The Dreaming Detective

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘Shall we try? For instance, can you remember who else was in the foyer of the ballroom while you were waiting for the Boy to complete his meditation?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Come, that’s nonsense. You must be able to recall some of the others, even though it’s thirty years ago.’

  ‘So I must, must I? But what if I can’t? People forget, you know. People even forget the most terrible things that have happened to them. Do you think I can remember what I felt, when I was no more than a slip of a boy, when the doctors told me that with the ankylosis I’d have to wear a calliper on my left leg for ever more? Well, I can’t. I can’t remember that. I can’t remember them fixing that first calliper on. It seems as if it, or the others they put on me, have been there for ever. So why should I be able to remember that day the Boy Preacher — Oh, I recall him from time to time — on the day he was strangled? If that’s what happened to him.’

  Can I believe all this? Harriet asked herself. Or is it the first line of defence that many a criminal has produced on the other side of the table in the interview room. Can’t remember, can’t remember, don’t know, don’t know.

  Right, they’ve broken down in the end and come up with a full confession. Not all of them. But enough. So will this obstinate fellow crumble in the same way?

  But he won’t. Not here on his own ground, in this wretched hovel of a shop with its grime-stained wall, its ill-lit staircase, its tattered advertisements for brands of watches and clocks long forgotten. Here he’ll feel he can defy the world with its alien commands and prohibitions. But one day, if he’s to be had, I’ll have him.

  She turned to go. But in the narrow doorway underneath the old clanging bell she turned back and snapped out one sentence towards the cripple’s sullen turned-away back.

  ‘Let me warn you, Mr Trapnell, that if I find even the smallest piece of evidence that leads me to think you have not been entirely frank with me, I will come straight back. And I will not then take I’ve forgotten as being any proper answer.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Harriet, as soon as she had stepped out into the narrow shabby street under the watch mender’s swinging sign, felt a twinge of regret at her ferocity. But what’s done is done, she said to herself with a faint shrug of resignation.

  Time to move on.

  ‘Right,’ she said to Pip Steadman as she marched back into her cubbyhole office, ‘have you located Sydney Bigod yet?’

  A fierce blush appeared behind the white triangular beard as he rose from his chair.

  But Harriet, the Hard Detective all set to beat to the post Mr Newbroom and his instant DNA expectations, ignored the all too obvious sign of nervous dismay.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘No. Er, no. No, ma’am, I’m afraid I — Well, I’ve had no luck. I’ve been on to Norfolk Police. In Norwich as well as Cromer. Er, twice. Twice, as a matter of ... But — But they’ve lost all sight of Bigod.’

  ‘Have they indeed? That’s not much help, is it?’

  By way of response the little detective extracted a cigarette pack from his pocket.

  ‘Ma’am, may I?’ he begged.

  ‘All right, go ahead. If you must.’

  ‘No, ma’am, I’m afraid I haven’t done too well there,’ he said, lighting up. ‘But, well, there is one thing that I learnt from the station at Cromer. Bigod’s name is not really Bigod. I got on to an old desk sergeant there, and he remembered him. He said — He said they found out thirty years ago, when DCI Kenworthy was making inquiries, that he’d only — That is, that Bigod had only taken that name when he left Cromer and came here. Here to Birchester, I mean. His real name, he said, was Vine. Vine. Sydney Vine. It was when he moved here — he’d made Cromer too hot to hold him — that he took to calling himself Bigod. Er, ma’am.’

  ‘Right. Good. We could be on to something here. You remember I told you Bigod was an old Norfolk name, name of the Earls of Norfolk back in the time of King Richard and bad brother King John?’

  At this friendlier tone, Pip subsided back on to his chair.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, ma’am. You were in Norwich when your husb — ‘

  ‘Never mind that. The point is that, when things got too hot for Bigod down in Norfolk and he came to the big city here, he must have changed his name to the first one he thought of, that Norwich Bigod. So, when at the time of the murder he decided to go back to somewhere he felt happy, like Norwich, isn’t it possible that, criminal as he is, he stuck to his old modus operandi and picked on a Birchester name to hide under?’

  ‘Well, I suppose so. But, well, isn’t that a bit of — Well, if you’ll excuse me, ma’am, a wild guess.’

  ‘Yes, DC. That’s just what it is. A wild guess. But there’s something to be said for wild guesses. If you find you can make thoughts that seem to come from the back of your mind, or from a dream even, fit into whatever investigation you have on hand you should go with them. All right, they may take you nowhere. Nine times out of ten they probably do. But there’s always the tenth chance, and it’s one worth following to the very end.’

  She looked across at Pip sitting there twisting one hand in another.

  ‘It’s not just by being the so-called Hard Detective that I’ve clocked up such successes as I’ve had. It’s by not immediately thrusting down, in the name of the great god Common Sense, the wild guesses that have sometimes come to me.’

  ‘But — But — ‘ Pip stammered. ‘But, ma’am, even if your guess is right and Bigod has taken a Birchester name to keep himself out of the way of the Norfolk Police, how are we to find what that name is?’

  He drew himself up a little, fighting to throw off the vestiges of the breakdown that had brought him as an extra burden to Harriet’s side.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Look, I’m Birchester born and I can’t think of any name, any name like Bigod, that sticks out here in Birchester. I’m sure I can’t.’

  ‘Can’t you? Perhaps you’ve lost your trust in leaps of the imagination since your — Since you left advertising and joined the police.’

  ‘Perhaps I have, perhaps I have. But I still can’t see what leap of the imagination’s going to produce a Birchester name that Vine took to Norwich all those years ago.’

  ‘Can’t you? But it’s simple enough. We don’t try and persuade our imaginations to leap. To begin with you can’t. It just has to happen. But what we can do is use a bit of plain hard work after they’ve made that leap. For instance, we can look on the Internet now at every page in the Norwich phone book till we find something that fits.’

  She saw Pip’s appalled look.

  ‘Yes, DC. Hard work. But no case was ever resolved without someone doing some dull, plodding, sheer hard work.’

  ‘Well, all right, ma’am.’

  He heaved himself up from his lopsided chair. Harriet smiled.

  ‘No, not you, DC. This plodding task, I rather think, should be carried out by the person who made the wild guess.’

  *

  But under the letter A, as she sat scrolling through the Norwich phone book on a commandeered computer, Harriet almost at once came across the name Aslough.

  Bingo. Aslough Parade. Where we buy those perfect croissants. All right, it may yet turn out to be just an extraordinary coincidence, but Aslough’s certainly as odd a name as Bigod. Didn’t John tell me once it really should be a slough because the street, smart though it is now, was first made back in the nineteenth century to run across what had been a large patch of marshy land on the edge of growing Birchester? Of course he did.

  And, of course, this entry for Aslough Car Sales could lead me to a man who has risen up from being a shady street vendor here in Birchester to — To the perhaps equally shady world of the second-hand motor trade in Norwich. I’d be surprised if there isn’t a Mr Sydney Aslough known to the police there, though they may never have linked him to Sydney Bigod, otherwise Sydney Vine.

  So, what a piece of luck. No sooner did I pontificate to poor Pip a
bout the virtues of the wild guess, not to mention the dream, than up comes a splendid example.

  Provided always that Sydney Aslough in Norwich does turn out to have been Sydney Bigod, just possibly involved in some piece of financial craftiness over the Boy Preacher’s funds. A piece of criminality which, if it had somehow come to the Boy’s notice, might have led Bigod to commit a spur-of-the-moment murder. Because, if he hadn’t attached himself to the Boy for the purpose of getting at the considerable funds his preaching had brought in, then why had he become one of those Meadowcraft called the Clique? From all I’ve heard of him he’s no good-hearted do-gooder.

  So something to be found? Right, it’s off to Norwich.

  *

  Glossy. That, Harriet decided, was the word for the Aslough Car Sales lot. The large forecourt, though fundamentally no more than an area of dusty tarmac, was decorated with bunches of bright balloons and flamboyant notices telling the world what bargains it was passing up by not coming in to look. And the premises beyond were every bit as alluringly smart, at least to the casual eye. The long fascia above them proclaimed in blazing red Bargains! Bargains! Bargains! Aslough Car Sales — Bargains! Bargains! Bargains! The windows below shone with polishing. Behind them, rather hard to see, three particularly smart cars gleamed enticingly, each presumably yet more of a bargain, if requiring a greater sum put down in cash.

  But in much smaller lettering, under that Bargains! Bargains! Bargains!, Harriet spotted, next to the telephone number and website address, the words S. Aslough Proprietor. S is for Sydney, she said to herself. Right, let’s have a word with Sydney Aslough, so-called, proprietor of Aslough Car Sales.

  She marched through the crude scaffold-tubes entrance archway, heavily decorated with bunting, and threaded her way past cars of every shape and size, each bearing a bright red-letters notice saying how wonderfully cheap it was.

  Inside the showroom a girl sat behind a smart light-wood desk, pretty and prettily dressed in a red low-cut cotton blouse with trousers to match. Lips, equally red, pouted.

  ‘Mr Aslough in?’ Harriet demanded. ‘Mr Sydney Aslough?’

  ‘D’you wanna buy a car? I can handle that.’

  ‘It’s a personal matter.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, he is in, I suppose. Who’ll I say it is?’

  ‘Mrs Piddock,’ Harriet answered, seizing on her married name. ‘He won’t know me.’

  The girl picked up the phone on her desk.

  ‘Lady to see you. A Mrs Piddock.’

  Impossible to make out the voice at the other end. But it seemed that it had uttered some welcoming words. I wonder, Harriet thought, whether the response would have been the same if the girl here had said Gentleman to see you or, even worse, Detective Superintendent Martens to see you.

  ‘It’s through there. Door marked “private”.’

  *

  Harriet immediately recognized the man she had seen in the thirty-year-old black-and-white police photograph which had fallen out of DCI Kenworthy’s files. Sydney Aslough, though fuller in the face, was clearly Sydney Bigod, or Sydney Vine. He was sitting behind a much bigger desk than his receptionist’s, the two telephones on it differently coloured, the computer terminal gleaming. Nothing else except a large glass ashtray in which a cigar butt still faintly smoked. A very expensive-looking open-necked shirt only partially hid Sydney’s well-fleshed torso.

  In garishness, Harriet thought, it might be fellow to the shirt I saw on its way to the lab on Monday, though that had looked a good deal less sail-like. So Sydney Bigod, street trader, has plainly prospered since he became Sydney Aslough, motor trader, proud possessor of this many-pocketed, multi-buttoned garment.

  ‘Well, me darling, what can I do for you?’

  Harriet paused for just a second before she delivered her puncturing thrust.

  ‘You can answer some questions. Detective Superintendent Martens, Greater Birchester Police.’

  Sydney Aslough grinned.

  ‘Clever lady, ain’t you, getting yourself in to see me? Mrs — What did Maggie say your name was? Mrs Something-or-other. Paddy? Piddy? Got it. Piddle. You know, I must have a word with that Maggie. She’s meant to have eyes in her head. Not to let the boys in blue — I beg yours — the pretty ladies in blue come poking in here, not without giving me a word of warning. Might have had the loot all spread out on the desk, mightn’t I?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think you’d have needed a word of warning about me, Mr Aslough. Or should I say Mr Bigod?’

  ‘Ah, so that’s what we’re on about, is it? Some bit of trouble from my time in Birchester? Though I don’t know what it can be about. Kept my nose nice and clean over there. Most of the time, anyhow.’

  ‘Including the time, Mr Bigod, you spent looking after a certain Krishna Kumaramangalam, known as the Boy Preacher — the one who was murdered while you were in the next room?’

  ‘Ah, him.’

  Yes, the cheeky tone vanishing away, water down a drain.

  ‘Yes, him. And the questions I want to ask you are about that evening, there in the Imperial Hotel, when the Boy’s life was brought to an end.’

  ‘Yeah, well ... Well, long time ago, weren’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it was. More than thirty years ago. On the evening of May the twenty-second, 1969, to be precise.’

  ‘Yep, thirty years ago plus. You’re dead right. So why’re you coming all the way over here to ask me about it?’

  ‘One simple reason, Mr Bigod,’ Harriet replied, casting away, in face of this streetwise Norwich citizen, any pretence of this being a mere hunt for cases from the past suitable for re-investigation. ‘Thanks to advances in the technique of DNA analysis, we are now in a position to know who it was who leant over the Boy, as he came out of a state of meditation, and strangled the life out of him.’

  ‘Bully for you. Bully for those DNA techniques, whatever they are. But that don’t answer my question. Why’ve you come to see little old Sydney, never did no harm to no one? Unless it was selling ’em something they didn’t ought to have bought.’

  Harriet gave him a grin. She couldn’t help it. Cheek is endearing.

  ‘Right, I haven’t come to arrest you, if that’s what you were afraid of. I’ve come, as I said, to ask you some questions.’

  Sydney Bigod gave her a cautious look.

  ‘Straight up?’

  ‘Straight up.’

  ‘Then fire away.’

  ‘Right, the night or the evening of the murder. You were there in the foyer of the Imperial’s ballroom with half a dozen other members of what’s been called Kumaramangalam’s Clique.

  ‘Hey, yeah. I know who called us that, chap what wrote that book. What was it called? Who Knocked Off the Preacher? Something like that. Read it, you know. Saw it on the next-door stall in the market here, couple o’ years after it all happened. If I’d seen it earlier I might have had a go at him, that Michael Mastercraft, whatever. He was out of order, you know, right out of order and not only about me. Said some right nasty things about that little Harish, wouldn’t hurt a fly. He still around, old Harish? D’you know?’

  Harriet sighed.

  ‘No, no, I’m afraid Harish Nair died several years ago.’

  ‘You’re not going to try an’ pin it on him then, are you? All nice an’ dead, can’t hit back? Wouldn’t put it past coppers, not anywhere, Birchester or Norwich.’

  ‘No, Mr Aslough. We are not going to try to pin it on Harish Nair.’

  And then, a nasty second thought.

  ‘Or, not unless we have evidence, good evidence.’

  ‘That new DNA? Read about it in the paper. Don’t they use it in the States nowadays, fix the blame in paternity cases? Screwing lolly out of all those sex-mad billionaires.’

  Yes, Harriet could not help thinking, some scientist over in Cherry Fettleham may at this moment be testing Harish Nair’s shirt, the one with little yellow daisies on a pale green background. I can see it now, as Pip bundled it off to the lab. Just what I
thought a gentle, sweet man like Harish would have been wearing. And it’s not impossible the scientists there will find a DNA match between the saliva on that shirt and the specimens taken from the Boy’s body. There’s no reason why they should not. If not today or in a few days’ time, then within weeks. After all, they may have paid attention to the urgent message I sent on to them from Mr Newbroom.

  But I haven’t come all this way to sit musing about what a nice man Harish Nair was. I’ve come to find out, if I can, how nasty Sydney Bigod is, underneath all this happy cheekiness. Am I in fact talking to a murderer? A murderer who committed his crime thirty years ago?

  ‘Right, enough about sex-mad billionaires. What I’m here for, Mr Bigod, is to ask you about that evening of May the twenty-second, 1969. You remember the ballroom foyer there, I suppose.’

  ‘Yeah. Sort of.’

  ‘Very good, tell me about the other six people in there with you.’

  ‘Cor, that’s a tall order. Can’t hardly remember the names of some of ‘em.’

  ‘You remembered Harish Nair’s.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you don’t so often come across a bloke as nice as him. Nice through an’ through he was. An’ that’s not what you can say about everyone. Hey, yeah, here’s another I do remember. ‘Cos of that. That Mr Lucas Calverte. You’d say he was nice, first look at him. An’ the second, an’ the third. Gentleman of the old school, always polite even if it was plain he thought you were shit. But treat you as if nothing like that had ever been in his mind. What he’d been brought up to do. But — what was I saying? — get right down inside him, an’ you see he’s someone who just wants what he wants, an’ bugger everybody else.’

  ‘That’s interesting. So, do you think, for some reason, Lucas Calverte might have wanted Krishna Kumaramangalam dead?’

  ‘The Boy, you mean? Never could get the hang of all that Indian. Did old Lukey want to get rid of the Boy, for some reason? Could be. Could be, I’d say. It’s like I told you. Get below the skin, an’ you find it’s one for all and all for Number One.’