The Complete Dangerous Davies

by Leslie Thomas

  As Davies and Jemma went into the hall, a musical group of young constables, The Cellmates, with a woman traffic warden vocalist, were playing. The singer, professionally called Dolly Parking, wearing orange wig and sundered dress, was bawling into a hand mike. The hall was filled with drinking policemen and their ladies. At the bar Davies was greeted by a broad ginger man. ‘Hello, Affie,’ Davies said. He looked around. Jemma was conversing with the Coroner’s officer. ‘How’s prison?’

  ‘I reckon it’s more difficult keeping them in than getting them there in the first place,’ grumbled the man. ‘Sometimes I wish I’d never transferred, Dangerous, stayed in the force. When you’re a copper, you’re dealing with the criminal classes only part of the time. In the Prison Service you live with them.’

  Davies said: ‘What d’you know about women’s prisons, Affie?’

  ‘Not a thing. Don’t know much about women, come to think of it.’ He looked about the crowded room. ‘There’s an old dame who’s here tonight, mind you. I saw her come in. She gives lectures on women’s prisons, history and everything. When you do your training course she bores the ears off you. He indicated with his glass. ‘I saw her over there somewhere, talking to my boss. Miss Gladstone, she’s called. Like an old bag, they used to say on the training course. But she’s over there, Dangerous. Why did you want to know?’

  ‘I just thought I’d take an interest in them,’ said Davies affably.’ ‘Thanks, Affie.’

  Almost with stealth he made his way through the drinking and talking people, murmuring apologies as he nudged elbows. He heard Jemma’s voice just behind him. ‘Take it steady, Dangerous, you’re too big to be a rattlesnake. Where are you heading?’ She rubbed his ear with her glass.

  Davies paused and spoke quietly over his shoulder. ‘There’s an old lady here, she knows all about women in clink. I’m wondering if she can shed a bit of light on that photograph.’

  ‘She’d have to have a photographic memory. And a long one.’

  ‘I know. But she’s the expert. Gives lectures. I thought it would be worth a try.’

  ‘You’ve got it with you?’

  Davies patted his pocket. ‘I took it to Watkins, the photographers, to see if they had any idea about it, you know, by looking at it. How old it is, what sort of camera. I also got them to copy it. It’s called clutching at straws.’

  He had turned to face her and because of the crush in the room they suddenly found themselves in very close proximity. The bust of her dress was touching his lapels. He swallowed hard and shuffled back a pace. She smiled. ‘You’re lovely, you know,’ she said to him. ‘Bloody lovely.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he croaked. The colour of her eyes was amazing, even allowing for the time of year. He took a deep drink and regarded her over the edge of the tankard. ‘You’re fairly bloody lovely yourself.’

  ‘When we’ve got time,’ she said seriously, ‘we’ve got to have a proper talk.’

  ‘I’d better get going,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Will you be all right for a couple of minutes?’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll soon find company. I’ll just smile at some nice chief inspector.’

  ‘Not a word …’

  ‘… about Lofty,’ she finished for him.

  Davies regarded her steadily. ‘I don’t want the police involved,’ he said. He stopped himself looking at her and turned into the crowd. As he went he felt her touch the nape of his neck with her finger. He pushed on through the people, searching, like an explorer through undergrowth.

  ‘Who are you looking for, Dangerous? Santa?’ A portly probation officer smiled as Davies emerged from the drinkers. The Cellmates launched into another frenzied song.

  ‘Listen, Ronnie,’ said Davies. ‘You know all these theoretical law-enforcers. I’m looking for a lady, an old girl, Miss Gladstone, Prison Service.’

  ‘Know her well,’ said the other man. ‘Makes your ear ache. A bit like this band.’ Like many fat men he had small eyes and he swivelled them around the room like a sniper looking for a target. ‘There,’ he pointed out. ‘Over there, see. In the dress that looks like a bit of our carpet. Talking to that chap from the fingerprint department. D’you know him?’

  ‘Dabber Donnelly,’ nodded Davies. ‘Right, thanks, Ronnie. Keep keeping them on the straight and narrow.’

  ‘I try, Dangerous. I can only try.’

  As Davies approached, the elderly woman and Donnelly, the man, turned to take two glasses from a passing colleague who had been to the bar. ‘Hello, Dabber,’ said Davies. The lady regarded him with reserve. Donnelly grinned and introduced him. ‘Miss Gladstone, this is Detective Constable Davies. One of our more interesting officers.’

  Miss Gladstone extended a hand so soft that, at first, he thought it must be enclosed in a glove. It was not. ‘Why are you so interesting?’ she demanded boomingly. Her eyes were indistinguishable behind dense spectacles. ‘You don’t look very interesting.’

  ‘I’m not,’ agreed Davies hurriedly. ‘It’s just that Mr Donnelly spends all his time in his fingerprint laboratory. Lives in a world of whorls. He thinks that anybody who gets out of doors is interesting.’ He paused. Donnelly asked him if he would like another drink. Davies guessed it was the escape route the fingerprint man had been seeking, and gave him the excuse. He took it gratefully.

  ‘I wondered, Miss Gladstone,’ said Davies, ‘if I could pick your brains. I know you’re an expert on women’s prisons.’

  Her ragged face took on a glow. ‘The Incarceration of Women,’ she boomed, ‘has been my lifelong work.’ Her voice was so penetrating that all the nearby people turned. ‘Have you, young man, read my autobiography, In and Out of Women’s Prison?’ Shamefacedly, Davies admitted that he had not. ‘Published. 1949,’ she said. ‘But there are still copies to be found. Get it and enjoy it.’

  ‘Oh, I will, right away.’ Davies tried to look as if he would like it for Christmas. ‘I need to get to know something about the system, pre-War that is.’

  She looked slightly displeased and drank her gin at a gulp. Donnelly had just returned with Davies’s pint so Davies took the glass from the old lady and handed it to the fingerprint man. ‘Another for Miss Gladstone, please, Dabber,’ he said.

  ‘Of course, I was only a gel,’ said Miss Gladstone, a little mollified. ‘Doing my pioneer work. It was 1937 before I wrote my first book Girls in Confinement.’

  ‘That’s about the period,’ said Davies hurriedly. ‘What were women’s prisons like then?’

  ‘Healthy,’ said Miss Gladstone firmly. ‘Jolly healthy. Far far better than the environment from which most of the prisoners emanated and to which, unhappily, of course, they returned.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Davies. ‘Healthy …’

  ‘Quite a number were farm prisons, you see,’ she continued. Her enthusiasm was warming. Donnelly came back with the gin and she again despatched it at a gulp, in mid-sentence. ‘The inmates worked in the fields. Good fresh air, hard labour, tired their bodies but brought roses to their cheeks. Wonderful experience for them. And they were always imprisoned close to their homes. Upon release some of them couldn’t wait to get back in. They enjoyed their incarceration.’

  Clumsily, Davies was reaching inside his pocket. He took out an envelope and from that, like a conjurer doing a small trick, he produced the photograph which had come from Lofty Brock’s wooden box. ‘This lady,’ he said, ‘doesn’t look very happy. But then it must have been taken on her first day.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Miss Gladstone, holding the picture at arm’s length and lifting her glasses. ‘Before she started enjoying herself. She does look a bit downcast.’

  ‘I’m trying to ascertain who she might be,’ said Davies. He had dropped his voice and now he glanced about him.

  ‘Why are you whispering?’ she demanded astutely. She looked around. ‘They’re all policemen and the like here.’

  ‘I don’t want the police to know,’ he said, trying to make it sound like a joke. ‘They’ll all wa
nt to be on the case.’

  She examined the picture again. ‘Her prison number’s been cut off,’ she observed. ‘Without that you haven’t got much hope, have you?’ To Davies’s consternation, she decisively pushed the photograph into her huge handbag. She hushed him by wafting the great bag at him. ‘I shall take good care of it, never fear, Mr Davies. You have a copy I take it?’ He admitted he had. ‘I shall have to consult my files,’ she said. ‘Perhaps I may be able to discover something.’ The challenge in her eyes was not to be denied. ‘And now,’ she said, ‘I’d like another sizeable gin.’

  Later that evening, Davies began singing softly, not to himself but not quite loudly enough for anyone at a distance of more than a few feet to hear, as if the tune were a secret.

  ‘Is that a moan or a song?’ demanded Jemma as they walked along the winter-night pavements.

  From The Babe In Arms came after-hours lights and voices. Poised uncertainly on the kerb, Davies looked at her askew.

  ‘Louder,’ he said, ‘and it could be a breach of the peace. Anyway, I prefer to sing to myself. When you have a voice like mine, singing becomes confidential.’

  ‘It’s after closing,’ said Jemma, taking his arm. Davies was looking wildly up the street, one way then the other, like a soldier about to advance under fire. ‘Extra Yuletide drinking time,’ he explained vaguely. ‘Mod will be standing there with a miraculously empty glass.’

  She helped him across the empty road. ‘Thanks,’ he said sweetly as they reached the bar door. ‘There were times when I didn’t think we were going to make it.’

  Few people had left the bar, despite the ringing of a bell, as forlorn as a buoy out at sea, and unhopeful exhortations from the various Irish barmen. Mod saw them enter and swiftly swallowed the remainder of his beer. He had been entertaining a girl who appeared to have two footballs under her thick grey sweater. Without speaking Davies took Mod’s glass. The girl declined his brief offer, saying she had to return to her boyfriend.

  Davies was quickly back with the drinks. ‘Just in time,’ he commented, handing one to Jemma and the other to Mod. ‘Who was that?’ he said to Mod.

  ‘Works in Woolworths,’ smiled Mod with late-middle-aged wickedness.

  ‘She looks like Woolworths,’ said Davies.

  ‘Wait, wait,’ cautioned Mod. ‘Within that large bosom beats a large heart.’ He smiled with a little bliss. ‘Things that go bump in the night,’ he murmured.

  Davies drained his beer. ‘I’ve got to go to the station. I’m officially on stand-by,’ he said.

  ‘I’d better come with you,’ said Jemma, regarding him doubtfully. ‘In case you’re kept in.’

  They went out into the sharp night once more, leaving Mod in the bar where unrequited bells were still sounding and barmen hoarsely calling for time.

  ‘Look at the stars, all blinking,’ pointed Davies. Her gaze followed his finger. ‘All up there. Blotto and …’

  ‘Pluto,’ she pointed out. ‘Blotto is what you are.’ Suddenly, she said, ‘It’s my son’s birthday today. I telephoned him.’

  Davies glanced at her and saw her eyes were glistening. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘It makes you sad. I’m sorry about that.’

  ‘Next year, end of next year maybe, I’m going to have him back. His father won’t let him come now. But I’ll see him some day. It’s three years since I was with him.’

  ‘Don’t cry,’ said Davies, clumsily putting his arm about her. ‘I’ll show you our new cells.’

  ‘He hardly ever saw his father,’ she complained, putting her face against his shoulder. ‘It wasn’t fair. That man was months, years away, and never setting eyes on his little kid. One day, you’ve got to believe this, Dangerous, one day the priest came to the door and I said “Hello, Father” and … and my little boy went crazy because he thought it was his father.’

  ‘That’s a bad mistake,’ agreed Davies with sombre wisdom. ‘No wonder you got a divorce.’

  ‘I didn’t. We’re still married. Like you are.’

  She hung on to his arm and blinked her eyes towards the stars. ‘Never mind,’ she said almost to herself. It sounded as if she had said it many times before.

  It was midnight when they reached the police station. The night sergeant had just come on duty and was unpacking his lunch from a fine old wooden case. It had brass corners, a brass lock and a polished handle with brass fittings. In regular rows around its sides, small bright screws glimmered deeply, like bulkhead lights.

  ‘Nice piece of furniture, Lew,’ said Davies. Jemma ran her finger over the line of inset screws. The sergeant looked momentarily pleased and wished them good evening.

  ‘My old dad made that, donkeys years ago,’ he said, patting the box. There was distant Welsh in his voice. ‘He was a cabinet-maker. I wish I’d been now.’

  ‘Got you on the red-eye trick again, have they?’ said Davies.

  ‘They’ve lumbered me with most of Christmas too. They reckon I haven’t got anywhere better to go.’

  ‘Exactly,’ emphasised the sergeant, pointing his finger at them. ‘Just because I’m Lewis Emmanuel, they put me down as Jewish, so I don’t qualify for Christmas off. Every year it’s the same. I keep telling them I’m bloody Welsh.’

  ‘Rotten luck,’ said Davie sympathetically. ‘We haven’t got any prisoners, have we? Not staying?’

  ‘No residents, Dangerous. Few drunks but they’ve been bailed. All quiet otherwise, thank God.’

  ‘I’ll just check the CID room,’ said Davies, moving away from the front desk. Jemma went with him. ‘See if there’s any messages. I’m only stand-by tonight.’

  ‘Right you are, Dangerous,’ said Sergeant Emmanuel, continuing the exploration of his box.

  They walked along the corridor and into the CID office. Jemma’s nose wrinkled. ‘Doesn’t anyone come and clean up in here?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, they do,’ answered Davies doubtfully. ‘But it only gets filthy again. It’s the cells that are the posh part of this building. They’ve all been refurbished. All mod cons.’

  ‘Show me,’ she suggested suddenly. ‘You promised you would.’

  He looked up in surprise. ‘Oh, right you are, then.’ He took a bunch of keys from the wall. ‘They’re really homely. Better than my home.’

  She held his elbow and they walked to the rear of the building down a resounding flight of steps and through a corridor. Davies pressed a light switch, illuminating a row of six barred cells. ‘Warmest place in the nicks,’ he said.

  ‘What’s through that door?’

  ‘Maximum security,’ he told her with a hint of pride. ‘For real baddies.’ He began opening the locks. ‘They’ve only just finished them.’

  He motioned her into a thickly padded interior. There were two cells, each with a bed, a chair fixed to the floor and a basin. To his surprise, Jemma sat on the bed.

  ‘Pretty comfortable,’ she said quietly, looking up into his face. Davies swallowed so violently he almost choked. ‘We … we aim to please,’ he said.

  ‘So do I,’ said Jemma. She took his hand and coaxed him down beside her.

  ‘This is likely to be the most private place we’ll ever find, Dangerous,’ she said seriously. She pulled his bemused face towards her. He was so mesmerised he forgot to kiss her. She kissed him. She had lovely lips and he could feel the gap in her teeth. His uncertain hands eventually located her breasts. Her coat was wide open and he stroked them as they stood out under her dress. Jemma half pulled away and looked beyond him. ‘The door,’ she said. Dragging herself clear of him, she walked the three paces to the main door of the Security Wing. At her touch it swung closed with a soft clang.

  ‘Now we’re locked in,’ mentioned Davies from the bed.

  ‘We’ve got ithe keys,’ she murmured, walking back towards him.

  ‘It doesn’t open from the inside,’ he pointed out. ‘It would be silly if it did, wouldn’t it?’

  She turned to face him with a frank grin. ‘So we’re stuc
k,’ she said mischievously.

  ‘Stuck until Sergeant Emmanuel does his rounds, or wonders where we’ve gone. He probably thinks we’ve gone out the back way.’ He spoke, even then, without realising the possibilities. ‘There’s a red light outside the door,’ he continued. ‘If we press the switch it will go on. But it’s still got to be seen. They didn’t fit anything noisy in case the villains in here disturbed the honest peace of the police station.’

  He stood and made towards a switch high on the wall. His raised hand was almost there when her long brown fingers fell calmly across his wrist. Davies regarded her with near-alarm. ‘Not yet, Dangerous,’ she suggested. ‘We’re okay here for a while. It’s quiet and warm.’ She sat on the bed and patted it. ‘And this is quite comfortable.’

  ‘We look after our villains very well … in the circumstances …’ His voice tailed off. He stood stupidly while she took off her coat. ‘That’s better,’ she said, examining one of the big buttons. ‘It really is close.’

  Davies did not believe what was about to happen. He half moved forward to help her with the coat, then halted. Still without looking at him, she began to undo the square buttons of her dress, moving upwards from the hem. It fell open like gradually parting curtains. Davies remained transfixed. His eyes alone moved, blinking twice. She stopped at the waist and looked up at him. The opening slipped to its widest extent, the side of the dress falling away, revealing the dark lengths of her stockinged legs and, like the sail of a small oncoming ship, a triangle of white between them.

  ‘Let me help you,’ blurted Davies, stumbling on to his knees, striking them on the concrete floor. He swallowed his cry as she seized his head with both hands and fiercely once more brought their mouths together. Half suffocating, Davies clawed his way forward, forcing his knees up from the floor and almost bulldozing her back on to the low, top-security cell bed. He clambered above her, heels kicking. Again they kissed frantically. His head hit the wall at the back of the bunk.