Gently Sahib

by Hunter Alan

  More to the point was the chewed shoe which Dutt, perhaps unconsciously, was carrying about with him, or the question which Perkins was dying to ask but daren’t:

  ‘What ought we to do with the panther?’

  Anticlimax! The point where routine took over from sensation.

  ‘Leave a man here, and let’s get back. Maybe Groton will have found his tongue.’

  A sad-faced constable named Culford was selected to stand guard. The pressmen scattered to their cars, suddenly silent and urgent. Hargrave, putting on a big act, was dispersing sightseers from the lane.

  Then a squad car arrived. Gipping jumped out, looking excited.

  ‘The Yard have rung us, sir . . . it’s rather peculiar. I thought you should know straight away.’

  ‘What’s bothering them?’

  ‘Shimpling, sir. They’ve identified another man as Shimpling.’

  ‘Another man?’

  ‘Yes, sir. He’s dead. He was killed in an accident last night. There was identification on the body.’

  Gently stared. ‘Let’s get this straight! He’s been identified as our Shimpling?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Living at a flat in Fulham, just off the King’s Road.’

  ‘Killed in an accident?’

  ‘In Kingsway, sir. He was stepping off the pavement when he was hit. They’re trying to find the car now, but they’re sure it’s the same Shimpling.’

  Gently looked at Perkins. Perkins had turned red. One could read his thoughts as though they were being screened on that quickly sagging, chubby face.

  ‘But that’s nonsense!’

  Gently shook his head. On the contrary, it was perfect sense.

  ‘But then . . . who’s the one we’ve got in the morgue?’

  ‘Who else is missing?’

  Perkins gaped.

  Groton wasn’t talking.

  He sat in his cell with the broody withdrawal of a penned gorilla, deaf, ignoring all about him, alive only in his smouldering eyes.

  Perkins read out the charge to him – intent to murder and actual GBH – but the formal warning that Groton need say nothing must have sounded ridiculous even to Perkins.

  Groton hadn’t, wasn’t saying anything.

  He needed no warning, now or ever.

  When Perkins had finished Groton climbed on the bunk, turned his face to the wall, apparently slept.

  But if Groton was saying nothing, Shirley Banks wanted to say plenty. Only two hours after she was admitted to hospital the telephone rang.

  ‘This is Abbotsham District Hospital, Sister Brassey, Emergency Ward . . .’

  The patient Banks was being difficult and demanded to talk to Superintendent Gently.

  ‘Is she fit to talk?’ Gently asked.

  ‘Perfectly fit, in her opinion. But she won’t calm down until she’s seen you, so you may as well visit her.’

  Gently, Perkins, Dutt, drove to the hospital. Shirley Banks was in a private room. She was lying propped up on a white-painted iron bedstead and had on a hospital shift of coarse linen.

  ‘Don’t tell me – I’m looking a fright!’

  In point of fact, she merely looked like a patient. Her face had been scrubbed of its thick cosmetics and her hair brushed cleanly back and pinned. She had patches of plaster on her neck and arms, a dressing taped to her left shoulder.

  Without the cosmetics she looked older, pleasanter. Her eyes were woosey from the injection.

  ‘Sit down . . . have you brought a notebook with you? Hell! This shoulder’s giving me socks . . .

  ‘Do you really feel up to it, Miss Banks?’

  ‘Sit down, copper. I’m the boss round here.’

  Gently sat in a comfortless easy chair. Dutt took out his notebook and perched on the radiator.

  The room was small and seemed to lack something. What was missing? Yes – flowers!

  ‘Where do I start? You know about Peter?’

  Gently nodded. ‘We’ve heard.’

  ‘Copper, you nail Groton for that good and proper. He’s a murderous bastard from his heels up.’

  ‘You mentioned a letter . . .’

  ‘Yes, the letter. He pinched it back along with the other stuff. He’d jemmied the door and frisked the place . . . a damn fine mess the bastard made.’

  ‘What was in the letter?’

  ‘It fixed the appointment, nine-thirty at Groton’s club. Anywhere else Pete wouldn’t have gone – he knew the swine too well for that.

  ‘But the Safari Club, that was different. What could Groton pull there?’

  ‘Why did he want to meet Groton?’

  ‘Don’t kid me, copper. It was a bit of black. All this time Pete was lying low . . . then the body turned up. It did something to him. Mind you, he’d never been the same, not like he was before it happened. But the body turning up made him snap out of it – made him angry, I guess that was it.

  ‘So he sent a black-letter to Groton and Groton made the appointment. A couple of thou he should have brought. But all Pete got was a car in the back.’

  ‘And you came up here . . . ?’

  Her lids dropped.

  ‘Yeah, I came up here because I was mad. Because I wanted to make him pay. I wouldn’t have cared a crap if I’d shot him.

  ‘You know what he told me? That the panther was his banker, that he kept his dough in its cage. And I swallowed it, a line like that. Next thing I was clawing up a tree.’

  She gave a shudder, then fell swearing at the pain in her shoulder.

  ‘Now I know what it’s like,’ she said. ‘I can understand what it did to Peter.’

  ‘What did it do to Peter?’

  She moaned, touched the dressing with a finger.

  ‘His hair went white, that’s the spitting truth. Two days afterwards he was white.’

  ‘After what?’

  ‘After what happened. He couldn’t get out of that bloody place. He had to listen to it eating the bloke . . . it gave him the screaming willies for months.’

  ‘We’re talking about the tiger?’

  ‘What the hell else?’

  ‘I’d like you to tell me what happened before that.’

  She slid a look at him.

  ‘Are you pinching me, copper?’

  Gently shook his head.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Well, OK.’

  She reached for the water-container on her locker, but Perkins was there first. He slopped water in her glass. She ran a casual eye over Perkins.

  ‘Man,’ she said, ‘don’t blush for those shoulders!’

  Perkins retired. Miss Banks drank water.

  ‘So about Peter and me,’ she said. ‘We were buddies from a long time back – maybe I don’t have to tell you about that. Pete was a nance. That didn’t bother me, we had our moments, all the same. He was nice to me, always nice. That goes a long way with a girl.

  ‘Then we did a little work together . . . he could trust me, understand? Mostly blacks work on their own, but Pete and me made a team. He’d give me a mark and I’d lay him, Pete would be there with the camera. Sometimes he pulled a nance job and then it was me who took the picture. I got a percentage. He never gyped me. I haven’t been on the bash for years. I used to pick up the dough for him mostly – clients were forgetful about posting it.

  ‘Pete got his hooks into the doctor, but he lost him for a time after the trial. That made him mad because the doctor had roughed him up, and there was a fat connection Pete was after. Pete had a screw on Groton too. That bastard had killed some natives in Kenya. Pete had a picture of him with the bodies and a truck behind them, showing the number plate. Groton whipped that, of course. He cleaned out everything from the flat.

  ‘Anyway, when Pete was in Abbotsham collecting money from Groton he met the doctor again – he was living here under a different name. That gave Pete a notion to come here. He was having a bit of trouble in town. One of his clients had swallowed a gun and I don’t know, one thing and another. Anyway, the doctor was flogging ho
uses and Pete blacked him for a bungalow, then we moved in and started building a connection out this way.

  ‘Pete was good, you know that? He was a bloody fine operator. He could smell black in a moment and he could handle clients when he got them. Once he read a case in the paper – didn’t know a thing about the bloke! – but he sat down and wrote this fellow a letter, and next day I was collecting the moolah.

  ‘Laugh? We killed ourselves over that one! He’d a sense of humour, Pete had.’

  ‘Was the name of that client Edward Cockfield?’

  Shirley Banks said: ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Yes, you do,’ Gently said. ‘If I’m not pinching you, I want names.’

  She pouted. ‘You’re a right copper! All right, it was Cockfield. So what?’

  ‘Just give me the names – all ten of them.’

  She slanted a look at him, muttered something.

  ‘So there was Groton and this fellow – and the doctor, you’d know about him. Then there was Lady Buxhall, the doctor’s girlfriend, just a tart who’d married rich. And Bert Drinkstone, he’s a magistrate – got a taste for being flogged. And the chemist – he was a lark! – and Joe Leyton who runs the Majestic.

  ‘Then there was Sayers, he was a nance job, and Gwen Eliegh and Gertie Wratting. Those perishing women were oonch-fanciers.

  ‘What are you blushing about, feller?’

  Perkins said agitatedly: ‘She must be lying! I know those ladies very well . . . Mrs Wratting in particular. She’s honorary president of the Dining Club.’

  Shirley Banks gave a gritty chuckle. ‘Where have you been hiding, sonny?’ she asked.

  ‘She’s a public figure—!’

  ‘She’s a randy old bitch. Pete had to come in and drag her away from me.’

  ‘And Miss Eliegh is chairman—’

  ‘She gave me a pain. You’d laugh if I told you what her game is.’

  ‘You can’t believe what this woman is saying . . . Mr Drinkstone too. It’s unthinkable!’

  Gently sighed, hunched weary shoulders. Perhaps he should have left Perkins out of it! Somewhere, in any statement by Shirley Banks, fresh Abbotsham heads were going to roll . . .

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘That’ll do, Miss Banks.’

  ‘Man, I’ll give details if he wants them.’

  ‘Get back to the statement.’

  She leered at Perkins. Perkins turned his back, stood twisting his fingers.

  ‘So that was Pete’s connection here,’ Miss Banks said. ‘We were running it about a year. Pete knew how to keep them cool, nobody made him any trouble. Then something happened that put a scare in me. I spotted a bloke on my tail. He was checking who I spoke to, where I was picking up the envelopes.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘A real creep. I didn’t reckon him for a cop. I saw him around a couple of days before I figured what his game was.’

  ‘Could he have been a private detective?’

  ‘That’s what Pete and me thought. Pete was trying for a big dip just then, he reckoned he’d stirred up some opposition.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I wanted to leave – but not Pete. Pete had guts. He reckoned they wouldn’t dare touch him if they couldn’t get hold of the stuff. So we arranged it I went back to London and took the stuff along with me. Then after he’d made his big dip he’d join me there, then we’d work the connection by mail.

  ‘Two months later he turned up at Fulham at around two in the morning. He was shaking and blubbing like an idiot, and all he could say to me was “the tiger!”’

  Shirley Banks laid her head back.

  ‘Now I know how he felt,’ she said. ‘Maybe I didn’t right then, but I do now. Poor bastard.’

  ‘But he told you what happened,’ Gently said.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I got it out of him. Not right away. He was shot to bits. Later on I heard the details.

  ‘Somebody came knocking on his door. He wasn’t expecting any callers. He took a poker down the hall, opened the door and let fly. Then everything happened. A truck backed up. He could see the tiger in the truck. He could see the grille going up. He dived into the bathroom and locked the door.

  ‘And that’s where he had to stay, listening to the tiger noshing the bloke. He couldn’t leave through the window because it was a bloody silly window. When it was quiet he peeked out and all he could see was the tiger’s leavings. He belted across to the garage, got in the car, got to hell.

  ‘That’s about it – except he woke up screaming every night for six months.’

  ‘And the bloke he hit?’ Gently asked.

  ‘He never saw who it was. The bloke rushed him when he opened the door, he clocked him one, the bloke went down.’

  Gently slowly nodded his head. Yes . . . the details all fitted. Even the missing car, and the burial of the remains which were perhaps not beyond identification. But who had been driving Groton’s truck, who had winched up that grille? Who had come back later, while the tiger still roamed, to dig the grave and remove evidence?

  Groton knew, no doubt of that. But Groton wasn’t saying a word.

  Shirley Banks was watching him anxiously.

  ‘Have I told you too much, copper?’ she asked.

  Gently shrugged. ‘You know what you’ve told me! But proving it is different. I wouldn’t worry.’

  ‘I’d do a stretch to fix Groton. The pity of it is they won’t hang him.’

  ‘You’d better relax.’ Gently climbed to his feet. ‘We’ll bring you something to sign later.’

  ‘Not nothing incriminating I won’t sign!’

  ‘Nothing incriminating.’

  Gently smiled at her.

  They drove back to Headquarters. Nothing was said in the car. The crowd from the football had turned out and they were jammed for ten minutes in Abbeygate Street.

  In Perkins’s office Gently lit his pipe and stood some moments gazing at the window. Perkins, equally absorbed, lumped down at his desk, and appeared to read doom in the marks on his blotter.

  Only Dutt, beginning to type from his notes, seemed exempt from this impulse to silence.

  At last Gently turned.

  He said: ‘Here’s the problem! We’re in a rather unusual situation. We have to decide whether to declare or to keep playing till stumps.’

  Perkins blurted: ‘We can’t go on . . . can’t bring all those people into it.’

  ‘We might keep it down to one or two.’

  ‘No . . . you don’t know Abbotsham. It’d come out!’

  ‘Then let’s take a look at the situation.’ Gently gave several quick puffs. ‘Fast, Groton. He’s off your hands. He’ll go to London. You can forget him. Then there’s a murder that isn’t a murder but an accidental death – a death resulting from the commission of a felony by the deceased and others unknown. Along with which you have a lesser crime, that of concealing the death.

  ‘Now, do we send it to the coroner like that, on the hard evidence we can offer, or do we ask for another postponement and try to identify the others unknown?’

  Perkins groaned. ‘We know who they were.’

  Gently shook his head. ‘That won’t do. All we can show is that certain people acted suspiciously, and that a prostitute claims they had a motive. On that evidence we couldn’t proceed. The Public Prosecutor wouldn’t accept it. But we could go on probing and pressuring these people on the chance of getting a confession.’

  He blew a heavy gust of smoke.

  ‘What it really amounts to is this! If I take myself off and go fishing, you can settle this according to Abbotsham.’

  ‘What . . . what . . . ?’

  Perkins’s eyes rolled incredulously.

  ‘Of course, I’m not putting ideas into your head. But if you said to me these people have suffered enough already, I should probably have to agree with you.

  ‘They’ve broken the law, but they’ve paid for it. Isn’t that all that justice requires? No point in mak
ing them pay twice, and wasting public money into the bargain. Better let them go on being good citizens.

  ‘Well – I couldn’t argue against that!’

  ‘B-but . . .’ Perkins stammered.

  ‘It just leaves two things,’ Gently said. ‘One of them is personal curiosity. The other is what happened to Sayers’s money, if indeed it was Sayers the tiger ate. You’d agree with that, would you? We ought to know?’

  ‘Y-yes . . . but . . .’

  ‘Hand me the phone. If I make an early start tomorrow I can be in Wales by teatime.’

  A gaping Perkins pushed the phone across. Gently lifted it and dialled.

  ‘Cockfield? . . . Superintendent Gently. I’d like you to invite me out this evening.’

  ‘You’d like me to do what?’ Cockfield said.

  ‘Invite me out to your chalet. With Hastings and Ashfield. Just the four of us. I thought you’d prefer it on your own ground.’

  A moment’s silence, then:

  ‘Why? What’s this supposed to be about?’

  ‘Oh, Sayers,’ Gently said. ‘We seem to have our hands on him.’

  A longer silence!

  Cockfield said: ‘Just you – nobody else?’

  ‘Just me,’ Gently said.

  Cockfield sounded as though he’d been drinking.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  SPURS HAD WON 5–2, which was happiness enough for Dutt. After tea he retired to the lounge to read the print off a football special.

  During tea Villiers had looked in, but seemingly hadn’t known what to say to them. He congratulated them several times, but kept sheering away from detailed comment.

  ‘This is another success for you, Superintendent . . . I’m glad our man showed up well in it.’

  ‘Inspector Perkins showed great courage.’

  ‘Yes . . . actually, we’ve just been talking . . .’

  What he wanted to say was: Let it drop – get to hell out of my manor! But apparently he couldn’t hit on a diplomatic way of phrasing it.

  ‘You’ll be glad of your leave after this . . .’

  ‘Are you an angler by any chance?’

  ‘No, not really . . . I do some fishing . . .’

  In the end he gave up.

  The sky had clouded over very lightly and the evening was cooler. When Gently set out to Weston-le-Willows the light had a filtered, shadowless radiance.