by Alan Hunter
‘No,’ Madsen said. ‘I was not a stranger.’
‘Wouldn’t you have wanted to be on your own?’
‘I don’ know,’ Madsen said. ‘It is the shock.’
‘So you spend the evening being questioned by your friends.’
‘I don’ know,’ Madsen said. ‘That is how it is.’
Gently puffed. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s carry it on from there. The pub turned out, you came back here. Tell me what you did next.’
‘I come up here next,’ Madsen said.
‘Why?’
‘These things . . . I am going to burn them.’
‘Why did you want to burn them?’
‘Because . . . perhaps . . .’ Madsen licked his lips, moved his hands. ‘It is hard to tell. I am ver’ upset . . . the head in a whirl, you know? I think that Tim would like this done. I think he will want me to do it.’
‘Why would Tim want it done?’
‘I don’ know . . . this is what I think. I am ver’ tired,
I have been drinking. I think that Tim is there with me . . .’
‘Go on.’
‘Yes, I come up the stairs, and go in and burn those papers. It seems the right thing, you know? I burn them up in the grate.’
‘Where were the papers you burned?’
‘In here . . . in this drawer.’
‘Why didn’t you burn Tim’s logbook, too?’
‘The logbook . . . ? That would be . . . I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know if you burned the logbook?’
‘Yes . . . my head, it is not ver’ clear . . .’
‘Did you burn it?’
‘I burn everything . . . all there is in the drawer.’
‘His memory’s failing,’ Felling said. ‘He told me he’d burned the logbook.’
‘Yes, the logbook,’ Madsen said. ‘The account-book, the logbook.’
‘So,’ Gently said, ‘you burned them. You put a match to them, and they burned.’
‘Yes, I wait while they burn. I think Tim is telling me to do this.’
‘What else did he tell you?’
Madsen’s smile was a grimace.
‘What did he tell you about the poker?’
Madsen moved his hands about.
‘About his pictures?’
The hands fluttered. ‘I tell you all I remember . . . I am so tired and in the whirl . . . you know? Perhaps I forget things . . .’
‘Perhaps you do,’ Gently said.
‘I am still ver’ tired. I don’ sleep well.’
‘You remembered to lose the key,’ Gently said.
Madsen just shifted his hands.
Gently puffed. ‘You do well,’ he said. ‘You give a good performance, Madsen. Where are the gloves you’re always wearing?’
Madsen opened his eyes. ‘I am not wearing gloves.’
‘Good,’ Gently said. ‘So we’ll print the poker, the drawer, the picture and the door. Was there anything else you handled, Madsen?’
Madsen swallowed. ‘I don’ remember . . .’
‘If you’re lying we’ll know it,’ Felling said.
‘Yes,’ Madsen said. ‘Yes. You’ll know.’
They went down the stairs to the garage, Felling locking the door behind them with care; into the still, closed-up atmosphere of petrol, oil and oily metals. With the lamps switched on there was a half-light. It had a submarine quality. The garage resembled a grimy tank into which at intervals rubbish had been thrown. The two trucks, heavy and cold, lay on the bottom like sunken ships. From a long way above, from the surface, came the chirping of sparrows in a gutter. Gently entered, then Madsen. Madsen was flushed and had his head drooping. Felling came behind jingling his keys. The door creaked slowly over the sunlight.
‘Where’s your logbook?’ Gently asked.
‘Yes, in my cab,’ Madsen said.
‘Fetch it down.’
Madsen hoisted himself up, reached for the book, jumped down. Gently took it, riffled the pages. They were scribbled in pencil in a child-like hand. They gave dates, loadings, places, the names of consigners and consignees.
‘Were you legal partners or just associates?’
‘Yes, legal partners,’ Madsen said. ‘I have a deed in my tin box. Legal partners, everything common.’
‘But it was Teodowicz who kept the record?’
‘Yes, I do not well understand that. Tim was ver’ clever, knew all about things. My tax, too: he do that.’
‘So now the record has gone up the spout?’
Madsen’s head drooped further. ‘I’m ver’ sorry.’
‘You’ll be sorrier still when the tax people hear of it.’
‘It is wrong, I know. I am sorry.’
Gently riffled some more pages. The scribblings recorded a far-reaching odyssey. Cardiff, Glasgow, Inverness, Yarmouth, Chatham, Bristol, Plymouth. Week after week the Leyland had roamed its vast tally of grey miles, spanning the country as of course, linking margin with margin; occasionally halted by a wheel-change, a snow-blizzard, a broken part, but always rolling again soon, thrusting forth on its appointed way.
‘Teodowicz did similar journeys to this?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Madsen said. ‘It is all the same. We do not do the short-haul trips – do not pay so well, you know?’
‘Was there any trip he always made – rather than let you make it?’
‘Oh, no. It is as it comes. The one who is free takes the load.’
‘So you know everything that goes on?’
‘There is nothing goes on,’ Madsen said.
‘There better hadn’t be,’ Felling said. ‘Don’t think burning that stuff fools us.’
‘I tell you it is honest,’ Madsen said. ‘I don’ have nothing I want to hide. It is ver’ foolish what I do, but not to hide nothing. Just being a fool.’
Gently snapped the book shut, handed it to Felling. ‘Take care of that for the moment,’ he said. He looked at Madsen. ‘You’re a mechanic?’ he asked. ‘You do your own servicing here?’
‘Oh yes, our own servicing, yes.’
‘You know what these tools and materials are used for?’
‘Yes, I’m a ver’ skilled mechanic.’
‘What use do you have for Rangoon oil?’
‘Rangoon oil . . . ?’ Madsen faltered.
‘Yes, Rangoon oil,’ Gently said. ‘There’s a half full
bottle on the back of the bench.’
He moved across, reached over the bench, picked out a bottle from a collection of rubbish. It was one of the size of a small medicine bottle and carried a crudely printed, oil-soaked label. The label said: Finest Quality RANGOON OIL* Semmence, Jackson & Co. Ltd. (Mfgs.) Coventry.
‘What’s this for?’ Gently asked.
Madsen’s head began to shake. ‘I do not know . . . is Tim’s, perhaps. I don’ know nothing about that.’
‘You’re a mechanic – and don’t know?’
‘Yes – perhaps to stop tools from rusting.’
‘Tools already covered in grease?’
‘That is what I think.’ Madsen’s flush had left him.
‘It’s used for tools all right,’ Gently said.
‘Yes, as I say. Is used for tools.’
‘But the tools are guns,’ Gently said.
Madsen’s hands moved. He didn’t speak.
‘Well?’ Gently said.
Madsen swayed. ‘I tell you . . . is something of Tim’s,’ he said.
‘Tim had a gun?’
‘I . . . do not know.’
‘He was certainly killed with one,’ Gently said.
‘I do not know about a gun.’
‘Nor about this bottle?’
Madsen’s head shook.
‘Never saw it there – or Tim using it?’
Madsen kept on shaking his head.
‘You’re very unobservant,’ Gently said. ‘I saw the bottle soon after I came in here.’
‘I tell you I know nothing about it,’ Madsen said.
‘I don’ never have a gun. You have searched. There is not one.’
‘We haven’t dragged the river yet,’ Gently said. ‘We may get round to it if people keep lying.’
‘It is right, I never have one,’ Madsen said.
Gently stared at Madsen. Felling sucked in breath.
CHAPTER FOUR
STILL IN THE garage.
Madsen had gone, stumbling over the threshold in his eagerness. Gently stood staring at the greasy bottle. Felling, scowling, eased from foot to foot. They could hear Madsen cross the yard and go up his stairs: the slam of his door. Then only the noises of the sparrows scratching down through the tight air.
Felling said: ‘It won’t have prints, sir – too much oil on it to take them.’
Gently nodded. He held up the bottle between himself and the light. He unscrewed the cap, sniffed, screwed the cap back on. Felling watched. He kept scowling. There was sweat on both their foreheads.
‘So,’ Gently said, ‘what do you make of it, Felling?’
Felling shifted, inclined his head. ‘I think they were running a racket sir, between them. And that’s why Madsen burned the papers.’
‘You saw something suspicious when you looked at them?’
‘. . . No, sir. I can’t say that I did. Only I didn’t look at them very carefully, I didn’t know that it mattered, then.’
‘What sort of a racket?’ Gently asked.
Felling gave his shoulder a twist. ‘Pinching stuff, sir, it could be. Loading a bit more than the docs show, then flogging it off before making delivery.’
Gently said, ‘It could have been that.’
‘That’s one of the rackets,’ Felling said. ‘Or they might have been knocking off other trucks, sir. There’s no saying what they were up to.’
‘It could have been that too,’ Gently said. ‘But where does this mysterious visitor fit into it?’
‘Maybe they’re two separate things, sir.’
Gently said, ‘Yes. Maybe.’
He said: ‘Teodowicz’s life would seem to have been a busy one, what with running rackets and being an agent. He couldn’t have had a lot of time left over. Not for driving loads, things like that.’
Felling grinned. ‘I see your point, sir. I was just trying to explain Madsen’s behaviour.’
‘Yes,’ Gently said, ‘it interests me too.’
‘There could’ve been something that needed covering up, sir’.
Gently kept on looking at the bottle. His fingers were covered with oil from it. The creases of his face had no expression. He looked at the bottle, turning it slowly.
Felling said: ‘I still think that Kasimir bloke is the only answer to the shooting, sir. I don’t reckon Teodowicz was a spy or anything, but there’s nobody else in the picture.’
Gently held up the bottle. ‘Have you an explanation for this?’ he asked.
‘Oh, I don’t know sir,’ Felling said. ‘Perhaps it belonged to Teodowicz, like Madsen says.’
‘Then one or other of them had a gun.’
‘It might just have been used for something else, sir.’
Gently’s head shook slowly. ‘Not what’s in this bottle. The Rangoon oil might. But not this stuff.’
Felling hesitated. ‘But isn’t it Rangoon oil, sir?’
Gently shook his head again. ‘You can see. It’s bluish. Rangoon oil has a yellow tint – and it doesn’t smell of citronella.’
Felling stared at the bottle too.
‘Then what do you reckon this stuff is, sir?’
Gently said, ‘It’s gun-cleaning fluid. From a service source. Perhaps the aerodrome you mentioned.’
The noise of the sparrows; the bottle held up; the trucks brutal in their size. The perfectly still hot air with its lading of petrol and stale oil. The submarine light on the two faces. One expressionless. One puckering.
Felling murmured: ‘It’s a coincidence, sir . . .’
‘Yes,’ Gently said. ‘I was thinking the same. What was the name of that aerodrome again?’
‘Huxford, sir.’
‘Yes, Huxford,’ Gently said.
He lowered the bottle, looked about the bench, found a balled-up page of a newspaper. He wiped the bottle on a piece of rag, wrapped the bottle and slipped it into his pocket. He looked at Felling.
‘I’ll leave the dabs to you,’ he said. ‘And the check on those cafés, where Teodowicz ate his last meal. And I’d like a couple of men to search this area, all these yards and derelict buildings. Can you manage that?’
‘Yes sir,’ Felling said. ‘Freeman and Rice can do the search.’
‘Tell them to keep an eye on Madsen,’ Gently said.
‘You bet I will, sir. We’ll tab that chummie.’
Gently nodded, led the way to the side entry. Felling produced the keys. They went out into the sun.
Four p.m. on the Thursday, and Offingham very nearly asleep. Gently’s car shimmered the air over it and opened its door like a broached kiln. He got in, drove down the High Street, across the Market, over the bridge; past two lines of greyed yellow-brick council houses, a couple of pubs, a filling station. Finally a third pub, standing thwartwise at the slovenly road junction, shouldered hard on the beaten passage of the A1 itself.
He halted there to choose his moment, then slid out into the stream. One car, two, went thrusting by him before the Rover picked up its stride. A tall articulated panted ahead of him, dark smoke puffing from its side. It was making fifty and the Rover needed all its guns to overtake. And so on southwards. Under a pale hazed sky.
Everham appeared, a slight congealing of the patchy drab ribbons. A chaffy triangle with a back road, a shop blazing with Dayglo posters. A blind red-brick church flat among dusty dark trees, a phone-box, an indistinct pub, a track worn in the bald verge. And then, for once, the ribbons faltered and gave way completely to grubby hedges; with behind them straw-coloured fields, folding slightly, weighted with hedge oaks. In the hazy distance, travelling like giants with their feet below the middle horizon, peered the three pink churns of Bintly power station, self-contemplative and aloof.
Another mile. An RAC box. A belt of sloe bushes to the right. To the left, southwards, the changing plane of the shallow roof of a hangar. Then the sign: Lay-By 100 yards, painted freshly black and white; and the ribbed concrete morosity of the lay-by beyond.
Gently slowed, picked a gap, pulled over and parked on the lay-by. It was a small one, designed for no more than two or three vehicles. Because the verge there was narrow the lay-by was pushed back into the hedge; the hedge was thin and had several gaps, and behind it ranged the thicket of sloe bushes. Gently got out. Underfoot the concrete was stained with plentiful oil-marks. Near the south end was a lighter area which had been recently washed off with a broom. Owing to the set-back a small vehicle parked there would be largely concealed from approaching traffic, but an observer stationed there would be able to spot headlights for about half a mile. Wrappers, paper, were strewn on the verge. In the ditch, a rusted bike frame.
He approached the hedge, the gaps in which showed signs of recent and frequent use. He stepped through it. Behind the hedge lay human faeces and paper. Into the sloe thicket, which was dense, went several tunnels or passages, as though a wild beast had made its lair there in the close gloom of the thorns. One of the tunnels opened opposite to the washed-off concrete. He ducked his head and went into it. Its underfoot soil was compact and unimpressionable. A few feet into the bushes it expanded into a little chamber, and here also lay faeces, paper rubbish, an old saucepan. He turned about and peered through the twigs. He was looking through the gap to the washed-off concrete. Several of the twigs were smashed and singed and hung withered from bleached fibrous stumps. He turned again, went on following the tunnel. From here it had not been used very often. The ground was still hard, but it had grown a little moss, and new twigs projected to obstruct his passage. Some of these new twigs were snapped and withered and some of the moss was slightly compressed. He went on
following. He came out of the sloe bushes. Beyond them was a stubble field, hedges, more fields. Far away southwards, peeking just above low trees, was a roof painted dull red. No other building was in sight.
He returned slowly through the tunnel, examining the walls of it more carefully. The sloe-twigs ended each in a spike and not all the outstanding spikes had been broken. Some yards down the tunnel he paused: a spike low down showed a wisp of snagged wool. It had been caught from a garment moving in a direction away from the road and was of a darkish grey-blue, the colour of certain service uniforms. He felt in his pocket, found an old envelope, stroked the wool off the spike into it. Then he searched for some while longer, but the single wisp was all he found.
Sweating, for it was hot among the sloe bushes, he returned to the lay-by and the car.
‘Have you a pass, sir?’
The SP from the guardroom was wearing his shirtsleeves rolled and had a white armband. Both his arms and his face were sunburned as though he spent his off-duty hours working for a farmer. Gently pulled out his wallet, showed the warrant card. The SP looked at him sharply, knowingly.
‘Yes sir, I see,’ he said, after a slight pause. ‘I didn’t know sir. We weren’t advised in the guardroom.’
‘Weren’t advised about what?’
‘About the civvie police being called, sir. I thought our own blokes were going to handle it.’
Gently shrugged. ‘Could be two other people, but I’ve come here on my own business,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to your commanding officer. Perhaps you’ll ring and let him know.’
‘The commanding officer . . . oh, I see, sir!’ The SP coloured, looked embarrassed. ‘Wing-Commander Thompson is on leave, sir, and the acting CO is visiting Cardington.’
‘Then who do you suggest I should see?’
‘The Adjutant, sir. Flight-Lieutenant Withers.’
‘Where do I find him?’
In HQ, sir. Straight ahead and first right.’
The SP stood back a pace and saluted, elbow angled, hand vibrating. Gently grinned a little sombrely, eased in the clutch, let the Rover drift. The wheels bumbled on the concrete roadway, much cracked and much repaired. On either hand, Nissen buildings; ahead the bleached levels of the airfield. He made the right turn. HQ was also a Nissen building. On one side of its doors was bolted a noticeboard, on the other an out-of-bounds notice. He parked, went in through the doors. Ahead stretched a dim corridor laid with blue linoleum. The linoleum was very highly polished and the smell of the polish hung in the air. On the doors off the corridor were affixed signboards: Central Registry, Pay Accounts, Orderly Room; and at the end of the corridor, Adjutant’s Office: F/Lt. Withers (PLEASE KNOCK). Gently knocked and went in. There were two men in the room. One sat at a desk and had shoulder ribbon. One sat at a table. Both looked up.