Free He Died with His Eyes Open by Derek Raymond

Illegal?'
    'Not today,' I said. 'I'd rather have a cab in a hurry. You can trust me; the taxpayer always pays cash.'
    'Don't I know it,' said Mr Creamley sickly. I left him rubbing his belly again with a shiny hand.
    I tried the address they had given me, but needless to say she had moved.
     

11
    It really is a dreadful nuisance his dying like this,' said Staniland's bank manager. 'He had an eleven-hundred-pound loan account, don't you know, and there's the interest owing on it.'
    'An unsecured loan?'
    'Well, not quite—there are a few equities. But equities are performing miserably at the moment, as you probably know.'
    'No, I don't own any shares,' I said. 'I don't know.'
    'The bank stands to be several hundred pounds out on this affair,' said the manager. 'Several hundred.'
    'We're talking about a murder.'
    'I daresay. Even so, it's very awkward.'
    He was small and pink, and at first sight looked too young to be a bank manager. He had a harassed expression and a smile that was meant to be nice. He produced it with the practised ease of a conjuror.
    'Head office cleared the loan. But I was against it.'
    'Oh? Why?'
    'Not a very stable individual, Mr Staniland.'
    'Did he tell you what he wanted the money for?'
    'No. Or rather, he told me some story or other, but I didn't believe it. I don't think he did himself.'
    'Did he borrow all the money at once?'
    'No, he borrowed five hundred; then, three months later, another five. I reminded him how steep the charges would be at today's rates, but he said he was going to be earning so that that didn't worry him.' He coughed. 'It worried me.'
    He opened Staniland's file, and I looked at it over his shoulder. 'Most of the cheques are drawn Self, you see. He drew the entire loan amount right down to this very last payment for three hundred a week ago. We let it go through, though it overdrew him, but that was when I wrote to him—'
    'Yes, I've seen the letter,' I said. 'It was with his property.' I got out my notebook. 'I'd just like to take the details of these cheques. I suppose you can tell me the banks they were cleared through? You know the codes.'
    'We're not really supposed to do that, you know.'
    'No, I know you aren't. But this man was actually murdered, Mr Bateson, and I am rather keen to catch the people responsible. I appreciate that you don't want to get yourself into trouble with your head office, but speed is vital.'
    'Oh, yes,' said the bank manager. 'Oh, very well, then.'

12
    Stanilands room was one of the most putrid I ever saw. I should have been round there already, and I would have gone if Bowman's people hadn't covered it. Romilly Place was off the Lewisham end of the Old Kent Road near the clock-tower; the houses were three-storey tenements and filthy. It was a dangerous bloody district too, especially for someone like Staniland—what we call mixed area, a third unemployed skinhead, and two-thirds unemployed black. It was a cul-de-sac, and in the warmth of the spring evening the air was filled with screams as kids and teenagers raced round the wrecked cars that littered the pavement. There were about twenty houses, mostly with broken windows and vandalized front doors. Some idiot on the council had had the idea of putting a public callbox on the corner; it now contained no telephone, no glass and no door—a directory leaf or two skittered miserably about in the breeze. The house I had parked by had been gutted by fire; the front had been shored up with timber, and there were sheets of corrugated iron where the windows had been; the chimney toppled inwards at a ridiculous angle to the blackened masonry. A youth saw me looking at it and came up. He was only about seventeen, but he had a very old face like a concentration camp inmate. There was a faint stubble on his long whitey-green skull that a flea couldn't have hidden in. 'Six geezers cindered in there,' he informed me, and added: 'But they was all black.'
    'I'm looking for number seven,' I said.
    'It's