The Gigantic Shadow

by Julian Symons

  He had been engaged after the submission of a series of spoof articles supposed to have been written by a traveller in the Soviet Union. The paper had bought, but never printed, these articles. Somebody had now disinterred one of these from the files, and it was printed, presumably to show the extreme disingenuousness of his character. There was an interview with Jerry Wilton in which he stuck rather bravely to some sort of guns, saying that Bill Hunter had been a very good television interviewer, with fresh ideas and a good technique, and that he had been personally extremely sorry when Bill resigned. In answer to the question, ‘Would it have made any difference to you, had you known you were working with a convicted murderer?’ Jerry had gallantly replied, ‘Not the slightest. I judge people by their behaviour, and Bill was always a good trooper.’ Anna was mentioned in a couple of the stories, as his friend. She replied to all questions about where he was, ‘He told me he was going away to the country for a complete rest.’

  All this was what he had expected, and he was glad to be away from it. There was one other item of interest, a telephone call made by the Banner to Mr Nicholas Mekles, at his villa on the Riviera. Mekles, according to the paper, had said:

  ‘I was given the information about Hunter shortly before the interview began. I confess that I was surprised that such a man should be sent to interview me, but I thought it would not be polite to raise an objection at the last minute. During the interview, however, the remarks he made were so insulting that I felt obliged to say something. I had no wish to force his resignation.’

  ‘Why did you refer to him by the name O’Brien when he was tried and convicted in the name of Hartley?’ the Banner reporter asked.

  ‘I did not wish to cause Hunter unnecessary embarrassment.’

  ‘His suggestions about your business connection with Bond were quite baseless?’

  ‘Quite baseless. As I told the police, I never heard of the man before in my life.’

  Lying on his bed and staring up at the stained, cracked ceiling, he realised that few people would believe that he had asked the question about Bond innocently, merely on the basis of Charlie’s research notes. Mekles had naturally considered the remark as a vicious personal attack, and had struck back. But how had he been able to strike back, where did his knowledge come from, how did he know the name of O’Brien? It was common, although not invariable, for members of the IRA to use another name, especially if they were engaged in dangerous work. The police had guessed that Hartley was an assumed name, but had made little attempt to trace his real one. What did it matter, when he was safe inside with a sentence of life imprisonment? He had quarrelled with his parents, and had left home. They had never got into touch with him while he was in prison, and if they had identified their son with the man accused of murder in Britain they had, typically, kept quiet about it.

  How, then, had Mekles learned the name O’Brien? When Anna had mentioned this very point he had asked, ‘Does it matter?’ But now, with knees up on the bed, he found himself mildly curious. Three men had been with him on the job – Craxton, Mulligan and Bert Bailey. They had known his real name, they had all done long stretches. But Mulligan had died in the war, and Craxton had been knocked over by a car and killed five years ago, just after doing a job. That left Bert Bailey – garrulous, stupid Bert Bailey with his whining voice and his interminable stream of hard-luck stories, which he even sprung on the police after his arrest. Could Bert Bailey be working for Mekles? It seemed unlikely and in any case, he repeated to himself as the small spark of curiosity died, what does it matter? Bill O’Brien, alias Bill Hartley, alias Bill Hunter, alias William Smith, he said to himself, you are worrying about something that is no longer any concern of yours. Worn out by the strain of so much, and such depressing, thought, he fell into a light sleep.

  Waking, he felt a strangely exhilarating sense of freedom, with a small undercurrent of shame. Freedom: it was something, after all, to have the worst known and said, to have lost temporarily the fear of discovery that had been for years the motive force of his actions. He had committed a crime, he had spent years in prison for it, the offence had been paid for. What was he afraid of, then, why was he hiding like a rat in this stinking hole of a hotel? And the shame was complementary to this feeling, it urged him to start a new life without delay, since that was apparently what he wanted.

  Before that, though, he should finish with the old one. Having said goodbye to Anna, he should now say goodbye also to Charlie Cash. He went down to the gloomy lounge, telephoned Charlie and arranged to meet him in a Wilton Road pub. When he got there, Charlie was already at the bar.

  ‘I’ve been trying to get in touch with you, Bill. Anna said you’d left, she didn’t know where you were.’ He looked sideways down his long nose. ‘She’s taking it hard, Bill.’

  He shook his head irritably. ‘It’s better for Anna, as well as for me. We couldn’t go on.’

  ‘She doesn’t think that.’

  ‘It has to be, Charlie, it’s just a thing that has to be. I’ve got to make a fresh start. Another name, another kind of life. You must see that.’

  Charlie made no comment on that. ‘I wanted to see you. But tell me what you wanted me for, first.’

  ‘They’ve given me six months’ pay. You’ve lost a pretty good client, and it wasn’t your fault. I ought to pay you something.’ Put like that, it sounded offensive, and he was not surprised that Charlie shook his head.

  ‘No need. I’ve lined up a replacement client already. Besides, if I hadn’t given you that stuff about Bond you wouldn’t have blown your top. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Bond, I mean.’

  ‘Bond?’ Whatever he had expected, it was not this.

  ‘I know a sergeant at the station, and he gave me the inside story.’ Charlie always knew a sergeant, or an electrician, or an understudy, who could give him the inside story. His life was passed in interpreting hints, putting two and two together, reading something – but was it the truth? – between the lines. ‘The police think Bond was being blackmailed.’

  He looked at the dark beer in his glass, then wonderingly, up at the barmaid, who returned his stare. It crossed his mind that she might have recognised his picture in the paper. Charlie was talking again.

  ‘This sergeant may have been dropping a story deliberately. You know that inspector on the case, Crambo? He’s smarter than he sounds. He may have told the sergeant to drop the story to me, reckoning it would get back to you.’ Hunter shook his head vaguely, to show that he did not know or care whether Crambo might have done this. ‘But I don’t think so.’

  Charlie put a toothpick in his mouth, twisted it thoughtfully. ‘Bond took dope, that’s the way my sergeant boyfriend tells it, probably reefers. He left a note, can’t go on and all that. He’d been quite a boy this Bond, in Parliament at twenty-seven, made a splash with his first speech, possible advancement, so on. Then none of it happened and he resigned his seat for reasons of health. Ran this Bellwinder Company, but that was on the skids. Hard up. Now, what does all that add up to?’

  He was conscious of pure indifference to Melville Bond, and even to Charlie Cash. ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘It matters this much, cock, that the cops have been giving me an uncomfortable time of it this last day or two. Where did my information about Bond come from, that kind of stuff. They seem to take it all pretty seriously.’

  ‘And you told them.’

  ‘Yes, I told them.’ Charlie took the toothpick out of his mouth, broke it, put it in an ashtray. ‘Trouble is, it’s not that simple. There’s a geezer I know named Twisty Dodds, kind of a small-time crook you might call him, and I got this story from Twisty, he’s got a girl named Maida. Now Maida’s cousin is –’

  He ceased to listen. Exhilaration about the future filled his mind to the exclusion of anything else. The words, a clean break, were repeated over and over. What kind of a break? On the money now in the bank he could live for how many months – six, nine, twelve? – in Spain, Por
tugal, Austria, Southern Italy. He would settle there, merge imperceptibly into the life of the country. O’Brien, Hartley, Hunter, Smith, they would all become one anonymous figure living peacefully in the country of his choice…

  A name brought him back. ‘What’s that?’ he asked. ‘What did you say?’

  Charlie looked surprised. ‘I just told you. This sister of Maida’s cousin, this Queenie, is going about with a man named Paddy Brannigan.’

  Paddy Brannigan. The name brought with it a face, square and vicious, young, with expressionless grey eyes. Captain Brannigan of the Irish Republican Army, Captain Brannigan who had told them just what to do and how to do it. Captain Brannigan, not long out of his teens himself, who had given a boy a gun and told him to use it.

  ‘Brannigan. You said Brannigan?’

  Charlie looked at him sideways, slyly. ‘That’s right. You know him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, Brannigan told this girl he was working for Mekles, see. I told the police that.’

  ‘What did they think of it?’

  Charlie’s mouth turned down in mock self-deprecation. ‘Not much.’

  ‘Have the police been in touch with him?’

  ‘How would I know? The sergeant didn’t tell me. There’s another thing, Bill.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I don’t want you to think I’m sticking my nose in. Though you may say it’s long enough.’ Charlie grinned.

  ‘I didn’t say it.’ He didn’t grin back.

  ‘You’re not treating that girl right, Bill, running out on her the way you have. A lovely girl like that. It’s none of my business, really.’

  ‘You’re right there.’

  ‘But I’ve got to say it. You’re not treating her right, a girl like that. I call it a damned shame.’

  He said nothing. Charlie drained his glass and ordered another. ‘PMYOB, is it? All right, you don’t have to say it out loud. But I wanted to talk to you about Bond.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘There doesn’t seem any doubt it was suicide, but still there was something rotten in the state of Denmark. Suppose you and I took a looksee to try and find out something.’

  ‘Can it do any good? I don’t see the point.’

  ‘Hard to tell whether there’s any point,’ Charlie said carefully. ‘May be a waste of time. Half the things we do are a waste of time if you ask me. Won’t get you your job back, that’s for sure. But if we turned up something that put you in the clear with the police, it wouldn’t do any harm. Wouldn’t do me any harm either, to tell you the truth.’

  Suddenly he felt warmly affectionate towards Charlie, aware of the utterly unassuming nature of his friendship. ‘Let’s look around,’ he said. ‘And thanks.’

  ‘Hoped you’d say that. I fixed an appointment for us to see the caretaker of Bond’s block of flats. In half an hour. Just got time for another pint.’

  Chapter Eight

  Bond had lived in a large block of anonymous flats, a greyish slab at the back of Marble Arch. The caretaker, to Hunter’s surprise, was a woman, a dark square-faced motherly woman in her forties named Mrs Williams, who watched with apparent fascination the toothpick that shuttled from side to side of Charlie’s mouth. But although fascinated she was cautious. ‘I’ve told the police everything, of course. And newspapermen too. What would you gentlemen be wanting information for, now?’

  Charlie rolled the toothpick frantically. His explanation was voluble but confused. Hunter caught words and phrases. ‘…journalists…my editor said…something more behind it, Cash, than simple…heart of the mystery…get right down there and find out…’ He took out his wallet, but the woman’s eyes showed no gleam at sight of the notes with which it was stuffed.

  She seemed merely puzzled. ‘I’ve got my work to do, you know, but I don’t mind answering questions if they don’t take too much time. But there’s no mystery that I know of. Mr Bond jumped out of the window, poor man, and that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘Ah, but why did he jump?’ Charlie put his head on one side as he asked the question, to which he immediately added another. ‘Did you know that he took drugs?’

  ‘I did not. But how would I have done? I used to clean up there for an hour every day, but I never saw anything suspicious. For the matter of that, I probably wouldn’t have recognised it anyway.’

  ‘You cleaned up the flat,’ Charlie said in an astonished voice, rather as if she had told him she performed a daily miracle. In what was almost a whisper he said, ‘Would it be possible for us – my friend here and I – to have a look over it?’

  She looked doubtful, and he again produced the wallet. This time she spoke decisively. ‘You can put that thing away, and stop flashing your money at me. I’m an honest widow, Mr Cash, quite satisfied with what I get from my job here. If I show you the flat it’s because I like your looks, and not for money.’

  ‘You mean you’re going to let us see it? Bless you, ma’am.’ Charlie split his long body in a bow, so that his head almost touched the floor.

  ‘You don’t go prying about in there alone, mind. I’ll be in there with you. I know what you’re like, you journalists. Not a scrap of honesty among the lot of you. Rob your own mothers to get a story.’ She spoke almost affectionately.

  ‘Did he have many visitors?’ Hunter asked as they went up in the lift.

  ‘How should I know? They come in, get into the lift, press the button. No reason for me to see them, or them to see me.’

  They got out, walked along the corridor, stopped in front of a door.

  ‘What sort of a man was he?’

  ‘What sort of a man?’ She had taken out a key and put it in the lock. Now she turned it. ‘Work it out for yourself.’

  The flat consisted of a living room, bedroom, bathroom and kitchenette. It had, like so many such flats, an utter lack of individuality. The furniture was of good quality, but might have come from any big department store. The books in two small cases were book club editions. A desk stood in one corner of the room. Charlie moved over towards it, delicately touched the top, looked out of the corner of one eye at Mrs Williams, and coughed.

  ‘It’s locked,’ she said.

  ‘That needn’t bother us.’ He jingled keys in his pocket, grinned.

  ‘You see,’ she appealed delightedly to Hunter. ‘Just as I said, not a scrap of honesty. Think nothing of opening a dead man’s desk, going through his belongings. But it’s no good. Even if I was to let you do it, you’d find nothing. The police have been through it already.’

  ‘Did they find anything interesting?’

  ‘Not that I know of. Then Mrs Riddell – that’s Mr Bond’s sister, his nearest relative – came in, too. She took away some papers. There’d be nothing interesting left now.’

  ‘I’d like to make sure of that.’ Charlie put his head on one side, rolled the toothpick. ‘Haven’t you got something important to do in another flat now? Just for ten minutes.’

  ‘No,’ she said emphatically.

  Hunter crossed to the window. ‘He jumped from this one?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The sill was fairly low, the window a modern iron-framed one that opened outwards. It would be easy enough to step on to the outer sill and jump. There were no marks on the sill outside. Inside, two long scratches had torn the wallpaper below the sill. Hunter bent to look at them, and then asked Mrs Williams if they were new.

  ‘They are. The police asked me the same thing.’

  ‘Come and look at these, Charlie. See what you think of them.’ Charlie Cash came over, looked, said nothing. ‘Hard to see why anybody getting on the sill to jump out of the window should make marks like that.’

  Charlie nodded. He hardly seemed to be listening.

  ‘But if Bond was being forced out, pushed out backwards, then his heels might catch on the wallpaper as he struggled. Nobody heard any sound of a struggle?’ he asked the housekeeper. ‘The people in other flats, I mean.’

  �
��No. You might not think it, but these flats are very well insulated for sound. You don’t hear the radio from one flat in another.’ She sniffed. ‘Not that in this case there was anything to hear, if you ask me. He jumped. That was the verdict at the inquest, wasn’t it.’

  ‘Yes. You’re forgetting something, Bill.’ Charlie was staring across the street, at a tall, narrow building opposite.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘There was a witness. In that block over there. Somebody who saw Bond jump.’

  They moved away from the window. Mrs. Williams had said they could work out for themselves what sort of a man Bond was. What had she meant?

  The bedroom seemed at first sight to give no more hint of a personality than the living room. The suits hanging in the wardrobe were well made, conspicuously elegant. Several pairs of shoes stood at the bottom of the wardrobe, in different colours of suede. A chest of drawers contained silk underclothing, and several silk shirts.

  Charlie whistled. ‘Beauty gallery. Come and look.’

  Over the divan bed were photographs of half a dozen boys and young men, all rather consciously posed against backgrounds of sea or country landscape. Three of them wore open neck shirts, two wore bathing shorts, one was naked. All of the photographs were signed in scrawling, unformed hands. Hunter read, ‘For Mel, with love from Jack.’ ‘For my friend Mel, from Jimmy boy.’

  On a small mantelpiece were some photographs of Bond. One showed him outside the Houses of Parliament – he had been elected in 1945, Hunter remembered – looking spruce, dapper, younger than his twenty-seven years. Another photograph showed him bouncing a ball on the beach, with one of the boys in the photographs over the bed. A third, obviously much more recent, was of a gaunt, baggy-eyed figure, hardly recognisable as the man standing outside the House of Commons.