neck and jacket you’ll get more of the same from that bufotoxiniferous cutie who stuck her tongue down my throat: Miss Tweedle-O-Twill.’

‘Tweedle-O-Twill?’ I said.

‘That’s a Gene Autry song,’ Burke explained.

‘And she was wearing cowboy boots,’ said Wilbur.

‘Blonde,’ I said, ‘pretty, about five foot six, good figure?’

‘That’s her,’ said Wilbur.

‘Sounds like Justine Trimble,’ I said. ‘When we took a sample of her saliva from Rose Harland’s neck the DNA was the same as Fallok’s. We took samples from Fallok, Lim, Goodman and Justine. The sample just taken from Fallok doesn’t match any of those if my notes are correct.’

‘Right,’ said Burke.

‘So what have we got here?’ I said: ‘Two Justines? What, are they cloning her now?’

‘Vampires move with the times like everyone else,’ said Wilbur. ‘Anyone for a beer?’