Jumbo grinned.
‘Women’s rights these days though. Got to be politically correct.’
‘More to the point, what’s in from the house-to-house?’
‘Come on, guv. What d’you expect? Miracles?’
‘Something like that,’ he answered cheerfully.
‘The impossible takes a little longer,’ Jumbo said, ever one for a well-used phrase.
‘But not too long, eh?’
He began to move off.
‘Guv, one other thing.’
Jumbo beckoned him nearer.
‘I’d think it’d be a fair bet we’ll still be here Saturday,’ he said.
‘Almost a cert.’
‘So have you forgotten the piss-up planned for Saturday night, Bob Carter’s fortieth?’
‘Oh, shit. Yes. Some Toffs and Tarts thing, wasn’t it? It’ll have to be postponed, that’s for sure. I don’t suppose the lads will be too pleased but there it is.’
‘Well, are you going to make an announcement? Or shall I just pass the word around?’
‘No, Jumbo. My decision, I’ll announce it.’
But a Toffs and Tarts party, he thought as he went up to the platform for the briefing. What an appallingly crass idea. Why is it the grottiness of CID work seems to produce a cruder, coarser outlook than the same people, women as much as men, would have if they’d got jobs as - what? Schoolteachers, managers, secretaries? Di March make a good top PA, bossy, bold, super-efficient. But they all - well, almost all - are less thoughtful than if they’d not been in the police. Still, a brute mentality goes with a dirty job. Or so it seems.
Announcing the postponement made a poor start to the briefing. A worse one than he had reckoned on, failing to take into account his own dislike of what Jumbo had cheerfully described as a piss-up. There had been an immediate murmur of resentment, a restive exchange of glances.
He realized he had muffed it. The truth was that, as he had stood calling for quiet, the contrast between a Toffs and Tarts party and the investigation he was launching into that sad, solitary death had abruptly struck him. Little Mr Unwala, that monkey-like quiet corpse, head half concealed by the heavy bookcase dragged on to it, the dusty old house he had lived in, that bed left for years untouched - all had for a long moment come alive in his brain.
But they had not filled him with the kind of determination he had seen in other officers leading a murder inquiry. An uncluttered ambition to succeed when the eyes of the world were on them. A response to a challenge. A simple, rousing animal respose. A murder case becoming purely a personal crusade, to be resolved more quickly than any case before.
So the mild jokes he hastily contrived - DI Carter’ll have to stay thirty-nine till we’ve sorted this - simply failed to quash the antagonism he felt swirling up. The atmosphere did not grow more cheerful. But, more important, he knew, too, he had done nothing to infuse his team with the plain determination to right a wrong which he felt in himself.
Well, he found he was thinking as he stood plough-ingly outlining the details, it’s understandable in a way, the resentment. That party’s been long planned, much talked about. But no time now for idle speculation. My besetting sin. Or is it?
Come on, concentrate. And force yourself.
‘Right then. A nasty business. And what I want is: I want it detecting. I don’t want a single one of you to leave out one single detail of any task you’re actioned with. One slip, one piece of carelessness, and this whole inquiry could go tumbling into dust. Remember that. Remember it, and good luck to you all.’
But when he asked for questions there were only two or three indifferent ones, hardly requiring answers. He realized with an inward sinking that, for all his late attempt to impose his will, he had still messed it up.
I want it detecting. But was there, is there, some lack in me that makes that demand so many empty words? Or at best half-empty? Have I not got in me all the brute will needed to trample my way to a result?
Something there I can’t ever quite shuck off?
He stood watching while the room began to become a machine at work. Phones picked up. Computer keyboards tapped at. Jumbo Hastings, up at the big blackboard now, chalk squeaking, starting to allocate tasks on the few actions generated by what they had learnt already. Cigarette smoke beginning to drift upwards. Occasional sharp curses punctuating the hum of business as mistakes were made, corrected.
But, as he listened to it all, he felt himself becoming more and more convinced that everything was not as it ought to be. Unmistakably there was something lacking. The feel of a whole team working to one end.
The weight of their task ought to be in the head of everyone in the room, even if they were hardly conscious of it. But plainly it was not. The thought should be lending to their every least word or movement an extra of urgency. Fuelling the will to find this man. The killer. The man who had swept down some heavy object - but what? Nothing found so far - on to the white-haired skull of poor, innocent Mr Unwala.
That name again. Unwala. He had heard it before. He had. Somewhere. Somehow.
But scratch at his memory as he might, nothing came to the surface.
He shrugged.
And where now was that feeling he could recall from every other murder inquiry he had been involved in right from his earliest days as a detective and even before? The challenge of murder, the ultimate crime. The ending of another’s life. Your own life, in a way, at stake if killers weren’t caught, if you didn’t get a result. Even the lives of everyone you knew. Your loved ones.
With a sudden pang he thought of Conor. The boy’s precarious situation. Father and mother abruptly - as he at least must have seen it and felt it - torn away one from the other. All right, the boy seemed to have weathered it. A good lad. Head on his shoulders. He ought to do all right in the end. But… But underneath was something going wrong? It could be. It could be. With a boy of that age, sixteen next birthday after all, you couldn’t expect to hear of every thought that entered his head. That stayed in his head. Stayed too long? Rotted there.
And Vicky? All right, she’d chosen to take the path she had. Into the arms of Mike, sporting hero. Or smalltime sporting hero. No, be fair, a decent enough bloke. But, see her side, though she hadn’t been absolutely pushed into Mike’s arms, she hadn’t been cherished enough for the temptation not to be there. Of Mike’s ready arms in particular, or of any others hovering.
He let it go. Things to do. He looked around, saw March and beckoned her over. The way she was, she at least ought to be fired with keenness. Even if - another misjudgment perhaps? - in the shop earlier he had tasked her not with pursuing that faint Hampton Hoard lead as she wanted to, but merely with locating Mr Unwala’s next of kin.
Any luck finding those relatives? What were they called? Polworthy?’
‘The only Polworthys in town. Report’s in your tray.’
Rebuked. But, all the same, does she never think somebody may be too busy with other things to have read the report she has chosen to make? For a moment he wanted to snap Say sir when you speak to me. But he held back. After all, when she had first gone to the house she had made a bad mistake, and someone like her took making mistakes harder than most. She deserved a little leeway.
Nevertheless he scrabbled in his rapidly filling in-tray, found the report, noted the address, Frogs Lane.
And suddenly, because of that, he remembered what he had had in the back of his mind since he had got out of bed in the morning: that this was Tuesday. Tuesday. His day for going to see Conor in Mike and Vicky’s flat. In - coincidence, coincidence - Frogs Lane. His day for going to make sure that Conor, when he’d got back from school, had got his tea, was doing his homework. Not necessary. The boy was capable of heating up a can of beans, whatever. And could be relied on, in fact, to do the homework. But this was Vicky’s demand. Her harridan voice, as he sometimes called it to himself. Christ, Phil, you might at least show some interest in the boy just once a week. Mike and I are entit
led to some time on our own. For her to watch her Mike playing football, rugger, squash, whichever it was.
But can I go out there now? With a major inquiry just starting up.
He thought about it. Uneasily.
Well, I might be able to fudge it. I have got to visit the Polworthys, after all. They deserve to be told about the death by the officer in charge of the inquiry. My duty, as I see it. But am I really right to combine that with going to see Conor? Still, perhaps I could cut looking in on him to the minimum. Say hello, tell him quickly what’s happening and buzz off to the Polworthys’, further along the lane to judge by the house number. He’ll understand. Even if his mother wouldn’t. Or not every time. Be fair.
Then Jumbo came up.
‘Something from the house-to-house. Just got to it. Bit iffy, but might be something.’
His hopes flickered up. Would this at last be what was needed to enthuse the inquiry?
‘Right. Let’s hear it.’
‘From a Paki lodging house, fourteen Percival Road, just a couple of doors along from the scene. Apparently a lady on the top floor there says she heard a scream. Or a shout. She thought it was “You black bastard”. She’s a Mrs Ahmed, a Pakistani, and the report says she wasn’t too clear in what she was saying. But seems she’s at least sure of the time. Just on six o’clock. She’d heard the weather forecast on ITV. More fog.’
‘Well, they got that right. But could she really be certain the shout-or scream, did you say?-came from the house?’
Apparently she says it did. Something about the place in between being occupied by squatters out at that time of the evening. So she says it couldn’t have come from anywhere else.’
‘Well, action it, will you? Send someone reliable to see how much more they can get out of this Mrs Ahmed. And Jumbo, use someone who gets on with Pakistanis, for God’s sake. Or she’ll clam up a hundred per cent, and we’ll lose this. And I’ve a notion it could be the lead we need. No, wait. Damn it, I’ll go myself. You can hold the fort here, can’t you?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Jumbo said, solidly confident.
He reached for his coat.
Just the job for me, in fact. Ability to get into the mind of someone different needed. A Pakistani woman. Yes, I ought to be the one doing this.
And easy enough to go on from the house there to the cottage in Frogs Lane. Couple of miles at the most. Then quick word with Conor, check he’s all right. And on to see the Polworthys, not much further.
You black bastard. If that’s what Mrs Ahmed really did hear, it could well have been the murderer yelling. Usual thing from the doc about not being able to tell the time of death until the PM, but he had said some time probably last evening. So it would fit. Not a lot to go on, though. What sort of a voice had it been, shouting? Or screaming? But treat this Mrs Ahmed properly, the way I can, and with any luck I’ll learn something more.
Chapter Four
Churning his car once again through streets which the fog and now oncoming darkness made doubly difficult, disconnected thoughts about the case came and went in Benholme’s head. Twinges of anger with himself, too, at the way he had failed to fire up his team.
Was he even because of that failure going off at this moment on a wild-goose chase? Had he allowed hope to mislead him? Could this Mrs Ahmed really have heard those precise words, You black bastard? Or had she, nursing fears of racial abuse like many Pakistani women, heard in some quite neutral shout words she feared? When you thought about it, the circumstances were pretty unlikely. To hear a shout amid the sort of noise you might expect in that part of the town at that time of day must itself be a matter of pure chance. And then to put actual words to it… And how had Mrs Ahmed been able to tell just where it had come from? How, even, had she managed to hear it at all from right inside number twelve?
But if she had in fact heard the shout - the scream? the yell? - and had heard those words correctly, what was the implication? Surely that little Mr Unwala had been the victim of a casual attack?
For some reason or other - But what? - he might have opened his front door and some passing racist yobbo had then taken it into his head to pick on him. And in the end it had gone too far. That could be something that might happen. Hadn’t Mrs Damberry mentioned a little boy once helping the old man catch one of his mice? So he did sometimes open his door.
And then there was that business of the scattered papers and Mrs Damberry’s u-rine-ated. That could have been the same sort of incident. It could have had nothing to do with the absurd rumour of the million-pound Hampton Hoard. It could be a case of unthinking racist violence.
Which if we do eventually get a result, he thought, will bring problems of its own. We may not have the trouble big cities with black populations have, but we’re not without our share of racial antagonism. Like those so-called Britforce people.
He nosed his way past Mr Unwala’s house, looking, he thought, like some giant parcel with the coloured plastic POLICE - CRIME SCENE - POLICE ribbons strung across it. A PC on duty outside stood flapping his arms for warmth. At number fourteen, which in contrast to number twelve was a total mess, he pulled up. In the patch of beaten-down earth that once had been its front garden lay a battered old pram with a hole in its underside, two or three half-rotten wooden crates, half a dozen tramped-down cardboard cartons. And, as was to be expected, the door of the house stood wide open.
Making his way up the stairs, pungent with spicy cooking smells, he had to stop at each landing to explain and argue his way past lounging, loudly talking Pakistanis spilling out of the rooms. At last he reached Mrs Ahmed’s attic.
Behind its flimsy door he could hear a thin stream of tinny TV cartoon music. He knocked. The door was opened just a few inches. Mrs Ahmed, he saw, was an intent-looking, nervy woman of perhaps fifty, sharp-nosed, wary-eyed, a worn-looking orange and green cotton sari wrapped tightly round her.
He introduced himself but had to show her his warrant card - her English, once he was attuned to it, a good deal better than the PC’s report had indicated - before she ceased to look ready to bang in his face the little door crammed under the roof. Patiently he told her as much as he thought he should about the circumstances of the murder. Then at last her suspiciousness melted enough to allow him in.
As he ducked inside he understood why her claim to have heard a shout from a house two doors along might after all not be impossible. The room’s one tiny window was evidently too ancient to be opened. But in the sloping ceiling there was a skylight. And, despite the chill of the night, it appeared to be permanently propped up. So a shout from number twelve might well, through the open top windows above the mice cages there, have reached this attic. Sound carries.
‘Tell me, if you would,’ he said, as mercifully she turned down the volume on the little black and white TV perched on a flimsy table in one corner, ‘about this shout, or scream, you told the constable you had heard. Were you in here at the time? Did it come through the skylight there?’
‘Where else? Are you thinking I was making this-all up? Not at all. I was hearing that scream. Definitely. I am not hearing sounds from that house before, but I am knowing and knowing that is where that scream was coming from.’
‘But - really I don’t mean to doubt you - how is it you’re sure it didn’t come from the house next door, or even from the one further along?’
‘No, no. I am very much right. Next door is squatters. I do not like, but… And also they are out always till late in evening. So, not those people. No. And from far along, not possible. If I could hear noises they are making there, I would have heard before. But, no, never.’
So not as unlikely as he had thought. Far from it.
‘That seems very clear,’ he said. ‘You’re being a great help. But tell me again, what did this person who shouted, or screamed, say? You could make it out fairly clearly?’
‘Oh, yes. Just what I was telling the policeman who came. I am certain-certain. It was “You black bastard”. Yes, those wor
ds, very loud, and no others. You know, I have not seen the gentleman who lived in that house many times - he is not often going out, I am thinking. But, yes, he is black, as they are calling it. I think he is Indian gentleman.’
‘Yes, he is. So I understand. But you told the officer who saw you this afternoon that it was not a shout but a scream you heard. Is that right?’
She stood for a moment thinking, lips pursed.
‘Yes,’ said said eventually. ‘Much more of scream than shout. Some boy very angry, frighten even.’
‘Boy, you say? A boy’s voice, but what age of boy? You’re sure it was a boy?’
‘Yes, yes. I am knowing what is sounding like a boy.’
‘So what sort of age? When you say boy, it could be any young man, isn’t that right? Isn’t that how you describe young men where you come from?’
‘Oh, yes, sir. A young man is a boy until he is married, we are saying.’
‘So this was a young man?’
‘No, no. This was a boy-boy. Definitely. Some young boy was killing that old man. Disgraceful.’
‘But what sort of age? Take your time in answering. This may be very important.’
Could the killer really be what she had called a boy-boy? A teenager? Or even younger? Well, boys of that age had been known to commit murder in the course of breaking into a house where there was an old person. And Mr Unwala would hardly have been able to put up much of a fight.
‘Yes,’ Mrs Ahmed pronounced eventually.
‘Well?’
‘Fourteen, fifteen years. More if the voice very late broken. Some very very bad boy.’
‘Thank you. You’ve been most helpful. Perhaps at some future date we may have to ask you to give evidence in court. Would you be happy about that?’
‘Yes.’
Again a firm note of decision.
A few clearing-up questions more and he made his way down the broken-banister stairs and out into the now blackly dark evening.
Sitting in the car jotting down what he had learnt in his pocketbook, he decided it was almost certain the murder had come about in the way he had envisaged earlier. For some reason little Mr Unwala must have had his door open when, surely, some racist yobbos had gone past. And they had pushed him inside, begun some rough-house horseplay, and then something Mr Unwala had said, some protest he had made, had lit to fury one of the younger members of the gang. Who had shouted out You black bastard. At almost exactly six o’clock. Mrs Ahmed had been as definite about the time as about anything else. Just after hearing the twenty-to-six news. Confirmation of the time of death still to come from the pathologist but, unless that flatly contradicted Mrs Ahmed, a ‘boy’ had been there in the house then and had yelled You black bastard. Presumably just before he, or one of the other yobbos with him, had lashed out.
The Soft Detective Page 3