by Hunter Alan
‘Ah, Superintendent! They told me I’d find you here. I gave them a ring at the station. ’lo, Ken boy – what do you make of him? He’s a rum nut, isn’t he?’
He laughed loudly, patting Ashfield’s arm. Ashfield responded with smiling grunts. Cockfield swept off his hat and tossed it on the desk, knocking two pill-boxes off the pile of prescriptions. He grabbed them up, still chuckling.
‘Mustn’t muck the goods about! See how neatly he does them up – that’s our Ken for you, Super. Are you busy?’
Gently shrugged.
‘I’m showing you over some sites, remember? Do you more good than grilling Ken. A fat lot he knows, apart from stinks. What are you after here, anyway?’
‘Routine inquiries . . .’
‘That’s a laugh! You’ve been giving him a dose of the old Gestapo, I could twig it when I came in.’ He winked at Ashfield. ‘Don’t let him upset you. He’s a decent so-and-so when you know him. He and I got drunk last night, he’s probably, you know . . . two degrees under.
‘Give him one of your special pick-me-ups, the violet muck. That’ll fix him.’
He laughed again, went prowling round the dispensary as though to give Ashfield time to follow his suggestion. But Ashfield only stood looking awkward and showing his teeth and grunting. Cockfield stared at the bottles. He was putting on a proper act. He stuck his behind out and his head forward, twiddled his thumbs behind his back.
‘What a devil of a lot of junk . . . you’ll never use all this stuff, Ken? Enough to lay out half Abbotsham. I’d hate to get in wrong with you.
‘AM NIT – what’s that?’
‘It’s a poison.’
‘I know, you clot! Why don’t you keep a shelf of Scotch? It’d do more good than all your potions . . .’
A proper act: the business executive being jovial with his pals. Bringing an earthy touch of sanity to a situation which had got tense . . .
‘See here, Super – NUX VOM. There’s a witch’s brew for you. You’d vomit pink elephants as well as nuts if you downed a dose of that. What’s it for, Ken?’
‘Pest control.’
‘Say rat poison, brother! Strychnine, isn’t it?’
‘A form of strychnine.’
‘Strychnine’s good enough. You wouldn’t be fussy if you copped some.’
‘There are various forms—’
‘Listen to him, Super! Now you know his besetting sin. Conscientiousness, that’s it – sometimes he’ll drive you up the wall.
‘He’s a philosopher. Oh, yes! You should hear him lecture on Buddhist philosophy. All about the sound of a glass of water and your face before your parents were born. Drives us mad he does, sometimes, has them arguing till the small hours. And he wouldn’t as much as swat a fly.
‘I mean it, Super – not a single fly!
‘Mr Non-Violence is our Ken. That’s not to say he isn’t human . . .’
Ashfield flushed very slightly, turned quickly towards the bench. He began playing with a chemical balance and making adjustments to the scale.
Cockfield chuckled.
‘But we’re all human, Super . . . when the chips are down, eh? You, me, the lot of us. Squeeze the orange and the pips squeak. I’ve never met a saint – plenty of hypocrites, no saints! Just good triers and bad triers, those are the sizes we come in.
‘Me, I never sack a man if there’s one damned reason why I shouldn’t, and if he’s a trier, he’s my friend.
‘Now what about coming along with me?’
He thrust out a hand, as though expecting Gently to strike it to close the deal. Gently grinned, shrugged feebly. How could one help liking Cockfield?
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’m sold.’
‘That’s talking like a man! You’ve done with Ken?’
‘For the moment.’
‘Come on. My car is outside.’
‘Just one other thing.’
‘What’s that?’
Cockfield hung on apprehensively.
‘That violet muck . . . I think I’ll try it. And for chrissake, don’t slap my back!’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THEY WENT OUT to Cockfield’s car, a maroon Daimler with slate-coloured upholstery, and Cockfield drove smoothly and patiently along Abbeygate and up the Buttermarket. People spilled off the pavements and darted out from behind parked vehicles. At the Market Place a waving constable was trying to keep the traffic moving.
Cockfield’s joviality had waned a little since he’d got into the car, but there was reason enough for that in the difficult traffic conditions. Gently felt better. The violet muck – it had tasted like camphorated sulphuric acid – had settled his head, after a preliminary spasm when the top of his skull seemed to have blown off. But now it was apparently back on station, and he had a sensation of floating calm.
They turned down towards the station and then left towards Milehall. Beyond the town the country was park-like and the road fringed with giant trees. Almost, it had a forest atmosphere, with tall plantations in the distance, and the roadside trees, oaks and limes, tangled together high overhead.
‘You’re not taking me far, are you . . . ?’
‘Only to Colton. That’s three miles.’
‘What’s there?’
‘You’ll see, brother.’
Gently grunted and lit his pipe.
Soon there appeared a right turn beside which was erected a large board. It was painted white with a red border and carried the name: COCKFIELD, in heavy capitals. They turned off. They were on an unfenced road which unravelled its way through a pocket of heath, closed, at a distance, on each side by low thickets or plantations. Bracken and ferns grew on the heath and occasional thorns and flaking pines. One looked continually for outcrops of rock, but there were only burns of sand or gravel.
‘Rum country, eh . . . ?’
Gently shrugged, puffed.
‘You’ll see a cottage in a minute . . . I was born in that cottage.’
They came to it. It was a ruin. It had been built of clay lump. Plaster, slipping off from one side, showed honey-coloured clay in which straw had been mixed. The thatched roof was sagging in, revealing pale edgings of unweathered straw, and a few rotted timbers appeared carcass-like through the gaps. Cockfield drove by without slowing.
‘Wasn’t any damp-course in those days! Two up, two down, and mother had six children. The old man was a keeper here. He died of rheumatics. We went to school in Abbotsham – three miles. We walked it. All dead except me . . . two died in the war. Tom, he was the last to go. Now I own the whole shoot . . .’
‘You mean the cottage . . . ?’
‘The whole shoot! Eight hundred acres, thereabouts, and two farms, and the hall. Not that the hall’s much to swank about, it was a hospital during the war. The National Trust wouldn’t have it. I let it stand there and rot.’
‘Couldn’t you demolish it for the salvage?’
‘I let it rot – while I build!’
Now they swung through a belt of pines and were met suddenly by an open prospect. Straight ahead, on a gentle rise, stood a large Georgian house of yellow brick. At once, even from a distance, one saw the house was falling into dereliction, for a number of the windows lacked frames and the main entrance gaped doorless.
But to the left, a little below them, was a criss-cross area of dug foundations, and beyond these a score of part-finished houses on which men were busily engaged. Farther back still were finished houses grouped in semicircular closes which, at their centres, had each one or two trees, left for effect when the site was cleared.
Children played under the trees and mothers with prams gossiped there. On the building site cement-mixers churned, a tip-lorry discharged a load of sand.
Only the eyeless house on the rise seemed out of place, seemed mistaken.
Cockfield parked. He glanced at Gently.
‘Well, Super?’
‘Where’s this?’
‘Colton New Village, that’s where. Not a New Town
– a New Village.’
‘Your idea?’
‘Who else’s? The County Council wouldn’t touch it – not that I wanted them in, anyway! But I put it to them, at the start.’
Cockfield gestured over the wheel.
‘I’ve built this from scratch in eighteen months. Over a hundred houses, a couple of shops, a village hall and made-up roads. Now we’re finishing ten houses a week and plan to work up to fifteen. The overall scheme is for five hundred houses with shops, pubs, clinic, a library.
‘And when it’s finished I’ll start again across the other side of the estate.
‘There’s my answer to the housing problem – houses, brother: houses – houses!’
‘Since eighteen months ago you’ve built this . . . ?’
Cockfield nodded without looking. His big hands gripped the wheel, he stared ahead, massive, heavy.
‘What would you say – are they good houses? You bet they are, when I build them! I’ve dug foundations and carried a hod, I’ve never skimped a job in my life. Look – look! What would they cost you, twenty miles out of London? Four thousand – five – six – seven?
‘I’m charging eighteen-fifty a house!
‘Eighteen-fifty, with quarter of an acre, gates, fences, laid path – three bedrooms, two reception, kitchen, garage, part-heating.
‘And if you haven’t the brass I’ll rent you one of my houses. Seven – eight guineas a week? Forty bob, brother, and walk in!’
He lifted his hands and slapped the wheel as though pounding at a rostrum. His body was tense behind the action and he made the whole car quiver.
Gently puffed.
‘You’re doing it at a loss . . . ?’
‘No! That’s the cream of the business. I’m making it pay, like a bloody capitalist – enough to put in the public buildings.’
‘But it’s non-profit-making.’
‘Only as far as the money goes. Set that aside and it’s pure profit. I’m building houses and gyping nobody.’
‘Whose money paid for this Daimler?’
Cockfield relaxed, gave a snorting chuckle.
‘I’ve got a great big house, too, brother – and a weekend place – and a yacht! Ted the Red’s a real stinker, eats caviar over his Marx. I’m right and left of the Party line and they hate my guts. I spoil the image.’
‘But you do make money.’
‘Who says I don’t? Sammy Bronstein paid for the car.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘A social criminal – financier, slum-owner, managing director. British Best Buys is his latest floating. They’re putting in supermarkets all over the southeast. I’m building them out this way. I can offer what they want – plant, quality, good labour relations and completion on the dot.
‘And I soak them for it, brother. I’m a capitalist to a capitalist. There’s just this difference – I never skimp. And they know it. And they pay.’
‘So you’re a sort of Robin Hood.’
‘Do you want me to sing the Red Flag?’
‘But you started this village eighteen months ago.’
Cockfield’s hands tightened on the wheel.
He looked at Gently, looked away.
‘I told you,’ he said, ‘I rang the station. I got Perkins. He said you were asking about me, about that accident I had. All right. It was a hell of a thing. You don’t know how you’ll act when it happens. It happened to me. I did the wrong things. I acted like a bastard . . . I was one. It’s been on my conscience ever since and I don’t think I’ll ever stop paying for it. Once it’s done there’s no undoing it. You just have to live with what you are.’
Gently didn’t say anything. Cockfield drew a heavy breath. Now the hands were lying dead towards the bottom of the wheel.
Outside, two youngsters were chasing each other through the bracken at the roadside; they sighted the Daimler and came to a stand, gazing at the car with round eyes.
‘I didn’t know the kid. I knew his father, he’s in the post office. But I knew the kid’s girl friend, Jenny Morris, she’s the daughter of one of my foremen.
‘We have a social club, I sometimes go there . . . you know, I like to be close to the men . . . I knew Jenny. She was a lovely kid. It knocked her flat. She’s gone teaching in Canada.
‘People see it from the outside – what they read in the papers.
‘That way, it’s easy to condemn . . . or you, hearing just an outline . . .’
‘So this village . . . ?’
Cockfield shook his head vigorously.
‘What connection can there be? They’re two separate things, they don’t cancel out – nothing ever cancels out.
‘Though if I dared, I tell you this, I’d call it the Clifford Amies Village . . . but what the devil good would it do? What good would it do Jenny Morris?
‘No! You just can’t cancel things out. You can accept them, that’s about all. If you can learn a bit . . . not to condemn . . . that’s about it. That’s the size.’
‘Yet someone condemned Peter Shimpling.’
‘He—’
Cockfield bit his lip.
‘He was a rat, you were going to say, a predatory animal. He didn’t deserve to have his life.’
‘I wasn’t going to say that! My God, that’s the sort of thing I fight against. You don’t understand. I didn’t condemn him. But now it’s done, can’t be undone.’
‘So we should forget it?’
‘I know you can’t. But how are you ever going to understand it? You see, the essence of it . . . the basic facts . . . you’re barking up the wrong tree. Yes, somebody did condemn Shimpling, somebody loosed the tiger on him. Those are facts, but you’re letting them blind you – say you’ve stumbled on them from the wrong angle.’
‘What’s the right angle?’
‘How should I know?’
‘You’re pretty certain I’ve got the wrong one.’
‘I am. I live here, I know the people, know the feel of it. You don’t know that.’
‘Is that all you know?’
‘I’m trying to help you! If only I could put you on the right track . . . However much you know, you’re bound to be wrong, and you might make a mess for which you’d be sorry. Why do you think I grabbed you this morning?’
‘Frankly . . . ?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’d like to square me.’
‘Call it that – I’m not squeamish! Perhaps you think I’ve done it before?’
Gently shrugged. ‘It wouldn’t have been necessary, not if I heard the story right. But you may have got hold of the impression, locally, that the police’ll swallow a good cover-up.’
Cockfield was dragging on the wheel again. Now he thumped it with his palms.
‘All right – I deserve that, very probably. I don’t care – throw it at me! But it’s not the reason, the whole reason. I brought you out here to give you a hint. Oh, I know how you’re working things out, making two and two equal four – and you’re right, you’re getting at the facts – but you’re wrong too. That’s my point!
‘No, listen. You’re full of sharp questions – was there ever a policeman who wasn’t? – you sort out a case like a box of tricks while the locals here just fumble. But are they wrong and you right? Isn’t it better to fumble sometimes? To let a weed wither away instead of trampling on the corn? Especially – this is worth considering – if you have any doubt about the weed?
‘You’ve seen Abbotsham. You think it’s slow. We don’t know what makes London tick. But do you know what makes us tick – the sort of people we are here? Because that’s important, more important than the facts you’re following up – a perspective, you understand – an elevation, as well as the plans.
‘Have you checked the crime figures for Abbotsham? No? You didn’t think to do that?
‘A manslaughter, a burglary and a bigamy – they were the highspots of 62.
‘And that’s Abbotsham. A good place to live, where people have time to like each other �
�� a place where nothing ever happens because we’re too damn busy living our lives! Plenty of money, no slums, a little culture, a lot of decency. And small enough – we know each other, aren’t just ants in a heap.
‘Whoever heard of blackmailing in Abbotsham before this fast boy came down from London?’
Gently shifted a little. ‘What are you trying to say?’
‘Nothing! Just giving you the perspective – no more than that. Shimpling comes here, ferrets about, finds he’s on virgin soil, begins to put the bite on people, to spread his poison through Abbotsham. And some devil loses his head and that’s the lot for Shimpling – wrong, perhaps, but it happened – and the pity was it didn’t end there.
‘The question is, how wrong?’
Gently shook his head. ‘Not a question for me.’
Cockfield turned, looked at him. ‘But it is,’ he said. ‘Believe me, the whole business turns on that. Suppose it wasn’t murder?’
Gently said nothing.
‘Suppose it was . . .’ Cockfield hesitated. ‘If it were . . . in some way . . . less than murder, would it be worthwhile blowing the lid off ?’
‘Less than murder in what way?’
Cockfield patted the wheel. ‘I don’t know! More like . . . manslaughter, something of that sort.’
‘Can you suggest how it could have been manslaughter?’
Cockfield twisted. ‘Well . . . it might have been an accident. Perhaps they only meant to scare the fellow.’
‘They?’
‘Him, her, who you like! It’s as reasonable an assumption as another.’
Gently shook his head again. ‘I wouldn’t hang my hopes on that. The way it was done wasn’t to throw a scare, and throwing a scare wouldn’t have solved any problems. If Shimpling had survived he’d have had another sting, would maybe have taken his revenge. The tiger was put in there to kill him. Nothing else will stand up.’
‘But if there was any question . . . ?’
‘I can’t make bargains.’
‘But you can suppose—’
‘I’d rather stick to the facts! How much had you drunk on the night you killed Amies?’
Cockfield clung to the wheel, said nothing.
Gently said: ‘You were being blackmailed. Ashfield and Hastings were being blackmailed. You claim to have spent that night together and your alibis cancel out. Groton was also being blackmailed and so was Sayers and a certain lady. Put it into any perspective you like, and what’s a policeman going to think?’