Gently Instrumental

by Alan Hunter

  ‘A jacket?’

  ‘Oh ah! But he was carrying that, like.’

  ‘What about shoes?’

  ‘Yes, his shoes. They was brown with big heels.’

  ‘Hat?’

  His tongue worked again. ‘Got a funny sort of straw hat, hadn’t he?’

  Gently took a step nearer to one of the gorses and sniffed at the hot, sweet fragrance. He fingered the yellow pods. David Crag hadn’t closed his mouth.

  ‘Tell me what happened.’

  David Crag gulped. ‘He – he spoke to me, didn’t he? Asked me if Mr Hozeley didn’t live here, and if a young fellow called Virtue wasn’t staying with him.’

  ‘Did he say why he asked that?’

  ‘Well no, he didn’t.’

  ‘He gave no hint that he knew them?’

  Behind Gently David Crag hesitated. Then he shuffled a foot: ‘No.’

  ‘And you left him standing here.’

  ‘Well . . . yes! I can’t say where he went then.’

  ‘Going down this path, wouldn’t you have looked back?’

  ‘No. No, I didn’t look back.’

  ‘You weren’t at all curious about him?’

  One could hear the tongue rasp on his dry lips. ‘No, I wasn’t, was I? I didn’t know nothing about all this, then.’

  Gently nodded to the gorse. ‘Right . . . I think that’s all here. But I’d like you to accompany me to the house. There is something I want you to do.’

  ‘But I got to pick those raspberries for Mrs Butley—!’

  ‘What you have to do won’t take a moment.’

  He gave David Crag a gentle push in the direction of the garden. They marched back through the gate and up the path to the cottage. Hozeley was watching from the French doors. He backed off to the piano as they entered. David Crag didn’t look at Hozeley. He came to a stand short of the piano.

  ‘Now, David,’ Gently said. ‘I want you to tell Mr Hozeley the time.’

  ‘The time—?’ David Crag gaped.

  ‘Yes . . . by the watch you’re wearing on your wrist.’

  David Crag’s eyes rolled. He lurched a little and made a half-hearted move towards the doors. Gently caught his arm. He forced him to the piano and flicked back the sweat-soaked cuff of the bush-shirt. He looked at Hozeley.

  ‘Well . . . ?’

  The watch was a gold-cased Rolex Oyster; it was on a gold bracelet and had a matt black dial chased with swirling silver lines.

  ‘What’s your verdict?’

  Hozeley’s eyes were molten. They flashed from the watch to the trembling David Crag. He said not a word but, turning from the piano, strode down the room and stood with his back to them.

  Gently hooked off the watch and slipped it in his pocket.

  ‘Come along, David,’ he said. ‘Suddenly, I feel you’re on your own.’

  David Crag made a choking sound; he could scarcely walk.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  IT WAS HIGH noon in the interrogation room but nobody seemed rushing to pull a gun. In fact a sort of sulky silence prevailed, like that of a class kept in past playtime. Meares, his shirt now open to the last button, sat head in hands, considering the table. Leyston, his head tilted back, was giving an impression of the ennui to be seen in Victorian photo portraits. The policewoman had arranged her pencils in a pattern and was soulfully gazing at the high window: it had the air of being a room where everything had been said that anyone could at all think of.

  When Gently entered they stirred slightly and Leyston rose in languid acknowledgement. Gently approached the table. He laid the gold Rolex on the spot that Meares was so earnestly observing. Meares started. He gazed at the watch, glanced at Gently, then back at the watch.

  ‘That’s Virtue’s.’

  ‘Are you sure of that?’

  ‘Of course. There can’t be two like it in Shinglebourne.’

  ‘You have seen him wearing it?’

  Meares shrugged faintly. ‘Everyone has. It was a present from Walt. I happen to know it cost Walt a shade over eight hundred and fifty pounds. Virtue couldn’t show it off enough. Ask the others – they’ll tell you.’

  Gently picked up the watch. ‘When did you last see it?’

  Meares’s eyes followed it. ‘I . . . don’t remember.’

  ‘Would it have been at Tuesday’s rehearsal?’

  ‘If you say it was I won’t contradict you.’

  ‘But was it?’

  Meares gestured wearily. ‘It probably was, but I don’t remember. He never wore it when he was playing anyway – musicians have a thing about that.’

  ‘So that was the last time you saw it.’

  ‘All right . . . say it was!’

  ‘But when you struck that match . . . didn’t you see it then, glinting on Virtue’s upflung wrist?’

  Meares’s eyes went still. They stayed on the watch, which Gently dangled before him hypnotically. One could hear its tiny ticking in the hot silence of the room. He looked up.

  ‘No . . . I didn’t see it.’

  ‘Wouldn’t he have put it back on when he finished playing?’

  ‘Yes, he would – and I should have seen it!’ Meares’s eyes sparkled suddenly. ‘Where did you find it?’

  Gently dropped the watch back in his pocket. He nodded to Leyston and headed for the door. Meares had half-risen from his chair: he was gazing after them in dismay.

  ‘But where did you find it, sir?’ Leyston echoed as they went through to his office. ‘It wasn’t in his room at the cottage. We only found a cheap Timex there.’

  Gently dropped into the chair at the desk, felt for his pipe and deliberately lit it. Through the initial wreaths of smoke he said:

  ‘Would you believe David Crag’s wrist?’

  ‘David Crag . . . !’

  Gently nodded. ‘The temptation to wear it must have been too great. He had on a sleeved shirt to conceal it from Hozeley. Hozeley recognized it but isn’t talking.’

  ‘Glory be!’ Leyston sank on a chair, his sad eyes comically round. On the desk was a tumbler charged with cigarettes: Leyston mechanically took and lit one.

  ‘Did you never check his alibi?’

  ‘Well – no, sir! Not beyond a word with his old man. He said young Dave was at home that evening, mending his bike. And you know the old man.’

  ‘Better than he seems to know his grandson.’

  Leyston punished his lungs. ‘It’s a stunner though, sir. Do you reckon Meares saw him?’

  ‘No doubt about it. Nor that his gardener jokes had a foundation.’ Gently brooded over his pipe. ‘It was David Crag who Virtue was planning to meet, of course. He’d feel he could risk that. He’d got a bite on Meares and was ready for a move to new pastures.’

  ‘Then young Dave turned on him, sir.’

  ‘And Meares must have arrived to see the end of it.’ Leyston took a drag. ‘There could have been provocation, sir.’

  ‘That’s what we have to decide now.’ Gently drew deeply and sieved smoke. ‘Fix up Mason with a fresh warrant. We’ll want David Crag’s clothes, any likely blunt instruments and whatever else he may have that he shouldn’t.’

  ‘The old boy will create, sir.’

  Gently grunted. ‘I shall want a word with Mr

  Crag too! And meanwhile you can hang Meares out to air and give the WPC a break to powder her nose.’

  Leyston stubbed his fag and rose. ‘I’ll put Meares in the charge room,’ he said. ‘Anything else, sir?’

  Gently nodded. ‘In a large glass – beer!’

  The sun had reached the interrogation room window and was slanting down one of the cream-washed walls. At Gently’s instance they’d fetched Leyston’s fan and propped it up on an extra chair. Otherwise the scene was unchanged, except that now David Crag was elbowing the table. The policewoman, fresh-faced from a sluicing, sat waiting for business with a virgin page.

  Gently sat; Leyston sat; the constable departed and closed the door. David Crag kept his eyes lowere
d: he was breathing audibly through his mouth. Somehow he resembled a young, trapped animal, a rabbit aware of the presence of stoats. His fingers were still stained from the raspberries and streaks of red had transferred to his brow.

  ‘Right, David,’ Gently said. ‘I shall have to ask you some questions.’ He administered the caution.

  David Crag heard him, but it was impossible to tell if he understood.

  ‘Now . . . you’d better tell us where you got the watch.’

  This, at all events, he was prepared for! He pulled his head up half-defiantly and fixed flinching, warm-brown eyes on Gently.

  ‘I bought it, didn’t I?’

  ‘You bought it?’

  ‘Yes – I bought it from this man! The one what spoke to me up on the Common – I seen him again last night!’

  ‘Oh. From that man.’

  ‘Yes – I’m telling you.’ His eyes held steady though his mouth trembled. ‘I met him in the caff, the Wimpy, and he asked me if I didn’t want to buy a wristwatch.’

  ‘I see,’ Gently said. ‘What was he asking for it?’

  David Crag wet his lips. ‘Asked a fiver, didn’t he?

  Said he’d got two and he didn’t need this one, so he’d sell it to me for a fiver.’

  ‘And that seemed to you a bargain.’

  ‘Well it was, wasn’t it? I mean, it was going all right and all.’

  ‘It didn’t bother you – buying a gold-cased watch for a fiver?’

  ‘No – well, I mean I didn’t know nothing about that.’

  ‘Nor anything else about it?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t, would I?’

  ‘Like who you’d seen wearing it a few days ago?’

  David Crag took a swallow. ‘I just hadn’t never seen it, not till this man pulled it out in the Wimpy!’

  He kept his eyes desperately on Gently’s but the eyes were becoming progressively wider. The fair hair was tousled about them and the cheeks a muck of sweat. Gently considered him silently. The eyes began to roll. Suddenly Crag snatched them away. His breath was coming rough and in starts: more like an animal’s than ever.

  ‘It won’t do . . . will it?’

  ‘Look, it’s right what I’m telling you!’

  Gently shook his head. ‘We’ve heard it too often.’

  ‘There was this man—’

  ‘There wasn’t any man. You remembered too much about him for him to have been real.’

  David Crag gave a whine. ‘You ain’t calling me a liar . . . !’ He doubled his fists into his eyes. ‘I ain’t a liar – you ask my grandad – I haven’t never told no lies!’

  ‘Perhaps you aren’t a cry-baby, either.’

  ‘You ain’t treating me fair!’ David Crag blubbered. ‘I never wanted that watch anyway – I was going to have one give me for my birthday.’

  ‘So why did you take it?’

  ‘I never took it. I bought it off the bloke, like I said.’

  ‘An eight-hundred-and-fifty-pound watch for a fiver?’

  ‘I only give him what he asked!’

  Now he was blubbering in good earnest, tears vying with sweat on his freckled face. You might have taken him for ten or twelve instead of his seventeen or eighteen years. Gently waited patiently. The blubbering became intermittent, lost its conviction, stopped. Red-eyed, his mouth drooped for fresh sobs, he came out from behind his doubled fists.

  ‘So now you’ve got that off your chest, why not tell us what really happened?’

  David Crag’s mouth crumpled. ‘You ain’t being fair! You tell me I haven’t got to say nothing, anyway.’

  ‘No, you needn’t, Gently said. ‘You can leave us to form our own opinion.’

  David Crag snuffled some more and used the sleeve of the bush-shirt. ‘He – he give it to me,’ he said.

  ‘Who gave it to you?’ Gently eased himself on the hard-bottomed interrogation-room chair, aligned his hands and sighted over them at the melting David Crag.

  ‘Him . . . Virtue.’

  ‘Virtue gave you his watch?’

  ‘Ah. He give it to me.’

  Gently grunted. ‘That’s likely, isn’t it! That he’d give you a watch worth as much as that.’

  ‘But he did!’ The reddened eyes were indignant.

  ‘He give it to me last Monday. Down in the summerhouse, it was. He pulled it off and give it to me.’

  ‘Eight hundred-odd pounds worth of watch.’

  ‘He didn’t know it was worth all that.’

  ‘And you thought it was brass.’

  ‘Well . . . no. I reckoned it might be worth twenty quid.’

  Gently gazed across his fingers. Now the young gardener’s mouth wasn’t trembling. Hot-faced among his dishevelled hair, he was pouting childishly, eyes lowered.

  ‘What did you have to do for it?’

  ‘Didn’t have to do nothing, did I?’

  Gently clicked his disgust. ‘We’re never going to believe that! Try me again with something more credible.’

  David Crag’s hot face grew hotter. ‘Well . . . I never did it anyway, did I?’

  ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘No I never! I wasn’t going to either, for all his old soap.’

  ‘But you must have promised something.’

  ‘I tell you I didn’t.’

  ‘Not for a present like that watch?’

  David Crag jammed his fists together and sat boring one into the other.

  ‘Let me help you,’ Gently said. ‘This is what you promised. You promised to meet him on Tuesday evening. He told you to be at the cottage at about nine, and that he’d fix it so that Mr Hozeley wouldn’t be there. He’d expect that at least in exchange for his watch – even if he didn’t know its value.’

  David Crag mauled his fists.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘He gave me the watch – he did!’

  ‘And you agreed to meet him at the cottage.’

  He began to snuffle again.

  ‘So,’ Gently said. ‘You’d have to work it somehow so that your grandfather didn’t find out.’

  David Crag’s eyes had a hunted look. ‘You leave my grandad out of this.’

  Gently shook his head deliberately. ‘Your grandfather will tell me the truth,’ he said. ‘He may not want to, but he will. It isn’t worth your while to lie.’

  ‘Grandad don’t know nothing about it.’

  ‘He said you were at home mending your bike.’

  ‘That’s where I was!’

  ‘That’s what you told him – and what he believed.

  But you weren’t there.’

  David Crag blubbered. His sobs had the whining note of a small child – somewhere, a mother should have heard and set him on her knee to comfort him. It made the policewoman fidget uneasily and sink her head over her pad.

  ‘I can guess how he worked it, sir,’ Leyston said. ‘They’ve got long gardens at those cottages. Crags have a shed at the bottom of theirs, and that’s where sonny would keep his bike. So he’d tell his old man he was off down there, and likely the old boy would never check. Sonny could have left his transistor playing. It’s straight out of the garden on to the Common.’

  ‘Straight out to the Common.’

  Leyston nodded. ‘That’d be the way he goes to work.’

  ‘He give me the watch,’ David Crag sobbed. ‘He did – he did!’

  Leyston stared at him with empty eyes.

  Gently spread his hands. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘We’ll take that as read. You had an alibi with your grandfather and a safe route to the cottage.’

  ‘I didn’t go nowhere!’

  ‘What time did you leave?’

  David Crag whined and cuffed his face. ‘I never saw him, and that’s straight. Not since the time in the summer house.’

  ‘Still . . . when did you leave?’

  ‘It ain’t like you think. I never had no transistor down there.’

  Gently said nothing.

  David Crag swallowed. ‘Reckon it might ha
ve been half-past eight.’

  ‘You went over the Common.’

  He pouted. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who did you meet on the way?’

  ‘I didn’t meet nobody, did I? That was about closing-in time.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well that’s it, then. I went to the cottage and never saw him.’ His eyes avoided Gently’s. ‘He wasn’t there, like. Not when he said he was going to be.’

  ‘When did he say he’d be there?’

  ‘Said he’d be there after nine.’

  ‘Where were you to wait for him?’

  ‘Well . . . at the cottage. I couldn’t very well go inside.’

  ‘And?’

  He rasped his lips. ‘Then I waited a bit, didn’t I?

  Down the garden . . . in the summer house, like. I waited a bit. Then I went home.’

  ‘Having seen nobody.’

  ‘No, I’m telling you.’

  ‘You were never nearer to the cottage than the summer house.’

  David Crag gulped. ‘No. I wasn’t.’

  Gently gazed at him. And shook his head.

  David Crag covered up again: but by now he’d almost expended his stock of tears. His sobbing had struck an unconvincing falsetto, a sort of dry, girlish whimper. Nobody interrupted him; he was left to play out the act solo. At last he ended on a wailing moan and let his fists drop from his eyes.

  ‘I ain’t going to say no more . . . !’

  That didn’t get a response, either. Helplessly he

  sat with rubbed eyes staring and breath coming in snatched gasps.

  ‘Let’s take it from when you arrived at the cottage.’

  ‘No!’ The hunted expression was back.

  ‘It was beginning to get dark, wasn’t it . . . and of course, there weren’t any lights in the cottage.’

  ‘I ain’t saying nothing!’

  ‘Virtue hadn’t returned. It was probably a little

  before nine. You’d have gone up through the garden, wouldn’t you, and round to the front? To the gate.’

  ‘No I never!’

  ‘And there you’d have waited . . . for somewhere around twenty-five minutes. Time for you to do a bit of thinking – if you hadn’t done it before.’

  ‘But I wasn’t never round there . . . !’

  Gently leaned across the table, his eyes trapping David Crag’s eyes. ‘And you were thinking like this: that you’d be a mug if you carried on and did what he wanted. Because you didn’t have that watch yet. You weren’t going to get it till you’d delivered. And knowing Virtue, that would probably be never. The watch was just a carrot to con a yokel.’