The Progress of a Crime

by Julian Symons

  “Was your brother at Far Wether last night?”

  She stared at him. “I don’t know. But if he was, I know Leslie well enough to be sure that he had nothing to do with that man’s death.”

  The bell rang. Michael, muttering something, ran down the stairs. The girl stood up, and looked at him almost with hostility. “If Leslie is in trouble I’m going to get him out of it. I should like any help I can get.”

  There were feet on the stairs, voices. Michael came in, looking slightly self-conscious. “This really is the Press, the man from the city, big-time stuff. Frank Fairfield from the Banner.”

  Behind Michael there entered a great wreck of a man, a handsome ruin. The handsomeness was a thing of the past now, the nose was drink-reddened and threaded with lines, there were thin red threads in the bewildered eyes behind horn-rimmed spectacles. Shabby clothes flapped on a great frame, there was a button off the raincoat, the thick brown shoes needed heeling. The man blinked and peered a little, and spoke with an agreeable hesitancy.

  “Please, look, don’t let me break anything up. They sent me round here from your office. An awful nerve, to come busting in. You’re Hugh Bennett.”

  “And this is Jill Gardner. Her brother’s been taken for questioning.” Michael said to the girl, with no trace of his usual languor—rather, indeed, like a salesman pushing a new line of goods, “Frank Fairfield, Fleet Street’s ace crime reporter. Have some beer.”

  The hand that took the beer trembled, the large spatulate fingers were slightly dirty. “I’m down here on some whim of my lord and master’s,” Fairfield said apologetically. “And when he speaks it isn’t mine to question why. It doesn’t honestly seem much of a story. What do you think now?”

  There was something agreeable about the putting of such a question, as though he were an authority on whether it was a good story or not, and it was a question that seemed to be asked guilelessly, without the least intention of flattery. Fairfield nodded while Hugh talked about the case, and seemed to be listening with every appearance of attention, when suddenly he said, “Shall we adjourn to the local and have a drink with the Banner?”

  “A drink with the Banner, splendid idea,” Michael said.

  Jill Gardner said, “I think I ought to try to find out what’s happened to Leslie. They called for him at the factory, just after he signed off.”

  “A quarter to nine. He won’t be back yet.” Fairfield spoke with complete assurance. “And I’d like very much to talk to you, Miss Gardner. It may sound ridiculous, but perhaps the Banner might be able to help.”

  They were in the Crown and Anchor, round the corner, by the time he amplified this remark. He spoke almost apologetically. “People think newspapers do a great deal of harm, intrusion into private lives and all that. Perfectly true, of course. But they can do some good. That’s true, too. If I didn’t think so I wouldn’t be here. And I’ve been a newspaperman five times as long as you two boys put together.” He lapsed into silence, swilling the beer round his glass.

  “How can you help my brother?”

  Fairfield looked up at her. He was not in the least drunk, yet there was something blurred about him, as though he saw hazily some kind of vision that for the rest of them simply wasn’t there. “Publicity.” There was again a silence before he amplified this. “Let your brother tell his story. Let the other boys do the same. We’ll print them.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “My dear Miss Gardner, what in the world have you got to lose? It can’t hurt him to talk. Does he work to-morrow?”

  “To-morrow. Oh, it’s Saturday. No, he doesn’t.”

  “May I come round at ten o’clock, then?”

  “I suppose so. I’m sorry about the way I sound, suspicious you might call it. My father doesn’t like newspapers. The truth is, I’m rather muddled.”

  “It’s a muddled world.” It seemed that Fairfield was about to make some further, vital pronouncement, but instead he transferred his gaze to the two young men. “Why are you in the provinces?”

  “Because we’re ugly ducklings who are turning into geese.” This synthetic persistent brightness of Michael’s jarred on Hugh. He said, knowing that he sounded quarrelsome or silly, “What’s wrong with being a provincial journalist?”

  “A contradiction in terms. In the provinces you work on a paper. You are hardly a journalist.”

  “I think I ought to go,” Jill Gardner said.

  Fairfield raised his slightly shaking hand. “Let Hugh telephone the station first. From what I remember of life in the provinces Hugh will have a contact in the police—”

  “So have I.” That was Michael.

  “And so have you. Of course. If Hugh telephones his contact we may find out what’s happening to Leslie.”

  Hugh made the call from a box on the first floor. P.C. Pickering was surprised that he knew Gardner’s name, wouldn’t say anything about the other boys under questioning.

  “Oh, come on, Bob, I know the Peter Street lot.”

  On the telephone Bob Pickering’s voice had almost lost its local burr. “This is a murder case.”

  “You won’t give me any names?”

  “I can’t tell you anything more.”

  “At least you can say this. Has Gardner been released yet, or is he being held?”

  “Nobody brought in for questioning has yet been released.”

  “When do you suppose—?”

  He was cut off. Evidently Pickering was not alone. When he told them what had been said, Jill Gardner got up. Michael was talking to Fairfield, and seemed hardly to notice that she was going. But Fairfield noticed. “Good night, Miss Gardner. Ten o’clock in the morning.”

  Hugh went with her to the door. “Where are you going?”

  “It doesn’t look as though I shall get anything from the station. I must go home and tell Father. He’ll be upset.”

  “Of course.”

  “Yes, but you don’t realise—well, it doesn’t matter. You’ve been kind.”

  “I’ve done nothing. Look, I may come along with Fairfield in the morning. If I can manage to get away from the office, and it’s all right with you.”

  “Glad to see you.” Before he could be sure that those were her actual words, she added, “There’s my tram,” waved and was gone.

  He went back. Michael, bright-eyed, was telling stories that he had heard before—malicious, slightly witty little stories about the office and what went on in it, stories designed to show the faint absurdity of Clare and Farmer Roger and Grayling and the rest. Hugh was faintly shocked, feeling that this was in some way a betrayal of the people they worked with. And if he were not there, what would Michael be saying about him? Fairfield listened, drinking pint upon pint of beer, the glance of his glazed eyes shifting occasionally from Michael to Hugh, and back again. He said little, speaking with emphasis only when Michael suggested telephoning the station again.

  “No. Don’t push it. Your pal won’t like you pressing him too hard, makes him look a bit silly. Leave it for the night.”

  “Okay, big shot,” Michael said. He started another story. Fairfield, or the Banner, paid for another round of drinks. They stayed until the pub closed. On the way back to the flat Hugh said, “You left her pretty much in the lurch.”

  “What, our Miss Gardner? She knows the way home, I suppose. If not, she shouldn’t be out. Besides, I thought you were interested.”

  “I liked her.”

  “She’s all yours, boy. Too prissy for me. Old Fairfield’s a bit of a dead-beat, isn’t he?”

  Hugh did not reply.

  11

  There was nothing particularly sordid about Peter Street, yet it was undoubtedly a depressing place. Peter Street, Melantha Street, Philidor Street, Bute Street, Anderson Street—these names chosen at apparent random designated streets that seemed identical in the
ir two up and two down respectableness. Most of the children were clean where twenty years ago they would have been dirty, they wore shoes where they would have gone barefoot, but they still played hopscotch on the pavement and scrawled goalposts on a wall. Fairfield talked philosophically about these things to Hugh as they got off the tram and made their way through Melantha and Philidor and Bute Streets on a grey wet Saturday morning.

  “The trouble with the welfare state is it’s done too much, and yet it hasn’t done enough. It gives these working chaps money, but what are they going to do with it after they’ve bought a telly and a fridge? Look at them.” He pointed to some long-haired boys wearing drainpipe trousers and tight-fitting overcoats, who talked and giggled by a lamp-post. “All dressed up, money in their pockets, nowhere to go. That’s how gangs begin. You get a boy like this kid Garney, who’s a natural leader from all accounts. He has to show the others how smart he is. He’s the kind of boy that we make an officer in wartime, probably he volunteers for a commando unit, kills a few people, comes home a hero. When there isn’t a war on we’ve got no use for him. It’s bloody ironical.”

  “I thought the Banner was a Tory paper.”

  Fairfield laughed, deep and rich. “So it is, Hugh boy, so it is. And so am I. This isn’t party politics, just common sense. A great guide to life, common sense. Do you know why we came down here by tram instead of taxi? Because we may want to talk to some of these people. Coming in a taxi, paying off the driver, giving a tip, is liable to put them off. Ever heard of Twicker?”

  “The Scotland Yard man who’s come down? No, I haven’t.”

  “He’s an odd character. I could a tale unfold about Twicker, and perhaps I will some day. Here we are.”

  The iron gate creaked a little. Fairfield lifted the knocker. At the upper window of the house next door the corner of a lace curtain was raised and lowered. The door of the house opened and a big man, thick-browed, with shirt-sleeves rolled up to show hairy arms, stood in the doorway.

  “I know you,” he said to Hugh. “Bennett your name is. Remember me? George Gardner, secretary Paradise Vale ward of the Labour Party. You’ve been to a couple of our meetings.”

  Hugh remembered. Gardner was a leading member of a Left Wing ginger group inside the Labour Party. He was also on the local council. “And you’re Fairfield. My daughter told me about you. Come in.” He shouted: “Jill.”

  He led them into a front room neatly tidy, conscientiously bright, with its unused-looking three-piece suite, and reproductions of Van Gogh and Utrillo on the walls. Jill Gardner came in and sat down without saying anything. Gardner stood with his back to the tiled fireplace.

  “Les is still asleep. They picked him up after work, didn’t let him go until after midnight. That’s what they call interrogation.” He looked directly at Fairfield. “Now, I don’t know what Jill said last night but whatever it was, I’m telling you now that we’ve got nothing to say to the Press. Any of us. Am I making myself clear?”

  “You’re speaking clearly enough,” Fairfield said. “But you don’t make sense.”

  “I know what you want.” A thick finger pointed at Fairfield, jabbed as it had done at a hundred meetings. “Supposing one of us tells you there’s a few rough lads in Peter Street, you twist it round and talk about gang warfare. Nothing of the sort. There’s nothing wrong with Peter Street that the people who live in it can’t cure. I’ve brought up two children in it and there’s nothing wrong with them. They’re decent and honest. Will you say that? Not you. It’s your job to live by peddling lies.”

  “Dad,” Jill said. Her protest, Hugh felt, was automatic.

  “Nothing personal,” Gardner said, unperturbed.

  Fairfield’s fingers, as he took out a cigarette, were as shaky as they had been the night before. His voice had no trace of anger. It was the same hesitant, cultured yet classless voice that Hugh Bennett had heard the night before, and the fact that he might have been debating some point on a television brains trust gave his words an extra sting.

  “You know, you’re the sort that makes press reporters and photographers and everyone else behave badly. You’ve stayed in Peter Street, I’d like to take a bet on it, because you’re a Labour man and proud of it. You don’t want to move to a neighbourhood one step up, where the houses have bits of gardens front and back—”

  “I’m Labour and proud of it, yes. I stay with my own sort. And there’s nothing wrong with this house. We’ve put in a bathroom.”

  “That makes it perfect,” Fairfield said. “What about your family? Ever think of them?”

  “We’ve been happy here.” Jill’s cheeks were red. “You don’t have to listen to him, Dad.”

  The thick brows were turned on her. “I let every man have his say.”

  “If they were happy it was because you told them to be. Told them what a splendid thing it is to live in a slum and help to make it a better place. But was your son all that happy?”

  “Leslie is a good boy.”

  “He seems to have been running round with some bad ones. Then I come round. You know my name, you don’t like the Banner—”

  “I think it stinks.” The big man thrust his head forward as he said it.

  “Right. Now, my job is to find out the truth about this case. Not lies, the truth, you understand? That’s the way journalism works, it’s what reporters are there for. You won’t let me get at the facts through you. Then I’ll have to do it through someone else.” Fairfield put down his cigarette. “You won’t let me talk to your son, probably won’t even let me have a picture of him. Then we have to do these things another way. Don’t blame me for it.”

  Now Gardner’s voice rose in savage irony. It was the sort of voice Bennett had heard him use to crush opposition argument at the Paradise Vale branch meetings. “You mean, don’t blame you because when people won’t let you through the front entrance you have to wriggle through a window at the back. Well, if I catch you wriggling in the back way here, you’ll be sorry. I’ll tell you this. My son had nothing to do with what happened at Far Wether on Guy Fawkes night, and that’s all I’m saying. And you’ll get no more out of anybody else in this household.”

  Fairfield got up and Hugh Bennett, feeling like an actor without a speaking part, got up too. Jill said, to him rather than to Fairfield, “I’m sorry.” She opened the front door.

  Two policemen were standing outside it, a black maria was just down the road, and it seemed that half the population of Peter Street was crowded round it.

  The policeman in front was a sergeant. “’Morning,” he said.

  Gardner stood with hands on hips, blocking the entrance. “’Morning to you, Joe Malcolm. What do you want?”

  “I should like to speak to Leslie Gardner.”

  “He’s asleep.”

  “Then you’d better wake him up.” With a backward jerk of the head, the sergeant said, “It might be easier if we came in.”

  Gardner did not move. The sergeant shrugged.

  “Have it your own way. Tell him to come down. At once.”

  “Why should I?”

  The sergeant showed a piece of paper in his hand. Gardner looked at it, then shouted, “Les.”

  A slim, pale boy, wearing shirt and trousers, came down. He was strikingly like his sister.

  “Leslie Gardner,” the sergeant said, “I have here a warrant for your arrest as being concerned in the murder of one James Renton Corby, on the green at Far Wether, on the night of November the fifth. I have to warn you—”

  The boy stared at the sergeant and then at his father, who looked back at him with a face of stone. Then it was as though the boy suddenly, and for the space of a few seconds, took wings. He must, in fact, have jumped, but the effect was that of his rising suddenly into the air over the sergeant’s outstretched hands, landing miraculously past them, diving round and away from the other policeman, an
d so out into the street. Then he began to run, tripped over a projecting kerbstone and fell. The two policemen caught and lifted him, not gently. They had practically to carry him to the black maria. He passed close to Hugh, who saw the trembling mouth that was whispering “Dad” and “Jill” and “Please,” the trickle of blood at the forehead, the staring eyes. He had a glimpse of other faces inside the black maria, of words incoherently shouted, fists raised. Then the van drove off, people crowded round, the street bubbled with conversation.

  “Bastards, those rotten bastards, sneaking up, taking away the kids.”

  “Just kids, that’s all.”

  “Thing is, you know what caused it, King and some of the others went round to see Rocky and the Pole, told them to keep their mouths shut. Rocky got the wind up, did a bunk.”

  A thin-nosed, sandy, ferrety man spoke to Gardner, not without malice. “Looks as if we’re in the same boat, eh, George? Going to use your influence with the council to get your boy out?”

  Somehow Frank Fairfield was beside the man, saying something to him. “I’m Mr. Jones from No. 32. They had my boy in last night, kept him for hours. Then when they did let him out the others threatened him, told him they’d cut him up…”

  Fairfield had him by the arm now, they moved away down the street. Gardner looked at them all, then turned abruptly and went back into the house. Jill followed her father and shut the door. Hugh walked down Peter Street, and away from it. He had suffered the kind of shock that comes only to those romantics who do not link their own experiences with life as it goes on around them. There was really no reason at all why he should have been shocked by his recognition of Leslie Gardner as the youth who had pushed over the little girl on Guy Fawkes night.

  12

  Twicker and Norman were met by the news as soon as they got to the station that morning. Langton said without apparent emotion, “One of those boys has done a bunk.”

  It was not for Norman to comment, but he would have liked Twicker better if the superintendent hadn’t preserved such a sphingine immobility, hadn’t said merely, “Which one?”