Say Goodbye to the Boys

by Mari Stead Jones

  I didn’t really care much whether or not Amos lived or died. But fearing for him, at that time was at least something positive, something to act on.

  ‘Oh – you is it, Philip?’ Miss Williams said. ‘Strangers ringing my bell all day. Don’t you think everything’s gone strange?’

  ‘Is he back, Miss Williams?’

  ‘Who? Mr Rude? That’s what I call him. Oh, yes – he came back – smelling of manure and soaking wet. Mr Rude and Smelly.’ She tittered nervously and touched her mouth. ‘He’s not going to stay in my house much longer I can tell you.’

  ‘Well – may I see him? Was Emlyn Morton with him?’

  ‘Both of them stinking,’ she said. ‘Messed up my bathroom. Left smells everywhere – and out they went again. He called Emlyn Morton his bodyguard!’

  ‘Did he say where they were going?’ Her narrow head shook a negative. ‘Did he leave a message, then?’

  ‘For you, Philip? Your name was never mentioned in my hearing.’ Great, I thought, great. ‘Besides,’ she added in a voice laced with spite, ‘you’re not supposed to ask great detectives where they’re going, are you? That’s what I told George Garston’s boy.’

  ‘Davy Garston? Has he been here?’

  ‘No more than an hour ago. He had his coat up – like this.’ She cupped her face in her hands. ‘Wanted to speak to Mr Ellyott. He looked very strange. You all look very strange. I don’t know what the world is coming to...’

  ‘Miss Williams – if Davy Garston comes back don’t let him in, all right? On no account.’

  She drew herself up to her full height, which wasn’t much. ‘Don’t you worry,’ she said. ‘Nobody comes in this house. I’ve told the Police about David Garston.’

  Davy Garston fits. I was trying to persuade myself as I climbed the stairs to Amos’s rooms. I was in time to catch Mr Stubbs as he came out and turned the key in the door. Stubbs didn’t like me. He didn’t look as if he liked anyone very much.

  ‘Of course he isn’t in. Been ordered to stop out, hasn’t he?’

  ‘You’ve not seen him?’

  Mr Stubbs shook his polished head. ‘Not today, thank God. I’ve told them it’s a case of red herrings. They shouldn’t keep listening to old cranks.’

  ‘The Tower, you mean?’

  He gave me a superior smile. ‘The Tower if you like. Everything if you like.’ He stepped past me on to the stairs. ‘There’s been interference,’ he added heavily. ‘You know about that – the interference that’s gone on. You seen anything of Davy Garston?’

  ‘What d’you want Davy Garston for?’

  He took a couple of aggressive steps back up. ‘You trying to be funny, mister?’

  ‘I don’t have to try – comes naturally.’ Davy Garston, I thought, and why not?

  He was a match fit.

  ‘Listen, Sonny Jim – you are not in the clear by any manner of means.’ Mr Stubbs was wearing his mean and nasty look.

  I walked straight for him, and around him down the stairs and into the fog, into no man’s land.

  David Garston the match fit. He’d had a breakdown in London. He was hitting the bottle. He was one of Lilian’s callers. He had medical knowledge and would know all about pressure points in the neck. A dead cert, old Davy. I went marching through the fog to the Crescent in order to give them the benefit of my reasoning. Davy Garston had links through his father with murky goings on in the past. There was a light on downstairs. I walked up the steps of the porch. Davy Garston would have access to a key for the Market Hall. Everything going for Davy. I raised a hand to knock on the porch door. Above all, Davy Garston had done a bunk and was on the run with a general warrant chasing after him... Oh, balls. I backed out of Idwal’s porch and headed for the pub circuit in search of the great detective and his bodyguard.

  It was a thin night for the brewers. The fog had sealed off the town, nailed the customers behind their own front doors – unless there was something good on the wireless, but that was hardly likely. Only the hard-core were out, blue veins in their noses, blood in their eyes, hands that had only recently stopped shaking, cigarettes going like Roman candles. And they were hostile, too, all staring and corner mouthed whispers and now and then a loud challenge across the room. ‘Reckon us boys ought to turn up for this Town Meeting they’ve called – eight o’clock tonight – all us interested parties. In the Town Hall.’ The mean old heart of the town, the lynch mob who would never leave a drink on the counter to do anything, anytime. And everywhere I drew a blank. No master criminologist and his assistant sighted anywhere. They were probably nose down, like blood hounds in the fog, following clues.

  I tried Ceri’s house again, still without lights, no one at home, not even a comment from the old bird next door. I went tramping again, something burning now on the go, the long braying of the sirens, mocking me. Perhaps I ought to stay in one place for Amos to find me. But I couldn’t stop. I went up and down Liverpool Street twice before I called in the house. Laura was sitting in the kitchen still, a new bottle of stout on the table. She indicated the envelope that had come for me, pushed through the letter box, and no sign of the sender in the street. The note was brief: ‘THE MARKET HALL AT 7. URGENT’. It was signed Andrei Ridetski.

  The padlock in the gates of the Market Hall would not take my key. I examined it. A new padlock. Another message. I walked around the building to the garage at the back, and there again the police guard had been dropped. Everybody out with a pick and a shovel, everybody hunting Davy Garston in the fog.

  I pulled at the central door of the garage. It opened. I stepped inside. The door was swinging shut behind me. And there was someone there. I could sense it. The hairs at the back of my neck responded to it. Black in there. Smell of oil. I thumbed the wheel on my lighter. It fired first time. Someone there all right. He had a twelve bore pointing straight at me. As much as I could see before my lighter went out. Black as the coal house now. George Garston’s voice, high pitched, stretched tight, quavering, ‘Stick your hands up, Andy!’

  The electric light bulb above my head exploded into life. For something less than a blinding second I thought the twelve bore had gone off. ‘Why, Philip, goodness me, is it you?’ He sang it, standing there one foot in front of the other, pointing the gun at me. I was standing close to the back door of a huge old black car, straight out of the gangster flicks, caked with dust and hung with cobwebs. There were bits of old engines on the floor, God knows how many tyres, some milk churns and pieces of broken furniture. Behind Garston was the wall of the Market Hall, a narrow open doorway in it with a thick rope inside that made me think of the gallows. George Garston looked as if he was stuck there. ‘Philip,’ he said, ‘did Andy send for you, too?’

  ‘Andy who?’

  ‘You know.’ George was about done, his narrow face the colour and texture of lard, thick black stubble like a rash, black shadows under his eyes. ‘Andy Ridetski – have you seen him?’

  ‘I thought they were having a dig for him.’ I motioned for him to lower the gun, but the man was stuck and the twin barrels, unfortunately, were stuck on me.

  ‘Digging for Ridetski,’ he said, contempt in his voice. ‘He was a clever man, Andy. He could run rings around anybody.’

  ‘Yet you thought I was Andy.’

  ‘I never said that. Never. It was dark. I couldn’t see who it was.’ A silence fell between us. Then I suggested that it must be a strain holding a heavy gun like that, but he never moved and the black eyes of the gun stared fixedly at an area somewhere below my rib cage. I toyed with the idea of moving, to the left or to the right, just to see what he’d do. Only toyed with it, though.

  ‘We aren’t making any progress,’ I said. ‘What about some facts? Number one – Mr Ridetski is sending out invites. Number two – your David is wanted by the police.’

  The gun
dipped alarmingly, and I thought what have I done.

  ‘That is all nonsense, I tell you. David is completely innocent. I have proof. It’s Mr Ellyott – he’s plotting against me. Plotting everything.’ His eyes flashed wild and white. ‘He’s been digging in my yard! He’s been leaving buttons on my doorstep!’

  ‘Buttons? What kind of buttons?’

  ‘From the RAF uniform! What do I want with buttons? What do I know about buttons?’ The gun swung up then down to support the appeal in his voice. ‘RAF buttons on my doorstep! There are no RAF buttons in my yard. Philip – is Mr Ellyott insane?’

  ‘Almost certainly,’ I said.

  ‘Saying lies about David. Saying lies about me. Saying lies about David and getting him nearly arrested. I never tried to shoot him. It was David!’

  ‘David tried to shoot Mr Ellyott? What about me? I was there as well.’

  ‘I never said that. No, no, no!’ The blank and threatening eyes of the gun looked all around the garage. ‘David was shooting those old crows. He didn’t know Mr Ellyott or anybody was there. It’s his nerves, you see. The examinations for a doctor are very difficult.’ He gave out a long, shuddering sigh. ‘If they can’t find him then it’s the fault of the police – because he isn’t running away, because he’s innocent!’ The prominent Adam’s apple in his scrawny neck rose and dipped but the gun remained steady, pointing.

  ‘Maybe your family shouldn’t play with guns,’ I suggested.

  He didn’t appear to hear me. ‘I couldn’t say anything because they would have said things about David because his nerves are bad. People like a chance to be spiteful. But there was no intent you see. All those police digging inside that old Tower. That old thing. They wouldn’t listen to me. It was in a very bad state and I set to at once, to mend it. Oh, some years ago now. I put some concrete inside it, you know – to hold it – and I tried to do a bit of pointing. But it isn’t well built at all – not a proper tower or anything like that. It’s the truth, Philip. You’ve got to tell Mr Ellyott. I’m just a poor working farmer. He’s playing games with me. My son is completely innocent. I am completely innocent. It’s David havin’ trouble with his nerves – after the exams. You’ve got to explain to Mr Ellyott. You’re his right-hand man.’

  ‘Tell him yourself. He’s probably waiting up there.’

  ‘I was going to tell Andy to tell him. He was a good friend of mine, Andy...’

  ‘Is that why he sent you those photos?’

  ‘All false, them pictures. He’d made them up!’

  ‘You got another one a few days ago – was that fake too?’

  The twelve bore waved about but there wasn’t much menace in it. ‘All false them photos. He’d made them up. I took them to an expert and he showed me how Andy had done them up. For a joke, you see...’

  ‘Which is why you stopped handing out the cash?’

  His voice dropped to a grating whisper. ‘You don’t make a fool out of me, mister! Nobody makes a fool out of me.’ An arrogant twist at his mouth.

  ‘OK – Ridetski sent you the first lot of pictures?’

  ‘I never said that. You’re putting words in my mouth.’

  ‘Sorry – but do you know who sent you the last one?’

  He gave out a growl which I took to be a laugh. ‘That Mr Ellyott of course.’ He paused for some time, his mouth moving, eyes narrowing as he weighed up the way the conversation was going. ‘It’s all supposing, isn’t it? If I got some old photo – which I’m not saying I did – it would be Mr Ellyott. Another of his tricks.’

  ‘Not Mr Ellyott,’ I said, hoping it was true.

  For the first time the twelve bore pointed away from me. He cradled the gun in the crook of his left arm. ‘You know who it was, Philip?’

  ‘Certainly. It was Mrs Edmunds who sent you that photo.’

  It nearly knocked him over. ‘Never,’ he snarled. ‘Never, never, never. Sent it for that big talker MT, you mean? Oh, never, never, never! It was Mr Ellyott who told you to say that!’

  And the gun went off.

  A twelve bore going off is best appreciated if it is fired inside a corrugated iron garage. I thought the roof had blown out. Pellets whined around me, rebounding off the ancient car. And in the middle of it all there was the terrible crackle of broken glass. The car’s windscreen had blown out.

  I had gone down on my knees, arms up to protect my face. When I looked up it was the deathly quiet after thunder. George Garston was standing over me, and he was blubbering, broken. ‘It was an accident, Philip. An accident, an accident.’ He went blundering past me, making no effort to see if I was all right. And the sounds coming from him were of an animal in pain. He had a struggle with the door, then he charged out into the fog and the door slowly swung back into place.

  The silence was deafening. I stood there and waited for the rush. Surely to God the entire neighbourhood must have heard the gun go off, but no one came running to the door, and inside the lift the rope hung stiff and still.

  I had blood on my cheek, a trickle running down to the corner of my mouth. I wiped it away, more blood on my handkerchief than I had expected. I went over to the lift, broken glass grinding under my shoes. Only one way to go now, up a dark shaft to where there was a faint chink of light. I tried not to guess who would be up there. Not Ridetski, for sure. I climbed in. You sat with the rope running free between your legs. One way to go, and I admired myself for being so calm, blood on my face and all, until I began to pull on the rope. How easy it was, so little effort required to rise into the darkness, the wheels drumming above. Then everything closed in on me. How did you stop the bloody thing? But the time I drew level with the chink of light I was in a panic and pulling too fast. I yanked up on the rope and came to a lurching halt. And then I was scratching feverishly for the catch to the door, sweat breaking out on my forehead. My fingers found the catch. The door opened and I stumbled into the secret room. Two hurricane lamps on a table. Amos behind the table. A stranger in a white raincoat sitting at one end. Empty chairs in front of the table. Amos wore a hat with a wide brim. He had a black automatic in his hand, pointing at me. A night for cowboys, I thought. A night for a showdown.

  XVI

  ‘Ah,’ Amos said, ‘Philip Roberts. Come up to the light.’ He placed the pistol carefully on some papers in front of him. ‘You are the first to accept Mr Ridetski’s invitation.’

  The stranger was a big man with awkward movements, broad in the shoulder but not perhaps as broad as the raincoat suggested. A fancy dresser, he had a long lean face with dark, swarthy skin. Cheapened by a two piece moustache which made him look like a city con man. He had a gold tooth, a gold ring on his left hand. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said, smiling. ‘Got a bad leg – excuse me.’ He sounded more cockney than Polish.

  ‘Mr Ridetski broke a leg some years ago,’ Amos explained. ‘It was set very badly.’ He pushed back his hat. ‘You have blood on your face. Did someone try to shoot you?’ With a wave of his hand he indicated that I was to sit next to him, at the opposite end of the table from Ridetski. ‘I take it you haven’t seen Mr Ridetski before?’ I shook my head. ‘Philip,’ he told the stranger, ‘distrusts me because he is in awe of my mental powers – is that not so, Philip?’

  ‘Just tell me what the hell you’re doing up here.’

  ‘Philip found the war tolerable only if he stopped thinking.’ He did his cackling laugh. ‘Where were you all day? Emlyn was asking for you. Have you seen him?’ Again I shook my head. ‘There’s blood on your face. We heard a noise which we took to be gunfire...’

  ‘Garston’s cracked up,’ I said. ‘He shot his car down there. You’ve overdone it. Scared the bugger off.’

  The old man made irritable noises. ‘This is a grave matter,’ he responded sharply. ‘We are here to conclude it. The end justifies the means.’


  ‘That’s a load of fucking bullshit, Amos. You want to be the main man, don’t you? Playing God. That’s why you picked this place and got your lanterns out and delivered your invitations and made sure nobody can come up here except by that bloody lift. That’s why you’ve had the police running around in circles.’ My voice echoed back at me from the outer darkness, hollow and mocking.

  It brought on a silence that lingered. The stranger shuffled his feet and made silent appeals to Amos and let me have the benefit of some heavy staring.

  ‘I see,’ the old man said at last. ‘You disapprove of my methods, but you may yet find that I am not some avenging angel. May I ask you to describe your encounter with Mr Garston?’ He smiled. ‘Please, Philip?’

  I went through it with them, and Amos nodded and didn’t make a single interruption. When I had finished he said, ‘The police have not found his son?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know. He called at your lodgings, wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘That sounds promising. You got the impression that George Garston thought you were Ridetski?’

  ‘Yes.’ I glanced at the stranger. ‘But you’ve scared him off.’

  ‘We shall see.’ Amos picked up the pistol and held it out to me. ‘Philip, I would regard it a favour if you would have charge of this weapon.’

  ‘No chance,’ I said.

  ‘Please?’ I shook my head firmly and stuck my hands deep into my pockets. ‘But – it is possible that an attempt will be made on my life.’