Twenty
It was difficult to hold a cosy gathering at the police station. Nevertheless the cleaning lady had dusted the charge room for once and had put a bunch of dried flowers on the table which, remembering Celia’s flowers, Davies thought was accidentally appropriate.
Detective Sergeant Green of the Special Branch helped Mod to get Davies’s wheeled chair up the front steps to the station. He had come out purposely and leaned close to Davies’s ear when they had reached the top step. ‘What have you been doing to Yardbird?’ he inquired quietly. ‘He’s bloody livid. He’s supposed to make this presentation to you this morning but something’s happened. I think he’d rather strangle you.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Davies mildly. ‘I think I must have embarrassed him.’
‘Christ, you’ve done more than embarrassed him. Apparently he went berserk in his office half an hour ago and he said he wasn’t going to make the presentation. But my boss Bob Carter has insisted that he does it. And Yardbird won’t say why he’s blowing his top.’
‘I see,’ said Davies. ‘I think I know why he’s so upset, Mr Green.’
‘What is it?’
‘I’ll tell you soon. Would you do me a favour?’
‘What?’
‘After our little ceremony is over – as soon as I give you the eye – would you take your boss, Detective Superintendent Carter into the CID Room. I’ll come in very shortly after with Inspector Yardbird. I have something I would like to say to him in your presence.’
Green nodded silently. He was a man well accustomed to the odd twists of life. He let Mod push the wheeled chair towards the charge room when the duty sergeant, the shiny Ben, appeared like a substantial shadow and pulled him aside.
‘Very quickly,’ whispered Ben. ‘I don’t know what you’ve been up to, Dangerous, but the old man is fucking furious. It happened first thing this morning, as soon as Yardbird came in. I gather there’s been a complaint against you from somebody called Boot. Says you’ve been terrorising him, beating him up, he says. Anyway he’s been telling tales on you. Then old Yardbird comes down to the CID Room and gets the key to your locker, which he empties all over the floor. And he went out frothing at the bloody mouth with a photograph of some young girl. I didn’t see this, but PC Westerman was in there with a nosebleed. He said it was a photo of a girl.’ Ben looked at Davies curiously. ‘You haven’t been dabbling in indecent pictures, have you, Dangerous?’
Davies smiled. ‘Sort of,’ he said.
Ben stared at him but said nothing more. He helped Mod to wheel the chair into the charge room which was full of people drinking Cyprus Sherry. As he came in they all clapped and he gave a short, embarrassed wave. Then through the door came Detective Superintendent Carter and Detective Sergeant Green of the Special Branch, and stiff-faced, Inspector Yardbird.
Davies sat in his chair, feeling its wheels vibrating from his own trembling. Mod stood one side of him and Josie on the other. To his amazement Doris and Mrs Fulljames then arrived, both extravagantly kissing him before retiring to a short distance, looking smug and apparently not noticing Josie or her proximity to Davies.
He knew that Mrs Fulljames was pleased because the rag-and-bone man had that day restored the brass bedstead to ‘Bali Hi’, Furtman Gardens. Davies had seen the piece in the yard when he had gone to give the horse a cabbage for saving his life. He purchased it, at a special police discount, the man alleging that he bought it from an honest-looking Persian who was in a hurry.
It was Detective Superintendent Carter who made the speech. Inspector Yardbird stood behind like a wax figure.
‘This is in the nature of a very private function,’ Carter said. ‘The implications in the matter which was concluded at Bracken Farm, Uxbridge, are still going on. Mr Ramscar and others are still to go for trial, as you know. But I felt, and I know others did, that in some personal and private way we should make some presentation to Detective Constable Davies, known to you all as Dangeous Davies. Official recognition of his performance may well follow. That’s not for me to say. But this is our own private show. As we can all see he has been severely injured in this affair, although I am glad to hear that he will soon be walking again. I hope that this small presentation from his colleagues will make up for some of it. I will ask his own station inspector, Inspector Yardbird, who himself has known the unique difficulties of a policeman’s life in this particular district, for a good many years, to make the presentation.’
Yardbird, staring at Davies, stepped forward. Davies wheeled the chair across the floor. His hands trembled on the rim of the wheels. The Inspector, shaking more than Davies, presented a silver marmalade pot, plate and spoon. He said no word. Davies thanked them all from his wheeled chair, shook hands with Carter and then held his hand out to Yardbird. Yardbird pushed out a freezing hand. Davies held it strongly.
All around there was more applause and the Cyprus Sherry began to flow. Davies was in his chair next to the stiff legs of Yardbird. As Yardbird was about to move away, Davies reached up and tentatively tugged the edge of his tunic. Yardbird looked down into a big stony smile.
‘Sir,’ Davies said diffidently. ‘Do you think I might have a few words with you? In private?’
Dangerous in Love
To my friend and fellow author
Brian Freemantle
who always buys my books
‘Write that down,’ the King said to the jury; and the jury eagerly wrote down all three dates on their slates, and then added them up, and reduced the answer to shillings and pence.
Lewis Carroll: Alice in Wonderland
One
There were moments when it seemed to Detective Constable Dangerous Davies that mayhem moved into his path, marking him purposefully out, isolating him, and then engulfing him, like those small individual whirlwinds that travelled around in parts of America and which he had seen on television. It was so on this ordinary damp night in early October as he and Mod Lewis, the unemployed Welsh philosopher, were walking to their lodgings at ‘Bali Hi’, Furtman Gardens, London NW, from an evening at The Babe In Arms public house. They were humming as they walked.
At the Neasden end of Power Station Lane, under the drizzle of the cooling towers, they heard the distant but unmistakable sounds of a fracas. Davies halted like a troubled dog. ‘A punch-up,’ he said. Mod stood, his face damp and moon-pale in the drizzle. His heavy head rolled to one side as he listened.
‘Singing,’ he ventured. ‘They’re only singing. Tuesday’s not a fighting night.’
A crash like cannon fire came from the far end of the street. ‘Somebody going through a door,’ said Davies.
At once, the singing became louder, less enclosed. ‘Irish,’ he added. ‘I suppose we’d better have a look.’
‘You’re the policeman,’ said Mod, standing still.
Davies sighed: ‘All right. I’ll go. You ring the law. It sounds like a three-dog job to me.’
‘Do you happen to have ten pence?’ asked Mod.
‘You have to ring 999,’ Davies said. ‘It’s free.’ Mod went off into the windy drizzle. Tentatively, Davies went along Power Station Lane to where he could see the riot: the light coming through the wildly open door, jostling figures behind the steamy windows.
Spectators had made themselves comfortable in upper storeys across the street, sounding appreciation, ooohs and aaahs, like people watching fireworks. He advanced along broken fences and dripping privet hedges, a short burst at a time, until he was twenty yards short of the battle which occupied the entire terraced house. With caution he fell back into the concealment of an open gate, and was thoroughly frightened by a huge hand on his shoulder. He turned to see a West Indian staring from the night. ‘It’s the bleeding Irish, mate,’ said the man.
‘Have they been at it long?’ asked Davies, faintly hoping that the alarm might have already been raised and the police on the way. The man’s teeth lit up like a window.
‘You’re Mr Davies,’ he said. The h
and that had dropped on his shoulder now descended again like a mechanical shovel and, turning him around, grasped his hand and shook it immensely. ‘You was very fair to my boy,’ said the man fervently. ‘Motor Bike trouble. Thompson.’
‘Ah, yes, Thompson, Power Station Lane. John Bountiful Thompson,’ remembered Davies. ‘Taking and driving away. Thirty charges. Six months suspended. How is he?’
‘Settled down a treat,’ beamed the man. ‘You said he ought to take an interest in things, join something. Well, ’e joined the National Front.’
‘Oh good,’ muttered Davies. He peered further along the street. ‘I suppose I’d better go and ask this lot why they’re knocking hell out of each other.’
‘“Summat to do wiv some bloke wot died in Ireland,’” offered Mr Thompson. ‘So they reckoned in the boozer this afternoon.’
‘Been going on since this afternoon has it?’
‘Since Sunday,’ corrected the man. ‘After church.’
As he spoke a crate of bottles came out of the open upper window of the uproarious house and crashed into the front garden. ‘Empties,’ said the West Indian. Davies moved away along the privets. He wondered how long the dogs would take. They were probably in bed. As he moved into the light of a street lamp, someone shouted from an upper window: ‘It’s Dangerous! Go on Dangerous, mate, sort them out!’
‘Never fear,’ whispered Davies, timidly raising his hand. He had reached the scene of the fracas now and peered around the dishevelled hedge. The front garden area was a shambles of debris, the just-jettisoned Guinness crate lying like a beached raft on an island. Two dazed men sat in the postures of children in a corner against the house. A boy in a turban appeared. ‘It’s the Irish,’ he said.
‘So everyone keeps telling me,’ replied the policeman. He scanned the garden area.
‘It’s always like that, their garden,’ said the Indian child. ‘Send them back to Ireland where they belong.’
As he spoke a man came out of the front door as if propelled by explosives, ejected backwards, arms whirling. His feet became entangled with some bottles on the path, which spun like rollers and capsized him against the low wall. He slid down, eyes flickering, finally closing, and became motionless. ‘Mr Phelan,’ said the Indian boy. ‘He’s on the council.’
‘Oh God,’ muttered Davies. A familiar sense of doom settled on him. His tongue was dry. He looked up and down the street but no help was arriving; no sirens, no dogs. He sighed, straightened up, and walked, as casually as a postman, to the gaping door.
‘Now lads, now lads, what’s all this about?’ he called from the front passage. ‘Come on now. You’ve had your fun.’
A moment later, wide-eyed, the Indian boy saw him coming out headlong. His feet caught bottles lying on the garden path. He staggered as if on skates, tipping backwards over Mr Phelan, striking his head on the brick wall and subsiding with a spent sigh. The child bent and peered into the collapsed face. There was an open cut on the forehead, grazes down the cheekbone. Blood dropped from the lower lip. ‘Dumb copper,’ the Indian boy muttered. From somewhere distant, beyond the night streets, a police siren sounded. Too late again.
They had put him in his usual bed in the hospital and now, with his head split and aching, swathed like a nun’s, lip sewn, he leaned against his pillows and morosely surveyed the grey scene outside the window. It was surprising how swiftly the seasons altered. Only a few weeks ago, during his last stay he recalled, the tree beyond the pane had a cover of gritty leaves, but now there was nothing to cloak its bleakness. He had mentioned this to a Nigerian doctor who had remarked, with a touch of medico-poetry, that it looked like an X-ray photograph of multiple fractures.
The arrival of Mod did little to brighten him. The elliptical Welshman, library books hugged beneath his overcoated arms, shambled down the centre of the ward exchanging small talk with other patients. ‘He’s back in again, oh aye … it’s home from home to him.’ He arrived beside Davies’s bed, the books pinioned by his arms.
‘You look like Moses,’ muttered Davies.
‘Works of power,’ answered Mod, piling the volumes on the bed. ‘You should read some philosophy or lives-of-the-greats while you are lying there, Dangerous. It could transform your entire outlook.’
‘That could only be for the better,’ grumbled Davies. ‘I’ve got a half-shut bloody eye and out of it I can just see the swelling of my split bloody lip.’
Mod put his glasses on and leaned closer. ‘Boy, that’s a beauty,’ he observed. ‘Exceptional, even for you, Dangerous. Like the spout of a Welsh milk jug. I brought you some fruit.’
From the interior of his commodious overcoat, he produced a sad apple and some dates wrapped in green toilet tissue. He put them on the bedside locker.
‘Don’t put them there,’ said Davies sourly. ‘They’ll all be wanting some.’
Mod looked around at the other patients and secreted the apple and the dates in the locker drawer. ‘Contributions from Mrs Fulljames,’ he revealed. ‘I nicked them.’
‘I thought that might be the case.’
‘As usual she wants full rent whether you’re there to eat or not. I’ve fed your dog and informed your wife.’
‘Not much reaction from either, I suppose.’
‘No noticeable reaction at all,’ confirmed Mod. ‘But the boys at The Babe once again send their sincere best wishes for your recovery.’ He sat on the side of the bed, inspecting Davies’s injuries. ‘What,’ he inquired, ‘seems to be the trouble?’
Davies glared under his lowered eyelid. ‘I’m in what is called a generally sodded-up condition,’ he said. ‘Fortunately no fractures. Just what you see, plus a black-and-blue ribcage.’
‘I’ve seen you worse,’ consoled Mod. ‘Have you had any visitors?’
‘The Coroner,’ muttered Davies. ‘He was just passing through. The pathologist was with him. They’d been to the mortuary. They gave me a good looking over, and I didn’t like the way they did it.’
‘Future reference, you think,’ mused Mod. His large bald head nodded. ‘Well, you never know. You do find trouble, Dangerous. It’s a pity you didn’t hang on for another fifteen minutes. There were police and dogs everywhere. But everything had subsided by then. You included.’
‘Any arrests?’ asked Davies.
‘Apparently none. One of the dogs wet himself in the house – fear, probably – and the Paddies want compensation.’
‘They would,’ grunted Davies. ‘Kitty is all right, is he?’ He did not wholly trust Mod with his dog. ‘He’s had fresh water?’
‘He’s had fresh Guinness,’ returned Mod. ‘The boys from The Babe donated it. Six bottles.’
‘Six? How many did Kitty get?’
‘We went half and half,’ admitted Mod. ‘By the way, you’ve won the pools.’
Davies’s eyebrows went up so swiftly he yelped in pain. ‘Won them! How much?’
‘One hundred and eighty quid between the whole police syndicate. Nine quid each. I’ll collect it for you if you like.’
‘No thanks,’ Davies sighed. His visible eye clouded. Mod leaned privately towards him. ‘I don’t know why you don’t get out,’ he said. ‘Clear off somewhere.’ He regarded his friend painfully. ‘Look at you. The embroidered man.’
‘The last detective,’ acknowledged Davies sadly.
‘Exactly. The last detective. The last one they send – unless there’s a madman to tackle.’
‘It seems to be my fate to look at people with murder in their eyes.’
Mod’s fat face softened. ‘Why don’t you go off and do something else? Open a hardware store.’
Distraught, Davies gazed at him. ‘Hardware?’ he said, touching his forehead.
‘Anything as long as you get out of the police and out of this area,’ said Mod. ‘Take your accumulated pension and your dog and go. You’re not cut out to be a copper. Never were.’
They sat moodily. ‘Sierra Leone,’ Mod said eventually. ‘Anywhere.’ A nurse
giving out bedpans progressed down the ward. ‘Have you got the right time?’ asked Mod.
Davies nodded towards his locker. ‘It’s in there. It must be nearly opening.’
Mod pulled the drawer and took out the watch. ‘Half an hour,’ he said. ‘Could I borrow the ticker? Just while you’re in here?’
Firmly, Davies retrieved the watch. ‘I like to see the time dragging by,’ he said. He put it back into the drawer. Mod rose and took up his burden of books. ‘I’d leave one of these for you,’ he said. ‘But they’re a bit heavyweight.’
‘I don’t want to start reading until both eyes are open,’ replied Davies.
Still clutching the books, Mod reached into his pocket and produced a randomly folded newspaper. ‘I brought you the local,’ he said. ‘You’re not in it. Nothing about your bravery.’
He shambled off. Davies watched him go down the ward, helping himself to grapes. He revolved at the door and waved royally. Davies lay back, closed his heavy eyes, then opened them as far as he was able and picked up the local newspaper. On the second page he saw that Wilfred Henry Brock, a disordered old man who had wheeled a perambulator about the district for years, had been found drowned in the canal. The news saddened him. Lofty Brock had been a moving landmark, muttering to himself as he pushed his pram, picking up random pieces of paper, as if looking for a lost letter. Nobody knew his story for, it was said, he had himself forgotten it. Davies wondered how he had come to get himself drowned.
He was given sick leave, but after washing his car and attempting to mend some of it, and brushing his dog, he seemed to have little else to occupy him. Cricklewood Snooker Hall was shut while they changed the tables, and there were disadvantages in not having a proper home. He walked to the police station to pay his football-pool stake. Sergeant Bannister, who filled in the coupon, was on duty.
The Complete Dangerous Davies Page 27