by Alan Hunter
‘Course we could. It was a lot of gold coins.’
‘A lot?’
‘Ever so many, mister.’
‘More than two?’
‘Coo! More like a hundred.’
Gently looked round the group. ‘Is this what you all saw?’
There was a murmur of assent.
‘And what you were telling people you saw?’
They shuffled, their eyes drooping.
Gently let his pipe work again. Dinno’s eyes were still on him. Brown, steady eyes. Eyes that didn’t give much away. Gently grinned at him suddenly.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘When was all this?’
‘Don’t know what date, mister,’ Dinno said. ‘Reckon it was just before old Peachey was murdered.’
‘It’s important,’ Gently said. ‘See if you can remember. Was there a truck or something in the yard?’
‘There was a big old van thing,’ Moosh said. ‘They come out afterwards and drove it off.’
‘Afterwards?’
‘Well, that was afterwards. After old Peachey put his light out.’
‘It was a big old green van,’ Dinno said. He wriggled his boot into the snow.
‘So they’d been unloading?’
Dinno said nothing.
‘And there was a light on in the office?’
‘Yeh,’ Moosh said. ‘There was a light, mister. I reckon old Cokey was in there somewhere.’
Dinno kicked snow. ‘But we never see him.’ He stared at a spot below Gently’s chin. ‘But he could’ve been looking out, mister. He could’ve seen old Peachey too.’
‘He couldn’t see what you saw,’ Gently said.
‘He could’ve seen,’ Dinno said.
‘And he could’ve been told,’ Gently said. ‘Isn’t that what happened after the van left?’
Moosh hung his head. Dinno stayed composed. He negligently swung at some more snow.
‘P’raps,’ he said. ‘P’raps we kidded him. We’re always kidding old Cokey.’
‘I think he came out and questioned you.’
‘He might’ve come out.’
‘Suppose you tell me,’ Gently said.
‘All right,’ Dinno said, his leg swinging. ‘Suppose he come out and we told him.’
‘What happened then?’
‘Wasn’t nothing happened. Old Cokey got up to have a look.’
‘He dint see nothing though,’ Moosh said.
‘We packed it in, went home,’ Dinno said.
Gently paused, still grinning. ‘And the next night?’ he said softly.
Moosh’s eyes swung up, goggling. Dinno’s eyes didn’t waver.
‘We wasn’t playing round there the next night.’
‘Sure?’
‘Course.’ Dinno sounded indignant.
‘You weren’t there, didn’t see Colkett?’
‘I’m telling you, mister. We went up the Sloes.’
‘All of you?’ Gently looked around. Nobody felt like meeting his eye.
‘Tha’s right, mister,’ Moosh whined. ‘We was up the Sloes along with some girls.’
‘A pity,’ Gently said.
Dinno ground his heel in. ‘But he done it, mister. We know he done it.’ He looked a little wistful. ‘You ain’t kidding us, mister – you hant got him locked away all the time?’
‘I’m not kidding you,’ Gently said. ‘I’m just wondering if you’re kidding me.’
Dinno’s eyes stared. ‘We couldn’t kid you, mister.’
‘No,’ Gently smiled. ‘Not for long.’
A whistle throbbed thinly. They started, colt-like, every head turned to the sound.
‘Mister . . .’
Gently nodded. Then they were running. Not even Dinno had another glance for him.
Gently stood some moments longer, sucking now on a pipe gone cold; then turned and plodded out of the sale-ground and crossed the road to the warehouse.
There was still no light. He cupped his hands at the window. The dim office looked chill and drear. He went to the door and silently tried it. Locked. Nobody at home.
CHAPTER NINE
THE SNOW HADN’T really given up; by afternoon it was starting again – big, feathery, sauntering flakes that clung to one’s clothes and laid quickly. You could see it teeming down from the clouds, racing when the wind caught it. Snow-gloom pressed on the little town. Already it had a cut-off feeling.
At the George Gently met the stringer, who sat playing patience in the hall lounge. He looked up hopefully when Gently entered, an elderly man with a sad, lined face.
‘Anything for us, sir?’
Gently hadn’t, but he felt sorry for the stringer and paused to chat with him. His name was Wemys. In the end, Gently fudged him up a plausible non-statement.
Not much, after twenty-four hours on the case!
Gently went into lunch broodingly. Apart from the medal they had no concrete evidence – and the medal itself was evidence of what? For the rest, surmise, suggestive circumstance and the dubious witness of children. Perhaps enough now to throw at Colkett, but not nearly enough if he failed to confess.
Frowningly, Gently cut short his lunch. Soon, they’d be waiting for the breaks. The case was depending too much on Colkett – somehow, it needed opening up. He rang the station. Gissing was out. D.C. Scoles had nothing to report. Leaving the Sceptre in the courtyard, Gently plunged out in the snow again.
In Playford Road, off Water Street, he found the greengrocer’s, Hallet’s. It was open-fronted and looking miserable with snow collecting on the stacked vegetables. A woman minded it. She was stout and freckled and wore a shabby coat over layers of sweaters. There were no customers. She gazed at the snow with a sort of meditative spite.
‘Mrs Hallet?’
‘That’s me.’
‘Police. I want a word with your lodger.’
‘Him.’ She sounded withering. ‘He’s up at the warehouse. Won’t be in till half five.’
‘You haven’t seen him?’
‘Not since breakfast. If he’s been back I haven’t noticed.’
‘Which are his rooms?’
‘Over the top here. There’s some stairs round the corner.’
They were iron stairs, running from a yard to a small landing at first-floor level. Snow lay virgin on the treads. Nobody answered Gently’s knock.
‘Told you so.’ Mrs Hallet had waddled out to watch Gently. ‘Up at the warehouse is where you’ll find him. You know the warehouse?’
‘I know it.’
She didn’t ask him what Colkett had done, simply stared as he trudged away.
But she was a liar. Colkett wasn’t at the warehouse, and snow covered the tracks leading to the door. Clearly he hadn’t returned since he left while Gently and Bressingham were searching Harrisons. So where was he? Holed-up at some friend’s? It wasn’t a day to be tramping around. Had Gently scared him so much that morning that he’d decided to make himself scarce?
Gently shrugged grumpily, standing ankle-deep in the darkening yard with the white flakes whirling. Harrisons, the warehouse, both deserted; only the wind to make a little moan.
He went down the passage, where the snow was thinner, and emerged in Thingoe Road. This was livelier. A few cars were passing, their tyre-sound muffled, wipers sweeping. Almost opposite the passage was the general shop where Peachment had bought the box of matches. Its windows glowed yellowy against the snow and were filled untidily with tins and cut-outs.
Gently crossed over and entered the shop. It smelled of soap and dog-biscuits. Behind the counter a neat, grey-haired man was checking groceries into a carton. A couple of shelves were stocked with cigarettes and a few cheap brands of tobacco; below them, a shelf of matches. A sign said: Aladdin Pink.
‘Police.’
The man glanced at Gently but went on checking, his lips moving. Then he scribbled on a piece of paper and stuck the pencil behind his ear.
‘Yes? I’m a little deaf.’
To establish
an entente, Gently bought tobacco. The grocer’s name was Wix. He went through his story readily enough.
‘What makes you remember Mr Peachment coming in?’
‘Well, you see, it was the last time. The next I heard they’d found the body – rather upset me, that did.’
‘Was that the next day?’
‘I can’t be certain. I wouldn’t want to tell you a lie.’
‘The 27th was a Thursday.’
‘Tuesdays and Thursdays. Those are the nights I stay open.’
Gently put his questions slowly, giving Wix time to think. Almost certainly Wix had been the last but one to see Peachment alive.
‘Did Mr Peachment often come in of an evening?’
‘Well, now and then. When he wanted something.’
‘I’d like you to tell me about that last time. Everything that happened, what was said.’
Wix did his best. He stared at the door, imagining Peachment coming in, then his shuffle up to the counter, his mutter, his request for the box of matches. It signified nothing. It was such a transaction as might have happened any time over the years. Nothing to say, when the doorbell pinged, that never again would it ping for old Peachment.
‘Were there other customers in the shop?’
Wix shook his head. ‘Not as I remember it.’
‘Do you know Colkett from the warehouse?’
‘I know him.’
‘Did you see him that night?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Who else was about here?’
‘Well . . . customers. They come from the council estate mostly.’
‘Kids?’
‘Always plenty of them.’
‘But do you remember them?’
Wix shook his head.
And, of course, the tobacco would be dry and unsmokable: Gently could tell it by the feel of the packet.
He left the shop and set himself doggedly to plod the length of Thingoe Road. Setting Colkett aside, this was the likeliest area from which Peachment’s killer might have come. Gently had studied a map; the foot-way and Frenze Street offered a short cut to the town centre; and Peachment, Gently was certain, had known his killer by sight – as he would have known the regulars from Thingoe Road.
A long, a dreary road! The Council had widened it before they built. One side were huddled old town houses, facing them the bastilles of Council terraces. Regular culs-de-sac divided the terraces, bearing names like Councillor Bunwell Close and Hotblack Grove; in the dark and the snow the estate wore the aspect of a Siberian penal settlement. No wonder the kids played in the sale-ground, or got their kicks cheeking old Cokey.
On the town side many of the properties were doubtless marked for demolition. Adjacent to the warehouse was a terrace of cottages, their windows boarded, crosses painted on the doors. Gently crunched across to examine them more closely. They probably backed on the garden of Harrisons. Something possible there? He eyed their blankness for a moment, then hunched his shoulders and turned away.
A waste of time! Yet he continued stubbornly, up one side of the road and down the other. He wanted the feel of the bleak thoroughfare, of the people who lived there, who used that short cut. Council tenants, some near the breadline, a few already known to the police, going daily past the house where, according to the kids . . .
But the snow beat him at last. Numbed, he turned back towards the footway. In two lengths of Thingoe Road he had met scarcely a dozen pedestrians. Now it was truly dark, in place of the twilight of the snow-gloom, with flakes pitching down in sackfuls so that you couldn’t see past the next street-light. He entered the footway. A shape moved ahead of him, going towards the warehouse door. Gently sprinted. The figure turned suddenly, flashing a torch. It was D.C. Scoles.
‘Oh . . . you sir!’
‘Me,’ Gently said. ‘You won’t find Colkett in there.’
‘Do you know where he is, sir?’
‘Hasn’t he come home yet?’
‘No, sir. That’s where I’ve just come from.’
‘What’s the flap then?’
Scoles hesitated. ‘I thought you’d have been informed, sir,’ he said. ‘We’ve had a message from Norchester. A man like Colkett sold a coin there today.’
Gissing was on the phone when they entered the office, his face as empty of expression as ever.
‘Yes, sir . . . we’d like them today.’
He was arranging search-warrants for Colkett’s and the warehouse. He hung up.
‘You didn’t find him?’
‘No, sir,’ Scoles said. ‘He isn’t back yet.’
‘We can wait,’ Gissing said. He looked at Gently. ‘Reckon we’ve nailed him now, sir,’ he said flatly.
It had begun to look like it. The jeweller in Norchester had given a good description of his customer: around forty, about five feet seven, grey eyes, lined face, strong local accent. The jeweller, named Deacon, hadn’t been too suspicious when the man offered him the coin: since collecting coins had become a vogue all sorts of people brought him valuable pieces. His suspicions had been further set at rest because the man dickered about the price, and had spent half an hour nudging Deacon towards his ultimate bid of forty-five pounds. Only after he’d gone did Deacon consult his police bulletin.
And the coin? An Edward IV angel, wrapped in crumpled blue paper.
‘It’s on its way here,’ Gissing said. ‘Deacon paid for it in fivers. We just pick Colkett up with the fivers on him and I reckon that’ll be that.’
‘Do we know how he’s travelling?’ Gently asked.
‘No,’ Gissing said. ‘But he doesn’t own a car. I’ve checked with the station. They don’t remember him buying a ticket. I’ve put D.C. Abbots on meeting the train.’
‘What about buses?’
‘I’ve rung Broome. The local constable will board the bus there.’
‘And if he’s hitched a lift?’
Gissing nodded comfortably. ‘P.C. Metcalfe is waiting at Hallet’s.’
All earths blocked. And at the other end, Norchester, the CID would be covering too. Unless Colkett faded into the snow en route they’d have to have him before much longer. The break had come. The case was made – Colkett had been panicked into doing something stupid.
Or was it going to be quite so simple . . . ?
‘Why did he sell that particular coin?’
Gissing stared, considering the question. ‘I don’t know . . . perhaps it was handy.’
‘But just that coin – the one we know about – if he had a lot to choose from? And why just one? Why not several? He could have sold them to different dealers.’
‘Perhaps he has done, sir,’ Scoles said. ‘Perhaps the other dealers haven’t come clean.’
‘Then we have to swallow that the one honest dealer was the one who bought the identifiable coin.’
Scoles shook his head, abashed.
‘Perhaps he only had that one coin,’ Gissing said heavily.
Gently nodded. ‘And suppose he came by it honestly – or at least, without murdering Peachment to get it?’
‘I don’t see how—’
‘Look,’ Gently said. ‘Peachment had been carrying that coin in his pocket. In his waistcoat pocket, Bressingham says, just loose, wrapped up in the piece of paper. So it could have shaken out when Peachment fell, and being wrapped in blue paper, it wouldn’t show up. So the murderer could have missed it. And the milkman could have missed it. It could have been there for Colkett to find.’
Gissing stared unhappily. ‘So what you’re saying—’
‘I’m saying Colkett probably wasn’t the murderer. But if he was, then all he stole was the one coin off Peachment’s body.’
It was perverse! Gissing gazed at his desk with the injured look of a sick goldfish. The very clincher that should have ‘nailed’ Colkett was being twisted into a defence! You could almost see Gissing’s mind wrestling as he grappled with this naughty argument. Scoles, too, gone suddenly stiff, was clearly trying to
find a counter.
‘But it doesn’t follow—’
‘If it wasn’t Colkett, sir—’
The two of them came in together. Colkett was chummie, and Cross CID wasn’t letting him go without a struggle.
‘Wait,’ Gently said. He gave them a résumé of his talk with Dinno and the kids. They listened impatiently. A couple of times Gissing’s lips shaped to interrupt. At last he exclaimed, ‘But that’s plain proof, sir! It proves Colkett knew what Peachment had got.’
Gently grinned. ‘If we believe the kids.’
Gissing gaped. ‘They couldn’t’ve made all that up.’
‘I put in some check questions,’ Gently admitted. ‘I think maybe sometimes Dinno was leading me. But if it’s true, then there was more than one coin – and it’s long odds that one coin is all Colkett had.’
‘But that’s still surmise, sir!’ Scoles broke in.
Gently shrugged. ‘It’s all surmise. We’ll know a bit more when we pull in Colkett. One thing’s sure – he’ll have to talk now.’
Gissing was shaking his head bereftly, his eyes miserable and unseeing.
‘I don’t know . . .’
He had to believe! Within was pure certainty that Colkett was guilty.
‘We’ll search, then.’ He rose blunderingly. ‘Those warrants’ll be across any minute. If we can just find the rest of those coins . . . they’ve got to be there. We’ll find them.’
‘And if they aren’t?’
Gissing made a gesture, as though warning Gently to get behind him. He grabbed the phone and raked off a number.
Gently shrugged again, and pulled out his pipe.
The warrants came. In a stone-cold Wolseley they bumbled through the snows to Playford Road. Hallet’s was shuttered, but a window down the yard spilled dim light on the foot of the stairs. Half a snowman, walking out of a doorway, proved to be Police Constable Metcalfe. He had nothing to tell them. After he’d told it he moved stiffly back into the doorway. Then a door opened cautiously in the yard and a thick-set, sweatered man peered out.
‘Who are you lot then?’
It was Mr Hallet, with his plump wife peering spitefully over his shoulder.
‘You got a warrant, have you?’
Gissing flashed it at him. Hallet made him hold it closer to the light.
‘These are my premises . . . what’s up with old Cokey? You fare to want him rare bad.’