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Gently Floating

Page 16

by Hunter Alan


  Gently drank tea, cut toast. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s common sense.’

  ‘So what’s wrong with common sense?’ Parfitt said.

  ‘The Speltons weren’t outside it,’ Gently said. ‘Vera Spelton wasn’t outside it. Some part of the time she was acting the spy. I talked to her this morning. She saw the comings and goings, perhaps more than that. She may have been involved, may have involved Dave Spelton. Dave Spelton has a temper, is violent, uses hammers.’

  ‘But Vera Spelton’s a nut, you can’t believe her,’ Parfitt said.

  ‘Her story checks,’ Gently said. ‘It checks with John French’s story, where it touches. Vera Spelton would like me to arrest John French. She fingered him for me this morning. She may have been an eyewitness to the murder, but it doesn’t follow that she saw John French do it.’

  Parfitt’s eyes were round. He said nothing.

  ‘She isn’t a fool,’ Gently said, ‘She’s an M.D. but she knows a hawk from a harnser. You liked John French. She fingered him for me.’

  ‘Oh to hell with it,’ Parfitt said.

  Gently ate some of his toast.

  ‘I still don’t go with it,’ Parfitt said. ‘I don’t care. I’ll be bloody biased.’

  ‘I’m biased too,’ Gently said, ‘but mine’s a bias towards the facts.’

  ‘Lidney is a fact,’ Parfitt said. ‘He’ll do. He’s my bias. He’s my fact.’

  Gently went on eating, drinking. Parfitt smoked cigarettes. They didn’t look at each other. Cars kept arriving, parking outside. Fresh people, fresh luggage spilled out on the parks. The wedge of river they could see was boiling with the wash of outgoing cruisers. A windless sail rocked, flapped, at last was lowered from a jerking mast. More cars arrived, more people. The mast kept jerking. The wash kept boiling. The waitress came, called Gently to the phone. Parfitt smoked. Gently came back. Parfitt said:

  ‘What’s the latest in facts?’

  Gently shrugged. ‘All confirmed,’ he said. ‘Lidney had the option. It falls in today. He was to have paid up Tuesday, then yesterday. John French was backing him.’

  Parfitt stubbed out a cigarette.

  ‘So,’ Gently said, ‘we’ll take him in. Let him cool his heels. Hear what he has to say.’

  * * *

  The humpty man came into Superintendent Glaskell’s office at eight p.m. on Saturday August 8th and he was still dressed in dungarees and a khaki shirt but he wore also an old jacket sagged at the pockets. He was brought into the office by a uniform man who had a hand on the humpty man’s arm and the roll or shamble in the humpty man’s gait seemed accentuated as he came into the office. All the lights in the office were switched on but especially a floodlight behind the desk. The office was warm, the floodlight was warm, it was also extremely bright. At the desk sat Superintendent Gently. On Gently’s right sat Inspector Parfitt. On Gently’s left sat Detective Constable Joyce. At a separate table sat a uniformed shorthand writer. In front of the desk stood a low wooden chair which had been fetched into the office from a detention cell. It was a scrubbed unvarnished chair and it stood alone in front of the desk. The uniform man ushered the humpty man to this chair but the humpty man ignored it and remained standing. The floodlight was nevertheless very bright on the humpty man. The uniform man closed the door, stood at ease with his back to it. Gently said:

  ‘You can sit down Lidney.’

  ‘Can I?’ the humpty man said. ‘Thanks very much.’

  He continued to stand. His eyes glittered, small. He was sweating. He smelled of sweat. Gently said:

  ‘You’ve been brought here, Lidney, to sign a statement about Tuesday evening. You’re going to give us your account of Tuesday evening and that account will be taken down in shorthand. But first I’m going to tell you that your account to date doesn’t square with certain evidence we’ve collected. And secondly I have to warn you that you’re not obliged to say anything. What you do say will be taken down, may be used in evidence. This is all the warning I’m going to give you. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  The shorthand man scribbled. Lidney looked at the pencil looked at Gently. His big mouth twisted, he said:

  ‘Are you charging me with doing him in?’

  ‘I’ll tell you that when I’ve heard your statement,’ Gently said.

  ‘Yes,’ Lidney said, ‘yes. You’re a nice bugger, aren’t you?’

  Gently didn’t say anything. Lidney stood, sweated. The pencil stopped scribbling shorthand. The floodlight buzzed, hissed a little. Lidney said:

  ‘What’s this evidence?’

  ‘You’ll hear later,’ Gently said.

  ‘Oh yes, so you can trap me,’ Lidney said.

  ‘I can only trap you in telling a lie,’ Gently said.

  ‘And suppose I don’t make any statement?’ Lidney said.

  ‘That’s up to you,’ Gently said.

  ‘If someone’s accusing me I’ve a right to know,’ Lidney said.

  ‘When they do you will know,’ Gently said. ‘All we’re asking for at the moment is your statement.’

  ‘Why don’t you come out with it?’ Lidney said. ‘Why all this rigmarole if you’re going to charge me?’

  ‘Just give your statement,’ Gently said.

  ‘Just bloody hang yourself,’ Lidney said.

  He came up closer to the desk.

  ‘You’re going to fix me, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘You’ve had that stuff out of my bungalow, you can show it in court, that’s good enough. So you keep coming at me and coming at me. You think I’ll bloody break down and weep. You get me here, pretend to know things, think I’ll spew my guts up to you. But you’re wrong, I’m the wrong bloke. I was brought up in a different school. If you’re going to arrest me, just get on with it. Then we’ll see where it gets you.’

  ‘Meanwhile,’ Gently said, ‘we’d like your statement.’

  ‘No doubt you would,’ Lidney said.

  ‘In case it explains our new evidence,’ Gently said.

  Lidney looked at him, sweated.

  ‘Let’s put it this way,’ Gently said. ‘You’ve a chance now to tell the truth. You’ve lied before. We’ll forget about that. I wouldn’t blame you for lying if you were innocent. But now we know too much about it, I’m not pretending about the evidence. So this is your chance to clear it up, and you’ll take it. If you’re innocent.’

  ‘You lousy ferret,’ Lidney said. ‘You’re on that tack, are you?’

  ‘If you won’t make a statement,’ Gently said, ‘that way we’ll know where we stand too.’

  Lidney’s mouth twisted, he puckered his eyes, there was sweat on the bald part of his head. The uniform man at the door shifted his feet, looked at his feet, looked at Lidney. Lidney shuffled further towards the desk. He stooped. His humped back looked humptier. He said:

  ‘You’ve been getting lies out of young French, haven’t you?’

  ‘I’ve been making inquiries,’ Gently said.

  ‘Yes, out of young French,’ Lidney said. ‘I thought he wouldn’t stand up to you long. Clever buggers aren’t you, going after the kid. As though he didn’t have enough to put up with anyway. Blinking heroes, that’s what you are, nagging at the kid till you got something out of him.’

  Gently didn’t say anything.

  ‘Heroes,’ Lidney said. ‘Only you aren’t dealing with a kid any longer. And if I don’t know what you drove him to say, I don’t know what you think I’m going to tell you. Does he say I did it?’

  ‘Did you do it?’ Gently said.

  ‘If he does that’s one lie,’ Lidney said. ‘I wasn’t far off, I’ve admitted that, but it wasn’t me, nor he couldn’t have seen who it was.’

  ‘Why couldn’t he have seen it?’ Gently said.

  ‘Because he was somewhere else,’ Lidney said. ‘There, that’s evidence, put that down. He was somewhere else, he couldn’t have seen it.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Gently said.

  ‘Because I know where he was,�
� Lidney said.

  ‘Then you know when French was killed,’ Gently said.

  ‘Didn’t know it was a secret,’ Lidney said, ‘is it?’

  ‘Apparently not to you,’ Gently said. ‘So now you can tell us. When was he killed?’

  Lidney looked at Gently with small eyes. ‘When someone copped him with a hammer.’ he said.

  The shorthand writer wrote shorthand.

  ‘What makes you say a hammer?’ Gently said.

  ‘Because it was a bloody hammer,’ Lidney said. ‘That’s why. What his nibs was searching the yard for. Not my doorstopper, a bloody hammer.’

  ‘We don’t know it was a hammer,’ Gently said.

  ‘Then you’re the only ones who don’t know it,’ Lidney said. ‘Every bugger else does.’ He winked sweat from his eyes.

  ‘So,’ Gently said, ‘where were you at that time?’

  ‘Not where I could see it done either,’ Lidney said.

  ‘But where were you,’ Gently said, ‘where John French might think you’d done it?’

  ‘Never mind about young French,’ Lidney said.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Gently said, ‘we’ll have to keep him in the picture. He couldn’t have thought you’d done it if he’d been on the Sounds in a half-decker.’

  ‘I tell you never mind about him,’ Lidney said. ‘He was where he was, I was where I was. We didn’t neither of us see it done, that’s all that matters to you.’

  ‘And you were in the bungalow of course,’ Gently said.

  ‘I was,’ Lidney said. He checked. He clawed at the sweat with a hand.

  ‘Yes,’ Gently said.

  ‘I can prove it,’ Lidney said. ‘I can bloody prove where I was.’

  ‘But shall we believe it?’ Gently said.

  Lidney’s mouth was a little open. His eyes weren’t focusing on Gently. His eyes were frowning, pulled down at the outside corners. His featherlike cheeks looked waxy. He said:

  ‘I can prove it all right. I know a way to prove that.’

  ‘Depending on your knowledge of the time he was killed,’ Gently said.

  ‘I can prove it,’ Lidney said ‘I don’t care what bloody time he was killed. I’m outside of it, every minute. I’ve got a witness you don’t know about.’

  ‘How convenient,’ Gently said. ‘Now you can tell us the whole story.’

  ‘There isn’t no story,’ Lidney said.

  ‘About the money for the dance hall,’ Gently said. ‘About the option falling in this week. About Harry French learning what you were up to. About his coming to your bungalow and getting killed with a hammer. About you blackmailing young French and Archer afterwards.’

  ‘All that’s squit I tell you,’ Lidney said.

  ‘Witnesses, young French and your cousins,’ Gently said.

  ‘I say it’s squit, all squit,’ Lidney said. ‘There wasn’t no blackmail, nothing like that. It was a business deal, that’s all it was.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Gently said, ‘I don’t suppose you threatened very much, just pointed out what a favour you were doing by keeping a still tongue. Then Archer invented a new job and bumped your wages and young French was ready to rob his father’s estate to keep Sid’s peculiar temper sweet.’

  ‘It wasn’t blackmail,’ Lidney said.

  ‘It wasn’t business,’ Gently said. ‘It never was business from the start. I don’t hear of any partnership deed.’

  ‘We don’t bother with that sort of crap round here,’ Lidney said.

  ‘So Harry French discovered,’ Gently said. ‘And that was the end of Harry French.’

  Lidney breathed fast, didn’t say anything.

  ‘You went out of that bungalow,’ Gently said. ‘French got the better of you in the fight. Your wife took over. You went out. Later French went out, your wife hadn’t fixed him. Later still you came back in. You’d nothing to say. You began drinking. When young French left the bungalow you were still drinking. And Harry French was floating in the river.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that,’ Lidney said.

  ‘If you don’t,’ Gently said, ‘who does?’

  ‘You bugger,’ Lidney said, ‘you nice bugger.’

  ‘Was it,’ Gently said, ‘your wife, who followed him out?’

  Lidney’s eyes were filmed, staring big. He shuffled a foot and moved his weight on it. The floodlight was throwing a big shadow behind him and because of his hump the shadow looked headless. He said:

  ‘You, you keep Rhoda out of it.’

  ‘Why should I?’ Gently said. ‘There’s only young French to vouch for her.’

  ‘You let Rhoda alone,’ Lidney said.

  ‘Is young French lying then?’ Gently said.

  ‘So he was there,’ Lidney said.

  ‘Of course he was there,’ Gently said.

  ‘I don’t know what Rhoda did with him,’ Lidney said. ‘She switched him about, his old man didn’t find him.’

  ‘When he came looking for him,’ Gently said.

  ‘All right,’ Lidney said, ‘when he came looking for him.’

  ‘When you had the fight in the passage,’ Gently said.

  Lidney felt for the chair. He sat.

  ‘Go on,’ Gently said, ‘when you had the fight.’

  ‘I threw the doorstopper at him,’ Lidney said. ‘The bastard knocked me down in my own house. I threw it at him. Hit his shoulder. In my own house that was. The big bastard. The big bastard. She come out and stopped us fighting. He wouldn’t have lasted, the bloody slob. She came out, give him the key. She’d got the kid out of it. He never found him.’

  ‘Yes,’ Gently said.

  ‘Like that,’ Lidney said. ‘The kid was round the place all the time. He knows she never followed the old man out. He was there. He was with her when I got back.’

  ‘When you got back from where?’ Gently said.

  ‘She sent me out,’ Lidney said. ‘Reckoned she could handle him best on her own, get round him, smooth him down.’

  ‘You went somewhere,’ Gently said.

  Lidney clawed at his sweat. ‘Up the rond,’ he said.

  ‘Away from the bridge,’ Gently said.

  ‘Yes,’ Lidney said, ‘away from the bridge.’

  ‘Did you meet anyone?’ Gently said.

  ‘As far as the mill,’ Lidney said, ‘I was fighting that bastard all the way. As far as the mill, that’s where I went.’

  ‘And you didn’t meet anyone?’ Gently said.

  ‘Up at the mill,’ Lidney said. ‘I was standing there near the mill-dyke. I don’t know how long I was standing there. There was a wireless on in Bob Tooke’s cottage. The window was open, it was the news. Bob was sitting there mending a fishing pole. I didn’t go up, say nothing to him.’

  Gently looked at Joyce. Joyce got up, went out.

  ‘Then you came back,’ Gently said.

  ‘The kid was with her when I got back,’ Lidney said. ‘It’s right. I went in and got the bottle. I was still fighting him. They were yapping.’

  ‘What did you see as you came back?’ Gently said.

  ‘What should I see?’ Lidney said.

  ‘You might have met someone,’ Gently said, ‘seen someone further down the path.’

  ‘I didn’t see anyone,’ Lidney said.

  ‘Perhaps a light?’ Gently said.

  Lidney screwed his eyes shut, passed his hand over them.

  ‘What light did you see?’ Gently said.

  ‘You frigger,’ Lidney said. ‘You will have it, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Gently said, ‘I’ll have it.’

  ‘You bloody know I didn’t do it,’ Lidney said.

  ‘I wouldn’t be too certain,’ Gently said.

  Lidney kept his eyes screwed, said: ‘The door was open. That’s all I saw. Where they were working. The light shone out of it. I didn’t see any more than that.’

  ‘Quite sure?’ Gently said.

  ‘Much good may it do you,’ Lidney said. ‘They sent the right bastard
on this job, you don’t give an inch, do you?’

  ‘So now what about a statement?’ Gently said.

  ‘You’ve got all the statement I’m giving you,’ Lidney said.

  ‘I’ll dictate one for you,’ Gently said. ‘You can make your own corrections.’

  Lidney looked at him, wiped the sweat.

  Gently dictated the statement. Lidney listened. He didn’t interrupt as Gently dictated. He sat leaning forward on the low chair with his long arms crossed on his short knees. Gently spoke slowly, distinctly. The pencil rustled over the paper. In Trafalgar Road outside it was becoming dark. So far Joyce hadn’t returned. At the end of the statement Gently said to Lidney:

  ‘Have you anything to add or alter?’

  Lidney said, still leaning forward: ‘Just type the shitting thing out, that’s all.’

  ‘If there are any substantial changes we’d like to have them now,’ Gently said.

  ‘If there were you’d know about them,’ Lidney said. ‘Never mind all the crap, let’s get it over.’

  The shorthand man went away to type the statement. Gently switched off the flood, lit his pipe. Parfitt had been smoking cigarettes, he smoked two more. Lidney didn’t ask to smoke, didn’t move. Parfitt looked at Gently once or twice without catching his eye. They could hear the typewriter pattering in another room. A moth flew in through the window, buzzed, tapped about the lamps. Parfitt watched the moth. Gently said very softly:

  ‘When did you know who did it?’

  Lidney moved his head, said: ‘Just frig off.’

  Gently blew smoke at the ceiling. ‘Save me some trouble,’ he said. ‘You’ve given me plenty.’

  ‘It’s what you’re paid for,’ Lidney said.

  ‘Who else knows,’ Gently said, ‘apart from Archer?’

  Lidney sat still, didn’t say anything, held his breathing in check. The moth went on butting at the light bulbs. Parfitt didn’t watch it, frowned. The typing stopped. The shorthand man came back, handed the typed statement to Gently. Gently read it aloud to Lidney. Lidney got up impatiently, moved to the desk. The sweat had dried on his face, he wasn’t puckering his eyes, he looked at the penstand, didn’t look at Gently. Gently finished, said:

  ‘Is that correct?’

  ‘Give me the bastard here,’ Lidney said.

 

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