The wall looked well-built, a craftsman’s job such as he would have expected in England. It was high, but the top was a good nine inches wide, neatly and smoothly made with a little ledge jutting out on each side about three inches down. Given a cool head, there would be no difficulty in traversing the twenty feet or so from this end to the Smiths’ yard. And if at that end there was some convenient way down, then he would know just how Pete got in and out and could safely keep watch solely on the front entrance. A route such as this would be for emergency use only.
Ghote wriggled down on to the top of the high wall and set out. His bulky overcoat was a bit of an encumbrance, and he was glad that the wind here was less strong than in the street. But he made good progress, arms held out to either side for balance. Ten feet, fifteen.
And he was there. He peered downwards. Yes, it was the backyard of the Smiths’ house itself. And there, rising out of a great deal of cluttered mess, was a substantial concrete coal bunker with the lid half-off. It formed an ideal stepping-stone up to the top of the wall.
This was all he needed to know. He manœuvred himself back round.
And then, quite distinctly in the comparative quiet, he heard a noise he immediately recognised. It was the sound of someone else clambering laboriously up the slates on the far side of the factory roof.
One of the brothers coming back this way: it could be nothing else. They had spotted the constable watching the alley entrance and had decided to come in unobserved.
What should he do?
He swung round and peered again at the half-lit gloom of the Smiths’ yard. But it would be asking for trouble to try and hide in the clutter there: he was almost bound to knock into something and then the brothers would be on to him in a flash.
He turned back again. In a few seconds he would be plainly visible to anyone coming over the top of the roof.
Should he drop down into one of the factory yards? But they were bare and mercilessly lit.
Then he saw what he could do. Recklessly he bounded back along the narrow top of the wall till he was almost at the factory end. Then, just where the twin yard-lights were fixed high up on the factory wall, he stooped, hung his legs down and kicked out viciously.
To his infinite relief he hit the yard-light which had lost its thick protective cover first time. He looked down into its yard. It was now a deep pool of blackness, all the more inky because of its brightly lit companion yard next door.
He swung himself down from the top of the wall on that side. If only whoever it was coming over the roof was not in too much of a hurry.
Clinging to the top of the wall, he lowered his left hand cautiously. The little ledge three inches from the top felt firm and secure. He lowered his right hand to it.
It was a wrenching strain, but he was able to hang there safely enough, the tips of his fingers clasping hard at the little ledge and his body pressed to the dirty yellow brick of the wall below.
In the dark and silence he waited.
Within a few moments he heard the slither of someone heavy coming down the roof. There was a grunt as the top of the wall was reached. He held his breath.
It was impossible to be certain about the sounds from directly above. Whichever brother it was who was coming along the wall was wearing rubber-soled shoes. He waited and waited. Would they glance straight down and be able to make out the top of his head? Or was the yard so dark that it really would blot him out completely?
Then suddenly he heard the sound of a quiet belch. It came from directly above him.
He counted the seconds. Ten. Twenty. And then came the wonderful sound of a heavy thump from the far end of the wall. Plainly someone jumping down on to the coal bunker.
He forced himself to stay hanging there for a carefully counted spell of exactly five minutes. Then he began hauling himself up. The moment at which the weight came off his right hand was wonderful. In the spasm of relief it brought he almost lost his grip. But he flailed out wildly and safely caught the top of the wall on the far side. He scrabbled at the brickwork with his toes.
And there he was. Back crouching on the wall once more. He stayed where he was, exhausted and trembling.
Then without warning a door in the Smiths’ backyard was jerked open. His heart went into his mouth. He could not move. He could not go down and hang there again.
There was the sound of an empty can clonking out into the yard and the door was slammed shut. Ghote found the relief gave him a new spring of energy. He scuttled up the low slope of the roof in seconds and slithered down on the other side.
He took a quick glance at the street. No one was about. He breathed a deep sigh. To be down on the ground once more and to be able to pass as someone going about their proper business, it would be as comforting as being at home.
He shifted himself into position to swing over and slip down the drainpipe.
And then he saw, just below him in the narrow niche itself, a tiny glow of light.
THIRTEEN
Peering down into the darkness as he lay flat on the slight slope of the factory roof, Ghote realised at once that the source of the tiny unexpected glow of light below was a cigarette. But there was still something puzzling about it, or about the vague outline of a face which it illuminated.
Then, like a piece from a jigsaw suddenly turned round, he saw what it was he had been staring at: the top of a policeman’s helmet. He peered harder and saw that, as he had half-known he would, it was none other than his mentor who was standing there.
He supposed that policemen in London were forbidden to smoke on the beat. And no doubt occasionally they succumbed to the temptation. Even the most majestic of them.
Patiently Ghote settled down to wait on the wind-lacerated roof. It occurred to him to wonder just what it was that was made in the little factory below. Easifoam Products. They sounded somehow so much what ought to be made in the contemporary Britain he was beginning to discover that, looking at the signboard earlier on, he had never even thought to ask himself exactly what sort of products they were.
He lay and puzzled about it for some time. But he had hit on no satisfactory answer when quite suddenly the constable below ground the butt of his cigarette under his boot and moved dignifiedly off. Ghote was able to hear his measured steps all the way along the street till they rounded the far corner. Immediately he swung down on to the drainpipe and an instant later was on the ground.
Without weighing the pros and cons, he headed simply for the familiar bus-stop. He had had enough for one night. And, as one of the brothers had taken so much trouble to get home unobserved, it was hardly likely he would go out again in a hurry.
Besides there was the conference again next day. His notes must be as full and precise as ever.
But, sitting on his smart black leather chair at Wood Street police-station next morning, Ghote found that it was much harder than he had expected to give his full attention to the papers that were read and the subsequent questions and discussion. The thought of the Smiths’ house kept swimming into his mind and threatening to overwhelm everything else.
He was relieved that, being a Saturday, there were to be papers in the morning only. The afternoon was to be given over to an outing, a tour of the newest of the various buildings that have housed Scotland Yard. And, much though he would have liked to have gone on this, he had earlier refrained from booking himself a place. There was not going to be time during his stay for anything that smacked remotely of frivolity. He had realised that days ago.
But at length the session drew to an end. As it did so, Ghote’s impatience mounted.
What is happening at the house now? Has anybody gone out yet? Are the brothers the sort to be up and about early? What about old Ma Smith, does she go shopping on Saturday afternoons? The questions popped up one after another.
And then he was free. He almost ran to the big double-doors, pushing past the more staid of his colleagues already beginning to relax after their hard work of the past few days.
“Inspector Ghote. Inspector Ghote.”
He realised that someone was calling his name in a high, clear sharp voice. Could he ignore it? Too many people knew him by sight now and someone was bound to stop him. Probably he was wanted to be told when he was to read his own, or rather Superintendent Ketkar’s, paper. It had been a prospect he had deliberately put out of his mind. With a feeling of hot trepidation, he turned round.
And, making his way directly towards him, was Superintendent Smart.
Ghote’s heart began suddenly to race.
How could he, he asked himself, have mistaken one of the world’s leading authorities on narcotics crime for a detective-sergeant on the verge of retirement? He had even called him “Sergeant.” He had leant out of the police car and said “Thank you, Sergeant.”
Yet somehow the figure advancing towards him still did not look as he ought to have done, in spite of the dark blue suit with the chalk-stripe which had replaced the dirtyish trench-coat and the woollen gloves. Perhaps it was the fact that the suit looked a little too big and a little too stiff so that its occupant still had something about him of the circumspect tortoise. Or perhaps it was the way in which his rather faded quietly striped tie was tucked so resolutely away into the waistcoat under the stiff collar of the white shirt.
Whatever it was, Ghote thought as he watched like a hypnotised rabbit the approach of the man he had insulted, there was after all some justification for his mistake. But how on earth could he refer to it in the apology he must make?
It took Smart of the Yard an incredibly long time, it seemed, to weave his way through the milling delegates and at last to reach his target. When he had done so he manœuvred himself right up close to Ghote amid the cheerful buzz of conversation all around before he spoke.
Then suddenly his warily anxious face lit up in the notably sweet smile Ghote remembered.
“My dear chap,” he said, “you must forgive me, I’ve been trying to say hallo ever since the conference began, and I just never seemed to see you.”
Approaching the neighbourhood of the Smiths’ house about an hour after his encounter with Superintendent Smart, Ghote found himself possessed of a new, quiet confidence about the prospect before him. Somehow their ten minutes of friendly and mild exchanges on the differences between life in London and life in Bombay had given him an altered outlook on everything he came into contact with. Their comparisons of the noise of the traffic in each city, the pressures of the crowds, the punctuality of the transport services—Ghote had insisted that here London must and should take the palm—had infused in him a new way of looking at things. Under it even the incident of his rescue at the hands of the ponderous constable, which the sight of a Number 15 bus reminded him of at that very moment, appeared in a changed light.
After all, he thought, if the top positions in the Metropolitan Police were occupied by men like Superintendent Smart, people of such serene modesty and simple strength of character, then the way that a man in the lowest rank happened to behave was unimportant.
The very existence indeed of someone in Smart’s position who could cheerfully forgive the sort of slight that he had put on him—and there could be no doubt that the slight had been noticed when Smart for all the quietness of his manner was plainly a man of such shrewdness—gave Ghote a more optimistic outlook on every venture the human race could undertake, whether it might be the urging of a great nation through the stormy seas of time, or a mere attempt to penetrate the secrets of a gang of petty protection racketeers.
He made his approach to the Smiths’ house with care nevertheless. The last thing he wanted to do was to make the mistake his mentor constable had made and drive the Smith brothers into using their back way in by stationing himself to spy on them from anywhere too obvious.
But he did have to venture as near as the actual street off which their alley led. He walked along it quickly, but not too quickly, all the while making a discreet but thorough inspection of everything in sight.
By daylight the street looked less ominous than it had seemed on the night he had tracked the hulking Pete to his lair. Instead of being sombrely dark, it was merely in the last stages of shabbiness. If not dirty by Bombay standards, it was certainly noticeably less clean than the other London streets Ghote had seen. It had an air everywhere of being ready for the scrap-heap.
A discarded toy pram lay on its side in one of the gutters. Bits of paper were being blown here and there by the wind, so strong this afternoon that it seemed to have swept the whole sky clear and left a bright sun to show up the patches of missing slates on the house roofs and the occasional square of cardboard replacing a broken window-pane.
The little shop where the constable had attempted to hide the night before had a piece of paper in its door, Ghote noticed, bearing the scrawled words “Must close at end of month. No reasonable offer refused.” It seemed to be selling second-hand clothes and old shoes.
At the far end of the street there was a small block of terraced houses which had already been vacated. Ghote thought of the new tall tower which might rise on their ruins and of the bright promise of the Patsys and Renees who would live in it. A demolition contractor’s colourful signboard hung on the rusted railing which protected their deep, sunless little areas. Their windows, long ago smashed and replaced by sheets of silver-grey corrugated iron, looked like the sightless eyes of a row of aged crones sitting waiting for death.
But the sight sent a quick flicker of joy springing up in Ghote’s mind. The houses might very well be exactly what he needed.
He hurried along to them and turned to look back. Yes, he had a clear view of the entrance archway of the Smiths’ alley. He darted a glance up and down the length of the street. A bunch of children had appeared at the other end, chasing about and shouting. But otherwise there was no one to be seen.
He caught hold of the top of the rusty railings of the nearest house, swung himself up and dropped over into the rubbish-strewn area below. He selected an old wooden crate, carefully placed it in position and got up on it.
As he had hoped, the top of his head came just above the level of the pavement. He was nicely inconspicuous low down like this, and he had a good unobstructed view of the alley archway about thirty yards away.
He settled down to keep it under observation.
Before setting out he had decided, influenced a little by the cheerful sunniness of the day, not to take his overcoat. If he needed to stand somewhere without attracting attention, he had reasoned, its vivid check might be a disadvantage. Now he began to regret the decision. The cement wall in front of him was green with damp and struck chill to the touch whenever he put his hand on it, and stray tail-ends of the boisterous wind seemed to find their way with unpleasant frequency into his little sunken observation post.
But he shrugged his shoulders resignedly. A bit of discomfort would be a small price to pay for making any reasonable advance with his investigation.
Time passed. An occasional small cloud, cotton-wool white round the edges, soft grey at the centre, momentarily obscured the sun from time to time and was then whisked on its way by the sharp wind.
Ghote stood on his crate looking steadily in the direction of the alley. Waiting.
And then suddenly, from somewhere just beside and behind him, there came an ear-splitting yell. He was so startled he jumped like a triggered-off spring.
“’Ere. Look. Look at this.”
He stole a glance round out of the corner of his eye. Clinging to the railings of the steps of the empty house next door was a small girl, perhaps about seven or eight years old. She was wearing a dirty pair of green trousers, a pink frilly blouse heavily smeared with grime and a ragged royal-blue cardigan. Her cheeks were a bright red and she had two little glinting brown button-eyes.
At the sound of her yell, three other children immediately appeared on the steps and stared down at Ghote. They were all a year or so younger than the girl, two boys in pullovers and torn short trou
sers and a smaller girl with a lemon-yellow coat, buttonless and mud-splashed, clutched tightly round her.
Ghote turned his eyes to the front again.
“It’s a nig-nog,” he heard one of the gang say. “I can see ’is face. It’s a nig-nog.”
There was a lot of giggling.
“What’s ’e doing down there?” one of the boys said.
“It’s a nig-nog.”
“No, but what’s ’e doing? What’s ’e doing standing down there like that?”
“I know,” said the other boy, his voice phenomenally hoarse. “I know. ’E ain’t real. ’E ain’t really real at all.”
“What, you mean ’e’s a statue or somethink?”
“Yeah. ’E’s a bleeding statue.”
“Go on. ’E ain’t.”
“I bet ’e is.”
“Bet ’e ain’t.”
Standing with his back to them, still looking over at the empty archway, Ghote thought the argument was going to go on all afternoon. But the older girl was plainly one of nature’s leaders. Before more than half a dozen further exchanges of recrimination had passed she produced a simple solution to their dilemna.
“’Ere, Melv,” she yelled. “Chuck this at ’im. That’ll prove it.”
There were a few incoherent expressions of encouragement and advice. Ghote wondered if he ought to turn round, but he felt that any move he made would only encourage further speculation.
Then something struck him sharply just above the left ear. He looked down as a glinting-edged fragment of bottle-glass bounced off the top of the crate at his feet.
“There. Told you so. ’E’s real all right.”
The argument had been settled. Perhaps they would drift away now.
But other questions remained.
“What’s ’e doing there though?”
“’E’s a nig-nog. I keep telling yer. ’E’s a nig-nog.”
Ghote suddenly flung himself round.
“Go away,” he said. “Go away. Now. At once. Be off.”
The button-eyed girl looked down at him in a passion of delight.
Inspector Ghote Hunts the Peacock Page 15