Copyright & Information

The Man with the Tiny Head

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The right of Roger Longrigg to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

This edition published in 2012 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

Typeset by House of Stratus.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

EAN	ISBN	Edition
075510482X	9780755104826	Print
0755134982	9780755134984	Kindle
0755135075	9780755135073	Epub

This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

www.houseofstratus.com

About the Author

Roger Longrigg was a British author of unusual versatility who wrote both novels and non-fiction, along with plays and screenplays for television, under both his own name and eight other pseudonyms, including Laura Black, Ivor Drummond, Domini Taylor, and Frank Parish.

Born in Edinburgh into a military family, he was at first schooled in the Middle East, but returned to England as a youth and later read history at Magdalen College, Oxford. His early career took him into advertising, but after the publication of two comic novels took up writing full time in 1959.

He completed fifty five books, many under his own name, but also Scottish historical fiction as Laura Black; thrillers as Ivor Drummond; black comedies as Domini Taylor; and famously Rosalind Erskine – a name with which he hoaxed all for several years – who appeared to write a disguised biography of what life was like in a girls boarding school where with classmates she ran a brothel for boys from a nearby school. ‘The Passion Flower Hotel’ became a bestseller and was later filmed. Roger Longrigg’s work in television included ‘Mother Love’, a BBC mini-series starring Diana Rigg and David McCallum, and episodes of ‘Crown Court’ and ‘Dial M for Murder’.

He died in 2000, aged 70 and was survived by his wife, the novelist Jane Chichester, and three daughters.

Prologue

The little white clouds which the trade-winds carry unceasingly across the Caribbean – which hung now like a raggedy lace flounce along the horizon – turned rapidly from flame to purple to black. The strip of sea between the two dry, uninhabited little islands turned from yellow to blood to black. A young moon lay just over the tangled trees of the larger island. The sky was immediately full of stars. The wind dropped to a whisper. Tiny, irritating insects came out of crannies and drifted over the dark beaches: but there was no one for them to sting, no one for miles.

Some prehistoric electricity was switched on among the vicious, inhospitable, useless vegetation of the two little islands – among the mangroves and sea-grapes and dusty cactus – and suddenly all the tree-frogs began to bong over the quiet water, bleep-bloop, bleep-bloop, an interminable electronic music, monotonous, magical. The noise of the cicadas, like a million tiny bicycles, chirred under the song of the frogs.

At the edge of the water, on the wet volcanic rocks and the dead coral, sea-snails with conical shells twitched and slithered. In the water, creatures with feelers and teeth and spikes and spines and poison waited, with endless patience, for the chance to kill each other.

A rhythmic thudding became dimly audible. It grew very slowly louder. A diesel motor, throttled right back. A yacht? But no yacht navigates for choice among the islands at night – it is dangerous: it is unnecessary.

Yes, a yacht, visible now in the channel between the islands (but there was no one to see it) – a big boat, a ketch, white-hulled in the moonlight, sails furled, inching along the narrows. No navigation lights, no lights on deck, no lights showing through the portholes or the windows of the saloon. No sound except the muffled thud of the diesel.

The timbre of the engine changed. The yacht stopped moving, the anchor-chain went down with a roar and the anchor splashed. The engine cut.

Still no light from the yacht. Now no sound except for the frogs and crickets to whom a yacht, more or less, was a matter of indifference. Little tired ripples from the yacht’s screw and her hull and the dropping of her anchor sucked at the beaches and died under the starlight.

‘Mr Warren,’ said the slim man in the pink shirt, bouncing down the steps from the cockpit into the big saloon, ‘Mr Warren, you’re not drinking!’

The fat, fiftyish American raised his head from his hands. It was true that the glass in front of him was empty. So also was the bottle. His eyes swivelled and his mouth hung open.

‘Not drinking?’ he finally said. His voice was blurred and uncertain and a long way away, like an announcer on a badly tuned radio. ‘I have been.’ He laughed, as though scoring a debating point of uncommon shrewdness. ‘I have been drinking, George.’

The big man looked round the saloon. He was sitting on a long, blue-cushioned seat; another faced him, with a shiny table between. There were also basket chairs, and low chairs of aluminium and plastic; a wall-vase with an arrangement of bougainvillaea; a bamboo magazine-rack full of copies of Playboy; yacht photographs on the walls. There were heavy, impenetrable curtains over the ports. It was not one of the cramped and functional saloons of small yachts and ocean racers: nor was it distinctive in any way. It was exactly like the saloon of nearly every other expensive charter-yacht in the Caribbean. Except that there were no people. There was no party.

‘No party,’ said Mr Warren with grief. He shook his head slowly. The heavy flesh between jawbone and collarbone wobbled as he moved. His lower lip wobbled damply. ‘Where’s girl? Where’s lil girl?’

‘She’ll be right up,’ cried George with glee. The thin face and arms that stuck out of George’s pink shirt were so deeply tanned that his original colouring was impossible to guess. His smile was wide and bright, and his dark hair waved prettily. He looked as queer as a coot.

He tripped to a door at the after end of the saloon and opened it. It gave on to a short companionway into a cabin. ‘Caroline,’ he called. ‘Caroline, honey. Come join the party, dear.’

A man appeared at the foot of the steps. ‘She’ll be right up. She’s all ready.’

Lyn’s tan matched George’s. He was so brown he was almost blue. His hair was fair and he wore very tight white cotton pants and his shirt was made of somebody’s yellow bath-towel.

George shifted a cushion, lifted the lid of a locker and pulled out another bottle of Johnny Walker. ‘New bottles for old, Mr Warren.’ He poured a stiff drink and dropped three ice-cubes into it, delicately, clucking when a little splash threw a drop of whisky on to the table. ‘Excuse fingers, please.’

He poured himself a very long weak drink and raised his glass with bonhomie. Mr Warren raised his glass too, since it was clear that the party had begun. Mr Warren took a long pull of his own big strong drink.

Mr Warren looked at the girl. The point of his tongue appeared and very quickly licked his upper lip and then his lower lip, and he drank some more of his drink. He fumbled for a cigarette from the pack in the breast pocket of his shirt. George was very quick with a tiny jade-green lighter with a design of mignonettes. Mr Warren went on looking at the girl.

Caroline was very young and very juicy. A pink-and-white girl, gold from cautious exposure to the sun. She was certainly not more than eighteen, and probably not less than sixteen.

She had long, straight fair hair and big blue eyes and there was no expression in her face at all. Her mouth was a little open, like Mr Warren’s. It was much prettier than Mr Warren’s. She was a very pretty girl indeed. She did not look a clever girl – indeed, at the moment, she looked moronic – but she was very pretty. Her legs were good, golden, well-rounded, visible to high-mid-thigh under a wild-coloured cotton shift. Her bare arms were golden and rounded: hanging limply now, but imaginable in many useful and vigorous activities. Her shift hung from juicy shoulders by narrow straps, one of which was waywardly slipping over the point of its shoulder. The edge of her golden tan was visible. The untanned upper hemisphere of her breast was smooth and white as a china soup-plate.

Mr Warren’s tongue very quickly licked his upper lip and then his lower lip, and he took a drag at his cigarette. Without taking his eyes from the girl he raised his glass. It was empty. George, watchful, nipped forward and filled it, and put three lumps of ice delicately in after the whisky.

There was no definite evidence that Caroline was wearing anything under her shift; there was, on the contrary, some evidence that she was not.

‘Caroline’s been resting up so’s to be right in shape for the party,’ said George. ‘Right, Lyn?’

‘Absolutely right,’ said Caroline. Her voice sent a shiver through Mr Warren. It was the unmistakable, arrogant, be-damned-to-you voice of the English upper classes. High and light, a schoolgirl’s voice, the assured and very young voice of a girl at a very expensive English school.

Her feet were bare, like Lyn’s and George’s. Mr Warren wore white leather loafers. Mr Warren was very red from the sun; you could assume he was visiting the Caribbean from some cooler and dimmer climate. You could assume, from his face and clothes and manner (drunk as he was) that he was rich and important. He smelled of money and authority. Through his mumbling you could glimpse the rigid and ingrained selfishness of the powerful.

Caroline sat right there, beside him on the seat George darted forward with a full glass for Caroline. It was medium strength, between the dark brown of Mr Warren’s drink and the pale straw of his own and Lyn’s.

Caroline’s eyes were made up, not skilfully. There was no make-up on her face or her lips. She was slightly shining with sweat – all her face and her arms and her golden thighs as she sat by Mr Warren, and the white of her breast below the edge of her tan, all her flesh was damp with a slight sheen of sweat. She drank her drink and smoked a cigarette without inhaling, and presently Mr Warren put his hand on her thigh.

She turned to face him, her mouth open, her big blue eyes half closed. Mr Warren put his hand under her wayward shoulder-strap. Mr Warren kissed her. Mr Warren began to take liberties with Caroline’s dress and her person.

George caught Lyn’s eye, then eased up out of the saloon into the cockpit. Lyn slipped quietly out by a door at the forward end of the saloon. On his way he pressed two switches with the effect not (as might have been expected under these romantic circumstances) of leaving a dimmer light, but on the contrary a much more brilliant light over the two long seats. He closed the door softly behind him.

Forward of the saloon was the galley. Bolted to the metalwork of the cooker was a 16-mm movie-camera, its lens probing through a hole in the forward wall of the saloon. A pale untidy man with a blue chin and thinning hair was operating the movie-camera, which made very little sound and which could swivel and tilt freely without any sound.

‘They’ll be centre-screen. Hey, see that? Hey, this guy is a fast worker.’

‘It is not rape! Look at her! Jesus, look at her! How can you say this is rape?’

Julie kept his eye to the viewfinder. He swung the camera a little and twitched the focus. His balding head was covered with big drops of sweat.

‘Photography,’ he murmured. ‘Making pictures. I been crazy about pictures since I was in school. My ambition, always my one single ambition was to get to be the guy behind the camera.’

‘Tough.’ Lyn lowered his eye to a peephole. ‘That’s my baby, Mr Warren. Keep at it, kid. You know something, Julie? You’re right. This time it is rape.’

Lyn was sweating now, too, in the close air of the galley. George in the comparative cool of the cockpit was barely damp. Caroline was drenched in sweat. Her gay little shift was now an untidy bandage round her waist; otherwise she was naked and slippery, and a little of her was very white and soaking wet and much of her was golden and soaking wet. She was weakly pushing at Mr Warren and fighting him and trying to push him off, but he was lying on top of her now and had taken off his own clothes and he was strong and heavy and not full of dope. He was sweating too and his expensively cut grey hair was wet and he was breathing harshly through his mouth and raping Caroline.

Caroline moaned but was unable to scream. Mr Warren put a big hand over her nose and mouth in case she screamed.

There were rings of moisture on the table from their drinks, and Mr Warren’s last cigarette had rolled out of the ashtray and burned a long black furrow into the shiny table.

The movie-camera hummed, hardly audible over the hum of the icebox in the galley.

Caroline stopped struggling and everything was easier for Mr Warren. He kept his hand over her mouth in case she screamed. Presently he lay on top of her, panting. Then he took his hand from her face and withdrew from her and looked blearily round the saloon. Caroline’s head lolled sideways and her mouth was open. Her arms were limp and she lay flat on her back and the whites of her eyes were showing.

‘She’s out cold,’ whispered Julie. His shirt stuck to his back and the camera hummed.

Mr Warren reached for his clothes and started to pull them on. He found it difficult to dress. He tried to pull Caroline’s skirt down, but it was rolled up and soaking with sweat and it was too difficult for him.

‘Come on, baby,’ he said thickly. ‘How do you feel? Come on, how about it, wake up, will you?’

‘You know what I think?’ whispered Julie. ‘I think that kid is not good.’

‘She’s a good kid,’ said Lyn, who was not really interested in Caroline and who had turned away from the peephole and lit a cigarette.

Soon Mr Warren was decent, if not dapper. Caroline had not moved and was not decent.

Lyn came back into the saloon. At the same time George came down from the cockpit, arriving with the little leap used by people who want to show they are athletic in a confined space.

George made Mr Warren another drink. Lyn tried to wake Caroline up. After a few moments it occurred to him that she was dead, and it was immediately clear that this was so.

Lyn showed some disposition to panic. ‘Jesus, what we do? Jesus, what we do? Jesus, what we do?’

‘Lash her to the spare anchor and sink her under the west cliffs where it’s real deep. Don’t fret, Lyn. You didn’t do it.’

‘And he’ll need Fort Knox, all the gold in the world,’ said Lyn, quite cheered up. ‘And the boss won’t be mad at us?’

‘I can’t think why he should, Lyn. Mr Warren was all alone with Caroline. Check, Mr Warren?’

But Mr Warren had once again buried his face in his hands, and it was doubtful if he was aware of anything going on round him.

‘I don’t believe he took it in,’ said George with gentle sympathy. ‘What a shock it will be, Lyn.’

Julie came into the salon, carrying the camera which he had unbolted from the galley.

‘This time is one time too much,’ said Julie flatly. ‘And I want plenty of light.’ ‘Don’t fret,’’ said George. ‘Mr Warren had a little accident. It isn’t any business of ours.’

‘It’s between Mr Warren and his conscience,’ said Lyn primly. ‘Who are we to judge?’

‘You lousy little fairies,’ said Julie. ‘I shoot these stinking movies, okay, I need the dough and I don’t give a goddam what you do with them. But this time is one time too much.’

‘You know, Lyn,’ said George, ‘maybe after all the boss could get a little mad. He trusted us to find a guy who could get the pictures without fail and keep quiet without fail. Will you keep quiet without fail, Julie?’

‘I got a conscience too,’ said Julie. He looked down at the pathetic damp empty flesh on the seat, with the damp roll of bright fabric pathetically round its waist.

Julie looked from George to Lyn and back to George and his expression was glum and determined.

George turned to a chart-table and opened a drawer. Keeping his body between Julie and the drawer he took out an automatic pistol and screwed a silencer to its muzzle.

George turned and shot Julie in the chest. Lyn caught him and they carried him quickly up on deck. There was almost no blood on the saloon floor; Lyn sponged up what little there was with a damp cloth from the galley. He rinsed the cloth and hung it up neatly, as though he enjoyed housework and liked a nice clean home.

Mr Warren was aware of the dull plops of the silenced gun, which were quite loud in the saloon. He looked round and drank from his drink.

Lyn went below. As he passed Mr Warren, Mr Warren focused on him and said: ‘How’s girl?’ He said it a second time, carefully, concentrating on clarity: ‘How is the girl?’

‘Be fine, Mr Warren. Over-excited, I guess, maybe a drink too many. Getting a little fresh air. Be fine.’

George started the diesel, raised the anchor with the power winch, clicked into forward gear at very low revs and steered slowly and carefully out of the narrows. He knew the place well and it was easy to see by moonlight and starlight. On a dark night, and for a stranger, it would have been dangerous.

Lyn came up on deck in picturesquely tattered jeans. He got the chain and the spare anchor from their lockers, and lashed the two corpses to them. He joined George in the cockpit and adopted a pose which emphasised the slimness of his hips.

‘No problem. Oily Feld can find us a photog in New York. And the boys in London can ship us another piece of aristocratic ass. We’ll cable first thing.’

‘Sure, so he is. Inspecting the machinery. So now he can really see it operate.’

‘Sure he’ll like it. And he wouldn’t want we should wait around not earning.’

When the yacht was clear of the islands the motor changed to a higher and louder note, and they were travelling away at eight knots. The noise of the engine soon became inaudible under the monotonous electronic bleep-bloop, bleep-bloop of the tree-frogs and the chirring of the cicadas. Little waves from the yacht snaked over the smooth water and rustled among the sea-snails and the conches and the roots of the mangrove trees.

The streets of Soho were choked in a freezing fog. Maltese, Cypriots, Italians, Greeks and Chinese coughed behind scarves. The walls of buildings looked as though they had been coated in cold grease. The people looked as though they had been dug up.

It was one o’clock: lunchtime. But the day seemed either not to have got properly light in the morning, or already to have started to get dark in the evening.

A row of restaurants emitted a welcoming glow, and none more than the Paese, which had hams and cheeses and china fruit in its window.

A big man in a coat with a fur collar walked fast along the street. He was bareheaded; his hair was dark and curly. He stopped in front of the Paese and pushed open the door. He looked as though he could equally easily have pushed a hole through the wall. In his big brown hand the door handle looked like a thimble.

The restaurant was crowded and quite noisy. There was a smell of onions and garlic and hot fat.

A little man in a black coat looked up when the door opened. He saw brilliant blue eyes in a big ugly brown face, and he ran to the door.

Il Conte Alessandro di Ganzarello (23rd of his line) shook hands with the little manager. In his hand the manager’s hand looked like the white hand of a doll.

Emilio opened a door behind a grubby red curtain. There was a staircase immediately behind the door. Il conte went up, taking off his coat as he went. Under the coat were a dark blue suit, unmistakably English and a white silk shirt, unmistakably Italian.

He opened another door at the top of the stairs, and he was in the Paese’s private room. There were some bad, romantic paintings of the Italian lakes; otherwise the decor was much like that of the restaurant below – dark wood, fringed lampshades, a checked tablecloth.

Il conte went to the sideboard and poured himself a Campari and soda. He then inspected the pictures with a look of disgust. He took the most lurid off its hook with his free hand and hung it up again with its face to the wall. It was a big picture, massively framed; he lifted it with one hand as though it were a postcard.

There was an armchair near the sideboard. Il conte lowered himself into it and stretched out his legs. The effect was of a steel spring gently uncoiling but likely at any moment to coil up again and become a powerful machine.

Light footsteps could be heard running up the stairs. The man began to smile. The door opened explosively, swinging round so that it bashed the wall beside it. A girl came in.

All that could at first be seen of her was a very shaggy short coat made from the skin of some unidentifiable longhaired beast. Below the coat were long and perfect legs. There was a gleam of very bright fair hair above the coat.

The girl took the coat off and dropped it on the floor. It lay looking like an animal recently shot.

She was wearing a tight yellow dress with a short flared skirt. Her figure was superb, to match her legs. Her face was not so much beautiful as breathtakingly pretty. It was round and innocent and charmingly asymmetrical – she showed, when she smiled, a deep dimple in one cheek only.

‘Why only one?’ As she poured Glenlivet whisky Jenny said: ‘We nabbed all four of your nasty little Greeks at their nasty little farmhouse. They’d just taken delivery, as you said. Their pockets were bulging with heroin.’

‘I also, usually, but not drug-traders on that scale. So I have closed the beginning of the pipeline and now you have closed this end of the pipeline.’

‘They were the most efficient and dangerous group in Europe,’ said Sandro seriously. ‘I wish they were all dead.’

‘Not in detail. In any case they feel moral indignation about the drug traffic. Where is Colly? He must by now have told them in New York.’

‘And Colly, to all his yachts and clubs and whisky. Sickening your both rushing off. We never seem to see each other nowadays except when we’re busy.’

He embraced her gently. The effect was of a huge and benevolent bear embracing a humming-bird.

‘He is not her husband. They are deluded. There is no such thing as divorce. The arrangement which I suggest . . . ’

Jenny put her fingertip in the deep cleft of his chin and pushed his face away gently and looked at him. The big, ugly, attractive face with the blazing blue eyes looked back at her, smiling. She knew that many women had loved Sandro very much, and she knew why, and she knew that it was true that he loved her. She also knew that these attempts he made, always at the end of a job, were a mixture of habit and politeness.

‘I yearn for what you have in mind, pet, but just at the moment another drink is what I most need.’

More footsteps could be heard climbing the stairs. They were irregular and shuffling. They were the footsteps of someone either pitiably infirm or else extraordinarily lazy.

The door opened slowly. A man in his early thirties stood leaning against the doorpost. He seemed in the last stages of exhaustion. He was medium-sized, with mouse-coloured hair and greenish eyes; he wore a sort of tank-coat, a garment without distinction.

‘Hi, kids,’ said Colly. He came into the room as though his feet hurt and his legs were unbearably tired. ‘Those stairs.’

‘The entire New York police force will at this minute be running around hitting people on the head with clubs.’

‘Pretty goddam hard. The Commissioner was whistling like a kettle. Sizzling. I could practically smell burning right along the transatlantic cable.’ Colly sank into the armchair and closed his eyes. ‘Give me a shot of that Scotch, will you, darling? I had a very, very exhausting time with the telephone.’

‘Get it yourself, you slob,’ said Jenny. Nevertheless she made and handed him a drink.

‘Now where is our lunch?’ said Sandro. He went to the door and shouted: ‘Emilio!’

The bottom door opened and Emilio looked up. They had an intense and protracted conversation in Italian about the cooking of the veal.

‘Hell, I don’t pull on any ropes. Jenny, listen.’ Colly’s voice suddenly became serious. ‘Come with me. Give up that screwy job.’

‘Come sail Perelartdra down to Grenada. It’s almost a full moon. Sea’s in the eighties. I want you on your own.’

Jenny smiled at him. Coleridge Tucker III, idler, multimillionaire, always apparently too tired to push one foot in front of another. Tanned, unremarkable face, loose-jointed average body. Unfailing good nature, unvarying lethargy. People in New York said it was an appalling waste. Many girls said they would have loved him if only he got around to coming alive. Jenny knew exactly what they meant. And she knew Colly with the mask off, Colly out from under the habitual, impenetrable camouflage – Colly swift and decisive and frightening.

‘How is it,’ said Colly, ‘that you tease and tease and tease the both of us to hell and gone, and yet you’re not a tease? And how is it they let you drink Scotch when you’re only fourteen years old?’

‘Please everybody,’ said Jenny, as though addressing the world, ‘stay out of trouble for a month.’

Jenny, her long bright hair almost hidden by her shaggy coat, scampered to her Mini in the street outside her flat. It was time she went to work.

The fog was patchy at Hyde Park Corner but it grew thicker near the river. There were few other vehicles on the streets. The lights had misty haloes. The Mini’s heater roared and the windows steamed up.

Jenny drove down Sloane Street and along the King’s Road. Dark shop-fronts, a greasy surface, no pedestrians.

She passed a stationary taxi, and in front of it two men pushing a car. She slowed down. You couldn’t leave people stranded on an evening like this. She stopped and began to get out of the Mini.

The crippled car was a battered little grey two-seater. A burly, muffled figure was at the wheel. The engine fired and the driver revved hard. It sounded healthy. The noise was loud in the quiet foggy street. Jenny expected the car to stop. But it accelerated away, past her, down the King’s Road and out of sight.

‘Well, I’m damned,’ said one of the men who had been pushing. ‘The bugger never even stopped to say thank you.’

Jenny knew the voice. An ordinary, nice, well-scrubbed, ambitious upper-middle-class young man, rendered more interesting in recent weeks by a fascinating new girl-friend. ‘Nigel, love,’ she called, ‘were you hoping for a tip?’

‘This evening,’ said the other man, ‘has got off to a lousy bloody start.’

‘Hullo, Jenny,’ said Nigel. He was about thirty, conventionally dressed in brown felt hat and dark overcoat. He looked vexed. ‘Foul man covered in ginger whiskers. Flags our cab down, asks for a push, we push his filthy car, and the sod just speeds off.’

Nigel’s boss was fortyish, very smooth, in a camel-hair coat and a Paisley scarf. Jenny remembered that Nigel was in advertising; this certainly looked like an advertising boss.

‘Good,’ said Jenny. ‘I’ll give you a special bottle after your pushing. Just the two of you?’

Nigel indicated the taxi thirty yards away. An old taxi, the driver apparently bowed with age and muffled like an Eskimo. The taxi crunched into gear and began to move towards them.